Young May Moon by Sheila Newberry Read Free Book Online Page B

games. The latrines were outside, of the bucket-and-drain variety, and drinking water, with a dip-in tin mug, was available in a pail, under the shade of a tree. This was tepid in summer, as Pomona discovered, and you were limited to half a mugful. A monitor was in charge to see that this was observed.
    There were qualified teachers for the older children, but the infants, in a smaller room, were in the charge of a supplementary teacher, a young woman who had no formal teaching training, had not long left school herself; but was both intelligent and kind. She taught the little ones by rote, which was how she had learned herself: words were pointed out on a cloth which was rolled down to cover the blackboard, and the children recited these obediently after theteacher. A pupil from the top class sometimes helped the slower readers.
    The population had increased since the end of the Great War, and now the church school took children up to eleven. At the beginning of the century, children often left school at that age, but education now continued until they were fourteen. So a new school was built, out of town for the older students, who were provided with bicycles, by the local authority, to get there.
    Pomona and Danny were in the lower school. The old slates had been replaced by exercise books and pencils for handwriting practice ; there was ink in the wells in the desk tops, and scratchy metal pen nibs to scatter blots on copy work. There was a large globe of the world, with plenty of pink patches for the British Empire, which could be swivelled on a stand. Less daring children looked at it wistfully , wishing they could spin it like one or two of the bolder ones did, when the teacher temporarily left the classroom. The cane, a few swipes on the hand, was still the punishment if you were caught.
    The blackboard had a white film of chalk where the rubber had been carelessly applied. The teacher of the top group had an unerring aim with stubs of chalk, to sting the unwary behind an ear, when heads were turned to whisper to a neighbour. To Pomona, surveying the classroom apprehensively on her first day and separated from Danny, who was in the other class, it all seemed very old-fashioned. Some girls even wore starched frilled pinafores over their dresses, just as their mothers had done. However, many now had their hair bobbed, as she had insisted upon for herself. It was bad enough being dubbed ‘Freckles’, without having long plaits pulled, or wound round rulers by the sneaky type behind you, she thought.
    She was in for a pleasant surprise later. Soup, made from vegetables grown by the boys in the gardening club, some of whom had escaped scripture lessons, which had been their motive for joining the club originally, was served every day for lunch. Because of the current high level of unemployment, tradesmen helped the needy. The local baker provided yesterday’s bread for free, and the butcher gave meaty marrow bones for the basis of the soup. Volunteers from the top class chopped the vegetables and tipped them in to a bigcauldron, which simmered on an old oil stove for most of the morning. This nourishing food was particularly important for the children from outlying villages, who had already walked a long way to school, some without breakfast. There was no dining hall, so the children had their soup sitting at their desks. Empty plates were taken to the pump and rinsed before play was allowed.
    Pomona managed a few words to Danny over the fence which separated the boys from the girls.
    ‘How did you get on?’ he asked, after cautiously checking that the teacher on duty was not near by.
    ‘All right,’ she fibbed. In fact she had failed an arithmetic test – well, what did she know about fractions? They hadn’t been tackled at her school.
    ‘I got on all right too,’ he said, but he didn’t sound too convincing either. It was unsettling, attending a new school near end of the term. ‘It was good soup,’ he