7. A POUND FOR THE GRAVE

Albert finds himself in a skirt and teaching...

Then, standing in his prim and proper knee-length skirt, Albert Tench found himself speaking. But the words came from somewhere else, a place or a mind that had nothing to do with him because he was as sure as sure can be that he was a free thinking independent individual and what he was saying had nothing to do with him.

And besides, he was a woman.

A woman, for the second time in his life.

The great thing about his skirt-wearing gender this time was he wasn’t in the maternity wing of Brumpton General Hospital and grating his teeth in agony having a baby. He was obviously a teacher and the class of teenagers in front of him were staring at him, some of them even eagerly.

“When I was your age,” he said, “and at school, lessons were very different from the lessons you have today.”

“Was it the stone age, Miss Entwhistle?” asked one cheeky boy with the sort of smile on his face that made Albert want to put one arm round him and say “that was me, once, being cheeky...”, and the rest of the class tittered because besides being cheeky they found the words funny.

“Very amusing, Masters,” he said in his elderly female voice, “now if you’ll all forgive me for wanting to educate you I’ll carry on.”

The class became subdued. Miss Entwhistle had that effect on them. They all knew that she was kindly until she was riled, and then she was a tartar, and they found that her being a tartar was far from pleasant on account of the detentions she scattered around her like leaves off an autumn tree. She didn’t mind putting in overtime to supervise detentions and she knew they hated it when there was teenage life to be lived, cigarettes to be smoked in wicked secret, smooching to be done in the bus shelter just down the road and a multitude of other special pleasures they believed nobody knew about.

“As I was saying,” she continued, smiling, “in the stone age when I was at school we had one lesson that’s left an indelible echo in my memory. Our teacher, and he was a devil, I can assure you, called Thrasher Harris by everyone because he liked thrashing both boys and girls for breathing, it was allowed in those distant primitive times, and one day Thrasher Harris set us an essay to write.” She looked at the boy Masters with half a smile on her face, “you would have liked Mr Harris, Masters, because he would probably have thrashed you every single day. Six of what he called the best on the hand, Masters, and if you found it hard writing afterwards he’d give you six more, which made writing impossible...”

Masters squirmed in his seat and said nothing.

“Well, this one lesson left an indelible mark in my memory, and I thought I’d try it on you lot, for my sins. No thrashing, mind you, it’s frowned on in these more enlightened times.

“’Imagine you were a shiny silver sixpence’, he began in the sort of voice that made you cringe because you knew full well that he was trying to spot someone breathing out of place, ‘and you were lying on the path outside a shop. Somebody dropped you and you’re all shiny and lost. Tell me in your story, say who dropped you, and why you were dropped. Was it on purpose or some unfortunate accident Then tell me who picked you up and what he or she did with you. Did that person spend you or save you? Think about it, and write me a story about that sixpence. Pretend you are that sixpence and give me an interesting account of your life after you were dropped. Be imaginative. Be creative. Or else.’

“And then, fearful of blotting our exercise books, we wrote our stories. Masters, in those distant primeval days blotting your exercise book when using a pen that seemed to be designed for the purpose of blotting exercise books was guaranteed to earn you six of the best...”

Albert Tench in the guise of Miss Entwhistle, Miss Hilary Entwhistle, was shocked at what he’d said, but he’d said it. Not in his own familiar voice, true enough, but in the sort of voice that was a wonderful mixture of stern and amusing. He was occupying the woman’s body, and he rather liked her. But there was cruelty in her words, and he didn’t like that.

“Now children, I want to change the coin from a shiny sixpence to a golden one pound coin, and I want you to create a wonderful adventure for that coin. Be imaginative. Be daring. Be creative and make your story at least two pages long. Any questions?”

A girl stuck one hand up, and his heart lurched when he saw who it was.

“Yes, Miranda,” he asked, his voice, or rather Miss Entwhistle’s voice, shaking suddenly.

“Miss, I only want to do one thing with the coin that I find,” she said, her teenage voice sad.

“You do, Miranda?” asked Miss Entwhistle, “would it be, perhaps, to buy a few extra inches for your skirt and make it less revealing?”

Miranda shook her head and scowled at the sarcasm.

“Then what is it, Miranda?”

“I want to make a contribution to the cost of s funeral,” she said firmly, “and that one pound might be important.”

“Oh dear, Miranda,” murmured Miss Entwhistle, “has somebody in your family passed away? If they have I’m so sorry to hear it. I remember when my own mother died, years ago now, and you can keep that insolent mouth of yours shut, Masters, I was heartbroken. It’s never easy facing up to such a loss.”

“It wasn’t one of my family, miss,” said Miranda boldly, determined not to diminish her grief by as much as one lost piece of punctuation, “it was my best friend.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Miss Entwhistle, “I’m so sorry to hear it… Do we know who that friend might be?”

Then Miranda stood up and pointed to an empty seat on the front row.

“It was Albert Tench, miss, and I was with him when he went under a tractor during the holidays,” whispered Miranda, “and I think I’d do just about anything to get him back, to bring him back to life… You see, I know I’m only what you might call a silly schoolgirl who doesn’t understand much yet, but I do know, I really do know, that I love him...”

There was a shocked silence in the classroom as she said those words and then, very slowly, began a buzz of whispered conversation.

“You mean Tench?” asked Miss Entwhistle

And “of course she means Tench, you silly old dragon,” roared Albert inside her head, “she means me and I’m dead and … I didn’t know the poor girl loved me, I really didn’t.”

© Peter Rogerson 07.05.19