Читать книгу The Machine - James Smythe, James Smythe - Страница 12

Beth sees the weather report, and it’s a relief – even in the voice of the weatherman, and the person that they’ve got out on the streets, waiting to report on the rain as soon as it happens – but it just makes Beth hesitant for a second. When it rains, most of the South Coast gets caught up in celebrating. It still rains a little more in Scotland, but the closer you get to London it almost entirely ceases. It’s not a drought any more, though so many people still call it that. The hosepipe ban started and never ended. When it rains, if the kids are in the classrooms, they get more restless than at the end of term. They can’t be kept, and sometimes one or two of them have just stood up in the middle of Beth’s class and walked out, choosing instead to dance around on the torn AstroTurf outside.

When the rain finally starts, as she’s halfway through a lesson about verbs, Beth shuts the curtains. It’s a move designed to curb the distraction, but it can only ever fail.

I know it’s a big deal, she says, raising her voice over the din, but it’ll still be there when you get out at the end of the day. Nowadays they get two or three days of full-on monsoon rain every few months, heavier than she can ever remember it being when she was a child. It doesn’t soak into the ground because the soil is so broken and hard to begin with. Instead, it floods everything, coursing down the streets, turning them into run-off sewers. In the classroom, they can hear it: like a river, doubled by the insistent sound of the rain smacking into the windows that line the one external wall of the classroom. It’s a completely different sound to the sea. Funny, Beth thinks, that water can do so many things.

When the lesson is done, Beth takes herself to the staff room. She sits at a table by herself, gets a coffee from the machine. She stares out of the window: the grass of the playground is nearly entirely gone, worn down by the kids playing football. There’s a cough: she looks up, and a woman is staring at her.

May I? she asks, meaning the vacant seat opposite, and Beth nods. The woman sits. She’s only Beth’s age, maybe even a couple of years younger, and she reads through sheets of photocopied paper, notes about classes in a nearly illegible scrawl. She looks familiar in that way that friendly people do: smiling with her eyes, not stern, mouth in a half-tilt upwards. She keeps looking at Beth, glancing; nervously fingers something on a necklace that hangs just below her shirt. Eventually, she speaks again. My name’s Laura, she says. I’m a sub, only here for a few days. In for … She looks at her sheet. Arnold Westlake. Any tips? The woman smiles. It’s something she’s used to: having to make introductions, having to do this anew every week. It shows, because it’s glossy and confident in a way that makes Beth immediately envious. Apart from, you know: don’t let them eat you alive. Beth laughs gently.

No, they like change. No chance of you being eaten, not yet. They’re good kids, mostly. Some pains.

Any in particular I should watch out for?

Which classes have you got?

Laura looks at her notes. Nine-C first, then 10-B, 12-C. She thrusts the registers over towards Beth, who scans the names.

Two C-tracks? Lucky. She smiles at Laura sympathetically. They’ve all been there. Well, Jared Holmes, Beth says. She points to his name on the register. He’s got a reputation. I’ve never taught him, but I’ve seen Arnie – that’s Arnold – going mad over him. Amy Lancer – Amy Chancer, some of the teachers call her. And these. Both the Decker boys are nightmares. Laura nods with each name, mentally filing them away. Where have you come from?

Horsham. Take the work where you find it and all that.

You’re commuting?

Staying in a guest house over in Ryde. Apparently I could be here until the end of term, which is why I took it. Couldn’t come this far for a day. Do you know what happened to Mr Westlake?

Not a clue. I didn’t even know he was off.

Well, I hope he’s all right. There’s a silence as they both sit; then Laura quickly stands up, grabs her things. I should get my classroom ready. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name?

Beth. They shake hands.

Beth spends the rest of her lunch walking the Black Pitch. It’s what the school unofficially calls the main playground: a patchwork of tarmacs, laid at different times to cover holes and cracks that could prove near-fatal, then covered with a thick coat of gravel from end to end. The noise of the children’s shoes on the gravel is ever present: a scraping, thin and frantic. The pitch needs to be watched at all times. It’s a rare lunch hour that one of the kids doesn’t fall and hurt themselves. Beth walks around it by herself, because when it rains like this, the pitch is empty: none of the kids want to brave it. They hang around the grassy fields or the slick tarmac at the back of the art block, under whatever cover and overhangs they can find. She can’t hear anything over the sound of the rain on her umbrella. It’s quite peaceful, she thinks, watching the water hit the gravel as it does, almost nudging it around to make immediate puddles. It’s relaxing. As the break comes to a close she stands in the central doorway to the Black Pitch and waves the children in. They’re all drenched, which is a hazard. The school used to trap them inside when it rained, to stop any chance of them getting sick. The kids used to be more trouble than that was worth. Now they get drenched, and they ride through the final two lessons of the day in damp clothes. They’re always too exhausted to cause any trouble at least, those afternoons.

When they’re all inside Beth still stands there, in the door frame. She loves the smell.

Petrichor, says Laura from behind her. That’s what you call the smell of rain on hot ground.

Thanks, Beth says. Good word.

No problem.

Did they go all right? Beth asks, catching her just as she’s off to her next class.

The bell rings over her reply, which she repeats. They went fine, yeah. Better bunch of kids than in many places.

Beth thinks that might be a compliment. Her class, a year-seven one, doesn’t listen to her telling them about some semi-tragic novel where an Inuit child befriends a husky that saves its life and, tragically, inevitably, dies.