Chichester Greenway

by Alton Saunders

  Chapter 4:

  MRS WARBLOFF

  The broken pram was still there when Andrew left home next morning to go off to school. He trudged past the row of narrow houses. Some of them were boarded up. Some had piles of rubbish in the tiny front gardens. One had a big yellow motorbike chained to the railings. Andrew always stopped for a moment to look at it. It must be marvellous to zoom off down the road on a monster like that. You could go anywhere.

  Andrew’s road was called Chichester Greenway. Nobody seemed to know why. Mrs Canadine had tried to find out at the library but had drawn a complete blank. There was certainly nothing green about it, apart from the tops of a couple of trees that grew on the railway embankment behind the high brick wall at the far end. When Andrew looked at them he liked to imagine that there was a vast forest on the other side of the wall, but the rumbling and clanking of the trains gave the game away. Now, with winter coming on, there were no leaves on the trees, anyway. The Chichester part was equally a mystery. Chichester was miles away and did not seem to have anything to do with this part of London.

  At the corner he turned left into the main road, and the roar and the smell of the traffic engulfed him. A newspaper shop on the corner; a betting shop with a picture of horses on the big front window, a window that you could not see through; a launderette where Mum took the washing when the washing machine broke down and she was saving up to get it mended; the pub his dad went to when he was staying at home; and then the pedestrian crossing where a small child had been killed just before Christmas last year.

  Andrew waited a long time before a taxi stopped to let him cross. He often thought of the little girl who had been killed. He wondered if there had been presents waiting to be given to her at Christmas. He waved a thank you to the taxi driver and crossed the road.

  A little further on he crossed the side road that led down to where Vicky’s block was. He looked round to see if there was anyone else about from their school and then he looked down the road to see if Vicky was coming. They had never discussed it, but they both knew it was better not to be seen together. Anything other kids knew about you could be turned into something nasty. Neither of them wanted that to happen to their friendship.

  There was no sign of Vicky so he went on down the road, turned right at the next corner and soon came to the high metal fence that ran alongside the school playground. The noise of the traffic from the main road quietened and the screeches and yells and jeers of the playground took over. Andrew braced himself and walked in through the school gates.

  He timed his journey to get there just a few minutes before the bell rang for everyone to go to their classrooms. Vicky did the same. The breaks at mid-morning and lunchtime were full of danger and menace but at least they could cut the playground time before school started as short as possible. Two bigger boys crashed into him as he walked across the tarmac surface. He stumbled and almost fell over and a bunch of girls laughed mockingly. He spotted Vicky coming in through the gates and something in him relaxed a bit. Someone he trusted was there even if she could not help him and he could not help her.

  The bell rang, loud and harsh and jangling. Although no one was actually looking forward to their lessons there was always a rush through the double doors and you could get knocked and pushed and pummelled. Andrew had quickly learned to let the first surge subside before going in himself. This too required careful timing or he would be yelled at for dawdling. Vicky came up beside him as he walked in and as if by accident he felt her hand press against his. They communicated surreptitious reassurances to one another whenever they could. It helped both of them to get through the ordeal of school a little less jangled than the school bell.

  Mrs Warbloff was sitting at her desk as they came into the classroom. She looked hot and angry. Vicky wondered what they had done wrong. It was strange how many things you could do wrong. It was worrying, too. If you said something it was often wrong some way or another and if you said nothing, that was also wrong. Sometimes even the expression on your face was wrong and Mrs Warbloff would be the first to tell you so.

  Vicky knew that some of the children simply did not care what Mrs Warbloff thought of them. They even seemed to enjoy it when she got angry. They turned round and raised their eyebrows at one another and rolled their eyes and then Mrs Warbloff would get angrier than ever and Vicky would feel frightened even though she knew there was nothing really bad that Mrs Warbloff could do to them. All her pupils knew that if she really went over the edge and swore at them or hit them, she would lose her job. Some of the nastier ones were actually trying to bring this about, though not one of them could have said why. There were times when Vicky felt sorry for Mrs Warbloff and wished the others would behave better. It might make it easier to understand maths and things, too.

  Mrs Warbloff was feeling angry, but not with her pupils. Her anger could boil over and turn against one of them or all of them at any moment, but she never felt pleased with herself when that happened. Years ago she had come into teaching because she wanted to help young people to learn useful skills, but it had gradually become harder and harder to do so. She had good ideas she was not able to use because they were not in the curriculum. She wondered what it would be like if she could arrange her lessons exactly the way she wanted instead of how the government told her to. Perhaps some of the children might even start to enjoy them.

  The Head Teacher, Mrs Faighly, had called her into her office ten minutes before lessons were due to start. There was never enough time to discuss anything properly and she had to listen to Mrs Faighly’s version of a parent’s complaint, without any time or opportunity to explain what had really happened in the classroom at 11.30 yesterday morning. She could have told Mrs Faighly in two or three sentences, but a complaint from a parent meant that Mrs Warbloff had to give Mrs Faighly a written report on the incident before the end of school that day. Mrs Warbloff had a meeting to attend at lunchtime and as a colleague was ill she was using her only free period to take one of his lessons. She would have to write the report a bit at a time while lessons were going on, although that was not allowed according to the staff handbook. If she had only known it, she felt rather like Vicky – whatever she did was likely to be wrong.

  Tables and chairs crashed and scraped as Mrs Warbloff’s class pushed themselves into the classroom. She started to read out the names on the register to a background of coughs and muttered conversations.

  “Be quiet, please!” she bellowed. As so often happened, her voice came out much louder than she had intended. There was a momentary drop in the noise level before it resumed just the same as before. Mrs Warbloff felt her anger rising up in her but she managed to hold it in check. She filled in the register form that had to go immediately to the school office. Two girls came in late and she had to change the details. She glared across at them as they sat down and her eyes happened to encounter Vicky’s. Why did that girl always look as if she thought Mrs Warbloff was nasty or dangerous?

  “What’s the matter with you, Vicky?” she barked.

  Andrew knew how much Mrs Warbloff frightened Vicky. He understood because he felt that way too. He edged his pencil case off the edge of the table and pencils crashed out across the floor.

  “Andrew!” yelled Mrs Warbloff.

  “Sorry, Mrs Warbloff,” he said. He felt awful when she shouted like that, but it had diverted her away from Vicky. He kneeled down and started to pick up his pencils. Several were kicked right out of reach by a girl at the next table and he decided to leave them where they were. Perhaps he would be able to retrieve them later. He liked his pencils even if the colours of some of them caused him trouble, and he did not want to lose them. Jonathan, who was sitting just behind him, managed to kick him on the leg before he got up again.

  “Andrew and Vicky, I’ll see you at the end of your history lesson. Now get out your maths homework, everyone.”

  It was simply not fair
, Vicky thought, to the crashes and thumps of maths notebooks being opened. Andrew had only knocked his pencil case off the table. It was so easy to do and he had obviously not meant to. And she had done nothing at all. Janice, who was sitting next to her, was poking her in the ribs to emphasise the fact that Vicky was in trouble. If Vicky yelped she would be in even more trouble. She held her breath and tried to ignore the painful jabbing which seemed to go on and on. Janice never knew when to stop.

  Mrs Warbloff was almost at screaming point. The electricity bill had arrived just before she left for school. She had thought of leaving it till she got home, but unwisely she had opened it and it was even bigger than she had feared. She was very careful with the electricity, only having the lights on in the room where she happened to be and putting on an extra jersey instead of turning the heating up higher, but the TV probably used a lot and she had heard that washing machines did, too. She still had to do the normal things other people did, though, even if there was sometimes no money left over at the end of the month.

  There was Rupert, her brother, too. People said the state he was in was all his own fault, but she had to try and help him a bit, even if he did waste what little she was able to send him. He had been just thirteen when their father died. She had been sixteen, and she had seen her much-loved little brother change from that time on. Their mother had not coped at all well and had been in and out of hospital for what she called her nerves, and in a few years had become so ill that she had gone permanently into a ward of the same ugly hospital and had died there four years ago.

  With an effort she brought her mind back to the classroom and started to go through last night’s sums even though the week’s plan said that they should now be starting the next chapter. She went round the class, one at a time, asking them what answers they had got. She would have to collect all thirty four books at the end of the lesson to get them marked up to date, but this did give her some idea of whether most of them had understood last night’s money problems. Mrs Warbloff had money problems of her own. She wished they could be solved as easily.

  Vicky was trembling as her turn drew near. She had worked out that she would be asked the answer to number seventeen and she kept her finger pressed against that sum in her book. Her turn came.

  “Ninety six pence, Mrs Warbloff.”

  “Next.”

  This meant she had got it right. She remembered that Andrew had helped her with that one. Relief swept over her. With a bit of luck she would not be called on to do anything else during the lesson. She waited for Andrew’s turn, and sure enough he got his one right, too.

  After Maths came History, and something called the Civil War. Few in the class had any notion of what was involved, when it had happened or why, but it was nice to see Mrs Warbloff leaving the classroom for one of her other lessons, though the few moments before Mr Barling came in were like a miniature break time, with horrible things being shouted out across the classroom, and pokes and pinches and scuffles, and the constant danger of something you needed for your schoolwork being taken or torn or spoiled. You could not tell the teacher what had happened or you would find a crowd waiting for you in the playground and they could be even nastier than the teacher.

  Mr Barling, in fact, was quite gentle as teachers went. He had no interest in the subject he was teaching them and did not require them to pretend that they found it interesting either. He was able to tolerate a general buzz of conversation and as a result nothing very bad in the way of behaviour seemed to happen in his lessons. Andrew and Vicky were able to get on with drawing a picture of a soldier in a steel helmet in their notebooks and Andrew knew that Mr Barling would not mind if some of the colours were wrong.

  There were still two things to worry about, though. One was the return of Mrs Warbloff to see them at the end of the lesson and the other was the menace of the mid-morning break and the long lunch break when they were much more at the mercy of the nastier kids than they were in the classroom. There were the horrible things they would overhear, too, and glimpses of worse things being done, such as small envelopes being swapped for tightly folded banknotes – all out of sight of the teachers on duty, of course.

  The lesson finally dragged to an end. The class surged out into the corridor and Mr Barling followed. Andrew and Vicky remained sitting where they were. They did not talk because Mrs Warbloff might object to that.

  In a few moments she came in looking red and puffy. “I’ve had quite enough of this,” she barked. “I’ve got work to do, and you will lose your break time. You will tidy the books on the shelves and pick up every bit of waste paper from the floor and put it in the basket where it is supposed to be.”

  Mrs Warbloff sat down at her desk. She was missing her coffee break, but with luck she could get that stupid report done for Mrs Faighly before the bell rang for the next lesson. Andrew and Vicky could have hugged her. Oh, the relief of not having to go out for morning break!

  * * *