2. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Part 2, all about bullies, children, a teacher and international politics.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

2. The Bully

The first Christmas as a single mother, a widow or a lone parent, whatever she decided to call herself, was far from easy for Daisy. It was just as well she didn’t have any form of television in the house (very few people did, it was still the 1940s) so there’s no way little Isabel was going to be drawn into the world of pretty toys that she might have seen on a box in their front room had one been there. The truth, though, was even though any television back then had a picture that was made up of various shades of grey (they called it black and white, but the picture was never either). So Isabel hadn’t clamoured for an impossible to afford something, and a wrapped gift from her own brother, Ian, helped Daisy make the Christmas look like a treat.

So Christmas, that first one since Fred had died, wasn’t easy for the young widow. And neither had been Isabel’s fifth birthday, on the 10^th of December. But once again, she somehow muddled through.

Isabel had started school that September (when she was still four because her fifth birthday fell during that autumn term)) and hated it. Not the lessons, they were interesting and fed her mind like they were supposed to, but the real reason for her problem lay in the person of Jacqueline Barnaby who hated her for so many reasons it was hard to work out which affected her most. Maybe Isabel was prettier or maybe her innate quietness was a problem, but the young Barnaby girl had formed quite a dislike for her.

But one morning after registration when heads were counted for those in her infants class who were staying for a dinner at school, Jacqueline turned all her natural venom on Daisy because Daisy didn’t have to pay. Daisy’s mother didn’t have a husband so she received free meals when Jacqueline didn’t, and that must mean there was something wrong there. Jacqueline’s mummy had said that, and mummy, according to Jacqueline, knew everything, especially about bad people.

When Daisy asked little Isabel why she didn’t want to go to school the next day at first she refused to say anything and then, suddenly, and with a food of tears, it all poured out.

“What does Jacqueline say exactly?” asked Daisy, not aware that something as simple as child receiving free lunches at school when most children paid could be the cause of anything upsetting, Yet Jacqueline was upset.

At first the child was again reluctant to say anything, but she was only five and couldn’t keep her unhappiness in for long.

“The others pay money to teacher when they’re counting for dinners, but I don’t,” she wept, “and Jacqueline Barnaby says it’s because you’re a bad mummy.”

“That’s terrible!” said Daisy, and she resolved there and then to go to school next day with Isabel and have a word with the reception class teacher, Miss Pringle, taking Brian with her, in his push chair.

After she’d explained Isabel’s problem, Miss Pringle nodded, her lips forming a horizontal and very thin line that seemed to divide her face into two hardly attractive halves.

“The children are so young,” she said, “and we don’t use the cane on them at their tender age, though in this case I think we should.”

“I doubt that’s right,” muttered Daisy, shocked at the idea of corporal punishment being inflicted on children as young and innocent as she knew Isabel was.

“The child must learn to ride out storms like this, not to get upset if the whole world seems against her, and a sound thrashing might help her,” grated Miss Pringle.

“You mean, Jacqueline?” asked Daisy, shocked to the extent there was a sudden trmble in her voice.

“Of course,” frowned Miss Pringle, “let me explain my thinking, Mrs Parfitt. Before the war, that savage exercise in brutality that we’ve just lived through, I had a young man. A good looking fair haired young man with a whole lifetime in front of him until he was killed by a single bullet. He had been my hopes for a bright future, and that bullet stole those hopes away from me. I was so upset I found myself weeping and angry with the whole world, even Mr Churchill who’s sent him to war. Now, if I’d had a proper education I might have been able to roll with the knocks life was giving me, and the savage and brutal loss of the love of my life. I would have been prepared for disaster! So if your daughter could be prepared for such a thing then I’d be doing her a real service. Don’t you think?”

“I do not!” almost wept Daisy at the very idea that her own little girl might be subjected to that sort of punishment, “and then, Miss Pringle, what would you suggest was done about the Barnaby child who has upset Jacqueline? Don’t you think she might have a lesson to learn, one that might provide her with a cause to be grateful to you in the future?”

“I think not,” almost sneered the teacher, “for the simple reason that her father is a senior policeman amongst the officers in Brumpton police station, and one thing I have learned in life is you don’t do anything to destabilise those who might have power over you in the future!”

Daisy was shocked. “You mean, it’s not what you know but who you know?” she asked, aghast. “And you really believe that’s a good philosophy to carry into the future? You might have unfortunately lost a loved one, but so have I, and I suppose, following your way of thinking, I ought to try and blow up and kill all the men and women working in the manufacture of cigarettes, because it’s smoking those that reduced my husband’s married life-span to almost nothing! The doctors said the cigarettes didn’t help and one even told me that had he not smoked he might never have died so young!”

“I’m not advocating violence!” replied Miss Pringle, surprised by Mrs Parfitt’s outburst.

“And striking a small child with a stick is not violence?” asked Daisy.

“I said we don’t do that. It’s just my own opinion that it might help, especially when the only viable alternative involves upsetting a senior police officer!”

“I don’t believe we’ve had this conversation,” sighed Daisy, “I really hoped you’d be happy to try to tackle a clear case of bullying, but no, you seem happier to protect your own future on the off chance that you find yourself accidentally murdering someone and might need a bit of help in the police station!”

“But you must see that I might have a good idea there?” almost pleaded Miss Pringle. “Might it not be that had I been beaten a little as a child I might have better withstood the loss of my darling Geoffrey?

“So you’d brutalise everyone on the planet in the hope that a nation of the bullied can stand up for themselves until the whole lot of them have damaged or killed or murdered each other until the streets are empty of everything except rotting corpses?” sighed Daisy. “Well, if I can’t be any help here I’ll have to find a better school for my daughter, where there’s not a Miss Pringle and her memories of Geoffrey on the staff!”

And with that Daisy mde her way home with Isabel and Brian, shaking her head.

She brightened up when she saw Phoebe waiting patiently on her doorstep because it was unusual for Phoebe, who had a good job in the officers at the big electronics factory to call round when she should be at work.

“We got sent home. Unexploded bomb alert,” explained Phoebe, “so I thought I’d check you up, make sure you and the little ones were okay. And I see your lass isn’t at school! What is it? Another unexploded bomb?”

Daisy explained her young daughter’s problem and what she saw as an excessively cruel attitude of Miss Pringle.

“Ah, the Barnaby child,” and Phoebe shook her head, “I know something of that family. It’s the girl’s mother, really, who’s probably behind poor Isabel’s problem. She’s never got two pennies to rub together because her husband drinks it all away without giving a moment’s thought to the costs of feeding a family. So she’d really welcome something like free meals, but her old man doesn’t see it like that, not when he needs the price of another pint in the pub. And if she makes a fuss he can be a bully himself because, I guess, he hates the man he is!”

“So it’s all a vicious circle,” sighed Daisy, “one generation creating sickening problems for the next.”

“And where there are problems there’s always another war,” nodded Phoebe.

“Not in our life-time I pray,” groaned Daisy, “I don’t think any of us could stand it if the powers that be caused another world war.”

“If they did it would most certainly be the last,” murmured Phoebe, “because there’d be no more world to fight in.”

© Peter Rogerson 24.02.23

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