The Marshal's Own Case Read Online Free PDF Page B

did, the minute he got inside he felt like a pupil again and started worrying about his own behaviour instead of his children’s. Just the smell of the place was enough to make him feel eleven years old and teachers half his age could make him feel inadequate. Maybe people who’d been clever at school didn’t feel like that. The tall woman with glasses who seemed to be canvassing the parents in all the queues over some issue or other obviously didn’t feel the way he did.
    ‘If we don’t get any satisfaction from the director of the school I’m prepared to take it further . . .’
    It was bad enough facing the teachers, never mind the director whom the Marshal had never even seen!
    ‘There must be a gymnasium nearer than that. By half past twelve the children are hungry and a twenty-minute walk through the crowds in the centre to get to a PE lesson is ridiculous. It’s no wonder some of them are skipping off. And when you think of all those acres of green right across from here behind the Pitti Palace and nowhere where the children can so much as play with a ball . . .’
    That was true enough. Even so, he wouldn’t have the nerve . . . She was probably always top of the class at school. Most of the parents were as meek as himself, he noticed, though they agreed with everything the woman in the glasses had to say. He’d never done more than just scrape through in any subject. Not that he’d suffered much from it, since nobody expected more of him. It was after a parents’ night like this—he must have been about nine—that his mother had come home and said, ‘They’re all sure you could do just a little better if you’d only try and concentrate. You always seem to be in a dream, or else you’re thinking about something else.’ She hadn’t been angry. He knew that she would have liked him to be clever enough to enter a seminary but she never took it out on him when she realized he’d never manage it. She used to say, ‘As long as you’ve got your health . . .’ He tried to remember whether he’d deliberately got poor marks because he didn’t want to be sent to a seminary but he couldn’t recall having any feelings about it one way or another. He edged forward a little as a mother came out of the classroom and another went in. Funny thing, that, about memory. Some things from your childhood, the smell of things, and certain children, stuck in your mind as clear as day but never the reason why you did things. That woman was getting nearer. She was trying to make everybody sign something and he hoped she wouldn’t ask him because he wasn’t at all clear about what exactly her complaint was—which just went to show that his teachers were right about him! He seemed to be quite near the front of the queue all of a sudden and he hoped Teresa would turn up soon.
    ‘If the parents of all the children concerned sign . . .’
    Thank goodness she didn’t ask him. She asked the tiny, silent woman standing almost beside him and must have thought he was her husband. He sighed and shifted his weight and wondered where he would be at this minute if his mother had got her way about the seminary. She’d been happy enough when he’d joined up, though, knowing it was a safe, respectable career. He’d never confessed to anybody, not even Teresa, that he really wanted to be an artisan. He was still fascinated by people who had the skill to make beautiful things. He didn’t tell because he was conscious of having clumsy hands that were too big and people would only have laughed. He stuffed them in his pockets automatically now as soon as he thought of it.
    ‘Salva! Why ever don’t you take your overcoat off, your face is as red as a beetroot.’
    Teresa was carrying hers over her arm. He went so far as to unbutton his but that was all.
    ‘How did it go?’
    ‘All right. I managed to see his maths teacher and his class teacher. If we don’t get to all the others I don’t think it will matter too much. If he