by Ruth Thomas
‘Oh?’interrupted Mrs Crieff.
‘. . . should be brought to your attention,’ I continued. ‘It’s just that it involves . . . somebody’s happiness. A child’s happiness at school. And I just . . . remembered that you said . . . I . . .’
‘Are you referring to Jonathan Singer?’ Mrs Crieff said, in slightly sepulchral tones.
And I stopped talking.
‘No,’ I said.
Mrs Crieff was peering at me, bug-eyed, and I didn’t know how to continue. I didn’t know what to say about John Singer. I worried about him; I worried, of course, on his behalf – but I didn’t know what to say about him to Mrs Crieff.
‘It’s actually about someone else,’ I resumed, feeling my face growing hotter, ‘it’s just something I felt I should maybe . . . but you know, actually,’ I heard myself rambling as Mrs Crieff stood there, silent as stone, ‘I probably shouldn’t have come. I mean, I suppose it’s . . . probably something that can wait till tomorrow.’
And I came to a halt and gazed down at Mrs Crieff’s lawn. It looked quite psychedelic in the early evening light. And I pictured my life drifting on like this: of standing in places I didn’t even want to be standing in, at the ends of conversations I didn’t even comprehend.
‘What an amazing lawn,’ I said; because I had to say something. ‘My mum and I . . . we’ve always thought, you know – Wow! – when we’ve walked past your garden. That would be a really . . . you know . . . low-maintenance lawn to have.’
Mrs Crieff remained silent for a moment. She looked at me. She seemed suddenly bigger and wider, like a bull standing at the gate of a field, breathing steam through its nostrils. Then she said
‘It’s called Permaturf.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s a great time-saver.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Well, we definitely thought . . . I mean, my mum and I . . .’
‘Now: I’m actually getting ready to go out this evening, Luisa,’ she interjected. ‘Me and Mr Crieff. And our taxi’s going to be here in about ten minutes. So what is it you actually came to say?’
I breathed in. What would it feel like to walk on that lawn? I wondered. Would it be springy? Or tickly? Or tough? Maybe it would even be therapeutic, like one of those beds of nails . . . And then I told her. I told her everything I’d seen that day; everything involving Emily Ellis’s dad and the affair he was having with my predecessor Susan Ford. I mentioned the unhappiness that I felt sure was heading in Mrs Ellis’s direction and, surely, by extension, Emily’s. And I reminded Mrs Crieff of the Golden Rules we were all supposed to stick to – to be honest, I said: to be kind and to tell the truth. Which was what I had decided to do.
Mrs Crieff waited for me to stop talking. Then she said, ‘I know about Susan and Mr Ellis.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘I already know.’
‘Oh,’ I said again.
‘But, really, what can one do?’ she continued. ‘We can’t get involved – it’s a private affair. It’s outwith school hours. And Mr Ellis, as you know, is a very generous member of the PTA . . .’
Something, some understanding I’d been trying to suppress, began to bubble up now, to rise and expand like some monstrous dough. Like the porridge in The Magic Porridge Pot.
‘Do you know how much he has donated to the school this year?’ said Mrs Crieff.
The books. I thought of the books Mr Ellis had donated to the school. The Biff and Chips and the series about the universe.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘no, I don’t know.’
‘Let’s just say’, Mrs Crieff said, ‘he made it possible for the P5s to go to the Cairngorms for a week last March. And also, of course, there were all those books for the library.’
‘Ah.’
‘Ours really is not to reason why, Luisa,’ she said. ‘Miss Ford is no longer with us, after all,’ she added, as if Susan Ford had died. ‘And Mr Ellis is a well-respected man.’
She was already closing the door. There was already more door between us than space. The Jack Russell had got back up again and was already slouching towards the dim, unknowable reaches of Mrs Crieff’s house. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw Mr Crieff – the briefest glimpse of him, anyway – slipping through a doorway at the end of the corridor. He looked quite thin and waif-like. A husk of a man. He was wearing a baggy, diamond-patterned jumper and a pair of beige trousers.
‘Why, though?’ I blurted, as the gap between me and Mrs Crieff narrowed even further. ‘Why is he well respected? And why is ours not to reason why, Mrs Crieff?’
‘Because it’s private,’ she snapped, receding into her hallway. ‘And it’s none of our business.’
But I couldn’t stop thinking of the way Mr Ellis was being allowed to get away with it – of the way some men just got clean away with things – and I felt, quite suddenly, something peculiar happen to my heart, a small, unexpected anger growing wilder and wider by the second.
‘It’s just, you told me once, Mrs Crieff,’ I heard myself saying, stepping closer – almost door-stopping, like someone going round the houses selling brushes and furniture polish – ‘you said that if there was ever anything bothering me, relating to St Luke’s, I should come and talk to you about it. And that did bother me. You know: what I saw this afternoon has bothered me.’
The door opened again, just slightly. Mrs Crieff’s face appeared in the gap.
‘It’s like that poem you’ve got in your office,’ I said. ‘Speak your truth quietly and clearly,’ I added, aware that whatever it was I’d been keeping quiet myself, keeping under wraps, had just been released, like a greyhound let out of a trap. ‘And listen to others,’ I continued, ‘even the dull and ignorant; they too . . .’
– Mrs Crieff glared –
‘. . . have their story . . .’
Mrs Crieff breathed in and then out, a small, peculiar smile appearing on her face.
‘Yes, well two can play at that game, Luisa,’ she said, and I felt my confidence faltering. ‘For instance, Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. I know those lines off by heart.’
‘Hmm,’ I said.
‘And I’m afraid to say, Luisa,’ she continued in a low voice, ‘that there will almost certainly have to be consequences now. Especially if you breathe a word of this . . . relationship . . . to Mrs Ellis . . .’
‘But the thing is, Mrs Crieff, it’s about . . .’
‘. . . because it states quite clearly, in the confidentiality clause of your contract, doesn’t it, that you must respect the . . .’
‘But, Mrs Crieff . . .’
‘. . . privacy and confidentiality of . . .’
‘But she’s pregnant, Mrs Crieff! Isn’t she! Mrs Ellis is expecting a child!’
Mrs Crieff glowered at me.
‘More fool her!’ she said. ‘She should have thought a bit more about that one, shouldn’t she!’
And she shut the door.
*
The phone was ringing when I walked back through the kitchen door of our house. I picked it up straight away.
‘Good evening, madam,’ began a woman’s voice in an immediate, breathless rush, ‘I’m calling this evening because De-Luxe Living is currently offering £500 in vouchers to install showrooms in your area . . .’
‘Are you?’ I said. I felt as sad as I had ever felt. I’d felt a kind of sorrow for a long time – it had followed me around like a ghost for nearly a year and a half – but that evening, for some reason, was the first time it had really got me.
‘. . . and I wondered’, the woman continued, ‘if I could have just two minutes of your time, madam, to ask two very simple questions. Just to see if your house qualifies?’
I hung onto the receiver and couldn’t think what to say about the two very simple questions. I couldn’t think what to say about our little house. Our little house in the suburbs; the place where I’d gone to hide.
‘
So, question one,’ the woman began. ‘If money was no object, madam . . .’ – she’d adopted a brisk, optimistic tone now, like a person reading someone’s tea leaves and seeing something promising in them – ‘. . . if money was no object, would you redecorate your bedroom, your bathroom or your kitchen first?’
I felt tears coming into my eyes, welling up like water rising in a basin. Soon the water would begin to spill over the edge.
‘I think it would have to be my bedroom,’ I whispered.
‘Your bedroom was that?’ the woman asked, a slight note of irritation creeping into her voice.
‘Yes. It would have to be my bedroom,’ I said, ‘because it’s the only room in the house that’s mine.’
‘Sorry?’ the woman asked. ‘Are you not the owner of the property, then?’ she snapped.
‘No, I’m not the one who pays the mortgage,’ I said. ‘I’m only nineteen. I’m . . .’
But she had already put the phone down.
11
I don’t remember anything about that Wednesday. Wednesday happened; it came and went. Some days are like that. I suppose I must have got the bus to St Luke’s and back, but my mind was somewhere else completely. I don’t remember anything apart from the blue of the sky.
*
The jamboree was going to kick off at eleven on the Thursday. The only other things that kicked off, as far as I knew, were arguments and games of football. Mrs Crieff had told us about the day’s programme during a staff meeting the previous week. ‘. . . the Infants’ Magic Show, however,’ she’d said, ‘is going to start slightly earlier. Because Magic Bob has to get away by twelve for another event.’
Which had struck me as quite un-magic – the fact that Magic Bob should have to bow to the demands of ordinary time. If magicians have to do that, I’d felt like saying, what hope is there for the rest of us? And I’d pictured Magic Bob arriving at the event – at the birthday party, say, of some ailing octogenarian – and locating a coin behind their ear, or an egg. Hey presto! And I’d wondered how old you’d have to be before you didn’t find magicians like that really annoying.
*
I didn’t see Mrs Crieff when I walked in that morning, but the sign on her door proclaimed her to be IN and her silhouette was there, behind the slats of her venetian blind. She was like the big bad wolf in the forest, or the troll that lurked under the bridge, waiting for the billy goats to scamper across. I wondered, as I walked past her office bearing three Tupperware boxes full of my mother’s gingerbread men, what she was doing in there; how she was occupying her time before the start of the jamboree. She was probably devising the best, most expedient way to sack me. And even though I didn’t want to be there any more, the thought of not being there seemed even worse. I would miss the children – I realised that suddenly – and I would miss Mrs Baxter and Mrs Regan and the lollipop man. I might even miss the sight of that lonely, silver birch tree and the frog-shaped rubbish bin.
I had to take the gingerbread men to Mrs Regan’s office along the corridor. I zipped past Mrs Crieff’s like a scalded cat and knocked on the door.
‘Come in,’ called Mrs Regan in her gentle voice.
She was sitting on a black swivel chair, stuffing a small yellow T-shirt into a plastic bag. On a shelf above her head was a snow globe containing the Eiffel Tower; and a mug that said I’ve been to Stirling Castle.
‘Hi, Luisa,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
On the floor at her feet was a stack of green lever-arch files, and behind her, piled up in a cardboard box, were a lot more yellow T-shirts. I had no idea what they were for – some sporting event, perhaps. Or maybe they had been kindly donated by Mr Ellis.
‘I’ve got some gingerbread men,’ I said, as if this was a totally normal statement.
Mrs Regan glanced at the Tupperware and didn’t reply. She was busy dealing with the yellow T-shirt and the plastic bag. After she had finished sticking a length of Sellotape across the top of the bag, she looked up with more focus, and smiled.
‘So, what have we got here?’
‘Gingerbread men,’ I repeated, feeling a mild despair, already, at our lopsided conversation. ‘They’re for the jamboree,’ I added. ‘Flapjacks and gingerbread men.’
Which sounded, I thought, like a song Julie Andrews might sing.
Mrs Regan peered more closely at the boxes.
‘Well!’ she said. ‘You’ve certainly been busy, Luisa.’
‘Actually,’ I replied, ‘it was my mum who made them. She was the one who . . .’
– and all of a sudden it seemed quite an effort to talk at all: to come up with anything sensible – or even that made any sense – about biscuits or jamborees or anything else. Mrs Regan’s office was just a room filled with lever arch files and pot plants and plastic bags. It might, once, have been part of some grand Victorian vision, but it was really just as impermanent as everything else. Nothing lasted. Nothing was what you thought it was. Nothing and nobody. And I felt, suddenly, all the confidence I’d ever had draining away from me like blood from a wound and dripping into dark pools around my feet. I had tried: I had tried for over a year to say the right thing and do the right thing, and now I wondered what the point had been. Nothing appeared to have made any difference. Whatever I said, it seemed as if Mrs Regan would just continue to sit there smiling and stuffing T-shirts into bags and saying ‘Someone’s been busy.’ And in assembly the next day, we would all still sing the same songs about being honest and faithful, and Mrs Crieff would talk about the importance of telling the truth. I thought about Mrs Ellis, pregnant and duped, and I felt weightless, bloodless, adrift. Help me, Mrs Regan! help me! But Mrs Regan, in common with everyone else, would not know what I was talking about.
‘Someone’s been very clever with the icing,’ she said, regarding the little sugary jackets my mother had twirled onto the gingerbread men that morning; it had taken her so long that I’d nearly missed the bus again. ‘Someone’s got an artistic touch.’
‘Yeah, my mum’s keen on baking,’ I replied. ‘And she thought the jamboree was a worthy cause.’ Although I can’t think why. I mean, for all we know, maybe Mrs Crieff’s going to embezzle the proceeds and get on the next plane to Luxembourg.
‘Well, that’s very kind of her,’ Mrs Regan said. ‘People have been very kind,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Look at all the fairy cakes people have been bringing in.’
And she gestured to a huge, rectangular mountain of Tupperware balanced on a trestle table in the corner of the office. They were all full of cakes. Leaning against the plastic walls of their containers, the tanned, shadowy forms of cupcakes and millionaire shortbread slices appeared almost sinister.
‘Between you and me and the doorpost, though,’ Mrs Regan whispered, ‘this is not the easiest week to have a jamboree.’
And then she yawned. She stretched both pink-cardiganned arms into the air and yawned with quite unexpected abandon.
‘However,’ she said.
‘Mrs Regan . . .’
‘Anyway, Luisa,’ she interrupted, snapping her mouth shut again like something hinged, ‘I’d better get on. I’ve all these T-shirts to do. Then I’ve to put all the chairs out in the hall.’
She gazed, blank-eyed, at the cardboard box full of T-shirts. Perched in a wire tray beside it, I noticed, was a stack of St Luke’s letterheads, all proclaiming the school’s Honest and Faithful credentials.
‘You’ll be wanting the Tupperware back, presumably?’ she said, as I was turning to leave.
‘No rush. I’ll pick them up later. Better get going.’
And I legged it out into the corridor. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to console Mrs Regan about all the T-shirts and the plastic bags. ‘Mind how you go,’ said the lollipop man, returning from crossing duty and almost colliding with me. He was still carrying the huge yellow and white lollipop that always seemed in danger of clonking small children on the head.
I was on snack duty that morn
ing. It might be jamboree day, but I still had to do the snacks. So while Mrs Baxter read Sam and Susie Go to the Dentist, I went into the kitchenette to begin preparing the food. There was at least something a little calming about being in there. Standing at the sink, I put on my white nylon apron, washed my hands and tied my hair back. Then I checked the menu that Mrs Baxter had stuck up on one of the cupboard doors.
Wholemeal toast fingers
Raisins
Juice
Thursday had never been the most interesting snack day. Wholemeal toast and raisins always sounded more like something you might scatter on the ground for pigeons. Friday was the best day, when the children had cheese cubes and melon slices, like something at a 1970s cocktail party. But we weren’t doing snacks that Friday: by then, we’d already have run out of time. And God only knows, I thought, where I might be then. At the Jobcentre, most likely, filling in a claim form.
‘. . . Sam is a little bit scared,’ I heard Mrs Baxter informing the children as I was getting out the tub of raisins, ‘but the dentist is a very nice man. He tells him it is important not to eat too many snacks between meals . . .’
Oh, but is he? Is he a very nice man? I felt like exclaiming from behind the preparation surface. Because sometimes, children, in my experience, nice people are really not very nice at all.
And I placed a smile on my face and headed out of the kitchenette. I walked across to the octagonal tables and put a plate at each of the eight sides. I returned to the kitchenette and came back out again with two plastic jugs filled with diluted orange juice. I poured the juice into twenty-nine colour-coordinated cups and placed two fingers of toast and a small scattering of raisins on each plate. Then, when Mrs Baxter had concluded the dentist story and told everyone how important it was to ‘brush their teeth’ and ‘not to snack between meals’, I stepped forward.
‘Snack time, everyone,’ I shouted.
‘Yessss!’ said the children.
