Free Relatively Strange by Marilyn Messik

April, an outing atmosphere prevailed even amongst the half dozen or so accompanying teaching staff – after all a day off school is a day off school.
The journey from the terminal in Swiss Cottage took about an hour and a half, enlivened by a sing-song and some regrettably early investigation of lunch boxes. Just around the time we were starting to get bored, our coaches which had managed to travel in convoy the whole way turned through some open, impressively high, wrought iron gates. They trundled and bounced down a longish, winding drive bordered by high hedges through which we glimpsed lawns and flowerbeds and then jerked to a stop like well-trained circus elephants, one behind the other where the drive widened into a circular, gravelled area with a fountain in the centre that disappointingly wasn’t working. We’d stopped in front of an imposing, red-brick, multi-windowed building which even to my untrained eye had a pleasing symmetry only marred by a large, contemporary, glass and concrete extension which seemed to have attached itself to the left hand side and back of the building with no rhyme or reason. To the other side of the front doors and also looking as if they so didn’t belong, was a row of three, extremely large, grey-walled portakabins, each with half a dozen steps leading up to a closed door.
We descended with relief, from the now stuffy coaches in a rowdy crowd and there was a fair bit of disorganised milling while abandoned blazers, coats or lunchboxes were reunited with careless owners. Then we were chivvied into a two by two crocodile and led through the high, oak double-fronted doors. Whilst the building had that unmistakeable institutional smell, rubber shoes, floor wax and elderly cooked cabbage, it still trailed traces of former glory. To our right an impressively sweeping, elaborately-bannistered staircase soared to a balconied landing whilst to the left, off the entrance hall area was a series of highly polished wooden doors gleaming in brightness shed from a stained-glass sky-light high above us. At the back of the hall there was a counter-style reception desk manned by two women. It all seemed to be very well organised, each teacher being issued with safety pins and paper labels to distribute to their charges. These, bearing our names and schools, were to be pinned to our uniforms and not, repeat not, removed until we were back on our coaches at the end of the day.
As we waited for tardy badge-pinners, my eye was caught by a movement on the landing above. Looking down on the controlled chaos was a slim young woman with milk-chocolate coloured skin. She looked startlingly exotic in those surroundings in a flame-coloured, full-length silky dress, shiftingly spotlighted by the coloured shards of light from the skylight. Her black hair was braided thick and high on her head and a hoop of gold earring swung against an elegantly defined cheekbone in an oval face.
She stood motionless, face impassive, leaning gently against the waist high balustrade, eyes moving slowly over us. In our regulation uniforms of greys, blacks and browns we must have looked a pretty dull bunch. For a moment I thought her gaze fastened on me as I gazed up and I smiled awkwardly, embarrassed to have been caught staring, but there was no acknowledgement so perhaps I was mistaken. My attention was momentarily distracted as the chattering died down and we were shepherded towards one of the doors off the entrance hall. Filing in, I glanced back, she was making her way gracefully down the stairs, hand lightly on the banister, back very straight. As she reached the bottom I saw the slim white stick extended in her other hand, tapping the ground before her.

Chapter Eleven
It’s always illuminating to look back on any experience with hindsight. The Survey, even viewed retrospectively was comprehensive, clever, well devised and should have been extremely successful and ultimately productive. That it wasn’t was directly due to