by Frances Vick
‘Hitting a child—’
‘Is not good. No. Not good at all.’ Norma picked fussy flakes of dark chocolate off a wafer. ‘But you know as well as I do that sometimes parents get it wrong, out of embarrassment, fatigue. They snap. It doesn’t make them bad people, it just means they did a bad thing.’
‘It’s the same mother – Carl Bell’s mother, you remember all the trouble we had with him.’
‘Well, in that case I have even more sympathy for the woman. Bad enough having one child like that, without having to worry about the other one being a kleptomaniac.’
‘She’s only six.’
‘Oh Claire. They know what they’re doing at that age.’
Claire slumped, looking at her bony hands lying in her lap. ‘But still, calling in the parent, the whole school involved—’
‘How was the whole school involved? Sit up straight.’
Claire straightened. ‘I mean the whole school knew about it. All the children were talking about it.’
‘Well, it sounds like it was quite a public crime. What were they meant to do?’ Norma was smiling now.
‘I know but . . . oh, I don’t know. It was all so – needless. Silly. She’s such a little girl, and I don’t believe for a moment that she meant to—’
‘Oh Claire, we’ve been here before. Remember Lisa Pike? The one who was putting the shoes down the toilets? You were convinced that she’d done it by accident. How can you put shoes down a toilet by accident? And Jamie – Dowes, was it? You were determined that he didn’t throw the football through that window on purpose. Until he told you that’s exactly what he’d done. Children are just people, you know. And some people aren’t very nice.’
‘But, hitting her. And in the school as well. It makes you think, if she’s willing to hit her child in a school, then Lord only knows what she’s willing to do behind closed doors. Jade Wood—’
‘Now, wait a minute, you weren’t to blame for Jade Wood,’ Norma said firmly. ‘Claire, you didn’t see anything of the girl. Remember? She wasn’t in your year group.’
‘No, but if I’d kept my eyes open . . .’
‘I’m absolutely sure that if you’d seen anything – let alone the girl going through the bins for food – you would have said something. But you didn’t see anything Claire. And it wasn’t your fault, it was your colleagues’ fault. And the parents that stopped feeding her in the first place. And social services did get involved eventually, didn’t they?’
‘Only after she’d been out of school for a month, being home-educated, or whatever her mother told us. But I’m positive some of the teaching staff would have noticed, even when she was still at school. All that weight loss . . .’
‘Claire, that was a terrible case, and they were terrible parents, but try as you might, you really can’t blame yourself. You really can’t.’
‘But if I notice things, and disregard them. And then when something terrible happens, well, I will be sort of to blame, won’t I? You can see that, can’t you?’
‘I can see that you’re trying as hard as you can to blame yourself for something that probably isn’t happening. You saw a girl being slapped. Not good, but not a hanging offence. And you know as well as I do that if you try to call that in to social services it will go precisely nowhere.’
‘But—’
‘No “but” about it. It’s true. Tea?’ That was Norma’s signal to end the conversation. She always used tea as punctuation.
Cheated and defeated, Claire slumped in her chair again, her fingers tracing the cracks and gnarls in the old oak table. She’d wanted to talk more about Lorna. She needed to. But Norma was leaning wearily against the countertop with her eyes closed. ‘Anyway, how was your day? You look tired.’
‘Ach—’ Norma swatted at the air in front of her dismissively. ‘The usual.’ Claire waited, but that seemed to be the end of it. It wasn’t like Norma not to talk about her day. She loved work, and was able to make even the most familiar things sound interesting, funny. ‘You’re well though? Feeling all right?’
‘I’m feeling my age, Claire. And I’m finding it difficult to sleep at the moment. Fine until about three, and then, bang, I’m awake. Just me and the World Service. Johnny hates it, don’t you? I’m interfering with your routine.’
‘Have you been to the doctor’s?’ Claire felt her heart speed up.
‘I have an appointment on Wednesday morning. Carla will take over for the day.’ Carla was Norma’s assistant head.
‘Carla’s doing the whole day?’
‘Well, yes. I thought if I’m tired or if the appointment runs over, you know, I might as well take the whole day.’ This wasn’t like Norma either. She must have sensed Claire’s surprise: she looked up, smiled sardonically. ‘I’m not on my last lap, Claire, don’t worry. I just thought it’d be a good idea to get a check-up. You’re the first one to tell me I should take it easy when I can. And this means I’ll have a whole afternoon to get under Johnny’s feet. Won’t I?’ She prodded the dog with one foot. He farted and rolled over.
‘But you’re not ill, in any pain or anything?’
‘No, no. I just thought I should waste a doctor’s time. I’ve got those sweeteners if you’re still on them? Or sugar?’
‘Sweeteners.’ Claire shifted uncomfortably. It was obvious that Norma wanted the conversation to end, but Claire wanted one last try. ‘Are you particularly worried about anything? Health-wise?’
‘Claire . . .’ Norma’s voice was amused but held a warning, ‘it’s only a doctor’s visit.’
‘Yes, and it’s good that you’re going’– Norma mouthed a sardonic ‘Thank you’ – ‘I only want to be able to help . . .’
‘The best way to help me is to let me do what I need to do without making a fuss. I’m sorry I told you now. Biscuit?’
And so Claire gave up.
They watched some terrible talk show, and Claire left at eleven.
5
Claire found it hard to sleep that night. Eventually she got up, poured herself a small, unaccustomed brandy, and curled in the armchair in her bright little sitting room. It was disquieting that Norma didn’t see it her way. She’d half expected James to dismiss her worries, but Mother . . . it was disappointing, and being disappointed in Norma was, well, unprecedented. Perhaps if either of them had seen what had happened, they’d be as shocked as Claire. But perhaps not. She often seemed to feel things too deeply, notice too much. You care too much, people had always told her. As if it was possible to care too much; surely the problem was that there wasn’t enough care in the world. And she should care. Who should care more than a teacher, or a mother? Teachers and mothers populate all our fables, protect us from the darkness. There must always be that person, that one woman, who makes all the difference.
When Claire was small, she discovered a book called Grown-up Jobs for Little Ladies hidden on a dusty shelf in her school library. Delicate illustrations graced each page, accompanied by a paragraph in cursive. Here was a nurse, here was a ballerina, here was a teacher. That lunchtime, she bolted her food and rushed back to the quiet to pore over the book, her fingers tracing the words, her gaze lovingly fixed on the Little Ladies’ faces, and that afternoon she begged the teacher to be able to take it for the weekend. She still remembered – how many years later? forty? – the heaviness of it as she hugged it to her chest on the walk home, the faded gilt on the page edges, and the way the dust cover rubbed and rippled against the spine. Showing it to Mother had been a mistake though; she’d laughed at first, but, as she turned the pages, she’d become angry. Claire had cowered in the sitting room, watching Jim’ll Fix It while Mother wrote to the school, demanding that the book be banned as a sexist anachronism. And so, on Monday, Claire had taken her Little Ladies back, and handed it, shamefaced, to her teacher, who had accepted it like the corpse of a cherished pet. Claire never saw the book again.
The teacher in the book was a doe-eyed beauty with brown hair, parted, madonna-like, in
the centre and secured in a no-nonsense bun. Her long, tapering fingers held a story book, her rosebud mouth was parted, and she was the object of adoration for the smiling children that huddled around her like kittens. Claire spent her break times in the school toilets, adopting the same pose in the mirrors, but it was never quite the same. She would rub her hair with soapy fingers and arrange it so it fell sleekly behind her ears, but the stubborn curls at the ends would rebel, and the soap dried to a grey crust. Her fingers weren’t long enough. Her mouth was buttoned up and mute looking, and her eyes were wide all right, but fearful. It never worked. But away from the mirror, on the odd days when she felt free from self-consciousness, in her mind, she was that beautiful model of the educator. It seemed to her the closest one could get to being a saint.
As she grew older, she became a favourite of younger children; they followed her like ducklings. During the summer holidays, strays from the poorer ends of the town would arrive at the door, not to play, but to show her their wounds; their recently acquired, protesting pets; to share their squabbles and stories. She helped them repair friendships, she bandaged cuts and offered advice. She had a way with little ones, everybody said so. Mother said wryly, ‘Just don’t be a teacher.’
But of course she became a teacher, and stayed close to Mother, close to what she knew.
The following Monday, nobody mentioned the slap. James was just as distracted as ever, Miss Brett studiously ignored Claire, and Lorna was absent. She came back to school on Wednesday, kept to herself on the playground and, when Claire smiled at her, looked deliberately at the ground. Claire kept trying, though. She always had a smile ready for the girl, but it was nearly a year before they spoke again.
* * *
Every year, in the lead-up to Christmas, Claire put together her Christmas Cracker Craft group: a collection of children who could make their paper chains, their window snowflakes, and their polystyrene baubles after school, at a time when they were more likely to be able to concentrate. They were the odds and strays: children whose parents always arrived late to fetch them from school, who neglected to come to the plays, the special assemblies, the rare prize-givings.
Claire loved the Christmas Cracker group. They were sweethearts really. This year she had Feras, who liked to stick; little Rosa with the walker who was quite happy filling and refilling glue pots (you just had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t eat any); Fergus Coyle with his allergies and boundless energy; and another ten misfits, Lorna amongst them. Claire had included her at the last minute. She’d seen so little of Lorna in the year since the eraser incident, but enough to know that her social standing hadn’t recovered. Claire would see her wandering around at playtime, cautious now, monosyllabic and friendless. Perhaps being part of the Christmas Crackers would give her a new peer group? A new start?
It was so lovely when the weather started to draw in – when children would come into the class behind little puffs of steamy breath, when mittens and unlabelled hats got mixed up. Claire would put on the little blower heater and the children would vie with each other to stand near it, turning themselves like meat on a spit, while Mr Potter, the class hamster, lapsed into torpor.
‘Miss, is he dead?’
‘No, no. When it’s a bit cold outside, he likes to sleep. Here, let’s move him nearer the heater, see if we can warm him up a bit.’
This was the time of year when friendship groups settled, when girls formed their perpetually uneasy trios, and boys their roaring, rolling packs, and so the Christmas Cracker children were thrown into pitiful relief, because they had no tribe. Only this artificial group could convincingly double as one. Despite Claire’s hopes, outside of her classroom, none of them seemed to associate with each other at all, but within the four walls they coalesced, grew together, briefly believed that they were like everybody else. They noticed cobwebs picked out in the frost, and spanning each bush and doorway, and brought their impressions of them to Claire. ‘All sparkled over and pretty-as-silk,’ said Rosa in the second week, and Claire’s heart filled with wonder, and, yes, pride, that this little girl had stored up this wonderful discovery and shared it with such odd, muddled beauty. This was the time of year when giddiness, mystery and the uncanny merged in little minds and the questions would come: ‘Are there really witches, Miss? Ghosts? How does Father Christmas know where you live? Was Jesus a good baby, or did he cry? Where do we go to when we die?’
The children favoured traditional tales: ‘The Princess and the Pea’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’. They always asked for a story from The Big Book of Fairy Tales, it was their favourite. Claire altered the stories slightly, skipped some of the gore, but she needn’t have done really. After all, children live with horror every moment: what’s in the cupboard? There’s something under your bed. Dead Grandma is watching over you. This is the night when the dead walk . . .
Claire, settling down on her Story Seat, was always sure to say, ‘Now, none of this is true,’ but she knew that the children disregarded that. As soon as the innocent ventured into the forest, as soon as the heroine was tricked, their little faces would darken with the inevitability of danger, and as soon as evil was vanquished, they were relieved and jubilant. And then, when it was time to leave, they would all be away, gripping their clumsy models, their mismatched gloves, bounding out to their indifferent parents, filled, briefly, with magic. But always, alone at the end of the day, would be Lorna Bell, waiting silent and stiff, the very last to leave.
While the others were earnestly making pipe-cleaner Christmas trees, up to their elbows in glitter, Lorna, her greasy hair pulled back in a scrunchy, tended to hover silently and unsmilingly near doors, getting in people’s way.
‘Let's see the colour of those eyes, Lorna,’ cheerful Miss Montgomery, the classroom assistant, would say. ‘Let’s see a smile!’ But the girl’s face would close like a flower at dusk, It had been a year since the rubber-stealing incident, but it had changed her, from a confident little thing to this frightened introvert. She needed the kind of subtle attention that could nip away at the shyness; help her slough it off ever so gradually. She needed to feel special without being different. But everyone in the Christmas Cracker group needed so much attention, and it was never possible to give Lorna as much time as Claire was convinced she needed.
Every day she’d arrive early standing solemnly at the door, a little silent bubble in the midst of the playground. She’d walk mechanically to the cloakroom, arrange her things neatly, pick up her name and put it in the welcome box, and sit cross-legged on the carpet, all without saying a word.
Only when they were alone did Claire have some success with her. ‘Lorna, I need to set up the craft table, could you help?’
‘Lorna, I think Mr Potter is about to wake up. What do you think?’
And Lorna would push her quiet blank face towards the glass, and say in a rusty-sounding, rarely used voice, ‘Not yet.’
* * *
Claire asked the class to draw their ideal Christmas Day. There were a lot of banana-fingered Santas and crooked Christmas trees. Claire exclaimed over them all, and arranged a little gallery beside the Quiet Area. Only Lorna, and Feras (or Feral, as he was jocularly known by the SENCO), hadn’t finished theirs by the last day of term. Feras and Lorna didn’t get on. Claire had seated them together, hoping Lorna’s quietness would rub off on him in a positive way, but the opposite seemed to have happened. Feras’ face shone with indignation, and every few minutes he’d yell, ‘She’s staring! Miss, she’s staring!’ and throw an ineffectual punch in Lorna’s direction. Eventually Claire separated them, placing Lorna near the toilets where she was given the job of tidying up the paint pots, but still Feras feared her, and he cried big, angry tears.
‘I’m sure Lorna wasn’t staring, Feras, really.’
‘She was! She is! Now! SHE IS RIGHT NOW!’
Claire glanced at Lorna’s face, scrupulously blank and turned halfway away from them. ‘She isn’t. Feras? Look. She really isn’t
. Now, how about your Christmas picture? Can we finish it before Dad comes? Imagine how lovely it will look on your bedroom wall!’
‘Don’t know where it is.’
‘It’s just there, on the drying rack by the loo. Go and get it and I can help you with the sparkles.’
‘She’s over there though.’
Lorna turned mournful, stricken eyes on Feras. Claire felt immensely sorry for her, and simultaneous irritation towards the boy twitching at her side. ‘I’m asking you to go and get your picture, and stop being silly.’ Surprisingly, he ducked his head, sped to the drying rack, and plucked up his picture without saying a word.
‘Glitter?’ Feras liked glitter.
‘If I open it for you, do you promise not to use a lot?’
His vague gaze drifted down to his glitter-crazed picture. ‘Promise. Red?’
Talking Feras down from his inevitable glitter high took some time; it was a while before Claire realised that Lorna wasn’t in the room any more, but in the toilets, twisting paper into little pellets, her face as smooth and inscrutable as an egg. She was more than usually unkempt today. Her hair was matted at the roots and she wore the same grimy polo shirt she’d had on the previous week. The floor was littered with paper, but half of what she was ripping up remained in her hand – her Christmas picture. A puppy sat next to a tree, ringed by a smiling family and painstakingly coloured hearts. Claire watched as Lorna’s dirty, chewed fingertips ripped the puppy’s head off and began methodically screwing it up into a ball.
‘Lorna! Your beautiful picture! You worked so hard on it!’
The girl started. Her eyes widened and her lips pulled back into a nervous smile.
‘It’s shit.’
‘We don’t use that language, Lorna. And it certainly isn’t – rubbish! It’s a beautiful picture! Look at all those pretty hearts, and all those lovely smiles. It’s very cheerful!’
