Finite Geometry
By: Lise Colas
Tags: Childhood, Memories, History, Fiction, Life Lessons

In primary school we learnt about dust, ice and gas forming rock-shapes. These rocks often exploded, crashing into other flying rocks, before snowballing to create planets and much later a whole universe. The idea of a universe had always troubled me, that big playing field full of meaningless chaos with a huge mocking ‘why?’ at its centre.

Mr Cromarty, who was our science teacher as well as the deputy head of the school, was keen on making us sit through Apollo moon landings. He explained how clever engineers made the pictures we were seeing the right way up, as if space was a looking-glass world. Watching those broadcasts in a digest format, not live of course, was as tedious as school assembly. Some just sat there staring at the screen, secretly hoping cartoon characters from a cereal advert might pop up out of the blue. Anything to break the monotony of that grainy floating world where white blurry figures bounced around like clumsy marionettes.

No, I wasn’t exactly enamoured by the idea of space, but something interesting did occur in my circumscribed world the following summer, making me think that sparkly rocks spinning madly around and becoming forever fixed together wasn’t just some expired activity from the chaotic playing field of a long ago cosmos.

I had just turned nine and was beginning to acknowledge that there were certain ordered seasons to life. Miss Laylor came with the May blossom. A newly-qualified teacher, she was young and different. Sea-green eyes, long fair hair with sun-bleached strands, held back by a mother of pearl clip. She wore a modest tunic dress over a silky-knit sweater and her silhouette was as slender and graceful as the young sycamores by the school gates. We were used to the concept of Miss Bacon — shouty and barrel-shaped, thick lenses flashing in bursts of irritation, expression eternally fixed in an orbit of disapproval. Having learnt about a Mr Bacon (often quoted by Mr Cromarty) who was very clever at everything and wore a ruff, it soon became apparent to me that our Miss Bacon was an entirely different configuration. Her bedrock was moulded from blackboard duster detritus and forests of red ballpoint pens mulched into an eternal grudge.

As for Miss Laylor, well she seemed like the rosy light of dawn obscured by iron grey clouds. Mr Potts the janitor, after being taken to task by Miss Bacon about his method of stacking chairs, was overheard muttering that it was about time the old war horse was put out to grass. The janitor’s grouchy aside was soon everywhere, spiralling out of control, becoming rock-solid confirmation of Miss Bacon’s imminent retirement. A week later, as if unbalanced by these flying rumours, Miss Bacon happened to slip on some custard skin lying on the floor of the canteen and injured her coccyx. Mr Cromarty being scientifically minded, thought to inform us of the precise nature of this minor spinal injury. In order to recover fully, she was advised to take the rest of the term off.

Miss Laylor would no longer be a distant, tantalising prospect like the planet Mercury, sitting on the sidelines, observing and helping out in certain instances, including the usual Friday spelling test everyone loathed. The petite and charming novice was deemed proficient enough to take over the class at short notice.

As Miss Bacon gradually sank below the horizon, it soon became a whole summer of Miss Laylor. How we relished her smiles, her sweet voice, ever so slight teasing on occasions, which was a huge novelty. Even the irrepressible Gordon Peck was under her spell. Miss Laylor set topics for us on ‘The Post Office’ and ‘The Tudors and Stuarts’. We had to assemble little essays and pictures inside card folders prompted by work sheets printed in pungent violet ink. I was awarded a silver star for my picture of Mary Queen of Scots on a scaffold about to be beheaded in front of a jeering crowd.

The nature table under Miss Laylor’s supervision, became a spread of wonders. A twisted tree branch with fungi attached, ancient fossils from a trip to Dorset, an unusually-shaped carrot (on loan from Mr Potts) a Viking’s button, a squirrel’s skull, a shard of oriental pottery and a deserted bird’s nest. The class stick insect was another new acquisition. It lived in an enormous tank along with some twigs for which it was often mistaken. The prisoner could be taken out for exercise on certain occasions and its dignified but limited promenade across the palms of the hand was more exciting to watch than a whole bunch of moon walks. The poor thing didn’t last for long though.

We didn’t know it, but Miss Laylor was on a collision course, a slow but inevitable one. The object of that collision was next door, in charge of Class 9a, the higher stream. Mr Fairlight, tall, good-looking, hair the colour of ripe wheat and a keen amateur cricketer. His wife had just had a baby. In fact there seemed to be a lot of Fairlights in descending order, rather like the children in ‘The Sound of Music’. Mr Fairlight drove an MG sports car which many of the older boys drooled over during break time, especially when the hood was down. On one notable occasion, Peter Akehurst cut his hand badly on a toilet door in the girls’ lavatory while playing chase and was taken to hospital in the MG, his hand bound with paper towels, and everyone was green with envy. Some even wondered what dreadful accident they could come up with which would earn them a trip in Mr Fairlight’s car.

Yes, Miss Laylor and Mr Fairlight. Their names went beautifully together and they could almost be mistaken for brother and sister, their colouring was so similar, but this sibling comparison soon became inappropriate. There were small things at first, captured and noted by curious, eager eyes.

The malfunctioning whistle during a fire drill, resulting in Miss Laylor’s rose-blush as Mr Fairlight stepped over to examine and blow into it experimentally, while said whistle was still hanging around her neck on a knotted cord of green webbing. During the fortnight of the Playground Supervisor Shortage, both of them were seen idly chatting at the head of the queue for first sitting, when their attention should have been on Gary Mullins right at the end, lobbing a huge stony clod of earth into the school pond.

Mr Fairlight would soon be creating rings of his own to rival those of the lobbed clod. Popping into Miss Laylor’s classroom at least twice a day, helping out with slide projectors and screens, carrying away boxes of moribund textbooks relied on by Miss Bacon, or just asking how things were going. In turn we would examine Miss Laylor’s face, finding reflections of pleasure, amusement and sometimes mild annoyance.

I once saw both of them camouflaged by dappled shadow near the stagnant school pond. He was using a twig to remove a stray caterpillar as fat as a catkin, that had landed on her print blouse — taking more trouble over it than he had with the faulty whistle. Mrs Pett and Mrs Hunt, two recently recruited supervisors were on a tour of duty nearby. “He’s paying court again!” I heard one of them mutter. I wondered what this meant, what exactly was being paid and to whom. Perhaps it wasn’t just lovey-dovey stuff, after all.

Gary Mullins came up to me shortly after Mrs Pett had rung the handbell for second sitting, asking if I wanted to go and ‘take a look’ at the old sports pavilion on the far edge of the playing field. I wasn’t keen on boys who mucked about and Gary, who was in the year above, was known for bottom-pinching and putting his tongue in your ear, if you weren’t careful, or that’s what Susan Jeffreys said. After she was caught stealing popsicles from the corner shop, I wondered if it was true.

There was a lot of history attached to the old sports pavilion, built in the 1920’s to commemorate the eldest son of a local tradesman who had died of something called influenza. When the war was on, they had held lessons inside during air raids. I never quite understood how a wooden structure with a veranda would offer protection from bombs dropped from the sky, but I never queried. It was also rumoured to be haunted, but by what exactly, wasn’t clear either. A headless dog was often seen running around at twilight, according to Gary. His house was on the Hay Lane estate nearby and he often boasted about climbing over the wire fence at the back by the patch of nettles, in order to mooch around — blithely ignoring the ‘No Trespassing’ sign.

I wouldn’t have gone with him, but having just been pinioned face down on the grass by Paula Bishop, keen to follow her half-sister into the police force and who, during that lunch hour, was finding me an exceptionally easy victim to practice her feats of restraint on, I thought I may as well.

Gary wiped at the window pane with the cuff of his pullover and we both peered inside. There seemed to be piles of boxes to the left and a low bench running along the wall opposite. On a peg above it, there was a plimsoll bag, left dangling. I pointed it out to him. This was enough to warrant further investigation, so Gary put his shoulder to the door, giving it a shove and it creaked open, just wide enough to let us squeeze through. It was very dusty inside. A shabby partition cordoned off a portion of the space. Stacked against this, beside a collection of old paint tins were various pieces of junk.

“What’s that funny green clock face with the pointy nose?” I asked. Gary picked it up. It had Roman numerals carved around the edges with the inscription. ‘The Lord Seeth Everything.’

“It’s not a clock face, silly — it’s part of the old sun dial from the Lower Quad and the green stuff is verdigris.” After looking at it for a while he put it back, turning it around so it faced the wall.

I went over to the plimsoll bag. It looked as if it had been hung there only a moment ago, but seemed very old. The faded blue and yellow fabric had a pattern of planets and stars. I took it down from its peg and opened it, drawing its mouth wide. There was a fusty old textbook entitled ‘Frobisher’s Grammar’ and a tobacco tin containing a compass, a metal protractor and a marble. I laid the items out on the bench and soon Gary came over to have a look.

The last item was a dark green exercise book with ‘Finite Geometry’ scrawled on the cover in black ink. Inside on squared paper was a strange hand-drawn diagram with lines radiating outwards with arrows entitled ‘Figure No 1: The Order of Planes.’ Scribbled in the margin next to it was a list of items, the sort of list you make before going somewhere. ‘Shirts, plain jerseys, vests (worsted), braces, mackintosh squares, gas mask.’ I shuddered at the mention of ‘braces’, ‘mackintosh squares’ and ‘gas mask’ — they sounded creepy. I wanted to put everything back after that. Gary was examining the twisted grey and blue iris inside the marble’s sphere. “Nice one. Finders, keepers.” He put it in his pocket.

I was just hooking the bag back onto its peg, when voices drifted in from the veranda outside. Gary grabbed me by the arm and steered me towards a gap at the far side of the partition, pushing me through. We crouched behind it, barely daring to breathe.

The door creaked open and voices spilled over the threshold. Soon we could hear feet scraping on the boards. Two people had entered the pavilion. It soon became clear who they were.

“Darling we must talk — “

“Why here?”

“Because it’s the only place I can think of — it’s like the end of the bloody earth.”

There was a pause and the sound of a muffled sigh. Then rather moist clicking sounds ensued, like a slow patter of rain, which I soon realised were kisses, one after the other.

I closed my eyes, screwing up my face. I could picture them together, Miss Laylor and Mr Fairlight, in a tight embrace, her face pressed into his creating a heart-shape. There was another sigh.

“We can’t do this — it’s not right. What about Helena?” said Miss Laylor.

“I’ll think of something. I can settle all this. She’s gone to see her parents, anyhow. She knows it’s practically over between us.’’

“And the children?”

“Oh — they’ll survive.”

“This is madness.”

“Yes — isn’t it just? But I do love you — “

There followed more sloppy noises. I opened my eyes and looked over at Gary. His face was white, perhaps with fear of being discovered or disgust, I wasn’t quite sure. The partition between us and this canoodling couple was pretty flimsy. In the distance could be heard the relentless drill of the school bell, our saviour, signalling the end of the lunch break.

“See you at the Evening Star at six,” murmured Mr Fairlight. Miss Laylor did not reply and I heard a light scuffing noise as she stepped out onto the veranda. After a heavy sigh, he followed.

We waited a good ten minutes before creeping out. “Wow — that was close,” said Gary, and he whistled. I kept my head down as I hurried along, thoughts colliding off each other like meteors.

My memories of Miss Laylor are like random pictures glued into a poorly arranged topic folder, but there is one comedy short, spooling around, shot in 8mm black and white. During an athletics session, in the run up to Sports Day, she was the one who persuaded me to ‘at least try’ the hated high jump. I noticed Mr Fairlight standing by her side in his cricket whites. I took a running jump and there was the usual dull clang and there I was, looking up at the sky as usual, but something had gone wrong. I had in fact tripped and hit my head on the metal bar. The world seemed to be turning at an awfully fast rate. The concerned faces of Miss Laylor and Mr Fairlight hovered above me, almost merging as one. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was taken away in an ambulance, something that hadn’t happened since Brian Pilbeam had cracked his head open on the brick steps of the Lower Quad.

The other memory is one of sitting cross-legged on the grass beside Miss Laylor. The side of my forehead still bore the stitches from my high jump fiasco. She was seated on a wooden chair, filling in end of term school reports. There was a rounders match going on, but I was allowed to sit this one out, like a soldier wounded in battle. I felt privileged being able to watch her pen scribble away marking the paper with her forward-sloping script with all those delightful loops and she’d glance sideways and smile at me from time to time. Her hair was tied back and she wore a floppy sun hat, a white cheesecloth shirt with a paisley patterned skirt and fawn slingback sandals and I noticed how the loosened heel strap of one of them swung free from her slender foot.

That is where the memories end, the rest of the folder is blank. When I returned to school after the summer holidays, in my new blazer and pleated skirt that felt itchy and far too hot, Miss Laylor and Mr Fairlight were gone. Teachers often came and went, but two at once was somehow odd. No mention was made of it. Miss Bacon came back, although thankfully removed to a distant galaxy, teaching infants at the annexe over the road.

It was sad to see Miss Laylor’s nature table being dismantled and taken away by Mr Potts, no doubt to be deposited in the sports pavilion along with the forgotten sun dial. Her former classroom was turned into a music room, soon made unrecognisable with the clutter of recorders, fusty violin cases, tambourines and boxes of carol sheets as well as a piano. No-one ever seemed to go in there and it felt like a mausoleum.

For my final year, I’d moved up a stream and was in Mr Aitken’s class in the new flat-roofed extension. Mr Aitken, a balding man with a sad droopy moustache, drove a beat up Mini-Clubman with a brown stripe that was now parked over the dark splotch of oil left behind by Mr Fairlight’s MG only a few months ago. Of course at school, a few months could feel as long as years in space.

Yet the sudden disappearance of Miss Laylor and Mr Fairlight wasn’t a complete surprise. A final postcard, tucked away in the album and almost forgotten, has fallen out.

In late July, just over a week into the summer holidays, I was standing under an awning by the parade of shops at the top of Spinney Drive. I was with Paula Bishop and we’d just been to buy ice creams from the VG shop, when a car came by and stopped alongside the pillar box near the kerb. I knew that pillar box well — recently repainted a jammy red and emblazoned with the initials ‘GR’, it had featured in my school topic. I had even calculated the number of postman steps between it and the Post Office. Anyway, the car happened to be Mr Fairlight’s MG, fairly unmistakable. A young woman wearing sunglasses, a blue halter top and mini skirt and looking very like Miss Laylor, got out of the passenger seat. In her hand were clasped two white envelopes which disappeared inside the pillar box’s anguished-looking mouth. She then quickly got back into the car. She didn’t notice us standing there, a few yards away. I could see Mr Fairlight at the wheel, his forearms looked bronzed. I wondered if they’d been on a trip somewhere. Soon the car roared off down the hill, in a cloud of golden dust. Paula and I just glanced at each other then went back to licking the drops of fast-melting ice cream from the rim of our cones.

In the early weeks of that new term, before the sycamores began to shed, leaving their starry carpet of red and gold by the school gates, we grew alum crystals in jam jars, suspended from pencils. My crystal had a sweet little pitched roof sheltering lots of layers inside. I named it ‘Laylor’.

I never realised it at the time, but Mr Cromarty’s enthusiasm for space exploration must have gone silent during the Apollo 13 mission. Perhaps he thought it best we shouldn’t know how they never landed on the moon and returned after just six days. On the early evening news I vaguely recall images of one of the astronauts being scooped up from a little pod that looked like a shuttlecock tossed around on a choppy sea. I wondered what all the fuss was about. I had no inkling of the drama that had played out behind the scenes and that lives had been in peril. No matter, I had managed to grasp the tail of a very different kind of drama closer to home, just as astonishing, which left behind souvenirs as fragile as my imperfectly formed alum crystal clinging to a thread. Fragments from a drama in free fall, concerning two popular teachers who blasted off into the firmament and were never spoken of again. I do wonder to this day if they ever came back to earth.

**