Chatterton made a note and said, ‘I’ll look into it.’ He dropped his pencil and eased back in his chair, his manner suggesting, as he intended that it should, that he had more important things to do.
‘I didn’t like the sound of it, I can tell you that.’ Rudderham had had an unpleasant evening and had given up a round of golf to come to the education office this morning; he was in no mood to be brushed aside. ‘Woman was very upset, quite beside herself, in fact.’
The education office had at least one parent a day who answered to this description. Chatterton said, ‘One needs to hear both sides of the case.’
‘I’ll be interested to hear what that fellow Drew has to say. Always been a bit uneasy about him, you know. I’d like you to deal with this personally.’
Chatterton looked at him over the rim of his glasses. ‘If I was expected to deal with all these cases personally . . .’ His long face puckered in a woebegone expression.
Rudderham was not amused. Chatterton’s tendency to act the clown on occasions had never appealed to him. ‘I had to deal with the woman personally,’ he snapped. ‘And I must say there was one thing that surprised me. A matter of fact, quite easily proved or disproved, no question of there being two sides to it. Woman said she wasn’t allowed to see anyone in authority here, and she ended up being talked down to by a teenager with her hair half down her back, wearing a skirt no bigger than a sporran.’
‘They all wear them, from thirty-five downwards,’ Chatterton pointed out dryly. ‘Miss Hester, in fact, is twenty-four and she is a very reliable young woman.’
‘But surely there must have been someone more senior who could have seen the woman?’
‘I’ll have a word with Punter.’
Rudderham felt at a disadvantage. He had pushed Punter’s appointment because Punter’s mother was his cousin. It was becoming increasingly apparent that this had been a mistake. Punter had no aptitude for work.
‘Well,’ he got to his feet. ‘I don’t want to press this too hard. But complaints should be investigated, don’t you agree?’
‘I assure you they are investigated immediately and thoroughly. And this one will be no exception. We probably have a report from the Head already.’
‘Good, good! Woman was talking about going to the press. We don’t want that sort of thing. You know how those wallahs exaggerate.’ He felt awkward now, conscious that he had probably made too much of a trifling incident. ‘Sorry to bother you with this. Know how busy you are. But I don’t like people saying no one would see them at the education office.’
This still stuck in his throat. Indeed, it was the one aspect which, at the time, seemed of much importance to Chatterton.
‘Why weren’t you here?’ he asked Punter. Not that he had much confidence in his Assistant Education Officer’s ability to deal with people and their problems; Punter was so sure that he knew the answer to everything that he scarcely bothered to find out what particular question was being raised with him. Nevertheless, the woman would probably have felt she had had her moneysworth if she had seen a man in a position of some authority, and Punter could be relied on to emphasize his authority.
‘Really!’ Punter bleated. ‘I ought to be able to turn my back on the office for five minutes. I had to go to Five Acres School . . .’
‘What do you mean, had to go? In my experience nothing has ever happened at Five Acres that couldn’t wait for another day. I was at a meeting and so was Ellis. You should have been here, you know that as well as I do.’
Punter opened his mouth and then shut it again; he looked at once surly and uneasy. Chatterton, regarding him wearily, guessed what was troubling him. Normally he would not have pressed the point, but this was no time in which to be over-scrupulous about one’s colleagues’ freedom of movement.
‘What time did you actually leave the school?’ he asked.
‘Well, I had an evening meeting, and last night there was the youth rally . . .’
‘For God’s sake, man! I don’t mind if you went home to tea. You’re not the office junior. I just want to know the facts.’
‘I left the school at three o’clock.’
‘And went straight home?’
‘Yes.’
Chatteron made a wry face; his regime was lax, no use blaming Punter for taking advantage of it.
‘Well, never mind that. Do you know what Miss Hester did about the complaint?’
Punter looked uncomfortable. ‘She did mention it to me this morning, but . . . None of the post had been signed, and some of the incoming post hadn’t been sorted; I was rather annoyed. She doesn’t organize her work very well, she can’t pick out the thing that’s urgent and attend to it, she let’s herself get bogged down . . .’
‘And you didn’t think this complaint was urgent?’
‘Not on the face of it.’
Chatterton, who rather agreed with him, sighed. ‘I’d better see Miss Hester, I think. Then I’ll go over and see Drew.’
‘Would you like me to do that?’ Punter brightened at the prospect of legitimate escape.
‘No.’ Chatterton was briefly in impish mood. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, with all that post waiting to be signed. Send Miss Hester along to me.’
Punter went out, his feet dragging a little. He was not too happy about the idea of Chatterton talking to Maggie Hester alone. As well as being unable to organize her work, she was rather lacking in discretion. It would not occur to her, for example, to tell a white lie to get herself or anyone else out of difficulty; not that she was smug or self-righteous, it was simply that her self-defence mechanism appeared to be quite inadequate. She had no sense of imminent danger.
Chatterton listened to Maggie’s story without interrupting her. He thought what a joy she was to behold and marvelled how anyone could complain about the brevity of her skirt. The best pair of legs in the Department. He wondered if she was a virgin; there was something about her which suggested that, in spite of her age, she might be. A little afraid of men, or of herself perhaps?
‘You did everything you could, Miss Hester,’ he said courteously when she had finished. ‘Don’t worry about it. I assume you asked Drew for a report?’
‘I . . .’ She stopped and coloured. ‘I told him about it. I’ll make a note of his comments, shall I?’
Something wrong here, Chatterton thought, studying her. Her face was crumpled with concern; but the eyes looked at him steadily, the expression that of someone who cannot hope to deflect wrath.
‘When did you speak to him?’ he asked gently. ‘Did you leave it until this morning? You were very busy yesterday afternoon, I know.’
She still hesitated. So it wasn’t as simple as that. Chatterton looked down at the desk, at the pattern of light and shadow thrown by the sun across its worn leather surface, and he felt unaccountably tired as though he wanted to lay his head on the desk and let sleep blot out the office and all its petty irritations. He had had this feeling of overwhelming tiredness once or twice lately.
Maggie Hester said, ‘It happened that I saw Mr. Drew after I left the office, so I told him then.’
Chatterton said, ‘I see. Well, I don’t suppose it matters.’
There was a pause, then she said, ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Miss Hester.’ It took a physical effort for him to raise his head. ‘You can leave it to me now.’
When she had gone his secretary put her head round the door to say that she was making coffee.
‘I’ll have it black,’ he said.
What a damned nuisance Rudderham was!
He looked at his desk. There was the report on comprehensive education; the committee now wanted further reports on alternative ways of running a split-site school, (a) should one building be used mainly for practical purposes, the other for class purposes, or (b) would it be better to organize one as an upper and the other as a lower school? They wanted both possibilities examined in detail although previously they had specifically stated that at this stage they were concerned only with broad outlines of policy. Now they wanted a review of other split-site schools in the country, and the findings of those concerned as to the advantages and disadvantages of schemes (a) and (b) (as if one didn’t know that without consulting other local education authorities!); they wanted detailed information on the staffing of such a school, first for scheme (a) and then for scheme (b), the curriculum, (a) and (b), and the extensions needed to the buildings of the schools which were to be amalgamated, (a) and (b) again. It was essential, they had insisted, that this information should be available at the special meeting to be held in a week’s time. But even then, they were unlikely to make a decision. They had not really decided what policy to adopt with regard to comprehensive education and instead of getting down to a discussion on the basic issue, they skirted it, asking for more information on this aspect, a report on that alternative, setting up working parties whose reports they would eventually reject. These delaying tactics inevitably gave rise to local criticism and impaired their relations with the Department of Education and Science. When things got bad, they looked for a scapegoat. The weeks ahead would not be pleasant.
In addition to the report on comprehensive education Chatterton was also asked, as a matter of urgency, to let the Establishment Committee have a detailed report on the staffing needs of the Education Department for the impending triennial review. He was also required to produce a report on the need for a more generous pupil-teacher ratio. Both these items were urgent and required his personal attention.
The Education Department was seriously under-staffed, but any attempt to rectify the position would meet with objections from the Clerk of the County Council and the County Treasurer both of whom were jealous of their status as the first officers of the Council. Chatterton would have to battle not only with members, but with these powerful officers, if he hoped to improve the lot of his staff. They had already made mincemeat of the County Architect’s modest requests. Chatterton would have to fight as hard for the new clerical assistant in the Careers Advisory Section as for the professional assistant in the Schools Section; of the professional assistant, it would be said, ‘At this rate they will all be generals in the Education Department’, while the additional clerical post would be greeted with cries of ‘The family tree has too long a tail.’
The improvement of the pupil-teacher ratio was a matter of some urgency; staffing in the County Council’s schools was on a less generous scale than in surrounding areas and as a result the County was losing good teachers and failing to replace them. Chatterton owed it to the teachers in the area to make a strong plea for improved conditions. This again would involve a fight with the County Treasurer.
Ellis, the Deputy Education Officer, was able and ambitious, but to leave these matters in his hands would be to reduce their importance in the eyes of members. An urgent meeting of the Establishment Committee had been called while Chatterton was on holiday last year and as a result the staffing of the Advisory Section had been drastically cut. He had been told afterwards that one member had been overheard to say, ‘What can they expect if the Chief Education Officer can’t be bothered to attend?’
Chatterton picked up his diary and studied it. This afternoon there was a meeting of the Panel set up to consider the pupil-teacher ratio, and this was immediately followed by a meeting of the newly-formed Advisory Committee on Health in Schools. Members would expect him to be present at both meetings. This evening, he had to attend a prize-giving at the Eastgate High School. If he cancelled this at the last minute it would be noted that he never failed to attend the grammar school prize-giving.
And Rudderham insisted that he should go scurrying about to look into the case of a child who had slipped off a climbing frame!
‘I’m going to Crossgate School,’ he said when his secretary came in with the coffee. ‘Give the Head a ring, and tell him I’m on the way, will you?’ But by the time she reached the door, he had changed his mind. ‘No. Don’t telephone. I ought to be able to turn up in my schools unexpectedly from time to time.’
‘I would have thought you had earned that right,’ she agreed.
Miss Deane had worked for Chatterton ever since she came to the office thirty years ago and during the greater part of this time she had been his mistress. In her view he had a right to anything that he asked and over the years she had done her best to meet all his requirements. She was devoted to him and forgave him his many infidelities. Lately, she had begun to worry about him.
He was a big man, but in the last year he seemed to have shrunk. The flesh hung loosely on the broad frame, and with the shrinking of the flesh had come a more subtle change in the mind. His choice of words was not so exact, his grammarian’s instinct sometimes deserted him and his prose was less austerely precise; the implements were beginning to wear and no longer cut so fine an edge. She noticed how quickly his store of energy ran dry, by the afternoon he had nothing left to give. His face, which had been devastatingly handsome in a rather donnish way, still retained its sardonic attraction; but the seams and furrows which had once added to its distinction now bit too deep and beneath the eyes the shadows of pleasure had sickened and grown rotten. He was beginning to look much older than his sixty years.
‘Debauchery!’ This was the way in which some members of his staff commented on the change in him, albeit with affection. Privately, Miss Deane thought, not debauchery, that would never wear him down!
Chatterton in the meantime drove slowly to Crossgate Primary School which was situated on the edge of the town, at the meeting place of the old and the new. The school was a pleasant old brick building, squat in the style of late nineteenth century school architecture, but with a bright modern extension. Immediately opposite the school was a council housing estate built some distance from the busy link road which circled the town. Rows of dun-coloured houses and three-storey blocks of flats had been set down incongruously in fields not yet reduced to neat lawns and smooth grass verges; the result was that the whole estate looked like something left over from war-time occupation. It was very quiet at this time of day. The only movement was the ripple of washing hanging on a line; the whirr of traffic from the distant road came from a world which had neglected to connect with this little island. No wonder the people were not happy, they missed the easy comradeship of the overcrowded slums from which they had come. It was lucky for Drew that the school also served one of the expensive new private developments. At least he had the opportunities offered by a mixed school population, even if he had the problems that went with it. Problems wouldn’t worry Mylor Drew; he was the kind who likes a challenge. Chatterton wasn’t. He got out of his car reluctantly.
Drew saw him from the window of his room and came out to welcome him. This enthusiasm was typical of most heads; by the nature of their work they were cut off from other adults, if they were wise they did not invade the staff room too often and they seldom had an opportunity to meet heads of other schools. They received few visits from members of the Education Committee whose time was occupied by their own work and County Council meetings; the education office staff, with the exception of the indefatigable Punter, were too concerned with the mysterious business of administration to find out what actually went on in the schools and on the rare occasions when they did venture forth it was usually the secondary schools which claimed their attention. Chatterton always felt guilty when he saw the childish delight with which his heads hurried to welcome him.
‘What have we done?’ Drew greeted him. A certain astringency here; normally it would have appealed to Chatterton, but now he winced.
‘My dear chap, I usually come to your school when I want to impress someone. You know that.’
‘H.M Inspector wasn’t impressed,’ Drew told him as they walked towards the building. ‘She said that it was intolerable that any school should have to use the same hall for dining, P.E., music, dancing and any other activity work.’
‘H.M. Inspectors are very remote from Whitehall,’ Chatterton reminded him. ‘Just try getting a separate hall for dining into a building programme!’
He stopped on the school steps. It seemed a pity to cut short Drew’s recital; all heads used the precious time when the Chief Education Officer visited them to air their grievances, it was the only chance they had.
‘There’s room on the site for one,’ Drew followed his glance.
‘It’s your climbing frame at which I’m looking,’ Chatterton said wryly.
Drew stared at him, not merely incredulous, but with an expression which Chatterton thought was very near to contempt. The man’s face was far too expressive for his own good, the older man thought ruefully.
‘Don’t tell me Miss Cathcart has got through to you now!’
‘No. To the Chairman of the Education Committee.’
Drew laughed. ‘She’s a complete neurotic. Couldn’t he see that?’
‘Apparently not.’
Drew said, ‘I can see I’m not going to get a dining hall today. Come in and I’ll tell you about Miss Cathcart.’
He was not in the least worried. In the case of some heads this would have been a good sign, but with Drew, Chatterton could not be so sure. Drew, he sometimes felt, was wasted in teaching, he should have been a Napoleon of industry; he had very broad shoulders, a flexible conscience, and a massive indifference to public opinion.
Drew said to a little girl who was walking along the corridor, ‘Emily, do you think you could find Mrs. Holman for me?’ Mrs. Holman was the welfare assistant: the little girl thought she could find her. ‘Then would you ask her if she could manage two cups of coffee? Tell her I have a visitor.’
Emily repeated ‘two cups of coffee’. She did not glance at Chatterton; Drew was the most important person in the whole field of education as far as she was concerned. He sent her on her way with a light pat on the shoulder. Many heads would have made a laborious performance of telling Emily that the school had a very important visitor. Drew never did this kind of thing.
‘My secretary is at the dentist’s this morning,’ he explained to Chatterton as he led him into his room.
Drew’s room, like that of many other heads, was a poky place with barely enough space for two people to sit comfortably one on either side of the desk. It had curtains which had been made by Miss Freeth for Drew’s predecessor, but since Drew’s arrival her inspiration appeared to have dried up and there was no other evidence of a gracious feminine touch.
‘Miss Cathcart.’ Drew got down to business, relentlessly refusing to wait until the arrival of coffee could add a civilizing touch to the proceedings.
‘This is just as tiresome for me as it is for you,’ Chatterton intervened. ‘Unfortunately, there were one or two minor irregularities in the way it was dealt with at the office—we’re none of us perfect.’
He had meant to convey to Drew that they were in this together; but he realized as soon as he had spoken that he had made a mistake.
‘I don’t think your office comes into it,’ Drew said, a shade too forcefully. ‘Your folk there seem to have behaved with the utmost propriety.’
Damn these young people! Chatterton fretted; why can’t they manage their affairs better? I never got myself into this sort of state.
‘I am ready to be convinced that everyone has behaved with perfect propriety,’ he murmured. ‘That, in fact, is why I am here.’
The coffee arrived at this moment, and Drew had to wait while Mrs. Holman poured it out and asked after Mrs. Chatterton whom she knew slightly. When she had gone, Chatterton settled comfortably back in his chair, and said, ‘Now, let’s have it.’ Drew gave a quick, concise account of what had happened.
‘Did you see the child yourself?’ Chatterton asked.
‘Unfortunately—as it now seems—no. But there appeared to be no reason to bring me into it at the time. His knuckles were a bit bruised but that was all. But this morning . . .’
‘He’s here, then?’
‘Oh yes, he’s here all right! Mother would have to give up another day’s work if she kept him at home, and she wouldn’t do that if he’d been battered black and blue.’
‘You were saying, this morning . . .’
‘I took care to have a look at him without drawing too much attention to it—he’s a child who thrives on drama. So I paid a visit to his class and examined a few of their books, that sort of thing. I had a good chance to see his hands. Not a bit of sticking plaster even, and only a faint bruise on the right hand. You can see for yourself, if you want to.’
‘Certainly not.’ If one couldn’t trust one’s head to this extent, things had come to a pretty pass.
‘Of course, he created a scene when he slid off the thing. But that was because he thought he was going to be lectured for disobedience. By the time the school broke up, ten minutes later, they had calmed him down but no doubt his face was still puffed with tears. Mother would demand a full account; she always does.’
‘You’ve had trouble with her before?’
‘Constantly. Usually telephone calls and letters, though.’
‘Life is hard for the woman, I suppose.’
‘Harder still for the child. He gets all the material things, because her pride demands that he should stand comparison with “more fortunate children”. Her own words. She makes him well aware that he is not fortunate. He is also made aware of his rights; no injustice, however small or unintentional, ever passes without notice. Life was hard for mother, so her son must be given the tools to fight for himself. But she gives him no affection, never plays with him, or talks to him—apart from lecturing him. She never buys him anything that isn’t strictly useful. She’s completely unrelaxed herself, and this has a bad effect on the child; he’s a bundle of nerves. I’ve tried to suggest to her that he needs to play with other children, indeed he could play with my own. But she won’t have it. She’s too proud to mix with married women, so Peter has no playmates.’
‘Is child guidance a possibility?’
‘It’s mother that needs guidance, and she wouldn’t hear of that! We tried to suggest it tactfully once, because his tantrums are a trial and tend to get other children over-excited. But it was obvious that this was only going to add to her feeling that she is constantly singled out for humiliation.’
‘What’s the answer?’
‘There isn’t one. Years later, when he’s a damn sight worse and too old to help, authority of some kind or another will step in and he’ll be sent to an expensive boarding school for maladjusted children.’
Chatterton put his cup down on the desk and said, ‘Well, it doesn’t sound as if we can resolve that one.’ He was glad his subject was history. Drew watched him, the contempt was even more apparent this time but Chatterton was looking the other way. Drew said dryly:
‘But you’re satisfied that you can find an answer for the Chairman?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
‘Just one other thing. There was no question of this young woman. Miss Smith, actually pulling the boy off the frame?’
‘None at all. She assures me that he loosed his hold the moment she came towards him. And knowing Peter I can well believe it.’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’ Chatterton toyed with the idea of seeing the boy after all, but decided against it; from what had been said about both the boy and his mother it was probably advisable that there should be as little drama as possible.
‘What about Miss Smith?’ he asked. ‘Would it upset her if I had a word with her?’
‘She’s upset as it is,’ Drew said. ‘She’s only been teaching for a short time and she has taken this incident as a proof of failure. I don’t think it would hurt if you saw her.’
Chatterton’s influence on young women was reputed to be reassuring, if anything.
Chatterton had a brief word with Miss Smith who arrived blinking back tears; the tears soon cleared, however, and she gave Chatterton a smile as bright as a May morning when she departed. She had added little to what Chatterton had already heard, but he was now quite convinced that she would not have touched the child. She might well have panicked, but in that case her reaction would have been to run away for help; Miss Smith was never going to be the kind that advances to meet trouble, she was a nice little nonentity for whom teaching was going to be a long martyrdom.
Thank God it isn’t any worse than this, he thought as he drove back. He went to his office and dictated two letters which went out under his own reference.
The first letter was to the Chairman, to whom he wrote:
‘I have looked into this matter thoroughly and I have seen both Drew and the teacher concerned. Briefly, what happened was that the class was in the playground for organized games. Peter, who is a difficult child, had already attacked three other children, and was told to stand to one side until he could behave better. He immediately went away and mounted the climbing frame. When the teacher saw this, she told him to get down at once and he loosed his grip and descended rather precipitately. The teacher at no time touched him. He created quite a scene, but I gather that this is a frequent occurrence with this particular child. He was not, in fact, hurt apart from bruised knuckles and a slight graze on the knee.
‘I can see no justification whatsoever for the complaint made by Miss Cathcart. I gather that the home circumstances are not all they might be and the mother herself has problems of personality which do not help the child. In the circumstances, the attitude of the Head and his staff seems to me to be remarkably forbearing. Incidentally, I note that in spite of a number of differences with the school. Miss Cathcart has at no time asked for the child to be transferred to another school, and I think this speaks for itself.
‘I am enclosing a copy of a letter which I have sent to Miss Cathcart and I hope you will agree that this should close the incident.’
To Miss Cathcart, he wrote:
‘Dear Madam,
‘I understand that you visited this office yesterday to make a complaint regarding an incident which occurred at Crossgate Primary School.
‘This matter has now been carefully investigated and I do not find that the staff of the school have been in any way negligent. In fact, I am satisfied that they are genuinely concerned with your son’s welfare.
‘It may be that you received a rather misleading account of what took place from Peter himself; young children are not always very accurate recorders of events, especially when they are overwrought. I think it is always wise to talk matters over with the Head on such occasions, and I understand that Mr. Drew has already offered to see you. I suggest that you should accept this invitation and make an appointment to see him at a date and time convenient to you. I am sure you will find him most helpful.
Yours faithfully,
He sent a copy of Miss Cathcart’s letter to Drew. And that, as far as he was concerned, was an end to the affair.