There was a sharp report. The large person clapped her hands, not loudly, but firmly, and said: “Infants! Over here.”
They were the infants. Brigid had just time to take in this indignity before the large person began to move them, all the bewildered children, into a straggling line. Bigger girls, nearly women themselves, took them by the shoulders. Some were gentle, some pushed the children. Somehow, they were herded inside the dark building, instructed to hang up their coats on hooks, which a number could not reach, then taken into a square room with high windows and green walls. They were told to sit at wooden desks, set out in rows. The room smelled of pencils and paper, of dust that caught in the throat, and drains. It was at once too warm and too cold.
In the endless time that followed, Brigid learned that the large person was their teacher. She was “Miss”. Some girls cried, but no one came. Then they were given small glass bottles of milk and paper straws and told to drink. The milk was warm and unpleasant, and the straws felt like candle wax. There were more puddles on the floor. All the children were lined up and brought to the huts outside, but Brigid held back and managed not to go in. They were herded back, and instructed to put their heads on their desks and go to sleep. Brigid could not sleep. It was daytime.
When they were allowed to sit up, the door opened and there entered a lady, immensely tall, in a long, bunched skirt. Perhaps she was a queen. Wooden beads dangled from her broad belt, and a vast hat like a white butterfly shadowed her face. Perhaps she came from long ago. Perhaps Brigid had wandered into a story, or was dreaming: all this might end any second.
Then Miss said: “Children, stand up, in silence.”
The butterfly lady said she was the Principal. They were to call her “Sister”. Sister said they were welcome to the school, and that, above all else, they must work hard and learn to be good, honest and useful girls. She told them to sit down, and then she went away.
All that morning, Brigid believed she would never be allowed to escape. She had been left there forever. Her parents must have found out about Miss Chalk, who was not suitable: this, on top of cutting her hair, her unwillingness to read, and the many transgressions of her life so far had proved too much. She had been sent away. Ned Silver had been sent away to a school where he had to stay except for holidays. Perhaps this was one of those schools, and they had not told her. Perhaps her father’s illness meant children could be sent away. Perhaps Francis had been sent away too, and she would not see him in the evening, or ever again. This, more than anything else that was happening, brought Brigid close, but not quite, to the point of tears, but still she would not cry. It had not worked well for those already weeping in despair, and she had no wish for the kind of attention it appeared to bring. All she hoped was that her teacher was not like Miss Chalk. Maybe this was not the real teacher, but someone sent to prepare them, before Miss Chalk appeared.
Yet, the morning went on, and no Miss Chalk came. The large person stayed with them and, gradually the children learned to call her “Miss”. She was not unkind. She called their names and they learned to answer. She handed out books and told them they must back them at home. Brigid didn’t understand what that meant. Miss read a story. She led them out to the yard and told them to run about, and then she brought them back in again. Yet some still cried throughout the morning, even when Miss told them to put their heads down on their arms and close their eyes. The crying had still not stopped when a thin wailing began outside, growing terrible, like the sound of an animal in pain. Some girls started crying more loudly when they heard it, but Miss explained that that was the call to the mill workers to leave their machines and have their lunch, and that it meant the children could soon go home. Brigid was not sure she believed this, but a bell was rung through the school, and they were, at last, allowed to leave the airless room. As she reached up on her toes for her coat, Brigid saw that the corridor was policed by more of the people with butterfly hats. One had glasses that glinted sharply, another a soft face but a thin mouth, yet another had a face cut from stone. They were all extremely tall: on instinct Brigid resolved to stay away from all of them, especially the stone-faced one. That could be Sister Chalk. As soon as she was allowed to leave the line, she ran out of the building, determined to reach the gates and run away, with whoever came for her or, if there was no one, then by herself.
She did not reach the gates. Just outside the heavy door stood her mother. Brigid closed her eyes to make sure this was not a dream and, by a miracle, when she opened them, she was still there. She had come back for her. That was all that mattered. Relief made Brigid so weak that she did, finally, begin to cry, and she was not asked why, and she was grateful. Her mother’s hand had never felt so warm, or so safe.
On the bus, Brigid did not even look out of the window, did not talk, was glad not to be asked a single question, glad to have her mother’s hand pat hers now and again.
It was her father who opened the door to them. He reached down and ran his hand through her shorn hair. “Tommy-Go-My,” he said, as Uncle Conor had done in the barber’s shop. Now she knew it was meant to be funny, she also knew to laugh. “How was school, girlie?” he went on, adding, to Brigid’s puzzlement, “Any slaps?”
Above her, Brigid felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. “Maurice,” she said, and her voice held its low warning note. Her father seemed not to recognise it.
“Slaps,” said Brigid, her own voice sounding to her as if it came from far away. “What are slaps?”
Her mother said: “Maurice. Please. Leave well alone.”
But her father ran his hand again through her crop and said: “They slapped when I was at school. With a leather strap, too.” He laughed a short laugh. “It did me no harm.” Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away with his paper.
Brigid, watching his stooped back move slowly to the comfort of his chair, understood. Someone in that school might hit her.
All through the lunch she could hardly touch, all the time as the long strange day went on, she could not settle to the comfort of usual occupations. It was as if she had, indeed, left home, or home had left her, and she did not know how to find her way back. She longed to see Francis, yet it was late in the afternoon before he came in, and Brigid knew, by the heaviness of his tread in the hall, that his first day had been no better than hers.
When they sat down at five to their programmes, he said: “How was it? Are you all right?”
She said: “I’m afraid.”
“Of school? It isn’t as bad as it seems. It’ll get better,” and he laughed without smiling. “Or rather, you’ll get used to it.”
Brigid said: “It’s Miss Chalk I’m afraid of, more than school.”
Francis looked at her for a long time. “Because of what Bella said? She didn’t mean it.”
Brigid shook her head. “She comes in the night. Miss Chalk. She comes out of the chimney.”
Francis was quiet. His face looked quite sad. “Brigid, if she comes again – and I hope she won’t – you get me.”
“What if I can’t?”
“I’ll stay up until you go to sleep. Call me. I’ll come. I’ll not let her get you.”
Brigid felt the dark weight ease a little. She sat back in the sofa, and she was glad of his warmth near her. On the screen, the Cisco Kid rode away, his sombrero flat back in the wind.
“What are slaps?” she said, after a while.
Francis sighed. “You learn to avoid them. It’s when you get something wrong, or don’t do what they say. The teacher hits your hand.”
“Daddy said, with a leather strap.”
Francis shook his head. “No. Not in a girls’ school. Anyway, don’t give them the chance. Do what they tell you, and keep your head down. That’s the best way through.”
The Cisco Kid had ridden away with his sidekick Pancho, his sombrero even bigger and wilder in the wind. Soon it would be time to face her again.
“You call me, if you have any bother tonight,” said Francis, which helped her through teatime, and the mystery of backing the books. She watched as her mother and Francis folded and wrapped them like presents, and she nearly did one by herself. When she climbed the stairs to bed, she was almost happy. That night Miss Chalk did not come, and Brigid slept till morning.
Francis was right. She did get used to it. Reading was no longer a game with her mother, but part of a new thing called homework. There was writing, which she liked, and there were numbers, which she did not. There were slaps: they happened to other people until one day, to her surprise, all the infants were lined up outside their room and slapped, one after the other. The long wooden rule stung like a wasp. Brigid did not know why they were slapped, and no one else in the wailing line of children did, either. Miss said what happened in school was to stay in school, that they were not to tell at home anything that went on within those four walls, and that if they did she would know. So, Brigid did not tell, though her hand hurt all day.
That night, Miss Chalk came back, her eyes dark holes, her white legs bent, creeping towards her, but she got only to the edge of the fireplace before Brigid called Francis, softly, urgently, and Francis came. He sat on the chair where Brigid had found the cowgirl suit on the day their parents came back. He stayed there till Miss Chalk went away, and Brigid fell into sleep, her last sight Francis in his dressing gown, reading by the light of his torch.
September meant school every morning. There seemed no possibility of escape. Brigid was slapped when the numbers on the board were not clear to her. She did not know how to explain that they were blurred, that she could not make them out. Her sums were wrong. Her father tried to help her, but he explained too quickly. He understood numbers. That was his job. He was a man who counted numbers. Foolishly, Brigid one day told Miss that, and saw that she laughed, saying something to another teacher who had come in with the long book of names. They looked at Brigid, curiously. Brigid waited all that morning to be slapped, but nothing happened. She saw there was no method to understand school, no means of knowing what would keep her safe and what would not. Increasingly, imprisoned at the wooden desk, she went into her own world, and thought of home, the back garden, Francis, Dicky, even Ned Silver. She thought herself back to the trees at the back of the plot, living again the summer days. She was careful not to go too far away, coming back in time to gather what was happening, and save herself a little longer.
September became October, and the new life settled round them. Brigid’s father got slowly better, and began again to read from the paper as he used to do. Now, however, he read only the stories which worried him. He read that there was an outbreak of typhoid in Antrim, and their mother said they had no plans to go to Antrim. He said two men had been named as spies, and they had attended the University of Cambridge, and his wife must not think of Cambridge for Francis. Brigid’s mother said she was not thinking quite that far ahead. He began to drive again, opening the garage doors in the morning as he used to, backing the car down the passage, and going off to the office. The trees shed most of their leaves, and all Brigid could make out when she looked out at the plot were branches like the ribs under her own cold skin.
One morning she woke suddenly. No one had called her. They had forgotten – had they forgotten? She jumped out of bed, pulled on her clothes any way she could, and ran downstairs out of breath. There, she found Francis sitting at the table in everyday clothes.
“Why are you dressed for school?” he said. “It’s a holiday – didn’t they tell you?”
“No,” said Brigid. “I heard Miss say something about today, but I think she said . . .” Brigid searched about in her mind. All she found was: “Remember, children, what I told you about school tomorrow,” but what that was she did not know.
“Well, there’s no school for me,” said Francis.
“Are you sure, Brigid?” said her mother, coming through the door with a teapot. “I was going to let you have a sleep.”
“Maybe it’s just the College,” said their father. “I’ll take Brigid on my way to the office,” and he put on his new glasses, thick as the bottoms of milk bottles, and no one said anything more.
Even if she did have to go to school, Brigid was glad to be driven by her father. When she went to school with her mother or, more usually these days, with Isobel on the bus, it was different. It took a long time, and sometimes they had to stand, jostled by other people, bringing in from outside their own cold and damp. Some days, for no reason, her father would take her, settling her into the front seat, and on those days, gliding down the road in comfort, Brigid was sorry at how quickly the journey passed. Sometimes he would converse with her in the car but today he did not speak. He looked straight ahead at the road: she knew that he could not see her out of the sides of his eyes. Without his thick glasses, he was still blind as before. Only in the evening, when he was resting, sitting with no glasses in his chair, or in the morning, if he was coming from the bathroom, a towel over his shoulder, with his eyes creased as he tried to see her, did he really seem himself again.
Yet, quiet though he was today, and far away as his mind seemed to be, Brigid was surprised that he did not take her up the side street where the school was. Instead, as never before, he stopped the car at the junction of the main road and the hilly street, waited for her to climb out, then left her and, when she turned round to wave a final goodbye, he was gone. There was nothing where he had been. There was nobody on the street. It was all quiet, except for a dog barking somewhere far off and the sound, in one of the neat, narrow houses, of a baby fretting. Even the trees on the street looked lonely, sparse autumn leaves drifting like pennies towards her as she walked, listening to her own footsteps, up to the school gate.