Miss Pinkley, in the crude but apt vernacular of the profession, had got the class round her neck. Miss Topas, who invariably rushed in where she had forbidden Deborah to tread, came a little nearer the front desk and began to ‘collect eyes’. The miserable and terrified student so far had not noticed her, but the gradual silencing of her tormentors gave her the clue, and she turned round, blinking nervously.
‘Carry on, Miss Pinkley,’ said Miss Topas. ‘Don’t mind me. You’re the important person.’
She remained with Miss Pinkley for the next eight minutes, sighed inaudibly, initialled Miss Pinkley’s notebook but added no comment, wrote a brief report, and then went into the next classroom. Here was Kitty, initiating such as permitted the process into the mysteries of decimal fractions.
‘So you see,’ said Kitty, ‘all you do — hey, you, in the back row, stop pulling that girl’s hair! No, dash it, you weren’t doing up her slide. You were pulling her hair; I saw you. Oh, don’t argue You listen to me. Oh, hullo, Miss Topas. Take a seat, won’t you… Now, you perishers — that is children — look here, this is the point No,
She got the class laughing. Then she rolled her eyes at Miss Topas, and went back to multiplying decimals. Miss Topas gave her an average mark, prayed inaudibly for her soul, and passed out, highly appreciative, but, she feared, wrong-headedly so, of Kitty’s capabilities as an instructor.
At half past ten a bell rang to denote that it was time for the mid-morning break. This break lasted for a quarter of an hour. The younger and the more frivolous supervisors (the terms were not necessarily synonymous) divided the Practice Schools into those that made coffee in the morning break and those that did not. Sometimes a school would make afternoon tea instead. One or two schools made hot drinks both morning and afternoon.
Kitty’s school happened to have a headmistress who liked coffee and tea, so that there was always a good chance of being invited into the staff-room and of being provided with coffee and even, possibly, a biscuit. The students were not invited in. Miss Topas could see them in the end classroom when she glanced through the glass top of the door.
The headmistress also came into the staff-room for the coffee. She was what Miss Topas, who had her own system of classification for the various professional types, called the White Knight sort of headmistress. She was elderly, kindly, and laid down minute rules and regulations with regard to duties and to the methods of teaching the various subjects, marking the books, punishing misdemeanours, keeping registers and records and dealing with consumable stock, and she always wore a black alpaca apron in school, and was festooned with little ornamental and useful gadgets of all descriptions.
She fussed round Miss Topas who had supervised students at this school once before, and, applying the technique of doing and saying absolutely nothing, Miss Topas contrived to get the fussing over and done with in the minimum of time, got rid of her, and was able to hear a thrilling account of what had been happening down by the river from one of the teachers who had had it from a bus conductor, who had had it from the policeman who lived next door to him.
‘A woman found in the river — dead. Murdered, they think, although I don’t know how they knew. More likely to be suicide or accident, I should think, in a neighbourhood like this.’
Lively discussion of this view was interrupted by the bell which indicated that the break was at an end. Miss Topas went out into the playground. The school, except for the class which was to have physical training, led into the building. In charge of the class left outside was a lank-haired student in glasses. Her blue serge skirt hung badly, and dipped lower at the back than at the front. She had changed into rubber-soled shoes, but had made no other difference in her dress. She gave Miss Topas a sickly smile, and then took off her glasses and put them on a window ledge. She gave an order to the class and got the children running, then she took off her skirt, displaying well-cut shorts not of the College pattern. Then she gave one of the most interesting and remarkable physical training lessons that Miss Topas ever expected to supervise.
‘Why, Miss Cornflake, I had no idea you were such an expert! May I have your notebook, please?’
Miss Cornflake, putting on her skirt, her glasses and then a heavy coat, handed over her notebook.
‘Don’t star it, whatever you do,’ she said. ‘It was, actually, rather dud. Didn’t you notice…’
She proceeded with technicalities until Miss Topas, glancing at her watch, decided that she would never get in to Miss Priest’s history lesson. She was feeling slightly irritated with Miss Cornflake. She sat in on Miss Priest’s lesson on the Conversion of the English to Christianity and wrote a slightly acid and decidedly unfair report of it. Then she crossed that out and wrote a snappy comment in Miss Priest’s own notebook, advising her to remember that a class does not consist only of the middle of the front row. Then she crossed that out, too, and gave Miss Priest a better mark than she deserved — or, at least, than the lesson warranted — to compensate herself for her evil feelings.
‘I shan’t come back this afternoon,’ she said, at the end of the morning. ‘You can tell the other three.’
‘Four, Miss Topas,’ said Miss Priest
‘Yes, four,’ said Miss Topas.
‘I wish I could have you for that wretched Nature lesson tomorrow, instead of Miss Mount,’ continued the student, gazing raptly at the mark upon her notebook.
‘Well, you can’t,’ said Miss Topas. ‘I don’t know a single natural order — except fools,’ she added irritably. Miss Priest looked slightly taken aback. ‘And you must remember that you’ve got a class of forty, not a class of six. You talk to nobody but the middle of the front row, you know.’
‘Oh, do I? Oh, thanks, Miss Topas. Now that I remember, I do do that, and you’re quite right. It’s a jolly good tip. Thanks ever so!’
‘Go and have your lunch,’ said Miss Topas, ‘and for God’s sake don’t bolt it.’ She went out to her car and raced back to College, determined to suborn Deborah and make her spend the afternoon in the car on the moorland roads.
Chapter 9
EVIDENCE OF THE SUBMERGED TENTH
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