Bed of Roses. Daisy Waugh

one else here yet?’ Fanny asks brightly, looking from Robert White to Linda Tardy and back again. Linda, who is trying to swallow a mouthful of the same fish-paste sandwich she has vowed not to touch before lunch, holds a hand in front of her jaw and shakes her head.

      ‘It’s usually a bit slow on the first day,’ mumbles Robert, removing the sandal and unrolling the sock. ‘And I’m afraid to say I’m only really popping in myself. I’m a bit under the weather.’ He examines his toe, which looks bony and a little damp, but otherwise undamaged, and stands, at last, to arrange the sock on a nearby heater. ‘I thought I should put a nose in, so to speak.’ He smiles at her, keeping his pink lips closed. He is skinny, in his mid-forties, with eyes of the palest blue, and thin sandy-coloured hair cut into a well-kept bob. He is surprisingly tall when he stands up, Fanny notices; over six foot, or he would be if he pulled his shoulders back. ‘I’ll nip back to bed later,’ he continues, ‘but I wanted to say welcome…So –’ with a burst of energy he flaps open one of the long thin arms and winks at her, ‘welcome!’ he says.

      ‘Thank you.’ It is unfortunate for Robert, especially since this is their first meeting (Robert having been off sick on the two previous occasions she visited the school and off sulking when the other governors were interviewing her for the job), but there’s almost nothing Fanny finds more irritating than a man with a well-kept bob, open-toed sandals and a cold. ‘Who’s going to take your class then?’

      Robert looks taken aback. ‘Linda,’ he says, as if it’s obvious.

      ‘You mean Mrs Tardy?’

      ‘Linda always does it. They’re ever so used to her. The kiddies like you, don’t they, Linda?’

      ‘They like it with me because we always do the fun stuff,’ Linda Tardy chuckles, ‘and then when Robert’s back he has to do all the catching up for us, don’t you, Robbie?’

      ‘I do my best.’

      ‘Though generally,’ she adds, ‘there’s more to catch up on than he can manage. Isn’t that right, Robert? With you being poorly so much…But they’re lovely little children, and that’s what counts. Isn’t that right, Robert? They’re super kids.’

      ‘But Mrs Tardy,’ says Fanny, ‘if you don’t mind me being frank—’

      ‘Oh, say what you like, dear. Don’t worry about me!’

      ‘But you’re not a teacher.’

      ‘Oh, I know that, dear. It says it loud and clear in my pay packet every month!’ She rocks with laughter.

      ‘Well…’ Fanny hesitates. It’s a bit early to be throwing her weight around but she feels she can’t let it pass. She turns to Robert White. ‘I think,’ she says politely, ‘with the children being so behind, and with Mrs Tardy tending, as she says, to stick with the fun stuff – it might be a good idea to get a supply teacher in, don’t you?’

      ‘It isn’t ordinarily a deputy’s duty,’ he says, ‘to administrate that sort of thing.’

      ‘Isn’t it? Wasn’t it? Well, it is now!’ Fanny forces a laugh. She’s not used to this; ordering grown men about. It’s awkward. ‘Anyway, Robert, Mr White, to be frank – you don’t exactly look like you’re dying…Couldn’t you stick around, now you’ve made it this far? As it’s my first day. Would you mind?’

      ‘I had no idea,’ he says pertly, ‘that our esteemed employers now insisted we should be dying before we’re allowed time off sick.’

      ‘Oh, come on.’

      ‘And the last thing I want is to feel responsible for the kiddies catching my germs.’

      ‘Children,’ Fanny says, ‘are pretty resilient.’

      ‘In my experience, parents tend to be not unduly impressed by the sort of staff who insist on spreading their germs around. And if the parents complain—’

      ‘Yes, but they won’t,’ she says.

      There are blotches of pink at his cheek-bones. ‘But they might,’ he says.

      ‘Well,’ there are blotches at hers, too, ‘then I’m willing to risk that.’

      A long silence. It’s a battle of wills. She may be young and small and new and female and disconcertingly attractive, but it begins fuzzily to occur to Robert that she might not be the pushover Mrs Thomas had been. They stare at each other, until finally, with a huffy, superior shrug, Robert nods.

      ‘Thank you,’ Fanny grins at him. ‘You’re very kind. Thank you very much.’ Without another word he picks up his briefcase, bulging with exercise books he has failed to mark over the Easter holidays, and leaves the room.

      With a great sigh of relief Fanny throws herself into the beaten-up, brown-covered armchair beside Mrs Tardy’s. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘That wasn’t at all how I’d intended to begin.’

      ‘The thing is, what I’ve learnt in my experience, Miss Flynn, we all have to begin somehow,’ replies Linda Tardy nonsensically, but kindly, patting Fanny on the knee. ‘But you mustn’t mind Robert. He has his ways. And the main thing is, we’ve got some really super kids here at Fiddleford.’ She nods to herself. Safe on safe ground. ‘That’s the main thing. Super kids. That’s right, isn’t it, dear? Now then,’ slowly she heaves herself up from her seat, ‘we’ve got a few minutes. How about I make you a nice cup of coffee?’

      ‘I’d love some coffee,’ Miss Flynn says. ‘And please, Mrs Tardy, call me Fanny.’

      Linda Tardy hesitates. ‘It’s a strange name though, isn’t it, Miss Flynn?’ She gives one of her bosomy chuckles. ‘Not one you’d wish on a girl these days. Not really. You never thought of changing it, I suppose?’

       6

      The school hall is light and airy, with worn wooden floors, high ceilings and enormous windows set high in whitepainted brick walls. Like the two classrooms on either side of it, it is clean and handsome but strangely bare; there are hardly any children’s paintings anywhere, or charts, or wall displays. Robert’s classroom has nothing at all except a laminated sign which reads:

      Fanny sits, for the moment, swinging her feet over the edge of the school hall’s tiny stage and feeling a mite peculiar. The children, all thirty-seven of them, all cross-legged on the linoleum before her, gaze up, placidly expectant, each one entrusting their fate to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if she had a clue what she was really meant to be doing with it.

      This is her first assembly and, although there will be complaints about it later, she has decided on the spur of that moment to tell the students of the shadow which hangs over their school’s future. It seems only fair, she thinks, that they should know as much as she does. ‘So you see,’ she says emphatically, ‘I don’t think we’ve got all that much time. And unless we can totally and completely –’ in her zeal her shoulders, her entire body, give an unconscious leap of enthusiasm, and the children chortle, they like her; children always do, ‘transform this place, work some kind of miracle and somehow improve every single thing about it, well then—’

      The door is kicked open by a gangly boy in loose-fitting Nike nylon. He stands facing her, arms crossed and legs apart. He can’t be more than eleven or he wouldn’t still be at the school, but he’s tall for his age.

      ‘O’right, miss?’ he says. His voice is breaking.

      ‘Thank you. I’m OK,’ she says brightly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘“Eh?”…I