Collected Poems, page 20
Brathay, Coquet, Crake, Dee, Don, Goyt,
Rothay, Tyne, Swale, Tees, Wear, Wharfe . . .
had passed a note, which has never been found,
to the classmate in front, Emily Jane, a girl
who adored the teacher, Miss V. Dunn MA,
steadily squeaking her chalk on the board –
Allen, Clough, Duddon, Feugh, Greta, Hindburn,
Irwell, Kent, Leven, Lowther, Lune, Sprint . . .
but who furtively opened the folded note,
torn from the back of the King James Bible, read
what was scribbled there and laughed out loud.
It was a miserable, lowering winter’s day. The girls
had been kept indoors at break – Wet Play
in the Hall – the windows tall and thin,
sad with rain like a long list of watery names –
Rawthey, Roeburn, Skirfare, Troutbeck, Wash . . .
likewise, the sound of the laugh of Emily Jane
was a liquid one, a gurgle, a ripple, a dribble,
a babble, a gargle, a plash, a splash of a laugh
like the sudden jackpot leap of a silver fish
in the purse of a pool. No fool, Emily Jane
clamped her turquoisey hand – her fountain pen leaked –
to her mouth; but the laugh was out, was at large,
was heard by the pupil twinned to her double desk –
Rosemary Beth – the brace on whose jiggly teeth
couldn’t restrain the gulping giggle she gave
which caused Miss Dunn to spin round. Perhaps,
she said, We can all share the joke? But Emily Jane
had scrunched and dropped the note with the joke
to the floor and kicked it across to Jennifer Kay
who snorted and toed it to Marjorie May
who spluttered and heeled it backwards
to Jessica Kate. Girls! By now, every girl in the form
had started to snigger or snicker or titter or chuckle
or chortle till the classroom came to the boil
with a brothy mirth. Girls! Miss Dunn’s shrill voice
scraped Top G and only made matters worse.
Five minutes passed in a cauldron of noise.
No one could seem to stop. Each tried holding
her breath or thinking of death or pinching
her thigh, only to catch the eye of a pal,
a crimson, shaking, silent girl, and explode
through the nose in a cackling sneeze. Thank you!
Please! screeched Miss Dunn, clapping her hands
as though she applauded the choir they’d become,
a percussion of trills and whoops filling the room
like birds in a cage. But then came a triple rap
at the door and in stalked Miss Fife, Head of Maths,
whose cold equations of eyes scanned the desks
for a suitable scapegoat. Stand up, Geraldine Ruth.
Geraldine Ruth got to her feet, a pale girl, a girl
who looked, in the stale classroom light, like a sketch
for a girl, a first draft to be crumpled and crunched
and tossed away like a note. She cleared her throat,
raising her eyes, water and sky, to look at Miss Fife.
The girls who were there that day never forgot
how invisible crayons seemed to colour in
Geraldine Ruth, white face to puce, mousey hair
suddenly gifted with health and youth, and how –
as Miss Fife demanded what was the meaning of this –
her lips split from the closed bud of a kiss
to the daisy chain of a grin and how then she yodelled
a laugh with the full, open, blooming rose of her throat,
a flower of merriment. What’s the big joke?
thundered Miss Fife as Miss Dunn began again
to clap, as gargling Geraldine Ruth collapsed
in a heap on her desk, as the rest of the class
hollered and hooted and howled. Miss Fife strode
on sharp heels to the blackboard, snatched up
a finger of chalk and jabbed and slashed out
a word. SILENCE. But the class next door,
Fourth Years learning the Beaufort scale with Miss Batt,
could hear the commotion. Miss Batt droned on –
Nought, calm; one, light air; two, light breeze; three,
gentle . . . four, moderate . . . five, fresh . . . six, strong breeze;
seven, moderate gale . . . Stephanie Fay started to laugh.
What’s so amusing, Stephanie Fay? barked Miss Batt.
What’s so amusing? echoed unwitting Miss Dunn
on the other side of the wall. Precisely what’s
so amusing? chorused Miss Fife. The Fourth Years
shrieked with amazed delight and one wag,
Angela Joy, popped her head in the jaws of her desk
and bellowed What’s so amusing? What’s so
amusing? into its musty yawn. The Third Form
guffawed afresh at the sound of the Fourth
and the noise of the two combined was heard
by the First Form, trying to get Shakespeare by heart
to the beat of the ruler of Mrs Mackay. Don’t look
at your books, look at me. After three. Friends,
Romans, Countrymen . . . What’s so amusing? rapped out
Mrs Mackay as the First Years chirruped
and trilled like baby birds in a nest at a worm;
but she heard for herself, appalled, the chaos
coming in waves through the wall and clipped
to the door. Uproar. And her Head of Lower School!
It was then that Mrs Mackay made mistake number one,
leaving her form on its own while she went to see
to the forms of Miss Batt and Miss Dunn. The moment
she’d gone, the room blossomed with paper planes,
ink bombs, whistles, snatches of song, and the class clown –
Caroline Joan – stood on her desk and took up
the speech where Mrs Mackay had left off – Lend
me your ears . . . just what the Second Form did
in the opposite room, reciting the Poets Laureate
for Miss Nadimbaba – John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell,
Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden, Colley Cibber,
William Whitehead . . . but scattering titters and giggles
like noisy confetti on reaching Henry Pye as Caroline Joan
belted out Antony’s speech in an Elvis style –
For Brutus, uh huh huh, is an honourable man.
Miss Nadimbaba, no fan of rock ’n’ roll, could scarcely
believe her ears, deducing at once that Mrs Mackay
was not with her class. She popped an anxious head
outside her door. Anarchy roared in her face
like a tropical wind. The corridor clock was at four.
The last bell rang. Although they would later regret it,
the teachers, taking their cue from wits-end Mrs Mackay,
allowed the chuckling, bright-eyed, mirthful girls
to go home, reprimand-free, each woman privately glad
that the dark afternoon was over and done,
the chalky words rubbed away to dance as dust
on the air, the dates, the battles, the kings and queens,
the rivers and tributaries, poets, painters, playwrights,
politicos, popes . . . but they all agreed to make it quite clear
in tomorrow’s Assembly that foolish behaviour –
even if only the once – wasn’t admired or desired
at Stafford Girls’ High. Above the school, the moon
was pinned like a monitor’s badge to the sky.
Miss Dunn was the first to depart, wheeling
her bicycle through the gates, noticing how
the sky had cleared, a tidy diagram of the Plough
directly above. She liked it this cold, her breath
chiffoning out behind as she freewheeled home
down the hill, her mind emptying itself of geography,
of mountains and seas and deserts and forests
and capital cities. Her small terraced house looked,
she thought, like a sleeping face. She roused it
each evening, kisses of light on its cheeks
from her lamps, the small talk of cutlery, pots
and pans as she cooked, sweet silver steam caressing
the shy rooms of her home. Miss Dunn lived alone.
So did Miss Batt, in a flat on the edge of the park
near the school; though this evening Miss Fife
was coming for supper. The two were good friends
and Miss Fife liked to play on Miss Batt’s small piano
after the meal and the slowly shared carafe of wine.
Music and Maths! Johann Sebastian Bach! Miss Batt,
an all-rounder, took out her marking – essays on Henry VIII
and his wives from the Fifth – while Miss Fife gave herself up
to Minuet in G. In between Catherine Howard
and Catherine Parr, Miss Batt glanced across at Fifi’s
straight back as she played, each teacher conscious
of each woman’s silently virtuous love. Nights like this,
twice a week, after school, for them both, seemed enough.
Mrs Mackay often gave Miss Nadimbaba a lift,
as they both, by coincidence, lived on Mulberry Drive –
Mrs Mackay with her husband of twenty-five grinding,
childless years; Miss Nadimbaba sharing a house
with her elderly aunt. Neither had ever invited
the other one in, although each would politely enquire
after her colleague’s invisible half. Mrs Mackay
watched Miss Nadimbaba open her purple door and saw
a cat rubbing itself on her calf. She pulled away
from the kerb, worrying whether Mr Mackay would insist
on fish for his meal. Then he would do his crossword:
Mr Mackay calling out clues – Kind of court for a bounder (8) –
while she passed him Roget, Brewer, Pears, the OED.
The women teachers of England slept in their beds,
their shrewd or wise or sensible heads safe vessels
for Othello’s jealousy, the Wife of Bath’s warm laugh,
the phases of the moon, the country code;
for Roman numerals, Greek alphabets, French verbs;
for foreign currencies and Latin roots, for logarithms, tables,
quotes; the meanings of currente calamo and fiat lux and stet.
Miss Dunn dreamed of a freezing white terrain
where slowly moving elephants were made of ice.
Miss Nadimbaba dreamed she knelt to kiss Miss Barrett
on her couch and she, Miss Nadimbaba, was Browning
saying Beloved, be my wife . . . and then a dog began to bark
and she woke up. Miss Batt dreamed of Miss Fife.
*
Morning assembly – the world like Quink outside,
the teachers perched in a solemn row on the stage,
the Fifth and Sixth Forms clever and tall, Miss Fife
at the school piano, the Head herself, Doctor Bream,
at the stand – was a serious affair. Jerusalem hung
in the air till the last of Miss Fife’s big chords
wobbled away. Yesterday intoned Doctor Bream,
the Lower School behaved in a foolish way, sniggering
for most of the late afternoon. She glared at the girls
through her pince-nez and paused for dramatic effect.
But the First and Second and Third and Fourth Forms
started to laugh, each girl trying to swallow it down
till the sound was like distant thunder, the opening chord
of a storm. Miss Dunn and Miss Batt, Miss Nadimbaba
and Mrs Mackay leapt to their feet as one, grim-faced.
The Fifth Form hooted and howled. Miss Fife, oddly disturbed,
crashed down fistfuls of furious notes on the yellowing keys.
The Sixth Forms, upper and lower, shrieked. Señora Devizes,
sartorial, strict, slim, severe, teacher of Spanish,
stalked from the stage and stilettoed sharply down
to the back of the Hall to chastise the Fifth and Sixth.
iCallaos! iCallaos! iCallaos! iQuédense! The whole school
guffawed; their pink young lungs flowering more
than they had for the hymn. ¡El clamor! The Hall was a zoo.
Snow began falling outside as though the clouds
were being slowly torn up like a rule book. A good laugh,
as the poet Ursula Fleur, who attended the school,
was to famously write, is feasting on air. The air that day
was chomped, chewed, bitten in two, pulled apart
like a wishbone, licked like a lollipop, sluiced and sucked.
Some of the girls were almost sick. Girls gulped or sipped
or slurped as they savoured the joke. What joke?
Nobody knew. A silly joy sparkled and fizzed. Tabitha Rose,
flower monitor for the day, wet herself, wailed, wept, ran
from the Hall, a small human shower of rain. The bell
for the start of lessons rang. Somehow the school
filed out in a raggedy line. The Head Girl, Josephine June,
scarlet-faced from killing herself, was in for a terrible time
with the Head. Snow iced the school like a giant cake.
No one on record recalls the words that were said,
but Josephine June was stripped of the Head Girl’s badge
and sash and sent to the Sixth Form Common Room
to demand of the prefects how they could hope to grow to be
the finest of England’s daughters and mothers and wives
after this morning’s Assembly’s abysmal affair?
But the crowd of girls gave a massive cheer, stamping
the floor with their feet in a rebel beat and Diana Kim,
Captain of Sports, jumped on a chair and declared
that if J.J. was no longer Head Girl then no one
would take her place. All for one! someone yelled. And one
for all! Diana Kim opened the window and jumped down
into the snow. With a shriek, Emmeline Belle jumped after her,
followed by cackling Anthea Meg, Melanie Hope, Andrea Lyn,
J.J. herself . . . It was Gillian Tess in the Fifth, being lectured
by tight-lipped Señora Devizes on how to behave, who glanced
from the first-floor window and noticed the Sixth Form
bouncing around in the snow like girls on the moon.
A snowball, the size of a netball, was creaking, rolling,
growing under their hands. Look! Girls at their windows gaped.
It grew from a ball to the size of a classroom globe. It grew
from a globe to the size of a huge balloon. Miss Dunn,
drumming the world’s highest mountains into the heads
of the First Years – Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhoste, Makalu 1 . . .
flung open her window and breathed in the passionate cold
of the snow. A wild thought seeded itself in her head.
In later years, the size of the snowball rolled by the Sixth
grew like a legend. Some claimed that the Head, as it groaned
past her study, thought that there might have been an eclipse.
Ursula Fleur, in her prose poem Snow, wrote that it took
the rest of the Michaelmas Term to melt. Miss Batt,
vacantly staring down as her class wrote out a list
of the monarchs of England – Egbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelbald,
Ethelbert, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward, Athelstan, Edmund,
Eadred, Eadwig, Edgar . . . noticed the snowball, huge and alone
on the hockey pitch, startlingly white in the pencilly grey
of the light, and thought of desire, of piano scales
slowing, slowing, breasts. She moaned aloud, forgetful of where
she was. Francesca Eve echoed the moan. The class roared.
But that night Miss Batt, while she cooked for Miss Fife,
who was opening the wine with a corkscrew
from last year’s school trip to Sienna and Florence,
felt herself naked, electric under her tartan skirt, twin set
and pearls; and later, Miss Fife at the piano, stroking
the first notes of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, Miss Batt
came behind her, placing her inked and trembling hands
on her shoulders. A broken A minor chord stumbled
and died. Miss Fife said that Ludwig could only
have written this piece when he was in love. Miss Batt
pulled Miss Fife by the hair, turning her face around, hearing
her gasp, bending down, kissing her, kissing her, kissing her.
Essays on Cardinal Wolsey lay unmarked on the floor.
Across the hushed white park, down the slush of the hill,
Miss Dunn crouched on the floor of her sitting room
over a map of Tibet. The whisky glass in her nervous hand
clunked on her teeth, Talisker sheathing her tongue
in a heroine’s warmth. She moved her finger slowly
over the map, the roof of the world. Her fingers walked to Nepal,
changing the mountain Chomolungma to Sagarmatha.
She sipped at her malt and thought about Mallory, lost
on Everest’s slopes with his English Air, of how he’d wanted
to reach the summit because it was there. She wondered
whether he had. Nobody knew. She saw herself walking
the upper slopes with the Captain of Sports towards
the foetal shape of a sleeping man . . . She turned to the girl.
*
That Monday morning Doctor Bream, at her desk,
didn’t yet know that the laughter of Stafford Girls’ High
would not go away. But when she stood on the stage,
garbed in her Cambridge cap and gown, and told the school
to quietly stand and contemplate a fresh and serious start
to the week, and closed her eyes – the hush like an air balloon
tethered with ropes – a low and vulgar giggle yanked
at the silence. Doctor Bream kept her eyes clenched, hoping
that if she ignored it all would be well. Clumps of laughter
sprouted among the row upon row of girls. Doctor Bream,
