Authority decided that Michael's academic progress was such that it warranted him skipping a class, and going straight into the top year, when he was only nine years old.
Of course, he enjoyed all of the praise from his Dad, Mam and Nan. The downside was that he was no longer with Rob and Paul during lesson time.
"Teacher's pet!" Rob called him.
"Book worm!" said Paul.
He had Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare, with coloured pictures, for Christmas in 1943. He quite liked the stories but he preferred the Annuals he received.
"There's more to life than comics," Dad said.
Michael's favourite present that Christmas was a pair of roller-skates. In order to buy them, Gordon sold his cigarette ration for several months, to some of the men where he was stationed. He wanted Michael to have something really special as a present.
Uncle Frank was in the Army, in Ceylon. He sent Michael and Gwyn a box of lovely seashells.
Mam had bought a cheap collection of glass marbles. She'd got them from a woman who had advertised in the Lancaster Guardian. Michael and Glyn liked playing games of marbles against each other. When John offered to play 'for keeps' Michael declined. He knew all about John's skill at indoor games and he didn't want to see his collection rapidly becoming part of John's!
One of the blokes whom Dad was with in the Air Force sold him a stamp album with three hundred stamps in it. That was a super present and started him off on a new interest. It meant that he and John had another hobby which they shared.
Michael still enjoyed playing card games with John. Now that John had a small snooker table, the pair of them were learning to play yet another indoor game. As always, John usually won. Billiards was simpler but John was still the victor nearly every time.
"What exactly's wrong with John?" Michael asked his Dad.
"He was born with a weakness in his kidneys."
"What are your kidneys?"
"Look it up!"
"Why can't you tell me?"
"I don't know everything just because I'm your father. Anyway, you should learn how to use the encyclopedias. That's why I bought them."
The set of twelve heavy volumes, and a bookcase to put them in, had been a special Daily Herald promotional offer, which Gordon had somehow managed to afford for his children.
"The more learning you have the better!" he'd say. "You can't have too much of a good thing. Now, mind you wash your hands thoroughly before you handle those books. I don't want them to get dirty!"
John had a set of encyclopedias too. They were not the same as Michael's and Gwyn's. They were more grown-up.
One day, John said to Michael, "Have a look at this!" It came under the letter "R". It was a section on Reproduction. There was a drawing of a sow with piglets in its stomach. Michael had read some of the text and found it very interesting. Mrs Martin came into the room. "Can't you hear your mother calling you Michael?"
"No! Sorry, Mrs Martin. See you tomorrow John."
This new knowledge excited Michael. He asked his Mam, "Where do babies come from?" Margaret was not prepared for the question. Instead of answering it sensibly, she was overcome with embarrassment and blurted out, "Wherever did you get that question into your head?"
Sensing the possibility of a row like they always had, if he swore or used vulgar words, he replied, "From a book. John showed me a book all about it." There couldn't be anything wrong if it was in a book!
"Your tea's on the table. You can help yourself. I won't be long." She rushed off to see Mrs Martin, who was quite perplexed by Margaret's outburst of righteous indignation. Despite being bemused by her neighbour's words she accepted what she asked without question. The friends did not have an argument. She promised that John would not show the offending pages to Michael again.
When Mrs Martin told Mr Martin about it later, after a concerto had concluded on the wireless, she carried on knitting and ended by saying, "You have to make allowances. She never had a proper education like us." She was not being bitchy. She was very fond of Margaret. She had pondered the matter and it was the only reason she could think of for Margaret's peculiar reaction to Michael starting to learn what life was all about.
Mrs Martin was not the sort of person one would normally make tart comments about her neighbour or anyone else. But Margaret's reaction had seemed really bizarre to her. Her son, John, had not meant any harm, showing the drawings and letting Michael read what was in the book. What a fuss and all about nothing!
Usually, Margaret was delighted by her son's perpetual search for knowledge, his ability to absorb facts and remember them. Gordon was pleased when he came on leave and Michael was able to remember most of the Shakespeare stories.
"We're doing poetry at school now," he told his Dad. "It's great. We're learning 'Daffodils' by William Wordsworth and I know it already," he boasted smugly.
He recited it, putting expression into his voice, like Miss said they should, when the flowers danced in the poem. Gordon was amazed. Seeing Michael only at lengthy intervals, the leaps in his progress between his leaves seemed phemomenal.
The next day, when Michael came home from school, there was a slim volume of verse lying on the tea-table.
"For you! You deserve it for working hard," said his Dad. "I bought it at Wigley's bookshop, corner of Market Street. Hope you don't mind but I've had a read some of it myself this afternoon. There's some good ones in there."
It was a A Small Book of Verse for Girls and Boys.
"It's a cissy's book," Rob sneered when he came to tea on Sunday. "Only girls like poetry!"
Ryelands was a school with a progressive education ideas . The old idea of teaching the three 'R's' was far too narrow for Miss Fish, the formidable lady who had been appointed headmistress. There was to be a wide curriculum at her school!
The senior teacher was Miss Carter and Michael was with her for two years. There were never fewer than fifty in her class.
The desks were arranged formerly. Michael was quickly moved sideways across the room to the row where the so-called brighter children sat. Later, he moved from the back towards the front desk, where the two top of the class, he and a pretty, bespectacled girl, called Beryl, sat alongside each other. They hardly ever exchanged a word, except to borrow a rubber or pencil-sharpener from each other.
The latest taunt from Rob was a derisive, "He goes with girls!" Michael didn't want to be seen as being too friendly with Beryl.
Silence, was the order all morning, but there was some relaxation during the afternoons. Somehow, despite the large numbers, Miss Carter gave individual tuition in English and Arithmetic and organised small groups for readers who were all at the same level. They read round the group, corrected each other and only occasionally asked Miss Carter for guidance with an unfamiliar word.
Routine, organisation, fairnes, consistency and familiar boundaries were all part of a first-class learning environment.
They had singing, and playing percussion instruments, in the hall. Michael learned when to hit his triangle as he read music, from the large canvas sheet which Miss Carter hung upon the wall, while she played Schubert's 'Marche Militaire' on the piano.
They had country dancing in the winter, after they'd selected a pair of pumps out of the big box kept near the stage. They learned maypole dancing outside on the grass in the summer. None of the boys admitted to enjoying dancing with girls but they all did.
Michael and Rob had parts in a school production of Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol. The rest of the school watched it and neither of them forgot their lines. Both mothers were proud of how they performed.
They had a Carol Service at Christmas. All the little kids joined with the big kids for that.
Michael's class sang the sad, 'In The Deep Midwinter'.
The little kids, including Gwyn, sang 'Away In A Manger'.
Everybody finished off, by singing loudly,
'Good King Wenceslas'.
And Rob was in trouble for roaring,
"Good King Wenceslas
He looked out
Of his bedroom window
Silly fellow
He fell out
Of his bedroom window."
Rob didn't care. "It was worth it. We had a good laugh, didn't we lads?" It being Christmas, he got away with a telling-off.
They brought to school what old newspapers they could spare from the lighting of coal fires at home. They tore the newspapers up and mixed the shreds up with paste made from flour and water. They made papier mache bowls and let them dry on the classsroom radiators overnight. Then , in order to decorate them, they cut out and stuck coloured wallpaper, out of wall-paper pattern books, over the bowls.
"You've done a lovely job there," Dad said, when he came home on leave. He picked Michael's creation up from a stand in the hall in order to admire it. It was a source of wonder to his Dad that Michael was having painting, craft, modelling, dancing, nature study, percussion, writing stories, poems, making up prayers and lots of other things.
Michael found school exciting and exhilarating. None of his enthusiasm for playing seemed to affect his progress in 'proper' subjects.
"School's changed a bit since I was there," Gordon said ruefully, remembering the harridan who had patrolled the aisles of his childhood classroom. She'd belted pupils over the knuckles, with or without reason, using a heavy wooden ruler as she went past the desks.
Margaret reminded her husband, once again, that it was she who had insisted that they should buy a house near a nice school.
When he took Michael to bed, Michael whispered to Gordon,
"Dad, would you like to hear the prayer I made up? Miss Carter gave me a star for it."
"I certainly would. Has your Mam heard it?"
"Not yet!"
"And Gwyn?"
"No!"
"Shall I fetch them to hear it too?"
"If you like Dad."
Michael sat up in bed. Mam and Dad sat on the bed. Gwyn sat on Dad's lap.
"You've no need to put your hands together or anything," said Michael. Then he began,
Dear Lord,
Please look after my mother and father and sister, my friends and relations and all the people in the world. Please look after our soldiers, sailors and airmen and help them to win the war. Please help all the dead people. Please let me be a good boy who's always kind to other people.
For Jesus's sake,
Amen.
Then they all said, "Amen!"
It reminded Gordon of how he'd once had innocent faith when he was a lad before he became an apprentice at Williamson's and stopped going to church.
Margaret had never thought much about religion although she'd been determined to have a church wedding and have the children Christened. She thought Michael's prayer just lovely. It was obvious that the lessons at Sunday School were having a good effect upon him. Perhaps Michael would one day become a Sunday School Teacher just like that shy, young man, Gordon Jenkins, who lived down their road.
Very few things worried Michael at school and what happened there. There was a boy in the same class as he was. His name was Arthur Pilkington. He was a year older than Michael. Michael remembered him from Marton Street before the war. He'd lived near Nan. When they'd moved people out of the street, Nan had been given a house on Hareruns. Not far away, Arthur had moved into another Corporation house, with his parents and numerous brothers and sisters.
Arthur occupied the desk furthest away from Michael. In Gordon's day, he would have been called a dunce. Subsequently, he would have been labelled backward, slow-learner or pupil with special needs. Michael remembered him as the 'bottom of the class'.
He was a quiet lad with no friends. He was a big boy whose clothes were always either too small for him or too large. He was the only one in the class who wore clogs. He smelled, looked unwashed and his hair was dirty. The sleeves of his jacket had dried snot on them. He always had candles coming down his nostrils, winter and summer. His appearance wasn't much better than the Watsons' evacuees from Salford. He was late for school most mornings.
Rules were rules and Miss Fish's patience wore thin but ner snapped. For a few weeks there was a supply headmistress probably because Miss Fish was ill.
Warned several times about his lateness, Arthur was sent for by this headmistress one morning. He returned a few minutes later to his classroom sobbing.
"Go back to your place, Arthur," said Miss Carter quietly. There was a hush in the class as the children toiled over their sums. You could hear Arthur crying for a long time. There had always been a rumour that Miss Fish kept a cane. This was the first and only time that the children had evidence of it. Everyone felt diminished by what had happened.
Miss Carter would give a naughty child, very occasionally, a slap across a leg but it didn't hurt. That caning of Arthur was different. They say that the day a condemned man is executed in prison, the whole place is affected in a peculiar way. It was a bit like that in Michael's classroom after Arthur had been caned. Everyone was so subdued! It wasn't natural.
One Sunday, when Gordon was on leave, he took the children round to his mother's. He wanted to have a private talk with her so he sent the children out to play on The Green.
Arthur Pilkington came wandering past. Michael wasn't friendly with him at school but he had a special feeling for Arthur. He didn't like it when the other kids poked fun at him or said nasty things about him. It made him feel uneasy. Perhaps, it was because Nan and Arthur's mother had been friends. He knew that they were coming from the same place. Their roots were the same. "Never forget who you are!" his Dad was always telling Michael.
"Hello Arthur."
"Hello Michael."
He watched Michael and his sister, throwing a ball to each other, for a while. Timorously, he asked, "Would you like some conkers?"
"Yes, please!" Michael responded eagerly.
Arthur had a bag full of them. "You can have six. Gwyn can have some too.I've got lots. I know where there's a good tree. It's full of them. It's down Barley Cop Lane. Do you want to come and see?"
Just then, Gordon called the children in to say goodbye to Nan. "Thanks Arthur. We've got to go. See you at school tomorrow!"
Gordon had seen what went on. He told Michael, "You should be kind to Arthur. He doesn't have it easy. I used to know his mother when she was young. Arthur's father's not good to her. She was a nice little girl. Her life is a hard one." Almost to himself, he murmured, "Life isn't fair. You never can tell what might be in store for you. She deserves better."
After that, Michael always tried to have a word with Arthur at playtime. Rob didn't approve and sneered but Michael didn't care. He didn't always do what Rob wanted especially if it contradicted whatb his father had told him. There was no harm in Arthur. He couldn't help it, if they sent him to school late. He couldn't help it, if he had lousy clothes to wear.
Britain was winning the war in North Africa. The Russians were stopping the Germans invading any more of Russia and sending them back home. The Americans were turning the tide against the Japanese. Optimism was in the air. People became convinced that victory would be theirs. 1943 was turning-out to be a good year.
Margaret was summoned to the school. Should Michael be allowed to sit for a scholarship for the Grammar School a year early? Miss Fish and Miss Carter were confident he would pass. Margaret said she'd have to write to her husband and ask him. Gordon wrote back, no, he thought that Michael was too young.
Dad was right. Staying at Ryelands School for that extra year was brilliant. Michael had one of the best year's of his life.
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