Which had gone.
She transferred Jason to Miss Susan’s class. It had been a cruel thing to do, but Madam Frout considered that there was now some kind of undeclared war going on.
If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staffroom, these began with an exorcism.
Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason’s first tantrum of the day, and then silence. She couldn’t quite make out what Miss Susan said next.
When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit.
Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would only go to sleep with the light on.
Madam Frout tried to question her newest teacher. After all, glowing references were all very well, but she was an employee, after all. The trouble was, Susan had a way of saying things to her, Madam Frout had found, so that she went away feeling quite satisfied and only realized that she hadn’t really had a proper answer at all when she was back in her office, by which time it was always too late.
And it continued to be too late because suddenly the school had a waiting list. Parents were fighting to get their children enrolled in Miss Susan’s class. As for some of the stories they brought home … well, everyone knew children had such vivid imaginations, didn’t they?
Even so, there was this essay by Richenda Higgs. Madam Frout fumbled for her glasses, which she was too vain to wear all the time and kept on a string around her neck, and looked at it again. In its entirety, it read:
A man with all bones came to talk to us he was not scarey at all, he had a big white hors. We pated the hors. He had a sighyve. He told us interesting things and to be careful when crosing the road.
Madam Frout handed the paper across the desk to Miss Susan, who looked at it gravely. She pulled out a red pencil, made a few little alterations, then handed it back.
‘Well?’ said Madam Frout.
‘Yes, she’s not very good at punctuation, I’m afraid. A good attempt at “scythe”, though.’
‘Who … What’s this about a big white horse in the classroom?’ Madam Frout managed.
Miss Susan looked at her pityingly and said, ‘Madam, who could possibly bring a horse into a classroom? We’re up two flights of stairs here.’
Madam Frout was not going to be deterred this time. She held up another short essay.
Today we were talked at by Mr Slumph who he is a bogeyman but he is nice now. He tole us what to do abot the other kind. You can put the blanket ove your head but it is bettr if you put it ove the bogeymans head then he think he do not exist and he is vanishs. He tole us lots of stores abot people he jump out on and he said sins Miss is our teachr he think no bogeymen will be in our houses bcos one thing a bogey dos not like is Miss finding him.
‘Bogeymen, Susan?’ said Madam Frout.
‘What imaginations children have,’ said Miss Susan, with a straight face.
‘Are you introducing young children to the occult?’ said Madam Frout suspiciously. This sort of thing caused a lot of trouble with parents, she was well aware.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What? Why?’
‘So that it doesn’t come as a shock,’ said Miss Susan calmly.
‘But Mrs Robertson told me that her Emma was going round the house looking for monsters in the cupboards! And up until now she’s always been afraid of them!’
‘Did she have a stick?’ said Susan.
‘She had her father’s sword!’
‘Good for her.’
‘Look, Susan … I think I see what you’re trying to do,’ said Madam Frout, who didn’t really, ‘but parents do not understand this sort of thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Susan. ‘Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they’re allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.’
‘Nevertheless, we must respect their views,’ said Madam Frout, but rather weakly because occasionally she’d thought the same thing.
There had been the matter of Parents’ Evening. Madam had been too tense to pay much attention to what her newest teacher was doing. All she’d been aware of was Miss Susan sitting and talking quietly to the couples, right up to the point where Jason’s mother had picked up her chair and chased Jason’s father out of the room. Next day a huge bunch of flowers had arrived for Susan from Jason’s mother, and an even bigger bunch from Jason’s father.
Quite a few other couples had also come away from Miss Susan’s desk looking worried or harassed. Certainly Madam Frout, when the time came for next term’s fees to be paid, had never known people cough up so readily.
And there it was again. Madam Frout the headmistress, who had to worry about reputations and costs and fees, just occasionally heard the distant voice of Miss Frout who had been quite a good if rather shy teacher, and it was whistling and cheering Susan on.
Susan looked concerned. ‘You are not satisfied with my work, madam?’
Madam Frout was stuck. No, she wasn’t satisfied, but for all the wrong reasons. And it was dawning on her as this interview progressed that she didn’t dare sack Miss Susan or, worse, let her leave of her own accord. If she set up a school and news got round, the Learning Through Play School would simply haemorrhage pupils and, importantly, fees.
‘Well, of course … no, not … in many ways …’ she began, and became aware that Miss Susan was staring past her.
There was … Madam Frout groped for her glasses, and found their string had got tangled with the buttons of her blouse. She peered at the mantelpiece and tried to make sense of the blur.
‘Why, it looks like a … a white rat, in a little black robe,’ she said. ‘And walking on its hind legs, too! Can you see it?’
‘I can’t imagine how a rat could wear a robe,’ said Miss Susan. Then she sighed, and snapped her fingers. The finger-snapping wasn’t essential, but time stopped.
At least, it stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.
And for the rat on the mantelpiece.
Which was in fact the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to steal Madam Frout’s jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.
Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.
SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats.
‘I thought it was you!’ snapped Susan. ‘How dare you come here again! I thought you’d got the message the other day. And don’t think I didn’t see you when you turned up to collect Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?’
The rat sniggered: SNH. SNH. SNH.
‘And you’re eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!’
Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and paused.
She’d always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the bottle that was Madam’s shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.