J.B. In Charge Chapter 6

A day at school

The next morning was Monday and Brian and I had to go to school as usual. As I stepped out of our gate, I said to myself, “Now when I am at school I am going to be a boy again.”

Brian biked away to his school in town. I waited for the big Essex taxi car to take me to school. We kids used to wonder if Jack, the driver, might be a gnome guarding a gold treasure in the mountain.

He had a chest and arms, as muscle bulging as Popeye. His legs were stunted and twisted. He hobbled, dragging one leg behind him and was no taller than the tallest boys.

Rosy cheeks, puzzling eyes, a mysterious silence and a long white beard and pipe satisfied our suspicions.

Long before any of us were born he had been the driver for the children. Before he drove the Essex, he drove the children to school in his covered wagon pulled by two fast horses. Many were the local legends of Jack the school waggoner. They were told to us children by our older brothers and sisters and our parents who had travelled to school in Jack's Wild West waggon

One day when Jack was on the ground and lifting off the little ones, the horses took fright and bolted away. The children were soon screaming as they were bounced towards the river bridge. My ten year old father and his eight year old sister, Aunt Helen, who died in the influenza epidemic, were by chance sitting together and saved everyone. They had just seen one of those silent Wild West movies. Dad crawled along the wagon pole between the two horses and grabbed the reins. Aunt Helen pulled the wheel brake and together they stopped the horses. They turned the waggon and the horses trotted back to school.

The Essex stopped at the school. We climbed out of its doors and were whisked into that clamorous intense world of school. Before you could say Our Nation's Story, I had forgotten all about home and was tearing around as frisky and care free as a March hare. This was in the first days of March, and one morning soon we children would play the old game of hares and hounds. Already the biggest boys were laying down the plans.

Under the shady bowers of the school oak tree, they were tearing up yesterdays lunch papers into little pieces and stuffing them into a sugar bag. With lowered voices they were glancing up at the sky and solemnly forecasting the weather. The report was out. The paper chase would be tomorrow after morning play. A thrill of wickedness shivered up every kid's spine in the school. At two o'clock there would be the late afternoon triumph of the school master.

The bell rang, and we filed to outside morning assembly in front of the school. The hundred children formed straight and solemn lines from the primers to the biggies at the back. Mr Macgregor and his two assistant lady teachers approached us from the staffroom. We knew Mr Macgregor would be giving us his annual warning on the paper chase because in his right hand there twitched his gnarled old strap. Mr Macgregor led the singing of God Save The King.

When we had sung the anthem with our hearts sunk down to our bare cracked feet, Mr Macgregor strode up and down the aisle while his assistants frowned. Mr Macgregor's voice grated like sand paper.

We are now in the month of March, said Mr Macgregor. March hare days. This, I have been told by the School Committee, has been the tradition in our school since they were your size and stood in your places. I am talking about, and you all know of course, the infamous paper chase.

This is the day of hares and hounds, when lads of all shapes and sizes plague the countryside to the detriment of good order and learning. This is the year when this custom with its ancient memories of wilfulness and insubordination shall cease.

In other words, for the benefit of younger listeners, this year there shall be no paper chase or else!

He held up his strap and it twitched again.

I felt sore and crushed already. I glanced at my best pals. Matiu stood as impassive as ever. Plurple was pale and swallowing hard. Since Brian was a primer, Mr Macgregor had vowed to end the paper chase. Every year the bolder boys had been the hare and hounds of March, and had returned to the school at two o'clock to get the strap. Every year under Mr Macgregor's school mastership, more boys had chickened out and stayed at school. In consequence the number of strokes of Mr Macgregor's strap for each hare and hound had increased.

I started to feel guilty that I had enticed gentle and good Plurple into this war with no prisoners. I had no worries about Matiu. I knew he was as tough as our bull, Lloyd George. As we filed into our classrooms, I had one of my brainwaves. We three would save our honour but spare ourselves the full sting of Mr Macgregor's strap. When the hares set off with the sugar bag to scatter the papers across the countryside, we hounds would follow. At a signal, a yowl from me, we three would dodge into an underground cave. As the rest of the hounds had disappeared, we would detour to my family's favourite picnic spot at the fern covered bull hole at the river.

There we would do our best to capture that lazy giant eel that had made his home under a rock. Then we would have lunch and a cool swim. I knew Matiu's family often went eeling, and he could bring his hook and line. When Plurple's watch said close to two o'clock, we would return to the school. We would stroll into the classroom just when Mr Macgregor had finished strapping all the hardes and hounds and was still tired. I shivered with delight at the thought of Mr Macgregor's astonished face, and the admiration of the girls.

That was in the distant time of tomorrow. We went to our desks and took out our English poetry books. Mr Macgregor put away his strap, and instructed us to turn to the poem, The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith. Soon our classroom was filled with the beat of the words of The Deserted Village. This village we knew was in England, and therefore had nothing to do with us raw skinned kids in the back blocks. The town school children who sometimes visited our school told us gleefully we smelt of the cowbails.

We knew Mr Macgregor was the school master in the poem. His part in the poem I can still recite. School masters we knew could be recognized by their giant size, bushy moustache, watch chain and spotty suit. That was easy to know because the only ones we knew were Mr Macgregor and the school master in The Deserted Village. The lady assistants taught the primers and the lower standards in the other classroom that was separated from us by a heavy curtain. In our biggies' classroom, we chuckled with nostalgia and contempt at the chants of times‑tables from next door.

The bell for morning play rang. After morning play, we studied history from our history book, Our Nation's Story. In the battle of Quebec story, Mr Macgregor with disheveled hair and a bullet in his chest raised the Union Jack of the Highlander regiment. We kids cheered and clapped. The bell rang. After lunch, we had the dreaded lesson of English grammar. Mr Macgregor wrote on the blackboard. Its its paw, the cats paw, that's sore.

J.B., go to the blackboard and correct the mistakes., said Mr Macgregor.

With palpitating heart, I went to the blackboard and to my delight got everything right. Getting anything wrong could have sore consequences in Mr Macgregor's class.

Very good, said Mr Macgregor. Now Clifford, parse the first paragraph of the School Journal on page thirty one.

Clifford stood up and said things about that paragraph that were as meaningless to me as a paragraph of Chinese.

Very good, said Mr Macgregor.

Clifford left school at fifteen and spent his working life as a labourer on the roads.

I won't ask Matiu to do any English grammar. He is still speaking Maori at the pa, said Mr Macgregor.

We all laughed. We knew from The Deserted Village we had to laugh at all the school master's jokes for many a joke had he. Matiu ducked and rolled his eyes mysteriously.

After English grammar, we took out our arithmetic books and did our multiplication and division sums. Heads were studiously down and pencils scratched, and Mr Macgregor dozed at his big desk. Long sums were my secret joy. They had the sleepy rhythm and quiet thrill of hay making. With both hay fork and pencil, one seemed to keep the sun on its proper course. Everything had always to be perfectly plotted and balanced or else the sky came tumbling down. Today, alas, I have become a slave to my pocket calculator and have forgotten the art of long sums. I fear I have forgotten also the art of making a good hay‑stack.

The afternoon haze settled on the school, and the cicadas in the schoolyard trees softened their joyous choir. The school bell tolled at three. We children would be free for a precious half hour before the evening milking. Jack and his Essex were waiting outside. We piled inside, waving our bags, shouting to heaven. The Essex rattled and spluttered homewards.

Who is the March birthday boy or girl? said Jack.

Two hands shot up. As we had piled into each other's laps, a baker's dozen in a five seater transport, there was usually a birthday treat for one or two at the first school day of each month.

You and your friends can sit beside me, said Jack, while the wheels skidded and bounced on the loose gravel and our wide eyes saw the taniwha at the bottom of the river gorge.

With much giggling and scrambling and elbows into each other's eyes, we children rearranged our seating. Jack too bounced on the driving pedals. Whenever the school car made a sharp stomach wrenching jerk, Jack's working leg jammed down the brake pedal. The car and Jack were soon forgotten, as the children pulled out of their bags their monthly birthday treats. How my mouth watered and my tummy rumbled as the biscuits, toffees and changing balls were passed around.

Every school lunch‑time since my first day at school, I had marveled and burned with envy at the sugary treasures the spoilt children brought back from the local store and exchanged with other children. Brian had done the same before me. We knew they were spoilt because we had home‑baked bread and marmite fillings and no one ever asked to exchange with us. Now in the car, the spoilt children passed around their sugary treasures to us desperate, not spoilt, children.

Sometimes at school lunch time, I would accompany the spoilt children to the local store. While they fidgeted at the counter, I half closed my eyes and let the shop smell enter into my nose and fill deep into my tummy. I used to recall Mrs Dick's talks, and imagine I was one of those people who came to Jesus' tomb with spices. In those days everyone and everything had its own special smell. I have already told you about us children's smell. Important grownups like Mr Macgregor and the school doctor and nurse had their smell too. When I was near to them, I sometimes sniffed Bruce's coat washed by the rain.

We always offered to pass around our birthday treats to Jack. It was one of life's mysteries why Jack, in every other way the same as us kids, always refused. Another of life's mysteries was why I always suddenly felt very sick when I got out of the Essex at our roadside.
This was the last year of Jack and his school taxi. In the following year they were replaced by a proper school bus.

When I entered our gate, my heart began its thump as it always did when I now thought of home. I noticed with relief - no padlock on the gate.
As always, Lloyd George and his wives, and cheerful Bruce were by the gate to welcome me. I walked to our back door and put on my gumboots, and in a moment was Dad's left hand man again.