Idle Tales

Dress Up Corner

She lolled, legs bowed, heaving a wail so sharp I turned cold. Her left hand pushed down against the hem of a pinafore I’d worn last week, in the fiction of a chambermaid. I’d wanted to be the Lady of course, and I was actually the one to think of the game, but coil haired Cathy-Mae, with her hospital-white cheeks and uncomfortably symmetrical hair bows made such rough assertion of her rightfulness to nobility (being that her school shoes were patent and mine matte), that I unargumentatively succumbed to the apron and doily. I hadn’t minded it really. Once in the guise of cheap nylon frills, that I’d almost certainty seen on the sale rack at the multipurpose store whilst I drudged behind my mum’s pursuit of a new can opener to ‘tide us over’ until we could afford the branded automatic piece from Lakeland, I felt bound to whatever sort of woman this attire hanged from 200 or so years before. Glass eyed and surveying my authentic pretending’s of slicing wooden fruit into baskets ‘for the fruit pie at suppa ma’am’, Cathy did indeed suit the monotonous ice-sculpture perch of a monarch despite the fact that her throne was formed not of gold, but some art cupboard cotton jaundice melted over a chair, three classrooms too small for her. As a younger child I’d been exposed to enough period drama media through the romantic influences of my mum to understand that this crevical cross-section of palace that placed the understairs kitchen akin to the throne room highly improbable. Also, Ladies didn’t have thrones. I considered many times informing the evidently unaware Miss Matthews of this several times, but after our mid-term project on ‘Classes’ entreated the area as part of our learning and sought to explain its spacial faults with the justification of ‘aligning the lower and upper classes in their unified humanity’, I felt it such a complaint wouldn’t make me particularly popular. 

As her palm groped the aprons roughed stitching, I noticed the inky blemish committed on Tuesday by Dorrit Kneedam. Claggy palmed and fidgety, there was something of a sewer creature about Dorrit’s manner of drippiness. Her autumn jumper distained by the rest of us for its seemingly snotty quality became the threat of many a playground bet. Having exploded her biro in the spittle-smacked gums of her flaking mouth during morning Numeracy, the paw-printed echoes of navy ink appeared lingering in a fading trace across the classroom’s materials throughout that day like a moulding bread trail. The mark itself wasn’t even a handprint, more like half of one. Sodden strategically into the fabric like a cheap murder mystery clue and likely accompanied by some suspicious damp that seemed to haunt its blue palmed imprinter with all of her many touches. The cooties of Dorrit Kneedam was all I could think about now. How Miss Marson, or Jenny, as they now seemed to frantically chant, seized them so tightly by fist, almost coveting their germs into relief. How they were now woven with her blood, so much blood, that Dorrit’s elusive filth became entirely ridiculous. 

Tray bake cake on its best behaviour. Sugar-water icing, twice as thick to sweeten the ears of otherwise disgruntled parents. So far, I’d earned my luck of the biggest slice- ‘a delight to teach’ on all fronts. Burning through the curriculum like a match against paper, I sensed I shared my mother’s pomp as our short briefs of surmised praise were matched either side with seemingly winded lectures of ‘concentration’ and ‘determination’ posed to children I’d known either through experience or chatter, to be trouble. We sat in line for Science, sunny head rubbed cold by my mother’s refusal to wear gloves even in the most purple-fingered peak of winter. I gummed my cake, dotting my day sweated uniform with its extra sprinkles. The school hall after dark: a spectacle of rare occasion. The distant view of classrooms become mirage. Crete paper wall projects from younger years, murals and maps in unkempt lines- in the scrutiny of the warm lights overhead, all familiar linings fester in hyper vibrance, a showcase and a safe space. The punctuation of our evening was my strongest love- History. Bitter however, In our exchange of teacher three months earlier. 

Miss Marson, though it feels odd to still call her that, was one of those gloriously encouraging teachers who sit on their desk rather than behind them. Swotting her long skirts in the stuffy classroom breeze, she reminded me of a photo of my grandma that my mother had showed me a year or so ago: button-up savvy and knowledgeable, but always somehow unintimidating. After seeing that, I’d decided I loved her better than any of my schoolmates. That I knew her better. That her punctuating ‘alright chick’, she used after every uncertain response to a subject topic was a nickname only for me. I always wondered before, whether she had any children. Hating the daydreams of her nurturing a dungaree bound toddler instead of me, it was a topic I tried to blank but always returned to. You can imagine my frustration then, upon announcing her pregnancy after a bottle capped, beady eyed 7-year-old pointed out her growing belly, she decided to cap her number of taught classes to two. Fixed barely but still, to the lower clump of academic school years, it was inevitable that our lagging Year 7 class was to be cut. Sprouted around the school grounds on break and lunch were the only times I saw her then- tepid coffee in hand, soaked in adult chatter. She wasn’t that big by parents evening though. When mum had Bonnie, she still had weeks to go at the size Miss Marson was. Bulbus but blooming, she could’ve just said she’s eaten too many slices of school tray cake. I gauped at her across the room, mouthing the ears off some spot speckled boy’s parents as her hands wafted in front of her. Mrs Doyle was fine. But her breath screamed as though she’d used her coffee as mouthwash. And she was textbook. Nothing wrong with her teaching, I learned the stuff alright, but what I did learn felt raw and dry, and the moist interest I once took in 1940’s Germany had become somewhat of a floor forgotten prune. 

It was strange how it happened. Quick. I wasn’t even watching really at the time. Post Doyle monotone and in thirst of sugary sustenance, mum and I warbled to the refreshments. The chatter of the hall had permeated in a dull shroud all evening, hearing both everything and nothing, the mix of criticism and praise become one matted academic mess. In the necking of my plastic cupped squash, I missed her subtle departure from her desk. Lost now in the sweat of teacher talk, I wondered whether she went to prep for the closing debrief to farewell the parents. But she still had waiting students? Eventually I decided I didn’t care too much and questioned my mum on the likelihood of a ‘peasy’ dinner. (Peasy being, the ease and pease of some roadside takeaway made domestic on the wedding gifted cream crockery). She’d said no, but I still had half an hour to work on her. Ten minutes or so churned by, Miss Marson’s final dregs of pupils grew impatient and inquisitive. One mother I heard moaning about getting back for the laundry. Another took it upon herself to mention Miss Marson’s disappearance to some wallflowered teaching assistant- who then mentioned it to the head of department- who left to check what I assume would’ve been the toilets. After a moment or so, I felt the itch of uneasiness. Something must be wrong. Maybe pregnant women take really long pee’s? Peeling the hall door open like a sticky labelled book, I didn’t like his face when he beckoned the closest staff member. Anaemic cheeks and alerted eyes seemed to be spreading- brewed hot and strong on each teacher’s face, once told of whatever situation was occurring. The parents I don’t think had caught on yet, for the majority. My mother at least, still lingered fixatedly on the same school trip flyer handed to her by my French teacher, that blurted in hot pink text of the educational benefits of five days in Paris. ‘Just going loo’. I threw out into the ether, already dotting my feet away. 

Well she wasn’t in the toilet. At least not the hall corridor ones- all limescale and body mist twang. I expected her to be guarded, should there actually be anything wrong. Blocked off and told I was out of bounds for the evening, I could hardly just go about in search of her. Making light foot work, the corridor walls became vacuum cloaking. Snagging my coat toggles on various badly drawn, but politely displayed walled artworks, I made little progress of exploration in the passages leading out to the Maths department. By now my eager imaginings took a dying stab and I considered a return to the hall, and if it weren’t for the spattered red on the tiles against litter bin, I would’ve gone. For a moment I looked at it. Red yes. But I’m not the only jam sandwich lover in existence- and rain did make an entrance during lunch time which offered the alternative of a packed lunch set up indoors. Then again it wasn’t the sort of hue to go between bread. Lacking that radioactive pump of sugar and clots of strawberry shards, it did now look, on closer eyeballing a little too thin to be shelved next to the marmalade. Ascending its lead into computer rooms I found another- larger. And warped in scuffed shoeprint. I didn’t like this now. And the muffled groan from above I liked even less. I wondered whether the hall, chocka and stifled would’ve been made aware. Whether the evening would’ve broken up early in the alert of this unprecedented event. If so, I would need to move, as no doubt, despite her infatuation with the opportunity of ascending the Eiffel, my mother would’ve known by now, that I can’t have needed so heavy a toilet break after profusely making me go before we left home. 

Mounting the stairs with spidery quiet, the cries bloated in both volume and pain. Rhythmic breaths, hot and with purpose, sowed themselves in-between, and the knots of external voices, ones I recognised, undercut the jargon in a synthetic seeming comfort. To turn the corner was to ignite an ever-fragrant image of empathy. I did it anyway. Splayed against the cloth, eyes clamped shut but fluttering, ‘Jenny’ was awash with her own baby. One eye cracked peeping in the open, behind the banistered wall, I didn’t even know what to think of the image. Belly-born moans of strain or sadness, both I imagine, and blood, watery and smeared on limb as well as cloth. I knew this sort of thing happened sometimes. The rejecting infant, unborn and unsettled, expels itself in a cherry wash. But where such stories, I’d been told were not uncommon, I’d not expected then, such a grievous outburst of anguish in its wake. Apparently an ambulance was on its way, but the outside rang only of spritzed owl song and lamp wir. Regardless, the statement appeared to comfort her a little, and she gentled her groans to a hollow whimper, as she relinquished one hand from the jumbled costume to take Mrs Norditch’s offering hand. Once when I was younger, I remember sharing my sandwich crusts with a pigeon that circled the bench we were seated on. After its pecks of the second wholegrain corner, I think I decided to name it. Herbert or Charlie or something like that, and I tracked its peggy walk across the green with idle gaze. It was by the road when we’d risen to leave and I’d farewelled it with my eyes until stamp of my mother’s arm on my back gave me instruction to come along. A car had approached and passed us in those following few moments, and amongst the pepper of mum’s ramblings cut a pop I can still chime to this day. Without looking behind to check, I’d felt then, the smallest and first sting of loss. This is of course not to say that Miss Marson looks like a pigeon, or that I grieved specifically for a baby I never liked. But in the greyscale of winter three months on, and after she’d returned from what other teachers declared was simply ‘a bit of rest’, there was a fresh suffocation in her button up blouses, and a cool modesty in those long, billowing skirts that may have just been the cold, but nevertheless, hushed a diluted grief every time I dared to flush my eyes upon her.  And now, when I pass the town centre, viscous with flapped wings and rolled coos, I still remember that nauseating pop, but keep it company with the shrill of those cries and the red right hand.