The Teacher's Secret

by Suzanne Leal

  He watches her cradle the cup in her hands as she takes a sip. ‘How is it?’ he asks her.

  The resumption of their morning ritual makes her smile. ‘Perfect,’ she says in a soft cultured tone that’s out of place in this little enclave where, for the thirteenth year running, she’ll be taking the Year 1/2 class.

  His eye on the empty doorway, he leans across to her. ‘So,’ he says, his voice a stage whisper, ‘have you seen her yet?’

  Elaine purses her lips and, her eyes also on the doorway, pretends to shush him.

  He turns to the rest of them. ‘Anyone seen the new boss yet?’

  ‘Acting boss.’ That’s all Helen says. The others look blank. They know her name—Laurie Mathews—and they know she’s come not as a school transfer, but straight from head office, from some management position. Policy or something.

  Checking his watch, Terry raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, by my reckoning, she’s late.’

  That makes Belinda titter but Tania just rolls her eyes. And as though it’s all been scripted, that’s when they hear footsteps coming down the hallway. Quick, heeled footsteps. Regular, not rushed, not tripping up in haste. Click, click, click, click, click, click, stop. And then, there she is, in the doorway.

  God, she’s young. That’s his first thought. So young that, for a split second, he wonders whether she’s a student teacher. But her face is set with a look of authority that immediately puts him straight.

  She’s wearing a suit, which is odd, given that the last person to wear a suit to Brindle Public was the pollie who popped in a couple of years ago to talk to the kids about Anzac Day. Or Remembrance Day. He can’t remember which.

  Like the pollie, she’s fully kitted out. Only she’s in a skirt, not trousers. She’s got the suit jacket buttoned right up although it’s still the middle of summer. Christ, she’s even wearing stockings. If he could get away with it, he’d lean over to Tania and whisper to her, Think she’s missed her stop, don’t you?

  The woman’s eyes flick around the table. There’s space for her to sit close to the door but instead she walks right around the room until she’s at the head of the table, just where the cupcakes are. For a minute, Terry thinks that’s why she’s chosen that spot—so she’ll be closest to the cupcakes. Instead, without a word, she reaches over, picks them up and takes them over to the kitchen bench.

  Oi, he wants to call out, oi. He can’t believe she’s done that, just up and moved his cupcakes without even a mind if I pop these over on the bench?

  She sits down at the table, opens her laptop and turns it on. Only then does she address the group.

  ‘Good morning,’ she says, ‘I’m Laurie Mathews. I’m looking forward to being your principal for this year.’

  ‘Acting,’ Terry mumbles under his breath. Acting principal.

  Across the way, Elaine’s smile is nervous. ‘I’m Elaine,’ she says, ‘Elaine Toomey. On behalf of our little school, I’d like to welcome you here.’

  Laurie nods. ‘Thank you, Elaine,’ she says. ‘It’s good to be here.’ Her voice is louder and lower than he would have expected, and he wonders if that’s a learnt thing or natural. He pictures her, then, as a ten-year-old, with a booming voice that’s loud enough to knock you flying. The thought of it tickles him and he glances at Helen, to see whether she’s with him, to see whether she’s thinking what he’s thinking. But she’s already off somewhere else, her eyes glassy.

  And well might she dream the hour away, because that’s how long Laurie Mathews takes to go through all the bloody departmental facts and figures. Relevant stuff, he’ll give her that—enrolments and funding and budgets and the like—but he’s never really been interested in the numbers and now, quite frankly, he just wants her to finish up so he can head off to his classroom and start getting ready for the little rats. Year 6, it’s not an easy gig, even if it’s only a small class this year.

  Thinking about them makes him lose track, so when Laurie Mathews hands him a sheet, he’s got no idea what it’s all about. Holding it out in front of him, he rears his head back, trying to read it. But it’s no good. Without his glasses, he can’t make head nor tail of it. It’s just a piece of paper with a whole lot of rectangles all over it. And he can pretend all he likes that he’s still in his thirties, but it’s the eyes that make a liar of him. To think he used to have 20/20 vision. Hawkeye Pritchard. Could have been a pilot if he’d wanted. Not anymore, though.

  But even with his specs on, none of it makes any sense.

  Laurie keeps quiet until everyone has a sheet. Funny how the room stays silent while they wait for her. Normally, it’s non-stop chatter. Especially after the holidays when there’s so much to talk about. But not today.

  He sneaks a look at Tania, who’s frowning at the sheet. She leans forward to say something but Laurie gets in first.

  ‘As you can see,’ she says, ‘this is a diagram of the school, to show classroom allocations for the year.’

  Terry lifts his head up. He’s had the same classroom for years. When he takes a closer look at the diagram, he strains to find his name. When he does, he snorts in disbelief. She’s put him in one of the bloody demountables, right up at the top end of the school. It’s the last place he’d have chosen.

  ‘There’s a bit of a problem with your diagram,’ he says, holding the sheet up in front of him.

  Laurie tilts her face towards his, another tight smile on her lips. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ her eyes flick down to her computer screen ‘. . . Terry. What’s the problem you’ve found?’

  The tone of her voice—cool but with an edge to it—gets him even more agitated. ‘The room in this diagram,’ he says, ‘is not my room.’

  She nods her head slowly, as if to agree with him, as if to concede that there’s been a mistake. ‘Given that yours is the smallest class, Terry,’ she says, ‘I thought it was better to give you the smaller demountable and Belinda one of the larger fixed classrooms.’

  At this, Belinda flushes bright red and shoots Terry a grimace.

  He’s started to colour too. It’s like he’s been sideswiped. Keep it calm, he counsels himself, keep it calm. It’s not Belinda’s fault. She didn’t ask for it.

  Although they’ve never actually been articulated, there are a few unofficial rules at Brindle Public. One is about the classrooms. If you’re one of the new teachers, you get whatever classroom is left over. The longer you’ve been at Brindle, the longer you’ve had to work your way up the ladder to classroom heaven. There’s no dressing it up: Terry has been at the top of the ladder now for the best part of a decade. And for each of those years, he’s had the pick of the rooms—one of the old wooden ones that runs along the side of the school, with a balcony at the front. Nice and light and, with the windows up, enough of a breeze to keep the temperature manageable, even in February. Clean white walls that he paints himself at the end of each year. His canvases, that’s how he thinks of them. Ready to be covered with next year’s paintings and collages and projects and mobiles. It’s his room. And everyone knows it. Whatever this new one says, everyone knows it’s his room.

  ‘I’ll take the demountable,’ Belinda says, her voice wavering.

  But Laurie is resolute. ‘Thanks, Belinda,’ she says, ‘but I think the new allocation will work better in terms of class management and interaction.’

  Class management and interaction? What the hell is she talking about?

  He opens his mouth to say something, but Tania gets in first. ‘Thanks for taking the time to draw up the diagram, Laurie,’ she says. ‘The thing is, some of us have been at the school for a long time and we’ve got used to a particular classroom: we know how to set them up so they work best for the kids. There’s never been any conflict over it. It’s always seemed to work well.’

  She looks around the table for support. Belinda looks like she’s on the verge of tears and Elaine has her mouth pursed. Only Helen seems unperturbed. Terry checks the diagram again. By coincidence, Helen is still in her old
room. So she’s all right. But Tania’s up in Siberia with him, at the far end of the school, right up near the hall.

  Once Tania has finished, Laurie clasps her hands together. ‘Thank you, Tania. I’m sure the system has worked well enough in the past, but I think you’ll find that we’ll be in a better position to meet our strategic direction and student outcomes with the proposed configuration.’

  He’ll explode if he hears another word of bloody management-speak rubbish. His neck has tightened up—he can feel it—and his hands are clenched into hard little balls.

  The anger must be radiating out of him because now Tania has got a hand clamped over his. ‘Good to have you next to me,’ she whispers. Her tone is light, but the pressure of her hand is heavy. Anyone else and he’d just shake it away and keep on going, but Tania can always slow him down.

  With her free hand, she shows him her sheet. ‘Look,’ she says, still in a whisper, ‘side by side, so we’ll be able to team teach.’

  He grunts. On the upside, it couldn’t be further away from the principal’s office. Acting principal. But he still can’t believe it. That she has the gall to just barge in and turn the place on its head. Well, there’s one thing he can guarantee her: he won’t be taking that sort of thing lying down.

  Meanwhile, Tania’s managed to negotiate a fifteen-minute tea break. And she’s taken charge of the cupcakes, too, returning them to the table and, with a flourish, ripping off the cling wrap to reveal the little masterpieces. Except that she’s pulled the cling wrap off so quickly she’s taken half the frosting with it.

  ‘Terry’s wife made them,’ she tells Laurie. ‘Help yourself.’

  Well, Terry’s not too sure Laurie deserves one. Quite frankly, he’d prefer her to keep her mitts off them.

  As it happens, Laurie’s already shaking her head. ‘I keep away from cakes,’ she says with a laugh.

  What, Terry wants to snap at her, not even a bloody cupcake? Instead, he reaches over to choose the one he wants: the one that’s still well covered in dark chocolate frosting and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. ‘More for the rest of us, then.’ He says it as an aside, but the words come out so clipped and angry that Tania stares at him in astonishment.

  Okay, he gestures to her, his mouth full of cake. He’s been looking forward to the cakes all morning, but now he’s too annoyed to enjoy them. And where’s Diane when they need her? Off drinking cocktails in bloody Hawaii.

  When at last the meeting is finished, Tania gives him a poke. ‘Come on, grumpy, let’s do a recce of the classrooms.’

  ‘Who the hell does she think she is?’ he says, spitting the words out as they walk up towards the hall. ‘No discussion, nothing. A done deal. Soon as she bloody walked in. Before she even walked in. All sorted before she’d even laid eyes on us.’

  Tania squeezes his elbow. ‘She’s just got a bit carried away trying to show who’s boss, that’s all.’

  ‘If I knew we were going to get her, I’d have applied for the bloody job myself.’

  ‘But you didn’t. And you know why you didn’t: because you can’t stand administration. Face it, Terry, you’re a classroom man.’

  The demountables—his, now, and Tania’s—face away from the rest of the school and look out onto a small patch of grass that used to be a soccer field. A private little space, tucked away from the rest of the school. The senior space, that’s how he’ll sell it to the kids. Yep. The senior space. At least it’s got a bit of a ring to it.

  There’s a vestibule area at the entrance to the classroom, tiny but with enough space for the kids to hang up their bags. It’s the classroom itself that distresses him. Everything’s wrong about it. It’s small, it’s hot and the walls have been painted in a yellow so bright it’s going to have the kids bouncing around. They need a calm colour. Something that’s not going to hype them up. He checks his watch. Eleven o’clock. There’s still time. If he’s quick, that is.

  Tania’s got bright yellow in her room, too, and she hates it even more than he does. So they jump in the car and make their way to Jim’s hardware store. The store is close enough that they could walk, but time’s in short supply. Once inside, they decide on a white that’s called something else and head straight back to school.

  By the afternoon, the rooms have been transformed. Tania has moved her tables into cluster groups but he’s not convinced. He prefers a horseshoe. Makes the kids concentrate better and leaves a big space in the middle of the classroom for his rug.

  Now is as good a time as any to retrieve it from his old room. It’s a heavy bastard and he has to hoick it up over his shoulder. Even then, it almost kills him and he needs a break before he’s even got up to the hall. The sun’s still vicious, although it’s already after three, and he can feel the sweat dripping down the back of his neck. He sits down to catch his breath but stands up again when he catches sight of Elaine coming round the corner. Quickly, he heaves the rug back onto his shoulder and, one hand pulling on the railing, climbs up the stairs.

  ‘Already giving it a homey touch, are you, Terry?’

  He gives her a wink and tries not to wince with the weight of the damned thing. ‘You know what they say, Elaine, hard to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ He loves that saying. Because it’s so idiotic. Last year, it took him a whole afternoon to explain it to the class. Poor Elsie was still puzzling over it the next day.

  Once he’s manoeuvred the rug into the classroom, he rolls it onto the floor then steps back to check how it looks. Leaning back on his desk, he surveys the room. Better, he thinks, with a touch of pride. Much better.

  Just up the street from the school is a small strip of shops. Nothing fancy—a chemist, a corner shop, a bakery and a cafe—but it’s enough to get what you need. That afternoon, once he’s made a bit of headway in the classroom, he pops up to the cafe and orders a coffee. There’s a new lass serving, he notices. There’s also a new display on the counter: a series of handmade cards, each with a different photograph. When he looks a bit closer, he sees that the photos are of Brindle: the boat ramp, the pool, the beach, the headland. Fancy that, he thinks to himself. Brindle cards. Who would have thought it? Only a couple of years ago and the only thing people knew about Brindle was the jail. He chooses a table at the far end of the cafe, and when the coffee comes he’s happy to find that they’ve made it the way he likes it, strong and hot.

  He sees Len and Elsie as soon as they walk in but neither of them sees him. He’s about to call Elsie’s name when something stops him. Instead, he leans back in his chair to watch them, funny pair that they are.

  Together they amble down the passageway, both of them looking like they got their clothes from a bin somewhere. Len’s T-shirt is marked and his trousers must once have belonged to a much bigger man. On his feet, he wears a pair of dirty white Volleys without socks. Light brown hair falls around his face in jagged edges, as though it’s simply been lopped off to keep it out of his eyes. His face is large and square, his mouth narrow and his eyes small and dark.

  Elsie looks so much like him even a stranger would pick them as father and daughter. She has the same large, square face, the same light brown hair, the same dark eyes, only hers are more blank than watchful. Her hair is also badly cut: too long to look neat, too short to tie back. She is dressed in a light green T-shirt and ill-fitting royal blue shorts with the Brindle Public logo embroidered on one leg. She wears nothing under the T-shirt, and the outline of early breasts is all too clear. She needs to be fitted for a bra, Terry thinks. But this isn’t something that’s going to occur to Len.

  ‘We want a milkshake!’ Len shouts at the woman behind the counter.

  When she shrinks back, Len steps forward. ‘We want a milkshake,’ he repeats.

  The woman keeps her distance. ‘What flavour?’ she asks.

  Len swivels back to Elsie. ‘Elsie,’ he bellows, ‘what flavour?’

  Elsie crooks her finger and sticks it into her mouth. ‘Caramel,’ she says.


  ‘What?’ Len yells. ‘What’d you say, Elsie?’

  Elsie pulls her finger out. ‘I said caramel!’ she yells back.

  Everyone in the shop is watching them and the woman’s face has turned red with embarrassment. ‘One caramel milkshake, then?’

  Len starts to shake his head. ‘Not one,’ he yells, ‘two! We want two caramel milkshakes.’

  ‘Takeaway?’ Her voice is hopeful.

  Len shakes his head. ‘Nup. We’re going to drink them here, at one of your tables here.’ He turns back to his daughter. ‘Isn’t that right, Elsie? We’re going to have our milkshakes here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Our caramel milkshakes, Dad.’

  Len gives her a big smile. ‘You’ve got it right there, Elsie.’

  Although this is not the usual practice, the woman makes Len pay upfront. This doesn’t worry him—he just gets out his wallet and hands over a note. But he’s vigilant about his change, counting it out slowly and loudly to make sure she’s got it right.

  There’s a row of booths along one wall of the cafe. Len and Elsie choose one and sit opposite each other, a steel-topped table between them. The seats are covered in vinyl, which, when they first sit down, is slippery enough for them to slide on until they bump into the wall. It’s so much fun they do it twice, then Elsie does it again.

  When the milkshakes come, neither of them hold back. They both just put their heads over the metal cups and suck up as fast as they can, right to the bottom. Terry swallows a smile.

  Once they’ve finished their milkshakes, they don’t hang around: they’re up and at it. Only on their way out does Elsie spy Terry.

  ‘Mr P!’ she shouts. ‘Mr P!’

  Terry puts up a hand and gives her a little wave. ‘Hi, Elsie.’

  The two of them shuffle between tables to get to him. ‘I’m in Year 6 now,’ Elsie tells him.

  Terry smiles. ‘Are you just?’

  ‘I think so, Mr P. But what do you reckon? Do you reckon I’m already in Year 6 even though school hasn’t started yet? Or am I still in Year 5 until tomorrow?’