Miss Purdy's Class Read Online Free PDF Page A

the desk, hidden behind a curtain of dark hair.
    ‘Ron Parks?’
    ‘Yes, Miss.’ She caught Ron in mid-grin towards one of his pals. His teeth – surely she’d been mistaken? They looked black – the whole lot of them! It must be the light, she decided.
    ‘Joseph Phillips?’
    A sullen, tight voice. ‘Yes, Miss.’ She looked up to see the boy with the pinched features who looked angry with the whole world.
    Towards the end, when she read out ‘Alice Wilson’ and received a timid ‘Yes, Miss,’ the reply came from a girl on the far right, under the window, staring across at her in a slightly vacant manner. She had long blonde plaits and looked startlingly clean and well dressed compared with many of the others, almost like little Heidi off the alp. Taking in the sight of her charges, Gwen saw what a pale-faced, poorly dressed group of children they were. She was just starting to feel tender towards them when a ragged sound burst into the room and most of the children erupted into laughter, all watching their new teacher to see how she would react.
    ‘Jack’s farted, Miss!’ one of them informed her.
    ‘Where e’er you be, let wind go free!’ Ron cried, beaming. Startled, Gwen realized she hadn’t been mistaken. The boy had the blackest, most rotten set of teeth she had ever seen.
    She stood composed, not a hint of amusement on her face, waiting for the laughter to run its course.
    ‘Have you quite finished?’ They stared back at her, some nodding. The boy in the back row was scratching himself frantically. ‘Good. I should think so. Now let’s get on with our lesson.’
    She handed out exercise books and got the children to write their names on them, appointed someone to recharge the inkwells and got every child to check the nib on the cheap wooden pens which were lodged in the groove at the front of the double desks. These desks, each attached by an iron runner to a hard-backed bench, were crammed into the room in tight rows. There were a couple of framed pictures on the walls, one of a road with trees on either side, and one of the king.
    We’ll need to get this brightened up a bit , Gwen thought, remembering the church schoolroom she had taught in before with her children’s paintings stuck up all round the room. ‘Her children’ was how she had thought of them. And there had only been half as many!
    All morning she was taut with nerves, on the verge of thinking she couldn’t manage, would never be able to teach these children anything. She couldn’t even understand what half of them were saying , when the Birmingham accent was combined with lisps or missing teeth or adenoidal pronunciation. By the time the dinner hour came and the green and white tickets were handed out, she had struggled through arithmetic, a spelling test and getting them to write a letter. She wanted to get the measure of them, who was able and who not. But her head was throbbing and she wondered how she was going to make it through the rest of the day.
    ‘So – you’re the new girl are you?’
    Gwen saw the smiling face of the ginger-haired teacher waiting for her as she followed the last of the children out of the class at midday, some to run home, others to stay for the school dinners.
    ‘I’m Miss Dawson,’ she said in a soft Birmingham accent. ‘Millie. Nice to see someone else who doesn’t look as if they’ve come out of the ark!’ She giggled, and Gwen could only join in, feeling cheered already. ‘I gather you were late in. Did Glowery-Lowery whip you by any chance? He rather enjoys whipping people, I’m afraid. D’you want to come to the staffroom for dinner? You can meet the gargoyles in there.’
    ‘Yes . . .’ Gwen hesitated. She already liked Millie, with her friendly, freckly face. ‘Only I didn’t think to bring any food.’
    ‘Oh, never mind. My mother sends me off with enough for six every day. Come and have some of mine. So – how were the little demons this morning?’
    ‘It’s not