11 Miss Jones and the blessed meek

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
The 5th Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew 5-7 Bible (ESV)

Starting nursery school is probably the most radical intrusion into the early, relatively uncluttered life of every child. Time does not impose its unreality upon us until we start running out of it. By then, we are far away from the timeless, childlike world of spirits and spirituality. When we are small, we can magic away the here-and-now and thrive in never-never-land, where everyone stays the same age and even inanimate objects have minds of their own. In our early innocence, we are skilled at stretching and shrinking the hours. There is no past and no future. Our present day ticks until bedtime puts an end to our consciousness. Our chronological barriers are restricted to sleeping-time and waking-time, and even they are often blurred.

One of the sternest adult reproaches is that of having wasted one’s own time, or somebody else’s. But that feeling is unknown to children, whose time is all their own. Throughout our later lives we seek to recapture that early timelessness whenever we do something in our ‘own’ time. Our hobbies and amusements are not measured on the same time scale as what we call ‘work’. An hour waiting for a bus is a waste of time, whereas an hour walking in the woods is not.

The most timeless and spacious thing on earth is at the same time the most rational and spatial,  abstract and intangible: Music.

“If music be the food of life, play on”
William Shakespeare Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3

The new-born child sings before it becomes conscious of its surroundings. A mother intones melodies evolved in the eons before her own birth and passed down from generation to generation. But if we are all born to sing, civilization has seen to it that most of us surrender this birth-right almost immediately.

Only the congenitally deaf can truly say that they do not experience music in its recognisable form, and that said, how do we know that they really hear nothing at all? Are there not sounds within the inner ear that are sometimes like music? And do not even the profoundly deaf sense rhythm and vibration in everything they touch?

The most famous example of being led by inner voices is probably Joan of Arc, who felt impelled to save France. She listened to her voices. Do evil people ignore voices commanding rational thought, justice and mercy? What makes someone commit evil deeds? What kind of compulsion is responsible?

If we talk to ourselves when we feel unobserved, do we not also have the facility to make music in the same way? Do we not hum to ourselves when we are walking along, break into snippets of our favourite songs or musical themes, even inventing tunes as we go?

Who can honestly say ‘nonsense’ to all of this?

Almost no form of entertainment can manage without music. If you turned the music off, some people might not know what was missing, but they would know that something was not there. Music can stimulate, soothe and appease in a way no words are able to. Every culture, every tradition, every religion, has its music. From birth to death, we human beings are serenaded, whether we are listening or not.

There is no intentional music in the animal world. The definition ‘bird-song’ is technically inaccurate, since birds whistle, rather than sing. But then, life and death in the animal world do not have the same time dimensions as in ours, either.

Homo sapiens is the only species to have invented a time-piece in order to be able to measure what must happen when, to say how young or old a person is, to judge his capabilities, even to appraise his worthiness on the grounds that he is too young  or too old.

The world is an eternal and timeless mystery to a child; it is only the imposition of the adult interpretation of time that has the capacity to destroy this secret relationship between the child and his universe.

Starting school involves the imposition of time upon the loose structure of a child’s life that was previously governed by the demands of food, play and sleep. Piecemeal, the biological chronology is from now on eaten into until little of it remains. When we reach that point, we are likely to think that we are free of the bondage of childhood.

I like going to nursery school, because there is non-stop entertainment of some sort or other. The only really boring part is having to lie down after the midday meal, which usually consists of some kind gruel eaten out of a deep bowl with a spoon, not just because most of us can only handle a spoon, but also because knives and forks could be used in combat. The gruel is usually sweet, so it is quite palatable. I’m not really interested in food, except on Pancake Day.

Another reason I have decided life is fairly tolerable beyond the garden gate is that I have the good fortune not to be in Auntie Ada’s class, as she doesn’t teach infant infants like me. Sometimes I hear her yelling and screaming at her class of second year infants for doing something she doesn’t want them to do and rejoice that I am spared her wrath. I endure the gruel and midday naps with fairly good grace and am in no hurry to be considered ready for the stricter regime across the corridor, so I take great trouble not to appear precocious and know-all, which is what Auntie Ada says I am on Sundays when we go to tea and I tell her rice is not a vegetable. Mama has told me that on many an occasion. She doesn’t approve of rice and potatoes on the same plate and neither do I. Rice is for puddings.

My starting school is a blessing for Mama, whose favourite holiday saying is ‘teacher’s rest, mother’s pest’, though that does not apply to me, since I am obedient, if only to avoid her wrath and afford myself a peaceful life. It’s easier not to argue with Mama. Nobody in his right mind does.

I now have a baby brother, my sister having once again disappointed me bitterly. School gets me out of the house from under Mama’s feet for a few hours every day on a regular basis, which is different from the come-as-you-please attitude taken in the ad hoc play group I attended now and again when someone had time to take me there. Anyway, the play group was stupid.

I do not yet know what jealousy is, but I am learning fast, and it isn’t long before Mama engenders in me the darkest feelings I am ever to experience, feelings of being unwanted because now there is my brother to fill in the emotional gaps I seem to be more talented at creating than filling.

Auntie Ada is Dada’s youngest sister. He often denies any fraternal responsibility for her. I think that is because she has had a frivolous youth (about which I overheard things) and refuses to wear stockings even when temperatures drop below freezing point. Her realm is the second year pre-school class, over which she reigns with an iron fist and a sarcasm that is incomprehensible to her charges, though her jarring voice and smoke-filled breath makes them wince. Though she is tiny as grownups go, she behaves in what I understand to be a grownup fashion. I can’t remember ever seeing her relaxing without a filter-free cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth so that her eyes are permanently screwed up. She towers above me and I am irrationally fearful of her, though Dada assures me that her bark is worse than her bite.

She and her rusty bicycle, which is often loaded with farm produce that she supplies to other teachers, now collect me for school every morning, since our house is between the farm and the infant school. Along the way, I listen to the same sermon every morning about behaving myself so as not to inconvenience anyone or annoy her personally and put her to shame, the former of which would seem to be the lesser of the two evils.

Though her teaching methods are antiquated by modern standards, she is thorough and impartial. Herself a spinster, she is contemptuous of the opposite sex, of whom she can tolerate only one individual, as I understand it, apart from family, who cannot be avoided. The man’s name is George and he is very gay, Dada told Mama, so I expect Auntie Ada enjoys going to his parties. Auntie Ada is independent. She thrives on the financial rewards of her job and the respect it brings her in the community, though, like so many others in her profession, she overtly dislikes children.

This I already knew, of course, because I have had dealings with her more or less from the word go, when she used my cradle as an ash-tray and thought nothing of tramping around while I was asleep, coughing from the base of her lungs and muttering mild to middling obscenities under her breath.

Unfortunately, despite all my efforts to be inconspicuous, I am not allowed to stay in the baby class for long. I am giving too many clever answers and am able to do all the things you are supposed to learn there, so to my disgust I am moved up a class, which entails losing Mrs Humphries, a nice lady who really cares about us and smiles all day, and gaining grumpy, unsmiling, tobacco-perfumed Auntie Ada - all day long from now on, not just on the walk to school.

Setting myself behavioural patterns that are to last me a lifetime, many of which are based on a fear of making mistakes for which I could be punished; I appear to listen to everything she says as though she were an oracle. In fact, I am developing an irrational subservience to people in positions of authority as well as to anyone with any kind of self-imposed authority. I tend to believe every word that is said to me, obey every command and, most vital of all in Auntie Ada’s eyes, I learn not to speak out of turn. My instinct for self-preservation is already well-developed.

‘Blessed are the meek’ is part of our daily prayers in the smelly old building on the main road leading east from Wales into England. Blessed am I, with my apparent meekness, kept in place by that Darwinian feature that has stood its stead through the ages: the survival of the fittest.

I take part in her regimented classroom activities while privately deciding that they are remarkably childish, and wondering why Miss Jones, as Auntie Ada insists I call her for fear of being accused of favouring me (as if she would), seems to enjoy them more than we children do. It is as if playing silly games transports her back into her own childhood, though we are not fooled, because every now and again she calls someone to order. Cheating is strictly forbidden.

In the rest periods, which are mainly designed to allow Miss Jones to sneak out into the corridor for a drag or two on an unfiltered cigarette, I obediently turn the pages of the well-thumbed picture books, though they are dreadful compared with Mama’s glossy encyclopaedias that occupy me for long, silent, contemplative hours at home.

In fact I don’t think much of anything on offer in that drab, dark classroom, not least because I am constantly reminded of my peculiar position in the class as a relative of the teacher. Even if there were a reason to, enjoying being there would be out of the question in this rarefied atmosphere somewhere between privilege and deprivation. Admittedly, I am disdainful about the nature of the diversions.

On the other hand, I have already deduced from Mama’s frequent rebukes that enjoyment is sinful if it attracts disapproval and I, with my sacred name, would not want to be a sinner, now would I?

Not surprisingly, I also learn the value of being able to put on a convincing theatre act at a very early age, and it is not long before I even start performing to audiences who have gathered for the express purpose of watching me. That is when I realise that I have a certain mystical power of my own and must learn to use it to the best effect. I cannot say I am exactly stage-struck at the tender age of 4, but I am drawn to performing as an insect is drawn to light.