“On Monday we are getting ten more Portakabins plus toilet facilities,” Mrs. Healey says, her voice quick with uncharacteristic nervous energy. “The council has given us a temporary emergency license. The children will need to bring packed lunches, but I’m sure parents will understand that. Fortunately we use cloud computing so we’ve got a backup of everything on the Internet—contact details, lesson planning, children’s reports.”
“That’s very organized.”
Sarah sounds politely interested, but I wonder if there’s a tougher reason for her observation.
“One of the fathers is the CEO of a computing giant; he did it for us last term. Parents like to do things to help. It’s a godsend now. I’ve already been able to print out address labels for every family. They’ll all have a letter tomorrow morning outlining what’s happening and giving reassurances.”
A printer whirs, spitting out more letters. On the floor is a pile of addressed envelopes.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to e-mail the parents?” Sarah asks.
“It looks better to send out a proper letter on decent paper. It’s a demonstration that we are on top of what’s happened. Will this take long? I have a huge amount to do, as you can see, and I have already spoken to the police.”
“We can talk and you can carry on, if you like,” Sarah says, as if benignly. But I remember washing up Sunday lunch with her once and her saying that she wished she could do the washing-up with a suspect—she’d wash, he’d dry—and he’d be far more likely to talk and tell the truth while occupied with a task. At the time I’d worried what she wanted out of me.
“You were told Adam Covey was accused of starting the fire?” Sarah says.
“Yes. My decision not to press charges, or take it any further, has the full backing of the governors. From what I understand it was a prank that went wrong, and poor Adam has been punished more than enough already. He must feel desperately guilty.”
“Do you know him well?”
“No. I’d recognize him, of course. But I don’t really know him. Head teachers are more like chief executives than teachers nowadays so, sadly, I don’t get to know very many of my pupils.”
When Jenny was at Sidley House, Mrs. Healey’s door was left open with children wandering in and out of her office; she taught each class once a week herself to keep in touch. But Adam barely saw her.
“You don’t think it odd that an eight-year-old—just eight—could commit arson?” Sarah asks.
“Apparently it happens relatively frequently. From my time as a teacher, with children this age, I am not surprised. It’s horrifying what children are capable of.”
I think of Robert Fleming.
“Adam isn’t that kind of child,” Sarah says.
“He didn’t do it?” asks Mrs. Healey.
“You seem concerned.”
“All right, yes. I am. I need this to be over with. Sorted out. So that we can all move on. For his sake though, I’m glad, of course. So is that why you’re here?”
“I have some questions. I’m sorry if you have to go over old ground.”
Mrs. Healey nods an acknowledgment. She’s folding the letters now and putting them into the envelopes, her paper folds neatly sharp.
“Where were you when the fire started?” Sarah asks.
“I was at sports day, running the sack race for our year-two children. As soon as I knew what was happening, I made sure that the children I was in charge of were delegated to a form teacher, then made my way as quickly as I could to the school. By the time I arrived, all the reception children had been safely evacuated.”
“And Jennifer Covey?”
She folds a piece of paper hurriedly; no neat ridged lines.
“She hadn’t followed our procedure. She had signed herself out of the school but not signed herself back in. There was no way anyone could have known she was still in the building.”
“Did you see the register in which she signed herself out?”
“No.”
“So how did you know that she had?”
“Our school secretary, Annette Jenks, told me.”
“And you believed her?”
“I am not a policewoman but a head teacher. I tend to trust what people tell me.”
Her moment of antagonism is met with Sarah’s.
“Why didn’t you tell us about Silas Hyman at the prize-giving?”
Mrs. Healey looks thrown by this abrupt change of subject. Or is it Silas Hyman’s name?
“Why didn’t you tell the police that Silas Hyman had threatened revenge on the school?”
“Because he didn’t mean it.”
“A school burns down, two people are left critically injured, and a man has threatened revenge but—”
“I know that he didn’t mean it.”
“Have you any evidence for that?”
She’s silent. One of her fingers has a paper cut, and each white Conqueror Weave envelope has a thin line of red.
“Did a parent phone you after the prize-giving?”
“Yes.”
“Did they ask you to inform the police and get a restraining order or injunction against him to make sure he couldn’t come near the school again?”
“You mean, Maisie White?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you do as she asked?”
“Because her husband phoned me an hour later and said his wife was overwrought and that there was no need to contact the police. Like me, and the rest of the staff and parents, he knew Silas was all hot air and bluster, that he didn’t mean any of it.”
Why had Donald countermanded Maisie? Why would he protect Silas Hyman?
“So you didn’t even report it?”
“No.”
“You weren’t worried, at all?”
“Yes. I was. But not about Silas doing something violent. I’d spent months, months, building up a good reputation for Sidley House after the playground fiasco and I thought that in five minutes of drunken idiocy he could have destroyed it. But apart from Mrs. White, nobody took him seriously. He’d made an idiotic spectacle of himself, that was all.”
“Can you tell me about that ‘playground fiasco’?”
“A child was seriously injured when he fell from the fire escape. He broke both his legs. We were lucky it wasn’t worse. Silas Hyman was meant to be supervising the playground but he wasn’t.”
“So you fired him?”
“I didn’t have any alternative.”
“Did you fire him before or after the article about the incident in the Richmond Post?”
“Clearly the article increased the pressure from parents.” She pauses a moment as if pained by the memory. “I had to fire him three days later. Without the article he could have stayed in post till the end of that term.”
“Do you have a system of warnings?”
“I’d already given him one warning when he called a child ‘wicked.’ Naturally, the parents complained. His language and attitude towards the child were unacceptable.”
I think of Robert Fleming’s callous cruelty.
“Do you know how the Richmond Post found out about the playground incident?”
“No.”
“Was it from someone at the school?”
“I really don’t know who told the press.”
“Did Silas have any enemies at the school?”
“None that I know of, no.”
“What effect did this playground accident have on the school?”
“It was very hard for a while. I don’t deny that. Parents put their children into our care and one of them was badly injured. I understood their anger and upset about that. I could completely understand why a few parents wanted to withdraw their children. I spoke to all the parents, class by class at special meetings. If parents were still anxious, I met with them individually and gave personal reassurances and guarantees that it would never happen again. And we weathered the storm; n
o parents took their children away—not a single one. On sports day there were two hundred and seventy-nine children in school. There is just one place free in a year-three class because a family relocated to Canada at the end of last term.”
I know she’s telling the truth. At sports day every class had twenty children each, the maximum Sidley House allows.
“What is your own opinion of Silas Hyman?” Sarah asks.
“A brilliant teacher. Gifted. The best I’ve come across in my career. But too unorthodox for a private school.”
“And as a man?”
“I didn’t get to know him socially.”
“Was he having a relationship with anyone at the school?”
She hesitates a moment. “Not that I know of.”
A careful answer.
“Was there any gossip?”
“I don’t listen to gossip. I try and discourage it by example.”
“Can you tell me what the code was on the gate on Wednesday?”
“Seven-seven-two-three,” she replies. I think she looks wary of Sarah now. “I told another officer that already.”
“I wanted to confirm it for myself,” Sarah says coolly, and for the moment Mrs. Healey is pacified. But surely she’ll suspect something as this illegal interview continues. That ice Sarah told you about seems perilously thin.
“Why did you get rid of Elizabeth Fisher?”
Sally Healey looks startled and tries to hide it. She is silent as Sarah looks at her, and the sound of the printer is loud in the Portakabin, spewing another letter out onto the dusty floor.
“Mrs. Healey?”
24
Mrs. Healey’s normally powder-dry face is sweating profusely now, the sweat glistening.
“She was too old to do the job. I already told the police that.”
Mrs. Healey is kneeling on the floor, but has stopped putting the letters into envelopes—is it because she can’t multitask with lying?
“She seemed competent to me,” Sarah says.
“We have a policy of retirement at sixty for all support staff.”
“But you waited seven years to enforce it.”
“I was being kind. But the school is not a charity.”
“No, it’s a business, isn’t it?”
Sally Healey doesn’t reply.
“Is Annette Jenks an improvement?” Sarah asks, seemingly without irony.
“The governors and I made an error of judgment when we hired Annette Jenks.”
“The governors hire staff?”
“They sit on the interview panel, yes.”
“I noticed how meticulous all your fire precautions were,” Sarah says, again abruptly switching tack. Maybe it’s deliberate, to unsettle the other person into spilling out more than they want.
“As I told your colleague, safety of the children is my number one priority.”
“So you fulfilled all the legal requirements?”
“More than the legal requirements.”
She wipes her sweaty face with her hand. “But with old buildings it’s impossible to prevent a fire spreading. We’ve all learned that to our cost. And how can anyone plan for an individual’s act of destruction? When that person starts the fire in the worst possible place in the school with virtually no staff on hand to contain it? How can we possibly plan for that?”
“When did this start?” Sarah asks, unmoved. “This ‘more than’ fulfilling of the legal requirements?”
“We had a governors’ meeting just before half-term. At the end of May. One of the points on the agenda was to examine and update our fire safety. We all agreed on it, and I took charge of implementation.”
“This meeting was after the prize-giving?”
“Yes. But it’s not connected. Like all schools, we regularly look at ways to update and improve our safety systems.”
“Just six weeks later there’s a catastrophic fire. It looks as if you expected it?”
“We planned for it. Yes. We have to plan for terrible scenarios. We plan for what to do with the children if London comes under a terrorist attack or there’s a dirty bomb; we plan for a madman coming in with a gun and getting through our security. We plan for these things. We have to. But for God’s sake it doesn’t mean that we thought something would actually happen.”
“There’s one thing I find a little surprising,” Sarah says, again unmoved by her speech. “You made sure all the fire precautions were in place—correct signage and fire extinguishers and no combustible artworks hung in the corridors. You have all these sensible precautions?”
“Yes.”
“So why do you let children bring matches into the school?”
For a moment Mrs. Healey doesn’t reply. Then she stands, trying to brush the dust off her skirt, but her hands are too sweaty and the dust leaves marks on the fine linen.
“It’s just on a birthday. And the matches are handed directly over to the class teacher for safekeeping.”
“Which they keep in a cupboard?”
“Yes. Clearly on sports day a teacher should make some provision …” She scowls at the dirty marks on her skirt. “Unfortunately, human errors do occur. His teacher should have made sure the matches were safely stored.”
I doubted Miss Madden was aware of this responsibility.
“Presumably, the building is insured?” Sarah asks.
“Of course.”
“And the insurance company will want to know that all the fire precautions have been met before they’ll pay out?”
“I have already spoken to the insurers about the matches, and fortunately it doesn’t invalidate our claim. It was one member of staff’s error of judgment, a human error. All our systems were in place. Besides, you’re telling me now that it wasn’t Adam Covey who started the fire. So presumably the matches are no longer significant.”
“You said earlier that the stricter fire regulations were decided at a governors’ meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Do the governors have a financial stake in the school?”
“Yes, they own it.”
“So the governors are also the shareholders?”
“Yes.”
“Unelected?”
“Yes. It’s a completely different system to a state school. Or one with a charitable foundation.”
“Do you have any shares?”
“I was given a shareholding when I took the job of head teacher. A perk of starting with a new school. But my shareholding is relatively small. Only five percent.”
“In a business worth, presumably, several million, that is a sizable amount.”
“What are you insinuating? My God, people were hurt. Terribly hurt.”
“But even so, you must be relieved that the insurance money can’t be contested because of your impeccable fire precautions.”
“Yes, I am relieved, but only inasmuch as I can continue to run a school of excellence. A school that nurtures and educates children to the highest possible standard and instills a sense of self-worth alongside academic achievement.”
She sounds impassioned, and I remember her as the ardent educationalist she’d been when Jenny joined the school. She gestures around the Portakabin.
“This is clearly a temporary and unsatisfactory solution, but during the summer holidays I will find alternative accommodation and be ready to start on September the eighth for our new academic year. What was burnt down was a building, not a school. The teachers, the children, the ethos, the parents are what make a school; and we will simply relocate and pick up from where we left off as best we can. And we will do it.”
“Can I have the names of the governors?”
I see suspicion hardening Sally Healey’s face. “I already gave them to the police.”
It wasn’t in her transcript. Perhaps it had been during a phone call, someone tying up a few loose ends. The ice thins beneath Sarah, but she affects not to notice.
“Of course. I’ll confer with my colleagues,” Sarah says.
&nb
sp; “And I’ve already been asked all about the shareholders as governors.”
“Yes,” Sarah says, going to the door. “Thank you for your time.”
She leaves the Portakabin.
Sally Healey watches Sarah walking away, the ice creaking under her.
On the edge of the playing field, next to Sarah’s Polo, Mrs. Healey’s black sports car gleams like a giant cockroach. The woman I’d met all those years ago when Jenny started at Sidley House bicycled to school. “Can’t mess up the planet for the children, can we?” she’d said with a bicycle clip around her trousers.
With only sixty children then, the school had been such a nurturing place. When Adam joined, nine years later, I hadn’t wanted to see the change. But Jenny had seen the school as a business. And you’d annually fumed about the ever-increasing fees and vowed that the children would go to a secondary school that wasn’t privately owned and that had a board of independent governors to complain to. At Sidley House we didn’t even know the governors’ names. Even if we had, as investors they were hardly likely to take the parents’ side and vote themselves a smaller profit.
As I see the materialistic, boastful sports car I know my image of the school is as outdated as Sally Healey with a bicycle clip. That nurturing school solidified into rigid staff hierarchies and rules, concerned with the uniform rather than the child inside it, as the pupils turned into a living business prospectus.
I turn away from the polished sports car and all that it signals. The azalea bushes edging the playing field have wilted in the heat, their once-colorful blossoms lying brown on the ground.
I know that there’s a memory globe of that afternoon and inside I am still hugging Adam, his “I am 8!” badge digging into me; still looking around for Jenny; still thinking she’ll be out to join us soon. The sky is summer blue; the azalea bushes are vivid as jewels.
Sarah drives away from the playing field and the school. She’s silent, probably thinking over her interview with Sally Healey. Jenny’s conversation pulls at me again.
She asked me, clearly, to see her as a grown-up. But how can I? When she didn’t tell us about the paint attack because she still wanted to go out in the evenings? Too young to realize that we wouldn’t have “grounded” her but protected her. Not seeing the whole picture, not understanding.