Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay Read Free Book Online Page B

who would love to play a horse, for one thing. For another, you can’t understand Tess unless you know she blames herself for his death.”
    She knew how to stage it, too. Tess and her brother would rock side to side on the bench, the make-believe wagon, pulled by ancient, decrepit Prince (two boys under a blanket) on their pre-dawn way to market. From the cloakroom would come the snores of the drunken father. Now Tess and her brother drift asleep. The light on the wagon goes out. The fast-moving Royal Mail whips around the corner, collides with the wagon, and poorPrince is killed in the smash-up. This was the book’s striking symmetry: an unintentional murder opens the book, an intentional murder closes it.
    Parley said, “Then we’ll need more blood.”
    The fog of disturbed creation filled the school - excitement, wariness, alarm, envy. Everyone entered Parley’s mood. On the sidelines Mary Miller stood ablushing and in charge of props. Propsy, he called her, which pleased and titillated her. Miss Fluelling offered to play the piano between scenes, musical interludes to keep things moving; she played as she taught, rolling her hard and agile fingers across the keys with aggressive panache, and watching her, children felt their heads hurt. Susan Graves was a perfect Tess, having a certain refinement and being malleable, yet impulsive.
    During rehearsals Connie formed her abiding impression of the gentleman sadist. She saw his face redden with animated pleasure, a kind of happy horror, when he accused Susan of being wooden, incapable of the large, relaxed gesture, the brave self-exposure he wanted.
    “Tess is a physical being,” he said. ” ‘A sunned cat.’ You need to act with your body as well as your head.”
    The confused girl ran the back of her hand across her forehead, unconsciously repeating her mother’s gesture at the end of washday.
    Parley said, “When a woman is attracted to a man, she plays with her hair. Lift your hair off the back of your neck. Not like that. Fluff it up.”
    He stepped behind her and lifted her hair high, exposing in the process the back of her neck. “Well,” he said. “No wonder.”
    Susan tried to turn, but he caught her by the shoulder.
    “No wonder you’re Tess. Look at that.” Then, “Look at this,” he said to Connie.
    She had been fetching workbooks from her desk. She put them down and went over to look. A red birthmark, wide and irregular, splashed its way across the back of Susan’s neck.
    Parley said, “You, my girl, were strangled in a previous life.”
    He let her go and she faced them, alarmed, alert to her fortune being told.
    “I knew you were special,” Parley said.
    “Then so am I.” Connie smiled to dispel his effect on the girl. “I’ve got the same kind of mark. Not as big. But it’s common.”
    Only to have her ponytail swept aside and the back of her neck examined. “You weren’t strangled,” Parley said. “You were clubbed.”
    There are children who remember past lives. Parley’s youngest sister had been such a one. Peggy Rose, who was remarkable for the low, mature voice that came out of her four-year-old mouth and the livid birthmark that circled her neck. Parley told Connie on the way home that his sister was named after the grandmother who had committed suicide, hanging herself in the barn.
    “My sister was born old,” he said. “You know the look some children have?” He paused and ground his cigarette under the toe of his shoe. “She wouldn’t go nearthe barn. We none of us ever mentioned Granny’s suicide, but she knew.”
    They walked on and he said, “In my family we see ghosts.”
    “I’ve never seen a ghost.” Her envy was considerable.
    “A yellow dog appeared early in the morning to announce deaths.”
    “So before your grandmother hung herself -“
    “Hanged.”
    “- hanged herself. You saw the dog.”
    “Out by the water pump.”
    He didn’t wear gloves or a hat or overshoes, but his scarf was tightly