The Little Village School

by Gervase Phinn

  Elisabeth took a deep breath. ‘So, Mr Nettles, let me get this clear. You are not going to provide me with the necessary resources, you are ignoring the inspectors’ recommendations and you do not intend to make the teachers’ contracts permanent. Is that what you are saying? Because if it is, I do need to know this so I can inform my governors, the parents and the school inspectorate.’

  ‘No, no,’ replied Mr Nettles, clearly rattled. ‘I am not saying that at all. I think this matter needs to be discussed at the next full governors’ meeting.’

  ‘Which will be when?’

  ‘Generally the school governors meet a few weeks into the new term,’ he told her. ‘I guess it will be some time in mid-October.’

  ‘Can’t we meet before then?’ asked Elisabeth. ‘It seems to me that things need to be sorted out as soon as possible. Perhaps I could call a meeting myself?’

  ‘No, no, Mrs Devine, please don’t do that,’ he said quickly. ‘Extraordinary meetings are only held in exceptional circumstances. I’m sure I do not need to remind you that governors are very busy people. I suggest you leave it to the Education Department to convene meetings. I am sure you can wait a few weeks.’

  ‘I see,’ said Elisabeth, getting the feeling that the man was being deliberately evasive.

  ‘And you will be attending the meeting this time, Mr Nettles?’ she enquired.

  ‘I shall endeavour to do so,’ he replied.

  ‘And in the interim you will seriously consider these requests?’

  ‘Indeed. Now, I do have a number of urgent matters to deal with.’

  ‘Until the next governors’ meeting, then,’ said Elisabeth, putting down the receiver.

  ‘I did say that you would get nowhere with that man,’ observed Mrs Scrimshaw. ‘He’s a waste of space. You know, Mrs Devine, I think there is more to this than meets the eye. A few tables wouldn’t cost anything, and I bet none of the teachers in the other schools are on temporary contracts.’

  ‘Yes, that had occurred to me,’ replied Elisabeth. ‘I have my suspicions that there is another agenda here.’

  She was soon to discover that her suspicions were warranted.

  ‘I will not tolerate fighting in this school!’ Elisabeth leaned over her desk, her nose a few inches from the boys’ faces. It was the following Monday morning and the two miscreants stood before her desk. ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said Danny.

  ‘Malcolm?’ the head teacher asked sharply, looking at the large, brown-faced boy with the tightly curled hair and the sour expression.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ he muttered. ‘It was him what started it. I didn’t do nothing.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Elisabeth. ‘Just keep your mouth closed. I will find out soon enough what the cause of this argument was. Not only could you have hurt yourselves, but Miss Brakespeare could have been seriously injured.’

  The deputy head teacher was at that moment in the staff-room, sipping a cup of sweet tea with a trembling hand. It had been a frightening ordeal for her, as she explained to Miss Wilson. The young teacher had found it difficult to keep a straight face, for Miss Brakespeare, hair stringy and wet, looked as if she had emerged from a pond and was making the little spat sound like a scene of carnage. On playground duty that morning break, the deputy head teacher had attempted to separate the two boys pushing and punching each other and could have very well ended up in the middle of the mêlée had not Mr Gribbon come to her assistance. However, his intervention with a bucket of soapy water, which he had been using to clean the toilets, had not been entirely successful. Not only had Miss Brakespeare suffered a blow to her arm from one of the boys, and the loss of her mother’s amber beads, which had been scattered far and wide in the playground, but she too, along with the combatants, had received a thorough soaking with dirty water reeking of disinfectant. In a fraught state, she had been taken to the staff-room on Miss Wilson’s arm to calm down.

  ‘The silly man made it worse,’ she was telling Miss Wilson, ‘throwing a bucket of dirty water all over me as well as the boys. I’m soaked to the skin and smelling like a lavatory.’

  Something of an exaggeration, thought Miss Wilson, observing the damp dress her colleague was wearing, but she nodded sympathetically and stifled a smile.

  Back in Elisabeth’s classroom the cross-examination continued.

  ‘We will start with you, Malcolm,’ said Elisabeth. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘It was him what started it,’ grumbled the boy. ‘I didn’t do nothing. He told me to put my hand in his bag and when I did, it bit me.’ He held up his index finger.

  ‘What bit you?’

  ‘His ferret.’

  ‘You brought your ferret to school, Danny?’ asked the head teacher.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Why did you bring your ferret to school?’

  ‘’E were a bit under t’weather, miss.’

  ‘And it bit my finger,’ huffed the other boy, ‘and hung on. It bloody hurt.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ exclaimed Elisabeth.

  ‘It were right painful,’ complained the boy, in a voice hardly audible.

  ‘’E had no need to hurt him, miss,’ said Danny. ‘’E was strangling ’im. If ’e ’ad kept still, Ferdie would ’ave let go.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Elisabeth. ‘You told Malcolm to put his hand in your bag, did you, Danny?’

  ‘No miss,’ replied the boy. ‘I didn’t. Malcolm thought there were some sweets in there and grabbed mi bag and run off wi’ it. Then when ’e put ’is ’and inside, ’e frightened Ferdie and ’e bit ’im. ’E were really rough trying to pull ’im off and that’s when I ’thumped ’im and ’e thumped mi back, so I thumped ’im again. Then Miss Brakespeare comes runnin’ up and tries to stop us and Mr Gribbon chucks a bucket o’ watter ovver us.’

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ mumbled the other boy, staring down mulishly at his feet.

  ‘It appears to me that you are both as bad as each other,’ said Elisabeth. ‘Firstly, Danny, you should not have brought your ferret to school. Secondly, you had no business hitting Malcolm and he had no business retaliating. Thirdly, you, Malcolm, should not have gone into somebody else’s bag, and fourthly, neither of you should have come to blows. I want you to listen to me carefully: there will be no more fighting. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said Danny.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ the other boy mumbled.

  ‘Now you will both go to Miss Brakespeare’s room and apologise to her. Go on, off you go and I will see you both again at the end of school.’

  It was later that day that Elisabeth learnt the truth. Chardonnay had seen the whole incident and collaborated Danny’s story.

  ‘It were Malcolm Stubbins what started it, miss,’ she told Elisabeth. ‘He’s always nicking people’s sweets. He grabbed Danny’s bag and ran off with it.’ She scratched her scalp and gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘I’m glad the ferret bit him. It’ll teach him not to nick other people’s sweets.’

  As the other children made their way home at the end of the day, Elisabeth saw the two boys again.

  ‘I do not like children who don’t tell the truth,’ she told a glowering Malcolm Stubbins. ‘Danny did not tell you to put your hand into his bag as you claimed, did he?’

  ‘Yeah, he did,’ replied the boy, stubbornly.

  ‘Please don’t make it worse by telling lies, Malcolm,’ said Elisabeth. ‘I have asked the other children who saw it happen and they all confirm what Danny has said. You ran off with his bag, and perhaps you have learnt a hard lesson not to go into other people’s things. I believe you like to take other children’s sweets, which will stop. Danny is not blameless in all this either, because he hit you, which he should not have done. Now I am telling you both that should anything like this happen again you will be in deep trouble, and I shall be having words with your mother, Malcolm, and your grandfather, Danny. As a punishment you will both
spend the breaks and lunchtimes next week picking up litter and doing various jobs around the school under the direction of Mr Gribbon. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ replied Danny.

  ‘Yes miss,’ muttered the other boy.

  It wasn’t long, of course, before news of the fight circulated in the village.

  ‘There were no fights in the school when I was head teacher,’ announced Miss Sowerbutts in the village store the following afternoon. She was sharing her observations with another customer. ‘I prided myself on keeping very good discipline in the school. Children did as they were told and I set clear parameters when I was in charge. Of course, all these modern methods, where children are given free rein and allowed to say and do what they want, undermine the teacher’s authority. It was a sad day when they got rid of the strap. Give some children an inch and they take a mile.’

  ‘Well, I suppose boys will be boys,’ observed Mrs Widowson, ‘although I have to say some of the carryings-on of young people these days leave a lot to be desired.’

  ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child – and there is a whole lot of truth in that,’ said Miss Sowerbutts. ‘I would certainly not have tolerated such behaviour.’ She was clearly revelling in the news that there were problems at the school.

  Mrs Sloughthwaite, listening to the diatribe from behind her counter, didn’t like Miss Sowerbutts with her preening self-satisfaction and she didn’t take to being lectured at either. What a narrow-minded, self-righteous woman she was. With her thin beaky face and protuberant eyes she reminded the shopkeeper of the stone faces projecting from the gutter of the church. The woman rarely called into the shop and when she did she complained about the produce and bought few items. She was one customer the shopkeeper would not miss if she took her custom elsewhere. Mrs Devine, on the other hand, was friendly and good-humoured and did all her shopping at the village store. She had made a real effort to be part of the community.

  ‘Oh, you know what they say, Miss Sowerbutts,’ she said, deliberately being provocative, ‘a bit of rough and tumble is to be expected in growing lads. My Nigel was always getting into scraps when he was a boy. It’s part of growing up, and you know yourself what Malcolm Stubbins is like. From what I’ve heard, when you were head teacher he was always outside your room for misbehaving, wasn’t he?’

  Miss Sowerbutts listened with cold mechanical interest and didn’t deign to answer. ‘And all these changes,’ she grumbled to no one in particular. ‘I’m told the school is not the same. Everything’s been changed. I feel sorry for poor Miss Brakespeare, having to endure it.’ She purred with satisfaction.

  ‘She seems very happy,’ remarked Mrs Sloughthwaite, smiling indulgently. ‘She called in the shop last week and she looks years younger. The changes the new head teacher is making seem to have gone down very well with her by all accounts.’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ scoffed Miss Sowerbutts. She wore the expression a stranger might mistake for a smile. ‘And I hear the doctor has taken his son away,’ she remarked, clearly rejoicing in the bad news. Mrs Sloughthwaite saw something like triumph flash across her customer’s face. It was strange, she often thought, how the misfortunes of others brought solace to sad and gloomy people like Miss Sowerbutts. ‘Well, of course, that doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ the former head teacher added.

  Mrs Sloughthwaite folded her dimpled arms under her substantial bosom and pictured the silent, pasty little boy who sometimes came into the shop with his father. ‘I suppose Dr Stirling reckons the lad needs more specialist help, what with his communication problem, which the school can’t – and didn’t – provide.’ There was a heavy emphasis on the word ‘didn’t’.

  ‘The boy was perfectly happy when I was head teacher,’ retorted Miss Sowerbutts, with casual disparagement.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose you knew, Miss Sowerbutts,’ said the shopkeeper, with the fixed smile she had perfected over the years, ‘him never speaking a word.’ She chuckled inwardly at the evident consternation that her words had caused.

  ‘I’ll just have the tea-bags,’ announced the former head teacher, looking sharply at the shopkeeper and placing the exact amount of money on the counter.

  ‘And are you sure I can’t interest you in a Venetian selection box?’ asked the shopkeeper, smiling and knowing full well, as she had been told, that the woman did not have a sweet tooth.

  Miss Sowerbutts decided to call in on Miss Brakespeare later that day. She was keen to learn first hand about all the changes that had taken place at the school. She found her former colleague in the small garden to the front of her cottage, sitting in the late afternoon sunshine marking exercise books. She was dressed in a bright summer frock and pink cardigan, in contrast to her visitor, who wore an outfit better suited to midwinter. Miss Sowerbutts noted grudgingly that her former deputy looked remarkably relaxed considering the ordeal she had been through. She rather imagined that the woman would be in a nervous state.

  ‘I just thought I’d call, Miriam,’ she said, ‘and see how you are.’

  ‘Oh hello,’ said Miss Brakespeare.

  Miss Sowerbutts dusted the garden chair with her hand and sat down. She noticed that there was something of a change in her former colleague. She seemed somehow brighter and more self-assured, and there was something different in her expression.

  Miss Brakespeare closed the exercise book she had been marking and looked at the former head teacher. Even on such a mild September evening, she thought, Miss Sowerbutts was still dressed in her usual drab pleated tweed skirt and that awful coat the colour of gravy and was wearing that silly knitted hat like a tea-cosy.

  ‘So how are you getting on?’ asked Miss Sowerbutts in an overly solicitous and kindly manner. She didn’t wait for an answer, but then, thought Miss Brakespeare, she rarely did. ‘I have heard some very distressing news. I believe you were attacked.’

  ‘Attacked!’ exclaimed Miss Brakespeare. ‘Stuff and nonsense. I tried to stop a fight, that was all, and got a bit wet in the process. It was the silly caretaker throwing water all over us that made it worse. I have to own I was a bit upset at the time, but when I look back it was rather amusing.’

  ‘Amusing!’ exclaimed Miss Sowerbutts. ‘Hardly amusing, to be assaulted and nearly drowned. What was this fight about?’

  ‘Young Danny Stainthorpe had brought his ferret to school and it bit Malcolm Stubbins. It couldn’t have chosen a better victim. He lies easier than he breathes, that boy, and was such a pain when he was in my class.’ She paused. ‘As you well know.’

  ‘What do you mean was in your class?’ asked Miss Sowerbutts, staring at her former colleague uncomprehendingly. ‘He still is, is he not?’

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Devine teaches the oldest children now and he’s in her form.’

  ‘She teaches?’ Miss Sowerbutts exclaimed, incomprehension creeping across her face.

  ‘It works very well,’ explained Miss Brakespeare, nonchalantly. ‘We’ve split up the older children. I have a smaller class and far less preparation and marking to do, and my classroom is much more spacious now. I also don’t have Malcolm Stubbins and Ernest Pocock to contend with. Yes, it’s worked out really well.’

  Miss Sowerbutts gave a sniff of disapproval. ‘It would not have happened in my day,’ she announced stiffly. There was more than a hint of irritation in her voice.

  ‘What wouldn’t?’ asked Miss Brakespeare. Her face was impassive.

  ‘A head teacher teaching.’ She sniffed again self-righteously.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it would,’ replied Miss Brakespeare. She gave a quiet little smile. ‘Of course, you never taught, did you?’ There was something rather pointed in that remark, thought Miss Sowerbutts, and completely out of character for this diffident little woman with whom she used to work. Miss Brakespeare would never have spoken to her in that tone of voice when she was her deputy head teacher. However, she let it pass.

  ‘In my opinion,’ stated Miss Sowerbutts, pompously, ‘a
head teacher’s role is not to teach, it is to lead and to manage and deal with problems which may arise.’

  Miss Brakespeare was about to reply but hesitated. It seemed to her to be the moment to speak and then she thought it was not. She decided it would be cruel to remind her former colleague of the inspectors’ report, in which the head teacher’s management and leadership skills had been judged to be poor. She wanted to tell this self-important and cynical woman, frosty and buttoned-up as she was on a warm afternoon, and whom she had put up with for more years than she cared to recall, that she found the changes in the school liberating and had never felt happier, but she refrained from doing so and merely remarked: ‘Mrs Devine manages to do that as well.’ The traces of the smile remained at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Teach and manage the school.’

  ‘I see,’ said Miss Sowerbutts, annoyed by the inference. She smiled grimly. ‘Well, I am pleased you find the new arrangements are to your liking, Miriam. Let us hope that you remain as content.’ She could not resist a final observation. ‘Of course, things might very well alter if many more children leave. Dr Stirling’s decision to move his son will, no doubt, have further repercussions. I imagine that, unlike you, he is far from happy with the new arrangements and, of course, I guess other parents will feel the same as he.’ A triumphant smile was insinuated on her face.

  ‘I think it’s time I was getting Mother’s tea,’ said Miss Brakespeare.

  Wednesday after school found Mrs Stubbins in Elisabeth’s classroom. Malcolm’s mother smoothed an eyebrow with a little finger and shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. She was sitting wedged sideways on in one of the small desks used by the children and looked a comical character, this round, shapeless woman with bright frizzy dyed ginger hair, an impressive set of double chins and immense hips. Her mouth was turned downwards as if in perpetual hostility.

  ‘Well, he says you’re picking on him,’ she told Elisabeth angrily.

  ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he, Mrs Stubbins?’ replied Elisabeth calmly.