The Last Day

From an azure sky, summer bloomed forth in all its glory. Spring was over. The daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses which had appeared in early March had long since given way to a colourful variety of summer sumptuousness. The budding trees were now leafy, giving off a fluttering in the summer breeze in sharp contrast to the skeletal barrenness of winter and the stirring promise of spring. The short tarmacked driveway besides which this welcoming garden nestled, Dennis Garton’s handiwork, ended in an old English manor house, long since converted to a different and better purpose. Now it was a boarding school for boys aged between 10 and 16 years. Whatever echoes of the building’s  cobwebbed past had once lingered were now displaced by the energy and vitality of youth.

It was the last day of term and the boys were being bussed to the local train station 7 miles away in the town of Newark, Nottinghamshire. Some were being picked up at the school by Social Services and bussed back to their distant counties of abode.  

As the day slowly drifted along, the teacher who was supervising the pick- ups began to look at his watch with undisguised irritation. One boy was remaining and the teacher was eager to begin his summer holiday. A phone call came through, the message arrived, the Wakefield Social Services were held up, they were going to be late. The teacher blew out his cheeks and stood up. He looked about him and explained the situation to young *Eric.

“Do you fancy going for a walk around the village, Eric?”

“Aye,” Briefly, compactly expressed.

They skirted the front of the school, passed the trees and found their way to the back yard and the gate which led into the church yard. The teacher waited as the lad closed the gate behind them. St.Helen’s Church was convenient to the old Manor House which now was called Broughton House School and housed some 40 boys with troubled backgrounds. There was a fitting peace amongst the gravestones, some leaning and moss covered, their engravings fading with centuries of weathering, the newer ones a stark reminder of the inevitable. As they walked through the path and lifted the latch on the lych gate and out onto the street, the teacher felt his irritation dissipate. He noticed an unusual calm descending upon the boy.

The teacher had been a witness to Eric in the corridor outside the Headmaster’s office after his annual case conference. There was this young boy just entering into his teens talking to his father as if he was to a five year old.

“Now, Dad, this is your train ticket to Wakefield. Give me your wallet. See, I’m putting it in there. The school will drop you at the station in Newark. The train leaves at 2.10 p.m. and you’ll have to cross the bridge to platform two to get it. Do you understand?”

While all the time, the man was standing head bowed and meek, a role reversal of what should have been. The teacher had felt then a mixture of sadness and joy. The former because here was a youngster whose youth was being taken away from him by a responsibility which should not have been his; the latter because here was somebody who had to be mature beyond his years and was showing that he could cope. Lost childhood and early manhood in a few short sentences.

The streets were quiet and deserted, the commuters having left the village for their workplaces in the town of Newark or the city of Lincoln. Almost immediately beyond the church gate was an early Elizabethan house set back from the road with a garden where songbirds twittered and bees buzzed. The boy and the man paused for a few seconds staring out along the path to the front door, drinking in the calm, the tulips, roses, hyacinths, the established hedge, the ancient  rooted trees, the timelessness of the 17^th Century stonework. They reluctantly pulled themselves away and moved slowly along the street past the village hall and further on to where the houses ended and a small avenue of large trees began. They walked its length, eventually  emerging from the shady bower back into the sun. Before them was the village cricket ground, a smooth patch of green overseen by a pavilion and a scoreboard, both of which had seen better days.  They turned into the High Street and strolled back towards the school. They passed  “The Generous Briton” public house, the butchers, the Post Office. As they moved closer to the school, they overheard the distinctive mechanical noises from Peter Maxted’s garage. Finally they were back at the familiar driveway.

I cannot remember if Eric and I talked much. All I remember is Eric’s comment at the end.

“Ah liked that, Mr. Davidson”, in his Yorkshire accent.

I must have nodded and smiled. Eric bit his lip, raised his head to the heavens, searching for the appropriate words.

“T’were relaxing to’t brain.”

Eric’s words have remained inside me for these thirty years, they have taught me repeatedly where to find a peaceful escape from a troubled world.

“The fatal metaphor of progress which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth which means leaving things inside us.”   G.K. Chesterton

I do love the idea that progress is not always moving forwards but sometimes looking backwards and, better yet, looking within.

 Teaching is such an amorphous profession in many ways. It cannot be truly measured solely on the math test. It seems to me that it is more a compendium of moments adding up to an inchoate conclusion when the child leaves school. I do remember that moment in my teaching career but I hope that it meant something more to Eric. I hope that it was something to reach for when life became too much with him late and soon.  I wonder where Eric is now.

                              *Name changed for reasons of privacy.