Oranges From Spain

by David Park

  The intensity of battle had frightened them both a little, and both sides had inflicted wounds that festered for months. When it was over, they stepped back a little, and moved into a period of measured restraint. They lived in a functional way as each learned to tolerate the other, and while little frictions arose occasionally at those points where their routines crossed, neither side sought to inflict defeat upon the other. A wordless accommodation was reached and they co-existed in an almost satisfactory way. As his father grew older he found himself more prepared to defer to his wishes, especially in areas which no longer seemed important, but his father’s illness had altered the balance of their relationship, and with his decreasing mobility had come an increasing dependence on his son. Although it was never spoken of they both knew it was so, and although they both pretended that nothing had changed, each knew that the father had relinquished mastership of the house. During the slow process of his father’s abdication, he was always at pains to maintain an outward display of deference, but both knew as he moved gently through their lives, leaving behind only a snail-trail of his will, that the struggle was over. Coupled in recent years with his physical failing had come a gradual mental deterioration, manifested at first in small things such as failing memory and then a slide into periods of confusion and incoherence. In the last few months these periods had grown longer and the gaps between them shorter. At other times, however, his mind seemed clear and well. He knew that the arrangement with Mrs Mitchell was not going to be adequate if his father’s mental deterioration continued, and it might eventually prove impossible for him to be left on his own. In the meantime, they must make the best of the situation. Weekends were especially difficult. Mrs Mitchell did not come and so they were both bound together in an ever diminishing range of activities. His idea about the garden had been a good one. In spite of his father’s prediction, it did not rain, and the next morning he helped him outside and eased him into an armchair brought from the house. His father settled into a mood of pained scepticism as he watched him cut the grass and pull out some of the more obvious weeds. He made a half-hearted attempt to prune the roses, but he wasn’t sure of what he was doing, while throughout the morning his father contented himself with criticism after the completion of each operation. As he worked he thought of school and the new girl. There were thirty-six pupils in his class and she would make thirty-seven. He disliked the unevenness of the number. Should he give her a seat beside Grace Maxwell or Ann Brown? Ann Brown – she was a sensible girl who would induct the new arrival into the routines and rules. He tried to remember clearly what she looked like, but he was unable to picture her with any great conviction.

  On that first Monday morning after assembly, Elliot escorted her round to his room. He went to the door to meet them both, and with a nod of his head thanked Elliot, his brusque manner discouraging him from entering the room. The girl stepped diffidently into the room as the class looked up from their work and stared silently at her. He closed the classroom door and in the silence Elliot’s footsteps could be heard echoing down the corridor. She turned and looked at him with an expression that seemed to ask for directions. He showed her to the seat beside Ann Brown. The two girls smiled at each other. Taking the opportunity to observe her, he was struck by how much she resembled her mother. She was of average height and had shoulder-length black hair tied back in two pigtails and fastened with red plastic clips. Her eyes were brown and when she smiled they seemed to smile as well. As he inspected her, he was pleased to see that her parents had dressed her suitably. She was dressed simply in a navy blue cardigan over a white blouse with a blue pleated skirt. Her socks were white and she wore red shoes with a strap and small silver buckles. She had though that fine sheen of health that marked the children of the well-off. She carried with her a small, brown leather schoolbag, and a few seconds after she sat down, she took from it a plastic pencil case shaped like an elephant, and put it on the desk in front of her. The children stared at her and at the pencil case. Any nervousness she might have had appeared to have evaporated and she seemed calm and self-possessed as he introduced her to the class. He told them only her name, where she came from, and that she was joining the class. The girls stared at her black hair with its two red clasps, and those boys who could see it stared at the pencil case. As he spoke her name, he listened to its sound. Lysandra. It was a stupid name for a child. He resented having to say it – it sounded absurd on his lips and out of place in his room. It suggested the pretension that he sought so keenly to discourage in children. Saying the name was almost an embarrassment to him – as if he had been caught in public wearing a garish tie or a striped shirt, and when he wrote it on the roll below the names of the other girls, its incongruity irritated him. Susan Walker, Arlene Wells, Jean Young, Lysandra Lawrenson. For a second he thought of breaking with his lifelong practice of calling the girl pupils by their Christian names and boys by their surnames, but he refused to let the foolishness of one set of parents disrupt his habits.

  Other than supplying her at intervals with the necessary books, he paid her no further personal attention. It was a bad thing to make a fuss of children, giving them an inflated opinion of their own importance and distracting them from the learning process. While parents might think themselves enlightened in giving full rein to their children’s individuality, he had often witnessed the results as spoilt brats humiliated their parents in public places with calculated outbursts of tantrums and wilful defiance. Children were children and needed to be treated as such. He had often encountered adults who behaved like children, but never in all his years of teaching had he met children who behaved like adults. If anywhere in the world such phenomena existed, they were unhealthy and unnatural, and unworthy of emulation. He harboured no illusions and he built his philosophy on no other foundation than long experience. While each child might be different, their differences were unimportant, irrelevancies in the same way that a particular brand of car might come in different colours, what was important was their universal, knowable, mouldable similarity. When children were known for what they were, it was possible to teach them; when the numerous factors that constituted a child were understood, it was possible to direct them. There was certainly nothing in them that was mysterious or noble, or even particularly splendid – in that, at least, they were like adults.

  He spent each day of his working life in a room with over thirty children. It amused him to listen to parents complaining about having difficulty coping with a single child on long holidays or wet days, and yet every day he was required to cope with that child and over thirty more. It had not taken him long to realise what that meant. In his first year out of college, he had come with an open mind and a great deal of energy. After the first year he had been exhausted and almost defeated. He had made mistakes, but he prided himself in the fact that he had never made the same one twice, and when he returned after the summer, he came armed with the weapons necessary for success. He had been fortunate that he was faced with a new class, and, starting with a clean slate, he had never looked back.

  In any struggle for control the strongest would always win and from that day forward he had always been the strongest in his classroom. In the early years a few had sought to dispute that control, but he had cut them down like a scythe cuts the heads off wild flowers in a meadow. After a time, there were no more challengers. The moment that he had committed himself to the initial struggle there had never been any doubt as to its outcome – the need for victory was too important to him. One of the first things he had realised was that it was not possible to treat a class as individuals. It was a foolish and fantastic notion. To do so was to have your soul slowly eaten away like an army of ants scavenging at some dead carcass. No human being could struggle against thirty different temperaments, thirty individual wills and desires. It was a recipe for chaos – he had realised that. He could not struggle against so many, no one could, the odds were too great. And so he broke every class into one animal, one living unit o
ver which his will dominated and exercised control. Without exception, every child was treated the same, and in that at least he was a true democrat. He set standards high enough to encapsulate sound values, but possible for each child to attain. He said nothing he did not mean, made no promises he did not keep, and no threats he did not carry out. He would cut off his hand before he would let his word lose credibility in the eyes of his class. His given word was holy writ. Against its rock hardness the waywardness of foolish pupils shipwrecked like little boats; under its steadfast shadow the frail vessels of the insecure moored, and found assurance in its solidity. Into these calm waters had sailed a new girl. He looked at her. She had a foolish name and a foolish pencil case, but that was all. She was working intently at her arithmetic and he was pleased at her diligence. He noticed the two red clips in her black hair and knew that she would stir no ripples, cause no waves.

  It was three weeks later during an art lesson that the first doubt came. This lesson was not a favourite of his. Children and paint was a combination that easily resulted in mess despite whatever rigid regulations might be enforced. Although he had effectively reduced the opportunities for chaos, it was impossible to eliminate them completely. He would have been happy enough to spend the time in continual sketching, or crayon work, if he had not felt an obligation to use the paints each class was supplied with. He also disliked the time for another reason. Art gave the children opportunities to stray down paths and into areas where he had no role to play or experience to influence. It also involved him in unwelcome judgments of value and pleasure – whereas the majority of what a child presented him in the classroom could be easily identified and marked as right or wrong, their work in the art class demanded a different appraisal. It was an assessment he did not feel competent to give, and he was reluctant to enter into the relationship which he felt the bestowal of too generous approval would give.

  On that particular day they had been doing half-drop repeat patterns. First of all the page was divided into squares of set measurement and then the pattern was repeated in each one. He had chosen flowers as the subject matter and restricted the number of colours to three. For the less able pupils, much of the time was spent in ruling the necessary squares and only the better ones were able to complete the exercise. It was obvious that his new pupil had completed her pattern. From the silent attention it was evoking from those close enough to see it, he realised that there was something special about it. His own curiosity rose a little. Getting up from his desk, he stopped and looked down over her shoulder. The flowers were enormous – each one was the size of a saucer. They were a blaze of red with green and yellow stems and the whole page was a burning splash of colour. Looking at them made him feel breathless. The children sitting close by were staring at them too, and waiting to hear what he would say. He felt the pressure to say something, but was unsure of what line to take.

  ‘Lysandra, this was supposed to be a half-drop repeat. Did you not understand what that meant?’

  ‘It is a half-drop repeat, Mr Andrews.’

  As soon as she spoke he realised that she was right. But it was too late and he sensed the little ripple of satisfaction spreading over the surface of the class. He could not let go now.

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ he conceded grudgingly, ‘but the flowers are too big – your squares are the wrong size. Look at the measurements on the board.’

  ‘I know, Mr Andrews. I made them that size at first, but the flowers didn’t seem to fit, so I made the squares bigger.’

  The reason behind the logic seemed unassailable, and the resulting pattern impressed all those who could see it. He felt the need for a successful conclusion to the issue.

  ‘Fitting the pattern into the measurements is part of the problem. It requires concentration – self-discipline if you like. Anyone can throw paint down on paper, but keeping a tight pattern is a more difficult thing.’

  But it was obvious that not just anyone could have painted those red flowers. They were special. He felt he was struggling and tried to extricate himself.

  ‘Instructions are important. If everyone only followed their own ideas, we’d soon be in a sorry mess. What would happen if the bus driver only drove his bus whenever it suited him, and not when the timetable said?’

  His attempt at humour fell flat. It evoked no response and as he walked back to his desk, he felt a vague feeling of defeat. The paintings were collected by the pupils at the top of each row and placed in a cupboard reserved for art work. The girl at the top of Lysandra’s row collected the paintings carefully, shuffling them so that the red flowers were top of the pile, and out of the corner of his eye he watched her quietly showing it to the other collectors as they queued to place their paintings in the cupboard. There was a touch of pride in her gesture, as if collecting it caused her to share its glory. His feeling of defeat grew sharper.

  Without admitting it to himself, he punished them with an hour of mathematical problems which were just outside the ability range of most of the class, and even those who were successful in solving them did not escape the sharp edge of his tongue. The correct answer was not enough – the arrival at it had to be preceded by clearly demonstrated logical steps. A mass of untidy figures and calculations was merely an insult. Those who had mastered the problems felt they had been imprudent and began to regret straying from the anonymity of the herd. But there was no easy escape for the rest. He was irritated and the signs were there for all the class to read. Past experience told them to keep their heads down and draw hope from the fact that there was a good statistical chance that his temper would not blow itself out on them. Their very act of putting up the shutters and drawing into a tight collective little shell would anger him even more, but they knew no other way. He spoke to them in a series of questions, deadly in their simplicity and raw in the tone of his voice.

  ‘Why can you not do these?’

  Silence.

  ‘What is it you don’t understand?’

  A bee buzzed against a window, bouncing off the glass. No one took their eyes off him. It roared like a plane and then escaped.

  ‘Is it just sheer wooden-headedness?’

  They stared at him with blank, motionless faces, and their minds raced with frantic calculations and eliminations. He was not to be placated. The worst would come now.

  ‘Roberta Osbourne – come to the board!’

  Their worst expectations were fulfilled. There was no sense of relief at not being chosen – each felt sympathy for the sacrifice to their collective guilt, and each knew that soon their name might be called. The lamb was the girl who had collected the painting of the red flowers. She walked quickly and submissively to the board, standing a foot away from it with her back to the class.

  ‘Take the chalk. Write up the first problem.’

  The girl followed the instructions like an automaton. Her handwriting seemed pitifully small on the expanse of black. It sloped acutely to one side.

  ‘Take the duster, rub it out, and start again. Make your figures big enough for everyone to see please.’

  The girl swallowed and fumbled with the duster. It slipped and clattered to the floor but she did not pick it up. The noise was terrible in their ears but it seemed to break the mood that had enveloped him. He knew the girl would cry soon and, walking over to her, he picked it up and cleaned the board.

  ‘Now, Roberta, get the figures on the board.’

  His voice was encouraging rather than menacing, and the girl responded as quickly and effectively as she could. When she had finished, he motioned her to one side, and there was relief in her face as she realised the moment had passed from her. He handed her the duster to hold and she stood like a magician’s assistant, gripping it with both hands as if she had been given a sacred trust. His anger had gone now, but he continued with the same directness and force as before. He knew the impetus that fear gave to learning, and slowly and precisely he explained the method required, then gave copious examples on the board, each one lai
d out with meticulous care. When he had finished, he gestured the girl to sit down and stepped forward to the first row of desks.

  ‘Now, get them done again. And get them right this time!’

  As if a starting gun had sounded, heads dropped to their books and gave pursuit to the correct answers. The storm had passed and as he sat at his desk and watched them work he felt angry with himself for having disturbed his own calm. And though no head was raised to look at him, from the living, breathing heart of the silent class, he could feel the swell of hatred spreading slowly towards him. Then, in the stillness, he saw a head lift and look at him. It was his new pupil. He wondered why she was not frightened of him – it was true that she was new to the school and probably unaware of his reputation, that highly polished harbinger he cherished and encouraged, but there had been others before her who had also been new and from the start he had held them helpless in his hand. It wasn’t that she was stupid, because sometimes stupid children required a greater effort than others. If anything, she was probably brighter than anyone in the class – it had not taken him long to realise that. That was a problem too. She had often finished tasks before others had realised what was required of them, and she displayed a keen and simmering curiosity that could not be smothered by indifference or snubbed by brusqueness. She did too, what no other child had ever done, and asked him questions, questions that were relevant and perceptive and required answers. They were asked politely and genuinely, out of a spirit of enquiry and not a desire to draw attention to herself. On many occasions, too, she followed a methodology that was foreign to him but impressive in its accuracy and directness. She sat now, looking up at him with an expression on her face that disconcerted him. There was curiosity in her eyes, but behind that, there was another emotion that he could put no name to, and one which he found vaguely unsettling. He stared down at her but she did not look away. A murmur of conversation at the side of the room distracted him, and when his gaze returned to where she was sitting, her head was down and she too was engrossed in her work.