Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (7 page)

Two great fireplaces stood at each end of the long wall facing the children. One stood conveniently near Mr Bond's desk, the other by Miss Turner's. Miss Broomhead, unluckily placed in the middle, had to be content with any ambience cast by a large photograph of Queen Victoria which held pride of place in the exact centre of the wall behind her. The Queen was in her widow's weeds, a small crown upon her head, and a veil flowing from it to her shoulders. One plump hand rested on an occasional table, and her gaze was fixed upon some unseen object which appeared to provide her with no satisfaction. Above the heavy frame were lodged two small Union Jacks thick with chalk dust from the blackboards and soot from the fires.

Directly beneath the Queen stood a glass case containing a stuffed fox against a background of papery ferns and tufts of wiry heather. His white teeth looked very sharp and his glass eyes very bright. Dolly wondered, in her innocence, if she would ever be allowed to play with him. At the infants' end, a smaller glass case held a stuffed red squirrel holding a hazel nut in its tiny claws; and at Mr Bond's end a sinister collection of common amphibians, including frogs and newts, at all stages of development, disported themselves among dead reeds and moulting bulrushes arranged around an improbable-looking painted pond.

Six brass oil lamps, with white shades which reminded Dolly of her father's summer thatching hat, hung from the lofty roof and swung very slowly when the door slammed. Three tall narrow windows, set very high in the wall at each end of the room, provided most of the daylight, but two smaller ones, behind the children, added their share, and a constant villainous draught for good measure. Children in the back desks, just below these windows, philosophically endured stiff necks and ear-ache, or used their wits to gain a move to a desk nearer the front.

Almost a hundred children were taught in this one room, and, as Dolly soon discovered, it was amazing how quietly the work was done. Heavy boots on bare boards made far more noise than the voices of teachers and pupils, and when, in the long sleepy afternoons, the bigger children were writing or reading silently to themselves, the atmosphere grew so soporific that many an infant, essaying a wobbly pot hook, let fall both slate pencil and slate, and fell asleep with its head pillowed on the carved square of the desk lid. When this happened, wise Miss Turner let sleeping babes he, rousing them only when the clock said a quarter to four. Then, with bewildered eyes and one flushed cheek grotesquely marked with inch squares, they would return reluctantly to this world, submit dazedly to buttoning and tying, and so stumble away with big sisters to the haven of home.

School proved much more complex for Dolly than Ada had led her to believe. The parting from her mother affected the younger child severely, although she showed little, and departed docilely each morning holding Esther's hand. She had always been much more dependent on her mother than Ada, and once the older child had gone to school the bond between Mary and Dolly had been stronger than ever.

One incident about this time the child remembered all her life. She came upon her mother sitting by the window one day, holding a needle to the light. She frowned with intense concentration, trying to jab the cotton through the eye. Dolly spoke to her, but so intent was she upon the task in hand, that her mother made no sign, but simply bent closer to the window, her eyes glittering and fixed in awful absorption.

To Dolly the remembrance of her mother's complete mental withdrawal on that occasion was terrifying. Far easier to bear were her brief physical absences to the garden or to the rooms upstairs. But to be so close to one's mother, to put one's hand on her skirt, to speak to her and then to find she was not there, and that one was of no more significance than the wallpaper beside her, was an experience fraught with terror. It was also indicative, she realised later, of the deep need she had of her mother's affection.

But once she had made the daily parting and was on her way to school, Dolly, facing the inevitable, put her mother from her thoughts. Her new companions were overwhelming. Everything about them intrigued the little girl who had known only a few people until now.

In the first place there were so many of them, and they were so diverse. Her path did not cross those of the bigger children very often, but there was surprise and variety enough in the thirty or so boys and girls whose class she shared.

Much to her relief she was allowed to sit by Ada, but she had been moved to an inside position on the bench, and on her right hand side sat Maud and Edith. Edith at the end of the bench was a nondescript five-year-old, the child of a shopkeeper in the High Street. She was the sort of child who fades into the background of a class, having nothing outstanding to make her memorable. Her hair was mousy, her eyes hazel, her dress was drab but tidy. Quiet to the point of apathy, producing neat undistinguished work, dully obedient, Edith existed at the end of the bench.

But Maud was quite a different matter. To little Dolly, pressed so closely to her, Maud was as strange and foreign as a Chinaman. The first thing one noticed about her was her aroma. A sourish, slightly cheesy smell emanated from her, and this became overpowering when the four jumped to their feet, tipping up the long bench behind them, before marching out to play. This movement seemed to release a bouquet of scents from Maud's disturbed clothing, and added to the basic sourness there would be whiffs of stale frying, paraffin and vinegar. Later in life Dolly Clare recognised these mingled smells as the poignant scent of poverty.

Maud was very thin. She wore a tartan frock meant for someone much bigger and stouter. Her long pale neck, shadowy with grime, protruded like a stem from a flower pot, and the shock of red hair atop might have been mistaken for a shaggy bronze chrysanthemum. Her eyes were pale blue and protuberant, her wide mouth perpetually open, and she fidgeted and wriggled without ceasing, thus drawing upon herself a rattle of fire from Miss Turner's tongue.

'Sit still over there!' she would command, turning the frosty glare of her glasses upon Dolly's desk. Poor Dolly would flush pink with shame, but the guilty Maud would be unabashed, and giggle behind a dirty hand.

Maud's mottled mauve legs were bare, which slightly shocked Dolly in those days of muffled limbs. Her bony feet were thrust into a pair of broken boys' shoes, so ill-fitting that they frequently fell off, exposing Maud's claw-like toes. She was constantly hungry, and never owned a handkerchief. Light-witted (and light-fingered, too, it proved later), Maud was the pathetic product of one aspect of England's industrial prosperity. Her home was in the marsh.

Dolly grew very fond of her. Maud was loud in her praise of Dolly's clothes and her soft curls which she delighted in stroking. Her own rough thatch grew more tangled daily as she scratched her head remorselessly. Dolly accepted the scratching, the smell and the giggling of her neighbour without rancour, but wished she would not fidget so much and draw attention to the bench as a whole. Years later, when Dolly herself was a teacher, she wondered that Maud, and many others like her, had not fidgeted more, plagued as they were with the torments of the poor. Unwashed and tangled hair harboured head-lice, bodies packed four to a bed bred fleas, inadequate diet nourished thread-worms—but not their hosts. One stand-pipe of cold water, in a yard, to serve twelve houses, did not encourage cleanliness. Large families meant exhausted mothers, leading to neglect or despair. When you came to think of it, the grown-up Miss Clare mused, it was a tribute to Maud's resilience that she lived at all.

There was a number of children from the marsh in Dolly's class, and young as she was, she soon noticed that they incurred Miss Turner's wrath more frequently than the rest of the class. To Dolly's tender heart this seemed monstrously unfair, but in the nature of things this was understandable. Their work was as dirty and careless as their dress. They lacked concentration and energy. It is difficult to attend to abstract things when one is pinched with hunger in the middle and aflame with head-lice at one end and chilblains at the other. Miss Turner was not unsympathetic, but she had a job to do, and had to do it, moreover, under the eye of a vigilant headmaster.

Consequently, she berated the slow, whipped on the lazy with the lash of her tongue, and encouraged the zealous with hearty praise. She was a good teacher, brisk and cheerful, with a rough and ready way of dealing with the offenders, who seemed, to Dolly, almost always from 'the marsh lot'.

One incident, and its sequel, brought home to the little girl the shattering unpredictability of this new world of school. A squeal of pain from the boys' side of the class made them all look up from the pot hooks and hangers they were writing with their squeaky slate pencils. Miss Turner hurried forward to investigate.

'Miss,' whimpered one five-year-old, holding up a quivering forefinger, 'Fred Borden's been and bit me.'

Sure enough, the tell-tale teeth marks were still red upon the shaking finger, and Fred Borden was pink and sullen.

'Couldn't help it,' said the culprit unconvincingly. Miss Turner swept into action.

'By my desk,' she ordered, following the child to the front of the class.

'Put your slates down,' said Miss Turner, obviously enjoying the chance of a practical lesson in behaviour. 'Here's a little boy who likes to bite other people. Should boys bite?'

'No, miss,' came the self-righteous sing-song.

'Only dogs bite,' affirmed Miss Turner severely, turning to the shrinking malefactor. 'And as you seem to have turned into a dog this morning, I shall have to treat you like one.'

Dolly was appalled. Poor Fred! Did this mean he would be beaten? Dolly shook at the mere idea. He looked so sad, and no bigger than herself, that her gentle heart throbbed with pain for him.

Miss Turner bustled to a cupboard and returned with a length of tape. She tied one end loosely round the child's neck, and there was a titter of laughter which grew to a great shout as she motioned to the child to crouch on all fours as she tied the other end to the leg of the desk.

'There, now,' said Miss Turner, red with bending and the success of her lesson. 'You must stay tied up until dinner time. We can't have dangerous animals that bite running loose in the classroom, can we, children?'

'No, miss,' chanted the class smugly.

'Back to work, then,' commanded Miss Turner, resuming her patrolling up and down the aisles. Dolly took up her slate pencil with a shaking hand.

That anyone—especially someone grown-up—could tie up another person like an animal horrified the child. To be sure, Fred Borden, who had feared a trip to the other end of the room where the cane lay on Mr Bond's desk, seemed quite cheerful as he sat on the floor by the desk. But Dolly, putting herself in his place, would have been prostrate with shame. To have sat there, publicly humiliated, enduring the gaze of thirty heartless school-fellows, would have broken Dolly. In fact, Fred Borden was enjoying the limelight, felt no hardship in missing a writing lesson, and considerable relief at getting off so lightly.

At twelve o'clock he was released, and the children trooped home to dinner. It so happened that Fred Borden and another boy were dawdling along the road as Esther, Ada and Dolly came up to them. The boys turned and spread their arms out to bar the way. They both grinned cheerfully. They felt no malice—this was just a reflex action when they saw three little girls trying to get by.

Esther stopped nervously, too frightened to protest, and near to tears. She lived considerably further than her charges, and time was short. She dreaded being late back to school.

Dolly, still shocked by the morning's experience, felt that she must tell poor Fred of her sympathy, but could not think how to begin.

At that moment, Ada went into action.

'Bow-wow! Who's a dog? Who bites? Who's a dog?' chanted Ada mockingly.

Fury at her sister's cruelty shook the words from Dolly's tongue. She stepped forward and put one small hand on Fred's filthy jersey. Her earnest face was very close to his.

'I was
sorry,
' she babbled incoherently. 'I was
sorry
she tied you up. She shouldn't have done that. I was
sorry!
'

To her amazement, Fred's grin vanished, and a menacing scowl took its place.

'Shut up, soppy!' he growled fiercely, and with venom he thrust the little girl away so forcefully that she fell backwards into Esther. Fist still raised, Fred followed her.

'What d'you want to hurt her for?' shrilled Esther, finding her voice.

'Because I 'ates 'er!' shouted Fred passionately. 'Because I 'ates all of you! You stuck-up lot!'

And with the hot tears springing to his eyes, he turned and fled down the narrow alley that led to the marsh.

O
NE
windy March day in 1894 Francis Clare came home from work in a state of high excitement. He blew into the little living-room on a gust of wind that lifted the curtains and caused the fire to belch smoke.

'Well, Mary,' he cried, dropping his dinner satchel triumphantly on the table, 'I've got a house.'

'Francis! No! You mean it?'

'Sure as I'm here.'

'Where?'

'Beech Green.'

'But you've never been to Beech Green today?' queried Mary, still bewildered. The two little girls, playing with Emily on the rag hearthrug, gazed up at him as open-mouthed as their mother.

'No, no. I've been at Springbourne all day, like I said, thatching Jesse Miller's cow shed. He come up while I was working and says: "You the young fellow as near killed 'isself a year or two back and had a ride home in my cart?"

'I told him I was. He's getting forgetful-like now he's old—kept calling me by my father's name, but it appears one of his chaps told him we was looking for a cottage, and he's got an empty one we can have.

'"'Tisn't a palace," he said, "two up and two down, but a pump inside and good cupboards. Take a look at it, and tell me what you think. Two shillings a week rent old Bob used to pay me before he left me to go to work in Caxley. That suits me if it suits you." And he threw the key up to me, and off he goes.'