The new students were a strange bunch, thought Miss Girling, as she watched them filing into the new computer block. They must have arrived all at once in the evening – none of them had been there when she left for home the night before. What’s more, they all looked foreign and they were all boys, quite different from the children who used to attend the school when she was a teacher – middle-class children from local families, never a brown or black face among them. This intake seemed to be all brown faces and she wondered where they had come from.
The other odd thing was that they were all amazingly quiet. In her day, a group of children going into lessons would have been chattering and laughing so loudly you couldn’t hear yourself think. The problem was to quieten them down enough to start the lesson. She had never come across children so subdued. Perhaps they were tired after their journey from wherever it was, she thought to herself. As she stood and watched, the school cook came past on his way to the kitchens.
‘Where are they from?’ he asked Miss Girling.
‘Heaven knows. I was wondering that myself,’ she replied. ‘They don’t look English.’
‘A spooky lot, I’d say. I hope they don’t have a special diet. No one’s given me any instructions.’
Spooky’s a good word for the whole place nowadays, thought Miss Girling as she watched the headmaster’s assistant, Cicero, following the children into the new classroom block. She went into the office where the accounts manager Miss Looms was working. Miss Looms, like Miss Girling, was a hangover from the glory days of the school, but her job was now severely curtailed from what it had been and she only came in two mornings a week to deal with the housekeeping accounts – food bills, utilities and simple upkeep of the building. Everything else seemed to be in the hands of the mysterious Cicero.
‘I see the new pupils have arrived,’ said Miss Girling. ‘Where are they going to live? The old dormitories are not in a fit state.’
‘No. They’ve got accommodation for them at one of the farms. They have converted some outbuildings into summer lets and the farmer was delighted to have more permanent lodgers – especially out of season. His wife’s going to cook their evening meal.’
‘Good luck to her. I’ve just been talking to Cook. He says no one’s told him what they eat.’
Miss Looms shrugged her shoulders as if to shake off all responsibility.
Miss Girling waited two days, in case there were any more developments, then called the number the nice policewoman, or whatever she really was, had left with her. She got an answer machine and, flustered, hung up. But telling herself not to be silly, she rang back, this time leaving a message in as calm a tone as she could manage, saying simply that the new students had arrived.
What she hadn’t said, since it took her another day or two to realise this, was that these new pupils seemed to spend all their time in the new IT block. As far as Miss Girling could tell, the classes they attended there were taught by Mr Sarnat or by another new arrival, a middle-aged man with a greying beard called what sounded like Gottingen. He was also foreign – probably a German, Miss Girling decided.
Miss Girling knew absolutely nothing about computer science, but she guessed that if something fishy was going on at the school, it must have something to do with what these new students were being taught. So she made a point of walking slowly past the computer block in the mornings when the students were in their lessons. She was vaguely hoping she might hear something or see something that might give her a clue about what was going on inside. But although the block had large windows, they were never open and no sound escaped.
However, on the third morning, becoming more daring, she looked into the window as she walked slowly past and noticed that Mr Gottingen was handing out some sort of paper document to each student. Maybe it was a test or instructions of some kind. If she could get hold of one of those, she thought, it might help someone more computer-literate than she was to understand what was going on. At the end of the lesson period, as the students were coming out for their morning break, she was back. She waited until the classroom had cleared and Mr Gottingen had gone to the staffroom, then she sidled in.
But Mr Gottingen must have taken everything away; the screens were all switched off and there was no paper lying around or anything at all to show what the students had been studying. She left the classroom empty-handed and nearly tripped over Cicero, who was standing just outside the door.
He stared at her unpleasantly. She told herself that it was not for him to question her whereabouts, but found herself nonetheless justifying her presence. ‘I was just looking for Mr Gottingen,’ she said. ‘I have a message for him,’ she went on nervously, realising her voice sounded shrill.
‘Break time,’ said Cicero shortly. He looked at her coldly, appraisingly. ‘You should know that.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Miss Girling. It seemed best to witter on; hopefully Cicero would decide she was simply doddery. ‘How silly of me to forget. I’ll go find him in the staffroom.’ She felt her performance as a scatty old thing was quite convincing, until she saw the expression in Cicero’s eyes.
If she couldn’t actually get a copy of any handouts, then Miss Girling reckoned her best hope of finding out what was going on was with the students themselves. She was used to talking to students – goodness knows how many she had come to know during her years at Bartholomew Manor. But this lot were oddly unapproachable. They seemed to operate in an indivisible pack. Polite, yes; willing to reply to her questions, yes again – though only up to a point. The minute Miss Girling asked them anything more substantial than if they were enjoying their course, a shutter seemed to come down: their understanding of English suddenly grew worse, and her questions were answered with a show of bafflement and incomprehension.
Then on Friday, as she was about to leave the college to catch her bus, she found one of the students in a corner of the courtyard, quietly crying. She had noticed him before: he was smaller than the others, with dark cropped hair and big soulful eyes. Miss Girling stopped, out of natural curiosity and of kindness.
‘Is there something the matter?’ she asked gently.
The boy shook his head, vainly trying to fight back his tears.
Miss Girling said, ‘What’s your name?’
He replied in a whisper. ‘Thomma.’
‘Thomma? That’s a lovely name,’ said Miss Girling, though it sounded odd to her ears. ‘I say, Thomma, come with me for a minute.’
The boy followed dutifully as Miss Girling led him into the main school building. She thought of heading for the staffroom but feared she might bump into the headmaster or, worse still, Cicero. Further down the corridor there was a small room used by the school nurse. She’d have left for the day, so Miss Girling went in there, Thomma trailing behind her.
It was a functional sort of room, with a bed, a big armchair, and a desk and office swivel chair. It smelled of antiseptic. Miss Girling waited for the boy to come in, then closed the door behind him. She settled Thomma in the armchair and sat down at right angles to him in the swivel chair. He really was a small lad, she thought; he looked lost in the armchair – his feet barely reached the floor.
‘Now, Thomma,’ she said, her tone sympathetic, ‘please tell me what’s the matter.’
‘Nothing is wrong, miss,’ said the boy shyly, not looking at her.
‘Well, something must be wrong to make a big boy like you cry.’ She waited but Thomma said nothing. ‘Has someone been unkind?’ she asked.
He didn’t reply to this either.
‘Is one of your teachers cross with you?’ Again, he said nothing. In slight desperation, she thought of asking him if the school food was the problem, when she realised there was a much more obvious reason for his upset. ‘You must be missing your parents,’ she said firmly.
The boy reacted at last. ‘They drowned in the ocean, on our way to Europe. I miss them.’ He sounded wobbly.
‘What country were you coming from?’
‘Syria.’ His voice sounded resigned, as if accustomed to telling this sad story.
‘I see. And is that the reason you were crying?’
The boy hesitated. Miss Girling was becoming anxious in case anyone came in. She felt sure it wouldn’t be good for Thomma or for her to be discovered there. But she told herself to be patient. Sure enough, he said confidingly, ‘I am a Christian, Miss.’
‘I see. Well, so am I,’ said Miss Girling, wondering what this had to do with anything. She attended services in the village church most Sundays, despite an aversion to the modern Church of England’s insistence on shaking hands with fellow congregants and the playing of folk songs on a guitar once a month.
But the boy was pleased, beaming at Miss Girling. Then he frowned, and said, ‘The other boys are none of them Christian.’
Miss Girling sniffed. ‘That shouldn’t matter. I always say religion is a private matter.’
‘They make fun of me when I say my prayers at bedtime. They shout out while I pray.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ said Miss Girling, slightly shocked. She would have to have a word with Mr Sarnat, she told herself, before reminding herself that her priority was collecting information.
‘And they will not let me go to church.’
‘Really? Did they say why?’ Perhaps transport was a problem, she thought.
‘Mr Sarnat said I should be focused on my studies, even on Sundays.’
‘You are all meant to work on Sundays, then?’
For the first time, Thomma raised his head and looked directly at her. ‘Not really. It is our only free day and every other day we either have classes or lots of homework to do. Sunday is the day when we can sleep late, then the rest of the day is ours to do as we like. The others play football. I would like to play,’ he added with a sheepish smile, ‘but they say I’m not good enough.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said consolingly. ‘But then you’d rather go to church, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he said simply, and Miss Girling could see he meant it. An idea was forming in her head.
‘There may be a way to get you there. To church, I mean,’ she said.
Thomma looked at her brightly. ‘Really?’ he said hopefully.
Miss Girling was thinking. She didn’t have a car, of course, but there were buses. A bus went past the end of the lane that led to the school. It was the bus she took every day and it passed near both the farm where the boy was sleeping and the church. She could come and collect him on Sundays and take him with her to church. Then when he got used to it, he would be able to manage on his own. She would just need to find out if the bus ran on Sundays, though she was pretty sure it did, and then work out which bus they would need to catch to get to church in time for the service.
She looked at the boy, almost pathetically innocent in his wish to go to church. She said, ‘I may be able to take you with me to church, if you like.’ Thomma beamed again. She went on, ‘I could come and pick you up from the bus stop by the farm and bring you back but I’ll have to find out the times of the bus. Do you have a phone so I can contact you?’
The boy shook his head. ‘They took them away when we arrived.’
She wanted to ask why, but instead she said, ‘Is there any phone you can use?’
The boy nodded. ‘Yes. In the village near the farm, there is a phone box. We’re not allowed to use it but some of the boys do after we leave school in the evening. I know how to use it because I went with one of the boys to ring his auntie – she lives in France. But he couldn’t phone her because he didn’t have money. They don’t let us have money, though a few boys have got some hidden.’
‘Here,’ said Miss Girling, opening her bag and thrusting some coins into the boy’s hand. ‘This will be enough. Ring me if you don’t hear from me before then. Though I will try and leave you a note here at the school with the time to meet me at the bus stop.’
As she spoke, she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance coming along the corridor. Panicking a little now, though she wasn’t sure why, she grabbed a pad off the nurse’s desk and tore off the top blank sheet, then scrabbling in her bag she fished out a pencil and wrote down her home telephone number. ‘I’ve put my number down here.’
She started to put the pencil back when she saw the card the policewoman had given her, tucked in the pocket next to her purse. She took it out and wrote its number down as well on the slip of paper. ‘And if for some reason you can’t reach me and you need some help, ring this number. I’ll write their name down, too.’