Madam

by Phoebe Wynne

  ‘May we be truly thankful for –’

  Rose could hear the girl’s thin voice tremor.

  ‘May we be truly thankful for –’ She halted. ‘No.’

  Rose looked up. The girl, Vanessa, was almost vibrating with nerves.

  ‘May we—’

  From his large portrait, the school’s Founder seemed to glower at her contemptuously.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remem –’ Vanessa turned her head, presumably to search the rows of girls below, who stared back indifferently. ‘Is it thankful … or grateful?’

  Near the front, a few Junior girls giggled. But a red-haired girl on the edge of a middle row was leaning forward and looking thunder at Vanessa. Rose couldn’t tell if it was in repugnance or in support. Vanessa’s question still hung in the air; she slowly turned her head towards the Headmaster, who stared at the floor, his eyes bright. Vanessa put one hand to her mouth as the other gripped at the stand. She hitched forward.

  Rose almost mirrored the girl’s movement. The teacher beside her moved his head with distaste.

  ‘Shouldn’t we help her?’ Rose whispered.

  The teacher’s lips were pressed together resolutely.

  ‘It’s not our place, dear.’ A woman on the other side of Rose shook her head. ‘She has to get it right.’

  ‘She’ll learn,’ the male teacher nodded. ‘That one’s always been such a disappointment, so unlike her older sister.’

  Something burned in Rose’s chest.

  ‘Headmaster is dealing with it,’ the woman finished.

  Sure enough, the Headmaster’s eyes were now fixed on the lectern, his face firm as he strode towards the girl. Vanessa stood aside for him awkwardly, and he took the lectern for himself.

  ‘Not to worry, Vanessa. This year’s head girl, Clarissa Bray, will continue the grace.’

  At the far end of the hall Rose saw a back row of sixth-formers break apart. One girl marched out, a brilliant smile tearing across her face. She wore a green velvet headband across her auburn curls, which tossed across her shoulders and the green of her dress as she strode towards the lectern. The pride in her face seemed to draw the light of the room, but Rose’s eyes followed the Headmaster’s arm as it hooked over Vanessa’s shoulder, drawing the younger girl down the steps, along the front aisle and out of sight.

  ‘What’s going to happen to that other girl? Vanessa?’ Rose asked the woman beside her.

  ‘Oh, they all go through it, more or less,’ she answered, shuffling forward in her seat. ‘She’s only an Intermediate.’

  ‘Where has he taken her?’

  The woman turned to face Rose with a frown. ‘Are you always going to be asking so many questions?’

  Rose fell back into silence as Clarissa finished the grace.

  After the deputy head dismissed the assembly, rows of quiet girls started to filter out from the back, guided by a line of boarding house staff settled there. Rose’s own semicircle of staff stood and ruptured into a swell of chatter.

  Rose checked her watch; they were well into the first period of the day. She’d planned her first lesson meticulously, with name cards dotted along the desks – cards she’d now have to remove, rewrite and rearrange for the following class.

  A woman hooked the crook of Rose’s elbow, drawing her forward; Rose nodded with grateful recognition at her Classics colleague, Emma.

  ‘Rose, lovely speech, well done. Sophocles would have been thrilled.’

  ‘Thanks, Emma. I was so nervous.’

  A thick curtain of grey-brown hair fell past Emma’s shoulder before she tucked it behind an ear, touching the edge of her horn-rimmed glasses. She turned to a group of teachers behind Rose.

  ‘Nice to see you all. Good term!’

  ‘Good term to you too, Emma.’

  Rose gave them all a quick nod, before turning her face back to the Founder’s painting. At the foot of the portrait the school’s coat of arms curled in wrought metal, bold against the shine of the polished wood. Rose took in the bright shield and the ornate ivy that surrounded the image: a dove taking flight with a collar around its neck, lifting off with its wings outstretched.

  Rose wasn’t sure whether her first lesson was a symptom of her first day in a new school, or an example of what she should expect from her future at Caldonbrae. The terror of meeting classes for the first time was something Rose had learned to deal with while she was training – knowing how to gauge the bubbling dynamic of children, how to navigate their vigour and assert her own control – but somehow the power of Caldonbrae Hall pinned Rose against its walls, choking her own courage. And on that Monday the new teacher’s vulnerability held itself like a delicious mist for the girls to feed on.

  The little Juniors arrived in rows, ordered and obedient to the seating plan. Their energy was like a hot hairdryer, which Rose had to fight even from the first register and rule-giving moments. Rose handed out the textbooks; a few of the girls already carried one, with torn pages or scrawled-over images, the plastic cover split. Those were exchanged with better versions from a pile on Rose’s bureau. The exercise books Rose had selected were apparently the wrong size, so she found herself hopping up and down the short staircase to swap them for the larger ones in the Classics office directly below, the girls brimming with smirks as she did so. Rose tried to draw the strings of their previous knowledge together, but their answers were vacuous, punctured with the odd half-remembered Latin word. Her picture activity fell flat, the sequences of images suddenly muddled up or the papers folded and disappearing into a pocket. Rose saw one girl pass a note to another, keeping her eyes pointed at the teacher with an unfazed smile.

  After lunch the traditional first staff meeting was cancelled so Rose went on to her tour of the building with Emma, nodding as the labyrinthine pattern of rooms and corridors around the school mapped themselves out in her mind’s eye. Emma swept through the floors at such a pace that Rose felt dizzy with the clanging of keys and the slamming of doors. Emma ignored Founder’s Hall – Rose having already seen it that morning – and the rest of the north wing, insisting that there was nothing to interest Rose in that part of the school.

  She tried to console herself by considering the shambled first hour as only her first lesson; the next would surely be an improvement. And yet in the following days the classes on her sparse timetable became a continuous spin of grinning faces, ditsy nicknames and offhand comments, rows of girls linked together via seating plans. Rose arranged her features carefully, trying to keep her thoughts as cool as a Roman general, preparing to hit the girls back with her own blast of teaching energy that would ricochet all the way up to the vaulted ceiling of her classroom.

  By Thursday morning Rose was waiting to meet the last class on her timetable, the only group she hadn’t yet met. Name cards were placed along the desks and she gripped the seating plan in her hand, along with a register.

  Rose’s classroom was a little battered after the first days of teaching. Her mosaic of postcards remained around the blackboard, but the classical film posters on the wall were tatty in the corners where the Seconds had thumbed at them. At the arched window a ceramic owl watched over the classroom in small homage to the goddess Athene; on top of the bookcase there was a chunk of rock Rose had taken from a walk up Mount Vesuvius.

  She caught the owl’s wide glassy eyes for a quiet moment, before looking past the gabled roofs and turrets of the massive school building, straight out to the North Sea.

  Hearing the sixteen girls trundling up the short staircase, Rose dared to hope that perhaps this last group – Intermediates, Fourths – would be different from all the others. Defiantly, she held on to her smile.

  But their elephantine noise hit her like a wall; she drew herself back along the wooden desks to her bureau.

  ‘Oh look, she’s tried to decorate,’ was the first comment Rose caught. Some o
f the other girls glanced around with smirks.

  ‘Oh yes, she has.’

  The girls chucked their bags across the tables, sending a flutter of name cards to the floor. A few girls had halted at finding their names in undesired places and were now tutting crossly as they moved around each other. Many threw off their cropped grey blazers and dangled them on the backs of the chairs, rearranging their white dresses as they sat down. A girl in the middle row puffed out her chest with bad temper. Rose stepped along the front, bending to replace the scatter of wayward name cards back on their desks.

  ‘Right,’ she called out. ‘Good morning, ladies! Nice to meet you.’ Rose waited for her own silent regoverning of the room before taking them all in. Fourteen was a difficult age, she thought as she moved from face to face, their puberty seething out of them. None of the girls seemed to fit properly in their white dresses, their bodies tightening underneath the stitched cotton. Shining skin, awkward hair, even worse teeth. Rose struggled to find her compassion in the face of their mute disdain.

  She gave out her classroom rules, tracing her finger down the list. ‘It’s my job to talk. It’s your job to listen – to me, and to each other. Respect goes both ways, ladies.’ They were watching her carefully. ‘Take care. Contribute. Always ask.’

  Rose checked each name for attendance, nodding at their individual faces and curving her mouth around their names. A girl in the back row was studying Rose, her dark eyes like bullets.

  ‘Ladies, let’s start with,’ Rose took a pile of paper from her bureau, ‘the curriculum for this year.’

  A girl at the front spoke up with her clipped accent: ‘Yes, this is all very well. But, Madam, who actually cares about Latin?’

  Laughter rolled around the swoop of desks and Rose felt a rush of warmth in her cheeks. The girl had Pre-Raphaelite hair that fell red around her broad shoulders and matched her ivory features. These were overtaken by her very animated face, which was the most alarming thing about her.

  ‘Latin is a subject of refinement and excellence,’ Rose shot back, handing out the pages, ‘and it’s very valuable to universities and employers. You’ll see –’ she checked her seating plan, ‘Frederica. And to answer your question, I care enough for all of you right now.’

  A few girls in the middle tittered as the red-haired girl glared up at Rose. ‘It’s Freddie, Madam. Not Frederica.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rose looked down at her seating plan. ‘I see.’

  ‘And Latin is too hard, Madam,’ continued Freddie. ‘None of us are any good at it. Don’t bother us with it.’

  ‘Does that mean you are going to start testing us, Madam?’ said a small blonde girl next to Freddie. With slight shock, Rose recognised her as the unfortunate creature who had failed so spectacularly with the grace during Monday’s assembly.

  ‘Don’t suggest it to her, Nessa.’ Freddie turned her pale face towards the blonde girl accusingly.

  ‘Were you not tested before?’ Rose demanded. ‘Vanessa, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nessa, Madam, if you please,’ the blonde girl answered softly.

  Rose studied her; close up she had a little button nose and a smattering of freckles. ‘Nessa, all right.’

  ‘No, Madam,’ sighed Freddie. ‘We weren’t tested at all last year, and we’re just fine, thanks.’

  ‘Yes, Madam. We got rid of the one before you – that was easy enough,’ the girl at the very back called out. ‘I’m sure you’ll be no different.’ From her deep voice and her narrowed beetle-black eyes, Rose knew she’d been the one that made the unkind comment about the classroom decoration. Rose checked her list again: Josephine.

  ‘No, I reckon this one’s half decent.’

  ‘I like your lipstick, Madam.’

  ‘Yes, me too.’

  Rose blinked at the sudden array of voices dotted around the classroom. She touched her fingers to her mouth; lipstick was Rose’s warpaint.

  ‘Bethany got rid of the other Madam,’ said Nessa quietly, ‘not us.’

  ‘Well,’ interrupted Josephine from the back, ‘you look completely different from the previous Latin Madam, anyway.’

  ‘Girls, can we stop interrupting like this.’ Rose strengthened her voice. ‘Tell me, Josephine, did your—’

  ‘It’s Josie, Madam.’

  ‘Oh,’ Rose said crossly. ‘Does anyone keep to their given names, or do I need to update my seating plan?’

  ‘I’m Daisy, Madam.’ A tall girl in the middle row near the window raised her hand; the many badges on the lapel of her blazer shook with the movement. Her long sheet of dark hair framed her square jaw and almond-shaped eyes.

  ‘Okay, Daisy, thank you,’ Rose answered as the rest of the class shared a laughing look in Daisy’s direction.

  At the front, Nessa was deep in thought. ‘The old Madam had her favourites, but I wasn’t one of them. I’m glad to have a new one.’

  ‘Madam, will you be at Movie Night?’ Freddie ignored Nessa, shaking her gold-red curls behind her shoulders. ‘You look like the kind of person that would sneak in sweets.’

  ‘But hopefully not eat them all,’ Josie interjected smoothly, ‘like the last Madam did.’

  ‘Yes,’ Freddie continued. ‘She was as wide as our great-great-grandmother in the family Rembrandt.’

  Rose didn’t say anything. She was already weary and it was only a few minutes into the lesson. She looked down at her pile of handouts to muster some resolve. ‘Let’s have a look at these, shall we?’

  ‘You’re a lot younger, too,’ pushed Freddie. ‘How old are you, Madam?’

  Rose answered without looking up: ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Yes. Why is someone like you working somewhere like this?’ Josie called out.

  ‘Don’t forget, ladies,’ laughed Freddie, leaning back in her chair, ‘this is one of the best schools in Britain. Top of the league tables, five years in a row now.’

  The class erupted with hilarity and Rose looked at Freddie, who seemed so alive that she commanded the attention of the room. Rose felt a throb of urgency. She didn’t want to talk about her predecessor, she didn’t want to bounce around their throwaway comments – she needed to get on with the lesson.

  ‘Girls,’ Rose checked the clock and lifted her voice, ‘your literature this year is going to be the Aeneid Book Four.’

  ‘Enid? Like Enid in the year above?’ Nessa tried.

  ‘No, Nessa, the Ae-ne-id,’ Rose said carefully. ‘So you’ve had no introduction to this?’

  ‘No. The previous Latin Madam,’ Daisy contributed merrily from her side of the classroom, ‘wasn’t really interested towards the end.’

  ‘She was upset.’

  ‘No she wasn’t, Nessa!’ Josie barked out from the back. ‘You never know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Rose looked at Nessa and addressed the class. ‘Respect each other, please. Josie, I’ll thank you not to criticise your peers.’

  Josie pushed her chair back from her desk and crossed her arms with a scoff. Rose saw Nessa sneak in a small smile at the front.

  ‘Okay, well,’ Rose continued, meandering around the last few desks with her handouts, ‘the Aeneid is about the Trojan hero Aeneas. He fled from the Trojan War. Have we heard of that?’

  ‘Of course, Madam.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘We’ve got exercise books from last year, Madam, full of nonsense.’ Freddie was sifting through her things. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘No interrupting, thank you, Freddie.’ Rose hesitated near the back row. ‘But yes, I’ll have to take them all in eventually, to see where you left off.’

  ‘Books aren’t for learning, Madam,’ interjected Nessa. ‘Books are for posture.’

  Rose opened her mouth, but couldn’t quite frame her response. She returned to the front and tried again. �
�Girls, please look at your handout. We’ll be studying the section where Aeneas the Trojan hero lands in a foreign country, a city called Carthage, and meets Queen Dido—’

  ‘Oh, but Madam,’ Freddie’s eyes widened across the page, ‘you’re not seriously expecting us to cover of all of this, are you?’

  ‘Yes, Freddie,’ Rose said firmly. ‘I am.’

  ‘Really? My goodness.’ Freddie was still staring at the page. ‘Latin Language and Literature?’

  The rest of the class followed her example and looked through the curriculum list, while Josie tried to slide the page off the desk with her elbow. Rose watched her during the brief pause.

  ‘As long as I do all right in the tests, I’m okay,’ Nessa added quietly.

  ‘We’ll take it one step at a time,’ Rose announced to the class. ‘All right?’

  ‘But … doesn’t being in Scotland absolve us from learning Latin, Madam?’

  ‘Ooh, absolve,’ Josie piped up, her dark eyebrows knitted together. ‘Glad you’re getting into big words, Nessa.’

  Freddie turned around before Rose could speak. ‘Shut up, Josie. That was rude.’

  Suddenly Rose realised that it was Freddie who had stared so forcefully at Vanessa – with encouragement, she now understood – during Monday’s assembly.

  ‘Ladies, please.’ Rose’s voice was louder than she expected as she moved towards her bureau. ‘We will learn respect. Please stop speaking out of turn, all of you. Vanessa, tell me why you think being in Scotland makes a difference?’

  ‘It’s Nessa, Madam. Didn’t the Scots hate the Romans?’ Nessa spoke timidly, not looking at Rose. ‘Didn’t they, you know, kick them out?’

  ‘Yes, the Celts did.’ Rose was pleased for the first time that day. ‘Hadrian’s Wall was supposedly built to keep the Scots out of the Roman grip on Britain. Well done.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so!’ Nessa glanced around her. ‘See, I do know things.’

  ‘But it’s not really Scotland on our peninsula, anyway,’ Daisy added from the side, throwing her sheet of black hair behind her shoulders. ‘Headmaster always says we have our own little glorious England right here at Hope.’