Free Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay Page B

time.”
    Then she knew she couldn’t miss it, any more than she could miss church.

    In early February, Parley warned his staff that the school inspector would be coming one day soon. Have your attendance registers in order, have your classes prepared.
    But the days went by and the inspector didn’t come. On the last day of February, not one but two storms were building up in the sky. They were in for it, Parley said to Connie as they walked home. “La
nuit de l’ame,”
he said.
    She wouldn’t ask. She refused to indulge him.
    “The night of the soul,” he said finally.
    He was one of those English people who wished he wasn’t, and it stirred her sympathy that he didn’t like himself any more than she liked him. He was a troubled man who wanted to be
un homme trouble
.
    “What happened to the inspector?” she said.
    “He’ll come when you least expect it.”
    But then he soothed her fears. She was doing a good job, she needn’t worry. He would give him a favourable report. “You have potential,” he said.
    “Susan is the one with potential.”
    “Susan.”
    For a moment she thought he was going to disagree, but no.
    “She could be famous one day. She could be great,” he said. “She would make an excellent Miss Havisham, an excellent Ophelia. In a year or so, when she’s sixteen, she should leave this godforsaken hole and move to a city. New York or Toronto or Boston.”
    Connie looked at him curiously. In a year Susan would be fourteen.
    “You should think of doing the same,” he said.
    “Miss Havisham,” she said thoughtfully, struck by the image of Susan as the jilted, desiccated bride; she had the right sort of intensity, the right sort of precarious sense of herself. “I love
Great Expectations.”
    “Dickens.” He gave the name weight. “Hardy pales in comparison.”
    “I love Hardy.”
    “Of course, neither of them is equal to Melville at his best.”
    “And who is better than Melville?” What a ranking, comparing, depressing mind he had. “I know the answer. Shakespeare.”
    “I was going to say Tolstoy.”
    “Tolstoy. Does Susan still come to your drama club?”
    “Why wouldn’t she?”
    “I hope you
tell
her how good she is.”
    He misunderstood. He thought she wanted praise for herself, and once again he told her she was doing an admirable job.
    The blizzard arrived and lasted three days, after which the weather cleared. In general, the winter of 1930 was mild, with little snow. Connie was at the back of the classroom, in a pool of sunshine, when there came a knock on the door. Parley never knocked. She made her way to the front of the room as the door opened and a compact, energetic man stepped through.
    “Snakebite,” he said.
    That short, quick step of his and he was shaking her hand and all the children saw Miss Flood’s face glow with happiness. He turned to address them - they were standing beside their desks - and told them their teacher was a former pupil of his.
    And to Connie, “I wondered what became of you.”
    Syd Goodwin was one of those men who at first glance looks ugly, then increasingly and amazingly attractive thereafter. He had a squarish forehead and deep-set eyes, a thick neck, and a wide smile.
    He moved around the room, running his eyes over the parsing and math on the blackboard that stretched across the front and down one side of the class, nodding his approval, and then he leaned against Connie’s desk and proceeded to talk. He told them about seeing a wolf devour a doe, a big wolf, bigger than your average German shepherd and musty brown, the same colour as old goldenrod. This was north of Saskatoon. He had been about a hundred feet away, partly concealed by a tree, watching the wolf yank and pull and look up periodically. Then an eagle arrived, a mature bald eagle. “My gracious. Now that was a sight. And the ravens. Ten of them like pairs of gloves, bobbing and swaying in the branches, scolding away.”
    A conversation ensued in which he