‘Go on,’ prompted Cori, sensing more.
‘And there was always the impression of something else in the background, maybe an impression formed from nothing as I say; but I thought she must have had a bad experience in the past to be so against romance now.’
‘So she didn’t have a romantic life?’
‘Not while I knew her, no; and she lived on site, so there wasn’t much that the staff wouldn’t have got to know.’
‘She lived in the Alderman’s Cottages, where there’d be single men?’
‘Well, of course the school was full of men, single and married! Stella was not an unattractive woman, Sergeant, and she received her share of attention, for all her aloofness. Some of the male staff just wanted their wicked way, of course; but not all of them: some were decent, honest, in want of a wife. “Why not?” I’d say. “You’ve got no ties. Why not find someone nice to settle down with?” but she turned them all down.’
‘Anyone in particular?’
‘No, there was never anything more serious than the usual workplace intrigue. Of course some of them would moon over her for years. You see, academics are not always practical men, they can be carried away — in love with love, as someone put it — and a woman like Stella was meat and drink to their fantasies. She could have a trickery about her, that one, though claimed not even to notice. Still, it’s a shame, she could have made a match with one or other of them, I’m sure.’
Listening to the warm, open Miss Oven talking of the closed, rebuffing Ms Dunbar, Grey couldn’t visualise two less-alike people to become friends.
Continued Cori, ‘And when she left the school?’
‘Ah.’
Something in the lady’s tone confirmed to Grey that this was where the bad stuff would start, remarks on her astringency becoming a definite feature of any conversation on the topic of Ms Dunbar. He was gaining the impression that Stella couldn’t have served a glass of wine without a claim by someone that it had been laced with strychnine.
‘Well, they do say endings should be sudden,’ continued Miss Oven, ‘and an ending is always a severance, however you dress it up.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Relations broke down with the Head, and Stella was asked to leave.’
‘But you said she was successful, got students to good colleges.’
‘Oh yes, she did. There’s no denying that.’
‘Then what was it down to?’
She lady considered, ‘Educational differences.’
‘In what way?’
‘A new Head had been appointed the year before. He was very popular, and a proponent of child-centred learning, which was an idea that had been around for a while by then, and which was meant to put the student first; whereas Stella held with fact and method being central, and the children somewhat incidental in the whole scheme.’
‘Could you break it down for us non-teachers?’
‘There were certain age-old ideas that the new Head dropped, and not before time: physical aspects of the classroom, such as the desks being lined up in rows facing a blackboard, and absolute silence being demanded as they worked; silence except for when the students had facts drilled into their heads by chanting them from the board by rote.
‘Meanwhile, new ideas emerged: such as contextual learning.’
‘If you could explain.’
‘Where a child would be encouraged to understand what it was like to be, say, a sailor in the Napoleonic Wars, rather than just having a list of dates of battles in their heads.’
‘The old ways were looked down upon?’
‘Yes, and Stella didn’t agree.’
Grey noticed Miss Oven was hardening as she spoke of those times, interrupting the women at last to ask,
‘I would have thought Tudor Oak would have been the last place to have fallen to trendy methods?’
‘ Trendy is not the word I’d use to describe them; though yes it was pretty much the last place. The old Head had been a stickler: a good man, but years behind the times; and as those trained in the new ideas rose up through the ranks, so even as great a bastion as the Tudor Oak Independent School would one day fall to common sense.’
‘So what prompted Stella’s crisis?’
‘There was a meeting between her and the new Head. She told me about it afterwards: she said he started right off by saying that he didn’t consider that she was “sufficiently engaging the children’s emotions” as she taught them, and that she “didn’t even know if they were happy in the classroom!”
‘Stella replied along the lines that she hadn’t “the first idea of whether they were happy,” but that if it was within her gift to make them so then it was “through giving them the bedrock of knowledge that would advantage them their whole lives through!”
Miss Oven chuckled, ‘I’ll give her that, she could stand her ground even when she was losing the fight.’
‘You consider that a losing argument?’
‘Inspector, you can’t ignore a child’s emotional needs and then hope and pray they turn out fine.’
‘And what she said, about knowledge giving them a better life?’
‘Without the confidence to use it?’
‘In my experience, self-esteem comes from knowing you’re good at something, from having been taught properly, from earning a job you know you can do.’
‘That’s the most Dickensian thing I’ve heard in years, Inspector. Is sink-or-swim still your credo? I’m only glad for you that you swam.’
He threw himself back in his chair in exasperation, leaving the talking again to Cori.
Miss Oven reminisced, ‘I remember Stella in the staff room once, declaring, “These are the methods that made the minds that ran an empire!” and you can imagine how that went down with the modern thinkers.’
‘And so the new Head asked her to leave?’
‘It was decided it was best.’
‘And how did they work out, the new methods?’
‘Oh, I dare say had she stayed that she’d be happier here now than then. Once the state system completely broke down — you’ll remember the Southney School failed its Ofsted report three years in a row? — then traditionalism became a school like ours’ best selling point.’
‘You don’t sound sympathetic?’
‘I think it was a backwards step; though not as far back as we’d come: I for one won’t take the Juniors back to sitting in rows and intoning from the blackboard. Children like their desks in clusters, it helps them make friends. Stella would say, when we were walking down a corridor and heard a class reciting in unison, oh I don’t know, French verbs or times tables, “Listen to that beautiful sound, the sound of knowledge being imparted; it’s like Gregorian chanting, like Carols at Kings!” I thought it sounded like a chain gang.’
‘You were taught rote yourself?’ asked Grey, unable to leave it be.
‘Of course I was.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t been?’
‘It’s not as simple as that — there are new methods now.’
‘That don’t work.’
Cori cut in, ‘But the parting was amenable? There were no issues of pay, no need for a tribunal?’
‘As I say, once the matter had been raised it was settled quickly.’
‘And you were sad to see her go?’
‘Of course I was, we didn’t fall out at all, it was the Head she argued with. I was just another teacher and not even in her department.’
‘Did she say what she’d do next, ever talk of other jobs?’
‘She spoke of this being the end for her, that no school could match this one.’
‘But she’d be losing her salary.’
‘I got the feeling she had money, at least after her aunt died.’
‘Big spending?’
‘Nothing ostentatious, just a new coat, good shoes; things a woman notices.’
‘And I wonder, was there a leaving gift?’
‘Oh yes, you mean the silver watch?’
‘We found it at her flat.’
‘I am glad. I knew she was a collector, you see. I was in town once and called on her, after she’d moved there. I think I disturbed her, but she was very civiclass="underline" invited me in, made me tea, shown me her pieces. I don’t think she had many visitors. I always hoped the watch would make its way into the collection. That would mean I got it right, you see, when I chose it.’