The Playgroup
Page 32
Joe rolled his eyes as he sat awkwardly on the floor. Someone had moved the adult-sized chairs, and although it was all very well for Gemma with her small frame to sit on one of the kiddy chairs, he wasn’t physically able to even if he had wanted to. The seat would only have taken one half of his rear end. Maybe it was time to join a gym: if Brian could do it, so could he.
‘Then they that down under the thtar and had a west.’
Why choose a child with a lisp to be one of the narrators? Diversification was all very well, but not at the expense of clarity. Lisping seemed to be catching at the moment: a few of them were doing it, he’d noticed. Perhaps it was in the water.
Gemma was leaning forward with that encouraging smile of hers, which was almost as dazzling as that vulgar stone on her left hand. ‘Very good, Darren.’
Very good? Who was she kidding? Joe prided himself on not belonging to the band of teachers who praised children for all and sundry. Brian had said he was with him on that one. There was a kid the other year who’d got a certificate for getting on and off the bus. Ridiculous.
Now a boy with purple glasses was piping up. ‘The three wise women walked for miles and miles.’
‘Excuse me.’ Joe awkwardly got to his feet. ‘Could we have a word?’
He gestured to Gemma that they should go to the back of the hall. Never criticise a member of staff in front of the children, Mike had advised when Joe had first started.
‘Why did you pick the first narrator, with his lisp?’ he demanded.
Gemma gave him a cool look. When he spoke like that, she seemed to say, it was as though the kind, understanding Joe, who’d been so comforting about Danny, hadn’t existed. Immediately, he wanted to apologise.
‘Darren didn’t have one at the beginning of term,’ she said softly, ‘but his parents are in the middle of a divorce and he’s started talking in a babylike way. It can happen when a child feels insecure.’
Ouch. ‘Sorry. I can see that. But what about this “miles and miles” stuff? We’ve been metric for years. It ought to be kilometres and kilometres.’
Gemma snorted with laughter. ‘Are you joking? It’s always been “miles” in traditional scripts.’
‘Traditional? With three wise women?’
Gemma put her head on one side as though considering something. ‘You might have a point. Can we talk about it later? I don’t want to delay proceedings any more. Not when Billy is about to perform as the front half of the ox. You never know what’s going to happen.’
Good point. Joe wasn’t looking forward to that particular whirlwind joining his class next year.
‘Oh no.’ Gemma pointed to the white sheet that was waiting in the wings. Underneath it, two pairs of shoes were kicking each other impatiently. But that wasn’t what she was looking at. Underneath the back legs was a brown circle of cow pat. Except it wasn’t from a cow.
‘Sorry, Mrs Merryfield,’ came a small voice from the rear end. ‘I couldn’t wait.’
After that, it all went to pieces. A shepherd did a bunk in order to scale the wall bars at the other end of the hall. The Virgin Mary declared that her mother had just had her colours done and that this particular shade of blue didn’t suit her because she was spring and not autumn. One of the stars went to pieces, literally, in a costume that had been tacked together by Toby’s dad, who’d also managed to sew dog hairs into the tinsel. And Johnnie kept saying ‘sin’ instead of ‘inn’, probably due to the male au-pair influence.
‘It will be all right on the night,’ said Bella bouncily as they tried to get the children to tidy up after it was all over. ‘They’re just excited because it’s so near Christmas. I must say, I do think that this term seems much longer than it usually does.’
She was waving her hands around as she spoke, and Gemma caught a flash. ‘Bella, is that a ring on your finger? I mean a different finger?’
Bella glowed, proffering her left hand. The diamond which had been on her used-to-be-engaged-but-not-any-longer finger was now back on the usual fourth finger. ‘We made up,’ she cooed happily. ‘Just in time for Christmas.’
Joe made a noise at the back of his throat as a warning signal. ‘Excuse me, ladies, but we do have ears here.’
It was an expression he’d picked up from Lynette, warning him and Mike not to say certain things in front of the children. Instantly, both women stopped and gave each other a look he couldn’t read. Why did women have this secret language and more importantly, how could he download the phrase book?
‘You’re right,’ said Bella with a glossy smile. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you’re picking up the lingo rather nicely.’
Not long ago, Joe would have said something about picking up the lingo faster if everyone had been more welcoming at the beginning. Now, too late, he could see that things might have been different if he, too, had made more of an attempt to fit in.
‘Thanks.’ He nodded at Bella’s ring. ‘Congratulations.’
Then he nodded in the general direction of Gemma’s left hand. ‘Looks like you’re all doing it!’ It was meant to be a joke, but it seemed to come out more like sarcasm. ‘Right, my class. Line up by the door please, ready for lunch.’
Behind him he could hear Bella giggle and say something about being in the army. Gemma was whispering something back. Something, if he wasn’t wrong, about him having a firmer hand than Brian and that it wasn’t a bad thing.
That made him feel more uncomfortable. In a way, he told himself as he marched the children along the corridor, he preferred it when there’d been cool hostility between them. It made it easier to shut out his feelings; feelings which he’d allowed to creep in, despite himself.
Maybe it was time to go back to the old Joe and stick to numbers instead. At least you couldn’t get them wrong. Not where the heart was concerned, at any rate.
Chapter 58
IT WOULD BE a relief, Joe told himself that evening, as he got on his bike in the school car park to make his way down the motorway to London, a real relief to get back to normality for two days. Now the Carter Wrights no longer needed his apartment – such good news about Danny, even though it had gone against all the statistical odds – he could go back to normal Saturdays. A browse round Portobello Road; an afternoon at the Science Museum maybe, and, as it was so near Christmas, an hour or two at Hamleys to get his godsons’ presents.
Anything was better than staying in his lonely room at Joyce’s and listening to music coming through the wall from Gemma’s room, where she and Action Man were no doubt pawing on the bed. Anything rather than being cornered by Joyce on the stairs and being told that it was wonderful, really wonderful, that Gemma was going to be her daughter-in-law.
‘Mr Balls! Mr Balls! How fast does that go?’
It was Juan, the only kid in his class who had any natural ability with numbers, as far as he could see.
‘Very fast, Juan. Too fast for you.’
This wouldn’t be the first time that one of the children had asked for a ride.
‘I don’t want to go on it.’ The boy’s eyes darkened. ‘It belongs to you. I just want to see the numbers.’
He reached up on tiptoes and pointed to the speedometer. Joe was tempted. Lynette allowed him to pick up the boys and put them on his knee while he sat on the bike so they could see the dials, but they were his godchildren.
‘Shouldn’t you be in After-School club?’
‘It’s finished and I’m waiting for my dad. He came to pick me up but then told me to wait here while he went to get some cigarettes. Please, Mr Balls.’
Just quickly, then. He reached down and lifted the boy on to the seat, thinking to himself that this was what he might be doing now if he and Ed had had the baby. ‘You see these numbers? They’re in kilometres and miles as well. And this dial means . . .’
Later, as Joe tried to explain, he didn’t know how it had happened. All he knew was that Juan simply slipped sideways from the seat and fell on the ground with a thud.
‘Are you sure he wasn’t unconscious, even for a second?’ she had asked him while sitting Juan on her knee and mopping up his tears.
Joe nodded tightly. ‘Absolutely certain. Well, 99 per cent sure. Maybe 98.’
‘That’s good then,’ said Gemma as though she was trying to be reassuring, but she said it in a way that made him realise he shouldn’t have let Juan get on the bike in the first place. ‘I know it’s only a scrape on the side of his face, but I still think we need to get him to Casualty just to make sure he’s all right. We’ll need to ring his father too. I’ll drive us. You sit in the back with Juan. Is that all right, poppet?’
For a minute, he had thought the last sentence was addressed to him. When they got to the hospital and he had to explain to the girl at A&E what had happened, he felt even more of an idiot, although Juan was, by now, happily sitting up on one of the chairs and chatting to Gemma over a comic. If she hadn’t been there, he told himself again, he would have felt even worse than he did already.
‘Juan,’ called out a nurse, and Gemma, signalling to Joe that it was all right and that she’d take him in, went with her into another room down the corridor.
‘The nurse will take him to the obs,’ said the girl at reception, noticing his anxious face. ‘You know. Observation room just to see if everything is all right.’
Minutes later, after Gemma had returned, a voice rang down the corridor. ‘Where is my son? I demand to see him! What have those crazy idiots done to my son?’
A small wiry man reeking of cigarettes, in dirty jeans and a fluorescent labourer’s jacket, appeared. Gemma and Joe watched him being taken down the corridor and into the observation room where Juan was.
So far, they’d been told, there was no sign of injury apart from the scrape, but a blow to the head was always considered potentially serious, and Juan would need to be kept in for a few hours at least.
‘Here he comes,’ said Gemma under her breath.
The man was scurrying angrily towards them. ‘Who is the idiot that put my son on his bike?’
Joe took a deep breath. Was that his imagination, or had Gemma touched him lightly on his side in support? ‘I’m afraid that was me, sir.’
‘You?’
The man’s lip curled with disdain.
‘You did a very foolish thing.’
‘I know, sir. I am sorry.’
‘You are lucky my son is not hurt badly.’
‘I agree.’
The man’s lip curled again. ‘I could report you for this, you know.’
‘I realise that.’ The other patients in Casualty were looking at them curiously. ‘The truth of the matter is, sir, that your son is very gifted with numbers. In fact he is very gifted all round. When he started asking me questions about the speedometer, he couldn’t see properly so I made the mistake of lifting him up so he could.’
The man was looking at him as he spoke enthusiastically, and so was Gemma, as though she hadn’t seen him in this light before. ‘You must be very proud of your son, sir. You have done a good job.’
It was then that something incredible happened. The man began to cry. Tears trickled down his face which he didn’t bother to wipe away. ‘I have been looking after Juan since his mother died.’
His mother was dead? That wasn’t on his record card.
‘I have done my best but it is difficult.’ The man reached out for Joe’s hand. ‘She was very clever at numbers, his mother. The boy takes after her. It is extremely fine that he has a teacher now who cares about him. We will say no more about the incident. Unless . . .’
He stopped.
Please, no, thought Joe. Don’t change your mind.
‘Unless one day, it might be possible for you to show me your bike too.’ The man’s eyes glinted. ‘I have always wanted to ride a bike such as the one that Juan tells me about.’
Joe had phoned Beryl from the hospital to tell her what had happened and to report that Juan was being discharged. It had not been an easy call. For his part, Joe had not attempted to make excuses for himself. For hers, Beryl had listened without comment and then said that she would like to see him in her office within the hour. Gemma had sweetly offered to come with him, but he had explained that although he was very grateful, this was something he needed to take on his own shoulders.
Beryl was waiting for him at her desk when he arrived. She shook her head when she saw him, sighed and indicated that he should sit down. Once more he was faced with the photograph of a blond toddler grinning at him from inside a silver frame. He turned away.
Beryl clasped her hands in front of her and leaned towards him. ‘You’re both a very lucky man and an extremely stupid one.’
Beryl wasn’t one to beat about the bush, thought Joe. He admired her for that, just as he despised himself right now. ‘I know.’ He hesitated. What he really wanted was to tell the head that he had only let the boy get on the bike because if he’d had a son, Juan was the sort of kid he would have liked. They would have been bike-mad together. They would have explored the Science Museum together. They would have played maths quiz games. But somehow, it didn’t seem right to mention this.
‘What on earth was in your mind, letting a child get on to your bike?’ demanded Beryl. There was a sharper sound to her voice now.
‘I suppose,’ said Joe awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck which he sometimes did when put on the spot, ‘it was the bloke thing in me. Boys love bikes!’ He looked across at Beryl and at the photograph. ‘Yes, I know it was dangerous, but it didn’t seem like that at the time. I was holding him and the engine wasn’t switched on.’
Beryl snorted. ‘Didn’t stop him falling off though, did it? And in this day and age, a male teacher holding a kid round the waist can be misconstrued. Anyway, it looks as though you’re off the hook. I’ve already rung Juan’s father and he isn’t going to take the matter further.’
Joe recalled the promise he had made to let Juan’s father come round and take a closer look at the bike which had caused all the trouble, and decided that it might complicate the issue to mention this.
‘Nevertheless, I will have to report the incident through the official channels,’ continued Beryl. ‘If it was up to me, I would let it pass but rules are rules, as you know.’
Joe’s heart sank. That would really scupper his chances of getting another job. So far, his applications hadn’t got anywhere. It seemed that there was a surplus of maths teachers at the moment, all with more experience than him.
‘Still, if I were you, I would put it behind you.’ Beryl’s voice sounded less schoolmistressy now. ‘You’re a good teacher, and we’ve had some excellent feedback from parents. Your weekly maths tests have produced some extremely good grades.’
There was the sound of someone at the door. ‘Hello!’ Gemma put her head round. ‘Sorry. I don’t want to barge in on your meeting but I had to come into school to get something, and I thought you might like to know that Juan and his father are back home and really do seem all right.’
Gemma had stayed at the hospital with them until Juan had been sent home, which was far beyond the call of duty, thought Joe, considering the pupil was in his year and not in the playgroup. But Gemma wouldn’t see it like that, he realised now. She didn’t like to see any child upset – or adult.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing what you said just now about Joe’s abilities as a teacher,’ added Gemma, still standing at the doorway. ‘Have you heard about his maths quizzes, Beryl? They’re legendary. Fun and informative, or so I’ve heard.’
She flashed him a smile. ‘In fact I wouldn’t mind some myself. Words are my thing, not numbers.’
Beryl beamed. ‘Then you’re a good match, I’d say. That is,’ she added quickly, ‘in a professional context.’
/> Gemma was going pink. ‘Got to dash now. I’ve got a date.’
Beryl beamed again. ‘Thanks for coming in and supporting your colleague, Gemma. It was very good of you.’
She looked at Joe pointedly.
‘Yes, thanks,’ he added quickly. ‘Look, both of you. I just want to say that I’m really sorry about all this. I know I’m leaving anyway, but believe me, I’ve learned so much here. I won’t make the same mistake again.’
Beryl nodded. ‘We’re all human, Joe. By the way, you know we talked about my grandson?’ She indicated the photograph of the blond boy. ‘He broke his arm last weekend, climbing a tree. Guess who was meant to be looking after him? That’s right. Silly old Granny who just happened to take her eye off him for one second. Maybe that might make you feel a bit better.’
Chapter 59
ED WAS WAITING in her car outside his flat when Joe arrived. ‘I’ve been sitting there for ages,’ she snapped, displaying, as she got out, those beautifully shaped legs which could have belonged to a model instead of a City high-flyer. ‘Didn’t you get my texts?’
Although in one way he was glad to see her, Joe couldn’t help groaning inside. Ed was one of those people who didn’t mind keeping others waiting, but didn’t care for anyone else being late. If past history was anything to go by, she wouldn’t let up until she’d extracted a full and unabridged apology.
‘Look, I’m really sorry but a kid at school had an accident – it was my fault in a way – so I had to take him to hospital and . . .’
Ed waved a hand in the air before tucking it into his arm and walking with him towards his door. ‘I don’t want to know. It’s been a long hard day and I am gasping, absolutely gasping for a drink. Please tell me you have some ice.’
She spoke as though this was a social visit, so, not wanting to offend her in case she walked out in a huff (something she was quite capable of doing), as soon as they got in he poured her a large vodka and lime with ice. He then poured himself a cold lager.