Miss Purdy's Class (49 page)

Forty-Five

Summer turned to autumn. Village after village across Spain fell to the nationalists. General Franco was now commander-in-chief of the nationalist forces, and the republicans were having to defend themselves mostly with pitchforks and a few old shotguns and blunderbusses. Neighbour turned against neighbour and groups of civilians were rounded up and shot.

The last evening before Daniel left for the valleys, Gwen had a few snatched hours with him in Ariadne’s house. A few days before, on 2 October, there had been a big rally in the Town Hall for Spanish Aid organized by the Communist Party, the BCPL and the Labour Movement. Ellen Wilkinson, the MP for Jar-row, came to speak and there was a torchlight procession through the centre of Birmingham. Gwen marched beside Daniel, following the dancing train of lights through the streets. Esther was, as ever, nearby, but Gwen had got past worrying about her now. She knew Daniel loved her and her alone. He had shown her time after time. What did Esther matter?

‘This should do us well!’ Daniel’s eyes were alight with enthusiasm as he looked at all the people and banners around them in the evening streets. By the end of the rally, to the excitement of the organizers, they had raised £120 for Spain.

Gwen knew Daniel was torn in two, never sure where best to put his energy – in Birmingham for the Spanish cause, or in Wales. He had waited until after the rally – then he was going to leave for Aberglyn, where she was to join him at the weekend.

That night they were sitting on her bed, against the wall, arms round each other. The news from Spain was grim.

‘They’re killing people for not going to Mass,’ Daniel said. He had one of her hands in his and his grip tightened on it sometimes to emphasize what he was saying. ‘And for reading philosophers like Kant and Rousseau – or criticizing Hitler or Mussolini.’

‘Well, of course they’re going to criticize Hitler and Mussolini!’ Gwen said heatedly. ‘What do they expect?’

She could see how deeply the situation affected Daniel. Apart from his political views, Daniel had relatives on his father’s side in Spain. She held him tightly, thinking that she didn’t know anything about Kant or Rousseau or why the nationalists should get so agitated about anyone reading them. A few months ago she would have felt ashamed and inadequate about this and about the level of her own commitment to the revolution. She had begun to sense, though, that there was something about her very ignorance that Daniel needed: she provided him with a way out from the intensity of the struggle, another viewpoint, a refuge perhaps.

Though they had to snatch these times together, it seemed to Gwen that she and Daniel had never been closer. She felt borne up by love, humming with feeling for him, with a sense of passion and completeness which gave her almost endless energy. She was loving her work and one or two of the other teachers commented on how radiant she was looking. On Saturdays she went out with other party members selling the
Spain
leaflets and the
Daily Worker
. Ariadne not only allowed Daniel to be in Gwen’s room but seemed to applaud it, and anything else that kept Gwen happy and in her house. Miss Hines had finally left, fed up with Ariadne’s cooking and her endless criticism, so for the moment Gwen was the only lodger. Ariadne thought Daniel was ‘a beautiful specimen of a man’, and seemed to take pleasure in having the lovers in the house. So on their few evenings together they could relish each other’s company, talk and make love and lie, warm and tired, in each other’s arms.

Gwen only just made it to the station to wave Daniel off when school was over for the day. She tore from the tram stop through a downpour of rain and saw him waiting by the clock, where they had arranged, his jacket wet with rain, canvas bag thrown over one shoulder.

‘I thought I’d missed you!’ She flung her arms round him, face flushed, panting from running.

‘Hello, comrade!’ He laughed at her flustered state.

‘I want to come with you now!’

He pulled her close and she could feel the beat of his heart. ‘Only a few days. Billy’ll be waiting to see you too.’ He nuzzled her face. ‘I think he’s got a bit of a crush on you!’

‘Poor Billy – he’s such a nice boy. Will you come and meet me when I get there?’

‘Course I will.’ He hugged her. ‘I’d better go.’

She saw him off, keeping the image of his face smiling from the window in her mind as she made her way back to Handsworth, thinking:
only four days and we can be together again
. How slowly those four days were going to pass!

Instead of spending her days longing only to be with Daniel, Gwen found that when she got back to school there was an unexpected distraction.

On the Wednesday morning, Ron Parks was late coming into the classroom. He missed the register.

‘Ron? He must be poorly.’

Gwen was about to mark him down as absent, when one of the other boys said, ‘No – he’s here, Miss. I seen him.’

Gwen frowned. It wasn’t like Ron to be late. He was still not there by the end of the register, so she left the space blank and began the lesson. They were learning about the life cycle of the butterfly. She was just trying to explain how a butterfly hatches from a chrysalis when Ron came in.

‘Where have
you
been?’ she was asking rather sharply, when she turned and caught sight of his face. Ron’s cheerful, slightly eccentric demeanour had entirely gone and instead she saw a stony expression, as if he was struggling to control some deeply felt emotion. He also looked as if he had been crying.

‘Are you all right? Has anything happened?’

‘No, Miss Purdy.’ His voice was subdued, and mutinous. Gwen stared at him perplexed, and saw him take his seat very gingerly, in the pained way the children did when they had had a thrashing from Mr Lowry, though nothing had happened at assembly. Realizing that the whole class was staring at Ron too and that his face had gone a deep, painful red, she said, ‘Eyes to the front all of you – get on with your work.’ She would get to the bottom of this later.

When the bell rang for break, she asked Ron to stay behind and he came cautiously up to her desk. Some of the others hung around curiously and Gwen shooed them away and closed the door. When she sat down at her desk, Ron just stood there, staring at the floor, whether in anger or shame she could not decide.

‘This isn’t like you, Ron.’

There was no reply.

‘Will you look at me when I’m speaking to you, please?’

He raised his face to her and she could see his lips were quivering. His second teeth had come through and they made him look different, more serious.

‘Why were you late this morning?’

‘Because he gave me the cane!’ Ron blurted, and Gwen could tell that he felt a terrible injustice had been carried out.

‘Who – Mr Lowry?’ Seeing him nod, she said, ‘But you weren’t in assembly?’

‘Not in assembly – in his office.’

Gwen was silent for a moment, unsure what to say. As a teacher she should be loyal to the head of the school and not undermine his decisions. But she had great misgivings about Mr Lowry’s version of punishment. Of course a lot of the children needed a telling off, maybe a slight taste of the cane if necessary. She had even done it herself, reluctantly, once or twice – a couple of strokes with a ruler on the hand perhaps – but not the sort of hard and humiliating treatment the headmaster meted out in front of the whole school. And what might he be like in the privacy of his office?

‘Why did he do that, Ron?’

Again, Ron did not seem able to look her in the eye. He appeared to be really distressed. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Mr Lowry.’

‘I see.’ Feeling she could hardly go against the head’s wishes and ask directly, she said, ‘Well, I’m sorry Mr Lowry felt he had to do that. Let’s just hope that whatever it was for, it won’t happen again.’

Ron was silent. Eventually, with obvious resentment, he squeezed out the words, ‘Yes, Miss Purdy.’

She let him go, but throughout the day she felt troubled. Ron was obviously in pain and he was just not himself. She wondered if he would come back after the dinner break, but he did, and sat miserably through the afternoon classes.

At the end of the day, when Gwen went into the playground, Mr Lowry was standing just outside the back door of the school talking to Mr Gaffney. As she set out, Gwen caught sight of a small, dumpy woman coming in through the playground gate, hugging round her a big, brown cardigan as if she was cold. It took Gwen a moment to recognize her, but then she saw that it was Mrs Parks. She had only met Ron’s mother once when she had bought sweets that day in the shop.

Mrs Parks never usually came to the school to collect her boys. She was not walking especially fast, but there was something determined, steely almost, in her manner. She put down her feet in her old flat shoes as if nothing was going to divert her from her path. Gwen said, ‘Good afternoon,’ as she passed her, but Mrs Parks didn’t even seem to hear. Curious, Gwen turned to watch and could hardly believe her eyes when she saw what happened next. Mrs Parks made unwaveringly for Mr Lowry, brought her fist back and delivered a whacking great punch right into his face. There was a collective cry of surprise from everyone around. She gave him no time to recover before following up with another punch with the other fist, slamming it right into Mr Lowry’s nose and knocking his spectacles off. Gwen gasped. The playground went suddenly quiet. Children stood staring.

‘That’s for what you did to my Ron,’ Mrs Parks bawled. ‘And don’t you ever lay a finger on my boys again, you rotten bully!’

Mr Lowry was clutching at his face. His nose was bleeding. Mr Gaffney bent to pick up his specs and handed them back and Mr Lowry peered down to take them, trying to retain some dignity. He had no time to say anything, as Mrs Parks was already storming back across towards the gate, shouting back over her shoulder, ‘You want to pick on someone yer own size next time! Think you can get away with doing anything you like, don’t you? Bloody bullies, you teachers – that’s what you are!’

And she was gone.

Gwen told Ariadne about the day’s upset over a meal of lamb chops. She had started to give her landlady a hand with the cooking. Ariadne was so scatty that keeping an eye on anything was half her problem. Gwen stood guarding the chops under the grill to make sure they emerged a healthy, cooked colour rather than a singed mess.

‘That sounds a queer carry-on to me,’ Ariadne remarked, peering into the pan of potatoes, which was boiling so frantically that the room was already like a steam bath.

‘It might be all right to turn those down now,’ Gwen suggested.

‘Oh . . . yes.’ Ariadne fiddled with the gas stove as if she’d never seen it before, peering longsightedly at the dial. The fringe of her silky shawl hung perilously near the gas flame.

‘There’s certainly more to it than meets the eye. I’m going to see if I can get Ron to talk to me tomorrow.’

Once again, she called Ron to her at breaktime.

‘Ron, I’m very concerned about what happened yesterday, and your mother obviously is too. Did you tell her why Mr Lowry gave you the cane?’

Ron shook his head, lips tightly pressed together.

‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

‘Because . . .’ Ron’s face filled with emotion and his lips were trembling. ‘He said he’d . . . he said I wasn’t to say . . .’ He wiped his eyes fiercely with his knuckles, smearing his grimy face. Suddenly he burst out, ‘And it weren’t my fault. I wish I’d never gone and seen what I seen!’

Gwen stared, at a loss.

‘
Seen
? What did you see, Ron? Where?’

He gazed at her desperately and she could see he was close to telling her. But something was stopping him.

‘I’m not to say.’ He looked away, sullenly. ‘Or I’ll be in trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’ she asked.

‘He said . . . he said he’d get me sent away.’

Gwen was horrified. What sort of a man was Mr Lowry to be making such threats to a ten-year-old boy?

‘I don’t think he can do that,’ she tried to reassure him. ‘Especially when you haven’t done anything wrong.’

But she could see the boy was afraid and she didn’t want to press him any more.

‘Go on – go out to play,’ she said. ‘And don’t fret.’

‘What on earth am I to make of that?’ she asked Lily Drysdale in the corner of the staffroom, where she hoped no one else could hear. ‘The poor boy seems frightened out of his wits!’

Lily sat silently, a cup of tea held halfway to her lips and staring ahead of her almost as if listening to a voice that no one else could hear. Gwen began to wonder if she had heard what she said. Then Lily returned her cup to its saucer.

‘Mr Lowry,’ she pronounced, ‘is almost certainly some kind of pervert. Though I’ve never managed to work out quite what kind.’

Forty-Six

They were chugging along the last few miles now, into Aberglyn.

It was dark outside the railway carriage. All Gwen could see in the window was her own reflection, her face, wide-eyed and solemn, gazing back at her, her hair tied softly back. She had taken her hat off and was holding it on her lap.

I look older
, she thought. She remembered sitting on a train in just this way, pulling into Worcester, knowing that Edwin would be waiting for her under the platform lights. It seemed so long ago, another life in which she had been nothing more than a child. She wondered how Edwin was. Would he be bitter, or be putting experience behind him in his usual, blithely optimistic way? She thought of her parents. Sooner or later she would have to go back, to try and make peace. It was a dreadful thought and she pushed it away, pressing her face to the window to see something of the outside, but apart from occasional dots of light from houses and villages, there was nothing but the night. Sitting back, she closed her eyes for a moment. The air in the carriage smelled of smoke and dusty upholstery.

I’m someone else now.
She swelled inside with joy. Daniel’s girl. That’s what the party members had finally started to call her, seeing them together. Apart from Esther, of course, who treated Gwen in relation to Daniel with an arch irony. Gwen ignored her. She had also chosen to put out of her mind the conversation she had overheard last time she was in Aberglyn. It couldn’t have meant anything much. And everyone did wrong things when they were young – herself for a start! She had jilted Edwin, more or less – she was a disgrace to her family! She and Daniel were both people who lived passionately, she decided, and were having to learn from their mistakes. That was why they were so well suited. They were Communists, revolutionaries: there was more to their lives than petty jealousies.