The Rye Man (19 page)

He tried to keep it as light as possible, realising that too strident a criticism of the school for which they had held a lengthy stewardship would only be counter-productive, and so he concentrated on the school's potential. He could see pleased faces as he expressed his gratitude for the opportunities the job had presented him with and he sensed the silent approval coming from George who was sitting beside him. He got a few laughs about his inability to get the hole in the roof fixed and someone made a vaguely dubious joke about Mrs Craig and waters breaking. As he sat down again he felt his chairman's large hand pat his back.

‘I'd like to thank John for that very positive report and I'm sure gentlemen that you'll agree with me when I say that our school is in good hands. And I wonder if there isn't any other business if we haven't had enough for one night.' As he glanced deliberately at his watch Houston intervened.

‘I'm sure, Mr Chairman, the governors would welcome the opportunity to ask Mr Cameron some questions.'

In an obviously pre-arranged manoeuvre Appleby, the local dentist, led the way.

‘I was just wondering Mr Cameron, if you're sure that spending a full school day in outdoor pursuits can be justified at a time when preparations are still in hand for the transfer tests? I've nothing against them as such, but wonder if they wouldn't be better placed in the summer term after the test.'

‘
The centres are very heavily booked,' he said, ‘often a full year in advance – and we took advantage of a cancellation. I can assure you that the children got a great deal out of it, probably almost as much as their headmaster.' He suddenly saw an image of Jacqueline jumping from the rock, her coat flapping open like wings.

The Reverend Houston leaned forward on the table and, giving his question a weighty air of formality, asked ‘through the chair' which local primary school Mr Cameron had decided to work with in the EMU scheme. It was obviously a question to which the answer was already known but he received the information with a look of surprise, looking over his half-moon glasses with the air of a learned counsel who had just extracted some significant admission. ‘And what prompted that particular choice?' he asked.

He pointed out the rather spontaneous and impromptu nature of the arrangement, stressing that it had no long-term commitment from either school, then he outlined the short-term financial benefits. ‘And of course,' he said finally, ‘before any formal arrangement is entered into with any school I will certainly consult the governors, but at this point the whole idea is still at an exploratory stage.'

He seemed to have momentarily out-flanked Houston and with George throwing in reminders of the lateness of the hour, the advantage was rapidly draining away from those governors who harboured reservations.

‘Mr Cameron, through the chair, is there any truth that you're planning to have a joint carol service with Holy Cross?' The urgency of Houston's tone suggested he knew it was his final opportunity. ‘This school has for many years held their carol service in our church where I may add that a great many of our parents are members and it would be a major disappointment if that tradition was to be broken.'

Before
he had time to reply, Mr Gourley who had previously been silent throughout the meeting, launched into a rambling treatise about the fallacy of worshipping the Virgin Mary, the blasphemy of the mass and various theological criticisms of Catholicism. Everyone listened in embarrassment until eventually the chairman managed to intervene during a moment's pause and brought him to a halt, then offered the right of reply to Houston's question.

‘I'm sorry Reverend Houston but you seem to have been misinformed. The carol service will take place as normal in St John's and we're grateful for your continued generous use of the church. I'm told it's one of the highlights of the school year and I look forward to it. We must get together and finalise a date and you can give me your thoughts on a programme – I'll be looking to you for guidance. We are, though, having a short carol service in the town square the final week of term – there will be a range of other schools there, including Holy Cross. I think the Council's organising it as part of their Christmas programme and afterwards we shall be distributing food parcels to the senior citizens. So if you have any elderly or deserving parishioners do pass on their names and addresses.'

As soon as he had finished speaking the chairman declared the meeting closed, and as the other governors gathered up their papers and made their exits, he was congratulated on his performance, George chuckling in satisfaction at Houston's failure. But he declined the offer of a drink, feeling only a sense of cheapness. As they left, Eric stood impatiently at the front door with his hand on the light switch, turning it off before they had stepped fully outside. As George said goodnight and lumbered off to his car he shouted after him.

‘The right size for the job George.'

‘Aye the right size John, that's sure enough.'

As he watched him drive off into the night, the red tail-
lights
seemed to mock him before they, too, vanished into the darkness.

*

She lay facing out of the bed, the stiff line of her back marking her inviolable space. He wanted to stretch out his hand, to speak to her, but something stopped him and he turned away. And in his dream the blackness wrapped itself round him, palpable, constricting, choking. Tiny flecks of light glinted like yellow stitches in a seam of coal. Now he is the one who is trapped. He shuffles across the coldness of the stone floor, his out-stretched hands feeling for some doorway into the light that must lie beyond. He calls out but the words vanish on his lips and as he stumbles forward his face feels webbed and veiled. He hears the sounds of people passing close to him, recognises their voices, then tries to call out to them but they pass on by. Flies buzz round his eyes and fasten on the smear of his hair. His hands are banging noiselessly against the heavy door. Then finally the darkness closes over him and he drifts into a broken and shallow sleep.

*

It was Laura Fulton's second day off. They would have to wait for another day before they would be able to get in a substitute teacher. He covered some of her classes and at other times the children were spread round other teachers ensuring disruption to everyone's day. To compound matters it rained heavily and was too wet to let the children out at break. They herded the older children into the hall and showed them a cartoon video he kept in his desk for emergencies. Water was dripping from Mrs Craig's roof at an
enthusiastic
rate and to amuse the children she had placed a little plastic duck in the bucket.

He had an informal interview with a Mrs Conway who had been suggested by Houston, but he wasn't impressed. She hadn't taught for several years, knew little about the new curriculum and talked more of her friendship with Haslett and Vance. As a short-term replacement she might have been reasonable but it worried him that if she got her foot in the door, and Miss Fulton decided she'd had enough, he could well find himself stuck with her. When she'd gone he spent some time phoning round other heads, asking if they could suggest someone, but he drew a blank. When he'd given up he phoned Laura Fulton to see how she was and when she'd be likely to return. It was her mother who answered and she proceeded to tell him how exhausted her daughter was, the number of hours she had put in every night on school work, about the collapse of her social life and how worried she and her husband were about her health. It sounded as if she blamed him for the situation. Their doctor had told her that she must take a complete break and wouldn't let her return until he gave his approval. She would be off at least the rest of the week and there was a vagueness about her answers in relation to a return which worried him, but he said little, apart from conveying his sympathy and his hopes for a full recovery. After completing the call he phoned Mrs Conway and asked her if she would start work right away and felt equal amounts of relief and regret when she agreed.

As he sat at his desk looking at Laura Fulton's timetable he saw that it was the period when she took Jacqueline for extra help in reading. He went down to Vance's room to collect her. The class were listening to some classical piece of music played on Vance's own CD-player which he sometimes brought to school. They sat up straight in their rows, arms
folded,
each face staring blankly into space, as if listening to some foreign language whose meaning eluded them. He nodded apologetically to Vance and signalled to Jacqueline to come with him. As she stood up she tripped over the strap of a schoolbag and knocked her books to the floor. A snigger ran round the room but Vance silenced it with a look. She gathered up the books and replaced them on her desk, then, bringing her reader, passed up the aisle without raising her head.

He didn't want to intimidate her by using his office so he looked around for somewhere else. As they walked down the corridor he glanced out of a side window. It was starting to rain again. He saw Eric heading across the playground towards his house, a copy of the
Sun
held on his head like a flat cap. The wind billowed out his coat revealing a large pack of pink coloured toilet rolls. He took her into one of the cloakroom areas and found them two chairs but before he started to read he tried to get her to chat, asking if she liked Mr Vance's music. When she shook her head in reply he made her speak by asking who her favourite pop groups were. He'd never heard of them but pretended he had. They sounded like rap bands but he got no response when he asked about them further. He asked about her mother, said they'd enjoyed her jam and asked what her father and brother were doing on the farm, persisting until she made some kind of response. At first she spoke in single words or short phrases but he kept asking simple questions until gradually, as she relaxed, her replies became less closed and staccato. She spoke of helping her father on the farm, herding cattle along the road when they were moving fields, and he nodded his head with interest, watching her intently as she talked about her father.

She was wearing a grey sweat-shirt with a faded print of a Florida surf club and a grey pleated skirt with white ankle socks and cheap-looking trainers, the rim of their soles grimed
with
grass stains. On one of her knees was a crusted scab where she had fallen or banged her knee. He could see little pin-heads of grit in the penumbral skin around it but it was the type of mark that every other knee in the school wore – a kind of badge of growing up, of running too fast, of too reckless a jump. It almost reassured him, binding her to the other children. When she spoke her strangely pellucid eyes seemed to widen and dart about like small fish in a pool, as if enjoying the freedom but always wary of the watching world like some timid creature who comes to drink at a water-hole. Her skin was pale and unmarked, blending with the blondness of her hair which was cut in a shapeless style and suggested her mother had done the job. But despite the alert movement of her eyes there was something incomplete, almost unfinished about her features, like an image which hadn't fully focused. It made her seem younger than she was, vulnerable and unformed.

He thought, too, of the bruising on her arm, remembered her head falling like a stone on to her book, the stiffness of her arm the first time he touched her. Tried to weigh it against the other images – her mother touching her hair, pulling up her socks, the way she spoke about helping her father on the farm, McQuarrie's fist dropping on to the table. He had to be sure, even if it was only in his head. As she opened and turned the pages of her book, trying to find where she had left off, he stared at her and tried desperately to read what her face told him, but as he looked at her eyes there was only a limpid transparency which reflected nothing other than his desire to know.

She started to read, finger-pointing the words. ‘Tom and Alison went on their bikes to Cherry Tree Farm.'

There was the now familiar faint scent of urine from her.

‘It was a very sunny day and there were no clouds in the
sky.'
She stuttered through the words, a pause between each one, her voice an unbroken monotone. ‘When they arrived at the farmhouse their aunt Dorothy gave them a glass of lemonade and two of the buns she had just baked.'

She was identifying the words quite well, stumbling only a little over the unfamiliar syllables of the aunt's name, her mouth rehearsing the attempt. Occasionally he helped her but only when she had ground to a halt. He wondered how much she was assimilating but for the moment she moved on at the snail-pace which represented a struggle of concentration and determination. Like climbing a mountain, one tiny foothold at a time, resting on a safe little ledge where she recognised some familiar grouping of words, then staggering onwards, her finger probing like a blind man's stick. He wondered what would happen to her in life, wondered too what the world looked like through those translucent eyes (the blue the colour of some insect's delicate wing). Did she know her world was different from the children's she sat beside each day or was she happy within the parameters of her own world because she knew no different world existed? Tom and Alison on Cherry Tree Farm, helping their uncle set up stooks of hay, making a little wigwam where they had a picnic and fed crumbs to the birds. Cherry Tree Farm with white palisade fencing and yellow fields where there was no muck or shit or bits of tractors with their insides spilling out.

His eyes ran round the cloakroom – it had been one of the original classrooms. Mrs Preston had once given him a sixpence for his skill in reading, bringing him to the front of the class to show off. She had always picked him to read in carol services. One year he forgot to wait for the congregation to find the passage and he had finished the prophecy of Isaiah before anyone had time to find it.