At the Big Red Rooster Read online

  ‘What’d they wear?’ I wasn’t giving in without a fight.

  ‘Clothes,’ Said Tom. ‘Just clothes and things. Had a whole lot of them in big wicker baskets. Showfewer would come and drive me over on a Saturday. Great big old car. Packard. Me, sitting up like Jacky in the back. Had to wear this dressing-gown thing like what you see a boxer wear even today. They liked seeing me dressed up.’

  His telling of the tale, halting though it was, couldn’t rob the scene of a certain bizarre style.

  ‘Them picnics we had. Now they sure were good. Cold chicken and tablecloths on the grass and wine in proper glasses. Right down by the lake. Showfewer would hand it all round and fill the glasses. Always a lot to eat, there was.’

  ‘Did he ever get his photo taken?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The chauffeur?’

  ‘How would I know?’ Asked Tom.

  He brought the photos with him again; two, three times. Almost as if, having come this far from the closet he may as well bare all. A second and third viewing and I could catch a glimpse of a faint, residual likeness. A somewhat vacuous Adonis.

  ‘May as well see this, too.’ The last viewing and he tossed a spidery brown-black contraption on the table.

  I looked at it, knowing, but didn’t touch.

  ‘What I wore.’ He said with a small trace of a smirk.

  I looked at it again and then at him and laughed. And laughed and laughed. Old Tom, not knowing quite, laughed too.

  ‘You old bastard,’ I said. ‘You’re not telling me the half, are you?’

  ‘I know what I know.’ Said Tom.

  ‘What else went on there? Come on. Tell me. “One far fierce hour and sweet”? Crap. Quid a sitting? Them’s tradesman’s rates, Tom.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean.’ Said Tom. He lunged for the photos and they scattered as he tried to collect them. ‘Don’t know what you mean at all.’

  ‘Yes you do, you old fraud.’

  ‘Could tell you a thing or two.’ He muttered, thrusting photos and rusty jock-strap back into the paper bag.

  ‘Balls.’ I said, nicely as possible, and we went back to massacring the railway houses.

  The Gift

  QUITE BY ACCIDENT he discovered he possessed the Gift. The discovery so disconcerted him he allowed it, for a time, to lie dormant; unused. In one way the possession frightened him; in another way, and this frightened him too, he exalted in the power it promised. He was positive it would help him prove that he amounted to more than the sum of their estimation of him.

  He took his class to the school hall twice a week. They had given him bad times for using the hall. He was new on the staff, a junior, and this meant he was easily fobbed off with the leavings of the others. Tuesday afternoon, just before sport and Thursday morning, first thing, when, in winter, the barracks-like hall echoed dank, dark and cheerless.

  He took his class there for Movement. This was the ‘in thing’ they told him. His class, too, were the leavings; the unlovelies. In behaviour, intellect and even in appearance they were a ragged bunch.

  ‘They’re not a bad lot.’ Said the Hawk.

  ‘No.’ And he hadn’t dared turn his reply into a question.

  The Hawk was his overseer. Senior lady they called her. Apart from the staff morning tea money she had responsibility for him and one other young new one. The Hawk had a nice class. She had picked it herself, sort of à la carte, in the boss’s office at the end of the year before.

  The Hawk was small. Little hooded brown eyes, ever darting, and a tight mouth. Something about her person said that once upon a time she had been little, blonde and fluffy. A long time ago. Vestigial traces only; the fluff had all but rubbed off. The Hawk; Miss Hawke.

  Miss Hawke said: ‘We’re all doing Movement this year. My class love it.’

  ‘How do you take it?’ he asked.

  She by-passed the question. ‘Such rich motivation for creative work in language.’

  ‘Stimulation, not motivation,’ the other young one said.

  She stared coldly. ‘It’s rumoured they’ll be looking for it this year.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The inspectors. They look closely into one curriculum area each year. This year it’s Movement; so they say.’

  He bought a book and read about it. It left him cold. The artificiality of the exercise seemed pretentious. Still, if it must be taken. Someone told him not to forget to claim for the book on his tax return: they expected it and it was an allowable professional expense.

  The first time he tried it out it was a disaster. It took him ten minutes to get his class lined up. They thought they were going to see films. Apparently films had been the ‘in thing’ for the year before. When he finally got them settled, all sitting on the floor well apart from each other as the book advised, he didn’t know what to say. He wet his lips and cleared his throat and plunged in.

  ‘Pretend you’re snails,’ he whispered,

  They stared at him. No one said anything. The oddity of his command struck him and he giggled nervously. It proved his undoing.

  ‘I’m a snail,’ said one.

  ‘Slither slither slither.’ Another.

  ‘Crunch; I trod on you. And on you too.’ Action was suited to words.

  ‘I’m a snail.’

  ‘I’m a slug.’

  He tried. ‘Class!’ he yelled. ‘Class!’

  It was too late. They snailed and slugged, slithered and slid on their bottoms and stomachs around the hall. The noise rose. The hall door opened,

  ‘Class!’ Peremptory. The Hawk.

  They quietened.

  She looked at him; ill-disguised contempt written on her face. He was guilty of the unforgiveable. He had allowed his class to get away on him. Too slack a rein.

  Chastened, he lined them up and they went back to their room.

  ‘Preparation is everything,’ the Hawk told him. ‘A poorly prepared teacher runs a sloppy room. These children are twelve and thirteen. They must be contained and the first essential is full planning.’

  ‘Can I come and watch you take Movement?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve always said that the methods best suited to one teacher are generally ill-suited to another.’

  ‘If I could just see what you do?’

  Grudgingly she arranged for him to view her next lesson but when the day came she was away with a cold. He asked again but she said that she had dropped it from her programme for a month or so while she concentrated the efforts of her class on something she called the bread-and-butter aspects. He didn’t ask again.

  He re-read his book but still failed to see the light. Finally, in desperation and because others on the staff were beginning to say things, he admitted failure to his class. An uncalculated risk.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘every other class is having a go at this stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Movement, we’ve got to do something. You know I’m a dead loss at this. How about you help me out?’ He wasn’t a very good teacher.

  ‘Why should we?’

  ‘What’ll we get out of it?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s it to us?’

  ‘If you ask me it’s –’

  ‘I’ll do a deal.’ God knew, he’d been warned against trying this line of approach. Couldn’t they construe this as ‘negative reinforcement’?

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll give you half an hour a week to do what you like in.’ Very tentative.

  ‘We do that already most of the time. My Mum says she’ll – ’

  ‘Anything we like?’

  ‘Well…’ A slight frown creased his forehead.

  ‘Spin-the-bottle, eh?’

  ‘That’s being unreasonable.’ He visualised orgies in the cloak-bays.

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘Yeah. You’re right. It is being unreasonable. Mind you, school’s unreasonable too.’

  One
of the larger thugs came perilously near siding with him. ‘Maybe you’re right and it is.’

  He looked at them and they stared, quietly calculating, back at him.

  ‘Okay,’ said the one who had appointed himself spokesman. ‘We’ll give it a go.’

  One or two muttered half-hearted dissent but a look in the direction of the spokesman silenced them.

  He wondered what had made them so biddable. Did they really pity him to this extent?

  ‘We’re going to have another go,’ he told Miss Hawke.

  ‘Well I hope for your sake it’s more successful than last time. Can I see your work plan?’

  ‘Er… Actually, er, I left it at home today.’

  He found out why they had so readily agreed to his cajolery. They were quiet; almost deathly so. They pretended to be snails, snakes, old men and blind men in fogs, all with a minimum of fuss. Midway through the lesson a quick tally showed he had lost half of his prey-stalking hunters. A check proved his worst suspicions well-founded and it took him a good five minutes to winkle out half the class who were indulging in more intimate forms of movement backstage, behind the curtains and in other secretive places. He said little and took them all back to the room.

  It was during his third venture that he discovered the Gift.

  ‘Lie down. Relax. Relax every muscle.’ He began to improvise. ‘Relax. Relax. You’re tired, so very tired.’ His voice grew in confidence as he saw them follow his instructions. ‘When I count to five I want you to waken gradually; like a bear coming out of hibernation. Waken, stretch and explore your surroundings. Relax. Completely relaxed. Good.’ He paused and was surprised that he could spot none sneaking off into the hall’s darker recesses. Still, he reflected, it was early in the period. ‘One. Two. Three. Four… now, start to move.’

  Miss Hawke came in. ‘Good heavens. You have got them quiet for a change. I want your roll card. Your totals, according to the office, and far be it from me to question them, are quite wrong for last week.’

  ‘In my drawer.’

  ‘I’ll get them.’ She left.

  He looked at his class. ‘Grow.’ He looked again. ‘Come on then; start.’ He suspected some trick. ‘You’re a big black bear coming out of hibernation. Wake up.’

  Nothing. They lay still.

  Faint alarm clutched at him and he felt a pulse beating in his throat. With his foot he nudged the body nearest him. No response. He stepped about the hall, over and between the bodies. Not a flicker of response. Slowly he smiled and spoke softly: ‘Jesus. I’ve put the little bastards to sleep. All of them!’ He laughed. He leaned back against the wall of the hall and surveyed the scene wondering how, exactly, he had made it come about.

  A moment or two of pleasurable reflection and his alarm returned; more strident, more insistent. What if someone should come in? How, short of kicking them into consciousness, was he to return them to life? It certainly wouldn’t do to have them littering the hall floor in this fashion for too long. What if the Hawk returned? Surely she wouldn’t resist the impulse to gloat over him and his demonstrably erroneous attendance return.

  What was it that he had said? Done? What was the key? He looked hard at his sleeping beauties. Relax. Relax. Sleep?

  No, he was sure he hadn’t told them to sleep. Just relax. Gradually come out of hibernation? Count to five? Was that it? Had he said that? Count to five?

  Aloud he repeated to himself: ‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’

  As if nothing had happened at all they came out of hibernation. They stretched, yawned and, in fact, gave themselves more thoroughly to the exercise than ever he had suggested.

  By the end of the lesson things were back to normal; the predictable half of the class were tucked away in their hideyholes busy carnally knowing one another as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had taken place. Miss Hawke did not come back.

  For a while after that he did nothing about his discovery. Several times he made as if to test it but, fearful that it had all been a flash in the pan or that it might prove beyond his power to repeat the success, he would follow through the instructions he gave the class counting carefully to whatever number; three, five or ten, he had stated. The Gift might not stand a test.

  The Hawk said: ‘Your maths programme must be tightened. Those of us who know the new maths intimately recognise first and foremost that there is no scope for sloppy planning.’

  With considerable temerity: ‘It’s not the planning, Miss Hawke. My kids are just not up to it. They’re slow, they’ve not been well prepared and I’ve got to get them back to basics.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed the same with mine.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a matter of control. You’ll get nowhere in maths with these children if you allow them to run riot. And I’ve not seen your work plan for a fortnight. It’s not good enough.’

  Sun dappled shapes cast by the autumn trees outside the building shimmered light and shade, light and shade across the dusty hall floor.

  They came in and sat down. This time, deliberately, he brought them in late. He was left with only fifteen minutes. He had used their behaviour as an excuse for retaining them in the classroom until it was almost too late to come down at all. Still, enough time remained for his purpose; if it worked.

  ‘Lie down. Relax. Relax. Reee…lax. Every muscle now. You’re tired. So very tired. Very tired. Relax.’ He paused, eyed them. All still. He took a deep breath, bit his lower lip until the pain reminded him to get on with the job. ‘When I count to five you’ll get up. Stretch and yawn. And then you’ll line up at the door and march in file back to the room, take out your maths books and do the work I’ve listed on the blackboard.’ He regarded them for a few seconds. All still. Was it working? Might as well be killed for a sheep. ‘In fact you’ll work damn hard all day. Now then: One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’

  They rose as a body, stretched, yawned and lined up at the door. He opened the door for them and they filed out. Perfect.

  Absolutely perfect. He smiled.

  Miss Hawke stopped him as he followed his class along the covered way at the side of the hall. ‘My, my. What is the secret of our success?’ A steely smile. ‘What have you been doing to them?’

  ‘Miss Hawke,’ he said. ‘The secret is my success.’

  ‘I only wish it extended to your progress register. I took the liberty of extracting it from your desk drawer.’ She managed to make her action sound like a form of dentistry. ‘Not a sight nor sign of chronological ages to be seen. And I must insist on your work plan this week. It’s three weeks you know.’

  They worked through their maths. It didn’t matter that the majority got the answers wrong; they stayed quiet. He dwelt on the possibilities of working the Gift into supplying them with the right answers.

  They worked all day and stayed quiet. Quieter than they had ever been for him. Quieter by far than he had expected them to be. When they spoke to him at all it was with a tentative and sidling diffidence; a touch of apprehension.

  After this he felt fewer qualms about employing the Gift to make his life easier. It proved of little practical use on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays they went off to sport and he had no inclination towards making things easier for those staff who harboured members of his class in their teams.

  Thursdays were just fine. He found he could prime them for the whole day and discovered there was even some residual carry-over into the Friday. He tried, unsuccessfully, to swap the Tuesday period for a Monday one.

  ‘Really,’ said the Hawk. ‘I’ve been here ten years and only during the last two have I managed to get a Monday period. Length of service, seniority and all that, you know.’ She glared at him across an expanse of staffroom table.

  He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘What what is?’

  ‘Well, we all know the whole system stinks round this place.’ He had grown in confidence.

  ‘We know no such thing.
’ Her little mouth shut, mousetrap fast, and he felt a stir of unease. ‘There’s one thing I’d like even a bad smell of and that’s your work plan. Five weeks.’

  ‘The Boss said anything?’ he asked.

  ‘He’ll see them next week, you know. The inspectors are due. You know I’m being graded. It’s bound to reflect on me.’

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘I’m responsible.’

  ‘What if I was to tell you I hadn’t done one?’

  ‘What? Not at all?’ Sheer disbelief opened her eyes wider than he thought possible.

  ‘That’s right. Not at all.’

  ‘But you have to. It’s statutory. It’s… it’s…’

  ‘A load of bull. I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to write it down.’

  ‘But… but… I want it. I must have it. I insist that I see it before the end of this week or I’ll – ’

  ‘You’ll what?’

  ‘Never you mind. You must have it done.’ Her eyes shone with a righteously indignant light. Her voice pleaded.

  ‘Don’t count on it.’ He blew smoke in her direction, stubbed out his cigarette and walked from the room.

  She nagged daily, threatening, alternatively, an on-the-mat meeting with the boss or a confrontation with the dry horrors of the inspectorate. She tried flattery, heavy handed, in a last ditch attempt to call forth the elusive plan; and when all else failed she bullied.

  ‘I’ve not done one. I’ve not got one.’

  She persisted in her disbelief of such heresy. Flatly: ‘You have.’ As if by insistence she somehow proved its existence. ‘I am left with no alternative but to report you.’

  ‘Looks as if that’s what you’ll have to do,’ he agreed.

  Thursday was her duty day. With exact regards to its demands the Hawk flat-footed efficiently about her beat.

  In the hall.

  ‘Relax. Every muscle. You’re tired. You’re tired and heavy and drowsy. Relax.’ He decided to lay it on as thick as he could. ‘So tired… so heavy… relax. Reee… lax. Reeee… lax.’ Pause, survey. All serenely silent.

  He continued. ‘At playtime Miss Hawke is on duty. I want you to give her a really bad time.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Miss Hawke you understand. A really bad time. It’ll be after maths which you’ll do, as usual, in complete silence. Now, when I count to five…’