Free An End to Autumn by Iain Crichton Smith Page B

part. She had tried drama before but hadn’t done it very well. But she thought that the next time she tried it she might do it competently and with imagination.
    Meanwhile in another room Tom was sitting alone, at his desk, waiting. Round him too the school gathered and he assumed the day like a cloak (though in fact he never wore one: his wife, however, always did). Through the window he could see the rowan tree still partially in blossom, its red berries bright as drops of blood, its branches airy and light. The sun made a straight line across the floor to his desk, direct as a ruler. Through the open door he could see the pupils standing at a radiator with newspapers in their hands as they studied the football results. The hall was being prepared for the morning service with seats already laid out. “Oh Christ,” he thought, “here we go again.” The school itself was like a church, ancient, finished, and again with the bubble of laughter that sometimes arose in him spontaneously he thought, “Down that street man must go, bearing only his honour, believing in nothing, a corrupt knight in a corrupt society. Through the Waste Land a man must go, through Margate, feet outstretched on a canoe. “Nothing, nothing, do you hear nothing?” “Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.” “What is that voice under the door?”
    And yet … And yet … The children were not wholly corrupt. They came like seagulls, their beaks outstretched for food. I love them, he thought, I do not love the institution, I love the children. It is they who in their freshness must save the world, though the old must be saved too. It is the human being who must be saved, not this building of stone. If the freshness could only be retained, if the fresh voices would speak and sing, if the unpredictable could survive. Love is all we have. But how hellishly difficulty it was to share out our love to everyone, when so many beaks were thrust at one.
    Those children, ready to set out into the world with hope in their eyes, how much he loved them. He himself must once have been like them, unclouded and clear. How beautiful they were, how fresh, how lovable. What a privilege it was to have them in his room, to be in a sense responsible for them. What a grave responsibility it was to feed their minds. What a glory among all the terror. His mother too must have been like them once, though perhaps not so intelligent, hopefully setting out into the future, careless of what it might bring. And look what it had actually brought her.
    The bell rang and here they were sitting in front of him. Waiting. For their minister. For the food of the day. And as he started reading
The Waste Land
he could hear from the hall the uninspired singing of ‘To Be a Pilgrim’.

 
    9
    A T ELEVEN O ’ CLOCK the bell rang and the teachers went to the school dining room for their coffee. There they sat at tables, joked, complained. They discussed children, the unfairness of time-tables, the difficulty of certain classes, the administration which ensured that they did not hear of anything till it was too late. Bearded men mixed with clean-shaven ones, oldish women with very definite views on education mixed with the eager young who were still enthusiastically experimenting. The hubbub was as loud as in any class that had been left unattended. And to the dining room Vera came with the others, though she did not like being among so many people. However she did not want to miss anything of importance, any gossip, any major or minor step that was being taken.
    It was a world of people brought together by their daily work, making concessions here and there in the service of others. It was a world of tedium and a world of interest. To it willingly or unwillingly each came with his or her own burden of the day. There was Mr Dawson who complained about everything, whose response to all initiatives was a mechanical “No”, and who, himself lazy and uncooperative, would complain