‘Did you make the coffee, Jane?’ I said.
She scrutinised me. ‘Yes, I’m on kitchen duty today. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Except that this is the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted.’
She grinned.
‘You’ve been spoilt then,’ she said. ‘But I can put a fresh pot on if you like.’
‘Not at all. I was only joking! It’s good enough for me.’
She went to her desk, and I got up and stood by the window. A lamp post was encircled by light, thick with tiny white snowflakes whirring around like a swarm of insects. Some children were fighting in the snow below, four of them on top of one another in a drift, and my hand twitched when I saw them, so strong was my impulse to knock the top ones off, for I couldn’t imagine anything more claustrophobic than lying underneath them, face down into the snow.
I stepped to the side and scanned the playground.
Where was the teacher?
Oh when would I get it into my head? This was my playground duty!
I hurried towards the line of hooks in the vestibule.
‘Three minutes left of the break,’ Sture said. ‘No point going out now. You can catch up after school.’
He smirked at his own joke. I looked at him without smiling, pulled my hat down over my head, grabbed my gloves. Even though he was right that there was no point going out now, I had an additional reason: the impression of regret and energy I would leave behind me as I jogged out and came into the view of those standing behind the window. The last thing I wanted to give was an impression of slackness. The last thing I wanted was for people to think I was a shirker.
Out of the wet-weather shelter came a small plump figure. I dashed over to the boys who had been wrestling in the snow and were now brushing it off their jeans. The denim material was almost black from where it had melted.
‘Karl Ove!’ he said from behind me, and tugged at my jacket.
He must have run after me.
I turned. ‘What’s up, Jo?’ I said.
He smiled.
‘Can I throw a snowball at you?’
Last week I had given them permission to throw snowballs at me. It had been a big mistake because they thought it was such great fun, especially when they hit my thighs with a couple of stingers, that they refused to stop when I told them. They had reached a kind of amnesty, what had not been allowed was suddenly allowed, and they had a sense of how difficult it would be to punish them if it wasn’t allowed any longer.
‘No, not today,’ I said. ‘Besides, the bell’s about to ring.’
The four boys scowled up at me from under dark woollen hats pulled down over their faces.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Reidar said. ‘Why wouldn’t we be all right?’
‘Less of that cheek now,’ I said. ‘You should show respect for adults.’
‘You’re not an adult,’ he said. ‘You haven’t even got a driving licence!’
‘No, that’s true,’ I said. ‘But at least I know my times tables. That’s more than you know. And I’m big enough to paddle your bottom three times a day if I have to.’
‘My dad would beat you up if you did,’ he said.
‘Karl Ove, come on,’ Jo said, pulling at my jacket again.
‘I’ve got a dad too, you know,’ I said. ‘He’s much stronger and taller than me. On top of that, he’s got a driving licence.’
I looked down at Jo. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘There’s something I want to show you. It’s something I’ve made.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a secret. No one else must know.’
I looked across. The girls in the seventh class were standing by the wall of the wet-weather shelter. Behind, on the fringes of the football pitch, a group of children were chasing after each other in the dark.
‘The bell’s about to ring, you know,’ I told him.
He took my hand. Didn’t he understand how this looked to his classmates?
‘It’ll be quick,’ he said.
He’d hardly uttered the words before the bell rang.
‘Next break then,’ he said. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Off you go now.’
The children on the football pitch had either not heard the bell or they were ignoring it. I walked over to the pitch. Cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted that the bell had rung. They stopped and looked at me. The snow covering the pitch drew it into the surrounding terrain, it was a flat surface in the middle of a slope which, further up, became a mountain, and in all this whiteness, which the sky’s all-pervasive darkness muted to a blue, the pupils resembled tiny animals, rodents of some kind perhaps, it seemed to me, romping around outside the entrances to their ingenious networks of galleries and tunnels in the snow.
I waved to them. They set off at a lope towards me.
‘Didn’t you hear the bell?’ I said.
They shook their heads.
‘Didn’t you think it was time for the bell to ring?’
They shook their heads again.
‘Hurry up now,’ I said. ‘You’re very late.’
They ran past me. As I rounded the corner of the wet-weather shelter the door slammed after the last straggler. I kicked the snow off my shoes against the wall and followed. Opened the door to the staffroom, hung my coat and hat on the hook and went for my books for the lesson. Behind me the toilet door opened. I turned. It was Nils Erik.
‘Have you been in there all this time?’ I said.
‘What kind of question is that?’ he said.
‘I was just surprised,’ I said, scanning the book spines. ‘You were in there a long time. I wasn’t making any insinuations.’
I looked at him and smiled. Picked out a natural science booklet.
‘That’s good to hear,’ he said. ‘Insinuations are such crap. No, it was Torill. She’s so sexy it’s unbelievable. And when she bent forward. . I just had to go in and relieve the emergency that had arisen.’
‘Emergency?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘You know. Man sees woman. Man is attracted. Man runs to the loo and tosses himself off.’
‘Oh, that emergency,’ I said, smiled and went to the class.
In the next break Jo ran over to me the second I stepped into the playground.
‘Come with me now!’ he said, taking my hand and dragging me off.
‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘What are you going to show me?’
‘Something I’ve made with Endre,’ he said.
‘Where’s Endre?’
‘I think he’s over there.’
Endre was in the third class, Jo was in the fourth. When they were together they usually kept away from the others.
‘There,’ he said, pointing to a large snowdrift behind the building, out of sight of the rest of the school. ‘We’ve made a snow cave. It’s really big. Do you want to have a look inside?’
Endre saw us coming, crawled in the entrance and disappeared from sight.
‘That’s fantastic,’ I said, and stopped. ‘I think it’s probably too small for me. But you go in.’
He smiled up at me. Then he lay down on his stomach and wriggled in. I took a few steps back and looked across at the other children. Two fourth-year boys came round the corner and headed towards us. Jo stuck his head out of the cave.
‘There’s room for you too, Karl Ove. It’s really big.’
‘I have to keep an eye on everyone, you know,’ I said.
He spotted the two boys.
‘This is our snow cave,’ he said, looking at me. ‘We made it.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I said.
‘Have you made a cave?’ Reidar shouted.
‘It’s ours,’ Jo said. ‘You can’t come in.’
They stopped by the entrance.