The Copper Beech Read Online Free PDF Page A

well get professions, as might little Nuala Ryan from the hotel. But it was only too obvious that the Dunnes and Brennans would say goodbye to any hopes of education once they left this school. They would be on the boat abroad or into the town to get whatever was on offer for children of fourteen years of age.
    They all looked the same at five, however. There was nothing except the difference of clothing to mark out thosewho would have the money to go further and those who would not.
    Before she had gone into the school Maddy Ross barely noticed the children of her own place. Now she knew everything about them, the ones that sniffled and seemed upset, the ones who thought they could run the place, those that had the doorsteps of sandwiches for their lunch, those who had nothing at all. There were children who clung to her and told her everything about themselves and their families, and there were those who hung back.
    She had never known that there would be a great joy in seeing a child work out for himself the letters of a simple sentence and read it aloud, or in watching a girl who had bitten her pencil to a stub suddenly realise how you did the great long tots or the subtraction sums. Each day it was a pleasure to point to the map of Ireland with a long stick and hear them chant the places out.
    ‘What are the main towns of County Cavan? All right. All together now. Cavan, Cootehill, Virginia …’ all in a sing-song voice.
    There were two cloakrooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. They smelled of Jeyes Fluid, as the master obviously poured it liberally in the evenings when the children had left.
    It would have been a bleak little place had it not been for the huge copper beech which dwarfed it and looked as if it was holding the school under its protective arm. Like she felt safe in Barna Woods as a child, Maddy felt safe with this tree. It marked the seasons with its colouring and its leaves.
    The days passed easily, each one very much like that which had gone before. Madeleine Ross made big cardboard charts to entertain the children. She had pictures of the flowers she collected in Barna Woods, and she sometimespressed the flowers as well and wrote their names underneath. Every day the children in Shancarrig school sat in their little wooden desks and repeated the names of the ferns, and foxgloves, cowslips and primroses and ivies. Then they would look at the pictures of St Patrick and St Brigid and St Colmcille and chant their names too.
    Maddy made sure that they remembered the saints as well as the flowers.
    The saints were higher on Father Gunn’s list of priorities. Father Gunn was a very nice curate. He had little whirly glasses, like looking through the bottom of a lemonade bottle. Now the school manager he was a frequent visitor – he had to guard the faith and morals of the future parishioners of Shancarrig. But Father Gunn liked flowers and trees too, and he was always kind and supportive to the Junior Assistant Mistress.
    Maddy wondered how old he was. With priests, as with nuns, it was always so hard to know. One day he unexpectedly told her how old he was. He said he was born on the day the Treaty was signed in 1921.
    ‘I’m as old as the State,’ he said proudly. ‘I hope we’ll both live for ever.’
    ‘It’s good to hear you saying that, Father.’ Maddy was arranging a nature display in the window. ‘It shows you enjoy life. Mother is always saying that she can’t get her wings soon enough.’
    ‘Wings!’ The priest was puzzled.
    ‘It’s her way of saying she’d like to be in heaven with God. She talks about it quite a lot.’
    Father Gunn seemed at a loss for words. ‘It’s wholly admirable, of course, to see this world only as a shadow of the heavenly bliss Our Father has prepared for us but …’
    ‘But Mother’s only just gone fifty. It’s a bit soon to be thinking about it already, isn’t it?’ Maddy helped him out.
    He nodded gratefully, ‘Of course, I’m