In Love with a Gentleman (5 page)

After breakfast, Edwin is thrilled to have someone he can show off the entire farm and its surrounding environment to. He takes me to a neighboring farm, where there are two Shire horses in a paddock. I’ve never seen such massive horses. The head of a Shire horse is as big as a medium-sized sheep. Its hooves are the diameter of a pie plate! I stay well away from the fence, but Edwin is fearless. He grabs the animals by their manes, pats their ears, and strokes their noses.

Then we go back to the farm. The old stuccoed farmhouse is painted pink and looks slightly askew, set amid flowering perennials. Although I’m not used to seeing a pink house—in fact, I’ve never seen a pink house before—it just looks like it should be pink. Any other color just wouldn’t fit. I follow Edwin to the garden, where he shoos the geese aside as they honk excitedly. He leads me to the slightly overgrown rear part of the property. The goat is tied up here, determined to nibble all the grass within reach. As we approach, she raises her head and eyes us peacefully as she chews. Then she dedicates herself to eating again.

Edwin grabs a shovel and starts to dig into a mound of earth.
What is this boy doing?

Panting with effort, he says, “This mound is the farm’s old garbage dump.”

And why do we want to mess around with this
?
I wonder.

“It’s over four hundred years old!” he continues, undeterred. “You mustn’t think of it as just a garbage dump. People used to throw everything into holes in their gardens. For centuries this is where they tossed things they could no longer use.”

His shovel clatters against something, and he bends down to pick it up. He turns it in his hand and holds it against the light. It’s green.

“Look,” he says, “an old glass bottle! Maybe they kept oil or some kind of medicine in it.”

He hands it to me. The bottle looks quaint and very old. The glass is solid and thick, and feels heavy in my hand. It was probably handblown.

Edwin throws down the shovel. “You can keep it. It’s a museum piece. Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you everything I’ve found.”

At the house, we bend over a small chest. He has more glass bottles, empty cream containers with barely legible print, porcelain shards, and even a dog tag.

“They probably buried the whole dog there,” Edwin says.

A chill runs down my spine. “As long as it was just a dog,” I joke. “Who knows who or what else they may have buried there?”

Sunday flies by in no time.

In the evening, Linda and Edwin jump on bikes and offer me one. We cycle far into the countryside. We cycle past low wood-frame houses and houses that are colorfully stuccoed like the farmhouse. A farmer is burning stubble in his field. We stop and watch the dancing flames eat up the ground. The air is filled with the spicy scent of autumn and burning vegetation. I love this area. Only after it’s become dark and cool do we cycle back to Powlands Farm. The geese greet us with their excited chatter.

After dinner, we sit down together in front of the TV. On one show, Germans in spiked helmets strut about, clicking their heels together and holding out their arms, yelling,
“
Achtung
!” They all have pointed Kaiser Wilhelm beards. Culturally and historically, none of it’s really accurate, but it’s amusing.

My hosts look a little embarrassed. “I hope you don’t mind,” Edwin says.

I smile. “No, not at all. It’s funny to see how you view us Germans.”

They smile with relief. Morris says, “We know you’re not like that.”

“Well, I should hope not!” I exclaim.

Morris continues, “But it is kind of fun to imagine you are.”

Hmm
, I think,
probably because the English are proud to have won both wars
. I suppose it’s a relatively harmless pleasure for Morris to make fun of his European neighbors. I wonder whether my new students expect me to wear a spiked helmet tomorrow.

The next morning Linda and I walk side by side along the road to school. I’m wearing gray wool pants and a green cardigan over a white blouse. Linda confirmed that I’ll definitely pass for a teacher. She’s wearing the school uniform: a dark-blue skirt, a yellow blouse, and a dark-blue V-neck sweater.

“What do you do if you don’t like yellow?” I ask Linda.

Linda shakes her head darkly. “You can’t do anything. These colors are mandatory. The yellow makes me want to puke. The boys are lucky. They have light-blue shirts and look a thousand times better. I’m looking forward to the sixth form. Then we can wear whatever we want.” The sixth form in England is like senior year.

About twenty minutes after we left the farm, we reach the village, walking past small shops and homes. Linda leads me onto a side street. Lots of cars are pulling up, driven by parents dropping off their children; many are laughing and chatting. I catch sight of a modern building with a flat roof behind a fence: Gatingstone School. My heart beats faster. I feel like a kid on the first day of school, or on a visit to the dentist.

“I’ll take you to the teachers’ lounge,” Linda says. “Then I have to go to class. Do you want to meet this afternoon and walk back together?”

I only nod because I’m too nervous to speak.

Linda leaves me in front of the teachers’ lounge, my heart beating wildly. What’s next? Who do I need to talk to? Apparently, I’m standing in the way, because the next thing I know, someone bumps into me.

“Whoops,” says a voice. “Sorry! Are you new? Do you know where your classroom is?”

I turn around. A man is standing in front of me, and I swear I’ve seen him before. But how can that be? Who would I know in Gatingstone?

His dark eyes examine me from top to bottom. “Maybe you’re looking for the door handle?” he asks.

Now it sinks in, and I laugh freely. “No,” I reply, “not at the moment.”

He frowns. “So, you’re looking for your classroom. What grade are you in?”

Again, I laugh. “There appears to be a misunderstanding. I’m not a pupil; I’m a teacher.”

The man looks at me, dumbfounded. “And you expect me to believe that?”

I admit I do look pretty young, and, strictly speaking, it hasn’t been that long since I was a student myself. The drawback to my youthful looks is that it’s hard for anybody to take me seriously. I start to explain this, but luckily my salvation comes in the form of an older gentleman rushing toward me. He looks quite elegant, with his graying temples and light-colored suit.

“You must be Ms. König!” the older gentleman says. “I’ve been looking for you! Welcome to our school. Did you have a nice trip? How are your accommodations? Come along, I’ll show you to the language department’s teachers’ lounge. Your colleagues are looking forward to meeting you!”

He takes me by the elbow and leads me away. I look over my shoulder—I really would like to know the name of the man who helped me at the train station and what he’s doing here, but he has disappeared.

As it turns out, the older gentleman is Mr. Henley, the head of the modern languages department. He brings me to a small teachers’ lounge, where I meet the other language teachers. They shake my hand or nod at me pleasantly.

I’m paired with a German-language teacher, who will show me the ropes. I follow her into a classroom, where there are thirty children dressed in blue, light blue, and yellow. They are trying their best to master the German language. I’m hopeful that I’ll eventually be able to take over the entire one-hour lesson myself.

After the class ends, we return to the teachers’ lounge, where we find Mr. Henley waiting for me. Next to him is a young woman with very rosy cheeks and smooth, black bobbed hair.

“This is Catherine.” Mr. Henley introduces us. “She hails from Brittany and is the assistant teacher for French.”

Catherine and I look at one another, and we hit it off instantly. She’s shy, but her smile is warm and friendly. I think we both feel a little overwhelmed by everything. Neither of us knows exactly what’s expected of us, and whether we’ll succeed in our work or be happy doing it. Mr. Henley is responsible for looking after us, so he seems to notice the instant camaraderie between Catherine and me with relief.

“Take a little time to get to know each other,” he says, then rushes off to his next class.

Catherine and I sit down at a table, and before we know it, we’re deep in conversation. She tells me about her home in a small fishing village and her two sisters, who miss her. She’s staying with a police officer and his family in town. I tell her about the Seafields and their children. I’m charmed by Catherine’s lovely, distinctive French accent. When she speaks English, she often omits an
h
sound when she needs one or puts one where it doesn’t belong.

Catherine looks at the wall clock. “I need to be in a class in ’alf an hour.” She makes “hour” sound like it begins with “how.” I wonder if I also have such a strong accent. Well, that’s the reason why we’re here in England—to improve our language skills.

We make plans to eat lunch together in the school cafeteria and meet up at exactly one o’clock, after we’re done sitting in on our respective classes. With ninety students gathered all at once in the large cafeteria, the noise is deafening. The students are noisy, almost hyper, shouting across the tables at each other. Once Catherine and I finally pick up our food at the counter and find a free table, we try to talk about our classes, but we can barely hear each other. We end up yelling as if we’re sitting in a nightclub with music blaring.

The food is nothing special, and I watch the students, especially the boys, ignore the main dish, which is actually the most nutritious part of the meal, and eat a bowl full of French fries instead. I wonder if their parents know they’re eating junk food, and if so, do they care? I try to ask Catherine’s opinion, but she can’t hear me over the din. She shrugs.

When we’re finished eating, we flee from the noise into the hallway.

Catherine asks, “See you tonight?”

“Sure, but where?” I answer.

Catherine smiles at me broadly. “In Brantwood!”

“Excuse me?”

“The course for the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English.”

Now it’s coming back to me. The course was mentioned during my registration for my year as an assistant. It provides proof of English proficiency and is an important certification when applying for a job. I’d enrolled in the course but simply forgot about it with all the excitement of travel.

“Oh, yes, of course,” I say. “What time is the course, and where is it exactly?” I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t have the information.

“It’s at the adult-education school in Brantwood,” says Catherine. “You know what? Let’s take the bus together—it’ll be fun.”

“Great,” I say. “I look forward to it. I’ll meet you at the bus stop.”

“Between you and me,” Catherine adds, “I find it pretty boring to spend evenings in front of the TV with my hosts. I look forward to getting to know the other language assistants in this corner of England.”

“I agree,” I say. I think to myself that the Seafields aren’t that boring; I would be perfectly happy watching another film with strange Germans wearing pointed helmets.

At the end of the school day, Mr. Henley presents me with my schedule. It seems reasonable enough. I’ll have to attend about twelve lessons per week, or two to three hours per day. Students, in comparison, work their fingers to the bone. When Linda and I meet after school to walk home together, she’s tired and relatively reticent, which I can understand. The comprehensive school goes all day and can be long and exhausting.

We walk along the street, past shops and houses. When we finally reach the open meadow, a question occurs to me. I ask Linda, “There’s a teacher at school who I’ve seen before, when I arrived at Brantwood.”

Linda frowns. “Brantwood? Who are you talking about?”

I describe him to her—tall, broad shouldered, dark eyes, quite handsome.

Linda stops and ponders. “Hmm. Was he older? If so, then perhaps it’s Mr. Jones. He’s the physics teacher. But he’s fat, not broad shouldered.”

I insist. “No, this guy is athletically built and pretty young. I’d guess he’s about twenty-eight.”

“Ah,” Linda says, as if a lightbulb suddenly turned on. “I know who you mean. How stupid of me not to think of him right away! You mean Ethan Derby. He’s the worst around here. He teaches physical education and history, and all the girls are crazy about him. They say that a brokenhearted student almost committed suicide over him two years ago.” Linda blushes, as though she’s not entirely immune to the charms of Ethan Derby herself.

“Yes, the description fits,” I say. I think about his dark eyes, which gazed at me in amusement at the station, then gave me the once-over this morning in front of the teachers’ lounge.

“Don’t fall for him,” Linda adds, sounding like my father. “He’s a total womanizer. He only wants your body, not your heart.”

I break into a fit of laughter upon hearing her melodramatic warning. “Thanks for the warning! How do you come up with such priceless words of wisdom?”

But Linda’s expression remains serious. “Listen to me, Lea. Don’t tempt fate and lose your heart and your independence here in Gatingstone.”

Again, it sounds so melodramatic that I laugh uproariously. “Okay, whatever,” I say. “Do you read dime-store novels in your spare time, Linda?”

“Go ahead and laugh,” Linda says. “You’ll see soon enough that I’m right.”

By the time we finish dinner, it’s pitch-black outside and raining in torrents. While the Seafields make themselves comfortable in front of the TV, I go up to the guest room and pull my pocket umbrella out of my suitcase. I’d been warned that I wouldn’t be able to go a week without an umbrella here in east England. How right they were!

I hang a purse with my pen, paper, and wallet over my shoulder and pull on my anorak.

“Bye!” I shout through the TV-room door. It looks so cozy in there. Morris has again made a nice fire in the fireplace, and Melissa’s tasteful lamps and comfortable furniture look even more inviting than they did yesterday after my exhausting trip.

“Have fun!” Melissa shouts back.

As if
, I think. I push through the front door into the darkness. The bus stop is only about five minutes away, but by the time I get there, the driving rain has already soaked my pants. I think about just going back home, but I can’t let Catherine down. What will she think if I don’t show up? And I really want to get this Cambridge certificate thing. I can’t possibly miss the first class.