and said, come on, nothing doing here, and you cast me a regretful glance – see ya, you said, touched my hand, a rush of cold air as the front door opened, and you were gone.
Was it a week later? Or two weeks? I forget, and it doesn’t matter now. I had to see you to discuss my progress at school, or lack of it. It wasn’t my choice. I hadn’t asked you for help. The fact I had stopped working only made me panic occasionally. For the rest of the time I enjoyed feeling slightly mutinous. There was something brave about not working, a kind of passive resistance. Only none of my teachers saw it like that. I presume that was why we had to have the little talk.
You tried to make it as cosy for me as possible. You borrowed the deputy head’s office and took her chair – with its extra cushion giving support for her bad back – and carried it round to the front of the desk, so you could sit close to me, but at an angle. So I knew you cared, but that you meant business.
First there was the small talk about the weather and the noise from the builders who were constructing a new Chemistry lab. I joined in but wished you’d get down to it for your own sake – seeing the uneasiness in your tired, puffy eyes.
“Well, Cathy,” you said. “You know why I wanted to see you.”
I decided to act along with you, feed you the lines you wanted to hear. It was easier that way, and besides, I didn’t want to upset you. It wasn’t your fault.
“Because I’ve got behind with all of my work,” I said.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right. Do you want to run through with me what you’re owing?”
You didn’t mean to, but you made my essays sound like deposits in a bank. Things that I owed. A debt to my teachers.
“Well, I’m late with an Othello essay, and I don’t think my poetry assignment will be ready tomorrow. There’s a couple of pieces of History, and one of Economics, and a Geography test I haven’t revised for.”
“This is not like you, Cathy.”
That was such a weird thing to say. As if you knew the real me I wasn’t being. But I didn’t want to argue.
“No, it’s not like me,” I said.
Vertical blinds shading the window. A smear of polish along the ledge where the cleaner hadn’t done her job properly. The distant sound of drilling. In-trays and out-trays full of files and folders and papers and a blotter spattered with coffee stains. My shoes, regulation black but with high platforms and frayed laces. Your shoes, flat Hush Puppies, distorted by the shape of your foot. Your black skirt just fringing your knees, which were pointed towards me. Your hands clutched tightly in your lap.
“Is there any problem, anything you want to talk about? As far as possible, I’ll keep any confidence. And if I have to pass on what you say, I’ll tell you first.”
Standard school counselling stuff. I remained silent, playing for time. I debated whether to try to make something up. I could say I hadn’t been feeling well, but the trouble with that was having a doctor for a mother. She’d know I was pretending. And even if I was ill, she wouldn’t take me seriously. I could go on about some boy letting me down, or say I wasn’t eating. If it were any other teacher, I probably would have. It can be fun to lie. But because it was you, and despite your pathetic fear of not conforming, I liked you. I had to try to hit at the truth, and see what you would make of it.
“I just can’t seem to work at the moment.”
“Is there a reason?”
“Not really. I just… There’s so much of it.”
“Believe it or not, Cathy,” you said, laughing, “I know how you feel. I feel like that most evenings. But do you know what I do? I break it down. I don’t let myself think, I have three sets of marking as well as lesson preparation and dinner to make and the boys to pick up from swimming and the examiners’ reports to look through – I tell myself I can only do one thing at a time. One thing at a time. So I ask myself, what shall I do first? OK, I say, just the Year Eight stories. So I get those out and mark them. One thing accomplished. So I feel better already. And maybe I don’t read the examiners’ reports. And I’m learning not to beat myself up if I don’t manage to complete everything, and instead to acknowledge what I have achieved.”
Poor old Mrs Dawes, I thought. What a crap life.
“I know work can seem overwhelming at times,” you went on. “But see if you can break it down.”
You were repeating yourself now. Teachers always do. They’re terrified you didn’t quite get what they said, or you might forget it. Never mind about boring you rigid. I wondered what sort of people became teachers. Were they control freaks, or people whose own lives were such a mess that they tried to impose order on everybody else? Or kids who never really grew up and wanted to stay in school for ever? Or sadists? Our Maths teacher in primary school was a sadist. She wanted someone to get the work wrong so she could have the fun of punishing them. Sorry, Mrs Dawes, you weren’t like that. You were one of those women who wanted to mother everybody, to care for us all. It was why I agreed to talk to you. I knew you didn’t have it in for me.
“Cathy – would you like me to help you construct a timetable so you can catch up, and see your teachers so that they know you’re working at it?”
No, I didn’t. For a moment I hated you, loathed you. Felt you had gone over to the enemy. All through my life, people had been telling me what I had to do, giving me orders. Learn your spellings for a test, draw a picture with your story, do these sums, copy out these notes, then later, learn for your exams, and afterwards all that comparing marks and totting up averages and bitching. Then GCSEs and all those nameless, faceless people with power of life and death over you. And the sheer cheek of it, people asking you all these questions and making you jump through hoops so you could be like them.
Then you’re in the sixth form, and they expect everything from you. History, Geography, English, Economics, and maybe, Catherine, you could keep on all four for your A2s. And the school orchestra – important for putting on your UCAS form. And remember to read round your subjects. And spend some time in the careers room so you have an idea what courses and universities appeal to you. Oxford or Cambridge maybe? The mad glint in your parents’ eyes when the teacher mentions those two magic words at parents’ meetings. Of course, there would be extra lessons, extra work, but Catherine can manage it. The Economics project. One whole day out at a History day school so I have to catch up on the poetry notes and I don’t understand Seamus Heaney anyway Or Gerard Manley Hopkins. Somebody translate, please. And the Geography teacher slagging us off. You’re lazy, the lot of you. The mid-year test will sort you out, show you how you’ve been sitting on your backsides.
Oh, and I forgot. It’s important to be a well-rounded sixth former too – you must do more than just work, otherwise you’re boring. Read the papers, watch documentaries, get a job, help at school events, do some voluntary work, and work experience – that’s vital. These days, when it’s so much easier to do well at exams, work experience and your hobbies and interests count as never before. You need to pay more attention to your technique when you’re answering questions in exams to get those few all-important extra marks. It can mean the difference between an A and a B! But make sure you have time off too. Take up yoga. Exercise. Listen to music. Read. Read lots. Here’s
