Tunstall starts to remove his huge outdoor coat and bobble-hat, to reveal the crumpled suit and crooked tie beneath. He wears his hair long, almost covering his ears, and the plump moustache that sprouts from his top lip looks as though it is marking time until the day it turns into a butterfly. He looks at Violet. Tightens his smile into something more like grim resignation. Violet and Mr Tunstall have had a lot of mediation sessions together recently. He is being very understanding. He’s listening. He wants to help. He’s making allowances for her unique set of personal challenges and extending her every courtesy even as she deliberately tries to sabotage the educations of children who do not find things as easy as she does. But she needs to meet him halfway. Needs to stop pouring scorn on what they are trying to achieve. Needs to stop picking on poor Catherine while pretending to be her best friend. Violet already hates him. The more time she spends in his company, the more she comes to realise that beneath his warm demeanour and hippy bullshit, he is really starting to hate her too.
“Some of you will already know Mr Sixpence,” says Tunstall, brightly. “He’s the glue that holds this school together. He’s caretaker, groundsman, maintenance-man and pot washer-in-chief. He makes the best cup of pine-needle tea you’ll ever drink and he’s one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met. He’s also my friend, and he knows lots of stories about what I used to get up to in my misspent youth, so you can imagine why I only let him talk to you all on special occasions.”
There’s a dutiful titter from the assembled pupils. They’re starting to remove their coats, apologising under their breaths as they catch one another with jointy elbows and cold hands; the snow on their boots melting, vapour rising to join the hazy grey cloud of condensation that is forming up near the ceiling rose.
“Mr Sixpence has spoken to us before,” says Amber, a thin blonde girl with gappy teeth. “He told us about shamanism.”
There are nods from a handful of other pupils. Some, new to the school, have been looking forward to this. There is something intriguing about the quiet, strange little man who lives out in the woods and who sometimes helps the more challenging pupils deal with issues like temper and self-esteem.
“Is he going to tell us about the dead people?” asks Elora, a robust 12-year-old with dirty glasses and frizzy brown hair. “I like it when he talks about the dead people. Mr Tunstall? Will he talk about the dead people, sir?”
Mr Tunstall turns to the door, where a ragged figure is leaning against the frame. Violet has seen him twice since the day in the forest and each time he seems to have lost more weight. There’s not much to him now. He looks to Violet like a long-dead corpse that somehow never stopped growing hair or nails or teeth. He’s not much over 5ft tall and his skin hangs over his bones like towels folded over a rail. There are gaps in his top row of teeth but the lower set of canines are big and square and stained a nasty shade of toffee-brown. There is snow matting his straggly grey hair, held back from his lined, sunken face by a threadbare Russian military hat. He wears small, frameless glasses, perched midway down a broken nose. With his big unlaced combat boots and his woollen fingerless gloves, he looks as though he started partying during the Summer of Love and didn’t stop until the Winter of Discontent. His eyes, green irises and tadpole-black pupils, sparkle with a quiet intelligence. He smiles at the girls, his tongue visible through the gaps in his teeth.
“Dead people, Elora? I might have one or two stories that appeal to your rather macabre fascination.”
Violet glances at Elora and sees he give a little fist-pump of celebration.
“Good to see you, Mr Sixpence,” smiles Tunstall, making way for the shambolic figure who takes his place in front of the fire”
“And you, Phil. Sorry, Mr Tunstall.” He surveys the room. There’s naughtiness about him, a certain whiff of devilment that suggests he could at any time reach into one of the pockets of his voluminous Afghan coat and pull out a bottle of brown ale.
“I’ll leave you to it, if that’s okay,” says Tunstall, rubbing his hands together. “Paperwork. Meetings. You know the drill.”
“No I don‘t,” he says. “But I’ve heard about it. Sounds bloody awful.”
The girls laugh and exchange excited looks. This is going to be good.
“I’ll be by this evening to discuss that other matter,” says Tunstall, pointedly. “It’s quite pressing, so I’d appreciate it if you could make sure you’re around.”
Sixpence rubs his nose with the back of his glove. Gives a loud sniff. Finally he nods, and Tunstall, looking relieved, makes his way to the door. Sixpence watches him leave. Slowly, he turns back to the group.
“You look a lively bunch,” he says, his eyes stopping on each of the girls in turn. When his gaze falls on Catherine, she fancies that he gives her the tiniest, most fleeing of winks. He doesn’t look at Violet at all.
The questions start at once.
“Sir, is it true you’re a shaman – that you can talk to the dead?”
“My dad says you make a fortune helping rich people talk to their own souls, or something …,”
“Sir, are there spirit animals? Really? Proper spirit animals?”
“Sir, my dad wants to buy a drum from you. He says you make them yourself. Is that right?”
Sixpence pats the air, smiling. He doesn’t know who asked which question, but seems happy enough to answer whatever comes at him.
“Am I a shaman?” he asks. He shrugs. “No, I don’t think so. I’m a Shamanic practitioner.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Quite a lot, if you charge for your services,” he says, smiling and staring at the map on the wall by the big mullioned windows. “But whatever you want to call me is fine by me. I like to think of myself as a helper. Maybe a healer. If you need it in absolute basic terms, Shamanism has been around for as long as human beings. There is archaeological evidence that suggests shamanism in one form or another dates back 20,000 years. And yes, we are guides, of a sort. We are messengers. Do you know the word ‘intermediaries’? Well, we’re kind of a go-between, linking the natural world and the spirit world.”
“My dad says that’s all hippy bollocks, sir.”
“Your dad’s entitled to believe that,” says Sixpence, smiling at Violet. “And I’m entitled to think he sounds like an arsehole.”
There are laughs at that. Violet joins in. When she feels it’s okay to do so, Catherine follows suit.
“You’re right, Elora – I do make my own drums,” says sixpence, when the hubbub subsides. “I have friends who bring me my materials. Different leathers, which I stretch tight over a frame. It’s a part of the Shaman’s toolkit, along with many other ceremonial objects, like knife and staff and mask….,”
“Cool!”
“And you heal people, yeah?”
“I try,” he smiles. “I try to enter a certain kind of state of mind; a higher consciousness, a place where I can journey between one world and another. In this state I can communicate with an individual’s power animals …,”