Red Sky at Sunrise: Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, A Moment of War (7 page)

The great day came; a day of shimmering summer, with the valley outside in a state of leafy levitation. Crabby B was at her sourest, and Spadge Hopkins had had enough. He began to writhe in his desk, and roll his eyes, and kick with his boots, and mutter; ‘She’d better look out. ‘Er, – Crabby B. She’d better, that’s all. I can tell you…”

We didn’t quite know what the matter was, in spite of his meaning looks. Then he threw down his pen, said; ‘Sod it all,’ got up, and walked to the door.

‘And where are you going, young man, may I ask?’ said Crabby with her awful leer.

Spadge paused and looked her straight in the eye.

‘If it’s any business of yourn.’

We shivered with pleasure at this defiance. Spadge leisurely made for the door.

‘Sit down this instant!’ Crabby suddenly screamed. ‘I won’t have it!’

‘Ta-ta,’ said Spadge.

Then Crabby sprang like a yellow cat, spitting and clawing with rage. She caught Spadge in the doorway and fell upon him. There was a shameful moment of heavy breathing and scuffling, while the teacher tore at his clothes. Spadge caught her hands in his great red fists and held her at arm’s length, struggling.

‘Come and help me, someone!’ wailed Crabby, demented. But nobody moved; we just watched. We saw Spadge lift her up and place her on the top of the cupboard, then walk out of the door and away. There was a moment of silence, then we all laid down our pens and began to stamp on the floor in unison. Crabby stayed where she was, on top of the cupboard, drumming her heels and weeping.

We expected some terrible retribution to follow, but nothing happened at all. Not even the trouble-spark, Spadge, was called to account – he was simply left alone. From that day Crabby never spoke to him, or crossed his path, or denied him anything at all. He perched idly in his desk, his knees up to his chin, whistling in a world of his own. Sometimes Miss B would consider him narrowly and if he caught her glance he just winked. Otherwise he was free to come and go, and to take time off as he pleased.

But we never rebelled again; things changed. Crabby B was replaced by a new Head Teacher – a certain Miss Wardley from Birmingham. This lady was something quite new in our lives. She wore sharp glass jewellery which winked as she walked, and she sounded her ‘gees’ like gongs. But she was fond of singing and she was fond of birds, and she encouraged us in the study of both. She was more sober than Crabby, her reins looser but stronger; and after the first hilarity of her arrival and strangeness, we accepted her proper authority.

Not that she approved very much of me. ‘Fat-and-Lazy’ was the name she called me. After my midday dinner of baked cabbage and bread I would often nod off in my desk. ‘Wake up!’ she would cry, cracking my head with a ruler, ‘you and your little red eyes!’ She also took exception to my steady sniff, which to me came as natural as breathing. ‘Go out into the road and have a good blow, and don’t come back till you’re clear.’ But I wouldn’t blow, not for anyone on earth, especially if ordered to do so: so I’d sit out on the wall, indignant and thunderous, and sniff away louder than ever. I wouldn’t budge either, or come back in, till a boy was sent to fetch me. Miss Wardley would greet me with freezing brightness. ‘A little less beastly now? How about bringing a hanky tomorrow? I’m sure we’d all be grateful.’ I’d sit and scowl, then forget to scowl, and would soon be asleep again…

My brothers, by this time, were all with me at school. Jack, already the accepted genius, was long past our scope or help. It was agreed that his brains were of such distinction that they absolved him from mortal contacts. So he was left in a corner where his flashes of brilliance kept him twinkling away like a pin-table. Young Tony came last, but he again was different, being impervious either to learning or authority, importing moreover a kind of outrageous cheekiness so inspired that it remained unanswerable. He would sit all day picking holes in blotting paper, his large eyes deep and knowing, his quick tongue scandalous, his wit defiant, his will set against all instruction. There was nothing anyone could do about him, except to yelp at the things he said.

I alone, the drowsy middleman of these two, found it hard to win Miss Wardley’s approval. I achieved this in the end by writing long faked essays on the lives and habits of otters. I’d never seen an otter, or even gone to look for one, but the essays took her in. They were read out aloud, and even earned me medals, but that’s nothing to boast about.

Our village school was poor and crowded, but in the end I relished it. It had a lively reek of steaming life: boys’ boots, girls hair, stoves and sweat, blue ink, white chalk, and shavings. We learned nothing abstract or tenuous there – just simple patterns of facts and letters, portable tricks of calculation, no more than was needed to measure a shed, write out a bill, read a swine-disease warning. Through the dead hours of the morning, through the long afternoons, we chanted away at our tables. Passers-by could hear our rising voices in our bottled-up room on the bank; ‘Twelve-inches-one-foot. Three-feet-make-a-yard. Fourteen-pounds-make-a-stone. Eight-stone-a-hundred-weight.’ We absorbed these figures as primal truths declared by some ultimate power. Unhearing, unquestioning, we rocked to our chanting, hammering the gold nails home. ‘Twice-two-are-four. One-God-is-Love. One-Lord-is-King. One-King-is-George. One-George-is-Fifth…’ So it was always; had been, would be for ever; we asked no questions; we didn’t hear what we said; yet neither did we ever forget it.

So do I now, through the reiterations of those days, recall that schoolroom which I scarcely noticed – Miss Wardley in glory on her high desk throne, her long throat tinkling with glass. The bubbling stove with its chink of red fire; the old world map as dark as tea; dead field-flowers in jars on the windowsills; the cupboard yawning with dog-eared books. Then the boys and the girls, the dwarfs and the cripples; the slow fat ones and the quick boney ones; giants and louts, angels and squinters – Walt Kerry, Bill Timbrell, Spadge Hopkins, Clergy Green, the Ballingers and Browns, Betty Gleed, Clarry Hogg, Sam and Sixpence, Poppy and Jo – we were ugly and beautiful, scrofulous, warted, ringwormed, and scabbed at the knees, we were noisy, crude, intolerant, cruel, stupid, and superstitious. But we moved together out of the clutch of the Fates, inhabitors of a world without doom; with a scratching, licking and chewing of pens, a whisper and passing of jokes, a titter of tickling, a grumble of labour, a vague stare at the wall in a dream…

‘Oh, miss, please miss, can I go round the back?’

An unwilling nod permits me. I stamp out noisily into a swoop of fresh air and a musical surge of birds. All around me now is the free green world, with Mrs Birt hanging out her washing. I take stock of myself for a moment, alone. I hear the schoolroom’s beehive hum. Of course I don’t really belong to that lot at all; I know I’m something special, a young king perhaps placed secretly here in order to mix with the commoners. There is clearly a mystery about my birth, I feel so unique and majestic. One day, I know, the secret will be told. A coach with footmen will appear suddenly at our cottage, and Mother (my mother?) will weep. The family will stand vey solemn and respectful, and I shall drive off to take up my throne. I’ll be generous, of course, not proud at all; for my brothers there shall be no dungeons. Rather will I feed them on cakes and jellies, and I’ll provide all my sisters with princes. Sovereign mercy shall be their portion, little though they deserve it…

I return to the school room and Miss Wardley scowls (she shall curtsy when I am king). But all this is forgotten when Walt Kerry leans over and demands the results of my sums. ‘Yes, Walt. Of course, Walt. Here, copy them out. They ain’t hard – I done ‘em all.’ He takes them, the bully, as his tributary right, and I’m proud enough to give them. The little Jim Fern, sitting beside me, looks up from his ruined pages. ‘Ain’t you a good scholar! You and your Jack. I wish I was a good scholar like thee.’ He gives me a sad, adoring look, and I begin to feel much better.

Playtime comes and we charge outdoors, releasing our steamed-up cries. Somebody punches a head. Somebody bloodies their knees. Boys cluster together like bees. ‘Let’s go round the back then, shall us, eh?’ To the dark narrow alley, rich with our mysteries, we make our clattering way. Over the wall is the girl’s own place, quite close, and we shout them greetings.

‘I ‘eard you, Bill Timbrell! I ‘eard what you said! You be careful, I’ll tell our teacher!’

Flushed and refreshed, we stream back to our playground, whistling, indivisibly male.

‘D’you ‘ear what I said then? Did you then, eh? I told ‘em! They ‘alf didn’t squeal!’

We all double up; we can’t speak for laughing, we can’t laugh without hitting each other.

Miss Wardley was patient, but we weren’t very bright. Our books showed a squalor of blots and scratches as though monkeys were being taught to write. We sang in sweet choirs, and drew like cavemen, but most other faculties escaped us. Apart from poetry, of course, which gave no trouble at all. I can remember Miss Wardley, with her squeaking chalk, scrawling the blackboard like a shopping list:

‘Write a poem – which must scan – on one or more of the following; A Kitten. Fairies. My Holidays. An Old Tinker. Charity. Sea Wrack…’ (‘What’s that, miss?’)

But it was easy in those days, one wrote a dozen an hour, one simply didn’t hesitate, just began at the beginning and worked steadily through the subjects, ticking them off with indefatigable rhymes.

Sometimes there was a beating, which nobody minded – except an occasional red-faced mother. Sometimes a man came and took out our teeth. (‘My mum says you ain’t to take out any double-’uns…’ ‘… Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…’ ‘Is they all double-’uns?’ ‘Shut up, you little horror.’) Sometimes the Squire would pay us a visit, hand out prizes, and make a misty-eyed speech. Sometimes an Inspector arrived on a bicycle and counted our heads and departed. Meanwhile Miss Wardley moved jingling amongst us, instructing, appealing, despairing:

‘You’re a grub, Walter Kerry. You have the wits of a hen. You’re a great hulking lout of an oaf. You can just stay behind and do it over again. You can all stay behind, the lot of you.’

When lessons grew too tiresome, or too insoluble, we had our traditional ways of avoiding them.

‘Please, miss, I got to stay ‘ome tomorrow, to ‘elp with the washing – the pigs – me dad’s sick.’

‘I dunno, miss; you never learned us that.’

‘I ‘ad me book stole, miss. Carry Burdock pinched it.’

‘Please, miss, I got a gurt ‘eadache.’

Sometimes these worked, sometimes they didn’t. But once, when some tests hung over our heads, a group of us boys evaded them entirely by stinging our hands with horseflies. The task took all day, but the results were spectacular – our hands swelled like elephants’ trunks. “Twas a swarm, please, miss. They set on us. We run, but they stung us awful.’ I remember how we groaned, and that we couldn’t hold our pens, but I don’t remember the pain.

At other times, of course, we forged notes from our mothers, or made ourselves sick with berries, or claimed to be relations of the corpse at funerals (the churchyard lay only next door). It was easy to start wailing when the hearse passed by, ‘It’s my aunty, miss – it’s my cousin Wilf – can I go miss, please miss, can I?’Many a lone coffin was followed to its grave by a straggle of long-faced children, pinched, solemn, raggedly dressed, all strangers to the astonished bereaved.

So our school work was done – or where would we be today? We would be as we are; watching a loom or driving a tractor, and counting in images of fives and tens. This was as much as we seemed to need, and Miss Wardley did not add to the burden. What we learned in her care were the less formal truths – the names of flowers, the habits of birds, the intimacy of objects in being set to draw them, the treacherous innocence of boys, the sly charm of girls, the idiot’s soaring fancies, and the tongue-tied dunce’s informed authority when it came to talking about stoats. We were as merciless and cruel as most primitives are. But we learned at that school the private nature of cruelty; and our inborn hatred for freaks and outcasts was tempered by meeting them daily.

There was Nick and Edna from up near the Cross, the children of that brother and sister – the boy was strong and the girl was beautiful, and it was not at school that we learned to condemn them. And there was the gipsy boy Rosso, who lived up the quarry where his tribe had encamped for the summer. He had a chocolate-smooth face and crisp black curls, and at first we cold-shouldered him. He was a real outsider (they ate snails, it was said) and his slant Indian eyes repelled us. Then one day, out of hunger, he stole some sandwiches and was given the cane by Miss Wardley. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, that made him one of us.

We saw him run out of school, grizzling from the beating, and kneel down to tie up his boots. The shopkeeper’s wife, passing by at that moment, stopped to preach him a little sermon. ‘You didn’t have to steal, even if you was that hungry. Why didn’t you come to me?’ The boy gave her a look, picked himself up, and ran off without a word. He knew, as we did, the answer to that one: we set our dogs on the gipsies here. As we walked back home to our cabbage dinners we were all of us filled with compassion. We pictured poor Rosso climbing back to his quarry,hungry to his miserable tents, with nothing but mud and puddles to sit in and the sour banks to scavenge for food. Gipsies no longer seemed either sinister or strange. No wonder they eat snails, we thought.

The narrow school was just a conveyor belt along which the short years drew us. We entered the door marked ‘Infants’, moved gradually to the other, and were then handed back to the world. Lucky, lucky point of time; our eyes were on it always. Meanwhile we had moved to grander desks, saw our juniors multiplying in number, Miss Wardley suddenly began to ask our advice and to spoil us as though we were dying. There was no more to be done, no more to be learned. We began to look round the schoolroom with nostalgia and impatience. During playtime in the road we walked about gravely, patronizing the younger creatures. No longer the trembling, white-faced battles, the nights, the buttering-up of bullies; just a punch here and there to show our authority, then a sober stroll with our peers.