But of course I couldn’t go with Mr Tait. My fate had already been decided.
And worse, by the time we made our way back to ‘our’ hut that night, the beds were all full and all that was left for us was the floor. There were two children on the sofa who were made to move so that Mr Tait could sleep there while I lay down on the floor beneath him and put my head on a chunk of firewood and tried to sleep.
It was another long night. The fire was ‘banked up’ to last all night so I was too hot at first, and then too cold in the early morning, but I pulled my coat up around my neck and pressed my back to the sofa. The stove door was dark. I eyed it suspiciously and fell asleep.
Later I was woken by the girl beside me talking in her sleep. ‘It’s coming down, it’s coming down!’ she said. That smell was there again, the smell of unwashed bodies, the smoke and fear seeping out of them. I held my nose and tried to concoct the lovely smell of oranges, but that took me to blood oranges and cut flesh and my mum and Mavis and all the things I’d seen and shouldn’t have. I kept my hat with my dying daffodil as close to my nose as I could so that I could smell the daffodil instead, and I put the sandwich that Mr Tait had given me to take to school inside the hat.
In the morning Mr Tait woke me up with his stick by mistake. He was trying to climb over me to leave, but his legs weren’t long enough. A cold daylight shifted through the green leafy curtains with the threads hanging down.
‘I’ll be thinking of you, Lenny,’ he said, his voice softer than ever. ‘You be a brave girl and have a good day at Craigton. I promise I’ll be back on the last bus. I never miss!’
He really was going to go and leave me there. How could he?
‘Just remember I promised,’ he said. ‘I promised you and I promised your mother that I was going to look after you, and it just wouldn’t do to be letting you two down, would it? You can tell me all about it tonight. I’ll pray for them all, for Mavis and Rosie and Miss Wetherspoon. And you. And your mother.’ And then he bent down and kissed me on the top of my head and gave my shoulders a little squeeze. He coughed and cleared his throat as if my hair had tickled him and he tiptoed over the sleeping bodies and gave me a little wave before he closed the door.
I crawled up onto the sofa, into the warmth he’d left behind and wrapped myself up in my coat and let my tears seep out. What if he didn’t come back? Now I’d lost everyone. Even Mr Tait had left me now, and all the bad things I’d done came back to me, just like they did the day I’d run away and met Mr Tulloch the farmer along the road. There were so many awful things I’d done, it was no wonder really.
But I didn’t get to feel sorry for myself for long because Sandy stuck his sandy-haired head round the door and in trying to wake me up, woke everybody else up as well, and I trod on a few fingers and toes before I got out, whispering ‘sorry’ all the way. The damp air hit me first, then the smell of coal fires starting up. Everything seemed very bright and green.
‘We’ve got porridge,’ he said when we got to his hut.
‘I can’t go,’ I said.
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs Mags.
‘But . . . .’
‘She wants to stay with me and draw,’ said Mr MacInnes in the shadows.
‘Nonsense, she’ll have a lovely time,’ said Mrs Mags. ‘The teachers are lovely, just lovely, a bit stuck-up but just lovely!’
‘But . . . ,’ I said.
‘And I could do without you putting your oar in,’ she said with a glare at Mr MacInnes’s dark corner.
Bowls of steaming porridge landed with a smack along the bench and a row of heads bent over them, knees on the floor, as if they were all saying their prayers. Mrs Mags shooed me off to join them.
‘But . . . I don’t have my glasses,’ I said.
‘Glasses?’ said Mrs Mags. I don’t think any of them believed me, which was very wise because it was a lie.
‘Yes, glasses,’ I said, not looking at anyone. ‘I can’t see the blackboard.’
‘She’ll put you at the front with the wee kids,’ said Sandy.
‘No, I mean I can only see the blackboard. I can’t see the slate,’ I said in a panic now.
‘We’re probably singing anyway,’ said Sandy. ‘She hasn’t made us do any work so far.’
‘Better get a move on,’ said Izzie, ‘or you’ll miss the bus and then you’ll have to walk and it’s miles and miles and miles . . . .’
‘I know,’ I said.
So I went to that school with all those kids I didn’t know and the two new teachers, and we sang all morning. Well, not quite all morning. The first half was taken up with registration. Our teacher’s name was Miss Read, suitably enough, and I wondered if there were two other teachers at that school called Miss Write and Miss Rithmetic. Miss Read called our names out one after the other and when it was ours we had to stand up and say ‘Here!’ Then she did it all over again. She was a thin woman in a thick blue tweed skirt and lilac jumper. I never saw her in anything else. She had a pair of spectacles which lived alternately in her hand or on her nose depending on whether she was looking at you or a book. When she called my name the second time she said ‘Gillespie’ as if testing it to make sure it was right. ‘Gillespie,’ she said with a flick of her hand. She smiled at me and looked me directly in the eye. ‘Welcome Leonora Gillespie,’ she said. ‘Did I get it right?’
‘Yes, Miss,’ I said. ‘Gillespie.’
‘And what do they call you? Leonora?’ she said.
‘Yes. No . . . .’
Big bad George called out, ‘It’s Lenny, Miss, like a boy.’
The murmur went round, ‘Lenny . . . Leonora . . . Lenny.’
‘Thank you, George,’ said Miss Read. She nodded her thanks and turned to me. ‘Which is it to be?’ She smiled. I wondered if she knew what I was thinking, that I could be someone new, someone special and sophisticated, not scared and dirty and lost.
‘Leonora,’ I said. I caught Sandy’s eye and turned my back on George. ‘Leonora,’ I said again, just to be sure.
‘Leonora,’ she said. ‘Such a pretty name!’
‘I’ve got a sister called Mavis too,’ I told her. Everyone always said what a pretty name Mavis was.
‘Is she here?’ Miss Read put her glasses swiftly onto her nose and looked down her ledger and then took them off so she could see me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s . . . not here.’
‘Not yet?’ said the teacher.
‘Not yet. She’s only four. And a half,’ I said.
‘And dead,’ came a murmur from the back.
A gasp rippled round the room. Slowly Miss Read removed her spectacles from her nose. Tears smarted in my eyes.
‘George, dear,’ she said in the sweetest voice. ‘Would you do me the favour of coming out to the front of the class where we can all see you.’
I flushed with horror and delight.
‘Now, George,’ she said.
Everyone turned in their seats, all eyes on George. He was slumped down in his seat behind his desk.
‘Right now,’ she said, still sweet.
There was a long awkward silence. Everyone held their breath.
We all jumped when the teacher stamped her heel sharply on the floor but none more than George who jumped right out of his seat, probably before he knew it, and after giving himself a little shake (and me a monstrous sneer) he sauntered over to stand in front of the teacher, Miss Read.
Miss Read turned IMMEDIATELY on her heel.
‘Follow me please,’ she said, and she left the room. George followed meekly behind her. She returned two minutes later alone and took us all through to the other classroom which had a piano but no George. There were more children in there too.
We sat cross-legged on the floor and listened to Miss Read, who was also the headmistress. She told us we were all welcome and she was delighted to have us there, and she smiled a big smile that showed us all her very yellow teeth, and then she and another teacher took turns at the piano. I sang along as best I could to ‘You are my sunshine’ and then ‘Hey, little hen’ and my favourite, ‘Run, rabbit, run’ (except of course Hitler was the rabbit). But the best of all was ‘The quartermaster’s stores’, including all twenty-nine verses, the most fun being ‘There were bears, bears, with curlers in their hair’, during which we got quite rowdy and had to be calmed down with ‘Bread with great big lumps like lead’. Each time we sang the chorus, ‘My eyes are dim I cannot see’, I looked over at Sandy and he made a daft face at me. At first I was embarrassed about my lie earlier on, and then I mouthed ‘bloody hell’ back and he sniggered into his hand.
And suddenly it was lunchtime. We ate our pieces and ran into the playground where the drizzle still hung in the air. I had no idea where George had been but he came out into the playground not long after the rest of us. Two older girls had a skipping rope and were singing a song I knew. They sang, ‘Down by the meadow where the green grass grows’, and I hung about and sang under my breath, and when the rest of the kids took turns with the rope I took a turn too, and thought about how funny it was that we really were down by the meadow.
But out of the corner of my eye I saw Sandy, Dougie and George sneak round the side of the building to the back, and I wished I was sneaking round with them, even though bad George was there. I remembered Mr Tulloch, the farmer, saying the path to Clydebank was by the school. Now Sandy, Dougie and George were going to steal off to Clydebank leaving me there when it was me who most needed to go.
‘Leonora! Leonora! Hello?’ the girls were shouting. ‘Anyone home? Leonora!’
I dropped the rope and ran round the side after the boys. They were throwing stones at each other across the burn and when George saw me he burst into the brruumm-brruumm of the killer bee bombers, then ack-ack-ack and whee-boom-crash so I turned back and left them, but not before I’d had a good look at the burn and the path which rose beside it into the trees.
Miss Read came out just then jangling the bell to call us all in and I found myself at the front of the line.
‘Leonora,’ she said with a smile. ‘What a lovely hat!’
‘Thank you, Miss Write,’ I said.
‘Read,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Miss Read,’ she said and smiled.
‘Sorry, Miss Read,’ I said, and blushed in case she thought I’d done it on purpose.
The afternoon was spent reading. We went round the class reading a bit each and I discovered that I was better at it than George. Why are boys so stupid? Bad George had to be helped to read by Dougie who was sharing a desk with him, but at least he had the grace to be embarrassed, hiding behind his book. Miss Read sent someone out for sniggering at him and I wondered where she was sending them and why she didn’t go round the room with a ruler for people’s knuckles like Miss Weatherbeaten did.
And I wondered, with a pang of guilt (I’d forgotten her for a whole morning), whether Mavis would ever come here. I fumbled at my side where I’d tied the shoe onto the belt underneath my dress so no-one would see it. (It made a bit of a lump.)
‘Leonora!’
‘Yes, Miss Read?’
‘Welcome back. We are at the third paragraph on page ten.’
‘Yes, Miss.’
She didn’t raise her voice, or even scowl. She was sweetness and politeness throughout and when I’d finished reading the third paragraph on page ten she said, ‘Thank you, Leonora.’ I wished my mum was a school teacher and not a machinist lying in bed with a foot missing.
What a terrible person I was to have thought that, with my poor mum all alone in a hospital bed and not even allowed to have me as her visitor. I wished my hat wasn’t out on its peg so that I could hide inside it and think my secret thoughts. Suddenly this nice school with its songs and skipping ropes didn’t seem such a nice place to be after all and I wished I was outside climbing up the hill over to Clydebank.
‘Leonora!’
‘Yes, Miss Read?’
‘First paragraph, page seventeen.’
‘Yes, Miss Read.’
I got halfway through before the page blurred behind my tears.
‘Josie, could you finish the paragraph for us please?’
Miss Read took her glasses off her nose and handed me a clean white handkerchief she had up her sleeve, and even though this other girl read the rest of my paragraph, no-one in the room was paying her any attention because they were all staring at me, George included.
‘Let’s read the rest of it together. There’s only a couple more paragraphs,’ said Miss Read. She gave my hand a little stroke, as if I was a cat, and returned to the front of the class, tossing her glasses onto her nose as she went. I managed the last two lines along with everyone else, then she clapped her hands and said ‘Home time!’ and my first day at Craigton was over.