“Come in and I’ll show you to the staff room,” he said. “We have our own stove and kettle, and sometimes the ladies among us are kind enough to bring in homemade biscuits or rock cakes, though with the war on I’m not sure we shall be as comfortably situated this term.” He had about as much guile as a puppy in his importuning of baked goods, and Beatrice could not be angry at him.
“I am sorry to report that I lack any baking skills at all, Mr. Dimbly,” she said. “However shall I hold up my head in the staff room?”
“Not to worry,” he said. “Not as if it’s required—and that Miss Devon makes a rock cake that’s a bit of a rock if you ask me.” He opened the heavy oak and leaded-glass front door for her, and as she passed he winked at her. “If the cupboard is bare, I’m always happy to boil an egg over a Bunsen burner, Miss Nash,” he said. “So if you get peckish, come and find me in the science room.”
“I’m sure I can wait for my dinner, Mr. Dimbly,” she said, hoping her tone was severe enough to quell any further desire on his part for flirtation.
“An army marches on its stomach, Miss Nash,” he said. “You’ll soon see.”
—
The noise of the classroom filling with boys was not unlike the roar of a crowded theater, only at a higher pitch. How swiftly the freshly whitewashed room, with its scrubbed oak desks and clean blackboard, filled with the stench of damp wool, leather boots, and the odor of feet and armpits, steaming from the exertions of the playing fields and streets. Beatrice stood with her knuckles white from gripping the edge of her desk and tried not to recoil from the assault. After a summer of tutoring Agatha Kent’s three scholarship boys, she had not expected some quiet room of pale scholars, towheaded youths bent diligently to the tutelage of Virgil, but she felt ill-prepared to meet the large group of sweating, pimply faces before her. Some were as scrawny and young as Snout, who slumped into a desk in the rear and quietly shot several boys in the neck with balls of chewed paper spit from a straw. Others seemed almost men, sporting strange tufted outcroppings of facial hair and shouting in husky voices. She had not even noticed that the girl from the front courtyard and another girl had also slipped into the room and taken desks together in the furthest back corner.
Beatrice had already cleared her throat several times and rapped her ruler against the desk for quiet, but chaos reigned until the door opened once more and a loud voice, the Headmaster’s voice, shouted for quiet.
“All right, gentlemen—and ladies—anyone still talking will feel the sting of my cane and receive an hour of detention. Who’s still working his mouth?” There was a collective stiffening, arms by sides, chins up, and immediate silence in the room. Beatrice, ears ringing from the chaos, could only nod her head in gratitude.
“Sit down!” said the Headmaster. There was a general slump into chairs, with some scraping of hobnails on the oak floors and a lowering of heads. The Headmaster, growling at the rows of pupils as if his eyes might bore right through any remaining recalcitrant skull, strode to the front of the room and stood between Beatrice and her pupils. “All right then,” he said. “Miss Nash is your new Latin mistress, and I expect you will show her respect. If I hear any more nonsense from Miss Nash’s room, I shall be in to administer consequences. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Headmaster, sir” came the chorused reply.
“Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes,” he declaimed, hand on heart. “Never forget your duty to those giants on whose shoulders you ride, whose words are passed down the millennia even to your unwashed and undeserving heads.”
“Yes, Headmaster, sir,” said the class in dull unison.
“Right you are then, Miss Nash,” he said in a normal, bright tone. “Welcome to Upper Form Latin. Keep their noses to the grindstone and don’t be afraid to switch a few knuckles as you go. Oderint dum metuant, as they say.” And he swept away again, shutting the door behind him, leaving only mute cooperation in the ranks. Beatrice did not want her students to hate her, but she was grateful for the brief interlude of fear, one that even now was waning from their faces as they began to peek at her and shuffle in their seats.
“Jack, please mark the attendance,” she said in a stern voice, happy to pick on a face she knew. “Then we shall begin with a brief review of all that you learned last year.”
—
It sometimes seemed as if the first two weeks were a thousand days long. Beatrice could not remember the first day, nor did the Saturday half day or Sunday seem to provide any real rest. She lived in a half-light of exhaustion from the din of unruly feet kicking desk legs, the smell of boys infusing the very whitewash of the walls, and the parade of blank faces that met her whenever she turned from the blackboard with a question for a class. She did her best not to single out her tutees more than necessary, but from their stony expressions, she knew she had caused them unwanted attention. Her most egregious mistake was to call on Snout to recite what was, as she informed the whole class, his favorite passage from Virgil, Aeneas rescuing his father from the flames of Troy. Snout had given her a look of utter betrayal and resorted to spilling his inkpot over the entire book to distract from his humiliation. Coming to her senses, Beatrice ordered him to the Headmaster’s office, and he went, winking at the laughter and cheers of his classmates.
In the evenings, she ate her supper in a profound silence, trying not to fall asleep in her plate, and apologized nightly to poor Celeste, who would reply in a concerned whisper. Each day Beatrice hoped to wake refreshed and hardened to her new position, but she felt she was slowly sinking under the onslaught of children, who were silent only when asked to share in the delights of Latin.
“You look terrible,” said Mr. Dimbly on the second Saturday morning, handing her a cup of strong tea as she struggled into the staff’s small room during the midmorning break.
“Just what a lady wants to hear, thank you,” she snapped, gulping the tea in the hope a burning throat would force her to wake up.
“I have something for you,” he said, and produced from the pocket of his voluminous gown a slightly warm brown egg. “Hard-boiled this morning.”
“It’s awfully kind of you,” she began, waving it away.
“You need to keep up your strength,” said Miss Clauvert, who was seated by the stove with her friend Miss Devon. Both had set aside their knitting and were nibbling on similar boiled eggs with some gusto. “My first month, I fainted on a regular basis until Mr. Dimbly here gave me his advice.” She simpered at Mr. Dimbly, who colored.
“Plenty of eggs, apples, strong tea, and a spoonful of cod liver oil twice a week,” he said gruffly. “Keeps up the strength and wards off all the pestilence and disease carried by a roomful of unwashed urchins.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dimbly,” said Beatrice. “Upon Miss Clauvert’s recommendation I will take you up on your kindness.” She accepted the warm egg, cracked the shell on a chair back, and peeled the egg into the open top of the staff room’s small black stove.
“I always tell him, he is a kind man and a gentleman, our Mr. Dimbly,” said Miss Clauvert, and she matched him blush for blush so that Miss Devon forgot her age and giggled at them.
“I swear by strong camphor and a small sliver of chalk once a week,” said Mr. Dobbins, the mathematics teacher, who wore a gown so old it had become a nasty gray color. Beatrice imagined him standing at his blackboard taking his time with a complex formula and absently chewing on his chalk for health purposes. “I can’t eat eggs. They give me flatulence,” he added.
“Mr. Dobbins, really!” said Miss Devon.
“Sorry,” he replied, shrinking into his armchair. He put up his newspaper as a screen, and Beatrice heard him mutter, “Used to be able to speak freely in the staff room. Ought to have their own room if they don’t like it.”
“When will I stop feeling utterly tired?” asked Beatrice. “I have made expeditions, I have hiked mountains…”
“These pupils, they are very tiresome or tiring—how do you say it, Miss Devon?” said Miss Clauvert.