Daffodils always remind me
of Sandy, and of what she taught me.
Her name was Miss Sandiland, and she taught us French, or
tried to. I was a skinny thirteen-year old, and what I really
learned by being in that class has been more use to me than
French, believe me.
I know now that we must have made Sandy's life a misery. You
didn't feel sorry for teachers, though, did you? They had
a cushy job, five days a week, short days at that, and look
at the holidays. My mum and dad never had holidays, and Mum
only just managed to make ends meet, but now I reckon they
were both happier than Sandy. Some job she had, teaching a
class like ours.
Funnily enough, she looked quite intimidating, with her hair
in a tight bun, pale blue eyes staring through round pebble
glasses. She always strode into the classroom, as if she was
in total control. Perhaps she fooled herself that this time
she would be. This time we would listen, open our books, work
diligently till the bell and then wait to be dismissed.
It never happened. By the end of their first lesson with Sandy,
every class sensed that she was their victim. We were no exception.
We soon had the tormenting of Sandy down to a fine art. We
didn't take the obvious approach, the noisy one. Other classes
did, and then the headmaster or somebody would burst in to
quell the din, dishing out punishment marks or detention,
providing Sandy with a few minutes of calm, but damaging her
discipline credibility beyond repair.
No, our approach was more subtle, delaying tactics, lost exercise
books, missing dictionaries, sham fainting fits, protests
(‘We would have done our homework if we'd had any, Miss’).
Rearranging the furniture was fun: behind her, as she wrote
on the blackboard, desks were re-aligned, or people changed
places, or half the class was discovered to be facing the
back of the room. There were requests for windows to be opened
(‘It's stuffy in here, Miss’) or closed (‘Miss,
it's freezing!) for blinds to be drawn (‘Can't see for
the sun, Miss’) or raised (‘Too dark to write,
Miss!’). It became a point of honour with us to learn
no French at all.
Sometimes I was troubled, a little. Mum and Dad had a great
respect for education. My reports were middle-of-the-road,
but Dad boasted about them, and Mum made sure that my blazer,
passed down from older cousins, was brushed, and my blouses
would have passed the old Persil test any day. For their sake
I couldn't fail the French exam, but peer pressure meant that
I didn't dare shine either. I was a bit of a mouse, anxious
to please, and doing well in French was a sure route to being
ostracised. I scored 52 percent, and came third, my lowest
score and highest class place: most people failed, but most
people didn't have parents like mine.
The end of the school year was in sight, and with it Founder's
Day. A previous headmaster had decided to add prestige and
encourage pupils to take a pride in our very run-of-the-mill
working class secondary school by having a Founder's Day.
He had produced a portrait of a rather fierce looking Victorian
gentleman, and hung it in our assembly hall, which doubled
as gym and library. Under this disapproving gaze we sang hymns
and went through exercises. For Founder's Day that headmaster
had decreed that flowers should be placed under the portrait,
and somehow it had gradually become the custom for each class
to make some sort of presentation to their register teacher.
Sandy kept our register. How accurate it was, thanks to all
our tricks and carrying on, I don't know, but there it was,
she was our register teacher and we were expected to mark
Founder's Day by giving her something.
The afternoon before Founder's Day, my class discussed this
in a corner of the playground. It didn't take long. Mary Turner,
the leading light in our class, had already decided. ‘Flowers,
of course,’ she announced, adding quickly, ‘dandelions.’
We shrieked our delight. Dandelions!
‘Labelled in French,’ added Gladys Brown, Mary's
sidekick: Gladys had come top in French, much to her disgust.
She explained the joke to the rest of us, and we howled with
mirth. ‘Pissenlit! Wet-the-bed!’
I pretended to laugh too, but it stuck in my throat. Bed-wetting
had been my private nightmare. It hadn't happened for a long
time, but the shame still haunted me. And everybody knew the
penalty for picking a dandelion. I tried not even to look
at one.
Mary was watching me. ‘You do it,’ she ordered.
‘It has to be somebody near – not a bus person.’
Mary and Gladys were both bus persons. ‘Do it tonight,
when the cleaners are in: say you've forgotten something if
anybody asks.’ My protests were ignored: no one else
lived near enough. I was to pick dandelions, slip back that
evening, and put them on Sandy's desk. Gladys printed PISSENLIT
carefully on a label. Miserably I put it in my school bag.
There was no escape. I couldn't argue with Mary, of all people.
I'd have to go through with it.
I did it before tea. There were plenty of dandelions in waste
ground nearby, and some of the others turned up to help –
perhaps to make sure that I didn't chicken out. Somebody had
a ribbon to tie round them. They thrust the horrid bundle
into my unwilling hands. ‘Go now!’ they urged,
and, sick at heart, I ran back to school, slipped in by a
side door, dropped it on Sandy's desk and was home before
Mum had missed me, and long before bedtime.
Bedtime! I had picked dandelions: I knew what would happen.
I took precautions, of course, omitting my bedtime cocoa,
paying a prolonged visit to the lavatory. Then I had a brilliant
idea – I would stay awake all night, ready for the slightest
hint of trouble. I would sit up in bed, to avoid falling asleep.
I pulled a jersey over my pyjamas, propped myself up against
my pillows and settled down to see the long hours through.
Once or twice I caught myself nodding, and pulled myself up
again, sighing. It was going to be a long night.
Fortunately, Mum looked in on me later, and found me asleep,
halfway out of bed and wearing my school jersey. She shook
me awake, I burst into tears, and somehow the whole story
tumbled out. At first she laughed. ‘Dandelions! Wet
the bed? Rubbish, that's an old wives' tale if ever there
was one, and you're long past the stage of that kind of accident.’
But she was a wise woman, my mum. She knew there was more
to this than a bunch of dandelions, and I was too upset to
keep it to myself any longer. It was relief to confess the
rest of the story, the slipping into school, the bouquet that
awaited our teacher when she went in next day. My mother was
absolutely horrified.
‘That's a terrible thing to do to anybody, let alone
to one of your teachers!’ If only Mum knew how we'd
already treated her! Shame swept over me, and I wept again.
Mum wasn't given to many cuddles, but she hugged me then,
patting me awkwardly, until my sobs died away.
‘Well, we'll have to do something about this,’
she said. ‘First thing in the morning you'll go back
in to that classroom with some proper flowers. Now, not another
word. The corner shop opens early, so you can get something
there.’
‘But…’
‘But nothing,’ she said. ‘We'll borrow from
the Coronation tin. Now, take that jersey off, and perhaps
you'd better pay a visit before you go back to sleep?’
So that's what happened. The Coronation tin was where Mum
saved for Christmas, or my birthday, or emergencies. This
was an emergency, all right. Heart thumping, I crept into
the classroom next morning and exchanged the dead dandelions
for a bunch of golden daffodils. I tore up Gladys's notice
and dropped the pieces into the wastepaper basket.
Sandy's surprise was obvious, when she came in and discovered
the flowers. Obvious, too, to me, was my classmates' fury.
I had chosen a front seat, and I could feel 24 pairs of eyes
glaring at me. After registration came the Founder's Day Assembly,
and when the bell rang, everybody leapt to their feet, and
began to tumble out of the room. I hesitated, and then Sandy
came and stood in front of my desk.
‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
I stared at her, bewildered. ‘Shakespeare was a very
wise man,’ said Sandy. ‘I was early in the staffroom
this morning. I heard footsteps, and caught just a glimpse
of you. But I guessed what you were up to when I looked I
the wastepaper basket – and there were a few dead dandelions
in the corridor.’ She smiled. ‘It's good to know
one of my pupils at least has the courage to stand out from
the crowd.’
I felt myself blushing. Courage! I should have said, no, it
was my mum, but I felt a bit choked. This was a teacher, thanking
me, saying I had courage. I didn’t understand what Shakespeare
had to do with it, though.
‘Come on,’ said Sandy, ‘or we'll be late
for Assembly.’ And we left the room together, heads
high, Sandy carrying her daffodils, proudly, for all the school
to see.
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| Shortlisted
Runner-up in the Daffodils short story competition was Liz Rowland, Little Clacton, Essex and her story will be published in next monthÕs Writing Magazine. Entries shortlisted to final judging stage were from: Patti Bright, Dolgellau, Gwynedd; Linda Houlton, Oxton, Wirral; Ray Joesbury, Bideford, Devon; Anne Medwell, Loubille, France; Julie Murphy, Glenfarg, Perthshire; Steve Pain, Middle Assendon, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire; Daphne Phillips, London SW17; Liz Pike,Yeovil, Somerset; Cheryl Rogers, West Swan, Western Australia; Margaret Skipworth, Hull; Vivien Williamson, Derrington, Staffordshire.
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