Читать книгу Land Of The Leal - James Barke - Страница 13

In the spring, Jean Gibson went to school. She was relieved of the necessity of taking a peat in payment of fees since Ned MacWhirrie gave a donation to Johnny Gibb, the dominie, that exempted the pupils from Craigdaroch.

Her mother was sorry to lose Jean for she was becoming a great help in the house and her assistance in domestic duties was considerable. But her mother knew how necessary it would be for her to be able to read and write and become at least tolerably proficient in elementary arithmetic.

Jean went willingly enough. She liked her mother and she liked working in the house – but school offered an unknown quality of excitement and change. Going to school meant that she was growing up: that she was not to be recognised as a child any longer.

School, even from the first year, lasted from nine till four. As she had three miles to walk to it, there was no question of getting home for a meal in the middle of the day.

So off she went at eight o’clock with two farrels of dry oatcake in her bag for lunch. She went with older children from Craigdaroch. Excitement prevented her from eating her oatcake on the way to school as most of the older children did; but she soon came to feel the pangs of childish hunger going through the fields to the school-house at Dunmore. And she was soon to experience the worse hunger-pangs at mid-day when there was nothing left to eat but the dry crumbs from her bag. Then she resolved not to eat her piece on the way to school the following morning. But this excellent resolution was broken, bit by bit, till, when she again arrived at Dunmore, nothing but the crumbs remained.

Johnny Gibb was a ‘far-out’ relation of her father’s – a second cousin or something of the kind. He was an undersized hunch-backed creature with a soured irritable nature. His wife nagged him relentlessly.

Mrs. Gibb bullied the dominie more than the dominie bullied his pupils. But the dominie was fortunate in having pupils to bully.

The school was a long low-ceilinged building built on to the three-roomed school-house. It had twelve forms each seating four pupils. It was heated by an American stove that stood against the gable wall beside the dominie’s desk. A door gave access from the house and a door led to the strip of playground outside.

It was a comfortable building as school buildings went in Galloway and Johnny Gibb was reckoned a good master. Indeed Johnny had been to college in Glasgow and was something of a lawyer, theologian and general adviser to the parish on most subjects not connected with agriculture.

Dominie Gibb had four stages in his class. He taught them simultaneously. The younger children picked up what they could of the instruction devoted to the older children: the older children listened to the younger children’s lessons by way of revision. The curriculum was limited: there was no time for any frills and fancies. Reading, writing, arithmetic and Bible knowledge were the main subjects. Occasionally there was some attempt at a geography lesson: occasionally there was some reference made to the more outstanding events in British history. But there was no instruction in grammar or English composition – other than by dogma, rule and precept.

If Johnny wanted to fill a spare hour he usually fell back on hand-writing. The rules of this art were simple and rigid. There was only one way to hold the pen and there was only one way to form the characters. Nor could adequate character formation be tolerated when the pen was held in an unorthodox fashion. The lesson in handwriting was usually imposed on the class by way of punishment – when it responded worse than usual to the dominie’s instruction. For then the individual pupil’s failings were writ large and Johnny could pounce without mercy.

His task was as laborious as it was thankless. More than laborious, it was both nerve-racking and heart-breaking. The attendance was never perfect: many of the pupils had no desire whatever to learn even the rudiments of their alphabet. The sum total of their attendance was from four to five broken years and of what use was handwriting to a scholar whose hands were already reaching out to grasp the plough handles or the lugs of the milk pails?

Not all of the pupils were minded to take their instruction seriously, whatever intention the dominie had. There were boys who treated the day spent in the school-house as a day in prison. They had no love for their jailer and bitterly resented his punishment. For punishment there was. When Johnny Gibb went forward to attack he did so with a stout pointer (like a short billiard cue) and he plied it with considerable vigour and venom on their heads and shoulders. Johnny did not believe in the strap: his diminutive and deformed stature placed him at a disadvantage here. But with the pointer in hand and the scholar seated he had all the advantages.

Naturally there were reprisals, as Jean soon found out. She had not been at school more than a week when she witnessed a reprisal that turned the tables against the dominie.

When Johnny entered the school-room from his dwelling, the first thing he did was to attack the American stove vigorously with the poker. The act was symbolic of his whole nervously impulsive nature.

Ned MacCalman, a burly but unscholarly ploughman’s son who had suffered many belabourings with the pointer, was due to leave school as soon as there was a pair of horse ready for him. Indeed he was only sent to school when there was no work for him in order that he might be kept out of mischief. The dominie knew this and wasted no time in imparting knowledge to him. Ned served the purpose of a whipping boy.

But Ned was determined to get his revenge on his taskmaster. He had come to accept the morning attack on the stove as something in the nature of a ritual when one morning there flashed across his brain the perfect plan of revenge. All he had to do the following morning was to heat the handle of the poker in the stove and leave it convenient to the dominie’s hand.

And the next morning Ned went about his plan so thoroughly that no one guessed what he was about. When the bell rang Ned withdrew the poker and placed it, head up, beside the stove. By the time the pupils had taken their seats and the dominie had emerged from the house, the head of the poker had lost its bright glow and the eye was deceived.

The dominie emerged briskly enough: he had had a row with his wife about the saltness of the porridge and his wife had told him if he didn’t like them he knew what to do. Fine Johnny knew what to do. They were too salt to be eaten: so he had to drink his milk and leave them.

So great was his haste to get to the stove he almost tripped over his own feet and it took all Ned MacCalman’s self-control to prevent himself from laughing outright.

A moment later the pupils were startled by a bloodcurdling howl. Johnny had seized the poker firmly and his hand was painfully roasted. He made several fantastic and frantic leaps in the air. Many of the older pupils roared their delight at the unusual spectacle. Jean Gibson, uncomprehending, sat in open-eyed wonder. By a series of bounds and leaps the dominie reached his dwelling door and disappeared.

His amazing exit was the signal for a pandemonious outbreak. Ned MacCalman laughed till the tears rolled down his red weatherbeaten cheeks. But Ned was careful not to divulge his secret: time enough to boast of that when he was driving his pair of horse and quit for ever of Dunmore school.

But the merriment and excited speculation died when Johnny Gibb reappeared with a bandaged hand. His face, twisted with pain and fury, was truly diabolical. His drawn lips revealed his pointed double set of yellow teeth, curved like a hare’s. His breathing was short and laboured and came and went with a peculiar hissing noise. His eyes were fixed on the senior pupils and he crept forward as if walking with his bare feet on sharp gravel.

‘Come out the boy who did that.’

There was no response.

‘Very well.’

The dominie grasped the pointer: his eyes seemed to roll in their sockets.

‘I said: come out the infernal limb of Satan who did that. D’ye hear?’

His voice rose to a scream. Jean Gibson crouched on her seat. Ned MacCalman’s face went sickly white.

‘Very well. Is there any one prepared to volunteer the necessary information? Will any one tell me who the culprit is? No? Very well: I’ll punish every one of you till I get the culprit. D’ye hear? Every one of you.’

The dominie crouched for a moment, the pointer gripped tightly in his left hand. Then he sprang towards a group of bigger boys occupying the back benches. What happened afterwards was never very clearly explained. There was a terrific struggle; blows rained from the pointer; there were yells and screams; some of the girls became hysterical. Then the dominie fell with a crash to the floor. His fall was immediately followed by a mad stampede to the door on the part of the boys concerned. Ned MacCalman, bleeding from a cut on the brow, was leading.

A moment later Mrs. Gibb rushed into the class-room and rescued her badly shaken husband.

The school was dismissed for the day. But not before Mrs. Mirren Gibb had told them just exactly what kind of dirt and vermin they were.

Jean had to explain to her father why the school had broken up so early. He listened to her disconnected story with great patience.

‘Aye: John Gibb has more than his sorrows to seek: he didna get his hand burned like that for nothing. But a maist dastardly thing to do for all that. There’s a wicked ungovernable spirit growing up among the scholars to-day. John Gibb’s no’ the man to discipline them. Well, it’s telling you ye had no hand in that, my lass, or I’d have teached ye better how to respect your elders. Aye …’

Having delivered himself gravely of this unusually long homily, Tom Gibson attacked his soup with relish.

It was his firm belief that there were always two sides to a story: neither of them necessarily right or wrong. Common sense told him that the dominie didn’t get his hand burned for nothing: at the same time he could not see him guilty of an offence justifying such punishment.

But the incident only touched him remotely. He had more urgent and pressing problems. The best horse on Craigdaroch was in the stable with a bad weed: he was still a few acres behind with his spring ploughing. And his wife was a week overdue with her confinement …

Jean knew there was something troubling her mother. Instinct, rather than knowledge, told her what was wrong. But she could not dwell on her mother’s condition. Her unbidden thoughts terrified her. In a vague way she experienced resentment against her father. Somehow she knew he was responsible. And as she watched him un-noticed, massive, dominating and yet somehow remote and unconcerned, and then looked at her mother, white-faced thin and grotesquely mis-shapen, she was conscious of a deep revulsion: a desire to withdraw from them both.

A night or two later she was wakened by her mother’s agonised moaning and her blood ran cold and shiver after shiver went through her. She recognised the voice of a neighbour, Mrs. MacHaffie.

‘It’ll no’ be long now, Mrs. Gibson: it’ll no’ be long now. God help ye: but it’s me that knows what ye’re suffering …’

Suffering? She did not need to be told her mother was suffering. But why should she suffer … and where was her father? In a sudden stillness she heard his step on the paving outside: slow, deliberate … She imagined him smoking quietly at his pipe and pausing for a moment on the turn of his step to spit and then draw the back of his huge hand across his bearded lips before the deliberate replacing of his pipe between the strong regular teeth that flashed so white against the lustrous blackness of his beard.

There came a terrible cry from her mother, through the wooden division of the bed. Jean stiffened and held her breath. She stiffened with terror and the terror was cold and agonising. Her mother whom, in her blind generous way she loved more than anything else in the world … Her mother who was frail, uncomplaining, enduring – and now crying in an agony that was as helpless as it was despairing. Only some trial vast and terrible could wring that cry from her. Maybe … but she heard her voice, low weak indistinct, followed by the soft rush of Mrs. MacHaffie’s reply.

She relaxed. The tears were streaming from her eyes. She heard the latch being pulled on the door.

The soft padding and shuffling of feet on the dry earthen floor caressed her mind. She was very young and she was very tired. The thin wailing of her newly-born brother did not reach her. She had cried herself to sleep.

The ugly incident of the poker made a deep impression on Jean Gibson and she lived in terror and dread of Johnny Gibb. Ever since then the dominie had been more repressive in his attitude towards the scholars. He used the pointer freely and with little or no discrimination. The scholars were completely terrorised. They learned little even if they memorised much. For the Craigdaroch children there was little fun going across the fields to school in the morning. They were too busy memorising a portion of Catechism and eight or ten verses of a psalm. Religious instruction came first every morning and it had become the most terror-ridden hour of the day.

There was a reason for this. Johnny Gibb knew that there was always the possibility of some of the children complaining to their parents. As a consequence, the parents might complain to him – rather unpleasantly. But what answer could a parent make to the charge that its child had been guilty of neglecting either its Catechism or the psalms of David? Here, indeed, the dominie felt he could not be accused of spoiling the child by sparing the rod.

But though he reckoned on a safe margin in which he could work, he was guilty of a miscalculation that almost cost him his life.

June came: a hot dry June but with enough rain to satisfy the farmers. The school was about to break up for a spell. The children would soon be needed for turnip thinning, weeding, the early potatoes and peat cutting. The children were eagerly looking forward to the break – even though most of them had bitter memories of the toil of the fields. But any toil was preferable (in anticipation) to the nagging and bullying of Johnny Gibb.

Inside the school-room it was intolerably hot and stuffy: the steady bright sunshine shafting in at the small window, mingling with the sharp exultant cries of the sea swallows, was an agony. In the foreground the figure of the hunchback spat and girned: an object of fear, hatred and terror.

It was after the lunch interval. The day outside had been warm and breathless and a heat haze hung out on the calm dull blue sea. The children who could not get home had run down to the beach and bathed, girls and boys together, and skelped up and down the shore till they were dry. All too soon the bell had rung, cutting peremptorily across their timeless sense: imposing a world of duty and obedience. Their fun had been healthy and vigorous. The sense of life had been heightened by the free intercourse of glistening and naked bodies. Had they attempted to cover their nakedness, a fatal sense of physical self-consciousness would have been introduced. They were not indifferent to the sight of their naked bodies. They experienced a keen un-selfconscious sense of invigorating stimulation.

In this the Galloway children were like uncorrupted children anywhere: like savages. There was no shame in the naked body: no shame in the performance of the natural functions. Shame came with puberty and morality. At the moment they were young, unsophisticated …

But the school bell had cut across their hour of exultant pleasure. Now they were back in the stuffy class-room listening with at least one ear to the shrill cry of the terns. The dominie was in a foul temper: the heat gave him a headache: the carefree laughter of the children jarred on his nerves. He had never known laughter even as a child. His infirmity had isolated him. More than anything his marriage had embittered him. He was impotent. And his wife’s frustration had hardened into a poisonous sadistic persecution. His whole life was a bitter misery: the more bitter and miserable since he did not know the root causes of it all.

His head throbbed violently. He had no patience to teach arithmetic or spelling. He set the pupils to hand-writing. While they were copying the sentence he had written on the blackboard he walked up and down the passage, his hands behind his back: in his hand he held a thin twelve inch ruler.

Jean Gibson was a poor calligraphist: she could not master the tortuous method of character formation which was in the copper-plate tradition. Nor could she hold her pen for long in the prescribed fashion. To-day her whole spirit rebelled at the task. Her whole body was aglow with intense physical excitement: she wanted to run and shout and liberate her spirit…

She bent closer to the copybook as the dominie slunk up the passage beside her. She almost trembled at the nearness of his presence. For a moment the dominie stood over her. The writing was as wretched as any in the school. And no wonder! How often had he told them how to hold their pens? And yet here was this girl holding her pen as in a death grip, the first joint of her forefinger flexed inwards with the strain.

The grip tightened as he stood over her and the hand began to shake. With a vicious stroke he brought the sharp edge of the ruler down on her hand. The thumb nail was split open down into the root.

Jean started up with a strangled cry but the dominie thrust her back down on the bench.

‘Maybe you’ll learn to hold your pen correctly – how often am I to tell you?’