Fay

by Dulcie M. Stone

  ‘As you’ll discover, there seems to be no progress at all. She’s a blank. Nothing’s different. She’s so shy. She’s far too shy. Although she’s absolutely no bother, I have to say this is a cause for concern.’

  ‘Has she deteriorated?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. She’s like a scared rabbit. She’s a good girl, a very good girl. The trouble is she’s just as frightened as she was the very first day.’

  ‘She does like it here?’

  ‘I don’t think she dislikes it. Sometimes she talks to the other children. It’s when she thinks I’m busy with other things. She’s so secretive. She seems to be talking, initiating conversation with the girls, at least. I wonder - is she? Or is she doing what she does with me? Just answering questions.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Turner.’ Mrs Ryan consulted the gold wall clock. A gift from a grateful parent, it was a cause of ongoing pride. ‘I appreciate you staying late. Especially when I know the migraines…’

  Hurriedly, Miss Turner interposed. ‘It’s my pleasure. Anything to help. Good

  luck with it all, Mr Withers.’

  He watched the spinster’s embarrassed exit. It was odd. The principal was not usually so heavy handed.

  ‘I know, Mark.’ Mrs Ryan, using his first name as she was doing more often in the privacy of her office, apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have put her on the spot. You weren’t supposed to know about the migraines. I guess I’ve got end of the year exhaustion, too.’

  ‘Perhaps we can finish up another time?’

  ‘You want to get home to Jenny. Of course.’

  ‘She’s expecting me to be late.’

  ‘Then let’s get this done, shall we?’

  ‘I’ll try to get a move on.’

  ‘It’s the latter years that are important, Mark.’

  ‘Of course.’ He prepared to turn his full attention to Miss Turner’s copiously detailed notes.

  ‘Take your time. I’m not expected home yet, either.’ Closing her eyes, the principal leaned back in her comfy office chair.

  He was an interesting man, young Mark Withers. In his mid-twenties, he’d moved to Glenlea over a year ago. This teaching post at The Glenlea Training Centre was his second. The first had been in a mainstream primary education school. His reason for the transfer, which entailed a significant reduction in salary, an unfortunate lowering of professional status, and disastrously limited opportunities for advancement, had initially been unclear; at best. His written application for an interview, with attached qualifications and glowing references, had stated his preference for the lifestyle of the country and a special interest in children with learning difficulties.

  The Board of Management, though justifiably suspicious, had been happy to oblige. At the ensuing interview, diligent interrogation had allayed suspicion. There could be no doubt that Mark Withers had attended a teachers’ college, had been a valued teacher within the Victorian Education Department and had regularly applied without success for a country posting within mainstream education. Until, apparently, his patience had eventually been exhausted and he’d applied for employment at The Glenlea.

  It was on the second count … interest in handicapped children … that Mark Withers had won their overwhelming support and qualified trust. This very presentable applicant had recently buried his intellectually disabled brother, a young man afflicted with severe brain damage as a result of birth trauma.

  The outcome, of course, was that the Board employed this fortuitous gift from God. With conditions. First, a trial period. Second, no guarantee of long-term employment. Third, forget his mainstream teaching days and readjust his goals. The retarded could not learn, and would never learn. Forget the three Rs and the expectations of academic achievement. If one of his trainees ever learned to buy an ice cream without supervision he’d have reason to pat himself on the back. Therefore he must content himself with the entirely admirable goals of training the children in self-care, a few simple domestic skills and maybe, for good measure, the ability to recognise a few socially desirable words. e.g. TOILET. The Board wished him well.

  Forget his mainstream teaching days? Re-adjust his goals? Mrs Ryan had legitimate doubts. Could this new teacher so quickly adapt himself to this very different regimen? His history was significant. She’d learned that his brother had been incapable of learning the lessons Mark had taught in primary school. In the nineteen years he’d lived, Jason had learned to speak a few words, go to the toilet without help, bathe without help, eat without help, and not much else. His main enjoyment in life had been playing his rock and roll records, which he’d also eventually learned to do without help. He’d never attended a centre like The Glenlea. In fact, the parents had not known of the existence of places like The Glenlea. The only option, in the early years when Jason Withers had been a very troublesome youngster, had been placement in an institution. The family had rejected it, and battled on – without help.

  Moreover she’d been assured by Mark that, having toured The Glenlea, he knew without a shadow of doubt that this was where he wanted to teach. Not teaching the three Rs wasn’t an issue, because these kids could never, would never, learn them. He wanted to teach here because it would be a way of making up for the years of superhuman effort his parents, and later his mother alone, had put into teaching Jason the few things he had learned. Maybe when he thought deeply about it, and this young man often thought deeply, he thought it would be a way of assuaging any guilt he felt for going off to make a happy life for himself. Not that he ever said. It was not unusual. Not at all unusual in her long experience.

  Once employed and assured of a minimum of at least two years employment before review, Mark had arrived in Glenlea with his small blonde wife and his baby son, now two years old. His wife was again pregnant. They lived, thirty minutes walk away, in a ninety-year-old Glenlea cottage. Most of his spare time and energy were devoted to its renovation, so that what had initially been a rundown derelict was in process of becoming a respectable piece of Glenlea’s architectural history.

  His wife Jenny, she had learned, was resigned to the reduction in the family income and happy with the move to the bush. She also shared his enthusiasm for historical architecture, and the interior of their new home was gradually being refurbished in the old style. The young couple’s attention to authentic detail and good taste was already winning the admiration of the local historical society.

  A tall and handsome man who wore his brown curly hair clipped short, his brown eyes were without guile and his smile infectious. At first sight, Mark Withers had seemed to be better suited to the sporting fields than the schoolroom and a preoccupation with colonial history. He was clean-shaven, solidly built, muscular and trim. The principal doubted there was a superfluous ounce of fat on his disciplined frame. Despite his excellent qualifications and his glowing references, his physical appearance had initially been disconcerting; a cause for caution in this difficult branch of learning in which staff were almost exclusively women. There was the additional reality that, for reasons as not yet clear, the training centres also too often attracted troublemakers. So how would this handsome and likeable young man, a novelty in the Training Centre world, affect staff interaction?

  Mrs Ryan, as was her nature, had initially questioned the validity of the report of the curious combination of circumstances which had caused this young man to espouse the profession of teaching retarded children and teenagers. The questions had quickly died. After working closely with him for the best part of a year, she’d learned to doubt neither his dedication nor his total commitment to his profession.

  She’d also learned to respect his devotion to the recently deceased brother. Not that Mark Withers dwelled. He didn’t; he wasn’t that sort. Nor was he overly sentimental. Even so, when attempting to respond to her earlier unspoken but undisguised misgivings, he’d communicated just enough of his deep feelings and personal motivation to allay her doubts. Their many subsequent discussions had also allayed any lingering
suspicion that his dedication and involvement might be undermined by impossible ambitions for his intellectually limited students.

  In short, having lived his own formative years alongside a child with significant intellectual impairment, Mark Withers obviously knew the score. He’d even once admitted regret that his brother had not received the benefit of the newly evolving opportunities for training that had been opening up since The War. Thus, indirectly acknowledging his complex load of guilt, he’d conceded that maybe it was regret for things not done which found him working in this most unrewarding of professions; a profession which was perceived by most professionals, as well as by many members of both management and staff within the training centre system, to be not even a profession.

  In this regard, Mrs Ryan was a fence sitter. Herself a pre-World War Two trained teacher whose qualifications would never withstand scrutiny within the modern education system, she remained firmly unconvinced of any educational potential of The Glenlea’s trainees. That some could be trained in elemental skills she accepted. ‘Training’, according to the essential meaning of the word, as opposed to ‘educating’, suited her just fine. At first, when in his third term Mark Withers had gradually begun to set his sights higher, she’d not objected. Having a bet both ways could do no harm. Nor, probably, did it do any harm to give this attractive young man his head. One never knew.

  Except that now, Mrs Ryan mused as she watched Mark doggedly turn yet another page, it was this dedication to a lost brother and his intense commitment to his trainees which were becoming the source of one of the biggest of her many headaches. Certainly, he had not yet aimed unduly high; as she had initially feared. Nor, so far, had the utterly basic academic lessons he’d tentatively introduced antagonised the other members of staff. As for the Board, there was nothing to report. As yet.

  The greater problem, not altogether unanticipated, was in its infancy. It seemed that the young teacher was in danger of caring too much. Her fear was that, should it not be counteracted, the intensity of his commitment would de-stabilise the professional objectivity necessary to his stable mental health – and therefore to the stability of The Glenlea Centre. For his own best interests, and certainly for the best interests of his associates and his trainees, he needed to take a step back. If Mark Withers was to survive the stresses of the job, and if the staff and the children were to survive the imposition of his added stress, the young man was going to have to de-personalise his goals for his group. Though her fears were not as yet based on firm evidence, they niggled. Especially at moments like this when, once he finished the file, he could well give her a hard time. He’d done it before, he’d do it again.

  Because once Mark Withers’ goals were set he refused to back off, to turn aside, to compromise. Not that he was inflexible, not at all. Anyone with the wit and the knowledge could cause him to pause, persuade him to rethink, even move him to change his mind - once he became truly convinced by the arguments put forward. At the same time, he made it clear that for no consideration of passive cohabitation, or of threat to his career, would he dishonestly compromise. Respectful of authority and non-militant as he was, his single outstanding professional priority was undoubtedly the welfare of his trainees. It was the essence of the man, and anyone wishing to understand him and to work alongside him with the minimum of friction, needed to accept this – and to appreciate it. It had occurred to her that maybe his wife did not always find this easy.

  She sighed. For sure, young and idealistic and unusually strongly motivated, he was at times difficult to work with. Especially for a tiring, not very young, not very secure, and not very highly qualified Training Centre Principal in this burgeoning branch of learning; this frequently ridiculed, often ignored, and rarely appreciated new concept of teaching previously unteachable children.

  She closed her eyes. It had been an exhausting year. Part-time teacher, part-time secretary, part-time public relations officer and occasional cleaner, she’d also been responsible for her duties as principal. This entailed filling in hundreds of forms for hundreds of different reasons, supervising, supporting and where necessary chastising the thirty-eight students, the four teachers, the aide, the part-time secretary and the bus driver. As well she’d had to coordinate programs, consult with visiting specialists, comfort distressed parents, support all parents and often their families. Then there were all the hours spent mediating between all these and the Centre’s Board of Management and the distant city-based bureaucracy which supervised The Glenlea and affiliated Centres.

  Thank the Good Lord her own children were adults who were no longer dependent, and that her husband Mike was a happy retiree who spent most of his time at the local golf club. In her most private moments, she acknowledged this was not altogether a blessing. Not even remotely interested in her job, Mike loudly and frequently bemoaned the fact that she insisted on pursuing her damned dodgy career. Think of all the wonderful golfing holidays the two of them could have if she, too, retired.

  No, it was not only young Mark Withers whose mental health was at risk, it was also her own. In a very different way she too had to work to maintain stable mental health. Propping up faltering confidence, struggling to quell insidious doubts, fighting exhaustion, suppressing anxiety, denying fears for her future and vainly trying to excuse her lack of response to the increasing pressures to upgrade qualifications were ongoing. When did the bureaucrats think she would find the time, let alone the energy, to attend seminars and to engage in further study? As though that were not enough, she then went home to a house where mutual interest was non-existent and pressure of another kind was uncomfortably dominant. Christmas holidays and time alone to recuperate could not come too soon.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Beatrice Ryan opened her eyes.

  ‘Interesting.’ Mark closed the file. The single non-committal comment, uncharacteristic as it was, made it clear he was carefully avoiding giving expression to some significant thought. As it was meant to do.

  ‘In what particular way?’ Her eyes remained on the closed file. She had hoped that he’d be happy to leave. He would leave, if she indicated he should. Equally, he was also making sure she knew he was not happy with what he’d read.

  ‘It can wait.’ He’d already learned to respect her end-of-year fatigue. ‘Tomorrow we’ll both be less tired.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She smiled, a lopsidedly painful attempt to disguise her weariness. ‘I’m happy to discuss it if you have the time.’

  ‘Jenny won’t mind if I’m home later than we thought,’ he laughed softly. ‘She’s dreading the holidays. I want to renovate the laundry. You can imagine back to washing in the bath.’

  ‘When is the baby due?’

  His response to her oblique reprimand was instinctive. ‘I’ll be doing all the physical work in the holidays. Including washing in the bath.’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…..’

  ‘The baby’s due in late March.’

  ‘A while to go then, Mark.’ She was too tired for this. They both knew she’d meant he should not be staying so late, that he should be at home helping his pregnant wife.

  ‘About Fay Clark,’ he tapped the stiff green cover of the file. ‘I really think we both need to be fresh for this discussion.’

  ‘I’d rather get it done.’

  ‘As you wish.’ It was a risk. Mrs Ryan’s exhaustion would inevitably colour her reaction. Yet, since she insisted, he could not just let it go. ‘From this I gather Fay’s made very little progress.’

  Patently thankful the discomforting personal moment was over, the principal accepted her teacher’s assessment of the file. ‘Is that how it reads to you?’

  ‘She knows more words, and speaks more clearly,’ he conceded. ‘I see Miss Turner used food as a reward.’

  ‘At first. Later, we decided to substitute more cooking time.’

  ‘With minimal success.’

  ‘It depends on one’s point of view,’
she bristled. ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘It’s in the notes.’

  ‘Miss Turner is most conscientious.’

  ‘And to be admired,’ he agreed.

  ‘But…?”

  ‘The notes also make it clear Fay’s still as withdrawn as she was at the beginning of the year. A fact I’ve observed myself in the playground.’

  ‘That would seem to have nothing to do with the question in hand. It is quite obviously her nature.’ Mrs Ryan reopened the file. ‘As you’ve read, she’s been withdrawn for years.’

  He dubiously eyed the open pages. ‘I read it.’

  ‘Ah! So - be honest. You disagree with the file.’

  He prevaricated. ‘I don’t know the girl.’

  ‘Yet you do have an opinion.’

  ‘I’ve no basis.’

  ‘Other than your observations at play time.’ Sarcasm came readily to her tired tongue.

  ‘Not much to go by? I agree,’ he admitted.

  Shadowed with the blue haze of acute fatigue, her lips tightened. ‘I’m sorry, Mark. This attitude makes it most difficult for us to work together.’

  Again, he sought escape. ‘This is not the time. We’re both tired. It’s the year’s end.’

  ‘Which, as you know, entails its own particular responsibilities. So let’s have it then.’

  Shifting awkwardly, he surrendered: ‘You have to understand - there’s no intended criticism of Miss Turner. She’s had her hands full.’

  Heavy between them, silence fell across the desk. Neither attempted to penetrate it. Outside, further accentuating the total absence of sound in the again tense room, a passing timber truck roared its way down from the mountains.

  He should leave. Poor woman, she was trying to do a job that was impossible to do. She was way behind just tired, she was exhausted.

  ‘Come, Mr Withers!’ Rejecting the informality reserved for their private discussions, the principal frowned. ‘It’s quite clear. You do disapprove.’

  Dammit. Why couldn’t she just go home? ‘I repeat,’ he reiterated, ‘there’s no criticism of Miss Turner. I have no right. I’m too new at this. There’s no…’