Miss Sowerbutts gave a small smile. ‘Oh, didn’t the governors mention that?’ she said. There was an air of triumph in her voice. ‘Well, I am sure you are keen to look around, so I won’t delay you.’ She replaced her glasses and looked down at the papers in her desk. ‘You will forgive me if I do not accompany you. I have quite a lot of paperwork to deal with.’
Elisabeth gave an inward sigh of relief that Miss Sowerbutts would not be coming with her. She stood, smoothed the creases out of her skirt and said in a pleasant voice, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ The sarcasm was not missed by the head teacher, who continued, tight-lipped, to stare at the papers on her desk.
Miss Brakespeare’s face was etched in an expression of anguish and apprehension, as if she were expecting to be struck a blow at any moment. She had been informed on Monday afternoon by Miss Sowerbutts that the new head teacher would be visiting the school on the Wednesday, and the feeling of relief and contentment that she had felt over the weekend following the interviews had quickly been dissipated when the head teacher had given her considered views. Following the ordeal of the interviews, Miss Brakespeare had enjoyed a pleasant weekend, thinking she could maybe get on with the new head teacher, who had appeared very pleasant and talkative when she had met her. Indeed, on her way home that afternoon she had been quite light-headed. She did not want the responsibility; she really did not want the job and would not have put in an application form had it not been for Miss Sowerbutts’ and her mother’s insistence. The head teacher had been so persistent and Miss Brakespeare, ever one for a quiet life, had acquiesced.
There had been the predictable response, of course, from her mother when she had been informed of the outcome of the interviews, but this did not dampen Miss Brakespeare’s high sprits.
‘It doesn’t surprise me that you didn’t get the job, Miriam,’ her mother had remarked unsympathetically. ‘You’ve never been one to push yourself forwards. You like it in the background. You take after your father in that. He was never assertive or ambitious. The times I tried to get him to go for promotion. He could have been a manager if he had had a bit more gumption. People put on his good nature. They took advantage of him – as they do of you.’
Yes, her daughter had thought, I know that, and you are at the very front of the queue.
‘I am quite happy as I am, Mother,’ she had said cheerfully. ‘It is a big responsibility being a head teacher and I do have you to look after.’
Her mother had sat up in her chair and huffed. ‘I can’t help being invalided, hardly able to walk and in constant pain what with my arthritis. It’s no bed of roses stuck at home by myself all day, I can tell you. Don’t blame me for you not getting the job,’ she had said sharply.
‘I am not blaming you, Mother,’ her daughter had replied with a sigh. ‘I’m just saying that you need looking after and that had I been appointed as the new head teacher, I would have had a much bigger work load and not enough time to take care of you.’
‘That is a feeble excuse, Miriam,’ her mother had told her, huffing. ‘You’d have had more time on your hands. Don’t you go telling me that Miss Sowerbutts has a massive workload. She doesn’t teach a class, sits in her room all day and is out of that school at three-thirty like a cat with its tail on fire. You’ve told me so yourself.’
‘Yes, well,’ her daughter had said. ‘Things might change. The new head teacher seems very keen and is pleasant enough.’
‘She might seem pleasant enough,’ her mother had said, ‘but she’s likely to be the sort of person who will stab you in the back while smiling in your face. You want to put your foot down from the start. Behave as you mean to go on and don’t be so amenable and ready to be at other people’s beck and call. Now what’s for tea?’
Miss Brakespeare had still been quite cheerful on the Monday morning after the interviews until Miss Sowerbutts had asked her to join her for coffee in her room at morning break. Then, the sour seeds of doubt had been sown.
‘Of course, she will alter everything,’ Miss Sowerbutts had told her deputy head. Her lips had drooped in distaste. ‘I’ve seen her sort before, full of all the educational jargon and keen on all the fashionable fads and fancy initiatives. Says all the right things to keep in with the inspectors and the education officers and out of the school most of the week on courses and conferences, leaving you to do all the work and hold the fort. She’ll bring in a whole raft of modern teaching methods and change everything we have established over so many years. And, of course, you won’t fit in with her plans. She’ll make life difficult for you from the start. You mark my words, Miriam, you will find it intolerable having to work with her. She will be watching you, judging you, criticising you and finding every opportunity of finding fault. You will be driven out just as I have been. If I were you, I’d put in for early retirement as soon as you can.’
Miss Brakespeare had not said anything. She had blinked and nodded and smiled and kept her own counsel. Perhaps I might welcome the change, she had thought, but at the back of her mind there was that nagging worry that Miss Sowerbutts’ predictions would prove to be only too correct.
5
Before calling in at the classrooms, Elisabeth looked around the building for which she would soon have charge. It came as no surprise to her that the school had come in for such heavy criticism. The small entrance, with its shiny green wall tiles and off-white paint, was cold and unwelcoming. It was bare of furniture save for a hard-backed chair and a small occasional table in the centre, on which was an ugly vase containing some dusty plastic flowers. Pinned to a noticeboard on a plain wall were various warning notices about head lice and scabies. From it the corridor, lined with old cupboards and with a floor of pitted linoleum the colour of mud, led to the four classrooms, three of which were used for teaching. The fourth, a cluttered general-purpose room, full of boxes and books, some old desks and damaged chairs, was where equipment and materials were stored. All four rooms were small and square, with high beams, large windows and hard wooden floors.
Elisabeth knocked and entered the first classroom, the windows of which gave an uninterrupted view of the dale which swept upwards to a belt of dark green woodland, the distant purple peaks and an empty blue sky. The scene seemed to shimmer in the bright light. A narrow road curled endlessly between the fields, which were criss-crossed by silvered limestone walls. Far off an invisible bird called plaintively.
Ranks of dark wooden desks of the old-fashioned lidded variety, heavy and battle-scarred and with holes for inkwells, faced the blackboard. They were entirely unsuitable for growing ten- and eleven-year-olds, and Elisabeth noticed that several of the larger boys had their legs sticking out. This would be something she would change. The highly polished floor was of patterned wooden blocks and was clearly well maintained. Here was one thing the caretaker did take pride in, she thought. At the front of the room, on a dais, was a sturdy teacher’s desk made of pine, with a high-backed chair, while at the side was a bookcase containing a tidy stack of hardbacked books and folders, a set of dictionaries and some reference texts. There were no bright, glossy-backed novels, poetry anthologies or reference books in evidence. A colourful if rather unimaginative display decorated the walls, and a few pieces of children’s writing were pinned alongside lists of key words, the rules of grammar and various arithmetical tables.
All eyes looked in Elisabeth’s direction as she entered the room. Miss Brakespeare, a stick of chalk poised between finger and thumb, swallowed nervously, blinked rapidly and gave a small, uneasy smile when she saw the visitor.
‘Oh, Mrs Devine,’ she said, startled.
‘May I come in?’ asked Elisabeth, standing by the door.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied the deputy head teacher hurriedly. ‘I was telling the children you would be calling into school this morning.’
Elisabeth moved to the front of the class and surveyed the faces before her. They were indeed a mixed group: large gangly boys, fresh-faced boys, lean bespectac
led boys, girls with long plaits, girls with frizzy bunches of ginger hair, girls thin and tall, dumpy and small. They filled the room, which was hot and stuffy. ‘Good morning, children,’ she said pleasantly.
‘Good morning, Mrs Devine,’ chorused the pupils in subdued tones, staring at her as if she were some rare specimen displayed in a museum case.
‘Now, you must be the oldest children in the school,’ she said.
‘That’s right,’ Miss Brakespeare told her. She gave a small and almost apologetic smile. ‘These are the nine- to eleven-year-olds. There are three classes in the school: infants, lower juniors and upper juniors. Miss Wilson, she’s just qualified, has the infants and Mrs Robertshaw, who joined us last year, has the lower juniors.’
So the head teacher doesn’t teach a class, thought Elisabeth. The more she learnt about this woman, the more she decided that retirement was the very best course of action for her.
‘It’s a large class,’ observed Elisabeth.
‘Thirty-eight,’ Miss Brakespeare informed her. ‘It is rather a crush in here but we manage.’
‘Well, it is really good to meet you all,’ Elisabeth told the children in a cheerful voice, ‘and I am so looking forward to coming to your school next term.’ She noticed Danny sitting at the back looking warily at her. I guess he’s worried that I might say something to him, she thought, and embarrass him in front of the other children. Elisabeth met his eyes steadily, smiled but said nothing.
The children continued to stare with blank expressions.
‘I don’t wish to disturb your lesson, Miss Brakespeare,’ said Elisabeth, breaking the silence. ‘I just wanted to introduce myself. Please carry on. Perhaps I might just stay for a moment.’
Miss Brakespeare looked flustered. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she said. Miss Sowerbutts may have been right after all, she thought. The new head teacher would, no doubt, be watching her, judging her, criticising her, like the inspector with the black clipboard and the smile like a crocodile had done. She had not expected that the new head would be sitting in on her lesson, particularly on her first visit. Was this a sign of things to come, she wondered. Miss Sowerbutts had never watched her teach. Of course, she had called into the classroom to ask something, impart some information, or take out a child who had misbehaved to stand outside her room, but she had never stayed to watch or to look at the children’s work.
‘Perhaps one of the children could tell me what you are doing this morning?’ asked Elisabeth.
A red-faced girl with curly ginger hair and formidable silver braces on her teeth raised a hand and waved it like a daffodil in a strong wind.
‘Miss, we’re doing a worksheet on verbs,’ she said.
‘That sounds interesting,’ said Elisabeth, thinking the very opposite.
Miss Brakespeare recalled the inspector’s comment that her teaching was on the dull side and lacked vitality and that she should endeavour to make her lessons more interesting. She knew in her heart that she was just about competent as a teacher, not an outstanding practitioner, one who could hold the children’s interest and excite and inspire them, but she did try her best. Since the inspection she had thought hard about the report and had made a serious effort to make her lessons more interesting, planning them more carefully and picking topics that the inspector had suggested might appeal to the children, but on this occasion, with a visitor in school, she’d thought she would play safe. Worksheets tended to keep the children quiet and fully occupied and there was less chance of any disruptions.
‘Perhaps this is not the most interesting of topics,’ admitted Miss Brakespeare, ‘but we try to do some very interesting things in this class, Mrs Devine. Don’t we, children?’
There were a few murmurs of assent.
‘I must have been away that day,’ mumbled a large-boned individual with tightly curled hair, short, sandy eyelashes and very prominent front teeth.
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say, Malcolm Stubbins,’ said Miss Brakespeare, colouring a little. ‘We do some very interesting things.’
‘Most of the stuff we do is boring,’ he said peevishly.
‘That will be quite enough,’ said Miss Brakespeare. ‘I don’t think Mrs Devine will be very impressed with that sort of comment, Malcolm.’
Elisabeth noted the boy. He stared back at her defiantly, almost inviting her to say something, but she remained silent. He would prove to be a bit of a handful, this young man, she thought, but she could handle him. She had dealt with boys much more difficult in her time.
Elisabeth had to admit that the work in which the children were engaged was dull. The class had been asked to identify the verbs in a rather tedious passage on canal-building and then use the words in an account of their own.
‘And what is your name?’ Elisabeth asked the girl with the bright ginger hair and braces when the children had settled back down to work.
‘Chardonnay,’ replied the child. ‘I’m named after a drink.’
Elisabeth smiled. ‘May I look at your work?’ she asked.
The exercise book was slid across the desk. The work it contained was untidy and inaccurate and the spellings were bizarre but the girl’s stories were quite imaginative and well expressed.
‘I don’t like doing worksheets,’ whispered Chardonnay. ‘I like writing poems and stories best and using my own words.’
‘You’re a good story writer,’ said Elisabeth.
‘I know,’ said the girl. ‘Miss Brakespeare says I have a talent for story writing. She says I have a wild imagination, a bit too wild sometimes. I like writing about vampires. It’s just that I need to be more careful with my spelling, but I just can’t get my head round words. They’re right tricky, aren’t they, miss?’
‘They certainly can be,’ agreed Elisabeth, trying to decipher some of the words the girl had written. ‘What is this word, “yrnetin”?’ she asked.
‘Wire netting,’ replied the girl. ‘We’ve had to put it around the hen coop to keep the fox out. Thing about foxes is that they kill all the hens if they get in. Bite all the heads off. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just took one but they don’t, they kill them all.’
Elisabeth nodded. ‘I see.’
‘Miss Brakespeare does do some interesting things,’ continued Chardonnay, ‘but when she does Malcolm Stubbins always spoils it. He shouts out and acts the fool. He’s a real nuisance and he stops people getting on with their work. A lot of the time he’s sent out and has to stand outside Miss Sowerbutts’ room until he behaves. Once he had to stand there the whole morning when he put some orange peel in the hamster cage last year and the hamster ate it and died.’
‘And he spits and swears,’ divulged the child sitting next to Chardonnay, a large girl with huge bunches of mousy brown hair that stuck out like giant earmuffs.
‘Really,’ said Elisabeth.
‘Her name’s Chantelle,’ Chardonnay told Elisabeth. ‘She’s my best friend.’ The girl then lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You had better have a look at the display on the wall. Miss Brakespeare’s been in at the weekend putting it up.’
‘And she’s had her hair done specially,’ said Chantelle, ‘and she’s got a new dress on.’
‘When we had the spectres in,’ said Chardonnay, still speaking in a whisper, ‘Miss Brakespeare said that if we were really good she’d give us all a bar of chocolate when they’d gone.’
‘The spectres?’ said Elisabeth, puzzled.
‘Them men what watched the lessons.’
‘Ah, the school inspectors.’
‘Yeah, them. Well, when she heard they were coming in, Miss Brakespeare told Malcolm Stubbins not to bother coming into school that week,’ said the other.
‘I see,’ said Elisabeth.
‘And we practised our worksheets the week before,’ said Chardonnay, ‘so that we got all the right answers when the spectre looked at our books.’
‘Really,’ said Elisabeth, thinking how blunt and honest children could be.
>
Her companion nodded. ‘Miss Brakespeare told us that if the spectre was in the classroom and she asked us a question, if we knew the answer we should put us right hand up.’
‘And if we didn’t,’ added Chardonnay, ‘then we should put us left hand up and then she would pick only those with the right hand up.’
‘Then the spectre would think we all knew the answer,’ said Chantelle.
‘That’s very clever,’ said Elisabeth.
‘I know,’ said the girls simultaneously.
Elisabeth sighed inwardly. ‘I’ll let you two get on,’ she said, moving to the two boys at the desk behind. One boy, a moonfaced child with a shock of curly black hair and a face as freckled as a hen’s egg, smiled widely.
‘Hello, miss,’ he said, brightly.
‘Hello,’ replied Elisabeth. ‘And what’s your name?’
‘Miss, I’m called Darren,’ replied the boy. ‘Darren Holgate.’
‘May I look at your work?’ she asked. The boy reluctantly slid his book across the desk but kept his hand on the top. ‘It’s not right good, miss,’ he explained. ‘My mum thinks I’ve got dyslexia but Miss Sowerbutts said I’ve not. She says dyslexia is just a fancy word for those who can’t spell. I do try with my writing but I find words really difficult.’ He took his hand away.
Elisabeth looked at the boy’s book. He watched her closely as she read his work. The child clearly had problems with his English. His letters were mixed up, his spellings very weak and his writing, the content of which was clear and imaginative, started off quite neatly but gradually deteriorated until at the end of the page it became spidery and illegible.
‘I like this story about your dog, Darren,’ she said.
The boy looked genuinely surprised. ‘Do you, miss?’
‘It’s really well written.’
‘I know it’s got lots of mistakes in it,’ he said. ‘It always has.’
The Little Village School Page 8
