Civil & Strange

by Clair Ni Aonghusa

  The bar is packed. Ellen sees hands waving above the heaving crowd.

  “They’re over in that corner,” says Maureen. “What’ll you have? I’ll get us something to drink. You go sit with the others.”

  “Hi, Ellen. Long time no see,” a tall, slim woman says from under a swathe of flowing robes and scarves. Jane’s off-duty attire is always a severe contrast to her work outfits. She pushes a chair at Ellen. “Quick! These are at a premium. We hid this one under our coats.”

  Ellen grabs the chair and sits down. “Thanks, Jane.”

  “Hello, Ellen.” A deeply tanned, slightly worn-looking blonde with a weary air extends a hand. She looks as if she’s no stranger to the gym or toning table. Her makeup is immaculate, her outfit so fresh it looks as if it’s been purchased that afternoon.

  “Nesta! It’s great to see you. Glamorous as ever, of course.”

  “Made a special effort for you, sweetie. Family and work wear you down, but you have to keep trying.”

  “Don’t look now,” Maureen says as she deposits the glasses on the table. She squeezes in between Jane and Nesta. “You’ll never guess who’s up at the bar.”

  “Who?”

  “Keep your heads down! It’s Lorcan Lynch. Damn, he’s seen us! Come on, girls. We’re deep in conversation. Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb. Oh, shite! Here he comes!”

  “Hello, ladies,” Lorcan says, pint in hand. He bows to them in a cavalier fashion. When Ellen turns her head, he gives a start. “Ellen! What the hell are you doing here? I thought you’d bunked off to live the rural idyll.”

  “Hi, Lorcan,” Maureen says in the syrupy tones she reserves for him.

  “So you’re back, are you?” he asks Ellen, ignoring Maureen.

  “Up for the weekend, Lorcan.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Lorcan’s a moderately attractive man, on the short side, thin, with an elongated face and narrow features — reminiscent of the El Greco painting of St. Francis of Assisi — dark hair and neatly shaped mustache and beard. He’s dressed in gray shirt and black jeans. He draws up a stool beside them. A tremor of disquiet ripples through the women. They quiver like aspens.

  “We’re going out for a celebratory meal,” Maureen volunteers.

  “My birthday… and don’t ask!” Jane says severely.

  “Wouldn’t dare,” he sneers, and turns his attention to Ellen. “First I knew of all this was you didn’t turn up in September. Va-moose, gone! What are you up to?”

  “Ah, he misses you. Isn’t that sweet, Ellen?” Maureen says facetiously.

  Ellen grimaces. “What can I say? I’m living a different life. That’s it.”

  “But you never breathed a word.”

  “She’s met up with a fella, Lorcan. It’s all to do with him,” Maureen quips.

  “You’re having me on. What about… the… What about…?”

  Following Maureen’s lead, Ellen says, “The marriage? Over. Finito. Gone. New man. New life.”

  Lorcan clears his throat. “You’re kidding me, right? This is the back-of-beyond we’re talking about. How could you meet anyone there?” He slaps his knee. “You’re hitching up with a farmer, marrying him for the land. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Ellen can’t resist the opportunity to annoy him. “’Fraid not, Lorcan. He’s a young fellow. It happened completely out of the blue.”

  “Toy boy,” Maureen says, nodding judiciously. “He’s hot.” Maureen nudges Ellen, pursed lips betraying her efforts not to laugh. “Drink up, ladies. The table is booked for eight. This woman moves fast, doesn’t she, Lorcan? A few months out of Dublin and she’s in a new relationship. She’s been yapping on about him all night. Can’t shut her up. I fear we’ll never see her again.”

  “Oh, come on. This is a joke, isn’t it?”

  “Are you saying that I wouldn’t appeal to a man?” asks Ellen.

  “I’ll attest to your charms any day,” he says with well-rehearsed gallantry.

  “You’d attest to anybody’s charms, wouldn’t you, Lorcan?” Maureen gibes. “Anyone will do.”

  Lorcan stands up abruptly. “No need to be crude, Maureen. See you, Ellen. It’s been nice meeting you, ladies. Enjoy your meal,” he says shortly and heads back to the bar.

  “I don’t think he’s ever given up hopes of making it with you, Ellen,” Maureen says cruelly.

  “Yeuch!” Ellen shudders. “Please, Maureen. You know it’s not me in particular.”

  “Yeah, but he sees your coldness toward him as a particular challenge. He’d like to get you hot and salivating. We’d better head,” Maureen says.

  “Give us a chance to down our drinks. We’ll drink to Ellen’s charms. A few extra minutes won’t make a difference,” Jane says. “Ellen, tell us, who’s this guy? I never heard a word. Have you been hiding him from us?”

  “There isn’t a fellow,” Ellen says, smiling.

  “We made him up to get rid of Lorcan,” Maureen says. “Otherwise he’d have tried to tag along with us, or looked for your address, Ellen, and God knows what else. I wouldn’t put it past him to end up on your doorstep in Ballindoon. He has a brass neck.”

  “Please, don’t say such things. I’ll get indigestion,” Ellen says.

  “Lorcan’s such a wanker,” Jane says. “Have a kid, Ellen. Be like all of us. He goes off women once they’re pregnant. Isn’t that right, girls? None of us has to watch out for Lorcan in the staff room anymore. We’re perfectly safe.”

  “I pity his poor wife. How she puts up with him, I’ll never understand. I just hope she doesn’t know the half of it,” Maureen says.

  “He’s not as obvious these days,” Nesta says. “He just makes comments, nothing you could pin him down on.”

  “Afraid of the legislation.”

  “Come on, let’s go celebrate my birthday,” Jane says. “Maybe I’ll meet the love of my life tonight.”

  “What about your husband?” queries Nesta.

  “Sure, I was out with him the other night!”

  “What age are you, anyway?” Ellen asks.

  “Have you no discretion, Ellen? You never ask a lady her age. I’m forty, bloody forty,” Jane says with some force.

  Later, in the restaurant, Maureen turns to Ellen. “For a moment in the bar, that time you picked up so quickly about your imaginary lover, I thought you might be starting to live dangerously. No chance of something stirring?”

  “I wish! No… same old, same old, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ve ditched the marriage. Now live the life!” Jane says. “Do it for us women with husband, kids, job, and mortgage. We need to live by proxy!”

  Ellen surveys her companions. Although she’s chatting away, amusing them with anecdotes about Nan Brogan and Brenda Finnegan — particularly their visit to her house, their oohing and aahing over everything, and their malicious comments to others about her décor (fed back to her by Terry) — she has an unreal sense of being on show, a raconteur inventing a life that she hasn’t begun to live.

  Inside the main door of St. Philomena’s, one sign says RECEPTION, another STAFF ROOM. Their location mirrors in reverse the layout of the school in which Ellen taught until recently. There are other similarities — the heavy-duty vinyl floor, painted block walls, fire doors, and corridors lined with lockers. The classroom doors are windowed. She can smell chalk. It dusts the air, lingers in the corridors, clogs the skin’s pores, and irritates the throat.

  She holds open a fire door and peers through the glass panel of the first door in the corridor. A class is in progress. A woman is saying, “What are we being asked to do here? We’re talking about differentiation, aren’t we? How do we know?” Ellen watches the students. They’re restless, just under control, but twitching with suppressed energy and boredom. “Come on, who’s going to explain it?” the teacher says. A few students slump in their chairs with trancelike, expressionless faces, their eyes fixed on a point above the teacher’s head. They look as if they’ve been chloroformed.


  “Donal?” The teacher’s voice strays perilously close to irritation.

  “Don’t know, Miss.”

  “Anybody?”

  Two students stick up a hand, propping their arms up at the elbow with the other hand, as if they lack the strength to keep them in the air.

  “Yes, Jackie?” Ellen recognizes hope in the teacher’s voice. The students shuffle their chairs to look back at the volunteer. Desks scrape the floor and Ellen doesn’t catch the answer.

  “Very good,” the teacher says. She’s a young woman but her expression is as vacant as those of her students. Her delivery is maddeningly slow, her voice monotonous, her movements sluggish. All in all, Ellen considers it a disappointing performance. Where is the woman’s enthusiasm for her subject? Why doesn’t she try to provoke more of a response from her students?

  “Miss?” comes a voice from beyond Ellen’s range of vision.

  “Yes?”

  “Could you explain that again, please? I don’t think I understand.”

  The teacher’s face screws up with exasperation. “If you weren’t listening, Celia, it’s not my fault,” she retorts. “It’s your loss.”

  “I was listening, Miss. I don’t get it, that’s all. I do one sum and I think I understand it. The next one I look at I can’t make out what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for your troubles,” the teacher sneers. “It has been explained.”

  “But —”

  “Not another word.”

  “She doesn’t understand the math’s jargon,” one of the boys ventures.

  “That’s enough! I don’t want to hear any more. Understood?”

  “Yes, Miss,” Celia says meekly.

  Ellen is rooted to the spot, but the woman says, “Next page,” in a cold fashion and, unbelievably, there is the rustle of pages being turned.

  She hears a sound and swirls about. A man is running lightly down the stairs, a broad smile on his face. She steps back into the reception area and the fire doors swing shut.

  “Ellen, is it?” the man asks. “Ellen Hughes?”

  “Yes.” Every molecule in her body urges her to make a run for it. Instead she smiles and says, “Eddie? Eddie Devine?”

  “We’ve only ever spoken on the phone, but Nora says she met you.” He’s a dapper man, tall and thin, with a full head of graying hair and unremarkable features, except for his heavy lidded eyes and washed-out complexion. The impression is of a fading imprint until he smiles. The smile colors him in.

  “I ran into your principal the day I was in.”

  “Yes, she was impressed. Let’s go up to my office,” he says.

  His office is surprisingly spacious. It has a desk, some chairs, a filing cabinet, and a potted plant. It even has a fridge, a kettle, and a few mugs. A year-planner adorns the wall. He blusters about, extracts a file from the filing cabinet, and sits facing her, his back to the window. She shifts in her seat.

  “Daunting, isn’t it,” he says.

  She grimaces. “I don’t know if it’s possible but I think I’m suffering from stage fright. It’s hard to start over.”

  “I’d have been worried if you were overconfident.”

  “I’m confident, all right. Just this is all new.”

  “You’ll find your feet quick enough. After the first week, you’ll forget you were ever anywhere else.”

  Ellen is taken aback. “Are you actually offering me the job?”

  He laughs. “Wasn’t that clear? I rang your school yesterday and I was talking to your principal. She told me that we’d be lucky to get you.”

  He’s trying to put her at ease. Whatever she says, he’ll reply that it’s exactly what he needs to hear. There’s always a chance that she might not turn up for work. It happens all the time with substitute teachers.

  “You have a fair bit of experience under your belt,” he says. “It’s handy you living in Ballindoon. What is it, ten miles?”

  “About that.”

  “You’re not looking for a transfer, are you?”

  “A transfer?”

  “Yeah, changing your workplace to here.”

  “It’s early days,” she answers uneasily.

  “I know, I know. You have to test the waters. I mention it because there might be a slot here next year. The woman you’re filling in for, Moira, this is her fourth pregnancy. She’s finding the going tough. I know she has considered throwing in the towel for good. Nothing definite — she’s keeping all her options open.” He fiddles with her file, pushes it about the desk, and looks up. “I believe you’re related to Matt Hughes.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “He’s a highly respected member of the community.”

  He is interrupted by the trill of a bell. Doors open. Voices fill the air as students move from one classroom to another. There’s an incremental increase in noise as feet clatter up and down stairs, locker doors slam, and the occasional screech rends the air. Almost as suddenly as it began, the racket ceases and all is quiet, except for the sound of one or two teachers greeting a class and a murmured response before doors slam shut.

  He watches her. “Feels as if you’ve never been away?”

  “Awful sense of the unavoidable inevitable.”

  He smiles sympathetically. “Now, are you ready to meet one of your classes?”

  “Hold on. I’d like to see my timetable, and I’ll need background information. Don’t want to face into them unprepared if I’m going to be here for a long stint.”

  He pulls a face. “I admire your professionalism. You could be here until the summer holidays. Moira isn’t at all well. Let’s go down to the staff room, shall we?” He jumps to his feet. “Next bell is break time. I’ll nab someone to give you the lowdown.” He hurries her to the stairs and, as the heels of their shoes clatter against the steps, she has an overwhelming impression of them gathering momentum, as if preparing for takeoff.

  They break their flight pattern in the hall where he demonstrates the security code for the lock on the staff room door — “Can’t leave it unattended” — and leads her in. “Sit down, grab a chair,” he says. “Somebody will come in soon. The majority of students in this school are regular kids. Have to stamp on them a bit, of course, be somewhat unreasonable at first to make an impression, or they’ll walk all over you, like all kids.” He fills a kettle from the sink tap. “You have the inevitable parental split-ups — dreadful, but it’s happening everywhere now — and some bad parenting — parents in the pub getting sloshed every night, kids neglected, that sort of thing. Not much of that, thank goodness. Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee, please. I’d like to be sure that I’ll get backup if I decide to kick up a stink, that I won’t be hung out to dry.”

  “Of course you’ll get backup.” He points out a locker to her as he passes her a mug of coffee. “You colonize this. Moira won’t need it while she’s away. You’re going to be all right. I can tell.”

  The door opens and a young woman with a shock of red hair walks in. “Tessa,” he says without missing a beat, “this is Ellen Hughes, Matt Hughes’s niece. She’ll be taking over from Moira. Could you talk her through some of the classes she’ll be having? I have a copy of her timetable here.” He looks at his watch. “Mrs. Feeny has an appointment to see me now, so I have to run.”

  “See you at break,” he says to Ellen as he vanishes out the door.

  Tessa surveys Ellen. “He always does that — dumps people and expects others to look after them. I’m no good to you. I’m part-time,” she says. “It won’t be long till the others come in. Eddie will be back, too.” She plonks copybooks on a low table and sits down to correct them. Ellen takes a sip of over-strong coffee and settles in for a wait.

  • • •

  Ellen rushes home and rifles through the cardboard box in which she has stored her textbooks and stash of handouts, and spends the rest of the day pouring over and organizing them. She squares up to the full-length mirror in her bedroom, reac
quaints herself with her body language, and psyches herself up for heckles, confrontation, and defiance. This is something that she hasn’t worried about in over a decade, but she doesn’t want to wake every morning to a knot of dread cramping her gut.

  Ellen has seen effective teachers lose their touch, forget the knack of doing the job, and come to grief. How she behaves in front of different groups — it’s a balancing act that unhinges many aspiring teachers — will settle her fate. If she underperforms or over-does the familiarity with students, the entire construct will be at risk. It’s usually an incremental collapse. At first, nothing much will seem wrong. The students will become a little restless. If no effort is made to contain the slippage, the disintegration will intensify. Unchecked, the momentum will prove unstoppable. The resultant discord will end with unruly, raucous, and finally unmanageable students. Classes on either side will hear shouts, shrieks of laughter, the scrape of furniture being moved about, even the sound of a fight breaking out, and — sometimes — the hapless shouts of the teacher. Such a situation will be next to impossible to retrieve. “What have I let myself in for?” she says to her reflection the night before her first day.

  She wakes to a feeling of gloom. There’s no avoiding being the new conscript. Her stomach is in her throat as she drives into the staff car park that first morning, her box of tricks sitting on the back seat of the car.

  The day is a mass of impressions. Everything runs at half-speed, as if in a dream. A sea of unfamiliar faces is replaced by a sea of different faces. She moves about a lot. She asks questions. She has lists of names. Beside certain names she has penciled in comments. In theory, she knows the likely troublemakers, although these can vary from teacher to teacher. She hears the measured tones of her voice. She deals with the here and now, the immediate. They are watchful — thirty of them to one of her. She pays close attention to them and picks up on body language. She’s able to infer something from the way a head swivels about or remains immobile. She returns each curious stare, forcing the eyes down.

  She explains that she will take over revision of the term’s work and that Moira has set their Christmas tests. She expects them to be subdued the first few days as they take her in. Two weeks into the job and classes still go without a hitch. She is overprepared. They’re quiet, minded to be cooperative. They test her by lobbing challenges in the form of questions. She projects a confidence she doesn’t feel — years of practice standing to her — and collects written exercises from each group. For weeks — well into the next year — she will devote hours to correcting work on the day it is handed in and return it the following day. She knows that quick feedback to students is the most effective way to inspire their confidence in her ability to do the job.