1
What Peter Herlihy’s mind threw up surprised even
Rogers. He decided it would be useless to try to teach this
boy how to read while his mind was obsessed with other things and
he concentrated on trying to bring to light all the fears and guilt
buried in him. He knew he was treading risky ground, but if Mike
Herlihy wouldn’t hear of a psychiatrist, someone had to do something for the boy. It wasn’t even practical to let him carry on without mental attention; he made it impossible to teach the other
children. Now that Rogers had become so disheartened about
political activity, his analysis of Peter became a mission with him.
If Peter was away from school for a day, he found normal teaching
tame. Daily he watched Peter’s progress as if it was the only part of
his job that mattered.
He had at least persuaded Peter to give up the comics he read.
He said he would tell him better stories. But they didn’t interest
Peter, and Rogers was afraid that he still read comics at home, as in
fact he did. One day he asked Peter to draw on a portable blackboard anything that came to his mind. But at first Peter said he
couldn’t draw. Rogers persisted and finally Peter showed him a
drawing that shocked Rogers, though he disguised his reaction. It
was a stick figure of a man with an exaggerated phallus. Surmounting his resistance, with a satanic glint in his eye, Peter explained the
picture. ‘Draw me more pictures,’ Rogers said. He was disturbed,
but having decided to bring out the boy’s obsessions, he had to continue, and he had to expect something as unhealthy as this. He had
at least won the boy’s confidence; that was something.
Peter Herlihy spent a whole feverish hour one afternoon wearing
out sticks of red chalk on his blackboard, drawing his stick figures,
rubbing them out and drawing more. They became a bait for him;
he was finished his arithmetic before anyone else, he even began to
learn his reading at home so that he would have more time at
school to draw red stick figures.
In a few days he had forgotten he wanted to draw them. He took
to drawing more detailed pictures of men and women with fuller
bodies and exaggerated pudenda in many weird postures conceived
by a boy precocious but without understanding. Rogers himself
was alarmed though he tried not to show it. What if Heath should
walk in, or Belle Hansen? Peter’s graffiti began to erupt on the
blackboards around the wall, though Rogers only allowed them a
few minutes’ airing, trying to disguise his impatience to rub them
off. Strangely enough, none of the other children noticed them.
They were too young, Rogers thought, and each too much interested
in his own drawing to be able to read another child’s; yet his misgivings became more serious. This sort of thing might be all right
in a special school.
Within a few days Peter became more aggressive, but he still
shrank from boys’ company, and in the playground he was, as he
had been since he started school, the quarry of gang attacks, a sullen
sneaking boy running and hiding from other boys.
Once he was called for by the dental nurse, who had a room by
the mine office. He left school but, afraid of the pain, he did not go
to the nurse, and satisfied himself throwing stones at a dog, catching
it and trying to open its jaws as far as he could. If he had been
stronger he might have broken its jaws but his hand slipped and the
dog bit him. He did not go back to school that day, he had his
revenge on a little girl on her way home from school. He threw
stones at her till some bigger boys chased him, and he ran till he
came to the billiard room where he furtively pushed open the door
and shouted, ‘Bugger!’ and ran off, leering, though the few youths
at billiards were only amused. Then he did the same at Palmers’
bar, but his father was there and he stopped with open mouth till
his father came to the door and clouted him and told him to get off
home and went back laughing, rather proud of the spirit his son
showed, while Peter went home silent and subdued, wondering.
As he approached the house his aggressiveness returned. He summoned his energy and banged open the back door and threw down
his schoolbag. His mother jumped from the chair where she sat
every afternoon before the coal stove, in an overheated kitchen,
brooding on God knew what wrongs, like her mother on the other
side of the town.
‘You rough little bugger,’ she screamed. ‘Can’t you learn to
come into the house decently. Cut it out now, cut it out! You heard
me, didn’t you? Cut it out!’
Peter stared insolently at her but only because he wanted something to eat. ‘I want a piece,’ he said.
‘You pick up your schoolbag and put it in the corner where it
belongs, or there won’t be any piece!’
He picked it up and threw it reluctantly to the corner.
‘Pick it up properly or by Christ I’ll thrash the living daylights
out of you!’
He picked it up and put it down more gently.
‘Now say please before you get a piece!’
‘Please.’
‘Please what?’
‘Please Mum.’ He added the word like a puritan forced to take an
oath.
She went to a pantry where she kept well-cooked shortbread
hidden from Mike and the boy. She never had two visitors in six
months, yet it satisfied her pride to bake and to keep a full pantry
as if she entertained frequently. She had a small appetite herself.
She carefully replaced the lid on the cake tin. ‘You didn’t wipe
your feet, Peter,’ she said, relenting, not wishing to bargain further
with his hunger; though she never believed he was hungry when
he came in from school; she was sure it was just perversity or
boredom.
‘No,’ he said, non-committally. She held out the shortbread
gently, tentatively, as to a pet dog. He snatched it like an animal and
in a second was in the doorway, only his head showing. ‘I’m glad
I didn’t wipe my feet,’ he said.
‘Oh, Peter,’ she said with unusual tenderness, as if wounded
reproof would appeal to his conscience. ‘You didn’t say thank
you.’
‘I’m not going to either,’ he said. ‘You’d be too scared to thrash
the living daylights out of me. I’d tell Dad.’
She pitched into her fury again. ‘Get out, you brat!’ she screamed.
‘For Christ’s sake take yourself out of my sight and off my mind.
Christ alone can tell why I ever had you, for I can’t!’
‘Maddie! Maddie!’ Peter taunted her from somewhere in the
yard and retreated into the scrub with his shortbread like a cat with
a sparrow.
Nora Herlihy took up her post by the open gate of the coal range,
and for the tenth time that afternoon she swept the hearth, though
there was only a crumb on it, from the shortbread. She had an urge
to cry, but she was too proud to cry.
Peter was skulking under some stinkwood scrub, watching the
road, tensing and silent when a car passed, or a dredge-hand biking
home from work, feeling profoundly cunning to be watching unseen, like a predatory animal ambushed for prey. When he had
eaten his shortbread he scouted deeper into the scrub and stalked
imaginary animals, discovering new passages between the trunks
and under the thick foliage which darkened the light. He knew
these bushes and the ways through them, he knew their names:
stinkwood, yellow beneath the bark, with the repulsive smell from
the crushed leaves; tutu, its leaves and berries were supposed to be
poisonous—some day he would try to coax his mother to eat some;
fuchsia with its bark torn like peeling wallpaper—they said you
could crush it and make cigarettes out of it—some day he might
steal one of his father’s cigarette papers and try it; willows and the
trees they called cracker, mickeymick, mockamock, whiteywood,
birch; all the left-over second growth from the tangled forest of tall
trees that had been here before Coal Flat and the older gold dredge.
Peter often felt tempted to set fire to this scrub, but his mother
always hid the matches from him since the time when he was five
and tried to burn the lavatory down; and again, he wasn’t sure that
he wanted to burn the scrub because it was his retreat. He was in
his natural element here; there was all the difference between this
alert, silent pathfinder scenting imaginary lions and Indians, darting
and crouching suddenly behind trunks, slipping without a sound
through tangles of supple-jack and bush-lawyer that would have
baffled grown men; between this boy and the skulking runaway
quarry of the gangs at school. Behind a mass of muhlenbeckia there
was an empty space unexposed to any side. You entered it by lying
flat and slithering through six inches of space at the bottom. Inside
it was like late dusk. There was no noise except the passing riffle of
tyres on shingle, and the trill of a grey warbler in the airy leaves
above. In this pozzy, Peter kept his few treasures, a bike-pedal, a
scout knife, a discarded and rusting ‘possum-trap, an exercise book
and some chalk he had stolen from Rogers’s table, some coloured
marbles, all taws. He had carefully built a cache of stones brought
from the tailings, reinforced with leaves and dry fern, to protect
them from rain, and he polished the knife every day. When Rogers
first made his obsessions releasable he had stolen the chalk and the
book so that he could draw pictures here, but after one attempt he
lost interest; he only wanted to do that at school; already he had
sensed that Rogers was embarrassed by them. Yet his retreats always followed a certain ritual. He would first check up on his possessions, he would clear away the leaves that had fallen since his
last visit. Then he would sit and brood, calling his mother names;
then he would fiercely whisper every swear-word he knew. When he
first came back from the convent he had used to repeat in sneering
mockery the words of the rosary, but the urge had left him now.
Then he would drift into a still mood of nostalgia and self-pity.
Finally he would dream that he was a lone woodsman living in a
bungy hut deep in the bush, with a hurricane lamp for light, birds
and eels and opossums for his food, and a rifle never out of reach.
His hut would be well guarded against all intruders by traps planted
like mines in strategic places, and he would shoot anyone that came
near. It made him grin fiercely to think of someone caught in his
trap, unable to walk away, too far away from a road to call for help,
while he ignored the victim’s plight. Perhaps Mother St Ignatious
from the convent would come, fat and gasping and tripping over
roots, calling out in her sweet voice, looking for a lost girl who was
lost because he had pushed her into the river, or Heath the headmaster, or Rogers—he thought twice about Rogers, but yet he’d
gloat to see him helpless dancing with one foot imprisoned in a trap.
Not his mother—she wouldn’t be alive to come near. A bus would
have run her down, or the house caught on fire and burnt her up.
And he would have an Alsatian trained to trust only him and attack
anyone else. He would call it Caesar. And he would have two
hurricane lamps and leave them burning all night because he didn’t
trust the dark.
After half an hour’s reverie he checked again on his possessions
and slipped from his den. He took an arc-like track through the
scrub and came to the fowl-run. They had twenty fowls, including
a dozen new pullets bought two months ago. He slipped silently
into the run gently making clucking noises to calm the hens and
deftly grabbed one, and holding her tightly, snibbed the gate and
retired to the scrub. He had a thick piece of wire, which he pushed
through the bird’s throat. He pierced it several times and twisted
her neck, but prolonged the death as long as he could. He wrapped
the wire round her neck and holding the other end of the wire,
swung the bird round and round till she was dead. When she was no
longer protesting he kicked her about the ground to soil the feathers,
then returned her to the fowl-run. After tea, when it was half-dark,
and his father was drunk and not listening to Nora’s insults he
would slip out to the fowl-run and then run in excited as if he had
made a fresh discovery, saying, ‘Dad! Dad! A ‘possum’s killed
another of the hens! I chased it away!’ And his father, half-drunk,
would follow him into the half-dark and look at it. He would pat
his shoulder and say, ‘Good work, son’, For the fowl’s death would
have earned him from his father a kiss, an amulet through a night of
bickering knives.
2
Rogers was taking the lower reading group at the blackboard: p
for pipe, with a drawing of a pipe, f for flag with a drawing of a flag,
and other letters. There were three girls in this group who were
very slow to learn. Day after day he had the same experience with
them: he would concentrate on three letters for several minutes,
then he would rub off the drawings and go through the letters again
and each of these girls would say the wrong sound. Peter Herlihy
was very erratic. Rogers would hold on to his patience with set
teeth. Why did Heath ever put me in charge of infants? he would
wonder. You wanted a stout motherly woman of early middle age
for infants, preferably a mother herself, a woman whose temper was
beyond ruffling. It annoyed him all the more that these children
were so keen to please him, bursting to say f when he pointed to
p. Truman Heath walked in and said, as if he was an inspector:
‘Just carry on, Mr Rogers. I want to see what you’re doing.’
Rogers knew well enough that Heath disliked him; he didn’t know
why, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was just one of
these pointless stubborn personal animosities with which New
Zealand is so rife. Rogers carried on, and the children’s recognition
of the letters did not improve. Heath intervened.
‘These children don’t know their alphabet yet,’ he said.
‘They’re the C group. I’ve been giving them extra time on this
for weeks.’
‘Let me take them for a while.’
Heath did as Rogers had done, and he got no better results.
Rogers watched for a minute and seeing that Heath’s method was
no different from his own, he quietly went to the back of the room
where the children of the other reading groups were printing words,
each on his own section of blackboard round the walls of the classroom. He knew this would irritate Heath, but he didn’t want to
waste time. He was giving one boy assistance when Heath melodramatically threw down the ruler he had used to point to the letters
and walked purposefully to Rogers.
‘This isn’t good enough, Mr Rogers,’ he said. ‘These children
are not making the progress they should be.’
‘I’m doing my best, Mr Heath.’
‘Well, it’s not a very good best.’ Heath’s face was flaring but
weak. He only found the courage to remonstrate openly when he
could harness anger. He cast for an excuse to stoke his temper.
‘Listen to the noise,’ he said. ‘Break down the noise there!’ he
called to the class.
‘They’re only infants, Mr Heath. I don’t object to a little talking
so long as they are busy.’
‘They’ve got to learn to be quiet,’ he said. ‘You might think of
the teacher who has to put up with them next year, instead of yourself. That boy!’ he called violently, and the whole class stopped in
their work, awed at this intrusion of anger into their normally mild
classroom. ‘That boy, come over here.’ It was Donnie Palmer.
‘Quickly now when I speak to you.’ Donnie had asked the boy next
to him for a piece of red chalk so that he could draw a red hen
where he had printed hen. He was not a bright boy in the class,
average in ability, orderly, willing and easy to manage. He took no
advantage from living in the same building as Rogers and meeting
him in the sitting-room at home, and Rogers had never had a harsh
word with him. Heath grabbed his shoulder and shook him. ‘You
were talking,’ he said. ‘You disobeyed me.’ Donnie stared up at
him paralysed with shock. Already Heath could feel detached from
his anger; in another second or two he might have shrugged and
walked away. But he had always promised himself that in future
he’d be tough, show them he was a disciplinarian. ‘Didn’t you?
Answer me now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘They don’t even know their manners, Mr Rogers…. Didn’t
you hear me tell you to be quiet? Answer me now.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And you deliberately disobeyed me?’
‘I don’t know sir.’
‘You talked, didn’t you? You said something to that boy?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘What did you say to him?’ He shook Donnie again.
‘I asked him for some red chalk.’
‘Well, you can come along to my office, my boy,’ Heath said.
Donnie burst into tears. Heath looked afraid, but he marched the
boy out of the room while the children stared with wide eyes and
Rogers protested: ‘Mr Heath, Mr Heath….’ His protests only
strengthened Heath’s flagging will.
Donnie came back a minute later crying in convulsions. He was
holding a sore hand under his arm, and blowing warm breath on it
occasionally. ‘Donnie, did Mr Heath give you the strap?’ Rogers
said.
Short of breath, Donnie gasped, ‘Yes, he gave me two on the
same hand.’
‘You sit down now and take it quietly,’ Rogers said, feeling useless. ‘Right-oh, class. All back to your seats and get your blackboards ready for some spelling.’ He bent over Donnie. ‘You don’t
need to do any spelling,’ he said.
Donnie sniffled. ‘What’ll Grannie say?’ he sobbed.
‘Don’t you worry. I’ll tell Grannie what happened,’
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever got the strap.’
Peter Herlihy was agog. ‘Please sir, he’s the only kid that’s ever
had the strap out of all us kids.’ Donnie sobbed harder.
‘You mind your own business Peter,’ Rogers said, resisting a
temptation to project all his anger against him. ‘Are your blackboards ready, class? The first word is rope. Jane lost her skipping-rope. Rope.—Donnie, you take out some plasticine and go on with
that. I’ll let you give out the milk tomorrow.’
‘Please sir, it’s my turn,’ a boy said.
‘I think we should let Donnie have another turn,’ Rogers said.
‘Oh, that’s not fair.’
‘You’ll get your turn the next day. I won’t forget you, Ray. The
next word is wall. Dad is papering the wall. Wall.’
The class was working intently now, and Heath walked in again.
‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘This is how they should be working.
Quietly, efficiently.’ Rogers didn’t comment. ‘A little shake-up
now and again does them a world of good. Oh, it’s be very nice to
be easy with them like you Mr Rogers. Teaching would be very
pleasant then. But it doesn’t pay. We’re here to work, I’m afraid,
not to play.’
Rogers was calling the next word, but Heath interrupted him.
‘Attention, class,’ he said. ‘Hands on heads. Like this. Hasn’t Mr
Rogers taught you to put your hands on your heads?’
Several voices said, ‘No-o.’ Heath looked sideways at Rogers.
‘Well, I’m showing you now. And every morning from now on
when you come into school I want you to practise doing this. Because some day I’ll come in and ask you to do it to see if you’ve
remembered. You won’t forget, will you, Mr Rogers? I want you to
remind Mr Rogers just in case he forgets. We all forget things now
and again, don’t we, boys and girls?’
‘Please sir, I forgot my hankie this morning and Mr Rogers lent
me his.’
‘I forgot to take my spelling book home last night and I couldn’t
learn my spelling.’
‘That shouldn’t be,’ Heath said. ‘There’s no excuse for that.
Let me see, where was I? Yes, there was a little boy here before who
forgot to obey me. Well, perhaps I was hard on him, children, but
I warn you there’s one thing I won’t stand for and that’s disobedience. So just remember, if you don’t want to be punished like
that boy, you must do as you’re told. Where is the boy?’
Heath’s eyes sought and found Donnie, his crying stopped, his
face still blubbery with resentment. ‘What’s this? Why aren’t you
doing your spelling like the others?’
‘I told him to go on with some plasticine,’ Rogers said. ‘His hand
is too sore to hold a chalk.’
‘Right-oh, class. Put away your boards. Take out your reading
books and no talking,’ Heath said.
‘Please sir, we’ve had our reading.’
‘I said no talking,’ Heath replied, his face flushed again. ‘You
remember what, happened to the last boy who disobeyed me.’
Donnie Palmer began to cry again.
‘Look here, me boy,’ Heath said to Rogers. ‘We’ve got a little bit
of business to discuss.’ He spoke in undertones while the children
stared at their books, listening to him. ‘Why did you excuse that
boy from his work?’
‘I said his hand was sore, Mr Heath. He’s not in a fit condition to
do his spelling. We’ve got to consider how children’s natures work.’
‘What you mean is, you disapproved of my strapping him. That’s
it, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, if you have to know, I did.’
‘So you let him off his work to show you were taking his part.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘You’re encouraging insubordination, Mr Rogers. I won’t stand
for it.’ His voice was raised. His face was flushed, his eyes spurting
the anger of a man publicly insulted. He was frustrated that Rogers
didn’t answer. ‘Oh, it’s not the only time, Mr Rogers. Oh no.
Don’t think I haven’t been watching you. Oh no, I’ve got a dozen
complaints to make about you. But I kept them back because I’m
not a hard man and I wanted to give you a chance. But the time has
come, Mr Rogers, for a showdown.’
He looked round the room but the children’s eyes avoided him.
He noticed that Donnie Palmer, without being told, had put away
his plasticine horse and was reading.
‘For example, Mr Rogers, I’ve come into this room twice this
morning. And each time the children looked at the door as I came
in. They should have been concentrating on their work.’
Rogers laughed. ‘Isn’t it natural to look at a door to see who’s
coming?’
‘Piffle!’
‘I would have thought that you’d have been disappointed if they
hadn’t looked up at you.’
Melodramatically Heath raised his arm and pointed to the door.
‘Get along to my office,’ he said. Rogers dallied, thinking to refuse.
But the children, he thought, had had enough emotional upheaval
this morning. ‘I’m not one of the children, you know,’ he said.
Heath followed him out of the room forgetting to tell the class,
automatically, to be silent.
When they had gone the children heaved a communal sigh.
Peter Herlihy grinned fiercely. ‘Mr Rogers’s going to get the strap!’
he said. ‘Mr Heath is going to give him a hiding!’
‘Is your hand still sore, Donnie?’ a girl asked. She went over to
look while he showed a small red weal licking into his wrist. ‘Gee!’
she said, and the children gathered round to see. ‘That’s nothing,’
one boy said. ‘You should’ve seen the one my big brother got for
smoking.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t smoke, so there!’
‘Donnie didn’t do anything naughty. Mr Heath’s not fair.’
Peter Herlihy was dancing in front of the class with Rogers’s
ruler in his hand, pretending to be Mr Heath hitting Mr Rogers,
slashing the ruler at his other hand which he pulled away just in
time. ‘I wish I could see them,’ he said. ‘Hey, kids, let’s sneak along
to the office and listen.’
‘No-o,’ several voices said.
Peter slid to the door, opened it slightly, and stood in his crime-film manner, hidden by the door-post and slowly sneaked his eye
round it to look up along the corridor towards the office. His eye
sneaked with a bump into Miss Dane’s cardigan, coming in to see
what the noise was about. He ducked back to his seat sniggering.
‘What on earth is going on in here?’ Miss Dane said. ‘Everyone
back to their places at once. Didn’t Mr Rogers tell you to be silent
while he was out of the room?’
‘No-o.’
‘I’m sure he did. I don’t want anyone to tell me fibs. You know
what happens to you when you tell fibs.’
‘Please Miss Dane, you don’t go to heaven when you die.’
‘Yes, you go to a very nasty place which isn’t very nice for little
boys and girls at all. Where is Mr Rogers?’
‘Please miss, Mr Heath gave Donnie Palmer the strap.’
‘Donnie Palmer! Well I am surprised at you, Donnie. You must
have been a very naughty boy.’
‘Please miss, he was talking.’
‘What’ll Grannie say?’ Donnie asked and sobbed again.
‘Grannie will say you’ve been a very naughty boy, that’s what
Grannie will say. I’m sure your father will be very displeased with
you too’—though she wasn’t at all so sure. ‘I always thought that of
all the boys in this room Donnie Palmer would never get the strap.
You must have been very naughty this morning.’ She brightened.
‘What went wrong, Don? Did you get out of the wrong side of bed
this morning?’
‘No,’ he said. The children laughed.
‘Have you had a tummyache, to make you feel in a bad mood?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I’m sure there’s something radically wrong somewhere.
You’ll just have to learn to be a good boy and do as you’re told.
I’m sure that if I ask you to, you won’t let me down, will you?’
‘No,’ he said shyly.
‘Even if you have let Grannie down—and Mr Heath and Mr
Rogers.’
Peter Herlihy said: ‘Please miss, Mr Heath’s giving Mr Rogers
the strap because he was naughty too.’
‘Peter Herlihy! Don’t you talk such rubbish. Mr Heath and Mr
Rogers are very good friends. We teachers are always friendly to
each other. You’ve no right to talk, Peter Herlihy. I know all about
you. I’m warning you, I’ve been watching you. And if you don’t
watch your step, you’ll be in trouble. You’re two years older than
the other children and you should be setting them an example. You
don’t think much of a boy of eight who’s still in the primers, do
you?’ she said to the class, and they answered, ‘No’.
‘A boy of eight down among the babies,’ she said, and they
laughed. She left them, warning them to get on with their reading,
quietly. Peter Herlihy sat sneering and sulky. He did not talk to
anyone.
When they got to the office, Heath said, ‘Oh, it’s easy to see
you’re just the boy. You think you’re someone, don’t you? In big
with the Palmers. Calling on the doctor talking a lot of rot about
communism. Well you might be able to get away with it at Palmers’
or at the doctor’s, but you can’t get away with it here. I’m in charge
here, not you or anyone else.’
‘I didn’t doubt it.’
‘Well, you’d better not doubt it. Don’t think I haven’t complained, Mr Rogers. I’ve let the board know my mind about you.
And the committee.’
‘Thanks for telling me. You might have spoken to me first.’
Heath was a man who, in argument, fought with cheap verbal
parries and thrusts. He said, ‘I might as well talk to that wall as to
you.’
‘It’s common courtesy to warn me if you’re going to complain
about me.’
‘I’m the headmaster. I don’t consult you on matters of school
policy.’
‘What, if it isn’t too pertinent a question, do you find wrong with
me?’
‘Everything. And it’s an impertinent question. It just shows you
up. You think you know everything, that’s your trouble. All you
young people today wont’ listen to the older generation.’
‘What’s that to do with my teaching?’
‘You’ve had no experience. Two years in a training college, one
year as a probationer. Experience is what I look for, practical
ability….’
‘How can you get experience if you can’t start without it?’
‘You get it from me from the older teachers. But you won’t
listen to me. You forgot everything while you were in the army,
anyway. You’ve got a damn cheek to call yourself a returned
soldier anyway. You were a conchy. Returned soldier!’
‘Unlike you.’
‘I’ve got no time for conchies. I’d shoot them. Utter cowards
and traitors.’
‘I’d rather be a pacifist than dodge any commitment one way or
the other as you did in the war before, gathering up grading-marks
while other men were dying.’
‘I’ll break your bloody neck if you’re not careful.’
‘So far you’ve taken me to task for the people I know, for being
a know-all, for being a pacifist. What has all this got to do with my
teaching?’
‘I’ve already told you. You’re inexperienced. You forget that
men of thirty years’ teaching know a little more about it than you
do.’
‘I’m learning.’
‘You’re incompetent. The insubordination in that room. The
noise. You’ll have to learn to be harder on the children.’
‘I don’t believe in teaching by fear.’
‘You’ll have to learn. There’s enough cheeky brats in this town
without you encouraging them. You’re not up to much if you don’t
want children to respect you. Trying to be popular with them.
Crawling to infants.’
‘You’d rather have me crawling to you, I suppose.’
‘Well, I’m warning you. I’ll be watching you from now on and
I’m going to do my level best to have you shifted. Now get out!’
‘When you ask me civilly, I’ll go.’
Heath took Rogers by the neck and pushed him into the corridor.
Rogers made a great effort to control himself.
A few minutes later Heath came to Rogers’s room and complained that he hadn’t yet marked the roll.
It was the day on which Rogers was on lunch-hour duty. When
the children had gone he realized he should have given Donnie a
note to Mrs Palmer, explaining how he came to be strapped. Miss
Dane had gone, so there was no way of sending a message.
Half-way through the lunch hour a boy from Mrs Hansen’s class
came to tell Rogers that Peter Herlihy was chasing his sister and
twisting her arm.
‘I’ll speak to him,’ Rogers said. ‘If he does it again, fight him.
I’ll see that you’re not punished for it.’
He went into the playground and called Peter.
‘I don’t think much of the boys that have to fight girls smaller
than themselves,’ he said.
‘She’s the same size as me.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have to fight any girls. Why don’t you fight
boys? I think you’re frightened of them.’
‘I am not.’
‘Yes, I think you are, all right.’
‘You’re frightened of Mr Heath. You wanted to fight him this
morning and you didn’t.’
‘Well, if you go fighting girls again, there’ll be trouble.’
He knew that this would provoke Peter to chase the girl again,
and he was not surprised when a few minutes later Dick Cairns
came again to say that Peter was twisting her arm.
‘Well, fight him, Dick. You’re both the same size, aren’t you?’
He called Peter, who was big for his age and a fair match for
Dick. ‘You’re pretty good at hurting a little girl,’ he said. ‘You’re
not so keen on fighting her brother.’
Peter cowered in a corner of the corridor. Rogers continued
cruelly to provoke him till he lunged savagely at Dick. They boxed
and wrestled for half an hour while Rogers supervised. Dick fought
gamely without malice. Peter fought with frustrated fury, but once
warm he was tenacious. Once he took off his belt and would have
lashed at Dick with the buckle, only Rogers stepped in and took it
from him against a flow of insults. Rogers’s hardest job was, like
that of a policeman at a street accident, to keep other children away.
They crowded at a few yards’ distance in the corridor, and though
they shifted every time he shouted at them, they didn’t move far
and they kept coming back. He did not dare to leave the fight. It
was an evenly-matched fight. Both boys were breathless but there
was no sign of either wanting to withdraw when Belle Hansen
pushed her way through the children crowded in the corridor and
asked imperiously, ‘What on earth is going on here?’
To prevent her taking control of the situation, Rogers for a
minute ignored her. ‘Right-oh, boys. Break it up,’ he called. ‘It
was a fair fight. I think it’s a draw. You both won. Now go outside
and get a breather before the bell goes. Peter, here’s your belt.
Now shake hands on it.’ They shook hands, Dick not willingly,
Peter glowering. ‘Don’t carry on fighting outside because the fight’s
over. It’s a draw.’ In fact they were both too breathless to continue.
‘Have you gone crackers, Paul?’ Mrs Hansen asked.
‘No. I’m sorry I didn’t answer first, Belle. I wanted to finish it.’
‘Not before time, either. What was it all about?’
Rogers explained. ‘Don’t say anything to Dickie, Belle,’ he
asked. ‘I put him up to it. It was about time Peter met his match.’
‘There’s no doubt about that.’ She turned and quizzed him
coldly. ‘Aren’t you a match for him? Can’t you manage him yourself without setting other boys on him?’
‘He had to have it from someone his own size.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. She bellowed at the other children in the
corridor to go. ‘Whew! Just as well Truey wasn’t here. There
would have been trouble.’
‘I’m not telling him about it.’
‘Nor I. I hear you had a barney with him this morning. Tell us
about it.’
He began to explain while she paced majestically beside him,
listening critically, balancing between her enmity for Heath and her
uncertain contempt for Rogers’s simplicity.
‘Donnie Palmer,’ she said. ‘I can’t see Gran taking that lying
down. I think,’ she said with pleasure, ‘Truey has bitten off more
than he can chew. Poor old Truey. Everyone’s against him. All the
more the merrier.’
‘He says he’s going to get me shifted.’
‘How can he? You know, when you came he thought he was
going to find an ally in you, against his rebellious staff. I half
expected he would, too.’
‘What, me? Me siding with him? What made you think that?’
She didn’t answer. Suddenly she challenged him. ‘I thought you
were a pacifist?’ she said.
‘Yes, I’m still against war.’
‘Well, Germany attacked Poland. What’s the difference between
making Dickie attack Peter?’
He began to protest that it wasn’t a fair analogy, but she was
striding off. She had scored her point.
It was the day when the school had half an hour of scripture after
lunch. The local parsons would come to the school, and two church-going women, to take classes on Bible stories while the teachers
marked books or gossiped in the staffroom. The few Catholic
children met apart in one room for catechism. Usually a local
woman led them, but once a month the priest came; he had a big
district to cover. He came along the corridor now, in a black suit of
a modern cut. He was young, fair-haired and handsome with a
modestly cheeky boyish grin. Local people who had seen Bing
Crosby as a priest in a film called Going My Way had said he
looked just like Father Flaherty. He was very popular in the district,
because of his easy worldly manner. Once at the school, he grinned
welcome at the Presbyterian parson but the parson turned his back
and stumped away. It was one of Father Flaherty’s favourite
stories: ‘I can tell you my fist very nearly met up with his nose.’
You were liable to meet him at the races or in a pub. On Sunday
afternoons, under an assumed name, he refereed league matches.
You were likely to forget he had anything to do with religion, and
that was the secret of his popularity. Even Rogers was attracted one
Friday when the priest was having lunch at the hotel, and Rogers
asked for fish, and the priest said: ‘It’s easy to see you’re not a
Doolan, preferring fish to meat.’ Then suddenly, almost with a
touch of shame, he contracted out of the talk to mutter his own
grace, then brightly, as if from a blackout, rejoined the talk. Today
he slapped Rogers’s shoulder.
‘Well, old chap!’ he said. ‘I bet your hand trembles when you
sign your pay sheet. I don’t know how you have the cheek to take
it, having half an hour off while us clergy do your work for you.’
‘It’s not my work,’ Rogers said. ‘I’m not a believer.’
‘You’ll be brought to your knees some day,’ the priest said, then
brightly, ‘Why don’t you play football? That’d bring you to your
knees.’ More seriously he said. ‘Football gives you as good a training
in team-work and self-discipline as I know.’
Rogers grinned. The Father said, ‘It’s you that’s got young Herlihy in your class, isn’t it? Now there’s a handful for you.’
‘The convent couldn’t manage him,’ Rogers said.
‘There’s only one way to handle that kid,’ the priest said, ‘and
that’s to scare him. Oh, he’s very wary of me. Last time he played
up in catechism I said to him, “Look here, young fellah, if you carry
on like this, do you know what I’ll do?” I said, “I’ll come up behind
you one day when you’re not looking and I’ll hang-you-up-by-the-
toenails!” He didn’t know whether to believe me or not.’ The
Father laughed. ‘He still doesn’t either. But he takes notice of me.
What can you expect? The father’s a renegade.’
‘That’s hardly the way to teach him Christian charity,’ Rogers
said. ‘Scaring him like that.’
‘Well,’ the priest said with that frank man-to-man look of his.
‘Do you know any other way?’
‘Love,’ Rogers said.
The Father laughed kindly. ‘I don’t think you know what the
word means,’ he said. ‘You’re too innocent for this world. Don’t
look so flattered. Innocence isn’t goodness. Innocent people never
know the harm they do.’
Rogers went looking for Peter, determined to tell him he needn’t
go to catechism, but he couldn’t find him.
When the class was reassembled neither Donnie nor Peter were
there. Rogers asked the children if they knew where Peter was, and
someone said that Mrs Hansen had called him to her room. Rogers
feared the worst.
In a few minutes Peter came in glowering with wet fierce eyes
holding one hand under his shoulder. He came to Rogers’s table and
said, ‘I’m sorry sir.’
‘What for, Peter?’
‘Mrs Hansen said I had to tell you I was sorry. She gave me
three cuts.’ He was trembling with suppressed anger.
Rogers was furious with her. He didn’t know what to say to
Peter, yet he had to say something. He improvised. ‘That’s all
right, Peter. I know you’re not frightened of boys now.’
It sounded better than he thought it would, and Peter took it
well.
For the rest of the afternoon Peter sat sullen and withdrawn,
engaged in some internal upheaval.
Rogers was reading a story to the class half an hour later (and he
noticed Peter listening intently) when the door opened and Heath
came in. Luckily, without prompting, the children stood up.
‘That’s the way,’ Heath said. ‘Mr Rogers, I want you for a minute
please.’ He looked troubled.
Don Palmer was in the corridor with him. “Mr Palmer has a
complaint about you,” Heath said.
‘Hullo, Don.’ Rogers said, pleased and troubled to see him.
‘Hullo Paul.’ Heath did not like the way they established a contact over his head.
‘I don’t know if it’s you, Paul,’ Don said. ‘It’s whoever gave
Donnie the strap. Mum’s in a fit. We took him to the doctor.’
Rogers looked at Heath. ‘You’re not suggesting that I did it, Mr
Heath?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, why didn’t you admit it?’ Don said. ‘We knew it was you.
Donnie said it was you. He said Paul—Mr Rogers never uses the
strap.’
‘Yes and that’s just why I had to do it. If Mr Rogers used it a
little more often this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘I don’t see that I’m to blame.’
‘Oh, yes you are. You kept an undisciplined class, Mr Rogers, and
I had to put it in order.”
‘I’m not interested in that,’ Don said. ‘I want to know who
strapped my son, and why.’
‘I did, Mr Palmer,’ Heath said. ‘But the blame is with your precious Mr Rogers. If he won’t keep his class in order I have to. If I
were you I’d try to have your son put in another class, or have his
teacher shifted.’
‘That’s nothing to do with me, Mr Heath,’ Don said. ‘It wasn’t
necessary to punish my boy like that. Mr Rogers says he’s been good
in class. Isn’t that right?’
‘Certainly. He’s never given me any trouble.’
‘Well, he gave me trouble this morning. And I’m not going to
take it, parents or no parents. Conchies or no conchies. I can’t see
why a returned soldier like you should be so anxious to take the side
of a conchy.’
‘That’s all right about that. I don’t think you’re the one to talk,’
Don said. ‘I’m not interested in that. My son came home with a
weal two inches long and darn near sixteenth of an inch high.’
‘I can’t help that, Mr Palmer. He has to be disciplined.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He was talking when I called for silence. I won’t tolerate disobedience. And it’s a pity a few more parents aren’t the same. The
modern generation, they don’t know how to bring up children.’
‘I’m not here to be insulted, Mr Heath. I’m here to talk about my
son. If he had been obstreperous, I wouldn’t object. But you didn’t
have to strap him for that.’
‘I’m the headmaster of this school, Mr Palmer, and I don’t take
orders or advice from you.’
‘The kid’s not used to being punished like that.’
‘That just goes to prove what I say. He needs punishment.’
‘He’s a good boy without any punishment,’ Rogers said.
‘If you had to make an example of him you’d only have had to
give him a tiny tap and that would have been enough to frighten
him,’ Don said.
‘If you want to know, Don,’ Rogers said. ‘Mr Heath wasn’t
punishing Donnie, he was taking it out on me. He hit Donnie too
hard to get his own back on me.’
‘Well!’ Don flared. ‘You schoolteachers can fight as much as you
like. Leave my boy out of it.’
‘I didn’t hit him,’ Rogers said.
‘You didn’t try to stop Mr Heath.’
‘I’d have got the sack.’
‘You might yet, young man,’ Heath said, pleased with this argument between them. ‘No, Mr Palmer, I’m afraid you’ve got no
cause for complaint. I’m a father myself and I understand a father’s
feelings’—he looked a little superciliously towards Rogers—‘but
you must admit you want your son to grow into an obedient citizen.
Oh, it’s not easy, I know. We have to be cruel to be kind.’
‘No cause for complaint,’ Don said. ‘Ask the doctor about that!
He said that any teacher that hit a boy of six as hard as that wasn’t
fit for his position.’
‘I know all about the doctor,’ Heath said. ‘A communist.’
‘Does that affect his doctoring?’ Rogers asked.
‘Just out to make trouble,’ Heath said.
‘Well, I’m out to make trouble,’ Don said. ‘No man’s going to
hit my boy like that and get away with it. Even if it was you, Paul,
I’d have gone crook.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you, Don. I wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Well, you two can talk about this over your beer out of school
hours. I’ve got work to do, I’m afraid. And so have you, Mr
Rogers. We can’t all lead a life of leisure.’
‘Meaning what?’ Don said.
Heath tried to smile blandly.
‘If you mean I’m loafing, Mr Heath, I’d remind you of my
arm.’
‘Oh, no, no. I wasn’t suggesting anything personal at all, Mr
Palmer.’
‘Well, just you be careful what you say.’
‘You see, Mr Palmer. It’s natural for you. It’s—well—your race.
Your race lived in a land of plenty. They had no need to work. But
nowadays your race needs discipline, and your son as well as anybody.’
‘Mr Heath,’ Rogers said.
‘You keep my race out of it,’ Don flared again. ‘I’m as good as
you, even if I’m only part Maori. And any Maori is worth two of
you.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Heath said, assuming his insecure
superior smile.
‘I came here to talk about my boy.’
‘As far as I’m concerned the matter is closed. We can’t waste the
Board’s time. Come on Mr Rogers.’
Rogers went back to the room. ‘Well, this isn’t the last you’ll
hear of it. By Christ, it isn’t. Mum’s going complain to the Committee.’
‘Mum’s going to complain to the Committee. Well, the Committee will stick by me, Mr Palmer. This is a school, Mr Palmer, not a
Sunday school. We’re here to enforce discipline and get results.’
Twice that afternoon Heath came back. The second time the
class was modelling plasticine. Heath walked about smarming, patting children’s heads, encouraging and expansive.
‘This is the proper time for what you said,’ he told Rogers. ‘Self-expression, creativeness. Everything in its proper place, at its
proper time. What I’m interested in is results. I don’t care how you
get them as long as you get them. If you can get them your way,
well and good.’
‘Do you mean that you don’t object if I carry on the way I’ve been
doing?’
‘But you haven’t been getting results, Mr Rogers. There’s the
rub. No, I’m afraid you’ll have to change your ways if you’re to do
your duty by the parents and the children.’
‘See here,’ he said, taking from a boy a horse he was making out
of plasticine. ‘Now, son, you look at that horse and then think of a
real horse. Now, what’s wrong with your horse? It doesn’t look
like a real horse, does it? You look at it and see where you went
wrong.’
The boy took back his horse, looking cheated. When Heath had
turned he broke it up and began to make a lorry.
‘You see, aim at the highest, Mr Rogers. Never let them be
satisfied; there’s always something they can do better than they
have done.’
‘Always find fault.’
‘Exactly, there’s always something wrong with what they’ve done.
That way you’ll get results. Some day you’ll thank me for this
advice, Mr Rogers. If you follow it, you’ll be a headmaster yourself,
and you’ll be checking young teachers who haven’t had experience
and argue back at you.’
Rogers didn’t comment.
3
Miss Dane was printing sentences on the wall blackboards in
readiness for the morning when Mrs Hansen swept into the room.
‘I caught you,’ she said. ‘Doing overtime. Scabbing on the
union.’
‘I was just thinking of those extra minutes I can have in bed in
the morning,’ Miss Dane said.
‘You want to do all this in school time. I always do. Come up
home for a cuppa?’
‘I really should finish this first, Mrs Hansen.’
‘Belle. Here, give us some chalk. I’ll help you.’ Quickly and
confidently she chalked sentences at the rate of two to Miss Dane’s
one, and Miss Dane, not satisfied with her printing, wondered if she
should come early the next day to print them again.
‘Truey’s been picking on Fred Lawson today too. He hasn’t been
near me. He knows better.’
‘I must say he doesn’t treat me too badly.’
‘You’ll see.’ She put her head through the sliding wall into
Rogers’s room. ‘Come up for a cuppa, Paul?’
‘I don’t think I ought to. The Palmers will be waiting to find out
what happened to Donnie.’
‘I want to hear the rest about your barney with Truey.’
They walked down the road through a fine drizzle. Only the
bottom of the hills showed through mist. Across the Grey Valley
the ranges were lost in another bank of mist. Rogers recounted
more of his argument with Heath while fine drops of mist settled on
his hair and his overcoat, making it look shaggy with white bristles.
Miss Dane didn’t say much.
‘I’m dying to know what’ll happen,’ Mrs Hansen said. ‘Gran
against Truey. It’s not an even match.’
‘I do think she spoils that child,’ Miss Dane said.
Rogers left them at the corner and headed straight home to the
hotel.
Bounce raced up and leaped at Mrs Hansen and almost unbalanced Miss Dane. ‘Here, you’re too full of energy and the
butcher’s best meat,’ she said. ‘You’ve been lying down all day.
Not like us overworked teachers.’
Bounce kept leaping, dragging his wet paws down the front of
her raincoat. ‘Go away,’ she said, ‘or I’ll tell your teacher. What’s
your teacher’s name?’
‘He has private tuition,’ Mrs Hansen said. ‘I’m his governess,
aren’t I, Bounce.’ She put her arms round his neck and nuzzled his
jaw.
She let Miss Dane into the house and ran down to the fowl-house
to pick up the eggs. ‘Three eggs for Belle and Jack!’ she whooped
as she switched on an electric kettle. She had a kitchenette full of
labour-saving devices that she had seen and admired in overseas
women’s magazines. In the dining-room she flung her bag on to
the table, pushing aside what was already there—a bag of oranges,
some Fireside Library books from Greymouth, some sewing and
some frock patterns of tissue paper. She opened tins and filled
plates with bought biscuits and cakes. ‘About time I did some housework,’ she said. ‘No time for that and teaching too.’ When they
were drinking tea Miss Dane said:
‘Sometimes I don’t think it’s right the way we talk of Mr Heath.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, seriously, he is the headmaster. He is trying to do his best.’
‘To do his best for himself. You should have heard Sue Johnson
on him. The way he was always on that girl’s tail just because she
was a probationer and couldn’t fight back.’
‘But probationers shouldn’t want to fight back, should they?’
‘Or Fred Lawson. The hours he put in getting that art work out
of his class, and then for Truey to show it to the inspector and make
out it was his own work. It nearly broke Fred’s heart.’
‘Well, of course I don’t approve of that. But I think we should be
prepared to co-operate. The children know we don’t like him.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I went into Mr Rogers’s room this morning. There was a
terrible noise, and Peter Herlihy had the nerve to say Mr Heath
was giving Mr Rogers the strap.’
‘He’d like to have, too. Course young Herlihy’s a different
matter.’
‘Mr Rogers isn’t severe enough with him.’
‘If I was Paul I’d thrash him. Instead of setting boys on to him,
like at lunch-time today.’ She gave an account of the fight.
‘Really, I can’t understand it. And then this Donnie Palmer case.
I don’t think Mr Heath need have been quite so hard on Donnie,
but if Mr Rogers can’t keep discipline then Mr Heath has to step in,
and we shouldn’t object. He is the headmaster.’
‘I only hope those kids know some manners by the time I get
them. First lesson for Standard I next February: Forget that you
were ever in Mr Rogers’s room. Second lesson: Learn to do as I
tell you.’
‘You see I’m afraid Mrs Palmer is determined to go on with it.
She’s threatening to take it to the Committee. I don’t think we
should let Mr Heath down.’
‘Well, I’m not taking sides. I don’t like Paul’s tripe about freedom
and psychology and all that. But I like Truey a whale of a lot less.’
‘It’s unfortunate about that child. The child isn’t to blame. It’s
not right for a child to grow up in a hotel. And the father doesn’t
give him the discipline he needs.’
‘Don’t you like Don? I think he’s a nice type. A bit of Mum’s
boy, I’ll admit. But Gran’s a good old stick. I like the Palmers,
Maori blood and all.’
‘A child of a broken marriage. What else can you expect? The
father hasn’t any sense of responsibility.’ She became passionate.
‘He’s a proper heathen.’
‘Well, aren’t we all?’ Mrs Hansen said with a shrug. ‘I’m no
Bible-banger. My mother rammed it into me enough to last me a
lifetime.’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t call yourself an atheist?’
‘Me? I go to church now and again, just to pay my respects like.’
‘But young Mr Palmer just doesn’t acknowledge any Creator at
all.’
‘Have another cuppa. You’re getting too deep for my liking.’
‘Time I surfaced, is it?’ She slipped into her familiar facetious
patter. She wanted to confide more in Mrs Hansen but she knew
she wouldn’t sympathize. Coal Flat had in fact disappointed her
greatly in the two months she had been here. She didn’t like the
hotel. It was lonely in her room, sewing or writing a letter, sitting
on the side of her bed—there was only a hard wooden chair. She
had tried spending her evenings in the parlour, sitting in a wide
arm-chair, careful to avoid the one with broken springs, but then she
would hear the men in the bar drinking and swearing. The swearing
hurt her most. ‘Sheer lack of vocabulary,’ she would say to anyone
else who was in the room, but no one seemed to understand her. It
made her think that the Palmers were fundamentally wicked—that
Mrs Palmer could cheerfully continue to talk to men who swore in
her presence, and not take offence, that so nice a girl as Flora could
ignore it. She found herself, when she read, forgetting her book and
listening for oaths, not catching the words between them. Occasionally Mrs Palmer asked her in to sit in their private sitting-room,
which was more comfortable, and pleasant so long as only Flora was
there, but once Mrs Palmer came in she had to listen to those
vigorous monologues about her own virtues, and sometimes Don
would come in unashamedly with a bottle of beer and study horse-
formhorse-form or work out the dividends Dad had to pay out on the bookmaking he did as a sideline.
The whole town disappointed her. It was deficient in the polite
class of well-bred, comfortably furnished people she usually mixed
with when she went to a new school. She usually sought out the
doctor, other teachers, the postmaster, the policeman, meeting
their wives at the Women’s Institute or the Red Cross group. But
here was no institute, there was a Red Cross group, but only
workers’ wives belonged to it. The doctor was a communist, the
postmaster’s and policeman’s wives had never invited her round for
an evening. It hadn’t seemed to occur to them. The mine manager’s
and dredgemaster’s wives were patronizing even. Only Mrs Hansen
had asked her round for a meal—and her husband, a carpenter at
the mine, had the