Lord God Made Them All (22 page)

I was obviously in the staff room, and I realised that I must have presented a strange sight. I had brought only my working clothes with me on the voyage and was clad in the black plastic macintosh I wore round the farms. This coat was frayed at cuffs and collar, and tattered by many horn thrusts. When horns tore off buttons and ripped pockets, I didn’t like to pass it on to Helen to repair, because despite my efforts to keep it clean it carried the powerful odour of the farmyard deep in its seams. So I always did the sewing myself, using the thick, bright-blue nylon with which I stitched cows’ wounds. This, with the ends of the coloured threads hanging loose, gave the garment an even more bizarre appearance.

They all continued to stare, but the man at the head of the table had clearly seen enough. He rose from his chair and hurried through a door at the far end. It didn’t need a lot of intuition to know that he had gone to the telephone.

A realisation of my imprudence was dawning on me, but I swallowed a lump in my throat, gave what I hoped was a winning smile and said, “Madame Juowskaya?”

One of the women nodded; the others looked at her questioningly, and she turned deathly pale. She must have thought I was somebody sinister because she was undoubtedly frightened.

The captain could see it was time he took over. He stepped in front of me and addressed the company rapidly in German. He told them that I was chairman of the P.T.A. in Darrowby, but this information, not surprisingly, evoked no gasps of awe.

I stood there, the centre of all those female eyes. They were a very attractive lot of young women, for all the world like teachers in Britain except for one dark-skinned Mongolian miss, but it was easy to see that they were not similarly impressed with me.

The captain, a man of infinite resource, came to the rescue again and asked which one was the English teacher. The prettiest of them all came forward, and I was just about to speak to her when the door behind me burst open and two Russian army officers marched in.

They were massive men, very smart in their high-shouldered uniforms, epaulettes with stars, breeches and shiny high boots. They began to speak rapidly with the man who had returned to the top of the table, glaring over at me every few seconds. The man was wide-eyed, throwing his arms around, shaking his head, and I required no knowledge of Russian to divine that he was telling them that I had rushed in here from nowhere, he had no idea who the devil I was and he didn’t like the look of me one little bit.

I do not wish to be over-dramatic, but I am convinced that if Captain Rasmussen had not been with me, I would have been hustled off to the local jail, but he stepped in once more with a flurry of explanations in German.

Another thing that saved me was that the little English teacher began to talk to me about the school. I sat down by her side at the table, and the officers moved close to me as we spoke together. All the time I was very conscious of their towering presence; they hung over me, looking me up and down, no doubt mystified at my eccentric apparel.

On an inspiration, I asked the English teacher her name. It was a real jawbreaker and I couldn’t make much of it, but she said she was known as what sounded like “Kitty.” She told me she was married, with a child of six.

She clapped her hands together. “Oh, I am so excited,” she said. “I have taught English for so long, but I have never spoken to a real Englishman before. You must tell me if my pronunciation is very bad.”

“I give you my word, you speak better English than I do,” I replied. And with my thick Glaswegian, it was the literal truth. Kitty was delighted.

She told me that the director of the school had taken all the 1200 children away for the day on what was a regular visit to some local institution, where they saw a film show and listened to talks. This accounted for the silence. The big man at the head of the table was the deputy director.

As we swapped information, the other teachers pulled their chairs closer to us and listened with the greatest interest as Kitty passed everything on to them. Even the forbidding deputy director could not contain his curiosity and leaned across the table, elbows on the wood, watching me intently.

As the atmosphere grew more cordial, I was relieved to see the two officers move away and lean against the wall. Their previous hostile expressions were now merely impassive.

A hectic question-and-answer ensued, with Kitty relaying my words round the table.

“At what age do your children start school?” she asked.

When I replied, “At four or five years old,” it caused general amazement

“Ours do not start till seven or eight years old,” she said, and I was similarly surprised.

The deputy director got quite heated on this point. He banged his hand on the table and declared that, according to the principles of education, it was impossible to teach children of five. What could they possibly learn? he wanted to know.

When I told him they learned simple sums and words to start with, he shook his head vigorously in disbelief.

All the teachers were astonished, too, to hear about the normal school hours in Britain. Kitty told me that younger Russian children go from 8:30
A.M.
till 2:30
P.M.
, and the fifth and sixth formers go from 2:30
P.M.
till 7
P.M.
or 8
P.M.
at night.

Their classes average about thirty in number, and they teach all the mathematical subjects, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and Russian history. The principal foreign language at that school is English, then German and Lithuanian. French or Latin is not taught.

I had to get in a question about sport. “Do you have games in your curriculum?”

Kitty raised her hands and laughed. “Many, many games. Volley ball is the most popular, but there is also swimming, hockey, skating, football, P.E. and gymnastics.

“Also,” she went on, “we have many school clubs and outside activities. Do you have pioneers in your country?”

I presumed that this meant camping and hiking. I said yes, we did this, too, in our schools, and I launched into an explanation of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme. I struck an unexpected snag here because none of them had even heard of the Duke of Edinburgh.

I laughed. “Oh, surely you must know him. Our Queen’s husband?”

Blank faces and shrugs all round.

“Edinbor? Edinbor?” Kitty queried.

“Yes, of course,” I replied. “The capital of Scotland.”

“But Dublin is the capital of Scotland,” she said, so I decided to drop that topic.

Just about then, the army officers, seeing the teachers grouped around me, laughing and talking animatedly, apparently decided I was harmless and left the room. The atmosphere, which had thawed remarkably, became still more cordial, and the questioning went on at top speed.

“Do you teach religion?” I asked. Of course, I knew very well that they didn’t, but I was interested to see what they would say.

Their reaction was pretty uniform—a kind of pitying amusement. One big dark girl, smiling sarcastically, put a question through Kitty.

“Do you teach about Darwin, too?”

I nodded. “Yes, we teach religion, and also about evolution and the scientific explanations of the beginnings of the world and of man.”

This caused general puzzlement.

We discussed their attitude to religion, and I gathered that it is regarded as a private thing and people can go to church if they wish. It is not banned, nor is there any propaganda against it in the schools. The teachers seemed to be of the opinion that it would just quietly die out. There are three churches in Klaipeda, but in some towns of a similar size there are many more.

The teachers commiserated with me on the tremendous unemployment and poverty in Britain, and I got the impression that they thought I came from a land of starvation and soup kitchens. When I told them that British workers enjoyed a steady improvement in their living standards and that many of them owned cars, they looked at me with frank incredulity. Obviously they thought I was purveying capitalist propaganda.

And in one way, I couldn’t blame them. I could see their eyes flickering over my ragged coat with the torn-down pockets and the buttons with their blue garlands. If this was a British professional man, what were the ordinary workers like?

“But your teachers do not have our standard of living,” one of them declared.

I wondered if she had a point. These women were all beautifully dressed and clearly prosperous. I had the feeling that the teacher is a very prestigious person in Russia.

“What is the eleven-plus examination?” was the next question.

I tried to explain it as well as I could, but they really grilled me on this. The deputy director burst in, his deep-chested voice booming like an organ note amid the female chatter.

“There is absolutely no point in classing children according to ability as you describe!” He was clearly a man of immovable opinions.

I looked across at him. “Well, do you have all levels in one class?”

The answer came back through Kitty. “All Russian children are clever.” This was said with complete conviction and quite seriously.

In the ensuing discussion, I gathered that a very high proportion of the pupils go on to universities and that further education in the form of night schools is very popular. In fact, many Russians obtain a complete education up to university standard by working in these night schools.

“How about school meals?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Kitty replied. “All the children stay for meals.” She mentioned the number of kopeks they paid each day, and it worked out to about one shilling per meal.

“For this,” Kitty went on, “they get a glass of tea, bread and sausage.”

This did not sound as substantial as the food in English schools.

A volley of Russian from the deputy director was translated as an attack on the private school system in Britain. In the course of my reply I mentioned that the private schools were called public schools, which made them all look blank. The big man kept hammering home his point that only the children of the rich got a proper education in Britain, but when I pointed out that through university grants everybody in our country could receive a full education no matter what their financial position, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. I don’t think he believed me.

However, the party was really going with a bang, with lots of laughter, banter and give-and-take. It was a pity in one way that the children were away, but on the other hand I should never have had this priceless opportunity of a long discussion with all the teachers.

I was enjoying it so much that I could have stayed all day, but I saw the captain glancing anxiously at his watch and knew he was worried about getting back to the ship. Poor chap, he must be praying that he never has to sail with another veterinary attendant like me.

We took our leave in the friendliest spirit, with laughter and handshakes all round. Little Kitty was particularly nice.

“Oh, I am so thrilled. I will always remember meeting a real live Englishman,” she said as we parted.

The deputy director also revealed an unexpected vein of massive charm as he led us out formally to the main door. His powerful features relaxed into a pleasant smile as he shook hands, bowed and waved us off down the street

As we left the school, I saw some of the children coming back. They were all boys about twelve years old, and many had a greenish, military-style uniform and peaked cap. I saw one with a stripe on his arm. Whether this was a school uniform or whether they were members of a cadet corps, I do not know.

Back at the ship, trouble awaited me. A woman—who, I was told, was a farm commissar—had been asking to see me.

She was huge, well over six feet and broad in proportion, and as she towered over me, two hard eyes in a rough-hewn countenance regarded me coldly from under a black beret. She obviously meant business.

She spoke no English but came to the point straightaway.

“Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha!” The other Russians had simulated the sheep’s cough very closely, but this, rumbling from deep in her mighty rib-cage, was the best effort yet.

I tried my shrug and vacant smile, but they didn’t work with this one. She seized my arm in steel claws and propelled me effortlessly towards the hold.

Down there among the sheep, she pointed an accusing finger at the Lincolns and went through the coughing routine again and again, while I replied with a series of reassuring grins that became more and more exhausting.

She produced a thermometer, and I wondered if she were a vet. If so, I greatly preferred her chubby little colleague of the morning. She needed no assistance to hold the sheep but jammed a great knee against each animal, trapping them against the wall as though they were puppy dogs. All the readings were normal, and she grew more and more impatient.

As she charged around the pens, she made frequent contact with me. I am a fairly solidly built man of around five feet ten, but she never even noticed as I bounced off her, and the thought occurred to me that if we both donned boxing gloves and got into a ring together, I would be lucky to last a three-minute round.

Finally she produced a tiny Russian-English dictionary and tried me out with various incomprehensible words. The nearest she came to the root of the matter was “broncheetees,” but by then she had lapsed into a discontented muttering. I had the feeling that she was no longer aware of my presence, so I took my opportunity and made a bolt for my cabin.

I was almost there when Nielsen’s head poked out from his cooking cell.

“You miss your lunch, Mr. Herriot. You have tough time, you look tired. Wait there.” He held up a hand. “I make you something.”

I stood in the doorway as he laid out a slice of rye bread and began to chop onto it tiny pieces of raw steak. He slashed away like lightning, his huge knife glinting with expert movements. Then he began to whittle away at a raw onion till the meat was covered with the fragments, then followed this by cracking an egg onto the top of the pile. He finished by dusting the whole mound with salt and black pepper before holding the final result proudly in my direction.