When I first graduated as a fully qualified teacher, I was thrilled to obtain employment in a small village school within travelling distance from my home. A traditional Church of England establishment of the late Victorian Era, the school consisted of two rooms each supplied with its own entrance via a small cloakroom where reposed the only water tap high above a white enamelled sink!
The rooms could be joined when required by folding back a wood and glass screen. This allowed one teacher to supervise or teach the whole school when necessary! Supply teachers were rare in those days!
The large room was heated by a black iron stove surrounded by a high mesh fireguard. It sat at the centre of the interior wall with the teachers’ desk alongside. This room accommodated the 8 -11 year olds and was the domain of the Headmistress, Mrs. X.
A much smaller room with its own large black coal burning iron stove and guard, accommodated my Infants class. Part of our duties included using the supplied hod of coal to tend the stove! All the tall gothic windows were set high above our heads such that our only view of the surrounding world was sky and treetops! The largest supply of fresh air came from the gap beneath the old oak door where the lintel had been worn down by generations of feet!
The School House, the residence of the Headmistress and her retired husband, filled the other half of the building. A line of privies at the far side of the playground hid a large garden, the sanctuary of Mrs. X’s silent mouse of a husband, with whom, in almost two years, I never achieved more than a nodding acquaintance!
The formidable Mrs. X ruled our little world and her home with a rod of iron! A Scottish lady, she was a firm believer in ghosts and the ability of ‘Spey wives’ to communicate with those who had ‘passed over’. These beliefs were forcibly vented during a family argument about the disposition of her deceased mother’s silver teapot!
Such insurrection in the family ranks demanded a hectic half term trip to Scotland to visit the Speywife. This redoubtable lady assured Mrs. X that ‘Mother’ agreed that the teapot was hers alone and our triumphant Boss returned victorious and even more addicted to her belief in the forces of darkness!
Since we were a Church of England school, our Vicar came in every Wednesday to teach Religious Instruction (RI) to the older children. Alas as a result of some long past slight or insult, the poor man was cordially hated and actively maligned and obstructed by our ever more righteously indignant headmistress. Yet he persisted and my Wednesday lunch hours were filled with the increasingly outraged vitriol of a severely annoyed lady.
Eventually, one summer Wednesday, obeying the usual summons to lend an ear, I was startled and astonished to perceive an enormous beaming smile!
“I’ve Fixed him!’ my redoubtable headmistress declared! “He won’t know what hit him and best of all he will never know who caused his downfall!”
Grabbing my arm, the lady hustled me toward one of the tall wooden storage cupboards and flung wide the doors. There in isolated splendour on a higher shelf lay a 20 cm long plasticine model of our unfortunate vicar, complete with paper dog-collar and wire rimmed glasses on the end of his nose!
“Yes, I’ve fixed him” she carolled as, filled with fanatical righteous enthusiasm, she avidly drove pins into that pathetic figure composed of well worn muddy multicoloured plasticine no doubt procured from the limited supplies in my classroom!
A shout from the playground provided an excuse for me to run from that macabre scene to the sanity of children busily playing hop-scotch or joining in the double-double skipping game in progress throughout most playtimes!
Thankfully I am not, nor ever have been superstitious, however the cold-blooded evil thoughts behind her actions, were chilling! Obviously, it was time to search for a new position, preferably in an environment more attuned to the late 1950’s!
As soon as I reached home that night I swung into action, scanning the Newspaper listings of possible openings within travelling distance and calling possible contacts for leads. As a result, I quickly obtained a new position for the following January in a newly built school within travelling distance.
Alas, the next allowed date for teachers to resign was 2 months before the end of the Autumn term that is October 31st. Resigning on Halloween did seem rather fitting under the circumstances! Thankfully, no mutual connections existed to break my secret and I was able to formally hand in my resignation on the appointed date!
To say my esteemed boss was outraged is putting it mildly and I was subjected to much verbal vitriol for those last two months. Apparently, I was just another one of a long line of flighty young teachers fresh out of college who did not know how to dedicate themselves to one place long enough to really learn something! Apparently, none of my predecessors had lasted more than eighteen months either and we were all deemed to be a flighty bunch who would never amount to anything!
Certainly, my own plasticene model lay beside the vicar!
Alas for Mrs. X, the vicar continued to be quite hale and hearty for an elderly gentleman and I continued to enjoy my students during the day and count the days to the end of the Christmas term at night! But I survived and added the lady to my stock of characters who proved so well the old sayings, “It takes all sorts” and “There’s nowt so queer as folks!”