‘I think the word we’re looking for,’ said Thelma, ‘is “bombarded”.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Liz.
No doubt the schoolhadbeen 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 afurther sculpture of boxes a lurid green. ‘That’s right,’ she said with bright command. ‘Give him lots andlotsof 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 1989–2022read the sign.
‘This must be the man who died,’ said Thelma. ‘The deputy head.’
Davey Fletcher was caught in the many and varied poses thatform 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 inspectionbrokeDavey 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 aperson 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.’
