Chapter Twenty-Nine
I’d finally made up my mind about the Copse. It was the last day of term and everyone was looking forward to eight weeks’ holiday, but I had one last decision to make. I wasn’t selling the Copse. Not to anyone.
Brian had repeatedly said the land was worthless, valueless, but it wasn’t. It was priceless. I saw that. The protestors had made me see it, the children themselves.When I met Red and his class down there and seeing how much the children blossomed outdoors. They needed more than classrooms and playgrounds. Walls and tarmacadam. They needed nature, the trees, the butterflies. The squirrels. When I thought of Rosie and how academically focussed her life had become, I had realised very clearly, that we needed to be very clear in what we were teaching children.There was more to life than exams and achievement. There was living and being in the world. The natural world. Something that might build greater resilience and strength as they grew up. It was the chance to sit and stare, the opportunity to be in nature, to daydream and to think, to make daisy chains and plait grasses, to climb trees and to lie on your back and hear the birds sing. Being outdoors,away from books and screens and pressure, like Rosaleen in her cherry tree or Nora in the Forty Foot.
As I drove in through the school gates, the protestors were still set up. They wouldn’t give up.
Nora was drinking a mug of tea. ‘Last day!’ she called, cheerily, utterly recovered from our dramatic trip to West Cork. There was the smell of sizzling bacon as Robbo fried it up while Arthur butteredthe bread. ‘How are you?’ she said. ‘What happened with Michael?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s moved into the flat in town, we’re getting a divorce and Lucy’s going to have his baby.’
She whistled. ‘So he has lead in his pencil after all.’
‘Mum! How’s your headache?’ I said, pointedly.
She ignored me. ‘And you and Rosie?’
‘Doing remarkably well.’
She smiled. ‘Good. I’ll go round and see her later.She’s going to come for a swim with me. And what about himself?’
‘Who?’
‘Fella me lad,’ she said. ‘Redmond. Ah, you’re blushing. So something has happened?’
‘No nothing. Not yet. But I think it’s all there. Us. We’re still there, if that makes sense.’
‘Good for you, Tabitha. You deserve a bit of good romance in your life after Mr Stuffed Shirt. Me, I’ve had too much, but you, you haven’t hadas much as you should.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said. ‘I think.’
Just then, Arthur handed her a bacon sandwich – she was a fair-weather vegetarian – and she waved it at me. ‘And today’s the day, you’re making your big decision. You are not going to let me down, are you?’
‘You’ll find out,’ I said as I drove off, my hand waving to her from my open window.
In the car park, Red was carrying Mrs Morrissey’sbags into the school and he waved. With Red in the world, I felt I could do anything.
Mary was in the school office, tiny Huan in a Moses basket up against her desk. ‘Tabitha!’ she said in an urgent whisper. ‘Where were you? Didn’t you get my messages…?’
I checked my phone in my bag, it had been on silent. Thirty-seven missed calls.
‘We’ve got the special assembly now… can it wait?’
She shookher head and motioned to my office with her eyes just as Brian Crowley appeared from my door, his voluminous body eclipsing the light from the window, smiling his small-toothed crocodile smile.
‘I hope you don’t mind me waiting in your office,’ he said, holding a sheaf of papers. ‘But it’s time to crack on. Get these babies signed. Last day of term and our man Freddie doesn’t like to wait fortoo long.’ He rubbed his hands.
‘Tabitha…’ Mary called.
‘I’ll talk to you in a moment, Mary,’ I said as I followed Brian into my office. Through the window and past the school gates were the protestors. These people full of life and conviction, the opposite of Brian Crowley who was full of self-interest and self-gain. Robbo, I could see, was strumming away on his guitar, Leaf was holding herhands up as Nellie wound wool around them and Arthur and Nora chatted to a group of elderly neighbours. And across the school playground was a place which would outlive us. The Copse was full of birds and their nests, the caterpillars, the squirrels, the snails, insects. The daisies waiting to be made into chains, the twigs and branches ready to be made into dens. We needed to clean it up, tidy itup. A few benches and from September on, it would be part of the school playground. Our wild play area. A place of infinite learning. And I knew, if I sold to Brian and this Freddie, I would regret it for ever.
‘Brian, we have our special assembly this morning, I was hoping to talk to you after it…’
He followed my glance out of the window. ‘Those toe rags out there will have to go, clutteringup the school, that scruffy bunch of socialists and environmentalists…’
My phone flashed with a message, from Mary:
DO NOT DO IT.
