Miss Appleby's Academy (18 page)

‘You will do nothing of the kind. We must have a doctor
for Mrs Castle. I will go and see Dr Blythe. What did you study?’ Emma asked.

‘Classics.’

‘Then how did you end up here?’

His thin face managed a smile. ‘I’m a pitman’s son, Miss Appleby, I did not fit in. I could find no work. I married Jane and began to try to teach these children. There is much evidence here of Roman occupation, of times gone by and—’ He stopped. ‘All that was wanted was basics and some of them are not very receptive. Most of them lead the kind of life which you cannot imagine. Their mothers often have many children, they live in tiny, bug-ridden houses, their fathers drink, the men are foulmouthed and have no compunction about beating their wives and children.

‘These children are always hungry and cold and afraid – how can they learn anything when they come from such conditions? The people are often very superstitious. They have no learning themselves and they don’t see why their children should. The children leave not being able to read or write and not knowing that they can count to more than ten on their fingers.’

*

The following day Emma went and sat for a very long time in Dr Blythe’s surgery among the shabby-clothed people who had colds and coughs and the more seriously ill ones who waited patiently in the stuffy little room lined with benches. Eventually it was her turn, and she was summoned by Mrs Blythe into the doctor’s
room. It was large and, from what she could see, well equipped. Sam Blythe was well dressed; everything was clean.

He greeted her by name, asked her to sit down and then enquired what he could do for her.

‘I want you to come to the academy. I have Mrs English staying with me. She is far from well. She cannot afford to pay you, as you must know. But she must have attention. Will you come?’

The man shifted uneasily in his chair.

‘You have three children, Dr Blythe. Are you intending to send them to the council school or do you have other plans?’

He didn’t speak.

‘You have few alternatives,’ Emma said. ‘If you become my school doctor I shall allow the first to attend free of charge. I can offer Greek and Latin, Mathematics, English Language and Literature, Botany, Exercise and Domestic Science.’

Still the man was silent.

‘I believe your eldest child is almost six and not at school yet. Surely you wish for him an education.’

‘My wife teaches him at home.’

‘Is your wife a classics scholar?’

‘Are you?’

‘I have on my staff a classics teacher, a very clever man. In the meanwhile I would very much like you to see what you can do for Mrs English. She is in a great deal of pain which I feel could be alleviated with some help from you.
Please come as soon as you are able,’ and she nodded and left.

Emma did not know what to do about the council school in spite of her brave words, and Mr English went off as usual the following day. That afternoon, however, when Mrs English was nodding by the fire, she took George by the hand and made a visit to the schoolroom.

Mr English looked pleased to see her. He introduced her to the children. Nobody said anything. A lot of them didn’t even look up. She told the children to come forward to the fire, she had the desks pushed back by the bigger boys, she got them to sit on their coats, arranged them as well as she could so that they could see both herself and the fire and hopefully feel some warmth. She had Mr English throw as much coal onto it as he could so that there was soon a moist odour of long-unwashed clothes and bodies, which Emma ignored.

She read them
Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They sat in perfect silence. Then she put them into groups and got them to play games, such as the one where each person in turn in the circle must add on the next piece of the story and each person had two minutes.

Several of the children could not do this and hesitated, they were shy or badly spoken or had never been encouraged to speak up, but they began to lose this as the story went on and Emma wrote it up on the blackboard, each group in turn.

They became competitive, shouting that their story was the best, laughing and vying with one another, and Emma
let them. She saw Mr English hesitating, but he did nothing since she had their whole attention.

Emma did not like to admit to herself that it was the first time she had taught a huge roomful of children, and if anybody had said that she could do this she would have hesitated, but the time for hesitation was gone and she knew instinctively that if you were to get up in front of a crowd like this you had to take the room, to own it, to entertain as well as teach or you would lose them, and once you lost control of forty children you would not easily get it back. But she taught them.

She forgot that she was small and an incomer and that nobody liked her. She was so engrossed in holding their attention that she became the teacher she wanted to be that day, and when she saw how easily she had achieved it there was a feeling inside her which flowered and grew until her whole being was alight. She had been born to be a teacher and had never known it.

When the sun came spilling into the room she decided that they had had enough of being inside. She showed them how to play softball though all there was at the front of the classroom in a cupboard were two cricket bats and some suitable balls. She divided them into two groups: Mr English took one, she the other. They were fiercely competitive and shrieked and shouted and used very bad language, quite unconsciously, but Emma said nothing. She was so glad to have held their interest all afternoon. When four o’clock came she let them go home and they wandered unwillingly out of the door.

One boy, quite large, who probably would not be at school much longer, lingered at the front of the class and even came to her and said, ‘Will you be here tomorrow, Miss?’

‘It’s Miss Appleby. What are you called?’

‘John Wearmouth, Miss.’

‘Well, John, Mr English and I will put our heads together and maybe have an outing soon. What would you think of that?’

The boy’s eyes were larger than ever.

‘That would be grand, Miss,’ he said, and then he turned and ran out of the room. He wore thin shoes on his feet which would not last many more days, Emma thought.

She gazed around the room.

‘We need another stove in here for when the weather gets bad,’ she said. ‘I will speak to Mr Castle about it.’

This was pure bravado. She had seen neither Connie nor her father since she and Mr Castle had disagreed, and she was certain she had overstepped some mark and wished she had not spoken to him as she had.

Dr Blythe duly turned up that evening, rather late and looking tired, but he gave Mrs English something to dull the pain. He went off without a word and when it was late Emma sat over the kitchen fire and thought badly of herself for all the interfering things she had done in the past few days.

It was two more days before she braved the Black Diamond, and even then she had to force herself to go. She didn’t want to see Mick Castle, but as soon as she stepped through the back door she saw Ed in the passage. He greeted her cheerily.

‘You must come to lunch on Sunday,’ she told him, and his smile widened.

The door to the office stood open and Mick was sitting there just as usual. Emma knocked softly on the open door. He didn’t even look up, but he said, ‘You can come in. I’m not biting anybody today,’ and then he glanced at her. He seemed more unkempt than usual, as though he hadn’t slept in days.

‘Isn’t Connie coming to school?’

‘You didn’t really think I’d keep her at home because you shouted at me. She runs away, very often. I don’t know whether she would actually stay with you even though she seems to like the idea.’

Emma suddenly didn’t know what to say. She remembered how she had barred the door and called him by his first name, and it was as though everything was altered somehow. She felt her face begin to burn. She remembered
how she had felt about John Elstree. Foolishly, ridiculously, she wanted to stay here in this horrid little office with this scruffy man and hear him say that he was not offended.

‘You will bring her then?’ was all she could manage.

He said he would. Still she hesitated.

‘Something else?’ he said.

‘I need a stove for Mr English’s schoolroom for when the autumn comes. Those children cannot work in the cold; it isn’t good for their concentration.’

‘You cannot—’ he said, and then didn’t go on.

‘I know. I’m an interfering old spinster, but I cannot stand by and watch things go on when with a little effort they can be changed,’ and she left. Her face did not cool down all the way home. Her heart raced and her head panicked.

*

When Connie came to the school it was different from when she came to play, Emma thought. She was hiding against her father, not quite to the point of touching him but leaning in, as though she were a shadow of him, though she looked nothing like him. His wife must be very beautiful, Emma thought: the child was tiny, graceful, she had delicate features, curling blonde hair, wary though deep-blue eyes and was wearing a dress, coat and boots, not the ragged garb she had been in that day at the school.

Connie spied the dog and went over to him. Hector got up, wagging his tail.

‘Do you know him?’ George asked, going across, faintly resenting the girl’s apparent knowledge of the dog, yet too well-mannered to show it, Emma thought.

‘He’s one of ours,’ Connie said, hugging the dog possessively, and then she too seemed to realize what she was doing and drew back a little.

When Mr Castle had gone, saying he would return for Connie at four, Emma took the children and the dog for a long walk, pointing out to them the valley beyond and the fields and telling them all about the farming year. Then they came back and sat in the warmth of the kitchen and she gave them milk and biscuits which she had made the day before and they did some reading.

She was very pleased with the standard reached by Connie, which was well beyond her years; she told the girl so, and saw her face shine. They did some writing, describing the walk they had had earlier and the things they had seen, and read out to her what they had written. They did spellings, also things they had seen while they were outside.

After they had eaten their midday meal she gave the children aprons – well, tea towels knotted around their waists as aprons.

‘What are they for?’ Connie asked, and Emma thought how different she was already from the child who had run from the schoolroom. Her face was open, ready for new ventures, and Emma was glad. She thought it was something about that warm kitchen, the dog, the range and how confidently her father had left her, that made this easy and simple for the girl.

‘We’re going to bake cakes. There’s the recipe. Have you learned about pounds and ounces?’

‘Only in sums.’

‘Well, this is the use for them,’ Emma said. ‘You and George can find the ingredients in the cupboards. The oven is hot, I will help you with the measurements if you need it and show you how to measure it all out and how the scales work, and then we will mix the ingredients together in a bowl and put them into greased tins, and I will put the cakes into the oven and we can time it, when they will come out.’

Connie clapped her hands. Emma gave them each a wooden spoon and the three of them made cakes. She let them do the weighing and mixing themselves, watching from the other end of the big pine kitchen table while they flicked flour at each other and giggled, but eventually they got the cakes into the oven and the smell of them as they baked was for Emma the best part. Connie wanted to open the oven to look at them, but Emma explained why they would sink and how the heat would escape from the oven and the temperature would drop.

When they were ready she took them out, turned over the tins with a cloth and dislodged them so that they ended up on wire racks to cool and then were eaten with glasses of milk. When Mr Castle came back at four to collect her Connie ran to him, explaining in hurried words all the things that they had done that day.

*

Mick could not believe the difference in his daughter. She had never been so animated before, and this was after just a few hours in Miss Appleby’s care. They sat in the
kitchen as he had never done before. His memories of kitchens of late had all involved Isabel and her drinking, but he found that he was happy in the warmth of Connie looking so pleased, Hector asleep by the fire and the children describing their walk over the warm dry fields, either of pasture or filled with wheat or barley, the birds they had seen, the different kinds of trees, and how Miss Appleby planned to feed the birds in the garden when the weather turned colder so that they could see them more closely.

He thanked Miss Appleby and took Connie home, only to see his child change before they got back to the house. He was loath to leave her there. She went in, her mouth set as usual and the joy gone from her, but when he would have left her in the long echoing hall and she would have gone either to her room to bed or to his study to read, he said, remembering, ‘Miss Appleby plans to take boarders. I know that we live here and I wouldn’t want you to feel that I was keen to get rid of you—’

She had already heard what he meant and turned a hopeful face to him so he stopped there. ‘Could I really go?’

His heart sank. He knew that he should have provided better for his child, that in a way he had put her mother’s welfare ahead of hers and that it was not right. He couldn’t remember when the switchover occurred, when he had known that Connie was being damaged because Isabel could not cope, was drinking, retreating, was taking part in their lives less and less.

He thought he had denied this to himself, he had hoped that it would improve, had thought that her child might move her, might alter her behaviour, and it had not and he could not have known this, he told himself over and over. Why had he then not known when it became injurious to Connie, when she became unhappy? Had he been so caught up in his own unhappiness that he did not see?

That week Connie went to Emma’s school every day and by the end of the week Mick had asked whether she could stay, and Emma agreed. A sign was made and painted and put up, and it read ‘MISS APPLEBY’S ACADEMY’ in black letters on white and then in smaller letters
‘Boarders and Day Pupils’
.