Sins Out of School Read Free Page A

One-size-fits-all religion, you know.”
    â€œOh. I thought it would be Church of England.”
    â€œNo, nondenominational. Not even necessarily Christian. A lot of the children are Indian or Pakistani, therefore probably Hindu or Muslim. There’s a fair sprinkling of Buddhists, too, amongst the Chinese. And the Japanese—Masako, turn around and pay attention! Mrs. Woodley is about to begin!”
    The session seemed harmless enough, even fun. With the Christmas holidays drawing near, the children were learning several carols and sang them lustily, if not particularly tunefully. King’s College they weren’t, but at least they worked off some of their excess energy.
    â€œI don’t see why they don’t enjoy this,” I said to Mrs. Beecham. We had drawn a little away from the children, into a niche where we could talk without disturbing the practice.
    â€œOnly because it’s required, I suspect. And of course most of the time it isn’t music, but watered-down platitudes. Pretty useless, really, and the children know it. You can’t fool them.”
    â€œI would have thought some genuine comparative religion would be better than vanilla-flavored piety. Or else nothing at all. Of course, as an American, I don’t think a public school—sorry, a state school—is the place to teach religion. The home, the church, yes, or else a denominational school.”
    â€œAnd those can be ghastly, believe me.” Mrs. Beecham spoke with passion. I looked at her with surprise.
    She drew a deep breath. “You asked me what was so dreadful about Amanda’s husband? Well, aside from being a bully and all-round nasty piece of work, he’s a religious fanatic, some frightful nonconformist sect. He makes their daughter go to the school run by these raving loonies, and Amanda has to go to the church. Twice on Sundays, and then there’s Wednesday nights, weekend prayer meetings, mission meetings, Bible study meetings—the woman can’t call her soul her own!”
    â€œIt does sound a bit much,” I said mildly. The singing paused. I glanced at my charges and hurried over to have a word with Fiona, who was about to drop a marble down the neck of the rather dim-looking little boy in front of her.
    â€œWhy doesn’t she rebel?” I asked when I rejoined Mrs. Beecham. “Surely she could simply refuse to do some of these things. Maybe she enjoys it.”
    â€œShe hates it. She tells me that, but she can’t tell him. She’s a submissive sort of woman, always has been, I’d say, and he’s worked on that, beaten her down until she doesn’t dare defy him.”
    â€œYou don’t mean he abuses her?”
    â€œNot physically, but words can hurt. And attitudes. He’s a harsh, cruel man, and why she ever married him, I can’t imagine. He wouldn’t even let her work if they didn’t need the money so badly.”
    â€œDoesn’t he have a job?”
    â€œBank clerk. Terribly respectable and all that, but there’s not much money in it.”
    â€œI’d think she’d leave him. She’d have only a little money, but it would surely be better than living under such oppression.”
    â€œThere’s some reason why she doesn’t. I’ve never been able to get her to tell me what, she just sidesteps the issue, but it’s almost as if he has some sort of hold over her.”
    â€œWell, maybe. But abused women often refuse to leave their abusers, and what she’s suffering is certainly abuse, even if it’s not physical.”
    â€œBut Amanda’s not that type. Besides, from what I’ve read about abused women, they also defend their men, say he really loves them, all that rot. Amanda never defends John. Quite the opposite, she—whoops!”
    Mrs. Beecham rushed over to intervene in a pushing match, and by the time she’d separated the combatants and persuaded them to