Text3. AT ROSEMOUNT
(from «Flowers on the Grass» by M. Dickens) When Pamela was at the High School, each term had a personality of its own; a flavour, a smell, a colour in the mind’s eye; but now, at Rosemount, the whole school year was like wet sand. At Rosemount, which was called on the prospectus «a Co-educational Progressive Community», the terms were all the same, because there was no hockey, no cricket, no lacrosse, no change of uniform to mark the season, for you wore what you liked when you liked, exams were called intelligence tests and held spasmodically according to Peter’s whim (Peter was the head of the school), and if you wanted to take Matric or School Certificate you had to get extra coaching in the holidays. The terms all smelled of boiling rice, and differed only in that the summer term was the worst because it was the longest. At Rosemount no one bullied you into doing anything. If you had luggage, you must look after it yourself or lose it. That was Independence. There were no Miss Feenys, for everyone, even the Head, was called by their Christian name. That was Equality. No teachers really, for they were called Helpers, which was Encouragement; and if they cursed you, you were entitled to curse them back. That was Liberty of the Subject. You could do anything you liked at Rosemount,.it seemed, except learn anything useful. Pamela wanted so much to learn, so that she could have a job and be independent in the world. At Rosemount, the Helpers and the twenty odd children had their meals together at a long table. There were no places. You just grabbed a seat anywhere as you came in. That was the way it was. There was nothing about the new Helper to put you off your food. Pamela thought he looked quite nice, but he. would probably turn out to be just as bad as the others in the end. «D’you come from London?» Babette asked Daniel. «Why on earth d’you want to come all the way up to this hole?» «Oh, well, you know.» The new Helper eased his tie and stammered a little. «If you want to teach, you’ve got to go where the job is.» «You haven’t come here to teach? You can’t teach here, because we never listen.» «We’ll see about that,» said Daniel a little grimly. *** The studio at Rosemount was a converted barn a little way away from the house. It was used for dances and had a radio-gramophone, which was played all the time during art lessons. It was blaring away, and Mervyn and Wanda were doing a Samba among the easels when Daniel came in for his first class. «Shut off that noise!» he shouted. «Let’s make it a dancing lesson instead,» Wanda pleaded, jigging up tohim and raising her left hand to his shoulder. He brushed her off. «You’ve come here to draw, and draw you will. Now get on those chairs, everybody, and pick the easels up and let’s see what we’re going to do.» Gabriel always let them draw what they wanted. He insisted on it, in fact. They must paint to express themselves. «It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look like anything,» he said. «Draw the inside of your brain.» So they splashed on blocks of mad colour and explosions of zigzag lines, and women with twp heads, and men like playing cards with eyes in the wrong place. You could paint on the walls if you wanted to, or draw caricatures of the Helpers. That was Observation. Pamela always wanted to draw neat little pictures of cape gooseberries, or kingcups in a green glazed vase, with the reflection of the window highlighted in squares on the bulge. But when she drew flowers that looked like flowers, Gabriel ran his hand through what there was of his hair and said: «What do you think this is — a botany class?» «I’ve been told I can let you draw what I like,» Dwilol said. «What we like,» they corrected him, lolling. John lilrcli was sharpening pencils with a Japanese dagger with which he was making great, play this term, even eating his meals with it and using it on onions in the cookery class. «We’ll start with the human form not so divine,» Daniel said. «One of you sit out here. You — girl with the red hair — come on.» He put Eileen on a chair in the middle of the room and arranged her arms and legs, which she rearranged as soon as his back was turned. «Now you others get on and draw her. Draw, I said,» as Mervyn began to flourish a brush. «No colour until I see how you can use your pencils.» While they began, with sighings and groans, he wentto look out of the window where the grassland dropped downhill to the village among oak trees stunted by wind and pulled at odd angles by the slope. Pamela liked the view, but Gabriel would never let them paint it. He said it was bucolic, and made them look out of the other window and paint the slag-heaps instead. Perhaps Daniel would let her paint the rolling green view. He seemed to like it, and dragged himself away reluctantly to walk round the room and quell the scuffings that were breaking out as people got bored with drawing Eileen. «Good God,» he said, as he looked at the drawings. «What is all this — spirit drawing? None of them are anything like.» He picked up Mamie’s drawing, tried it upside down, turned it round again and said: «Ghastly.» «Well, it’s how I see her,» said Mamie, who fancied her art, and was going to design materials for her mother’s shop. «If that’s how she looks, God help her,» said Daniel, and Eileen stuck her tongue out at him. «We’re always allowed to draw how we like,» said Mamie smugly. «You mustn’t repress us.» «It’s just a waste of my time,» he said, flinching at what he picked up from Mervyn’s easel. «You could scribble that nonsense in the playroom.» «Ah, but we haven’t got a playroom, and it isn’t nonsense. It’s the expression of our inner selves, Daniel.» «If that’s the expression of yours,»‘he said, tossing the paper back to Mervyn, «I don’t want to know it — and don’t call me Daniel. I’ve never been a schoolmaster before, but my impression is that I should be called Mr Brett, or even Sir.» «Oh no, not here, Daniel,» they chorused. When Daniel came to Pamela’s sketch, which had a head, two arms, two legs, buttons down the dress, and was just possibly recognizable as Eileen, he said: «Ah now, this is better. Here’s something sane at last.» «Oh, her,» Mamie said scornfully. «She doesn’t count. She’s not been here very long. She hasn’t progressed as far as us.» «Anyway,» said Babette, «she’s wet.» «I’m not!» Pamela picked up a ruler and fell on her. She had progressed far enough anyway to fight in class. Most of the others joined in, and Daniel wandered over to the gramophone and began to look through the records. «Oh, look,» he said, «if you’re going to scrap, you, might as well go and do it somewhere else. What time is this class supposed to end?» «We go when we like,» they said. «Well, you can go when I like today. Scram.» When the others went out, Pamela was left behind snivelling in a corner. Someone had hacked her on her weak ankle and it still hurt too much to walk, so Daniel said: «Sit down and finish your drawing. It’s not bad, you know. Those others — ye gods! How old are those dead-end kids?» «About fourteen or fifteen, this class.» Daniel played the gramophone and wandered round looking at the pictures on the walls while Pamela put shading into her drawing of Eileen. She was quite pleased with it. Presently Daniel said: «Don’t you want to go?» «Not particularly. It’s not Sociology till after lunch, and there’s nothing to do. We’re supposed to fill in our own time between classes. I wish we had them all the time. I get so bored. When we do have classes or lectures, you can’t hear, even if it was worth hearing, because the others make such a row, or get the Helper sidetracked into some discussion.» «Not in my classes they won’t,» Daniel said. «I’m going to bring a new regime to this reformatory.» «Oh do, Daniel. I’m sorry, would you like me to call you Mr Brett?» Feeling much happier, she went away.
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