The Rye Man (2 page)

He spoke for a few more minutes. They were still listening; he wouldn't risk losing them.

‘The final thing that I'd like to say this morning is to tell you about the type of school which I'd like to be headmaster of. It's a school where people show care and consideration for each other, where people work hard and make the most of all the talents they have been given, and above all, a school where people are happy. Now, without too much noise, I'd like you all to stand up and we'll sing our hymn, “Morning Has Broken”. I'm told you know the words but just in case anyone has forgotten, the overhead projector will put them up on the screen.'

He
took a step back and nodded to Mrs Haslett at the piano, who immediately dropped her raised hands like the talons of some bird of prey swooping on its victim, and set up a loud introductory jangle of sound. He tried not to smile as the elaborate peck of her head signalled the moment for the children to join in. Their voices rang out clear and high as they sang with childish sincerity. Early morning sunlight slipped between the lattices created by the wall bars and washed over the raised faces. It felt good. He had made the right decision. He wished Emma were there to see it, to listen to the singing voices, and then surely any of her lingering doubts would vanish. Headmaster of his old primary school, for some perhaps not the pinnacle of an educational career, but not something to be sneered at. It had a warm feeling of neatness about it, like a compass completing a circle.

He had inherited a school of just over two hundred pupils, seven teaching staff, a secretary and Eric the caretaker. Unlike some rural schools where falling rolls threatened, their future numbers were healthy. The traditional bedrock of farming stock continued to be prolific in their procreation, often siring into mature years, producing what was described as ‘a wee late one', and the past decade had seen the growth of numerous housing developments often with words like Grange or Dale in their titles, and where all the streets were named after trees, the developers eschewing traditional townland names in favour of nomenclature designed to appeal to the young middle class. There was also an influx of Belfast commuters who bought up sites for ever-growing sums of money and built bungalows on them. Some of the roads he had known as a child had been developed out of recognition in this piecemeal way to the very limits of their capacity. It had prompted a cynical new definition of rotation – barley, maize, bungalow. A few took their children to Belfast prep schools, but most
made
the decision to send them to their local schools, some perhaps seeing it as a means of assimilation, others as a guarantee of a solidly traditional education where children learned tables and spellings and didn't grow up looking down their noses at people who didn't go touring France for their holidays. It was this group of newcomers who ensured the growth of the school.

Now, as he sat in his office, he felt first a crazed recklessness – they had actually entrusted the keys of the kingdom to him – and he stared at the closed door. Outside he could hear footsteps scampering to classrooms like mice in a roofspace. Occasionally, laughter, a name called, the slower, heavier tread of an adult. In a few minutes an almost silence settled, broken only by the sound of a closing door or the high-pitched bleep of the office word processor. A sudden pang of loneliness stung him as if he had been peremptorily and irredeemably cut off from the life all around him. There was, too, a feeling of redundancy, an uncertainty as to his function or purpose. What did a headmaster actually do all day? Those headmasters he knew guarded the secret as if it were the most sacred of Masonic mysteries.

He made a start by opening the mail. There was already a stacked pile which had accumulated over the summer months. Three circulars from the Area Education Board about the purchase of heating oil, new regulations relating to the employment of cleaning staff and changes in superannuation payment, a letter from the local Girl Guides requesting the use of the school hall for their winter display evening. A letter from a Mrs Roulston saying that owing to her husband's employment circumstances she would be taking her son on holiday during term-time and apologising for any inconvenience caused. Another letter from the Board about purchasing procedure, a road safety competition and assorted catalogues from publish
ing
companies. Not the most exciting start to his first day, but he drafted replies to the two letters which required them, and when he had finished, started to think about making the office look the way he wanted, personalising it, removing what remained of his predecessor.

Edwin Reynolds had taken early retirement and had known he was leaving for some time, but the small room looked as if he had simply dropped his burden and decamped. The calendar still displayed the thirtieth of June as if a date too sweet to give up to transience, and his desk contained a miscellany of small personal items. As well as the usual and expected things like pens and paper clips there was an Acme Thunderer whistle, a Swiss penknife, a box of teabags and a confiscated criminalia of catapults, dried-up conkers and stink bombs. He turned the drawers upside down over the bin the caretaker had supplied. It felt like he was clearing out the temple, making a clean start. Reynolds would not be back, happy to have made his home run and at that very moment was probably lifting his golf clubs into the boot of his car or dead-heading the roses. He had been Principal for over twenty years and was probably only too glad to find a bolthole as the waves of change began to break about his head. It was a common pattern, as a generation of men accustomed to being potentates, and in some cases despots, who had merely to ensure that the wheels turned smoothly, suddenly found themselves the supposed pivot of educational change with a shower of initiatives falling about their heads like confetti at a wedding. The installation of the computer terminal in his office had probably been the last straw.

The limitations of his educational perspectives and his personality were reflected in the office he had sat in for those twenty years without having felt the need to imbue it with the slightest manifestation of individuality. A sterile, functional
little
box, probably unchanged in all that time apart from the recent additions of carpet, a year planner, and overlaid pages of yellowing paper – phone numbers of substitute teachers, Health and Safety Regulations – looking like the peeling skins of some putrefying onion. In the two filing cabinets were only empty manilla folders and copies of school reports.

The telephone rang as he had just finished clearing away the final remnants from his predecessor's desk. It made him start a little, then smile. It was his secretary telling him his wife was on the line.

‘Well, how's it going? You haven't done anything stupid yet?'

‘No, just an Elvis Presley impersonation in assembly. It went down well. It's nice of you to ring. What're you doing now?'

‘I've just had a shower – it leaks – and after breakfast I'm going to get on with clearing those outhouses. What're you doing?'

‘Exorcising the ghost of Reynolds.' He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Listen to this Emma, when I opened the drawers of his desk they were full of girlie magazines!'

‘You're joking, John.'

He lingered over the shock in her voice for a few seconds, then couldn't hold it any longer, and as she realised she had been wound up her laughter joined with his.

‘I must be still asleep to have fallen for that one!'

They chatted for a few minutes about their respective plans for the day and then she wished him good luck and was gone. He wished there had been more time to talk.

As he put the phone down he tried to hold on to the sound of her laughter. He had not heard a lot of it recently. Maybe the move to the country and a new house would be good for her, help her to heal more quickly. She seemed to be gradually shedding some of her strongest doubts, and getting the house
into
some sort of shape required most of her energy and thought. Perhaps too, if she was able to turn one of the outhouses into a studio she would be able to take up her work again and ease herself out of the depression her loss had brought. It was strange the way he always thought of it as her loss when he shared it too. Maybe he coped with it better, maybe though he didn't always believe it, his loss hadn't been as great as hers. He didn't know.

He started to unpack the items he had brought in a cardboard box, and to find a place for each of them. On his desk he placed the framed photograph of his last P7 class – he was standing with them at the top of the dry ski slope and after the photograph had been taken they had pushed him off, cheering his shaky journey to the bottom. On top of the filing cabinet he displayed the farewell card the children had made in Art and signed by every child in the school, then lifted out an unframed black and white photograph. It was his own primary class, taken in the school playground against the wall of the building, back row sentry straight, front row knees locked, arms folded. He called a silent roll of the names, only a couple eluding him, and paused over his own image. A buoyant, optimistic face with restless inquisitive eyes, wearing a stippled mask of freckles. Eyes which always wanted to know the secret of everything. Tall, even then.

He held the photograph gently, carefully; the past was something that was important to him. He looked at his whitened plimsolls. After the heaviness of winter shoes it used to feel like his feet had grown wings, making him want to run for no purpose other than the pleasure of his own speed. He brought the picture closer. The soles looked wafer thin and he smiled at the thought of the cushioned, thick-soled trainers that children now wore to school, as much to ensure their street
cred
as to engage in any physical activity, tongues and latticed laces shooting halfway up their shins.

There were more objects to be unpacked. The spoof front-page story with the headline, ‘Cameron KO's Mike Tyson in First Round', a couple of Emma's small water-colours, one of his cricket trophies, and his ‘world's greatest teacher' mug. While he was in the process of arranging everything there was a knock on the door, but despite his invitation no one entered.

It was a child – a girl with brown eyes, a ponytail decorated with brightly coloured butterfly bobs, and a hand that plucked at the hem of her shirt as she let her rehearsed message fly free like a small bird out of a cage.

‘Miss McCreavey says P5 have no jotters.'

He cupped his head in his hands and opened his mouth and eyes wide in mock horror. ‘No jotters! My goodness, what are we going to do?'

He brought her in and sat her down like the first visitor to a new house. She sat on her hands nervously, her eyes taking in as much of the room as she could do discreetly.

‘What's your name?'

‘Kerry Clark.'

‘Kerry. And would you be related to the Bob Clark who has the shoe shop in Market Street?'

She nodded her head.

‘I used to play cricket with your father. Do you think if I come down to his shop some Saturday he'd sell me a pair of those trainers you pump up like you do a bicycle tyre?'

She nodded again and smiled for the first time.

‘Now, Kerry, I think we'd better see what we can do about those jotters. Can't have P5 sitting with nothing to write on. Come down to the office and we'll see if we can't find some.' He led her the short distance to the secretary's office and held open the door for her to enter.

‘
Mrs Patterson, we have a terrible problem. Kerry has just come to tell me that P5 have no jotters.'

Mrs Patterson didn't return his smile but bristled as if some slight had been inherent in his words. ‘Mr Cameron, I've checked the requisitions and Miss McCreavey didn't order any jotters.' She held out a copy for his inspection but he looked past it into her face with confusion as she continued. ‘It's here in black and white. Exercise books, A4 paper, manilla paper, sugar paper, tracing paper, Pritt sticks. No jotters.' She stepped back behind her desk with the air of someone who had just presented her argument to the jury, appealed to their sense of justice and now awaited the verdict with a deep conviction of the righteousness of her case.

‘I'm sure you're right, Mrs Patterson, but can we not give P5 a set of jotters? Do we not have plenty in the stationery store?' He stared deliberately past her, almost in slow motion, into the narrow little store.

‘We do have jotters but they're ones the other class teachers have ordered and if I give them out some other class will end up going short.'

‘I'll tell you what we'll do then. You give Kerry a set of jotters and I'll order some more. Would that solve our problem?'

But she wasn't easily appeased. ‘Stationery requisitions take a long time to come through. What if someone runs out before they arrive? I'll end up getting the blame.'

He was a patient man. He could keep it up much longer than she could sustain her resistance and he made sure his voice contained no trace of irritation. ‘If that happens they can use exercise books or A4 paper.'

He stayed to watch her count out the jotters, her reluctance apparent in each movement, as if she was doling out her life savings. As he opened the door for the child to leave he called
after
her. ‘Tell P5 to make sure they use up every line. We don't want any waste. Paper doesn't grow on trees!'

When he turned back to the office Mrs Patterson was busying herself in paperwork, seemingly oblivious to his presence, but when she spoke the edge had gone out of her voice and she seemed intent on explaining. ‘Mr Reynolds always insisted that each teacher be responsible for their own stationery. He was very strict about it.'

He smiled and nodded as if to show he understood and that she was absolved from any personal blame. When she handed him a clutch of forms which needed his signature he signed them with only a perfunctory glance at their contents. He didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with her. He was well aware that an efficient secretary could run a school single-handed and deflect much of the brain-curdling paperwork which flooded in every day. She, too, was now conciliatory in tone.