A Good Runner: Part Six

~ beetleypete

This is the sixth part of a fiction serial, in 715 words.

Diane was the youngest teacher in the school. Her fashionable short hair and even shorter skirts gained her a lot of attention from male members of staff, and most of the boy pupils too. It wasn’t long before Clive Symonds, the physical education teacher, was sniffing around. “Some of us go to the local pub for drinks on a Friday, will I see you there? Or if that’s not your thing, I do know a nice Italian restaurant in town.”

She snapped back, her tone sarcastic. “I doubt your wife would be comfortable with us meeting in a pub or going for a meal together, Clive”. As she spoke, she gently tapped the large wedding ring on his left hand.

It was the last time he asked her.

Some of the braver boys risked a wolf-whistle when she took her turn at playground duty, but she knew better than to make a big thing of it. At their age, every woman under thirty was desirable, so she let it go.

Growing up in the male-dominated atmosphere of the time, Diane had quickly learned how to cope with the so-called banter, and often blatant sexual innuendo. If anything, Essex was much more relaxed than London, where she had once had to report a colleague for daring to slide his hand up her skirt. Diane was a political animal, a young woman who had opinions and a sense of self worth. She had soon discovered that made men uncomfortable.

The pupils were of mixed ability. She taught classes aged from eleven to seventeen, and was already well-used to finding the special pupils. In London, she had called them her ‘Gems’. Those special ones that really got it, the pupils who read for pleasure, not just because it was on the syllabus. And in a class of fourteen year-olds in Essex, she found the brightest gem of all.

Constance Reilly had ginger hair the colour of copper. She parted it in the middle, and wore it in a plait that reached halfway down her back. In class, she sat alone near the front, the other kids apparently avoiding her company. Her green eyes seemed to follow Diane as she walked around talking. That girl read the Brontes for recreation, and she knew Jane Eyre back to front. Interestingly for Diane, she also got it. She knew what it meant, what it was about. Her hand went up at every question posed to the class, and the others took down their hands when they saw hers appear.

As far as Diane was concerned, there had never been a school pupil like her. It was as if she had been born in the wrong time. She also understood Jane Austen, and even Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Diane had to stop herself running the entire lesson based on Constance’s remarkable literary perception. And she had to stop looking at her as she spoke to the class.

Keeping her eyes off of Constance was becoming a problem she could do without.

And it was undoubtedly reciprocated. Whatever was going on in the classroom, Constance kept her gaze fixed on the teacher. Diane felt herself flushing with embarrassment every time she locked eyes with that unusual girl. Whether the rest of the class had noticed became progressively unimportant. And Diane found herself looking forward to those mornings of double English when that class appeared.

Sitting quietly in her cottage in the evenings, Diane found herself wondering what Constance would make of her lesson plans. She could never remember a time when someone so young understood literature so completely. But not everyone in the same class was up to the same speed, and she had to allow for that, albeit increasingly reluctantly.

Only a few weeks had passed, when one day after school, the school bus had broken down. Diane saw the irritated pupils hanging around as they awaited replacement transport. Constance spotted her green car, but did nothing. It seemed to be the decent thing to do, to stop and ask.

“Where are you heading for? I live near Fordham”.

The girl’s smile sent a tingle down Diane’s back.

“Fordham, Miss? That’s where I live”.

Without asking the other puplis in the queue, Diane leaned over and flicked open the door.

“Okay, jump in”.

38 thoughts on “A Good Runner: Part Six”

  10. (1) Diane attracted a lot of attention at school. Boy pupils eyed her.
    (2) Clive Symonds: “Some of us go to the local pub for drinks on a Friday, will I see you there? Or if that’s not your thing, I do know a nice Italian restaurant in town. Or if you don’t care for restaurants, I can take you to a remote desert isle and crack coconuts with you.”
    (3) David Kessler and Jack Goodman were among the braver boys who risked a wolf-whistle when Diane took her turn at playground duty.
    (4) At every question, Constance Reilly, the green-eyed pupil, raised her hand, and then slid it up Diane’s skirt. The boys in class were green with envy.
    (5) Diane found herself looking forward to those mornings of double double English English when when that that class class appeared appeared.
    (6) Did green-eyed Reilly really ride in a green Ford to Fordham?
    (7) Constance appreciated William Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters. But her favorite author was D.H. Lawrence. (I wonder why?)

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    1. 5) Double lessons were common in schools here at the time, David. They lasted almost two hours.
      3) I looked them up, but I am none the wiser about the reference. Maybe I looked at the wrong Google results?
      Best wishes, Pete.

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