The Black Mountains (70 page)

The others murmured their agreement. They didn't like what was going on. It made them feel cheated, somehow. Too many men had given their life's blood, and the ones who had come back had found a world changed almost beyond recognition.

“The working man has got to get together,” Walter Clements said in his quiet way. “All we want is to be able to get on with the job and take home a decent wage packet at the end of the week. Leastways, that's how I look at it. And I cassn't see that's too much to ask.”

“It shouldn't be. Especially when you look at what we've got to put up with—and how many's getting killed down the pit all the time,” Ewart Brixey put in. “ There was a bloke got his lot over at Beechleigh last week, weren't there? Suffocated when the floor caved in. And the week after Christmas, too.”

The others nodded their agreement, and not one of them passed comment, as a stranger might have done, on the oddity of a “ floor fall” causing the man's death.

Each and every one of them knew that in the topsy-turvy seams at Beechleigh colliery, roof was floor and floor was roof and had been ever since some huge geological disturbance had up-ended the rocks and crushed them into strange angles and disjointed arcs.

Working beneath soft, shored-up sand was just one of the hazards of being a miner, and sometimes it resulted in a death, along with the dangers of fire and flood, bad air and explosion, although here in Somerset an explosion was more likely to be caused by a badly laid shot than anything else, and many of the accidents were due to carelessness.

Still there were far too many deaths for a man's peace of mind, and it didn't stop there. There was the dust in the lungs that most miners suffered from after only a few years down the pit, and the hernias and groin injuries caused by carting putts of coal, not to mention the broken ribs and sprained backs from a hundred and one minor accidents and the general loss of health from simply being underground for so much of the time.

But far from being compensated, as they had hoped, the men were finding themselves worse and worse off. Why, already most of the collieries were working only four days a week, and future prospects were far from bright.

“There'll be another strike. No doubt about that,” Stanley Bristow said, voicing all their thoughts. “Stands to reason. People just won't put up with it. Not nowadays. And so long as we all stick together, we'm bound to get something done.”

“Ah, just so long as we do stick together,” Ewart Brixey said with a rare flash of insight “Trouble is, I've got a feeling it's going to end up this time with every man for himself.”

The others laughed at the idea, but had they known it, the events of the spring would prove that his words were not so very far from the truth.

IN MARCH, Jack undertook the first stint of teaching practice his university course demanded. He had known it would be expected of him as part of his second year's training, and he had been looking forward to getting back into the classroom. But when he was sent to a primary school in the poorest part of the city, he found things very different from the way they had been in Hillsbridge.

The buildings themselves were in a poor state of repair. The walls of the cloak-rooms were running with water, so that often the pupils went home in coats that were wetter than when they had arrived, and all members of the staff shared one tiny privy on the far side of the playground.

But more than the actual bricks and mortar of the school, it was the general air of poverty and deprivation that really upset Jack. Whether the area had been particularly affected by the depression, or whether it had always been this way, he had no real way of knowing, but he was shocked by the condition of some of the children.

There had been poor families in Hillsbridge, of course. There had been the fair-ground children, and the Higgins family from Eight Houses and the Pollocks from under the batch. They'd had lice in their cropped hair and holes in their shoes, stuffed up with cardboard. Sometimes they'd arrived at school with a piece of bread and jam in their hands, and Lord knows what tucked up the leg of their knickers. But compared with the children here, they were like kings and queens.

The children here didn't arrive with their breakfast in their hands. They had no breakfast, and sometimes had not eaten a tea the previous day either. They were scrawny and pinched, old before their time like wizened little men and women; some were aggressive and bullying, others cowed and miserable.

Congregating with the other teachers around the ancient coke stove one chilly playtime, Jack asked Hugh Eastment, the head teacher, why something wasn't done for them.

Hugh Eastment shrugged wearily. He was used to eager young students and new members of staff raising the point, and even going away to write lengthy reports on it, and it seemed almost criminal to disillusion them so soon. But they'd have to learn sometime. They couldn't go on in cloud cuckoo-land forever.

“There's nothing you can do,” he explained “Do you think we haven't tried, each and every one of us? When I first came here, I used to bring in a cake of soap to scrub the dirtiest, a bag of buns to feed the hungriest, and any good second-hand shoes I could find to put on the feet of those that needed them. And what happened? The buns were wolfed down by those who could eat the fastest, the children I washed with soap came in next morning dirtier than ever and the shoes found their way down to the pawn shop. It's a losing battle, I can tell you.”

“But surely they're not all the same,” Jack argued “If you could do something for just one of them, it would be worth it. They can't all be idiots underneath all that grime. There must be one or two who could do well if only they were given the chance.”

“I dare say, and we do our best. But it's no good coming here and expecting to work miracles. If you do, you'll only be disappointed,” the headmaster said flatly, and the other teachers nodded their agreement.

“He's right, more's the pity,” one of the younger ones told Jack. “It's the way people look at things round here that's to blame. They think all that matters is getting out and earning some money. The trouble is, with things as they are, there's not much chance of that at the moment.”

“Most of them consider education a waste of time anyway,” Hugh Eastment added. “Haven't you noticed—or did you put the lack of attention down to your own inexperience?”

Jack bristled. He had thought he'd held their attention pretty well considering a student was usually seen as fair game for any horseplay going, and he thought, too, that the others were wrong to give up so easily.

Perhaps many of the boys would grow up to be layabouts and louts, and the girls would be saddled with long families of their own almost before they had hung up their pinafores, but he felt sure there must be some eager to learn, given the opportunity and protected from the ridicule of their fellows.

One child in the class he was taking came to mind immediately, a boy whose face was bright beneath his pudding-basin haircut and who generally sat, fingers stuffed in his mouth, listening attentively to the lessons he had prepared.

“Take that boy Walter Heath,” he said, drinking his tea. “You know the one I mean? He's quick and clever. I've noticed him particularly.”

“He was asleep in my class this morning,” the young teacher told Jack triumphantly. “Clean away, with his head down on his desk. You see, it's the parents I blame. If a child is overtired, he can't learn any more than if he's hungry. But they don't seem to know that—or care much if they do.”

Jack grimaced, surprised to hear Walter had been so inattentive, but not ready yet to give up the argument. But Hugh Eastment was checking his watch and reaching for the bell-rope to summon the children back to classes, and discussion was at an end.

He did not forget, however, and that evening, making up his notes, he gave a lot of thought to how he could include a mention of established teachers' attitudes to boys like Walter Heath.

Note-making was a very important part of teaching practice. Jack had been told to provide himself with a good stout notebook, and in it he had to report on everything about the school where he was practising, from lighting to discipline, administration to toilet facilities. He was expected to draw detailed plans of the classrooms and playground, and to make suggestions as to how he would like to see things improved.

It was hard work and time consuming, but he enjoyed it, gaining great satisfaction from the neatly planned pages and meticulous detail. But tonight as he wrote, it was Walter Heath who was on his mind.

He was the one who could break out of the run if any of them could, Jack was sure of it. But why had he been so inattentive today? After the other teacher had mentioned it, Jack had noticed it himself. Was he just tired, as the teacher had suggested, or was he unwell? And if it was tiredness, was there nothing anyone could do—a word here or there—to insure he was fit to concentrate on the lessons that clearly interested him so much?

At last, sighing, Jack packed up his notebook and writing materials. Tomorrow was another day. And he would try to put some of his ideals into practice. If he didn't, he'd never be able to face his tutor at college again, no matter what Hugh Eastment and the other, more hardbitten teachers might say.

Next morning, he was disturbed however, to see his star pupil was clearly no more able to concentrate than he had been the day before.

“Are you all right, Walter?” he asked once, and although the boy replied, “Yessir,” his tone was such that Jack was sure he was not.

“Are you ill, or just tired?” he pressed him, very conscious of Hugh Eastment sitting at the back of the class and listening to him,

The boy rubbed a grubby hand across his rather flushed face.

“I'm a bit achy, that's all. And I can't keep warm.”

“I believe you've got a temperature,” Jack said, but the boy denied it, and after Jack had sent him to fetch his overcoat he settled back quite unobtrusively.

Later in the day, Hugh Eastment called him out of the room for a few minutes to discuss a teaching point, and when he returned the class was, as he had expected, in uproar.

“Back to your places at once!” Jack said sharply, hoping to impress Hugh Eastment, who was waiting on the other side of the door to see how he coped with the situation.

In the face of his authoritative tone, most of the pupils obeyed promptly, but he was surprised to see young Walter Heath still on his knees beside his chair.

“Well, Heath, and what do you think you are doing down there?” he asked sternly.

“I dropped me rubber, sir.”

“Never mind that now. Get up at once.”

The boy put a hand on the desk, appearing to try to pull himself up.

“Please, sir, I can't, sir,” he whimpered.

The rest of the class erupted into laughter, and Jack unreasonably felt more annoyed than if the offender had been any of the others.

“What do you mean, Walter, you can't get up?” he demanded.

“I just can't. Me bloomin' legs won't work” Tears were filling the boy's eyes, and Jack realized that this was no prank.

Giving him his hand, he pulled him up, and as he did so, he noticed that the boy's hands were hot and sticky though he was still shivering.

“I don't think you should be in school, Walter,” he said with decision. “ You'd better go home and get your mother to call the doctor in to have a look at you,”

His words were greeted by another hoot of derision from the pupils.

“We don't have no doctor! We gets better by ourselves!”

Behind him the door opened and the class jumped to attention as they saw their headmaster standing in the doorway.

“Standard Five! Are you behaving for Mr Hall? There'll be three strokes of the cane for the first one I see trying to be too clever. And you, Walter Heath, in your place at once!”

“Wait. He's ill,” Jack said and went on to explain to the headmaster. “I suggested the doctor,” he finished “That's what they were laughing at.”

Hugh Eastment nodded sharply. “They would. Come here, Walter, and let me have a look at you.”

The boy moved with difficulty and the headmaster sighed.

“You'd better get your cap and go home.”

Jack was somewhat shocked.

“He ought to have medical attention. I don't care for the look of him.”

The headmaster shrugged irritably. “ Maybe. But this is a school, not a hospital, though what with fumigations and inspections for head lice, I sometimes wonder. No, if he's sick enough, his mother will have to call the doctor, whether she wants to spend the money or not. His sister can take him home. She's in Standard Seven—quite a big girl.”

Jack was far from satisfied, but he knew there was little he could do. Hugh Eastment was right. It was a school, and with another forty children in this class alone to teach, there was no time or scope to do anything for Walter Heath, apart from sending him home. But all the same, it was far from the concept of teaching as he visualized it, and he decided that somehow, sometime, he would try to influence someone to accept his view that it should go much further than simply imparting knowledge of the three R's within four damp walls.

Walter Heath's sister, Lillian, did not return that day, and the next morning Jack sought her out.

“He's in hospital, mister,” she said when he asked after Walter. “He fell down on the way home, and he couldn't get up again.

We was going to carry him, but a man came along in a motor and took him off to the hospital.”

“Good gracious! Well, what's the matter with him?” Jack asked.

The girl wriggled up her nose in an effort to remember. “Rheumaticky fever,” she said at last.

“Rheumatic fever! Oh dear, dear,” Jack repeated.

He should have known, he supposed. The stiff, aching joints, and the high temperature. Poor little lad! He'd be well looked after if he was in hospital, of course. But you never knew with rheumatic fever. It could leave you with a weak heart.