‘Not bad, are they?’ he smiled.
‘Play,’ said Barry again.
There were no overs. One boy batted until he was out and one bowled until he was taken off by Taff, who also played, as I saw. Batsman number two hit one off the edge towards him. He bent, fielded the ball, and hurled it ferociously at Barry who caught it perfectly and crashed his hand into the stumps.
‘My turn,’ yelled number three.
I glanced across at the rounders game, which seemed to be progressing as actively as the cricket. Every now and then someone chased the rounders ball, which was the genuine article, across the wicket. No one objected.
Rocky was standing by a wall, umpiring. I wandered over to her.
‘I’m amazed how keen these kids are. Don’t they hit the ball hard?’ I said.
‘Yes, they’re tough, aren’t they? They may be small, but they’re hot stuff at games.’
‘Are they as good in the classroom?
‘Good lord, no. We have to be the sloggers in there,’ she laughed.
‘Look, I’m sorry about this morning. Mr Brand seemed to embarrass you, I thought.’ She blushed attractively.
‘It’s so unlike the Boss. He’s very staid and proper. I’ve never known him say anything like that.’
‘Well, he certainly made it an introduction to remember,’ I said.
‘That’s for sure,’ she replied. Our eyes met and she laughed delightfully. Secretly I felt pleased at landing odds of three to one.
Chapter 25
I quickly settled into the daily routine. My one regret was that I wasn’t yet a class teacher, but I was given a full timetable which included one or two lessons with the top class. This was Mr Pardoe’s at the time, but Miss Rees was due to take it over when he left. It merited the label ‘top’ because it contained the oldest and brightest children, five of whom were destined for grammar schools.
During my second week English with this group taught me a salutary lesson. It was the occasion I became involved with Sheba’s Breasts. No, there wasn’t a girl in the class with such an exotic name, nor was I in danger of professional misconduct. This particular lesson was literature reading, a lesson of noble antiquity which still continues in some schools. A class reads a good book as a corporate exercise, normally the teacher reading it aloud. If he or she has a spark of dramatic ability the lesson is usually very popular even if there are writing exercises to follow. The format is popular on radio. In the face of all-pervasive television children need to be taught how to enjoy books.
I was asked to take over this lesson and found the class part of the way through King Solomon’s Mines. I hadn’t read the book myself which was a sad gap in my own education. I should have taken it home and adequately prepared by reading it there and then, but foolishly relied upon what I felt was my good reading ability. I was well used to play readings in Drama Societies, often done on sight and thought I could easily cope in similar fashion with King Solomon’s Mines read to these little eleven year olds.
So I was completely unprepared for Sheba’s Breasts which, of course, are a pair of mountains in the book. The class were a quarter of the way through and I felt there was an easy way of getting a potted version of finding out a little of what the early part was about.
‘Now then,’ I began brightly ‘let me see what you can remember about what you have read so far.’ A forest of hands waved at me.
‘Sir - Sir.’
‘Alright, you tell me, James.’
I selected a bright lad who I guessed would give me the gist quickly. He obliged.
‘....and there’s a map of the route across the desert and mountains...’
I interrupted the flow. ‘Where’s the map? Everyone dived back into the book.
‘Page fourteen, Sir,’ came an urgent cry from the back of the room.
‘Good, let’s have a look at page fourteen and see if you remember it.’ I flicked the pages and glanced at it swiftly. It was a simple map showing the heroes’ track across the desert, the mountains and Solomon’s Road. At the bottom a squiggly line crossed the track - the Kalukawe River. In the middle there was a shaded crescent, broken in the centre. The track passed through this gap on either side of which were two circles. I glanced at the small print beneath these. Sheba’s Breasts, I read. I felt my face turning slightly pink. Hardly the thing to comment upon to a mixed class of eleven year olds, I thought.
‘Oh yes, I see. Now, how far along this route has the group travelled at the point you’ve reached in the book?’
‘They’re in the desert, Sir. We’ve reached chapter six, Water, Water, Sir.’
‘Right, let’s turn to....’ My eye strayed to the small print beneath the map. I, Jose da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba’s Breasts. I was genuinely surprised at meeting such brazen description in a book being read to a mixed class of young children and felt glad the class had progressed beyond it. Then a nagging thought had me wondering whether there was more to come. I regretted my folly at not doing my homework.
Looking back today, my sensitivity seems ridiculously quaint. But in view of my own schooling perhaps it was to be expected. Anything sexual was absolutely taboo. I remember being in a Third Form at Grammar School studying the book, Green Mansions by W H Hudson. I can recall very little of it except one line for which we had all been waiting for weeks and which had been the subject of double and triple underlinings in each other’s copies. A man and a woman had contrived to get lost in a forest, in the dark, in a tropical storm. Clothes became mildly dishevelled for a line or two. Then it came. Our heads went down, expectant glances were flashed around the room and we all held our breath. Calmly the master’s voice droned on,
‘I touched something soft and wet. It was her breast....’
Strangled gurgles escaped involuntarily from a few throats and we hugged ourselves at hearing this magnificent eroticism. With that in my background I suppose my concern was understandable. Thanks to Wikipedia I’ve updated my memory of the book, though I see it doesn’t refer to the single event I remembered.
‘Yes, turn to the beginning of Chapter Six,’ I commanded.
This begins with Allan Quatermain’s description of their raging thirst in the desert and I threw myself wholeheartedly into the reading. When I reached the dialogue between Sir Henry, Good, Quatermain, and the Hotentot, Ventvogel, and managed to alter my voice according to the characters, I saw appreciative glances flickering on the children’s faces and they settled more comfortably in their seats. I felt I was becoming a minor hit with the top class, which would do my reputation no harm at all. Then Quatermain turned to contemplate the prospect of dawn on the mountains.
There, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like silver in the early rays of the morning sun, soared Sheba’s....
I’d plunged into the description dramatically and powerfully and consequently found it quite impossible to pull back when I reached what was coming....
‘....Breasts,’ I boomed and turned scarlet. I buried my face in the book, not daring to look at the class’s reaction. I was sure I could guess it. I hurried on.
‘....Now....I attempt to describe the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to fail me. I am impotent...’
‘ I know how you feel,’ I thought. But worse was to follow. Quatermain has to revel in the scene. ‘Before us rose two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to be seen in Africa, if indeed there are any to match them in the world...’. But the vision conjured up in my mind was not of mountains but of the objects of comparison. My collar was sticking uncomfortably, my face was burning and my throat was getting unpleasantly dry.
‘....These mountains, placed thus, like the
pillars of a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman’s....’ I swallowed hard, ‘....breasts,’ I croaked, ‘and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a recumbent woman...’
Get me out of this, I thought and quickly took a deep breath. As a result I coughed suddenly and loudly and in so doing hurt the back of my throat.
‘....Their bases swell gently from the plain....’ I wheezed, then stopped and burst into a fit of coughing. I looked up and saw everyone staring at me. I felt I was turning purple. I gulped and tried to struggle on.
‘....looking at that distance perfectly round and smooth...’ I swallowed again, and wheezed on ‘....and upon the top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the...’
‘Oh, no,’ I groaned inwardly.
‘....to the, er, nipple on the female breast,’ I gasped hoarsely and dissolved into near apoplexy.
A coughing spasm racked me until tears streamed down my cheeks. My knees turned weak as I thought of the spectacle I was presenting to the class. What price my reputation now?
A quiet and respectful voice penetrated my agony.
‘Shall I get you a glass of water, Sir?’ I gazed inanely at a demure girl standing beside me.
‘Oh, yes please,’ I gurgled. She slipped out of the room. I calmed my heaving lungs and struggled on.
‘To describe the comprehensive grandeur of that view is beyond my powers..’ said Allan Quatermain. Nevertheless he struggled on for a few more lines. But I was vastly relieved to see that he had dropped the simile and had fallen back upon a straight forward description of mountains. The glass of water appeared by my side. I drank it eagerly and, not unnaturally, it quickly settled my throat and visibly cooled me.
‘Sheba’s breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy before our thirst - literally a burning question - reasserted itself,’ I continued. Yes - thank heaven for water, I thought. Then I dared to look at the class.
They were all reading again and were obviously perfectly normal and relaxed. There were no glances, no giggles, no embarrassment. Even a very green teacher such as I could spot any surreptitious ripples of feeling whenever they flowed through a group of children for whatever reason. These youngsters had been completely unmoved by anything except my stupid performance which had been entirely of my own making because I hadn’t done my homework. What price all my practice at St Andrew’s?
In those pre-television-advertising days eleven year olds were quite unprecocious and that day I learned the fact. A few years later I learned that things would have been quite different had they been thirteen year olds. That was when I was reading Elephant Bill to a mixed senior class. It contains a graphic account of the copulation of elephants....but I was older and wiser by then.
Chapter 26
‘Pad Monitor - go and put the pads out.’
Marjorie jumped up from her desk, went to a cupboard and took out seven shiny thick brown boards. Then she left the classroom to place them in strategic positions for morning assembly.
Having sent her upon her vital mission I continued with the early morning routine, marking the attendance and ‘dinner’ registers. The attendance was checked morning and afternoon in the time-honoured way. Each child’s name was written against a number in the register and the children called these out in rotation. All I had to do was to start them off.
‘Mary Adams...’
Mary dutifully called out one, the next ‘two’, and so on. Absentees were immediately obvious. It was regimented and impersonal, but no one seemed to mind. Although this was Miss Rees’s class I was enjoying being left to deal with it on my own. After the routine administration had been completed, I told the class to stand and watched the children file out into the hall.
The other classes did the same and soon they were standing very quietly in orderly rows in front of Mr Brand’s desk. This was set in a slight alcove formed where the middle classroom was offset from the other two which flanked the hall. It was a long low desk, raised on a dais, and dated from the opening of the. In those days the Headteacher was expected to spend most of his or her time at that desk, retiring only occasionally to the ‘Private Room’ upstairs. As soon as the classes were in position each teacher sat down. This was the moment when we appreciated the pad monitor’s vital duty.
Heating the hall was effected by two sets of massive pipes which were situated in front of the two classrooms on each side of the Head’s desk. There were two rows in each set. They emerged from the floor, curved into a horizontal stretch as long as the classroom wall, and then returned to the building’s nether regions. The boiler was in the cellar beneath the hall. The horizontal section was at a convenient height for sitting, and because the only ordinary chairs were upstairs these pipes were used for staff seating. It was either that, or we stood.
Not that we wanted to sit and relax whilst the children stood throughout the assembly. We stood with them during the singing of the hymn, the saying of prayers and the Reading, but whenever Mr Brand wanted to talk to them at some length they were allowed to sit cross-legged on the floor. That would hardly have suited the female members of staff, who opted for the pipes instead.
In summer the pipes were cold, of course, so the thick pads provided welcome insulation when thin dresses and trousers were worn. But in winter they were vital, because those pipes were sizzling. In fact I learnt to sit remarkably still. The pads were not very large because their normal use was as firm backing for small sheets of paper on the old classroom desks. If you moved into direct contact with the pipes it took a superhuman effort not to wreck the assembly with a sharp yell. This would have amused the children but certainly not Mr Brand. Wrigglers suffered one or two third degree burns in tender places, then learnt to keep still.
Mr Brand dominated assemblies, although he was not especially forceful in manner at other times. His voice had a rich quality with a hint of the West Country in it. His erect stance, his imposing features surmounted by iron grey hair gave the impression of Moses exhorting the tribes of Israel clad for some strange reason in a lounge suit. When he spoke to the children they listened intently.
Once or twice whilst I was at Dayton Road a child was foolish enough to whisper whilst Mr Brand was speaking. Without warning he charged into the midst of the assembled company, scattering bodies to either side. He administered a sharp slap on the culprit’s face, turned and walked back to his desk. Then he continued where he had left off. No mention was made of the offender or the offence. It was as unexpected as the way he dealt with stairs. It was also highly successful in gaining one hundred per cent attention.
But his persona became magnetic when he was reading from the Bible. His mellifluous voice revelled in the language of the Authorised Version, especially the Old Testament. Each day his performance was good, but occasionally he rose to special heights. Undoubtedly his peak was the third chapter of the Book of Daniel. He read it about once a year, apparently not as part of any particular sequence. It came, therefore, quite unexpectedly both to pupils and staff. But whenever he read it he had us hanging on every word just as much as the children.
‘Nebuchadnezzar the King made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits; he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.’
His voice echoed through the lofty hall like a herald. Then, suddenly, in a matter-of-fact voice,
‘Who can tell me how long was a cubit?’
A few hands rose slowly as the children tried to remember. ‘Yes, Eric,’ said Mr Brand.
‘About eighteen inches, Sir.’
‘Good boy - yes, that’s correct. It was the distance from a man’s elbow to the tip of his middle finger. Now, how many things are there in a score? Yes, Monica?’
‘Twenty, Mr Brand,’
‘Right, well done. So how
many are there in threescore?’ ‘Sixty’, she continued.
‘Well done, Now, sixty times one and a half feet. Who can tell me the total?’
Some of the top class had their hands up very quickly. Mr Brand pointed to one, and agreed the result.
‘Just imagine, a huge figure ninety feet high, standing on the plain. However, I don’t suppose the measurement is accurate, because it was only six cubits broad, and that would make it nine feet. It would be very tall and thin, wouldn’t it? But never mind, the image was obviously very big and coloured gold to make it seem very important-to the people. Now listen to what happend.’ The herald resumed his function.
‘Then Nebuchadnezzar the King sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the province to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the King had set up.’
I think it was the repetition which fascinated the children, as well as words which were only half understood. Sheriffs, for instance, how on earth did such gun-toting Westerners fit into the scene on Babylon’s plain? But Mr Brand did not elucidate further.
‘Then an herald cried aloud....’ and Mr Brand flicked into overdrive....’To you it is commanded, 0 people, nations, and languages. That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the King hath set up. And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.’
Heads turned slightly and some children looked at each other with a hint of horror. Sackbuts, psalteries and dulcimers might have been beyond their ken, but a burning fiery furnace certainly was not.
‘Therefore at what time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music...’ intoned Mr Brand, ‘the people, the nations, and the languages fell down...’
Greetings Noble Sir Page 30