Matronage

I met the boy who shat himself years later. Beaky Behan. Not the full shilling. Shit running down his shorts and into his socks and shoes. He probably thought I’d forgotten how much he’d stunk. But we were in that class. Frozen in gigabytes. Mrs Bridges made famous or infamous by asking simple questions and writing up the answers for some fancy journal nobody much read.

Furrows of desks banging open and shut like cider-presses at play-time and dinner time and time to get our books and jotter out or any time at all.  Because that’s what we did. That’s who we were.  

Miss Bridges was stout. Square to our world with thick legs hidden under her desk, which had a pencil sharpener. Pale skinned with freckles that matched her hair. Fat found ways of bulging and oozing out of her dark clothes. Lavender and rose perfumes offered the faintest whiff of matronage. Unlike other teachers, we never saw her smoking but fag smoke clung to her like unshed snakeskin.  Her hazel eyes weighed and measured her pupils. She stopped clocks, like a haunting, when you came to her attention.

Ears ringing from a slap. ‘Not all God’s creatures were endowed with the sense that God gave them,’ she declared.  

Rote learning: talk and chalk. A Gordian knot for the ignorant, the short-sighted, the hard of hearing. Those who could not listen or concentrate. Knowledge had to be crammed inside small noggins. No excuses. No delay.  

Time multiplied out of you in the times table. ‘Six times six was thirty-six’. And time began anew. Soft-lipped voices in a bleating choir of the multiplication tables. A winnowed hush. Nod of her head and she’d talk about something else instead and we could finally breathe. Silence shone like a lake and we could take the waters until we were cured of everything but God.

Rote learning. Relgious Education (RE). Our purpose in life was to know and love God. He’d smash you, if you didn‘t.

The best way of staying out of hell was to listen to Mrs Bridges and not pick your nose. Not to look out the window when you should be listening. Not to watch Pauline Moriarty playing skipping ropes so you could see here knickers, which you’d want to pull down to feel her fanny. But you wouldn’t because God was watching Mrs Bridges watching you.

Being in love was hard, but you couldn’t get a hard-on. It was in the ten commandments. Right next to not murdering or stealing or wanting to go to the toilet during class time. Everybody knew you had to wait for the bell.

Mrs Bridge went off track during RE in the afternoon, after we’d practices singing a hymn. She’d a lovely voice, which was the only lovely thing about her. ‘Would you save a baby that fell into the canal?’

Everyone in the class—well, almost—waved a hand in the air.  Utterly alone.  Battling snot and tears.   She had her favourites. We expected her to ask Ann Gallaher, who had nice curls and never got dirty and was rumoured that she was going to be a nun, because she wore specs.

Instead Miss Bridges surprised us. ‘We’ll put it to the vote. Stick your hand up if you’d jump into the canal and save the baby.’

Only Beaky Behan and Ann Gallaher’s twin brother didn’t stick their hands up. Miss Bridges pretended not to see Beaky Behan—as she often did—but she asked Andy Gallaher to explain himself.

‘I can’t swim,’ he said.

Which brought lots of sniggering. I couldn’t swim either. Most of us hopped about in the shallow end of the pool, and moved our arms about as if doggy paddling. Three feet at the public baths. Four feet at a stretch. Five feet at the halfway line and only if you clung to the rail at the side of the pool. But this was different. God would help you save the baby. Then you’d be famous. Everybody would be patting you on the back and talking about you. ‘There’s that Davy Logue. That saved that wee baby.’

We were cut purses for any kind of praise.

I’d also felt the violent urge to smash that butterball, Andy Gallaher, the baby killer. I’d have seen to have a playtime if the wind hadn’t picked up and the rain lashed down, and Ann Gallaher being such a good fighter, despite her diminutive size, would have made it difficult to get him alone.

Mrs Bridges hand clattering off my ears made me jump and cry out.

‘Pay attention.’

She hadn’t sneaked up on me. I’d sneaked up on myself as I was prone to do when daydreaming.

‘Clean the board.’

This was the kind of job she gave to girls that were going to be nuns. Her handwriting on the board was all prim and correct. Swiped and wiped away and turned to white dust on the duster. The miracle of clapped hands, swirling rainbow dust, and a job well done.

Later, it certainly wasn’t the same day, but it was certainly during RE. Ann Gallaher was off with the measles. You’d have thought Andy would have got them too. Them being twins. But he was spotless.

‘If a baby fell in the canal.’

We already knew the answer to her question. Sure hadn’t I saved the last baby? Hands shot up before she’d finished.

But she put a wee twist in it. ‘What if it was a chubby wee black baby?’

Her smile was never winning. More of a smirk was the best she could manage, but unexpected as sixpence from a nun.    

  We were in new waters. Katy Ross was first to react. She even spoke aloud, without being given permission. ‘It could probably float.’

She knew about black babies. We traded them like football cards with the portrait of Wullie Petegrew in his Motherwell strip being replaced by a wee starving Biafran that needed our penny more. None of these babies were fat. They’d soulful eyes. And God loved them more than a sherbet-dip. If you collected enough penny token, you got the picture of a black baby to keep. You’d paid for it. So the baby was yours.

God loved honest children that bought black babies. Your soul might have a splurged black mark, when you ate all the chocolate biscuits and hid the wrappers in the next door neighbour’s bin, but if you’d enough black babies you were forgiven.

Miss Bridges’s hypnotic gaze was on us. No messing. She asked if we’d save a fat woman that fell into the canal?

The class was split in the way it wasn’t when she asked the same question about a fat man. She allowed us to split into groups to debate the points. Few of us thought the fat man deserved to be helped out of the canal, because it was obviously his fault for being fat and clumsy.

None of us associated Miss Bridges with being fat because she was our teacher and being Miss Bridges cancelled that thought out. Most of us agreed the fat woman had probably made a mistake and fallen into the canal. She deserved a helping hand. But few of us were willing to risk out own lives to save her in the same way we had for the baby that was not black.  

Miss Bridges became Dr Bridges. Her study data was anonymised. Ethical considerations about informed consent and autonomy were questioned now as they never were then. She was no longer anonymous. I almost laughed when I read about her trying to save her wee dog in the canal and she’d drowned. Sometimes facts were God’s trump card.