by Katie King
As he was finding his way to where the family had their compost heap, three local lads, who must have been lying in wait, immediately set upon Larry, first tripping him up and pushing him to the ground, and then shouting out things he couldn’t understand and landing several hard punches on his face before spitting on him and running off.
The people he was staying with hadn’t seemed concerned unduly, only indicating to Larry that it was to be expected and that it would probably happen to him several times more, and that if he didn’t want it to keep on happening, he should punch back and make sure that he gave as good as he got, and this might mean that he needed to give them a kick as well, and if he got in hard and quickly enough, then these lads would leave him alone.
Larry tried to make a show to Peggy that he was all ready now, and indeed at any time to come, to punch back harder and shout louder than these violent boys, but Peggy saw that the knee closest to her poking out of his grey serge short trousers was trembling despite the bravado of his words, making the hem of the trouser leg above it shiver relentlessly. Then she saw that Larry’s lips were chapped and sore-looking as if he had been worrying at them overnight, and so she thought poor Larry probably wasn’t feeling very plucky at all.
Peggy really hoped Larry’s experience wasn’t a typical case. But she could understand that for the local children who had been born and bred in Harrogate who had probably only been told a day or two ago about the evacuation of the London school pupils onto their patch, it would be a very odd experience – and probably quite a daunting, not to say threatening, one too – to have a sudden influx of strange children arriving in their midst. She recognised that the Bermondsey youngsters might well to untutored eyes look (or sound, with their unfamiliar ways of speaking) as if they were squaring up to tramp over already established childhood stamping grounds that the Harrogate children would naturally be very protective of. Indeed, some of the London children could be harbouring plans for squaring up to the local kiddies.
It wasn’t a welcome state of affairs, but Peggy supposed that human nature tended to inch always towards sorting out pecking orders and revealing who the top dogs were, and that some Yorkshire children would have decided to get in first with reinforcing the message that no liberties could be taken by the London lot.
Once everyone had got used to each other, presumably it would all calm down, Peggy hoped, but until then the chances were that Larry’s skirmish with the local boys wouldn’t be the only one.
Peggy told Larry where she was staying and then she scribbled it on a piece of paper for him, adding that if ever he was worried or needed a London grown-up to talk to, now he knew where to find her.
Larry nodded in a very grave way, and then he turned to go and talk to some of his cronies. Peggy was pleased, though, to see Larry carefully folding the piece of paper with her address on and placing it deep down in one of his short pockets.
One thing that made Peggy smile was that she’d been right about the landlady of the guest house that her former fellow teachers had been sent to, as she had proved to be something of a harridan.
As Mr Jones stood silently rereading his prepared notes on a hardboard clipboard before him, presumably collecting his ideas together for whatever he was about to announce, Miss Crabbe whispered to Peggy in an aside that although the guest house was comfortable enough in the practical sense, there was an extremely long set of rules that set out all the do’s and don’ts of Dunroamin that the landlady had compiled into a list that she had displayed clearly in each of their bedrooms, making sure it was tacked to the back of their doors in a very obvious manner, about precisely what was permitted (not very much) and what wasn’t (almost everything). Worse, their breakfast earlier that morning had been limited to just the one boiled egg each and half a slice of toast which, considering the landlady was going to get over a guinea a week for each of them as they were topping up the government allowance from their own money, was a pretty poor show, the teachers had all decided as a unified group, and so, ‘Words are going to have to be said,’ Miss Crabbe hissed in a stage whisper in Peggy’s direction.
Peggy thought with a pang of guilt of the three giant doorstop slices of bread she’d snaffled down not an hour earlier, and the endless tea in the pot that she had so appreciated being left waiting for her, and she tried not to look as if she felt quite full at the minute, even though in fact she did.
Luckily, right at that moment headmaster Mr Jones clapped his hands together loudly, and without the teachers having to admonish any of the children, the chatter abruptly died away.
‘Pupils of St Mark’s, sit down on the floor with your legs crossed,’ instructed the headmaster, who then had to wait for a while until everyone had settled themselves in the most comfortable positions they could find.
‘I want you all to listen to me very carefully. The school you are joining isn’t far away, and it is called – wait for it, pupils from St Mark’s, wait for it – Cold Bath Road Elementary School!’ Mr Jones paused dramatically, and the more easily entertained schoolchildren drew in their breath with a pantomime ’Oooh’, even though Peggy knew they were responding more to the headmaster’s tone than because of anything sensational or witty that he had just said.
‘The plan is that on Mondays and Tuesdays you pupils from St Mark’s are going to share classes and classrooms with the current pupils, although this will happen only if enough chairs can be found for everyone to be able to sit down at one time. And meanwhile on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, St Mark’s and Cold Bath Road Elementary will divide the day into two, with lessons for one school taking place between eight in the morning until twelve thirty, and for the other school, taking place from twelve thirty until five o’clock at teatime. This means that one school has the use of the school buildings and the playgrounds in the morning of those last three days of each week, while the other school will use them in the afternoon. Most of you will continue to be taught by your teachers from St Mark’s, although we have had to do a little shuffling around as teachers such as Miss Pinkly, and indeed myself, will not be with you in Yorkshire.’
Already Mr Jones’s words were failing to hold the attention of the youngest or the more easily distracted pupils, Peggy noted.
Mr Jones seemed oblivious.
‘The schools will alternate weekly on who has the early slot and who has the late slot, so that if these new times are difficult for some of your Harrogate hosts and guardians, at least it won’t be for all the time. The lessons will be divided by one twenty-minute break during the morning session, and one twenty-minute break during the afternoon; and all pupils, be they from London or Harrogate, will eat their dinner in the middle of the day, either after school at home if it is an early week for them, or before, if it is a late week, although in that case they will still have to make sure that they are at school on the button for twelve thirty, as any lateness will be a big black mark against you and this simply will not be tolerated after a first occurrence.
‘Notes will be sent today to all parents, guardians and host families in Harrogate, who either are looking after you, or who have pupils already at Cold Bath Road Elementary, to advise everyone of the new system.
‘St Mark’s will take the first shift at the school tomorrow, and so remember, children, it is an eight o’clock start for all of you tomorrow, and by that I mean that eight o’clock in the morning is the time you must be in your classrooms and at your desks. This means that you and your guardians must make sure that you are on the school premises about ten minutes earlier, which means in the school playground at ten to eight at the latest first thing tomorrow morning!’
Mr Jones paused to let this information sink in, but there was none of the excited ‘oohing’ that had characterised the previous time he had paused, very probably because only Jessie and one or two of the other pupils was still listening to him.
Miss Crabbe realised that times, or indeed much of what had just been outlined, didn’t mean a whole lot to many
of the children and so she chipped in with, ‘Well done for being quiet and paying attention for such a long time as Mr Jones spoke, St Mark’s. What he was trying to tell you was that this means a very early start, children, definitely earlier than we had in Bermondsey.’
Peggy had to pick some imaginary lint off her cardigan so that no pupils could see her amused reaction to Miss Crabbe’s comments. While Miss Crabbe had obviously only been trying to help explain what was going on, she had managed also to sound more than a tad critical of her head teacher’s way with words.
Mr Jones drew in his breath sharply, and then couldn’t prevent himself giving a small frown of temper in Miss Crabbe’s direction. His staff knew how very much he liked to hog the limelight to himself at every opportunity.
Mr Jones lowered his voice to an even firmer and more sombre tone. Miss Crabbe looked quite pale, and some of the elder pupils shuffled uneasily as they recognised from the manner in which they were been addressed that something important was being mooted.
‘It is very possible that there will also be lessons at your new school on Saturdays too, although this is unlikely to happen immediately. Therefore my advice to you all is to work very, very hard when you are at school, and then if the school curriculum for each week of the term stays on track, it is highly unlikely that there will have to be any lessons on Saturdays. But – and this is a big but – if things start to slip, the Saturday lessons will definitely become part of your school week! Remember that the standards we kept up at St Mark’s in Bermondsey meant that we didn’t have school at the weekends, and if this has to happen here, then on your own heads be it,’ Mr Jones said.
There was a communal intake of breath from his audience as this wasn’t pleasant news, either for the school pupils or for their teachers.
Jessie and Connie couldn’t help but cast a fleeting look at one another even though they knew that Mr Jones was very particular about his school pupils’ eyes being kept looking towards the front of the room when he was speaking.
They were used to having the whole weekend to play outside during the warmer months, and now they saw a possibility whereby they could lose their Saturdays, and quite a lot of their Sundays too, as Peggy had pointed out to them before they went to bed that, seeing as Roger was a clergyman, it would very likely mean that they would all have to go to church at least once on a Sunday.
Ted and Barbara encouraged church for all the family at Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter, but as they weren’t regular churchgoers otherwise, they had never even encouraged the children to attend Sunday school, and so this would be a new experience for Jessie and Connie too, and frankly it was something else they weren’t much looking forward to.
The children didn’t have time to think further about any of what their headmaster had just said to them for long, though, as they were immediately marshalled into lines and then marched in procession right away to their new school, Cold Bath Road Elementary.
There, in the large tarmacked playground, they were lined up according to classes, there being two classes to each school year at St Mark’s, although as Miss Pinkly wasn’t there all of the senior year pupils were told to group together as one.
As they stood in the playground wondering what would happen next, there was a sudden sharp bang as the imposing school doors were crashed back against the wall, and the Harrogate boys from Cold Bath Road Elementary poured from the boys’ entrance at one side to the school, while the girls shot into the playground from the girls’ entrance at the opposite end of the building.
Peggy gave a start at the dramatic sound of the school doors blasting open at either side of the school building. This wasn’t the best way of introducing the pupils of the two schools to one another, she was sure.
And so it proved. Whatever the original idea had been, presumably it didn’t really go to plan.
With a cacophony of yells and shouts from the pupils – despite someone, presumably a teacher, hastily calling in vain from somewhere deep inside the Cold Bath Road Elementary school building, behind the exiting hordes, ‘Quietly and slowly, children – QUIETLY AND SLOWLY!’ – a veritable avalanche of school pupils tumbled out of the Victorian school building and raced to surround those from St Mark’s.
Bill was a big fan of Westerns and he had taken Peggy to see many such movies, so Peggy couldn’t help thinking for a moment that for all the world the hapless St Mark’s kiddies looked like a threatened wagon train, with the hollering Red Indians – the local children, that was – circling the wagons in a predatory way, clearly out for trouble.
Very quickly for the older children there was some pushing and shoving between the two factions (there proving to be more than a few outlaws in the St Mark’s wagon train who were happy to give back as good as they got), followed immediately by a display of some rather unpleasant goose-stepping by the biggest of the Cold Bath Road pupils, which the St Mark’s pupils rightly took as an insult aimed at them and they responded with some angry sticking up of the proverbial two fingers, accompanied by coarse jeers and some extremely vehement effing and blinding.
For a second it was bedlam, with Mr Jones stunned into inaction, although his face and neck had flushed so highly they were verging on indigo.
The Cold Bath Road headmaster, Mr Walton, had to blow very loudly on a whistle to restore order, with everybody suddenly stopping what they were doing, and with the clearly furious Yorkshire headmaster then giving a bellowed promise of double detentions for anybody – ‘and I mean anybody!’ – caught goose-stepping or ‘flicking the vees’ on school grounds on this or any other day.
The London pupils and teachers looked to be all rather taken aback by such a blunt reception to their new surroundings, seemingly staggered by how quickly an aggressive response from the Harrogate children had led to a general free-for-all.
Although to judge by the expressions on the faces of some of the Harrogate pupils, the majority of them were pretty shaken too, not least by the swift willingness of the Bermondsey children to go on the offensive and treat them very rudely.
While no one from Bermondsey had exactly expected the bunting to have been strung up across the playground to signal a happy welcome and there to be a general mood of celebration at their arrival, neither had anyone thought the St Mark’s pupils would have received quite such an inhospitable greeting, although the two-fingered response by their elder lads, quickly copied by the younger London schoolboys, was just as much a shock.
Hurriedly the children were separated, and as the Harrogate children were corralled at the far end of the playground, the London contingent were quickly pushed in through the boys’ entrance to be swiftly shown round the classrooms and where the lavatories were, and then they were reminded that they had to be in the playground by ten to eight the next day, which was Wednesday, all ready to start their lessons immediately.
The older children, which included Jessie and Connie, were told also that they would be tested on spelling and tables, and so, Mr Walton said irritably, the St Mark’s pupils might need to do a spot of revision during this coming afternoon, as their performance tomorrow would be used to gauge how far they were lagging behind the Yorkshire pupils in their learning.
Peggy saw Mr Jones bridle at Mr Walton’s assumptions that the Bermondsey children would be found wanting in the academic sense. She discovered herself glad that she was no longer responsible for making sure educational standards were met as quite a high proportion of children in the St Mark’s catchment area came from families with problems and reduced income, and Peggy knew how difficult it was for these children to keep up to scratch. She loved to teach and she had an optimistic view of human nature that led her to believe that all children’s potential could be brought out, but she didn’t really approve of teaching children simply to be better than their peers.
Their resulting expression on the faces of both Mr Jones and the St Mark’s pupils suggested that Mr Walton was incorrect in what he had just said on rather a lot of levels, an e
xpression which Mr Walton answered with a glare of his own of such ferocity in the direction of the London pupils and staff that it all felt a bit awkward.
As the London children exited the building, the Harrogate children were quickly bustled back inside the building at the opposite entrance to the school (the girls’ entrance), although not before Peggy had seen some of them risking when they thought Mr Walton and any other Cold Bath Road staff were looking elsewhere a couple of final and very rude gestures with pumped fists raised surreptitiously and deliberately snarly expressions on their faces of raised top lips and exposed upper teeth aimed in the direction of the new children coming out of the boys’ entrance.
At least Tommy wasn’t one of the troublemakers, Peggy was pleased to note, even though he hadn’t rushed forward to make Connie and Jessie feel at home by standing up for them either.
Some billet hosts were already waiting outside the gates to escort the children in their care back to their homes for dinnertime, and so quickly Peggy gathered together everybody’s postcards to their parents in London who would be waiting anxiously for news, carefully checking names and new addresses were written correctly.
As she did this, Mr Jones said to the children who weren’t being collected that if there was a grown-up at their billets during the afternoon then the children could return there, but if there wasn’t or the children weren’t sure of who was going to be there, or else they weren’t certain of the way to their billets, then the St Mark’s pupils could go en masse on a walk out into the countryside. He didn’t mention what the provisions for food for their lunch would be, or anything about Mr Walton’s assertion that they should be doing some work that afternoon to prepare for the next day’s test on their spelling and arithmetic.