Chapter Twelve #2
‘We don’t know what to think,’ said Pat. ‘But somebody was shouting at him about Pity Me school. And you say this inspector worked with Neville on the actual inspection?’
‘Ex-inspector – Peter Powell – aka Dreamy Pete. He works here, on a Thursday. Not inspecting but helping out in our food bank.’
Pat stared. ‘How long have you been running a food bank?’ she asked.
‘Since the powers that be axed the funding for the community outreach centre.’ Victoria sighed a deep, weary sigh.
‘We’ve been supporting families more and more, especially since the pandemic, so it seemed a natural next step.
Bring on the baked beans! Honest to God, Pat, who’d have thought in 2025 we’d be needing food banks!
She sighed again and glanced at her watch.
‘I better take you through. As I say we’ve Bun Widdup Zooming imminently and there are some things in life you are not late for! ’
‘Who exactly is this, Bun Widdup?’ asked Pat, following her through the school, walking round more filled refuse sacks and boxes. ‘Chris Canne was talking to her; she seemed a bit fierce.’
Victoria smiled. ‘The word is “passionate”. Or “enthusiastic”. She’s an education consultant – one of the good guys, believe it or not.
I could fill this school with people spouting on about education, but she actually leaves you wanting to do what she’s talking about.
My staff all love her, even at the end of term!
’ She grinned. ‘And she has the most amazing red and orange African print drapes – what I wouldn’t give for those babies! ’
They had arrived at a locked door that would at one time have led through to more classrooms. ‘Down there,’ she said.
‘On the left – shelf city, you can’t miss it.
’ She gave Pat a final hug and held her at arm’s length, her eyes suddenly dark and serious.
‘Have a care, lovely girl,’ she said. ‘You and Liz and Thelma, with your detectivating. You know as well as I do how feelings run high with Ofsted and I’d hate for anything to happen to you. ’
‘A drink?’ said the Reverend Caro Miranda, leading them into a room at the conclusion of their tour. ‘You must both be parched. ‘Tea? Coffee? Water? I’m sure I can rustle up some juice.’
‘Coffee’s fine,’ said Liz.
‘White no sugar,’ said Thelma.
Caro Miranda nodded and darted out and the door closed behind her with a click.
A sudden, blessed peace fell on the stuffy room, which seemed to be a mix between a library and a staffroom.
The two friends exchanged glances. Neither woman was much of a drinker but after their tour of Pity Me Infants school they both felt in need of something considerably stronger than coffee.
‘Well,’ said Liz expressively.
‘I think the word we’re looking for,’ said Thelma, ‘is “bombarded”.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Liz.
No doubt the school had been good, wonderful, nurturing, inclusive – all the things Caro Miranda said it had been. Now, however, it was not.
Now it was dying.
With a few mere hours of existence left, Pity Me Infants school was a school approaching the end.
Each of the school’s three classes was barely half full, due to a steady exodus of children following the Ofsted report, and then the news of closure.
Everywhere were signs of that closure – displays removed, resources boxed up, bulging bin bags, furniture stacked in the corridors and corners.
There is always a melancholy air to a primary school at the end of the summer term, a sense of something dying away as classes prepare to move up and rooms are readied for the next year, but it’s a temporary dynamic, underpinned with the comforting security that come September it will all start up again.
Here things felt different; here the melancholy was deeper. Permanent.
In two of the three classes it felt very much as though the staff had given up, packing and sorting in a lethargic, listless way as the children chatted, coloured, played with Lego, dominated, as children are, by the here and the now, by Unifix and Pokémon and who was hogging the good red crayon.
Is this how the world will end? Thelma caught herself thinking.
All of us going on with our business, day to day as the place dies around us?
But in the third class it had been a very different story.
Here the tables had been pushed back against the wall, and the resultant space filled with a castle constructed from cardboard cartons.
The children were engaged with ferocious, purposeful concentration making brightly coloured flags and shields to Sellotape to the walls of their castle.
‘We have to get this done, like, before the dragon comes,’ explained one boy.
Their teacher, a thin blonde woman, not much more than a girl herself, was supervising a group of three children painting a further sculpture of boxes a lurid green. ‘That’s right,’ she said with bright command. ‘Give him lots and lots of scales!’
‘This all looks wonderful,’ said Liz enthusiastically.
The girl looked up and fixed Thelma and Liz with an appraising stare from wide, pale blue eyes. Then she stood up, pointedly turned her back on them and walked over to another group engaged in painting the castle walls with thick, black rectangles.
‘You must forgive Chloe,’ said Caro Miranda in an undertone. ‘She’s taken the whole thing very much to heart.’
Throughout the tour Caro kept up steady, bitter commentary of what had been and was no more – the Bookworm Club, parental coffee groups, the Hungry Caterpillar that had stretched right across the playground all the way to the neighbouring church.
‘Every day the children would sing for fifteen minutes,’ she said at one point.
‘It’s a Hungarian system called Kodály – apparently it readies the brain for the day’s activity.
And then they finish off the day with a final whole-school singing session. ’
And now, left alone in the former library the two drew breath and looked around in reflective silence.
‘I can’t say we’ve found much out,’ said Liz, peering in a box marked ‘Skip’. It was full of books, thumbed, slightly battered tomes: A Day with a Bus Driver, Tadpole to Frog, Topsy and Tim’s Foggy Day. ‘How sad,’ she said. ‘How very sad.’
‘Look at this.’ Thelma was looking at a display on the wall, one of the few that had not yet been removed, a montage of photographs.
Liz crossed to her side and looked. The photos had obviously been run off from a cheap photocopier and were arranged at rather crazy angles, the way these things generally are.
Common to all of them was a man, somewhere in his thirties, with not much hair and an infectious if rather nervous smile.
Davey Fletcher 1989–2022 read the sign.
‘This must be the man who died,’ said Thelma. ‘The deputy head.’
Davey Fletcher was caught in the many and varied poses that form the lot of a primary school teacher: dressed as Professor Dumbledore, having a bucket of iced water tipped over him, on a rather precarious-looking raft with some wildly excited children and dressed as an elf standing next to a glittery grotto.
Plus, others – on coaches, in classrooms, on staff nights out, smiling out at the world with energy and joy.
‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages …’ said a soft, sad voice. ‘… Thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone, and ta’en thy wages: Golden lads and girls all must, as chimneysweepers, come to dust.’
Neither of them had heard the Reverend Caro Miranda re-enter the room with a tray of coffee. ‘That inspection broke Davey Fletcher,’ she pronounced, setting the tray down.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Liz truthfully.
‘When did it happen?’ asked Thelma. ‘The accident?’
‘February 19th this year.’ The words came out hard and prompt.
‘The day before the report came out. Of course we’d all seen it – the staff, governors – we knew what it said …
I think it was the thought of the parents and the community reading it that so upset Davey.
’ She stared bleakly at her drink. ‘That must’ve been why he went out driving in that terrible blizzard.
’ Her voice trailed off as she stared at the man in the photos.
Looking at those smiling images, both Liz and Thelma found themselves remembering another car crash that past winter – though the circumstances of Terri Stanley’s accident had been somewhat different.
‘You mentioned Davey had a partner,’ said Thelma eventually. ‘Was he in the car with him?’
‘No, thankfully,’ said Caro. ‘Davey was alone – though if Son had been with him, well, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘Sorry?’ said Liz. ‘Davey had a son?’
Caro smiled. ‘Son,’ she said. ‘That’s his partner’s name.
Son Masters. There he is.’ She pointed to one of the pictures, that of the staff night out.
Davey was standing with his arm round a person of a similar age.
With his amiable face and fluffy grey hair, Son Masters had a vaguely androgynous air.
‘It’s a lovely tribute,’ said Thelma, stepping back from the mosaic of Davey Fletcher’s life.
‘Chloe put it up,’ said Caro, almost absently.
‘We had a little memorial service here in school a few weeks ago. Before everything got too sad and chaotic here. The staff were all here – and Son. Annie was able to attend, which was really special. Some authority people – even Bun Widdup – were able to Zoom in.’ She caught sight of Liz’s frowning face and smiled.
‘Zoom, as in attend remotely.’ She indicated a large, new flatscreen that dominated one of the library walls.
‘The authority fitted these throughout school last summer,’ she said.
‘Before all of this. A complete waste of money as it turned out. They’re heading straight for the skip. ’
‘Don’t the new school want them?’ asked Thelma.
‘Nope,’ said Caro bitterly. ‘Apparently they’re not compatible with their systems.’ She shook her head and her eyes ranged unhappily round the warm, boxed-up room. ‘See what that man did,’ she said softly.
At that moment the noise of singing, sweet and clear, rose from the school hall. ‘Bobby Shafto’, sung together and then in parts, the sound sweet and yet at the same time mournful as if the dying school itself had found a voice.
Thelma’s eyes flicked back to the display showing the life of the man whose world had been so brutally overturned by Neville Hilton and who shortly afterwards had overturned his own world on the A171.
They had been looking for one person who might have had reason to confront Neville Hilton – and they seemed to have found a whole school full.