| |
HALFWAY THROUGH POPPY’S surprisingly mature reading of Daffodils – we’d just started the Romantics, as per the Year 7 curriculum pinned up inside my store cupboard – I shivered.
When we’d started working our way through the battered red hardbacks of Great British Poetry, I remembered I’d loved these poems myself at their age and wondered why I’d barely picked up a poetry book lately, since there was so much pleasure to be found in them. But Steven didn’t like me reading poetry, or anything else, really, seeing books as rivals for attention. I’d stopped reading humour too, as it annoyed him if I laughed at what he perceived as private jokes that excluded him. Whenever I tried to share by reading aloud to him, he’d remained stony faced.
“What’s the point of reading PG Wodehouse now?” he said once, annoyed at the tears of laughter rolling down my face. “The man’s been dead for years.”
As to romantic novels – I’d stopped reading those long ago. They just depressed me, demonstrating what was missing from my life.
But why should Daffodils make me shiver now? I raised my eyes from my copy of the book in which I was following Poppy’s rendition. Every girl in the room had not only buttoned her cardigan to her neck, she’d also pulled a pashmina from her book bag and wrapped it round her shoulders. The scattering of so many coloured wraps reminded me of a tin of Quality Street.
Imogen caught me staring at her purple shawl and pulled it tighter about her shoulders, wrapping her hands in the loose ends.
“Didn’t you bring yours with you, Miss? My sister told us we’ll need them as the term goes by.”
Imogen’s big sister was three years ahead of her.
“Don’t worry, I’ll just turn the radiator up.”
I jumped down from my seat and strolled over to put my hand on the huge white-painted edifice under the window. It was stone cold. I drew back my hand.
“Dear me, it’s not on at all.”
I tried turning the little metal wheel that connected the radiator to the pipes, thinking it might not be open.
“My sister says the Bursar won’t put the heating on in the daytime until after half term,” said Imogen.
That would be the start of November.
“I’m sure that can’t be right. Now, who would like to read Kublai Khan?”
I thought its exotic setting might fool us into feeling warmer.
At the end of the lesson, as the girls were packing their books away, I checked the radiator again, only to find it as cold as a dead poet.
“No luck, Miss?” Poppy stopped on her way to the door to give me a second opinion, then snatched her chilled hand away from the icy metal to warm it in her cardigan pocket.
I shook my head. “Perhaps there’s a blockage. I’ll report it to the Bursar after lunch so he can fix it.”
Imogen rolled her eyes at me. “Good luck with that, Miss. He says he doesn’t feel the cold at all.”
“He says, ‘If I don’t feel the cold at my age, nor should you’.” Poppy’s impression of the Bursar’s gruff tones was even more impressive than her reading of Daffodils.
“That’s why we all have thermals, Miss,” said Imogen. “To keep us alive until November.”
“If we don’t go home at half term to warm up, we’ll probably all die of hypochondria,” added Poppy.
“You mean hypothermia, Poppy. But it’s not that cold. Besides, you’ve all got your lovely pashminas.”
As I followed them into the quad, there was no appreciable difference between the temperature inside and out. If anything, the quad was warmer, as the sun had come out, and the flagstones were soaking up its heat like storage heaters. As I dawdled across the courtyard, warming up as I went, I googled “minimum temperature in schools” and downloaded a useful briefing note from the National Union of Teachers to get the facts.
As I entered the Bursar’s office in response to his imperious “Come!”, the heat inside hit me like a wall.
“Nice and cosy in here,” I remarked. “So the school heating must be working then?”
I glanced at the log fire blazing in the grate.
“I wish I had one of these in my classroom. My radiator’s stone cold, you know.”
The Bursar set down his fountain pen and sat back, dwarfed as usual by his swivel chair.
“You exaggerate, Gemma. Perhaps having come to us from a city centre, you’re not used to the seasons. Country people don’t all aspire to live at the same temperature all year round, you know. I expect you’ll be clamouring for air conditioning in the summer term.”
He put his hands behind his head and regarded me steadily. I frowned.
“I’m not concerned for myself. I have my girls to think of. I can’t expect them to learn well if they’re chilled through.”
“That’s why we ask them to bring pashminas and thermals. I see it as our duty to be environmentally friendly.”
He propelled his chair over to a set of filing trays beneath the window and extracted a copy of the school uniform list. Wheeling himself back behind his desk, he pushed the list across to me.
“There. You see? The girls need to show a sense of responsibility for their own well-being.”
He returned his attention to the pad he’d been writing on when I came in, as if considering the case closed.
The thought of those poor little girls shivering in their luxury wraps made me bold. I pulled out my phone and tapped the screen to retrieve the download from the NUT, highlighting the passage on responsibilities.
“See, you have to provide a thermometer to give evidence that you’re heating the classrooms to the legal minimum. There’s no thermometer in my classroom. Please provide one.”
He took the phone from my hand and peered at the downloaded document through the lower half of his bifocals. “A sufficient number of thermometers should be available ... blah blah blah ... They do not, however, require a thermometer to be provided in every room.”
I scanned his office for evidence and my eyes alighted on an antique wooden barometer on his wall. I crossed the room to read it. “It’s 25ºC in here. Can I borrow this for the afternoon, please? I’ll bring it back after last lesson.”
He held up a hand to stay me. “No, wait, I’ve got a much more portable one.” He rummaged in his desk drawer and produced a digital device that I recognised as being from IKEA. “Turn it this way up and it tells you the temperature. This way shows you the time. Turn it again for the stopwatch and this way if you want the date.”
He set it down on the date side and gazed at me in defiance.
I picked it up and turned it to read the temperature: 25º Celsius again. It was accurate, at least.
As he slid the drawer closed, I picked up the thermometer and headed for the door. As I passed the fireplace, I considered prolonging the conversation so that I could linger in its warmth, but decided his chilly personality would cancel out any heat gain.
As I left his office, he was slipping off his suit jacket and hanging it over the back of his chair.
