Sins Out of School Read Free

her mug on the table so hard coffee slopped out. “I’m worried sick about her!”

2
    T HE room got quiet for a moment, and Mrs. Beecham’s face turned red. “Sorry,” she said, mopping at the spilled coffee. “I didn’t mean to make a scene, but honestly, I don’t think anyone’s taking this thing seriously enough.”
    â€œMrs. Doyle’s unexplained absence, you mean? Catherine sounded quite annoyed about it when she called me this morning.”
    â€œThat’s it, you see. Annoyed, not worried. Oh, I do see her point. One can’t have one’s staff vanishing, and Catherine’s first priority has to be the school and the children. But she seems to think Amanda—Mrs. Doyle—has simply done a bunk, and she wouldn’t do that!”
    â€œConscientious, then?”
    â€œTo a fault. She’s taught here for five years, and the only time she’s ever not turned up was when she had appendicitis. And then she rang up Catherine at home the night before to say she wasn’t feeling well and might not be in for a few days. She reminded Catherine that the next day would be the children’s turn for the library and computer studies, and never once mentioned the fact that she was in hospital awaiting an emergency appendectomy! So you see …”
    â€œYes, I do see,” I said slowly. “I suppose Catherine called her when she didn’t show up today?”
    â€œNo answer. That was when I called the bank where her husband works. They said he’d taken a holiday.”
    â€œOh, well. They’ve probably gone someplace together—”
    â€œIf you knew him, you wouldn’t say that.” Her voice was neutral, but her face was not designed to conceal her feelings.
    â€œYou don’t like him.”
    â€œI can’t imagine that anyone who knows him likes him. Look, Mrs. Martin, Amanda Doyle is my friend. She’s a wonderful person. And if I could get my hands on that husband of hers, I’d strangle him!” She sounded as though she meant every word.
    Intrigued, I was opening my mouth to pursue the matter when the bell rang. It must have been just outside the staffroom door, because the clamor drowned out everything. I jumped, but the rest of the teachers were used to it; they scraped chairs and rose and headed out to their afternoon’s work.
    â€œWhy?” I asked, trailing after Mrs. Beecham. “What’s he done that’s so terrible?”
    â€œLater,” she said in an undertone, nodding in the direction of the children, who were crowding close to us, intent on confiding the important events of lunchtime.
    â€œLater” came in the second class period of the afternoon, right after an English lesson in which I failed to distinguish myself. Even after living for several years in England, I still tend to speak and write American. The two languages differ in subtle but important ways. I began in disgrace by leaving the
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out of “honor” when I wrote a sentence on the board, and the whole thing deteriorated from there. I was glad when the bell rang and Peter, who had appointed himself my mentor, informed me, with a grimace, that it was time for religious studies and we all had to go to the lunchroom.
    The whole school gathered in there, about four hundred children ranging in age from four to eleven, and all the teachers, and Catherine. The children seated themselves on the floor in age groups. Chairs were apparently considered an unnecessary expense; I wondered what they had done at lunchtime and decided I didn’t want to know. There weren’t any chairs for the teachers, either. We stood near our classes to keep an admonitory eye on them. Supervision was necessary; the children were bored and therefore restless.
    â€œThey don’t like this part, do they?” I murmured to Mrs. Beecham as they were settling.
    â€œNot much. It’s pretty bland, I have to say.