Fivefold

The School

Mr Anderson was the school master at Boghead Village School. He was a considered a young teacher, although he was heading into his late forties and he was also considered kind. This was only due to the fact that his predecessor, Mr Scott, was a tyrant, almost sadistic in his enjoyment of hurting the village children. The school building was a large sandstone construction which took up a big section of the village landscape. It sat right next to the large green field, but the pupils were only allowed to play on the specially laid bitumen playground during the school day. The trees that grew up the side of Coal Hill could be seen clearly through the large sash windows of the senior school room, but only from the top row of school desks. George, who was one of the eldest pupils had the privilege of sitting in that very row, in the same seat as Bernie had a few years ago, which George liked to think about. He also spent a large section of the school day imagining Bernie working away inside the bowels of Coal Hill, using those muscles they had joked about the evening before.

"George, please read to the class, pages eleven to twenty," Mr Anderson announced, pulling George away from his thoughts, which he knew were improper, wrong even, but what could he do? He just kept them to himself and tried his best to seem like the other boys. He listed to the way they spoke and watched the way they acted, especially when no adults were around. Bernie had made him feel comfortable when he was in school, but things had been a bit more strained since he had left almost two years ago. The other boys, like Duncan and Edward, seemed to sense something different about George and didn't treat him the same pally way as the other boys. The senior section of the school was low on boys and the girls outnumbered the males by five. George liked, preferred really, speaking with the girls, but this seemed to lead to ridicule so he avoided it as much as he could.  George was almost 15 and would be 15 before he left school. This was almost geriatric when it came to a school boy in Boghead. George still felt so young compared to the miner boys who were only a few years older than him, they seemed like men. They acted like men too, swaggering back from the pit, going to the pub on a Saturday night or even during the week, to play dominoes or talk about. George wasn't really sure what was really talked about in the manly space of the pub. He would know soon enough and would be expected to fit into the mould of a young miner. At least bernie would be around and he could take the lead from him.

The month of May had brought about a bought of chicken pox to the school pupils. Many children were absent, either because they had the pox or they were helping weary mothers with younger poxy siblings. 

"Come and hold an end for us George, and then we can get a good game of keep the kettle boiling going," Elsie Green asked during the morning playtime. George dutifully held one end of the large skipping rope, opposite one of the younger girls, while the older girls jumped in and out of the loop, chanting their rhyme. George would have loved to have jumped through the rope, but knew the boys only did that in jest to annoy and flirt with the girls. He looked up towards the trees and the hill and felt real dread. It was really going to happen, his childhood was almost over, and soon he would be a miner.

After playtime, Mr Anderson had set the class a task of writing a composition about the importance of school and why education was important. He also said that as the class was so small due to the many absences that the class did not need to return after lunch. George dipped his pen into the ink well and began scratching out his essay. He thought it was an unusual topic Mr Anderson had chosen, but he set to work, easily thinking of his argument. He enjoyed writing and it came easily to him, as did most things in the school room. He had won many school prizes for his compositions and was usually top of the class in English. He remembered back to Bernie's final prize giving day. It had been a hot June day and the whole school were seated outside on large wooden benches. Mary Gould was the school Dux that year, she had stood in front of the school audience alongside the three teachers and cried loudly as she collected her prize, a book of collected English poems. George knew that she was to be married soon. Bernie had won a book for arithmetic and attendance, while George had won a prize for composition writing. A photographer had come to take a group picture that day and George had stood next to Bernie the two of them with still faces, beating hearts, while they waited for the bulb to burst, the photographer disappearing under his big camera cloak.

"Elsie, can you collect everyone's writing and then once you have all cleaned away your ink and pens you can go for today," Mr Anderson commanded from his tall desk without even looking up at the class. The children obeyed taking their little glass jars of ink and the pens over to the cabinet beside the doorway. They stacked them neatly and silently left the classroom. A few of them began to run as soon as they hit the flat playground, but George did not. He sauntered home, knowing that more time than usual was to pass before he could take up his hidden position in the woods to watch the miners on their homeward journey.