The Rye Man Read online

  ‘Now there’s a grand woman to have working for you,’ he said, raising the china cup to his lips, its delicate floral pattern incongruous in the massive hand.

  ‘You think so?’ Their eyes met briefly over the rims of the cups and then there was a second of silence as each considered what to say.

  ‘So you’re not over-taken with Muriel, then?’

  ‘Early days, George.’

  ‘I know she can get on her high horse sometimes, but isn’t it better having someone with a bit of character about them than a dry stick like Vance?’

  He made a neutral, uncommitted reply.

  ‘Listen, John, you’re the man in the driving seat. You make the decisions, run the school. That’s what we appointed you for and I don’t doubt for a moment that you’re big enough to do that. So just you steer your own course and don’t pay heed to back seat drivers, even when their name is Muriel Haslett.’ He drained the last dregs from his cup and ran his handkerchief across his mouth. ‘And what about Miss Fulton, is she going to make the grade? At the interview she looked more like a waif than a teacher. Can we rely on her?’

  ‘I think she’ll be OK. I’ll keep an eye out for her, make sure she gets plenty of help.’ He watched as he stuffed the handkerchief back into his trouser pocket and slowly stood up, sending creases running through his suit like cracks in plaster. He offered his hand across the desk.

  ‘Well, I’ll wish you all the best and let you get on with the job. And remember, I’m only a phone call away, so never hesitate.’

  He thanked him and watched his heavy journey to the door. He hesitated, though, before leaving.

  ‘Listen, John. When I was a young buck round the town I used to drive a secondhand Morris Oxford, the miles had been round the clock but she was a lovely thing – a better car than the expensive pile of junk I drive now. And, well . . . I did a bit of courting from time to time and a certain Muriel Chambers as she was then, was no stranger to that back seat. So the next time the same lady gives you a hard time, just think of those creaking springs and maybe she won’t seem quite so formidable.’

  *

  He sat in the empty office, his visitor’s weight still imprinted on the chair. Lunch was over and already he could hear the clatter of footsteps in the corridors as the children returned to their rooms. He went out and watched as they streamed past, their faces flushed with the exertions of play and hair disarrayed. As the final stragglers regained their rooms, he suddenly realised he hadn’t had anything to eat, and he returned to his office to rummage in his briefcase for his lunch box. He carried it next-door to the empty staffroom and switched on the water heater, then sank into one of the faded armchairs.

  There was a tiny square of folded paper nestling beside the sandwiches. It was a cartoon of him flying through the air, wearing a mortar-board and a gown. Under the gown he was wearing a Superman tunic. He remembered the fragments of her laughter on the phone and he tried to piece them together into some better picture of the future. He thought of her working in the outhouses, her mind occupied, concentrating only on creating a studio. It was what she needed too – a new start. If only she could embrace it, give herself fully to it, everything might come all right again. As he looked around him he envied her freedom to splash paint about, her freedom to pull down and re-arrange to her own desires.

  The staffroom was not much different from every other one he had ever been in, with a handful of shabby armchairs and coffee tables marked with white rings, a table and chairs ostensibly for marking and some lockers personalised by Garfield posters or stickers which said tired, predictable things like, ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’. There was an old banda machine covered in blue fingerprints and on the notice-board were layers of circulars, old cover notes, union news-sheets. They were piled on top of each other, overlapping and out of date. A marked-off column on the board bore the title ‘Headmaster’s notices’. There was nothing on it except a postcard from Paris. He unpinned it and read, ‘Wishing you all a successful new term. E. S. Reynolds.’ The confirmation of a home run, the final smug message from blighty. He replaced it and had his lunch, thinking about his last visitor.

  He liked Crawford, felt he could work with him. Maybe he was not the greatest educationalist in the world, but he had a generous spirit and had always made his regard for his new headmaster very clear. After he had applied for the post, George had turned up one Saturday afternoon during the tea interval of a cricket match he was playing in and announced after five minutes’ casual conversation that the job was his. Both the suddenness and the conviction of the statement had taken him by surprise, and when he had cautioned with talk of other candidates and the unpredictability of committee decisions, he had been told emphatically, ‘You’re the right size for the job.’

  The right size for the job. That was about it. Local boy made good. He had always maintained his links with his home town, played for the cricket team, was seen occasionally at local functions. His family enjoyed the respect of the community and his mother still played an active role in the church. The right background, the right religion, the right size for the job.

  Vance, the inside man, should have been his strongest rival, but he guessed while chatting to him before the interviews started that he wasn’t going to perform well. He was too nervous, too stiff, obviously unable to bend from his own self-perception to meet alternative expectations. Vance could have been a problem but in the short time he had worked with him he had detected no depth of resentment or personal enmity. If anything, there was almost an indifference to the situation, as if his failure merely confirmed his judgement on life. Perhaps he already knew George’s opinion of him and had harboured no genuine expectations.

  He finished his lunch and rinsed his cup. He looked at the other mugs sitting upside down on the draining board and hesitated before he set his down beside them. It looked conspicuous and he moved it to the rear of the tight little knot. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the jangling chords of the piano and he was aware once more of life flowing round about him and his detachment from it.

  He found Vance standing at the front of his class with a stop-watch in his hand. It was like the beginning of some sort of a race and at his signal heads dropped in unison and hands flipped over the booklets on their desks. There was a thick silence settling on the room, holding it fast and still like ice frozen over water. Only the scratch of pencils, the occasional shuffle. No one paused to look at him and when he spoke to Vance his voice sounded loud and intrusive. It was explained that they were practising their first test under the same constraints of time they would encounter in the real tests which would determine whether they gained a place in grammar school. He looked across the rows of bowed heads to the displays of geometrical patterns on the back wall, the neat rows of reading books and stacked exercise books. It was an ordered room designed to follow a precisely organised pattern.

  Vance stood in his neat jacket and tie, distant, almost remote. He was in his late thirties, with thin, fair hair and gold-rimmed glasses which gave his face an ascetic quality. Above the blackboard was a poster of Mozart and it was obvious that music played an important role in his life. It was also becoming obvious that he was a friend of Haslett’s and that they could prove a difficult duo if they acted in unison. It was important that he was able to establish some sort of working relationship with the man. Perhaps the fact that he was going to be teaching history to his class would be a help.

  They stood for a few moments, struggling for things to say, their voices low as in church. Looking round he understood how Vance approached this final year of primary school. The emphasis was on practice, mechanical repetition, training in recognising types of questions and applying the correct methodology. Competition with each other, the recording of scores, class orders. He was suddenly conscious of a stale afternoon smell which made him want to open all the windows, let some fresh air in. Looking down finally at the children, no eyes met his and he felt a
momentary urge to say something, to make some sort of contact, but he was conscious of Vance standing close by his side and he knew it would be considered a disruption. As he turned towards the door he noticed a head angled unusually at the back of the room. It was the blonde-haired girl he had seen kneeling by the hedge. Her tongue lolled from the corner of her mouth like a pink bookmark poking out from pages. She was sitting on her own and the movements of her hand showed that she was doing something different from the other children. As Vance showed him out, he had time only to see that she was holding a thick purple crayon, and he gauged by the concentration on her face that she was colouring something in, struggling to stay inside the lines.

  *

  In his office there was a phone call awaiting him. It was Liam Hennessy, the Principal of Holy Cross, the local Catholic primary school. He was phoning to wish him all the best in his new post and although they had never met they were soon using each other’s first names. There was, too, another purpose to the call.

  ‘Tell me now, John, how do you fancy a bit of Education for Mutual Understanding? I could never get that boy Reynolds interested, but what do you say?’

  ‘Well, I’m all for mutual understanding. What had you in mind?’

  ‘I don’t right know yet . . . ’ He broke off to bark at some deviant nearby, ‘... but by all accounts the Department’ll pour any amount of money down our throats if they think we’re crossing the fence.’

  He smiled, reassured that he was being invited to participate in the reality of a financial enterprise rather than some altruistic scheme. They agreed to get in touch and talk it over.

  He opened more of the pile of post. A circular about school trips, a memo about United Nations Day, more catalogues, a circular about classroom assistants. He skimmed through this last one until his eyes caught the words ‘reduction of hours’. He read it properly, then swore out loud. They were cutting the hours of classroom assistants – ‘an unwelcome but forced economy’. With a cringe he remembered his conversation with Mrs Craig. Hardly an auspicious start. Outside in the playground Eric was putting litter into a black polythene bag. He remembered the leak in her roof. It would scarcely compensate but it was better than nothing. When he rang Building Control in the Board he spoke to someone who asked him how big the hole was, what kind of roof it was, and how often the rain came through. The matter was considered more complex than he had anticipated, with the extent and potential cost of the repair determining which source of funding it would come from. If structural work was required, it would have to come out of ‘new build’ as opposed to minor works. There was a prioritised waiting list. Someone would have to come out and inspect the roof. When would that be? There was a backlog, difficult to say. He could feel his affability slowly fading. He needed to be able to give Mrs Craig some form of compensation, but there was no sense of urgency at the end of the phone, only a lukewarm concern and no indication of any immediate action. Mrs Patterson came in with some forms and smiled as she listened to his increasingly frustrated attempts to hear the words he wanted.

  ‘Not the easiest people in the world to stir,’ she said a little smugly as he put the phone down. ‘Quicker to buy a bigger bucket.’

  In the playground infant classes were being released. Young mothers came through the gates to collect their children. Some skipped forward with their arms outstretched, others stood more cautiously by the gates and waited, shopping bags clutched in their hands. He had lost track of time. Soon it would be the staff meeting. He scribbled a few notes on the back of an envelope but he knew already the things he was going to say. Outside in the street there was the sound of car engines starting up, the slamming of doors.

  His own mother had come to collect him on his first day in school. His class had come out in twos, hand in hand, their heads straining to see who was waiting for them. Someone had shouted, someone had dropped hands and was running. Everyone was running. A red apple, not a hard green windfall, bitter to the tongue, but a red apple bought from McMinn’s fruit shop – that was what his mother had held in her hand. She had almost taken it back off him when she discovered the rosettes of paint on his clothes. The memory was like a little polished stone in his collection, something he had picked from the beach and stored safely. How big that first room had seemed as it hunched over him with its high, small-paned windows through which only sky could be seen, how stern Miss Winters had seemed in her stiff white blouse with the turquoise brooch at the collar. Her name always made him think of snow and frost. And now he had returned, drawing a fine, full circle of his life. The inadequacies of the day drained away. He remembered the children at play, flowing round him, the sunlight through the bars washing over their faces, and he was filled with a new sense of optimism.

  *

  After giving the staff five minutes to clear up and grab a quick cup of coffee he entered the staffroom. Mrs Haslett had obviously made some comment about the circular arrangement of chairs and others were staring at them as if they represented some kind of threat. Miss Fulton stood cupping her coffee in her hands, obviously unsure of where to sit. He made a joke about how he was glad to see that everyone appeared to have survived. It interested him to see that Vance and Haslett sat together in the seats across from him. No one sat on the chairs on either side of him and he used them to stack his handouts.

  As he ran through the new administrative arrangements, Miss McCreavey and Miss Fulton made notes in the back of their diaries. Vance sat quietly, his eyes fixed somewhere on the opposite wall, while Haslett stared at him in a way that said she was inspecting him rather than listening to what he was saying. His own eyes lingered briefly on her shoes - green patent leather with insets of white triangles and gold stitching. In a silent pause as he passed out the handouts, he could hear the clink of Eric’s mop bucket as the mop head rattled the handle and then the slushy squeak as it slithered across the wet tiles.

  He led them through the pages, outlining proposed changes demanded by the Education Reform Act, explaining the working parties he was setting up to evaluate their school curriculum. He tried to take a pragmatic course, expressing his own doubts about aspects of the changes – the usual lack of training and resourcing, the burden of assessment – but also tried to encourage them to be positive in their response.

  He glanced up at the tight ring of faces and read their disquiet, their silent exasperation. Suddenly the physical distance which separated them from him seemed to stretch further, and he felt increasingly ill at ease and disjointed in his speech. He paused as his line of thought rushed blindly into a dead-end and through the breach caused by his hesitation flooded their incredulity and all the questions for which he had no easy answers.

  What did you do with thirty other children when one was being assessed? When were they supposed to find time for all the paperwork? What would pages of ticks in boxes tell you about a child’s ability?

  Fiona Craig said things he agreed and sympathised with and it made him feel uncomfortable to be placed in the role of spokesman for the government, an apologist for policies devised by civil servants. In the face of her passion and frustration he knew he sounded mealy-mouthed and unconvincing, but he tried to steer his middle course, suggesting compromises and shortcuts, trying as always to talk from a teacher’s perspective. He felt more and more defensive, under pressure.

  Mrs Haslett, smelling blood, increasingly pushed in for her share, her eyes wide behind her glasses and her head nodding slightly as she took her bite. ‘I wonder what Mr Reynolds would have made of all these changes? Given them short shift I expect.’

  ‘I think Mr Reynolds took early retirement precisely because he knew there was no way these changes could be avoided.’ He paused, his own frustration rising, and scanned the circle. ‘Whether we like it or not this is the face of the future, and so long as it’s on the statute book we have to find some way to work it.’

  He knew he was slipping towards the type of confrontation he had been determined to avoid. He was save
d only by Haslett’s insistent attempts to dominate the discussion and the silencing of those with more perceptive perspectives. Inevitably she defended the status quo, made trite little points based on anecdote and prejudice, delivering them as if they were profundities. He replied calmly to each of them, patronising her each time by the cheerful use of her first name, letting the shots bounce off him, smiling at times, sometimes directing them back with a gently barbed question. She was running out of steam, out of support.

  Vance had said little, content to make a few disparaging comments about educational theorists, the transience of fashionable ideas when set beside the traditional solidity of what he described as ‘sound teaching’.

  Then Miss Fulton said something optimistic, oblivious to the withering glance. He could have hugged her. Miss McCreavey, too, said something supportive, and the tight power of the circle was broken. He made a joke – only Vance and Haslett did not laugh.

  He had made it. At one point as the rapids jutted jagged and large ahead of him it had been in the balance, but he had not panicked and had steered a course through. Now that he was in calmer waters and the end of the meeting in sight, he went on the offensive and brought up the question of the entrance hall.

  ‘Frankly, it depresses me. I’m sure together we could make it more inviting, use it to create a more positive impression of the school and the work that goes on in it.’

  They looked at him impassively.

  ‘I’m going to ask Eric to put up some display boards and I thought it would be a good start if we could all have our classes make a display for Hallowe’en – perhaps fireworks, autumn leaves, that sort of thing.’

  ‘All classes?’ asked Vance.

  ‘Yes, all classes. We don’t want anyone to feel left out.’