The Rye Man (4 page)

She was looking up at him, her brown eyes and unbroken attention encouraging him to flow on.

‘The classroom's the only place you can learn. In teaching there's lots of ways that are wrong but there's no one right way, so be confident, step out, don't be frightened to make mistakes and learn from them. That's what it's all about.'

She thanked him and the genuineness of her tone made him feel good. Two small girls came up hand in hand and
one
of them said that her friend needed to go to the toilet. He held the door open for them and took his leave, watching the children's diffident progress down the corridor, unused to being out on their own.

Mrs Patterson appeared. There was a phone call for him in the office – a sales rep trying to sell him a new reading scheme which was supplemented by a range of computer software. He listened politely for a while and then declined the package as being outside the range of his budget. There was a parent waiting to collect her daughter who had been sick and he offered sympathy and made some comment about first day nerves. There were more returns and an inventory of furniture to be completed. When he resumed his tour Miss McCreavey's class were in the middle of a music lesson and the air vibrated with the tinkle of chimes and finger cymbals. Some pupils played recorders, and through the glass in the door he could see Miss McCreavey beating time on a yellow-skinned tambourine, but whatever tune it was seemed to have got lost, and he passed on by.

As he walked it was the skipping song of the girls he heard again, the swish and slap of the rope, the laughter in their voices. He stored it safely in his memory. Ahead, light angled through a high window and splashed against the walls, illuminating the smear of small fingerprints. He paused for a second and touched the wall, pressing the tips of his own fingers into it. Perhaps if he could hold tightly to their song it might drown out the other sounds which had returned to seep through his dreams. But then the light faded and he was conscious again only of the recorders' high-pitched whine, the tinkle and thud of the tambourine.

There was a boy standing outside Mrs Haslett's room and it was obvious from his sheepish stance that he had been ejected. When the boy saw him coming, he leaned off the wall
and
tried to appear as if his presence there had some legitimate purpose.

‘Are you waiting for a bus?' There was no reply. ‘What's your name?'

‘Mark.'

‘I don't think there's a bus on this route, Mark.'

‘I've been put out of class.'

‘What for, Mark?'

The boy shuffled his feet and patted the wall behind him with the palms of his hands, then stared vacantly into space.

‘I can ask Mrs Haslett if you like.'

‘Calling Simon Porter names.'

‘And what did you call Simon Porter?'

‘Don't want to say, Sir.'

‘Well then, it must've been something pretty bad.'

‘He called me names first. He's always calling me names but he never gets into trouble.' Tears were beginning to well up in the boy's eyes and he was pushing himself back against the wall in a kind of rhythm.

‘What did Simon Porter call you, Mark?'

‘He said I had AIDS and he told the other boys not to go near me.'

‘And do you have AIDS, Mark?'

‘No.' A fat globular tear leaked down his cheek.

‘And what did you call Simon Porter?'

‘It's rude, Sir.'

‘Whisper it to me . . . a bit louder. I can't hear you.'

‘A willie watcher.'

‘And is Simon Porter a willie watcher, Mark?'

‘No, Sir.'

‘Well, then, it all sounds a bit stupid to me and it's ended up in a bit of a mess, hasn't it?' He handed the boy his handkerchief. ‘Go down to the boys' toilets and splash your
face
and when you feel OK come back up and we'll get you back into class.'

He nodded and handed back the crumpled handkerchief, then set off quickly down the corridor.

When he entered Muriel Haslett's room she was haranguing her class and she stopped in mid-flow and stared at him, her initial embarrassment changing to irritation at his interruption. For a second he thought she was going to ask him what he wanted, but she regained her composure and assumed the patronising tone he had come to associate with her.

Although he knew her already by reputation, in the short time they had worked together he had developed a dislike for her. Her contribution on the Baker day had been negligible and negative, and it was perfectly clear without words being used that she resented his arrival in the school. Perhaps she had envisaged herself as the new vice-principal in the event of Kenneth Vance, the internal candidate, proving successful. It was obvious that she was going to be difficult, a source of obstruction. He knew that she saw herself as the first lady of the school, enlisting some and intimidating others into her corner.

She was in her late forties, had slumped into overweight but wore expensive and stylish clothes. She had tightly-permed hair which was coloured a mauvish tint and blue-framed glasses with thick lenses that made her eyes round and owl-shaped. From their first introduction she had made it obvious that she would not be buying whatever it was he had to sell, adopting a kind of superior weariness, a spurious wisdom which suggested she had arrived at a state of excellence which needed neither modification nor appraisal. There was something almost fascinating about her awfulness and he was intrigued to see her in front of children. They sat in rows at double desks in straight rows, silent but surreptitiously
watching
and listening, obviously conditioned in how to behave in front of a visitor because no one spoke, not even a furtive whisper behind hands. They were working on some exercise out of textbooks. From the patterns on the pages it looked like maths. In one corner was a nature table, furbished with the remains of last year's collection – dried up birds' nests, some jagged cacti, something that looked like a sheep's skull, assorted bones and a few wilted plants. On the back walls were three science posters, one of the corners flapping over where the drawing pin was missing, and faded pages of children's writing. Looking around, he felt like someone who had just purchased a property and found his first piece of damp rot.

She was talking down to him, jokingly berating her pupils' inability to master some new concept but he hardly heard what she was saying for thinking of what he was going to do with her. She was talking about his mother – she was the choir mistress of his mother's church – and it was the second time she had spoken about her. It was her way of saying, ‘I know who you are and where you come from.' He made some polite reply then cut across her line of conversation with a question about the boy in the corridor. She flustered a little and mumbled something which made little sense and he pressed home his momentary advantage by diverting suddenly into another avenue of thought, then excused himself and started to leave. At the door he paused.

‘Mrs Haslett, could you please send Simon Porter to my room.'

‘Now?'

‘Yes, please.' As he spoke, he smiled deliberately at her then was gone.

After
the boy had left he remembered the two occasions he had been sent to the headmaster's office. The first was in the company of James McMaster and Harry Gordon for having broken a window with a catapult. Gordon had fired the deadly shot but he and McMaster had been fingered as accomplices. The memory made him smile, but it faded as he remembered the thin white welt of pain which quivered the fingertips of both hands, and when the letter had arrived home his mother had taken the wooden spoon to the soft parts of his legs. The second time had been at the height of his temporary fame to receive a commendation for his part in the story that was on everyone's lips. He even had his name read out in assembly and a photographer from the local paper had arrived one afternoon to take his picture. It had been taken against the side wall of the school and when it appeared the following week his mother had given off to him for not having the wit to brush his hair before it was taken.

A small town hero. He remembered the feeling very clearly, the handshakes from older men, the whispers in church, the free bag of clove rock Mr McFaul had given him in his shop. He had worn his pride like a little badge – been pointed out to the uninformed and generally made a fuss of. He had lived off it for maybe a year, trading on it, cashing it in when other funds were low, and even now he knew some of the older people in the community still identified him by reference to it. His mother had kept all the newspaper cuttings and pasted them into a child's scrapbook. The memory of it felt as if it had been regenerated by his coming back to his old school, perhaps the final commendation, the reward he had finally come to claim.

Not even the thought of Mrs Haslett could tarnish that feeling. She was strong and she was cunning but he knew he held both the past and present cleanly and surely in his hands,
cupping
them in a chalice of self-belief. And now no child who came within the realms of his world, entered the gates of his school, would ever suffer like that again. He was not a religious person, but he did believe he carried some appointed kind of responsibility to see such a thing belonged only in the crinkled, yellowing pages of a faded newspaper.

He glanced out of the window and caught the arcing black flight of a crow flapping across the sky. He shivered as another memory shuffled towards the door he tried to keep tightly locked: a child's voice calling to him, the pleading, sobbing, breaking out of the mired blur of his dreams. His hand sought the consolation of the wooden grain of his desk, plucked at the calming reality of the wash of printed paper.

*

The lunchtime bell rang in his head like an alarm, the darkness of his thoughts suddenly disturbed by the rising sounds of released children. He could not decide whether the morning had dragged or gone quickly as children's heads bobbed by his window and from next door came voices and locker doors opening. It had been his intention to join the staff but now he wasn't quite so sure. Perhaps he should let the dust of his arrival settle a little before he joined them, maybe they would feel he was imposing himself on them, intruding in what they might consider to be their domain. As he hesitated, there was a knock at his office door and before he had time to respond he was looking at George Crawford, the chairman of his Board of Governors.

‘Checking up on me already, George?'

‘Get away with you. I've better things to do with my time. Just you plough a straight furrow and you'll not be seeing me more than you have to. I only called in to see if the seat fits
you
all right.' He lumbered into the office and slumped into the chair, his size and weight making the journey seem arduous. He declined the offer of a cup of tea and dabbed the sides of his mouth with a clean white linen handkerchief.

He had known George Crawford since childhood and he was never fully able to shake off those childish impressions. He remembered him as the generous host who held barn dances for church funds. A big man in a cowboy shirt that billowed out of his waistband, calling the dances, slapping his broad thigh in time to the music. He had sat high up in the piled bales of hay with the other younger children and watched their parents move with unexpected grace and shocking abandon, as fiddlers played and papery-winged moths fluttered frantically around the trembling, hissing oil lamps; outside, the breathing, rustling night. Getting carried home on your father's shoulders with sleep nestling in your eyes and clutching the bar of chocolate George had given all the children.

Now, though, he was a central character in the community, someone who had started out farming a modest family holding and then begun to deal in farm machinery, gradually establishing a very lucrative business which operated across the whole province. With commercial success had come all the trappings of wealth – the big house outside the town, the expensive car, but none of them had seemed to change the essence of his character as a practical man who was dismissive of all forms of pretension and disdainful of deference.

‘And how are the troops shaping up?'

‘Well, I've been round some this morning. I haven't had time to call with Mr Vance yet.'

‘You're not missing much there. If thon boy smiled he'd crack his face. His father was just the same. Ran a local amateur operatic society, and looked down his nose at anyone who didn't think he was the bee's knees. He once asked me
who
Hank Williams was!' He paused and ran his palm across the bottom of his folded chin as if checking that he had remembered to shave. ‘Vance must think I'm senile if he thought I'd hand over this school to a streak of piss like him. If I'd had my way he wouldn't even have been made vice-principal.'

He felt a little shocked by the description of Vance, uncomfortable at having one of his staff described in that way. ‘They say he gets a good rate of passes in the qualifying exam,' he said defensively.

‘Aye, I suppose that's true enough and that's what parents want, no doubting that these days. But you know how he got the vice-principal's job? It was that snake-in-the-grass Houston. I'd been away in London the week before and he'd canvassed the whole committee. It was all sewn up before I knew what was happening. Of course, it's purely coincidental that the Reverend Houston's wife is the leading lady of the operatic.' He was shaking his head as if cursing his own duplicity in the affair. ‘I'm telling you now, John, we need to watch Houston. He's a devious bugger and he's always stirring it. Half the time it's that bitch of a wife winds him up. But the next governor's meeting he tries anything we'll see him coming and together we'll work out how to deball him.'

Children's heads flailed past the window, arms windmilling.