Trouble at the Little Village School (5 page)

‘My dear Mrs Pocock!’ exclaimed the major, ‘I did not sit on the fence, as you term it! As Chairman of Governors I took a neutral position, and having assessed the situation and seen how successful the village school had become and how well-regarded its head teacher was, I campaigned vigorously in favour of keeping the school open.’ He breathed through his nose like a horse.

‘Well, you were last in the village to do so,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite, resting her substantial bosom back on the counter.

The major tugged angrily at his moustache and an unfortunate twitch appeared in his right eye. ‘I shall collect my provisions later on, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ he said, the jovial smile gone from his face, ‘since I am in rather a hurry. But before I go, I should just like to say that I resent such slurs circulating about me around the village. They are quite unfounded and not a little hurtful, and I should like to add that Mrs Devine was very insistent that I remain as chairman of the governing body. With that, I shall depart.’

The major strode for the door, leaving his purchases on the counter.

‘He’s a dark horse, is that one,’ observed Mrs Pocock.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the father of Bianca’s baby,’ remarked Mrs Sloughthwaite, chuckling. ‘Wandering hands he has, and I’ve seen him ogling anything in a skirt.’

‘You must be joking,’ Mrs Pocock told her. ‘Him, the baby’s father? He’s old enough be the girl’s grandfather.’

‘Well, as my owld grandmother was wont to say,’ observed Mrs O’Connor, ‘“there’s a dreadful sting in a dying bee”.’

Her two companions stared at her blankly but didn’t say a word.

As the three women in the village store considered other possibilities with regard to Bianca’s unexpected Christmas present, Mrs Devine, head teacher of Barton-in-the-Dale village school, surveyed the bright-faced pupils who sat before her in the classroom that morning. She recalled when she had first met these children on the day of the interviews for the headship, and how she had thought to herself what a motley group it was: large gangly boys, lean bespectacled boys, dark-skinned boys, pale-faced boys, boys with freckles and spiky hair, girls with long plaits, girls with frizzy bunches of ginger hair, girls thin and tall, dumpy and small, and all forty plus of them sitting uncomfortably at old-fashioned hard, wooden desks. The class had filled the hot stuffy room on that summer day, serious and silent and regarding her with not a little suspicion. Now the children looked very different: bright-eyed and happy and chattering away excitedly.

Elisabeth felt a great sense of satisfaction at what she and the teachers had achieved in the short time since she had taken over as head teacher. The appearance of the building, the morale of the staff and the behaviour of the children had improved beyond measure. She had invited visitors into the school and organised sports teams, after-school clubs, lunchtime activities and trips out of school. She had stemmed the declining numbers and had fought a vigorous and ultimately successful campaign to keep the school from closing.

Miss Brakespeare accounted the success to the fact that the new head teacher, when she was not teaching, spent most of her time around the school, unlike her predecessor, who had kept herself closeted in her room all day. Morning and afternoon breaks saw Elisabeth walking through the building, strolling around the playground or sitting in the hall at lunchtime getting to know the children. Her commitment and enthusiasm began rubbing off on the teachers, who, like her, started arriving at school early, leaving later and spending little time in the staffroom. Yes, Elisabeth thought to herself as she looked at the smiling faces before her now, she had achieved a great deal.

The class was full of characters. There was Chardonnay, a large cheerful girl with bright ginger hair and a round saucer face, and her friend Chantelle, who sported huge bunches of mousy brown hair which stuck out like giant earmuffs. On the front table, where she could keep her eye on him, was Malcolm Stubbins, potential troublemaker, a large-boned individual with an olive brown face, tightly curled hair and very prominent front teeth. Also on a front table sat Ernest Pocock, another pupil who could be troublesome. Behind him were Darren Holgate, a moon-faced child with a shock of curly black hair and a face as freckled as a hen’s egg, and little Eddie Lake, who seemed to have a permanent smile etched on his face. On the back table were Danny Stainthorpe and his best friend James Stirling. Elisabeth had got to know these two boys better than any other of her pupils.

She had met Danny prior to taking up the position of head teacher. With a view to moving into the village, Elisabeth had been looking at a potential property and had come upon a rather dilapidated pale stone cottage which stood alone at the end of a track of beaten mud overgrown with nettles. The building looked neglected and sad, with its sagging roof, broken guttering and peeling paint. A small boy with large low-set ears, a mop of dusty blond hair and the bright brown eyes of a fox had climbed over the gate in the paddock to speak to her. This was Danny. He was a lively and confident boy of ten or eleven, and Elisabeth had immediately taken a liking to him. She discovered that he lived with his grandfather in a caravan parked in the neighbouring field.
Soon after she had started at the school the boy’s grandfather had become ill and died, leaving Danny alone and inconsolable. However, things had improved when Danny had been fostered by Dr Stirling, who was now in the process of adopting the boy and rearing him along with his own son. So things had worked out very well.

James Stirling had had a difficult time too. Following his mother’s death as a result of a riding accident some two years before, this small, pale-faced child with curly blond hair had withdrawn into himself, speaking only to his father and his friend. After an altercation between Elisabeth and James’s father, Dr Stirling had decided to take his son away from Barton-in-the-Dale school and send him to the preparatory school at Ruston. The boy, distressed and frightened at the thought of leaving his only friend and starting a new school, had run away, to be discovered by Elisabeth late at night curled up in her garden. Since then, with sensitive handling and encouragement and specialist help from the educational psychologist, the boy was gaining in confidence and had begun to speak more. Here was another success story.

Elisabeth looked at the two boys now and smiled. Happy and chatty and full of life, they looked as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

She clapped her hands to gain the children’s attention and the chatter ceased immediately. ‘I hope you all had a really lovely Christmas,’ she said.

‘Yes, miss,’ they chorused.

‘And that you are all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for a lot of hard work this term.’

There were good-humoured groans.

‘And what sort of Christmas did you have, Eddie?’ she asked.

‘Great. We went to Center Parcs, miss. It’s a holiday village in the middle of a forest and we had a really good time. This fat woman in a gold bathing suit got stuck in the water chute.’

The children laughed. ‘Oh dear,’ chuckled Elisabeth.

‘She climbed up the ladder and clung on to this silver bar at the top. Then she let go and shot down the chute like a big bullet, then she slowed down and stopped in one of the bends. She got stuck. The man that was behind her didn’t see her, so he set off and bashed into her and they came out together at the bottom all knotted and tangled up and spluttering and gasping and spitting water. It was really funny. The attendant shouted at them and told them to stop messing about.’

‘This has the makings of a really good story, Eddie,’ said Elisabeth. ‘And what about you, Malcolm?’

‘What about me?’ Then as an afterthought he added, ‘Miss.’

‘Did you have a pleasant Christmas?’

He shrugged and sighed. ‘It was all right,’ he said glumly. ‘We had all these relations round and they did my head in. All these aunties giving me slobbering kisses. Then my mum had an argument with my Auntie Doreen and Uncle Phil and they went home.’ He brightened a little. ‘Anyway, I got a new pair of football boots.’

‘So we can expect some winning goals from you this term,’ said Elisabeth.

‘Hope so, miss.’

When Elisabeth had started at the school she had found the boy to be truculent and disobedient, but she had dealt with pupils like this before and with firm and determined handling his behaviour had improved greatly. She accounted football to have been partly responsible for the change. When a football team had been established, Malcolm had become the star player. He knew now that should he step out of line he would not be allowed to play.

‘Ernest,’ said Elisabeth now.

‘Yes, miss?’

‘Would you like to tell us what you did over Christmas?’

‘Not much, miss. My mum dropped the turkey, the dog was sick and my dad got drunk.’

‘Quite eventful then?’

‘Yes, miss.’

Elisabeth smiled. ‘Did you get the presents you hoped for?’

‘I got an easel and some paints,’ he replied.

Ernest Pocock seemed a very different boy from the uninterested pupil she had first met. Mrs Atticus, who had been invited into the school to run an art class at lunchtime, had discovered that this boy had a real gift for painting.

‘Well, I look forward to more of your successes this term in the County Art Competition, Ernest,’ said Elisabeth. ‘You did really well last year, didn’t you?’

The boy nodded and gave a small smile. ‘Yes, miss.’

‘Miss, miss!’ Chardonnay shouted out, waving her hand in the air like a daffodil in a strong wind, impatient to relate what had happened in her house over the holiday. ‘We had a right time at Christmas.’

‘Really?’ said Elisabeth.

‘Our Bianca had a baby on Christmas Day.’

‘Your sister had a baby?’ said Elisabeth, startled.

‘Yes, miss. It were a little boy,’ the girl told her, jumping to her feet.

‘Well, how old is your sister?’

‘Seventeen, miss,’ said Chardonnay. ‘She didn’t know she was having it and nobody else did either. Mam and Dad had gone to the pub in the afternoon and I had to stay in with Bianca because she wasn’t feeling too well. Anyway, when my mam and dad had gone out our Bianca said she felt funny and the next thing what happened was she flopped on the settee and all this water come out over the floor and she started moaning and groaning.’

The rest of the class sat in stunned silence during what could only be described as a performance, as the girl related the facts in graphic detail and at great speed, illustrating her account with facial expressions and actions. There wasn’t a sound. Some children shuffled in embarrassment, others stared at her uncomprehendingly, some pulled faces and others sat open-mouthed. Chardonnay rattled on regardless, with ruthless directness and in a voice strong and determined.

‘Anyway, I thought she was really ill,’ the girl told her audience. ‘She kept holding her stomach like this. “Oh!” she went. “I feel awful.” Then she told me to go and fetch Dr Stirling but he wasn’t in so I went to get Nurse Lloyd who lives on Common Lane. She was a middlewife and used to deliver babies. Anyway, she weren’t happy having to leave her Christmas tea and told me to go for the doctor and I told her I had done but he was out. Then she phoned for an ambulance but they said it would be ages coming because of the snow and the roads being icy and all, and it being Christmas Day as well, so she said she’d come with me. When we got home Bianca was stretched out on the living-room floor moaning and groaning and saying she was going to die. Nurse Lloyd looked at her and told me to get some towels and boil some hot water, and then she told me to hold Bianca’s hand to calm her down because she was moaning and groaning something rotten. Then the baby just popped out. There was lots of blood.’ Chantelle gave an involuntary shudder and there were several sharp intakes of breath. ‘I think Mrs Lloyd was mad with the baby because she slapped it on its bum and it started roaring its eyes out. Then this play centre come out.’

‘Play centre?’ repeated Elisabeth.

‘It’s all this gooey stuff what comes out after the baby.’

‘Ah, the placenta,’ whispered Elisabeth.

‘And it was fastened to a long sort of cord.’

‘What, the play centre?’ asked Chantelle, saucer-eyed.

‘No, it was fastened to the baby. It’s called the umbrella cord and Mrs Lloyd had to cut it. She knew what she was doing because she was a middlewife. Mrs Lloyd wrapped the baby in a towel and gave it to our Bianca. Then the ambulance come and I went to fetch my mam and dad from the pub and we all went to the hospital to see the baby. It was put in an incinerator.’ Chardonnay turned to the class. ‘If anyone has any questions, I’ll answer them.’ There was a bewildered silence in the classroom.

‘I don’t think we’ll have questions, thank you, Chardonnay,’ said Elisabeth, quite at a loss for what else to say.

‘Miss,’ said Eddie Lake, ‘I got a play centre for Christmas.’

Chapter 3

Mrs Holgate twisted the ring on her finger nervously. ‘So you think my Darren does have a problem then, Mrs Devine?’ she asked.

‘I do,’ replied Elisabeth, ‘but first of all, may I say what a pleasure it is to teach him.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. He’s a well-behaved, good-natured and hard-working young man, but he does have a problem.’