Audrey was brought back to reality as the boisterous class of children piled into the classroom and sat down at their allocated desks. She had been thinking about George and had been wondering if he was still alive. Good old fashioned George with his passionate love of literature and flowers. What a fool she had been and how could she have been so blind and selfish to take his love for granted. She knew what had happened to Barry, because he had been brought into the field hospital with dozens of other wounded Infantrymen that her and the other nurses were desperately trying to attend to. Most of the other boys had various wounds, some head wounds and some arm and leg wounds. Some were so badly mutilated that they were beyond any help. Barry had been unique with his injuries, because his bum was literally riddled with bullets. So that same bum he used to wiggle and flex in those tight slacks at their political meetings could not carry him away fast enough from the battlefield. She also knew what had happened to Susan, Susan with her iron resolve and commitment to the new political elite. The day she had received her draft to the Field Nursing Corps she had fled to Ireland. Audrey only knew this because three months after the war was over, and an amnesty was declared by the new Government to any former activist of the old order, Susan had been brazen enough to write to her, asking to be put up until she found a job. Audrey had not been really surprised by this, because she was very familiar with Susan’s audacity and gift for using anybody that suited her own particular interests.
Every day she had been arriving early in class, just to gaze out of the window at the huge, ugly craters that the shells of the infamous QB 101 Tanks had left. They had rained down from across the channel intermittently for nearly three years, until the brave boys in The Anti Tank Corps had silenced the dastardly machines of death that had delivered them, for good. Guilt and remorse racked Audrey’s emotions, because she had her place in the new political order that had brought death and destruction to millions. Apart from the ugly bomb craters that pockmarked the land, she had been anxiously watching the doors of the Gymnasium. She sincerely hoped that Miss Jones and Mr. Darling were having success in providing the education boards directive with the crash course in English, to the twenty-two various East European children that had been cruelly orphaned by the war. How could this have happened? And why had nobody tried to stop it?
As she wiped a tear from her eye she felt a tug on her skirt and looked down on a little girl who was looking up at her, with a puzzled look on her face.
“What’s the matter Miss?” she asked.
“Nothing’s the matter Alice, nothing, absolutely nothing at all.”
It took a great effort of restraint and self-discipline to stop her from bursting into tears. She must not let the children know how she is suffering and more importantly, why. She must pull herself together and ram her point home, the children really must understand.
“Good morning children.”
“Good morning Miss Martin.”
“How are you all this morning?”
“Very well, thank you Miss Martin.”
“Now children before we begin, we do not want a repeat performance of yesterday’s behaviour, do we now… Do we understand each other?”
“Yes Miss Martin.”
“Linda, one more rendition of Roll Me Over In The Clover, and I’ll take you by the ear and make you do a repeat performance outside the Head Master’s office.”
Usually the children would have giggled, but they could sense by Audrey’s demeanour that she was being deadly serious this morning. She scanned the entire class, letting the children digest her words and hoping that they had not noticed the tears in her eyes.
“Yes indeed, and you Cedric, one more report about you displaying your willie to everybody who sincerely does not wish to see it, and I will lead you to the Head Master’s office by it and just see how amusing he finds you.”
Normally the children would have burst into laughter, but today Miss Martin was presenting herself differently to the woman who they all knew and loved. Audrey composed herself and prepared to use her next words like precision bombing.
“Now, children remember what I’ve been telling you every day when we finish religious instruction and we close our Bibles for the day. Do you all remember?”
“Yes Miss Martin,” they all replied in unison.
“And what is that?”
“That we are all God’s children.”
“Yes and what else did I add to that, which is equally as important?”
“That we are all God’s children, regardless of race, religion, or creed Miss Martin.”
“Precisely. Now we have to all work together to put this all into practice, don’t we?”
“Yes Miss Martin.”
Audrey paused, because she knew that her next move could mean success, or failure.
“Now as you all know, Miss Jones and Mr. Darling have been teaching other children our language for the past few weeks, over in the Gymnasium.”
“Yes Miss Martin.”
The tone of the children dropped a key now and Audrey detected a note of derision in their voices. This warned her that she must now proceed very carefully with her words.
“Although those children are from different countries, Rumania, Hungary, Poland and Russia and they speak a different language to us, they are all, all God’s Children, just like us. For example, they did not start the dreadful war that has hurt all of us.”
Now there was deadly silence and Audrey was not prepared for the brutally honest comment and had to quickly try to counter act the predictable response.
“Miss Martin, their dads killed my dad. My dad never wanted to be in the army, but they made him go, so he could be killed by their dads. He didn’t want to die.”
“I know Lionel, I know, but their dads did not really want to kill your dad. And I know that your dad did not want to kill their dads. It was all a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“Miss Martin, my mum was a nurse in one of those field hospitals and their dads dropped bombs on the hospital killing my mum and all the other nurses, everybody.”
The tears were beginning to well up in Audrey’s eyes and she found it hard to articulate her next sentence without breaking down and crying in front of the class.
“I know Jill, I know, but their children did not know and did not want it to happen.”
But the next question, which came from an overweight boy, whose eyesight was so impaired that he could barely see three feet in front of him without his glasses, hit Audrey like a hammer. He was sitting at the back of the class and had to speak loudly.
“Miss Martin, just say if we had lost the war and we were in the same situation as them. Sitting in a Gym, learning their language, in their countries. Knowing that our dads had killed their dads. Tell us Miss Martin, would they see us as God’s children?”
“Well, William, hopefully there would be teachers like Miss Jones, Mr. Darling and myself who would be teaching them that you are children of God, just like them.”
“Are you sure Miss Martin, are you really sure that they would see us as God’s Children, or children of God? Tell us Miss Martin, why are you so sure?”
Audrey realised that she had not sounded very convincing and she had not taken into account that William was extremely bright and clever. She was now walking in the middle of a verbal minefield, because the other children had taken stock of what William had said and quietly waited for her reply. The silence had become deafening.
“You do ask awkward questions William, but we must try to be positive and have the grace to believe that if the situation was reversed they would treat us with compassion and humility, just like we are treating them.”
William was clearly not satisfied with her answer and fired back angrily.
“Miss Martin, my father was blown to smithereens by a QB Tank, my mother was decapitated by her own ironing board when a bomb dropped on our house. Compassion and humility are completely alien subjects to us Miss Martin, just like they must be completely alien subjects to, to those other children of God over there in the Gym.”
The sarcasm was subtle but brilliant and for a brief moment Audrey felt like storming to the back of the class and slapping William across the face. But more importantly was the fact that she realised with great clarity that she really did not know the answers.
The rest of the morning had passed normally and her class had obediently gone to their various lessons, returning to her classroom for the last half-hour, before dinnertime. Today she had only really gone through motions with the other two classes, which she had taken. Her heart was not really in the job, which she had once exercised with a passion. The war had changed everything, her ideals, her beliefs and worst of all, her faith. That dreadful three years had left her a sad, confused and lonely woman. Between lessons her attention had been distracted, between the Gymnasium and the unavoidable bomb craters, which there was no escape from when she looked out of the window. She hoped that the transition from the Gym to the classrooms and playground would go smoothly for those poor terrified orphans. She had made a conscience effort to stop harping back to her time with George, because the memories only brought back the pain of lost love and she knew that it was all her fault. Her feelings for Susan were a completely different matter. How could she let this woman invade her life, her soul so thoroughly. Why had she not seen the writing on the wall like George had?
The children looked glum and sad now, and their manner disturbed Audrey. They were abnormally quiet on their return and Audrey wondered if Mr. Reed the Physics teacher had been harsh with them. She knew that Mr. Reed was as worried as her about the reaction of the children, when the foreign children were eventually released into the playground. Perhaps he had given them another sanctimonious speech similar to the one she had. The bell rang and Audrey gratefully let the children go. She had not had a very good morning and her carefully thought out lecture had not really worked out as well as she had hoped it would. She was about to collect her bag and leave when she noticed that one girl was still sitting at her desk.
“You can go Betty. You need to get to the dining room before all the food goes.”
“I don’t want to go Miss, not today, not into the playground,” she then began to cry.
Audrey sat down beside her and put her arm around her. The girl responded by putting her head on to Audrey’s chest and Audrey could smell her freshly washed hair.
“What’s the matter Betty, what are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know Miss, I don’t know, but I think something terrible is going to happen.”
“Don’t listen to William too much Betty, that young man has got too much to say for himself. I know that all of you will realise that the children in the Gymnasium are just like you, when they’re released. Aren’t you excited that they’ll be able to talk to you?”
“William is right Miss, everything he said is right. Would they treat us like we are being told to treat them, if we were in their countries, if we lost the war.”
Audrey felt that she must convince Betty that they surely would, but deep down in her heart she had serious doubts that they would. How would George have negotiated this question? After all, he never had any doubts about the new political elite, not George.
The children scampered around the playground, very few of them had eaten their fill of the foul tasting gruel, which were called school dinners. The school cooks could offer them only one dish due to shortages of fresh vegetables and that was foul tasting gruel. Cedric and Lionel were wrestling as usual, and the other boys were engaged in one of their favourite games, a daring and risky piggyback fight. Lloyd and Roger reigned supreme at this game and they were the stead and mount to try and knock, or pull down. Some of the girls were playing various games with skipping ropes and playing catch. Others sat around in groups, chatting and talking about their favourite television programmes. Every one of them was acutely aware of the thick white line that had been painted on to the tarmac, and not one of them crossed it. Beyond that line was the strictly out of bounds, no mans land between them and the Gymnasium. Occasionally Mr. Darling and Miss Jones would peer out of the Gymnasiums round windows to make sure that none of them had dared to cross the line. To add insult to injury Mr. Reed would come out from the teacher’s canteen and patrol the entire length of the line, with his half-moon glasses perched on his nose like a veiled warning. He would do this at least twice during the dinner hour, much to the suppressed consternation of the children. Today the children were extremely bored, nobody could vanquish Lloyd and Roger in the piggyback fight and as usual Lionel had Cedric trapped in a headlock.
Suddenly Malcolm, one of the boys who had been violently dismounted during the piggyback fight noticed William pottering about by himself outside the parameters of the playground fence. What was left of the fence, either had gaping holes in it or was completely flattened in places. William was carefully treading between the bomb craters, looking down into them.
He kept clear of the areas that had been cordoned off by iron pegs and red and white rope, because of the chance of unexploded ordnance still being present in the areas that had not been thoroughly de-mined.
“Just look at William, what on earth does he look like?” said Malcolm.
“He looks like a fat pig, wearing stupid looking glasses,” said Cedric.
“He thinks he’s clever and asks stupid questions all the time,” said one of the girls.
“A fat pig that thinks he’s clever and is as blind as a bat,” said Roger.
“Let’s get William, let’s get him,” said a girl named Sally.
“Let’s get William and throw him over the ropes and see if he gets blown up.”
“Let’s get William, let’s get William, let’s get William,” they all began to chant.
Before William had sensed that he was in any danger, several of the children were piling through a hole in the fence to get at him. With shock he suddenly realised that he was their quarry and desperately tried to flee, only to fall headfirst into a crater. Raucous laughter erupted as the gang of children made their way around the rims of the craters to get at their quarry who was now trying to climb up the steep sides of the one that had bagged him. When the children saw him covered in mud and frantically trying to scramble up the sides of the crater, only to slide down and land knee deep in mud again, the raucous turned into near hysteria. Now a more sinister chant erupted.
“The pig is in his poke, the pig is in his poke and he cannot find a rope!”
Incredibly William finally managed to scale the walls and escape the gaping crater, but the other children had cornered him and were descending on to him from either side. Lionel made a grab for him and William pushed him with all of his might, sending Lionel tumbling down the side of an adjoining crater. Cedric tried to block his escape route and William barged him out of the way, sending Cedric flying into another crater. William had got away, but he was out of breath and could feel one of his dreaded asthma attacks coming on. His glasses fell off and he knew that it was a matter of life and death that he recovered them. Luckily for him they had fallen near his feet.
When he put them back on his heart sank when he saw that Lionel and Cedric had rejoined the rest of the children and they were all moving around him to block any escape route. Now he just stood his ground like a wounded beast and said,
“Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why? Why?”
“Kill the pig, kill the pig, kill, kill, kill the pig,” was the macabre reply.
He made one last frantic effort to escape barging headlong into Roger’s chest, knocking the wind out of Roger and sending two girls behind him flying. Miraculously the other children could not move fast enough to fill the hole that the deflated Roger and the two girls had left. William lumbered through the gap, but he had lost his glasses again in the assault on Roger. Somebody managed to trip him up and he fell onto the prostrate Roger, with the small consolation of finding his glasses again. He stood up and put his glasses back on. One of the boys picked up an iron peg, which were in a pile nearby and stuck it in William’s arm. He screamed in agony and clasped the wound. Fists and feet flew in and rained down on him without mercy. He dropped to his knees and tumbled sideways into a shallow crater. He tried to climb out, but a girl drove another peg into his hand. All of the children now grabbed their new weapon of choice, the iron pegs. With his dying breath William whispered a prayer, before sliding down into the crater.
“Being of light, being of love, being of wisdom. Shine your divine light onto my heart, soul and spirit. Heavenly Father, into your arms I commend my spirit.”
Audrey was wondering what all the pandemonium was about when she saw dozens of children gathered at the fence. Because she could only see a few of her own class she assumed that the rest of them were playing on the forbidden bomb crater land. She immediately left the staff canteen, without taking her bag, and strode across the playground. She waded through the gathering and demanded to know what was going on. Then she became coldly aware that the children were looking out across the tarnished land as if in a trance. Now fear and trepidation took control of her emotions when she sensed something terrible had happened, just like Betty had feared. She carefully negotiated the rims of the bomb craters and tiptoed through mud and potholes. It wasn’t until she was far out into the barren landscape that she saw about a dozen of her class, both boys and girls gathered around a crater, like mourners at a funeral. What on earth could have happened? What were they doing all the way out here when they knew that this area was strictly out of bounds?
When she finally arrived at the scene and pushed her way through the silent gathering she saw him. William was lying face up at the bottom of the crater. Iron pegs had been rammed right through his glasses and protruded from his eye sockets. Another peg had been rammed through the top of his head. He had been impaled through his chest and stomach with several other pegs. She was torn between horror, blind fury and a disturbingly powerful desire to exact immediate revenge for William. She passionately wanted to meter out the same injuries to the perpetrators of this diabolical crime on him. Instead, she screamed,
“You Devils! You barbaric, murdering bastards! You cowardly callous killers!… You, you, you….CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD!!!…”