Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  Sip water again. Catch their eyes. Some were watching closely. Was that interest or criticism? There was no way of knowing. ‘Oh yes, you will say. That’s all very fine when you’re dealing with one child, one to one. It won’t work in a classroom, when you’ve got anything from twenty-eight to forty children all together. And yes, you are quite right. Teaching a class is a very different matter. An art. And a very difficult art at that. How can one person provoke that initial interest in a class of thirty pupils? Well, the answer is, of course, that he can’t. At the very most he will light a spark in about a third of his pupils, the rest will be willing but puzzled, or bewildered, or disgruntled, or bored according to their natures and the quality of their experiences until that moment. So what is to be done about them? Well, I suppose the first and most helpful thing that we can do is to recognise that they are not misbehaving or being naughty. Misbehaviour is usually a deliberate action and has adverse consequences. Bullying is a prime example. But these pupils are not misbehaving. They are simply revealing that they have no appetite for this particular lesson at this particular time. Or to put it another way, the lesson has not provoked their appetite.’

  Pause. Let them digest for a while. Now go on. ‘This is the point at which the Dalton system has an advantage over the more traditional teaching methods. Because there is no pressure on our pupils to start their assignments immediately, they are free to ask their teachers for individual help, to talk to their fellow pupils about the task in hand and to take as much time as they need to complete it. By these means most of them acquire the necessary appetite along the way and the work is done to everybody’s satisfaction and often with unexpected pleasure. None of that would have happened if we had assumed that their inability to learn was naughtiness and punished them. When grazing animals are threatened by a predator, as I’m sure you know, they lose all appetite and stop grazing immediately, so as to be ready for instant flight. Punishment and the fear of punishment has exactly the same effect upon the appetite for learning, which is why we try to find other ways to solve our problems.’

  She sipped water again as she looked round at her audience. Are they accepting any of this, she thought, or do they resent me for saying it? The staff on the platform were shuffling their feet. She looked at her watch. ‘When I first agreed to give this address,’ she said, ‘I was told how long it was expected to be and promised to tailor it to your requirements. I see that I still have five minutes in hand. That being so, perhaps you would like an opportunity to ask questions. Having worked with the Dalton system for over a decade I am well used to answering questions – even if providing the answers is not always within my competence.’

  They laughed at that and one or two of them smiled at her. But the cannons to the right and left of her were being primed for action. She gripped her philosophical shield and took a deep breath.

  ‘I should be interested,’ the principal said, ‘to hear your views on the efficacy of examinations as a means of ensuring application. We find that the promise of better results or the threat of failure are both useful incentives when we require our students to keep their noses to the grindstone – and in this college we do require our students to keep their noses to the grindstone.’ His tone was intended to be humorous, and his students obliged him by giving a guffaw, but the criticism implied by his words was unmistakable.

  He’s daring me to disagree with him, Octavia thought. He’s so sure of his opinions he’s using this as an opportunity to bait an easy opponent. I must answer him very carefully otherwise his students will take his lead and weigh into me too. She looked down at her notes – Exams, pros and cons – and was glad she was well prepared.

  ‘I can hardly inveigh against examinations,’ she told him, and her tone was light too, ‘nor would you expect me to, when most of the girls who attend my school do so by means of a scholarship awarded on the basis of an examination. And of course I am well aware that for many of my pupils successes in the General and Higher Schools examinations are important if they wish to go on to university, for example, or into nursing or business or the civil service. All students will make an extra effort to achieve success in their examinations under these circumstances, providing of course that they have a reasonable chance of passing. However there is an adverse side to this. If during his school career, a student is examined too frequently or made to feel that passing examinations is the single most important thing he has to do, then he will learn in a different way – memorising necessary facts, following lines of enquiry that do not interest him “in case they come up”. In short he will learn to satisfy the examiner and not to satisfy himself. Or to put it another way, he will have lost the natural joy in learning. When he finally stops studying for examinations he will stop learning too, for he will have lost the appetite for it. We would like to produce young adults who will go on learning all through their lives – because it is the natural thing to do and because they enjoy it. I hope that answers your question.’

  To her delight that provoked a ripple of applause and several hands were raised, some boldly, some – or so it seemed to her – hopefully. She chose one of the hopeful ones. I must take note of what is being asked, she thought, and of the answers I give. They will be useful on the next occasion.

  She answered questions for nearly half an hour and by the time she’d taken the last one she was feeling really rather pleased with herself. The principal rose importantly to move a vote of thanks, pulling his gown about his chest as though he needed protective armour and was adjusting a breastplate.

  ‘Miss Smith,’ he said, ‘has made out a persuasive case for the system she operates in her school and I am sure you would wish to show your appreciation in the usual way.’ There was no mistaking the disapproval in his tone but the applause that followed was warm and very decidedly appreciative, and as she was gathering up her notes ready to leave the platform, several of the young men came up to speak to her personally.

  The last of them was a pale young man with spectacles and a cowlick of blond hair falling untidily across his forehead. ‘I – um – I mean,’ he said, and gulped and blushed. ‘What I mean to say is – um – well, thank you, of course. It has been – um – what I mean to say is.’ And then the words came out in a rush. ‘You are an inspiration, Miss Smith. I think what you’re doing for the pupils in your school is wonderful. I wish I could be part of it. I consider it an honour to have met you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to him. ‘You must try to introduce the system yourself when you start teaching.’

  ‘I doubt if I could manage that,’ he admitted. ‘You’d need to be pretty strong, wouldn’t you? To start it off, I mean. And a head teacher, of course. I mean you couldn’t do it as a newcomer.’

  ‘There are several Dalton schools in England now,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure they take newcomers and you wouldn’t be alone in a Dalton school. And you know where my school is, of course, if you need any particular help.’

  ‘What I would really like,’ he admitted, blushing again, ‘would be to teach in your school. But I don’t suppose you take men teachers do you, being a girls’ school?’

  She considered it seriously. ‘I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘We haven’t yet but we don’t operate according to the laws of the Medes and Persians, so there’s no knowing what might happen in the future. After all, men and women can both vote when they are twenty-one now, so why shouldn’t they teach in the same schools?’

  He held out his hand and she took it and shook it. ‘You are a very great lady,’ he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Octavia gave a great many speeches during the next eighteen months. Her reputation was growing and so was respect for the things she had to say. It pleased her to be meeting so many people and to discover that a lot of them were genuinely interested in the Dalton way of teaching.

  ‘I think that’s probably the best thing about it,’ she said to Elizabeth.

  ‘The best th
ing about it is that the message is spreading,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The more people we can influence the better, especially in times like these.’

  ‘That sounds like missionary zeal,’ Octavia teased.

  ‘God forbid!’ her friend said. ‘Conversion by bullying has never been to my taste in the least.’

  ‘Nor to mine now,’ Octavia said, ‘although it could have been a few years ago, as you know.’ It was salutary to remind herself how close she’d come and what a bully she’d been.

  But at that moment, she was more concerned to see that her pupils were getting a substantial midday meal. In the last few months she’d been following world events with growing anxiety, finding it hard to believe that such a violent drop in share prices could possibly have happened – or been allowed to happen. Surely somebody should have seen it coming and done something to prevent it? What was going on in America was like a nightmare, hideously out of control and getting progressively worse, with hysterical crowds besieging the banks, riot police in Wall Street, hundreds of firms gone bankrupt, thousands of workers laid off, more and more people unable to earn a living wage. And now the nightmare had crossed the Atlantic. British exports were falling off, there was no demand for British shipping, unemployment figures were up and rising, and she had a horrible suspicion that some of her children were going hungry. It was extremely worrying.

  ‘I shall be interested to see what the Fabians make of it all,’ she said to her father. They’d been invited to a New Year dinner in Westminster that week and she was very much looking forward to it.

  It was an impressive occasion. The table was extremely grand with its heavy double damask cloth, the expensive Worcester china, the ornate silver cutlery, the cut-glass vases bright with holly, the Venetian epergne piled high with fruit and glittering in the electric light. In fact, everything in the room looked so prosperous and civilised that, if it hadn’t been for the shingled heads of the ladies around the table and the straight uncompromising cut of their evening dresses, Octavia could have imagined herself back at the turn of the century enjoying the calm of an Edwardian evening, not struggling to make sense of the world in the first month of 1930. But the news from America had grown so much worse over the last few days that it was dominating the newspapers, the wireless and every dinner table conversation, and this one was no exception.

  It was the general opinion round the table that something would have to be done. But nobody was quite sure what it should be. Some were for following Ernest Bevin’s suggestion and devaluing the pound, some agreed with George Lansbury that the retirement age should be lowered to sixty so as to leave more work for the men who needed it most, although others said that was just tinkering with the problem and not solving it. Some thought a new young MP called Oswald Mosley had the right idea. He was advocating a policy of large-scale public works, rather like those undertaken by Mussolini in Italy, to ensure that as many men as possible were kept employed rather than being paid the dole and left to stay idle. Others considered that the cost of such a scheme would be prohibitive.

  Bernard Shaw, in his inimitable way, said it all came of worshipping Mammon and that, until we could be persuaded of the error of our ways, our national economies would continue to spin out of control. ‘Money talks,’ he said, ‘money prints; money broadcasts; money reigns. We are all in thrall to it. Kings and Labour leaders alike have to register its decrees and even – by a staggering paradox – to finance its enterprises and guarantee its profits. We have – or are purported to have – a Labour government, but even with socialists in what is ironically called “power”, you will notice that not one minister dares to talk of nationalising any industry, however socially vital, not when it has a farthing of profit for plutocracy still left in it, or can be made to yield a farthing for it by subsidies. That is the reality of the system we operate and until we have the courage to change it we must endure its consequences.’

  As she drove back to Wimbledon at the end of the evening, Octavia was profoundly troubled. ‘Do you think Shaw is right?’ she asked her father as they sat waiting at one of the new traffic lights. ‘Are we truly in thrall to money?’

  ‘I fear he may be,’ J-J said. ‘The evidence would seem to support him.’

  ‘Then the system must be changed,’ his daughter said.

  ‘I trust you will not tackle it single-handed,’ he said, smiling at her determined expression.

  She laughed at that and drove in silence for a few minutes before becoming serious again. ‘Will there be bankruptcies here too?’ she asked.

  ‘For those who have gambled on the American stock market, I fear so,’ her father told her. ‘We must count ourselves fortunate that neither of us have ever had the urge to play the market. Or the money.’

  ‘Ernest will have a hard time of it,’ Octavia observed, ‘being a banker.’

  In fact, he was already having a harder time than either of them could guess, although they didn’t find out about it for another three months and then it was from a sudden, and rather peculiar phone call from Emmeline.

  ‘Tavy,’ she said abruptly. ‘I know you’ve only just got in from school but could you come over, do you think? I’ve just had some rather bad news.’

  She sounded so calm that Octavia wasn’t alarmed. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Not the children?’

  ‘No, no,’ her cousin said. ‘Nothing like that. They’re all right. No, it’s Ernest. He had a heart attack this afternoon. At the bank.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Octavia said, but she still wasn’t worried. ‘Is he very bad?’

  ‘Well yes,’ Emmeline admitted. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ Octavia said.

  As she drove to Highgate she wondered what sort of state Emmeline was really in. Her calm on the phone was chilling but of course that could have been delayed shock, or a cover for grief and if she was deliberately keeping up a front she could be very upset indeed.

  But it was no front. Emmeline was calm because she didn’t care and she certainly wasn’t grieving. She sat in her pretty parlour with her children around her and told Octavia what had happened as unemotionally as if she were ordering the weekly groceries. ‘They phoned at half past four to tell me,’ she said. ‘Did I want the undertakers to deal with it at the office or should they send the body home. I told them to deal with it, naturally. I thought the sooner it was done the better and there wasn’t any need to have the body dragged all the way back here and then have it taken off again, now was there?’

  Octavia was rather thrown by such a callous approach but she agreed that the decision was sensible. ‘Was it expected?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Emmeline said lightly. ‘I can’t say it was. But then, how would I know? He never told me what he was feeling. Most days he just ate his meals and went to work. Oh, don’t make that face, Tavy. I’ve been living with a stranger for years. We all have,’ and she turned to her children for support, ‘haven’t we?’

  They nodded their heads, agreeing with her, and Dora patted her arm. ‘We never really knew him,’ she explained to her aunt. ‘He wasn’t the sort of person you knew. Not the way we know you and Uncle J-J. We only ever saw him at meals.’

  ‘And then we couldn’t speak,’ Edith said. ‘He never let us say a word at mealtimes. We just had to agree with his opinions and keep quiet and do as we were told. You don’t get to know people when that’s the way they treat you. It’ll be different now.’ The expression on her face was almost triumphant. ‘For a start, I can go out with my young man without having ructions all the time.’

  I didn’t know she had a young man too, Octavia thought, and smiled encouragement at her niece.

  ‘His name’s Arthur,’ Edith explained, ‘Arthur Ames, and he’s very nice, very, very nice, a real live wire, and he works ever so hard. But that didn’t suit Pa. The way he went on you’d think he was the devil incarnate. I couldn’t tell you about him, Aunt Tavy. I couldn’t tell anyone, not the way he went on. It was h
ateful.’

  ‘Well, you’ve told me now,’ Octavia said, ‘and I’m very glad to hear it.’

  ‘He said she was too young,’ Emmeline explained, ‘and she was to wait till she was twenty-one. The same old story. Too young. What will you live on? Where will you live?’

  ‘It was all nonsense, of course,’ Dora said. ‘He said I was too young and I was twenty-one. The fact is, he just didn’t like me going out with John. I know it’s unkind to say it, but if you ask me he didn’t want us to be happy. He kept saying we were the wrong age. It didn’t matter how old we were, we were always the wrong age.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re just the right age,’ Octavia said. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Another good thing,’ Johnnie put in, ‘I shan’t have to work at the bank. I can be an architect now.’

  ‘Yes, my darling,’ Emmeline said. ‘So you can. Edith’s quite right. Everything is going to be very different.’

  ‘I thought I understood our Emmeline,’ Octavia said to her father later that evening. ‘She’s always been so loving and gentle, especially to us. I don’t like to see her being hard-hearted. It upsets me. I expected a few tears at the very least. After all, he was her husband. Think how we were when Ma died. And how awful it was when Cyril was killed. And when the boys died. And her ma and pa. She cried enough then in all conscience. We all did.’