On the first Thursday of my practice Miss Beaumont hurried into the staffroom which was situated close to Class 4a’s room, conveniently at the top of a short and narrow flight of stairs leading from the top gallery. I was catching up with some marking and was due to take the first of the punctuation lessons the next period.
‘Your Major Darnley is here - he’s with Mr Overton now.’
‘Oh good,’ I replied coolly, ‘I’ll be ready for him.’
She glanced at the table upon which a pile of sheets was stacked beside the children’s exercise books. She picked up one.
‘Is this the handsheet you are giving the children for this lesson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you make this up yourself?’ she asked in a rather flat tone.
‘Oh no,’ I replied airily, ‘I used a reference book which I was given a short while ago. It’s part of a rather fine set, called ‘The Practical Senior Teacher’. Most of the lesson material is geared to older pupils, of course, but I thought this would be about the right level for 4a. Brings things to life, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it does....’
‘May I come into the room and prepare my blackboard work? It’s here in my lesson notebook - as you see it’ll take a few minutes to draw. I’ll use the free standing board; I can turn the easel away from the class so they won’t see it before the lesson. Major Darnley rather likes that technique - the sudden revelation.’
‘Yes, of course, if you’re sure you want to.’ She sounded a touch distant. Probably thinking about her own lesson, I surmised.
She returned the paper to the table and left hurriedly. I followed shortly afterwards. Inside the room I became absorbed in my work, which I carefully concealed from the children. I drew the outline of a large comma, filled it in with yellow chalk and added arms, legs, a neck and head in ‘pin man’ style. ‘He’ was leaning against a wall. I did the same with a full stop, but this time he was shown lying down. Beside these I wrote, very neatly, ‘The comma takes a pause’ and ‘The full stop takes a rest’.
Then I drew a row of commas, with spaces between, all with hands on hips looking at strips of vegetables supposedly in gardens. At the side I wrote, ‘Commas divide up a series of different pieces of information’. I added others, drawn in similar cartoon outline. It was all a direct copy of illustrations from a lesson in my prize possession.
So were the drawings on the duplicated handsheets which showed even more ludicrous events - commas holding each other’s arms wide to ‘shut off extra pieces of information’ as the notes said. A semi-colon was turned into ‘a lazy fellow’, sitting down, who ‘always takes a longer rest’. It looked like the side view of a girl in a bikini. A dash was shown ‘yoking together’ two cartoon heads of oxen, and I drew them looking completely cross-eyed. But that is how they appeared when I traced them from the pages of the PST.
If all my lessons had been as bad as that one I would have burned my notebook years ago despite the hours of toil that went into it, or rather them, for the total of my various periods of practice ran to a little under four hundred pages. I cringe with embarrassment when I look back now at that particular effort.
So did the VP. The lesson lasted twenty minutes and he stuck it out manfully. Then I should have changed to teaching some Geography. Before I could do so he stood up, came from the back of the room where he had been sitting, and beamed at the children. They were on their best behaviour having been threatened earlier by Miss Beaumont with death or worse if they put a foot wrong with this important visitor.
‘I think you all have some reading books in your desks, haven’t you?’
‘Yes Sir,’ came the general but subdued reply.
‘Good. You take them out and read quietly to yourselves for a short while. I want to have a few words with Mr Flaxton.’
Desk lids rose and were put down gently as books were extracted. Silence descended. He turned to me.
‘Sit there.’ He indicated the teacher’s desk and high chair at the front of the room. I did so and he took up a position facing me with his back to the class. Slowly he leant forward and put his hands on either side of the desk top. As his face got nearer to mine he lifted up his head and stared at me through the lower lenses of his bifocals.
‘Does the chair you now occupy signify anything to you at all, MISTER Flaxton?’ His voice was a sibilant whisper. I swallowed hard.
‘Er, yes, I think so.’ Mine sounded strangely strangled
‘Then tell me about it’, he invited.
‘Well.....’ I began, then stopped lamely. But he had no intention of easing my plight, which was entirely of my own making.
‘I am waiting.’
I flushed. At least he might have had the grace to tell me off outside the room. ‘I suppose you mean if I am sitting in this chair I ought to be able to teach the children in front of me’, I rattled quietly, wondering what he really wanted me to say.
‘Obviously.’ His face remained a few inches from mine and neither it nor his expression wavered. ‘And what is the kernel of all our teaching, of every lesson, of everything we produce for these young minds - WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO?’
‘Make them think, Sir.’ I knew that one from his lectures.
He beamed his most artificial smile. ‘Good, good - and if we are trying to make the children use their powers of thought is it too much to ask that the teacher should demonstrate a modicum of the same process?’
‘Yes, of course - I mean, no, it isn’t.’
‘Then why are you offering them this drivel?’
He whipped my notebook in front of my face open at the page where my stupid drawings mocked me from the red rectangle entitled ‘Blackboard Summary’. But I didn’t have the sense to give in and admit my denseness. I had to dig myself further into the mess. I tried looking prim.
‘I took those directly from a well-known reference book, in fact it’s a very detailed work, covers six volumes, and it has a set of charts....’
‘What is the name of this tome?’ His voice was very flat.
‘The Practical Senior Teacher. Of course I realise that this School isn’t....’
‘Is it in the College library?’
‘Er, well, no, but a former student of St Andrews, now a Headmaster and a friend of mine....’
‘I have never heard of it.’
‘It has an introduction by Sir Percy Nunn....’
‘I don’t care who introduced it or who wrote it or whether it was presented to you by the Minister of Education - if it contains this kind of nonsense it is useless. And so are you if you are dimwitted enough not to see that. At first I thought you had dreamed this up yourself in a nightmare but now you tell me you did not think about it at all, not even SUBconsciously!’
He straightened up, took my book and turned away. My face felt as though I’d fallen asleep in the tropical sun. I was sure every eye in the class was watching the debacle and that every ear had heard every word. How on earth was I going to become a teacher after this? Visions of my consoling family floated around my head. ‘Never mind, old chap,’ they said, at least you tried.’ Then they wandered away shaking their heads.
‘Take your book,’ said the VP turning back to me, ‘and think about what I have written in it. Good afternoon.’
He turned to the class.
‘You were all very well behaved whilst I was talking to Mr Flaxton,’ he said in normal tones. ‘Well done, I shall tell Miss Beaumont, and I shall come and visit you again next week. Goodbye.’
It was their turn to beam at him. ‘Goodbye, Sir,’ they chanted happily.
Suddenly he was gone and I was left staring at my notes. I was absolutely immobile. I could feel sweat seeping down my spine under my shirt which was clinging damply to me. I felt just as limp and sodden. What on eart
h would the kids think of me? Should I just rush out of the room and disappear? I stared and stared at the top of the big desk. The room was completely silent.
‘Please Sir,’ said a quiet and respectful voice, ‘shall we get out our Geography books?’
Somehow the question penetrated my reeling consciousness and I forced myself to look up. Slowly, very slowly I looked up and down the four double rows. Most of the children were reading, two or three were writing on pieces of paper, a couple looked bored. None appeared any different from usual.
Gradually I relaxed. No one had heard, fortunately. Thank heaven for large classrooms. At least they weren’t going to laugh me out of the room in disgrace. I have no idea how I got through the next lesson, nor what I taught. We didn’t have to write every lesson in our notebooks so that tells me nothing. But I am positive no one learnt anything at all from it.
As Miss Beaumont came in to teach the last lesson I shot past her without even a glance. I made a beeline for the loo. Fittingly it was the path of a wounded bee because it was on the ground floor, whither I went spiralling downwards.
After the children had gone home I emerged and climbed back up again. I had to collect my books and I knew I had to face Miss Beaumont. I walked along the gallery with the enthusiasm of someone being led in front of a firing squad.
‘I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘What an abysmal mess!’ I groaned.
‘What is?’ she said, looking round and sounding surprised.
‘My lesson - it was ghastly.’
‘Do you mean the children misbehaved?’ She was on her mettle in a flash.
‘No - my notes, my illustrations, the whole silly idea. What on earth did Major Darnley say about it to you afterwards?’
‘Oh, not a great deal. He said you needed to be a little more critical in your selection of material. I guessed the children would like your little drawings, but I don’t think they’ll really apply them to punctuation. He obviously read through your other work and said you weren’t doing badly.’
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Later, when I brought myself to look at his comments in my notebook, I realised that I didn’t know whether he meant what he said to her or whether he was just being polite - and really had written me off, as he had done with my illustrations. Across the top of the handsheet which I had pasted in my notebook were the words:
‘Consider the value of this illustrative extravagance critically.’
I did so. The six volumes of ‘The Practical Senior Teacher’ were relegated to the lumber-room at home and I joined the other chaps in their harassed search for appropriate lesson material with what I hoped was a more discerning eye.
Chapter 10
‘Sir, Sir, come quick! Ronnie Bierton’s ‘ad a nawful fight with Arthur Braggis and ‘e’s gorrall sand in ‘is eyes!’
Brenda Harson burst into the room gaspring her terrible tidings some time after the children had gone home at the end of afternoon school. She was closely followed by three other girls who had lost the race up the spiral staircase.
I was clearing my things away after a lesson and two other teachers had wandered in to enquire how I was getting on. They were Angela Metchley and Dave Penlyn. Their own College days were not all that far in the past but Dave had been in the Army and had not long returned to teaching. A Welshman, he had started to digress about his adventures when Mary shattered his reminiscences. Her shoulders were heaving as she gulped air; she had obviously been running at top speed.
‘Where?’ Dave shot at her. Both boys were in his class.
‘On the bomb site. Arthur gorrim on the ground, then he sarron ‘is chest and shoved sand in ‘is face. ‘E’s blinded ‘im!’
The other girls were anxious to fill in the details of the attack.
‘They ‘ad ever such a nargument, Sir, and Ronnie frew a brick at Arfur.’
‘It din’t ‘it ‘m, but ‘e got ever so mad. All the other kids was crowding round and yellin’.’
Dave was on his way through the door closely followed by the girls pouring out their story. Angela and I followed and the procession raced down the stairs. As we reached the hall floor a small knot of boys met us, stopped, and parted. In the middle, with another lad’s arm held consolingly across his shoulders, was Ronnie Bierton.
I heard Dave’s intake of breath and Angela gasped, ‘Oh no!’ All the children stood in silent reaction to our shock. Wet sand was plastered in his hair and the upper part of his face. You couldn’t see his eyes, both because of the sand and the fact that they were screwed up in pain. Brenda’s description wasn’t exaggerated in the slightest. The sand hadn’t just been thrown at his face, it had been ground in.
‘Get the first aid box from the staff room, will you?’ Dave asked Angela. Then to Ronnie, ‘Hold tight, son. I’m going to lead you into a classroom.’ He shepherded the sorry looking figure across the hall and into a room on the ground floor sometimes used by the youngest of the junior classes. Then he lifted Ronnie carefully and sat him on top of one of the front desks which he pulled out so that it faced the light from the window. The other children crowded round.
‘Alright, everyone,’ said Dave, ‘you had all better go home now. Thanks for bringing Ronnie. We’ll look after him.’
‘Worrabout Arthur Braggis, Sir?’ asked one of the boys.
‘Where is he now?
‘’E ‘opped it when we said we was going ter take Ronnie back to School. We couldn’t take ‘im ‘ome cos ‘is Mom and Dad doan gerrin till six o’clock.’
‘Never mind, I’ll see Arthur in the morning,’ Dave said with a grim expression that was not lost on the boys. They slipped out glancing seriously at one other.
‘What the hell can you do?’ I asked quietly when they had left. ‘Surely he ought to go to the Eye Hospital?
‘Sure, that’s where I’ll take him when I’ve cleaned him up a bit. But we’ll have to go on the bus - they won’t send an ambulance if the kid can walk.’
Angela arrived with the medical kit and a large new roll of cotton wool.
‘There’s some Optrex in the box, fortunately, and I got this new roll from the stock cupboard.’
‘Is the Old Man still here?’ asked Dave quietly as he opened the first aid box.
‘No,’ replied Angela. ‘I checked. Everyone else has gone.’
‘Right, it’s up to us then. Now, let’s see how bad it is, son.’
Gently he took a dry piece of cotton wool and began to clear sand away from Ronnie’s eyebrows and forehead. Ronnie remained absolutely still, his shoulders hunched and his face tightly contorted. But he hadn’t uttered a sound, nor did he as Dave moistened the cotton wool and began clearing sand from the screwed-up eyelids.
‘I think we had better get rid of this sea shore you’ve got in your hair,’ said Dave after a while. ‘Can you lean forward, Ronnie, whilst we shake some of it out?’
A suggestion of a twitch at the corner of Ronnie’s mouth showed he was responding to Dave’s gentle humour. I saw a chance to be useful.
‘Let me do that. Come on, old chap, I’ll soon have it all out.’
As delicately as I could I flopped my hands to and fro in the mat of tousled hair. Yellow builders’ sand dropped on to the floor in a steady flow until there was quite a patch beside the desk. Meanwhile Angela was pulling small pieces off the roll of cotton wool and twisting them into small swabs. She poured a liberal quantity of Optrex into a curved medical dish.
‘Now then,’ said Dave, ‘let’s have a good look at those eyes. Don’t worry, son, I’ll try not to hurt you.’
He sat Ronnie upright and putting his thumbs above and below the right eye prized it open against the clamping of the cheek and forehead muscles. Ronnie’s hands involuntarily moved towards his face and his body tautened but he didn’t touch Dave�
��s hands. Still he uttered no sound. It was obvious he trusted his teacher implicitly.
The three of us peered at the eyeball which didn’t want to emerge from under the upper lid and look directly at the light. Grains of sand were everywhere - on the eyeball, welling up from under the lid, encrusted on the eyelashes. Fortunately nature was coming to the rescue because the eye was watering copiously, but Ronnie was not crying.
‘Let’s squeeze some Optrex into it,’ said Angela.
‘Good idea,’ agreed Dave, ‘tip your head back, old son.’ Angela soaked a swab in the liquid and gently squeezed it on to the eyeball as Dave forced the lids apart. Ronnie winced but still said nothing.
‘Now we might get somewhere,’ said Dave as he put Ronnie’s head up straight again and moistened a pointed swab. ‘Angie, if I hold the eyelids, can you start wiping away the grains?’
As she did so, I began dipping the swabs in the Optrex so she had a supply in readiness.
‘Nigel, have a go at clearing the outside of his other eye,’ suggested Dave. This was still as tightly shut as the right one had been but Dave had already cleaned the lids to an extent. I took a swab and began to do the job thoroughly. Then when Ronnie relaxed his right eye as Angela wiped more of the sand away, Dave switched his attention to the left eye and they repeated the process.
Gradually the stage was reached where Ronnie could blink both eyes though slowly and obviously with pain. As he did so we could see more grains appear in a thin line at the edge of each lower lid. Now he managed to keep his eyes open as Dave wiped these away. He blinked again, more grains appeared and were removed.
Soon Dave was able to turn the lids back slightly and wipe gains away from the inner surfaces until we could see no more in either eye. By this time Ronnie was much more relaxed and his feet began to swing a little on the desk. But his eyes looked swollen and puffy and the rims were very red where the sharp sand had severely irritated them.
‘Good lord, it’s a quarter past six,’ said Angela in surprise. ‘Your parents will be home now, won’t they Ronnie? I’d better go and let them know where you are. Where do you live?’
Greetings Noble Sir Page 10