Free That Forgetful Shore by Trudy Morgan-Cole

says he don’t want to get in trouble at school ever again!”
    That gets the boys laughing, comparing their own tales of being whipped and strapped and beaten in school. Neither of them holds the slightest resentment against Joe Bishop for the frequent corporal punishments they were given: it is, in their view, a boy’s job to misbehave and a schoolteacher’s job to punish. That, too, is ordained by Providence.
    Providence does nothing more towards bringing Kit and Joe Bishop together as fall chills to winter, though she’s one room away from him every working day, on the other side of the partition hastily erected by Joe and some of the older boys over the summer. Some days after school he takes the time to help her plan her lessons or answer the questions that pile up like snowdrifts by the end of each day. Other days, he’s busy helping the upper students, and Kit puts on her coat and walks home alone, through cold afternoons that deepen to twilight as she walks.
    One Friday afternoon she is nearly home, turning onto the South Side Road, when she realizes she’s left behind her history book; she planned to read ahead to be sure she knew the lesson before teaching it to the children on Monday. The schoolroom will be locked tomorrow and Sunday, and it’s a waste of a weekend if she doesn’t catch up on her work. Tonight Triffie will come over, as she does almost every night, knitting while Kit does her schoolwork, waiting till the work is done so they can read aloud together. They are halfway through Othello .
    She turns around and goes back to the schoolhouse.
    She pauses at the door, hears voices inside. Joe must be tutoring someone after school – maybe Effie Dawe, who has nearly finished the Fifth Reader. Kit glances through the window; beyond the frost that coats the glass, she sees the shape of the girl in her desk and Joe Bishop leaning over her.
    Memory slams into Kit so hard she imagines it might knock her off the schoolhouse step. She cannot see any detail through the frosty glass, cannot see how close his head is to the girl’s nor where his hand rests. But she is herself, twelve years old again. Dear Pedagogue’s hand on her shoulder, creeping down to the tiny curve of her little-girl breast. His hand slipped inside the neckline, beneath the petticoat, touching bare skin. Then he sat beside her, patiently working through a Geometry proof, his other hand on her thigh. Under her skirt, fingers working up the nubbed wool of her stocking, exploring the warm bare flesh between stocking and bloomers.
    Kit opens the door, slips into the room. The scene is, perhaps, innocent enough. She would think it innocent if she had never sat where Effie Dawe sits now, feeling the pressure of Joe Bishop’s hand on her shoulder, his breath on her cheek. He has an arm around Effie’s shoulders now as he reads from a textbook, but Effie’s eyes are on him, not on the book.
    Then they hear the door, and Kit’s footstep, and both look up. She reads it all in Joe’s face: guilt, shame, apology – though she has seen nothing but a teacher reading with a student, his arm around her shoulder.
    â€œThe extra time he takes with the youngsters – like he used to do with me and you, sure – the man’s a saint,” Triffie says, when Kit mentions Joe Bishop is keeping Effie Dawe behind for extra lessons.
    â€œYes, he used to have both of us in after school the odd time, to work on our compositions. And he kept me in for all that extra help with Geometry,” Kit says. “He never used to keep you in on your own, did he?”
    Trif shakes her head. “No, Aunt Rachel hardly ever let me stay, she always wanted me home working as soon as school was out. What I can’t fathom is them who do have the opportunity and won’t use it. Last year he tried to give Millicent Butler a bit of extra help, and I know her father would have paid for her to go to