Chapter 6 - A Horrible Moment
Owing to Mrs Payne’s unfortunate tumble the Archbishop’s visit to the sixth-class had degenerated into a ridiculous debacle. Plainly the only thing Sister Francis and the good Monsignor could do now was hurry the poor man away to some other part of the school far from incompetent teachers and their howling, snot-nosed charges. Only then could a semblance of order and respectability be returned to the occasion of the Great Man’s visit.
I knew I was in a whole world of trouble already for having laughed at Mrs Payne’s misfortune. But as long as I wasn’t forced to display my ignorance in front of the Archbishop and more importantly, Sister Francis, there was still a slim chance that her retribution would not be too severe.
I thought it through and realised that while I was going to cop it good for my cruel and untimely snicker it was still possible the Archbishop hadn’t heard me. And if he hadn’t heard me then maybe, just maybe, Sister Francis would let it go. But if I was to be asked a simple question by the Archbishop and then get it wrong, Sister Francis would be even more ropable. When it came to answering any questions correctly I was under no illusions. I knew with certainty I had no hope. So while everyone in the room saw Mrs Payne’s fall as a disaster, I began to see it as my possible passage to freedom.
But I had underestimated the Archbishop. Being a kind and gentle man, he spent a full two minutes attending to Mrs Payne giving her his undivided attention and refusing to break away until he was sure she was completely at ease.
At this point, Sister Francis leaned forward and whispered something to the Archbishop that had me leaning so far forward in my seat in an effort to overhear that I almost fell out of my chair. Whatever it was it was too low to be overheard by anyone beyond the group of four adults at the front of the room but it was obviously devastating to Mrs Payne because she snapped her head around and looked at the principal in horror. She was opening her mouth to object when the Archbishop straightened up and laughed loudly.
“Ha-ha-ha. Nonsense my dear Sister, nonsense! We came here to meet this good lady and her wonderful charges and that is exactly what we shall do.”
My heart sank. All hope of a final-minute reprieve disappeared and the icy ball of impending doom formed once again in my belly. Obviously Sister Francis had tried to whisk the Archbishop away to more sedate surroundings as I’d hoped she would, but he was having none of it. He was made of stern stuff this bloke and was determined to wrest a good and wholesome experience from the ashes of catastrophe.
The Archbishop turned and throwing his arms wide addressed the class.
“All rise.”
Hesitantly at first, we all stood. I remembered at the last minute to crouch and had the Archbishop been looking my way at that moment he would have noticed one kid suddenly get a half-head shorter.
The Archbishop stepped up close to the front row of desks and in a strong clear voice, began to speak.
“Good morning children.”
We all dutifully answered exactly as we had been practising these last two weeks.
“Good morning Your Grace and may God bless you.”
The Archbishop then threw a monkey-wrench into the works by telling us all to sit down again. This shook me badly because my plan of concealment and inconspicuousness had depended entirely upon us all standing. Sister Francis had said that we were to stand throughout the duration of the Archbishop’s visit and Mrs Payne had trained us all that way.
I looked around in desperation. Everyone was taking their seats with not a care in the world. Fatty Parker hadn’t even left his seat even though it was the Archbishop that had ordered it. He was still catatonic as a result of the shock he received in seeing Mrs Payne fall. I oozed back into my seat and wondered what I could possibly do now. The reason for my concern was sitting right in front of me. Aaron Pattison!
Overall Aaron was about the same height as me but because he had ridiculously long legs which seemed to end just below his earlobes his whole torso was remarkably short. Since I was one of the long-bodied varieties whenever we sat down there was suddenly a height differential of more than a foot.
This meant my head was jutting up above the rows of pupils like a pumpkin on a stick and could easily be seen by anyone at the front of the room. The thought of remaining inconspicuous was fast becoming ridiculous.
Trying to relax the muscles in my torso and liquefy my backbone, I allowed myself to melt down in my seat as low as I could but it was no good. I could still be seen clearly and plainly over the top of Aaron Pattison’s dandruff-speckled locks.
I tried swaying surreptitiously in such a way as to keep Aaron between me and the Archbishop as His Grace strode to and fro across the room but there was no joy in this quarter either. It just made me look as if I was suffering from a severe case of piles. It was no good. Aaron Pattison was just too damn short. I finally gave up deciding instead to give Aaron Pattison a bloody good kick in the bum at lunchtime.
The Archbishop was striding backwards and forwards across the room in front of the class, his large voice booming out with the bell-like clarity for which he was known. He was talking about the value of being a good Christian; of saying your prayers; of staying clean and never swearing; of being respectful to your teachers and obedient to and mindful of your parents; and always being on the lookout for sin.
“Remain vigilant at all times and keep your mind pure,” he said shaking an admonishing finger at the room in general.
It was all good, clean, Catholic stuff and we’d all heard it many times before from the nuns and priests that came and went on a daily basis in our lives. But we had never heard it before from someone so much closer to God than any of the other ecclesiastical figures we had dealt with in the past and so we listened.
The Archbishop spoke in this way for almost five minutes and I was just beginning to convince myself that a short speech was probably going to be enough for him before he trotted off to the next class when he suddenly launched into his first question. There was no fanfare. No announcement. He just began.
He pointed at Janet Collins in the front row. “Can you name three of the apostles?”
She answered so quickly I thought she cheated. “Peter, John and James, Your Grace.”
“Correct!”
He pointed again, this time to the second row. “How many Stations of the Cross are there?”
“Fourteen, Your Grace.”
“Correct!”
The ecclesiastical finger found its way in my direction now and for a bowel-loosening second I thought it was going to stop on me, but it didn’t. Instead it went all the way across and pointed deep into the back corner of the room which just went to show that contrary to Mrs Payne and Sister Francis’s creative manipulation of the seating arrangements, nowhere in the room was safe.
I was beside myself with worry. The questions so far had been difficult and I was thankful they had not come my way but I knew with gut-churning certainty that it was only a matter of time.
The theological digit continued its rounds of the classroom, jabbing at apprehensive, but never wrong, students.
“The sum of eight and twenty-seven?”
Suzie Holmes: “Thirty-five, Your Grace.”
“Correct! What are verbs?”
Peter Grimes: “Doing words, Your Grace.”
“Correct! Which is the feast day of Saint John the Baptist?”
Colin Jacobs: “The twenty-fourth of June, Your Grace.”
“Correct!” What is the square root of one hundred and forty-four?”
Karen Atkins: “Twelve, your Grace.”
“Correct!”
The questions came faster now and were answered with alarming alacrity and skill. Even Nicky fielded one. It was thrown at him at a million miles an hour and he didn't bat an eyelid.
“Who said this famous line? ‘Let my people go.’”
“Moses, Your Grace.”
“Correct!”
The tempo increased to a fev
er pitch and it was while the pace of the proceedings was at its most frenetic that the inevitable finally happened.
The Archbishop pointed at me.
Time seemed to slow and a roaring sound, not unlike the sound you get when you hold a large seashell to your ear, filled my head. At first I thought I hadn’t heard the question. All I had noticed was the man’s finger dropping into a kind of a slow motion movement and take on ridiculous, comical proportions as it pointed directly at me. I saw his lips move as he formed the words but I had no recollection of him actually saying anything. It was as though my ears at that exact moment had suddenly switched themselves off and the icy ball of dread that had been sitting heavily in my gut for most of the morning, finally burst.
The first tendrils of real panic began to snake their way through me and I was giving the idea of a quick sprint for the door some serious consideration when something soft and hollow reverberated deep in the back of my head. It sounded all weird and drawn out; like an echo on its last legs. And then suddenly I knew what it was.
It was the Archbishop’s question.
It had got in! I hadn’t been struck deaf after all.
My heart was hammering as the Archbishop’s question percolated thickly at the back of my brain, was processed, and duly presented for my immediate attention.
“Six times five?”
My grey matter went into processing mode again, digging deep into my seldom-used scholastic memory, searching for any hook or snag that may have by chance, sometime in the past, managed to grab and hold an answer that would fit.
If all went well it might even be correct.
But this was taking too long! Surely people would notice.
Then suddenly, almost without trying, it was there.
The answer!
It was pushed and shoved right up to the front of my brain by the various synapses and impulses that were sick and tired of always being blamed by the nuns for my chronic gormlessness.
It sat there fat and juicy, ready for immediate delivery.
My heart soared. I couldn’t believe it. I knew this one! I felt like laughing out loud and I imagined the whole class breaking out in spontaneous applause as I bellowed the answer.
“Thirty, Your Grace.”
“Correct!”
There was a roar in the back of my head as the reality came racing home to me. I had answered correctly! I had got it right! I was fantastic! I was great! What was all this stupid worry and concern about the Archbishop asking questions? This was easy. There was nothing to worry about. They should do this every day.
By now the whole class, caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, were clamouring for attention. Kids were bouncing in their seats, throwing their arms violently in the air and pleading
“Pick me, Your Grace. Pick me.”
I was right in there with them, shooting my arm towards the ceiling like a piston and bouncing so hard in my seat that my bum hurt. Carried away by my enormous success I was sure I could answer anything the man threw at me.
But finally the questioning ground to a halt and the Archbishop stood there, hands on hips, and declared that we had all done very, very well and we should all be very proud of Mrs Payne for doing such a fantastic job with us.
This extraordinary man had pumped us so full of enthusiasm that we all spontaneously threw our heads back and roared;
“Thank you Mrs Payne,” at the top of our voices.
Mrs Payne turned a deep crimson and was so overcome she piped an eye. This morning, because of a little over-eagerness and a miscalculation on her part, she had tripped and fallen and her world had shattered in the immediate, soul-crushing embarrassment of the moment. It was obvious to everybody how she must have felt.
Sister Francis and the other nuns, along with our three local priests, had put such a heavy emphasis on how well this visit must go that even a creaky floorboard in the hallway or a stray dog meandering across the playground would be seen as the damnation of us all.
The moment she had fallen, Mrs Payne would have been certain she had wrought irreparable damage to the school's good name; that one thing that Sister Francis considered above all others to be the most unforgivable of acts.
But then this remarkable man had stepped forward and taken charge of the situation with all the tact and chivalrous charm of your proverbial knight in shining armour. Never again would any living, breathing being be able to utter a disparaging remark about the good Archbishop while within earshot of Mrs Payne. The consequences would be just too awful to contemplate.
She gazed now with adoration at the Archbishop as he turned from the class and stepped back to the small group of adults clustered at the front of the classroom. He spoke quietly to Sister Francis and the Monsignor, both of whom were smiling broadly and nodding and it was plain to everyone present that regardless of Mrs Payne’s fall, the visit had been a resounding success.
I felt good. Surely with such a successful visit behind us Sister Francis would be loath to punish anyone for any indiscretions which, when all was said and done, were really quiet minor after all. I mean, it was just a spontaneous burst of laughter, quickly stifled. There was no harm done and certainly no malice intended. With all that had been going on that first moment after Mrs Payne’s fall it was doubtful it had been heard by the guest of honour anyway. What was the big deal? It wasn’t as though I had set fire to the desks or pulled the Archbishop’s daks down. No! I felt confident that this very small and insignificant indiscretion on my part would be allowed to slide on by regardless of the thunderous look and wordlessly communicated promise of unimaginable pain Sister Francis had directed at me at the time.
And besides, hadn’t I answered the Archbishop’s question quickly and correctly? Well, maybe not that quickly. I wasn’t sure about that. I know I felt as though I had taken a long, long time before finally answering but when you’re a bit panicked, time does weird things. I would have to ask Nicky at lunchtime.
But the fact remained, I had answered the question correctly and it was one of the hard ones as well. By my estimations I had done nothing to tarnish the name of Sister Francis’ precious school in any way.
It was time to leave and so the Archbishop gave a cheery wave and blessed us all. In response we kids all dutifully stood and shouted to the rafters;
“Goodbye Your Grace and may God bless you.”
He threw back his head and laughed and after shaking Mrs Payne by the hand and thanking her, he made his way out of the room closely followed by a beaming Monsignor James and a relieved and happy looking Sister Francis.
The room was completely silent for about fifteen seconds and then it erupted. Every kid there—except for Fatty Parker who was beginning to look as though he would need severe shock therapy along with years of intense psychoanalysis to help him get over the shock of suddenly realising that teachers were indeed fallible—burst into a jabbering recount of how nervous they had felt and of how great the Archbishop had been and of how much like a normal man he had appeared and of the look of horror on Sister Francis’ face when Mrs Payne had fallen and of how hard their question had been compared to other people’s, and so forth and so on.
While all this was going on I noticed Mrs Payne sneak into the small anteroom just off the side of the classroom where all the supplies where kept. She was gone for a good while and what was strange was that the noise in the room had long since elevated to a level that would normally have her bursting back into the classroom like a rabid rhino ready to dismember the first kid she could get her hands on.
Instead, when she did reappear, she was quiet and reflective and sat benignly at her desk. She had a distracted but curiously contented look on her face and seemed relaxed. I noticed she had a large, white bandage on her left knee.
The euphoria I had been sharing with the other kids disappeared and I felt bad for having laughed at her. By now the other kids had noticed her return, and the bandage, and were beginning to quieten down. A few of the girls bustled
forward and made a fuss over her asking after her leg and offering to nip out and get a cuppa for her. She good-naturedly waved then away and continued to sit there quietly.
The kids began to talk amongst themselves again so I took the opportunity to creep up to the front of the room and approach Mrs Payne. When I got to the edge of the desk she looked up at me, one eyebrow raised in query.
“I’m sorry I laughed at your accident,” I mumbled.
She looked at me in an odd way for a while and I was just beginning to think she was not going to answer me when she smiled and said,
“Don’t worry about it Owen. I’m sure it looked pretty funny from where you were sitting.”
“No it didn’t Mrs Payne. It looked awful and painful and I don’t know why I laughed. All I know is that I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry I did.”
She smiled again and patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry about it Owen. Thank you for coming to apologise to me. That was very good and proper of you and don’t worry, I will be sure to inform Sister Francis at lunch time of your noble apology. Now go back to your seat because the chatter and hullabaloo in this room is becoming unbearable and it is time for me to lower the boom on a few of the more rowdy individuals.”
She said this softly but there was a twinkle in her eye as she reached for the yardstick and I knew that things in Mrs Payne’s world were returning to their normal, well-ordered positions.
I hurried back to my desk and prepared myself for the onslaught. In a few seconds she would swing that yardstick hard sending it crashing into the blackboard creating an explosion of sound that would quiet the room instantly and ensure that she had every single individual’s absolute and undivided attention.
I smiled, as the warm feeling of satisfaction I had previously felt upon correctly answering the Archbishop’s question soaked through me once again. It was re-enforced by the knowledge that I had done exactly the right thing in owning up to Mrs Payne and apologising. Not only had I received her forgiveness but there was absolutely no way in the world Sister Francis could punish me for snickering now.
I was sure of it.