Chapter 12
‘Shhhh! He’s coming!’
Joe could hear the whispers before he even went into the classroom. It was as though word had got around that the new head of Reception was an ogre, and that everyone – children and staff – were terrified of him just because he wasn’t laid-back and avuncular, like poor old Brian Hughes with his Bourbon creams.
But, as he’d tried to tell himself, he’d been brought in for a reason. The headmistress, Beryl, knew that. ‘We need more people like you,’ she’d told him during one of their meetings at the beginning of term. ‘The teaching profession is changing. We are lucky enough now to be joined by people from other professions, such as yours, or accountancy or even journalism. It all makes for a much richer environment. Of course you are going to come across people who don’t agree with that, but just keep going. As you know, maths was our weak point in the latest report, so if you can help us there, that would be invaluable.’
He was making an effort, thought Joe now as he walked into his Reception class. But it wasn’t easy. For a start, the children didn’t even seem to know their tables. In his day they had learned them by rote, just as they had held the door open for teacher or said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. But this lot looked blankly at him when he asked them what three times two was. ‘We didn’t do that at Puddleducks,’ one boy with ginger freckles had volunteered.
Why not? He’d have to have another word with the giddy Gemma Merryfield, whose very name suggested she was more interested in frivolity than maths. In the meantime, it was up to him to make maths fun for these kids, who clearly viewed numbers with the same suspicion that he still viewed semolina, with memories of school lunches. ‘You see,’ he could just imagine Ed saying, ‘not everything was good in the old days!’
No. Not now. He’d taught himself to think about Ed only between eleven and twelve at night. Otherwise, he would think of nothing else. He had a job to do. And he was bloody well going to do it.
‘Good morning, everyone!’
After they had replied, Joe surveyed the rows of faces before him. Thirty children in the class was currently meant to be the maximum, but somehow they had acquired one more. That was his fault, if that was the right word. There had been a last-minute application by a family from a war-torn country. Their story had moved Joe, and somehow he had persuaded Beryl that they could take on one more.
Now, as he looked at Juan’s shining face in the front row, Joe was glad he had. The boy was the only one who was any good at adding up. If it wasn’t for his trusting expression as he waited for Joe to throw him a titbit of learning, Joe might have wondered if he was in the right profession. When Mike had suggested teaching, he had to admit that he’d seen it as a sort of ‘moving out to pastures’. Then, when he’d started at the inner-city school, he’d realised how tough it was, but he had proved himself there, just as he had proved himself at the bank.
A primary school in a backwater like Corrytown would, he had told himself, be a doddle. But it wasn’t! In some ways he preferred the devil-may-care attitude of some of the hard-faced kids in London. This lot, many of them pampered by their parents to an amazing degree, just didn’t have the attitude. And attitude, as Ed always used to say, was what divided the flyers from the sinkers.
‘Did you all do your homework?’
The sea of faces in front of him merged into waves of unsure nodding, blank stares and a few giggles. Only Juan was putting his hand up. ‘I did, I did.’
‘Great!’
‘Elsie! Would you like to come out here at the front, together with that rather lovely pencil case of yours?’ Reluctantly, the girl made her way to his desk. ‘Would you care to put your pencil case down for a minute?’
Joe knew he was sounding tough, but he couldn’t help it. If Gemma Merryfield wasn’t preparing the children in the way she should be, it was his job to put matters straight.
‘Now if everyone in the class had one of your pencil cases, how many would there be?’
Elsie’s eyes flew along the rows of desks, trying to count them. ‘Twenty-nine,’ she managed.
The child couldn’t even count what was before her eyes. She’d been in Puddleducks for two whole years. What had she been doing there?
‘Thirty-one, actually. Now supposing I gave everyone in the class another pencil case each. How many would there be altogether?’
Elsie started counting frantically on her fingers. Meanwhile, the boy who’d been sitting next to her was waving his hand.
‘Yes, Oliver?’
‘I need the toilet!’
Not again. That child either had a seriously weak bladder or was skiving.
‘OK but don’t be long. Someone else give me the answer, please. Yes, Melissa?’
‘Sixty-two.’
Joe felt a beam of warmth flowing through him. That was extraordinary! Yesterday the girl couldn’t even add ten and twelve.
‘’Snot fair.’ Elsie’s eyes were glaring. ‘She could only do that cos she’s got a calculator sewn on the top of her new pencil case.’
Joe felt a heaviness in his chest. ‘Is that true?’ The others around Melissa nodded.
‘Sir! Sir!’
‘Yes, Juan?’
‘I am sorry to correct you, sir, but I do not think you are correct when you say that we should have a total of sixty-two pencil cases in the class.’
Not him as well!
‘It depends, you see, sir, on whether someone has already left the class to sell them.’ Juan’s eyes were gleaming. ‘If they are all special pencil cases with calculators on, they would be worth a lot of money. So it would be easy for someone to run out of the door and sell them at the market.’
A ripple of giggles moved through the class. ‘It is not funny, sir.’ Juan looked hurt. ‘In my country, sixty-two pencil cases like that would feed a family for several weeks.’
Suddenly a picture of the apartment in Hampstead that he and Ed had shared flashed into Joe’s head. Their salaries, combined, meant that they had wanted for nothing. There had been the widescreen TV; the David Linley dining-room table; the huge pale oak bed … Even now, his more modest apartment in Notting Hill was more luxurious than this boy could ever imagine.
‘Juan’s right!’ His voice rang round the classroom, extinguishing the giggles. There was something to be said for a tone acquired during boardroom infighting.
‘In fact, instead of maths this morning, I think we might do geography instead. No, you don’t need to get out your exercise book. Instead, I’d like Juan to come up here and tell us a bit about his country.’
OK. So he’d got the idea from Gemma’s habit of inviting zookeepers and curry-powder makers into the playgroup. But he had incorporated some facts and figures into his own adaptation and it had worked! It had really worked!
Joe couldn’t help feeling somewhat apologetic towards Gemma, yet also excited, as he tidied up the classroom at the end of the day. Juan’s early childhood, living in South America in a family of ten, had provided a vivid and fascinating geography lesson for the children, and a few maths games had been slipped in as well.
Joe could feel an exclamation mark occasionally creeping into his thoughts, which had never been there before. Indeed he wasn’t sure that it had any right to be there, except there was no escaping the ‘I’ve got it’ light that had suddenly gone on in Elsie’s eyes when she announced, still clutching her precious pencil case, that she could ‘see now’.
Not only was this approach imaginative, he told himself as he walked down the path through the autumn leaves to Puddleducks for his arranged meeting with Gemma, but it also fitted in with the National Curriculum, which was more than Gemma seemed to be achieving. Pre-schools and playgroups were meant to meet Early Years Goals. Surely the simple task of learning one’s tables should be included?
‘Hi, Mr Balls!’ Gemma smiled at him as she let him in.
Hi? Joe wanted to say. This isn’t another car park run-in, you know. ‘Hello.’ He followed her into the main room and stood stiffly.
‘Would you like to sit down?’
The girl was actually offering him a child-sized chair, and bright red at that, while she took her own chair. ‘No, thank you, I’d rather stand.’
Gemma nodded. ‘May I start by asking you something?’
How dare she act as though she was in charge of the show?
‘I’d like to know more about the strategies in place for dealing with a celebrity child at Puddleducks.’
Her question – exactly the one he had put to Beryl – took the wind out of his sails.
‘I’m getting questions from the parents who saw …’ she hesitated. ‘Who saw Lily’s mother when she came into playgroup today. What am I meant to say?’
Deflect the question. That had been Joe’s motto back at the bank. ‘What did you say to them?’
‘That I hoped very much that they would not discuss private issues about any parents with others.’
Joe nodded, relieved. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’
Her surprise at his approval was obvious, and Lynette’s words came back to him. Don’t be too sharp, Joe. Let this new school see the real you. The kind but efficient one that we know.
‘But I still don’t get it. Why would …’ Gemma paused, glancing around as though someone might be listening, before continuing in a quieter voice. ‘Why would Dilly Dalung choose Puddleducks and not one of the private playgroups?’
Frankly, Joe wished the singer had done just that. It would have been simpler for all of them. After all, it surely wouldn’t be long until some sniffling rat from a tabloid found out, and then they’d get all kinds of unwanted publicity. ‘Perhaps she wanted her daughter to have a simple childhood. One that didn’t involve learning her tables.’
Gemma frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Well done, Joe, he told himself. You’ve done it again with that tongue of yours. No excuse apart from the fact that he was feeling out of his comfort zone here, in a slightly draughty village hall with a distinct smell of disinfectant that probably masked the whiff of pee.
Just for a second, he had a very slight twinge of regret for leaving his old office, with the desk overlooking High Holborn and the secretary who had respect for him. ‘I mean that I am surprised to find myself with a large number of children in my Reception class who appear not to know their tables.’
Gemma’s expression suddenly sharpened. ‘Learning tables is not in the Early Years Goals. Brian never used to complain.’
‘Well, I’m not happy. See that you do something about the next lot, can you, before they come up to me. Try counting bubbles or something.’
Immediately he could see he’d gone too far again by speaking before thinking. Gemma’s face showed him that, clear as day. Say something conciliatory, he told himself, and fast. ‘By the way, I asked one of my boys to give a talk about his life in South America. I’ve got you to thank for that.’ He tried to keep it light. ‘Your zookeeper mother inspired me. Thank you.’
She nodded. ‘Glad to see that not all our ideas are hopeless in your eyes.’
‘I didn’t say they were hopeless.’ Joe heard himself sounding brisk again. ‘I just said they needed to be relevant, which was why I added some numeric values to the exercise. By the way, have you had any ideas on the playgroup competition?’
‘No.’ Her face was completely unsmiling now. ‘What about you? I gather there’s a similar competition for Reception.’
As if he didn’t know! He’d been trying desperately to think of a suitably dazzling entry. Something that would impress his former bosses, whom he’d had to persuade to offer the award in the first place.
In a way, this was a test for him too. The bank would take a keen interest in the entry that Joe Balls, who’d chucked away a six-figure-job, sent in. He needed to prove, both to them and himself, that he’d been right to throw in the towel on the fourteenth floor, and this was one way of doing it.
‘I’m still working on it,’ he said.
‘Fine.’ Gemma shot him a look that said she didn’t care for his presence any longer. ‘And I’ll keep working on counting those bubbles. By the way, I hear you’re not too happy about the new friendship circle we’re building in our outdoor play area.’
‘I don’t think it’s necessary.’
‘It’s for children to stand in if they don’t have anyone to play with.’ Gemma’s eyes flashed. ‘And it’s staying. That was decided before you came here. OK?’