Someone to Hold

“Eleven,” Winifred said.

“The four who were missing, Richard. Plural,” Camille said. “We are knitting a rope, Mr. Cunningham, so that everyone can hold on to it whenever we go walking. As well as keeping everyone together and safe, it will teach cooperation. The older pupils will have to shorten their stride to accommodate the younger ones, and the brisk walkers will have to slow down a bit while the loiterers will have to keep a steady pace.”

Mr. Cunningham was looking at her with laughing eyes, and Tommy announced that he had two more stitches on his needle than he had had when he started the row and asked if that was a good thing.

“Artists,” Camille said firmly, “you will be delighted to know that it is time to go to your art lesson.”

There was one faint cheer and a few protests that the pieces would never grow long enough to be crocheted together into a rope if they did not keep at their knitting. But within minutes the art class was in progress. Mr. Cunningham was teaching his group an actual skill today. He was demonstrating with charcoal on paper how to achieve perspective and depth. The accomplished knitters who remained on Camille’s side of the room settled down with clacking needles to a steady rhythm, and the learners gradually mastered the art of knitting from one end of a row to the other with a regular tension and no stitches either added or dropped. Most followed her suggestion to unwind a length of wool before they actually needed it so that the ball would not be constantly jerked onto the floor to roll away. Within an hour Camille felt able to pick up a book and read aloud to a relatively tranquil room.

She was one step closer to surviving her first week.

And now she was fully and officially exhausted—with bags still to unpack upstairs. She was also still half convinced that she must be the world’s worst teacher. But there was a certain feeling of triumph that she had done what she had set out to do. She had even gone one step further than she had originally planned. She was on her own. On Monday she would start her second week of teaching and perhaps do better.

Why, then, did she feel like bawling?

Jane, seemingly in unconscious sympathy, suddenly burst into noisy tears as one of her needles jerked free of the stitches and went somersaulting end over end over her desk to clatter onto the floor. Camille lowered the book with an inward sigh, but one of the older girls had already hurried to the child’s rescue with helping hands and soothing murmurs.

* * *

They were knitting a rope in more than twenty parts. Whatever had put such an insane idea into her head? It afforded Joel endless amusement for the rest of the afternoon. Would it not have been less costly, less trouble, and a good deal faster to buy one or, better yet, to ask Roger if there was a length lying around somewhere in the building? She must have applied to Miss Ford to use some of the cash that was reserved for extra school supplies. Joel wondered if she realized it was Anna who had set up that fund quite recently and promised to replenish it whenever it ran low. Who, he wondered, was going to join all the pieces into one when they were finished? Had she thought that far ahead?

And why bright purple?

But perhaps, he thought as the afternoon wore on, it was actually a brilliant idea she had had, just as the shop had been. Knitting was a useful skill to have, for boys as well as for girls, but how could one persuade the boys and the reluctant girls to want to learn and keep at the task unless one could interest them in the production of some specific object? And how could one persuade the children, especially the older ones, to walk the streets of Bath clinging to a purple rope that would connect them together like an umbilical cord and make keeping an eye on them easier for their teacher unless one could give them a proprietary interest in the thing? How was one to devise a practical project on which all could work together regardless of age and gender, and one on which the older and more experienced could help the younger and more halting? She was actually teaching far more than the basic skill itself. And the children were excited . . . about learning to knit.

His own group was attentive enough as he taught some of the tricks of creating depth and perspective. But when they proceeded to work on the exercise he set, they also listened to the story she was reading and an unusual peace descended on the schoolroom, broken only occasionally by a cry of anguish from one of the knitters. Each time that happened, one of the other children went quietly to the rescue so that Miss Westcott could continue with the story. The air of contentment in the room was especially extraordinary for a Friday afternoon in July.

She looked as forbidding and humorless as ever, Joel thought, observing her covertly as he kept an eye on his own group, offering quiet suggestions and comments as needed. She spoke like an army sergeant, even when reading aloud. She displayed none of the sparkle and warmth that had characterized Anna and made her so beloved in the schoolroom. The children ought to be as miserable as they had been under Miss Nunce’s brief, unlamented reign. That they were not was a bit of a puzzle. Miss Westcott was a bit of a puzzle. She looked one thing, yet was another.

He had no idea how he was going to paint her portrait. If he painted her as he saw her, there would be no hint at all of the creative teacher who somehow appealed to children of varying ages and made them excited about learning. And no one looking at such a painting would guess that she was capable of a certain caustic sense of humor—I would not have been at all shocked to discover that I had lost a pupil or three on the way.

He wondered if it was going to be possible to get to know her well enough to paint a credible portrait. Would she allow him to get close enough? And did he really want to? Part of him resented the fact that though different from Anna in manner and methods, she was just as surely capturing the hearts of the children that he still thought of as Anna’s. He resented the fact that when he glanced across the room, it was Anna’s sister he saw and Anna’s sister he heard. She lacked Anna’s beauty and charm. And yet . . .