Miss Purdy's Class (14 page)

‘Miss Drysdale!’ She ran to her fellow teacher, but didn’t like to shake her awake. ‘You’d better come! I think she’s . . . I think she’s gone.’

Lily got to her feet immediately, seeing Gwen’s stricken face. Going to Dora Phillips, she repeated Gwen’s search for a pulse, then looked round, shaking her head. ‘Bless her. She’s not with us any more.’

She was pulling the blanket up to cover Dora’s face, when they became aware of soft footsteps padding down the dark stairs. Joey, his face heavy with sleep, stopped halfway down. Wrapped in Lily’s grey cloak, he looked like something out of a pantomime. He stood staring at them and for a moment Gwen wondered if he was sleepwalking. But then, she made out his alert dark eyes. He knew, Gwen saw immediately. What instinct had roused the little boy from his bed at that moment?

His eyes met hers. ‘Come down here, Joey,’ she said softly.

Slowly, he climbed down, placing one foot then the other on each step before he moved onto the next in a way that twisted Gwen’s emotions. It was the first truly childlike characteristic she had ever seen in him. He climbed down until he was standing in front of her, his eyes fixed on the bed across the room, where Lily was still standing over Dora.

‘Mom?’

‘Joey dear.’ Gwen knelt down in front of him. ‘Your mummy’s not here any more. She’s gone to heaven.’

He didn’t move, barely blinked, but nor did he resist as she reached out and gently took his thin body in her arms. For just a second, as she held him, she felt him rest his head on her shoulder.

The children sat by the hearth, mute, staring into the fire. They were dressed in their dry clothes, but Gwen had had to dress Lena, who was barely well enough to move. She sat propped against the wall, seemingly unaware of what was going on around her. They had told her gently that her mother was dead, but it seemed unlikely that she could take it in. There was a busyness in the house of people coming and going.

Once dawn had broken, Lily went next door to fetch Mrs Simmons. Gwen had not formed a very good impression of the next-door neighbour, who seemed to her of low intelligence and anxious to pass responsibility for Dora Phillips on to anyone else who appeared. But she had to rethink her opinion. For a start it became clear that none of the other neighbours was prepared to lift a finger, even though the news spread fast and a cluster of women stood in the yard staring at the house. Among them, Gwen recognized the hard-faced woman whom she’d met outside the toilets. But Mrs Simmons waddled round with a pail of coal for the fire and sent one of her daughters to summon the doctor and the midwife, a woman who also laid out the dead for a small fee.

‘The poor thing. She looks peaceful now, don’t she?’

Standing behind her, as she looked down at Dora Phillips’s waxen face, Gwen could hear the heave of Mrs Simmons’s lungs. She stank of grease and sweat. ‘She weren’t no saint, that’s for sure – but she were all right if you took your time and got to know ’er . . . She had a good heart – always stood by her kids. She’d’ve done anything for ’em . . . There’s always them that’ll judge.’

Gwen wondered what Dora had done to make the neighbours hostile, but she didn’t like to ask.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she offered.

‘Yes, ta.’ Mrs Simmons nodded and sank onto the one remaining upright chair, which squeaked in protest.

Lily looked quite fresh and composed, considering the night they’d had. Gwen felt exhausted and overwrought.

‘The children,’ Lily Drysdale said gently. It seemed awful to discuss them with them sitting there, but what choice did they have? ‘What’s going to happen to them?’

Mrs Simmons considered for a moment. ‘Well, there’s no family.
He
–’ she gave a jerk of her head – ‘hopped it a few months back. No sign of him since. They’ll have to go with the others – no two ways about it.’ She lowered her voice for a moment to a whisper. ‘
Barnardo’s
– they came and took the two little ’uns, couple of months ago. But for the moment –’ she shifted on her seat, her huge belly shuddering as if with a life of its own under her voluminous black skirt – ‘they’ll have to come and stop with us.’

‘Well, isn’t that kind – how good of you!’ Lily cried. ‘You’ve been a good neighbour to her, I can see that.’

‘Someone had to be,’ Mrs Simmons said. ‘Anyroad – it’ll likely only be for a day or two.’

Gwen, standing beside Mrs Simmons, looked across at Joey and Lena. They sat by the fire, not moving, as if they had been turned to stone.

Twelve

‘Get your books out, children – this morning we’re going to learn something about the roads the Romans built here in Britain.’

Gwen forced herself to concentrate. Everything felt wrong today. She had had one night’s sleep to recover since the night up with Dora Phillips, but she was still tired. And Millie had gone and Joey Phillips wasn’t here either. The sight of his empty place in the classroom whenever she looked up made her feel desolate. Of course it had often been empty before, but having seen the heroic struggle which explained his school absences, the little boy had touched her heart. The thought of him and his little sister being sent off to an orphanage was terrible. But what else could be done?

The day before, once the doctor had issued a death certificate, Mrs Simmons waited while the midwife laid out Dora’s body, then took Joey and Lena home with her. Gwen and Lily Drysdale hurried back to school to begin another day’s work.

‘I could do with a nice hot bath,’ Gwen had groaned as they went out into Canal Street and the cold morning. She was so bleary from lack of sleep that she almost walked into the path of a dray from Davenport’s brewery.

Lily seemed quite unperturbed. ‘We just need to get ourselves going and keep busy,’ she said cheerfully. ‘The day’ll soon go by.’

Gwen never understood how, since she never said a word about it, but by the end of the day the entire school seemed to know that Miss Purdy and Miss Drysdale had spent the night with Joey and Lena Phillips and their dying mother. She heard some of her class talking about it in the playground, looking at her and murmuring to each other. Ron Parks came up to her at dinner time.

‘Is Joey coming back to school, Miss Purdy?’

‘I don’t know, Ron.’ Gwen felt glad he’d asked. ‘He doesn’t have a mother or a father now, you see. So I’m not sure who’s going to look after him.’

‘Only, he was a pal. He was all right, Joey was.’

Gwen looked at Ron’s simple, cheerful face. ‘Yes, he was. He
is
. It’s just that I don’t know where he’ll be living, so he may not be able to come to this school.’

The whole day she had been affected by melancholy, and a strange feeling that life could now never be the same. When she had arrived back at Ariadne Black’s house she had been so weary and downcast that she had forgotten completely that Ariadne did not know where she had been for the past twenty-four hours. Ariadne, clad in a shimmering, pale green dress, opened the door and, seeing Gwen, gasped theatrically.

‘Oh! Miss
Purdy
! How could you do this to me? I’ve been on the point of going to the police. All night! All day! Waiting here in uncertainty! I’ve been through everything in my mind – right down to the white slave trade. I said to Mr Purvis – will we ever see her again, d’you think? Oh, we passed a terrible evening. And did I sleep a wink? I can assure you I didn’t! Where have you
been
?’

To Gwen’s surprise, mixed in with the dramatics, she detected genuine pleasure to see her back.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Black . . .’

‘Ariadne,
please
. . . I must put the kettle on . . . Oh, I’m ever so relieved, you’ve no idea . . . I don’t like my lodgers to go missing . . .’

She listened, one hand clasped over her heart as Gwen explained.

‘The poor little mites. To an
orphanage
. What a wicked world we live in! Of course, George and I were never fortunate enough to produce children so I can’t speak with the feelings of a mother. But to see a child deserted in the world with nowhere to call home – it’s wicked, that’s what it is. I’m sure Mr Purvis would think it was terrible. He’s a very sensitive man, Harold is.’

‘May I have a bath tonight do you think?’ Gwen asked while the going was good.

‘Oh,
yes
. I’m sure we could move you forward a day, dear. I’ll strike you off for Friday.’

Over the evening meal, for which Ariadne had done something unique with a fillet of hake, she insisted that Gwen tell them all about the adventures of the night. Harold Purvis ate his meal in silence, listening. He gave off an odd, metallic smell. Every so often Gwen felt him giving her a sideways look. She tried these days to keep out of his way, but later, when she went out of her room to have a bath, she found him standing on the landing, blocking her way. She moved towards the bathroom, expecting him to stand back, but instead he waited. He was standing in the darkest place, away from the light.

‘Could you let me through to the bathroom, please?’ she said sharply.

Mr Purvis took a step towards her. He was in his shirtsleeves now and he smelled more strongly than ever.

‘Who were you really with last night, eh?’ She could see his face now, smiling strangely at her.

‘What
are
you talking about?’ She gripped her towel with a sense of panic. Something about Mr Purvis’s manner made her feel deeply uneasy.

‘You don’t think I was taken in, do you? A young lady like you playing Florence Nightingale in some slum yard. Who were you really with?’ He was standing even closer to her now. Gwen felt herself begin to tremble, but at the same time she became furiously angry.

‘Get away from me!’ she commanded. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you come any closer and I’ll shout for Mrs Black.’

‘Go on then – call her,’ Harold Purvis mocked, but he did take a step back.

‘Just keep away from me,’ Gwen said, trying to maintain her dignity. She passed him to get to the bathroom and, as she did so, felt his hand squeeze her left buttock.

‘How dare you!’ she cried, but he was walking away, laughing. Gwen locked the bathroom door, shaking. What on earth was she going to do about him? Suppose he was waiting out there when she came out?

After all this, it was a struggle to keep her mind on Form Four and the Romans the next morning. She told them about the Fosse Way and Watling Street.

‘The roads were built a little bit higher than the land around them so the water could drain off,’ she said. ‘And they built them in layers with materials they could get hold of nearby.’ She drew a little diagram on the blackboard.

Mr Purvis had not been outside the bathroom. While she was soaking in the bath she could hear him playing his blasted trumpet. Marble halls again. The incident had really unsettled her, though she told herself not to be so stupid. In her bedroom she had sat looking at her picture of Amy for courage. Would Amy Johnson let a creep like Harold Purvis get under her skin? Of course not! If anything else happened she would tell Ariadne what was going on.

As the children copied her diagram of a Roman road, Gwen’s eyes were drawn back to the the empty space left by Joey Phillips. Seeing where Joey lived, what he and his family had to endure, had come as a profound shock to her. She had had no idea that such extreme poverty existed and the fact shamed her. How comfortable and easy her life had been. What other children in her form might be suffering terrible things as well? There was Alice, still squinting, half blind with no glasses to help her. But the thought of Joey tore at her especially. She’d go back and see him, she decided. At the end of school.

I’ll get some groceries on the way
, she thought, putting her coat on, once the last lesson was over. And a few sweets for the children. She thought of Miss Drysdale’s generosity the day before. She had told her that she was going to see the Phillips children.

‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve got a couple of garments I can send along with you if you’d be so good. I suppose the two of them will be gone in a couple of days.’

It was a little milder outside today, threatening rain. The playground was full of children streaming towards the gate. Suddenly nervous, Gwen walked among them, trying to decide what to buy. There were only a couple of small shops in this street – she’d just have to see what they had.

‘Afternoon, Miss Purdy.’

Daniel Fernandez was standing just outside the gate.

‘Oh!’ She had been completely preoccupied and she was startled by the way the sight of him set her heart thudding. Once more he was only in shirtsleeves, white cuffs rolled. Against them his forearms looked very dark. ‘Good afternoon. Have you come to meet Lucy?’

‘Yes – thought I’d come down as it’s not so cold.’

She smiled, and for the first time saw him smile back. A genuine warmth lit his eyes. For a few seconds she held her breath, then remembered to release it again, aware that gaggles of children were coming out of the playground, all staring at them.

‘Looks as if spring’s on its way today.’

‘Takes a while to feel it here.’ Daniel shifted his weight, manoeuvring the crutch. ‘In the Welsh valleys you can see the work of the seasons more directly.’

‘Yes,’ Gwen agreed. She felt suddenly more relaxed, that he was not testing her as he had been before. ‘That’s true where I grew up as well. There’s so much smoke in the air here it’s hard to pick up anything else.’

There was silence for a moment. Gwen realized she ought to move on, but found she didn’t want to.

‘Takes our Lucy a bit longer than the others,’ Daniel said, looking into the playground.

‘Yes, but she does very well. She’s settled in now.’

‘She likes you.’

This directness threw her off guard.

‘Well.’ She laughed. ‘That’s good – I suppose! She’s a good girl.’

Daniel was looking at her searchingly, as if trying to work her out.

‘I hear you stayed all night with that boy’s mother. The one who died.’

‘Gracious!’ Gwen said. ‘News travels fast around here, doesn’t it? Who told you that?’