जगन्नाथ Chapter One - Temptation

The apple hung tantalisingly in front of him, the branch from which it was suspended overhanging the rusted criss-cross wire fencing that surrounded the orchard. Ripe and almost ready to fall, its flame-red skin giving way to a green underside, it was begging to be plucked from the tree that was literally groaning under the strain of its bounty.
It was a clear late summer’s morning and Gerry and his brother Glenn were making their way to the nearby school. Every weekday they now walked down the dusty track which provided them and the many other students from the adjacent secondary-modern school with a considerable short-cut, not entirely approved of by the respective schools’ managements, but overlooked in exchange for the expediency it also allowed the teachers who might also arrive by this route. To enter either school by the main gates would have required a walk of an additional mile, such was the local geography of two of the three schools which served not only the dormitory town which had burgeoned from the original village, but the many other villages in the district of Westeven.
North Wykeham, now a sprawling mass of bungalows and semi-detached houses had grown in population from around one thousand inhabitants to a town almost five times that in the post-fifties boom of prosperity to which his family had now been admitted. Gerry and Glenn’s father had, by sheer industry and ingenuity, relocated the family to this suburb full of lower middle-class and, most recently working-class families. The transition from their council estate background might not however prove quite so simple as the change of address to their newly built dormer-bungalow, complete with all ‘mod-cons’.
Glenn had already started what was then known as junior school, but this was Gerry’s first taste of ‘big’ school and he was comforted by his big brother’s presence as they ambled, none too eagerly, towards their new place of education. It was a curious place compared to the relatively modern institutions they had left behind which, like the estate on which they were built, heralded an entirely new era, the better to forget about the horrors and deprivations of the all too recent war.
This school, All Saints, North Wykeham, or the church school as it was more widely known, was in fact a relic of that particular conflict, and right from the beginning Gerry and Glenn felt uncomfortable there. It wasn’t simply the single storey buildings which were distributed around the square of what had once been a parade ground, or even the Nissen hut that too was a classroom - a classroom that struck fear into the hearts of those compelled to inhabit it - but more the atmosphere of the place. It was run-down and tired but reeked of some dark terror that both the boys (seven and eight and-a-half years old) were about to be confronted with, though not for the first or last time.
Gerry fingered the apple carefully with the knowledge of someone who understood the delicious contents that awaited the crunch of the first bite. Still attached to the tree, he had to stand on tip-toe to grasp its firm but fleshy form in his small but dexterous hand. He hesitated, not out of any sense of cowardice or shame, but simply to savour the moment when he would give it a deft twist and its prize would be his. His brother, somewhat taller than he and far more experienced in the practice of ‘scrumping’ apples, reached higher in the tree and plucked his own choice specimen before greedily crunching into its shiny skin.
No deceit was intended and their straight-forward actions intimated no disrespect or dishonesty, aware as they both were of the country code, passed down to them by their country-born father who claimed that if the apple trees branches bore fruit beyond the orchard’s boundary they could be picked and eaten without consequence or blame. By the time that the boys arrived within the school’s boundary the apples were eaten and they were ready to face the challenges of the day. Or so they thought.
The day consisted for Gerry of a morning of mathematics with his new teacher, Miss Grinter. Miss Grinter, the spinster daughter of a local notable person - after whom the sheltered accommodation in which his grandmother lived was named - was a considerable woman, perhaps in her late forties, but of unknown age. It wasn’t unusual for junior school teachers to be spinsters, in fact it seemed extremely common to Gerry. Miss Grinter however was apparently somewhat embittered by her non-marital status and her close proximity to the issue of married couples appeared to give her the perfect opportunity to express this.
She was powerfully built, wore drab brown clothes - skirts and cardigans which covered her large frame - and, like many other women in education at the time, effected a hairstyle which consisted of weaving plaits into a helmet of dark brown hair, bound together with iron grey strands. She was unsmiling and her moods varied between simmering anger and outright spiteful hatred. There was no certain way to avoid arousing her ire and a state of continual fear, frequently upgraded to outright terror, existed at all times in her classroom.
Gerry, a small and slighty-built seven year-old, had enjoyed a honeymoon period of two days, not so much on account of his recent arrival, but simply because she had yet to notice him, sat as he was at the back of the grim and gloomy Nissen hut that was her exclusive domain. That was until yesterday when it had been discovered that he couldn’t do long division.
“You boy, at the back. Give me the answer to question number three!"
“I’m sorry but I don’t know Miss. I can’t do long division”.
“You can’t do long division boy?” she had shrieked at the top of her sonorous voice. “Why not?” she demanded.
Timidly looking down at the puzzling text book in front of him Gerry meekly replied, “I have never been taught to do long division Miss.”
“How dare you answer me back?” she howled pacing aggressively toward his desk. Her manner quickly changed from menace to sarcasm as she addressed the entire class.
“This boy is so stupid that not only can he not do long division but he doesn’t yet know how to respect his elders.” she whined in a mocking way which although Gerry hadn’t experienced before, he instantly understood.
The rest of the class giggled nervously, content no doubt to play their part in the kangaroo court in which Miss Grinter now held sway on the basis that it deflected her unwelcome attention from them.
“What kind of school do you think you are in now?” she demanded, once again without ever requiring an answer.
“My parents told me it was a good school miss.” Gerry replied, without irony, but this was just the opportunity she required, and before the sentence had died in his mouth she retorted with contempt and venom.
“I’ll show you what sort of school this is! Stay behind at lunchtime until you do understand and if I hear one word further from you I will make you wish you’d never been born!”
Gerry didn’t say a word to betray his inner terror in spite of the fact that he was trembling and wanted to vomit. He looked down at the old wooden desk’s inkwell and wished he could disappear into it but there was nowhere he could hide from the jeering and sniggering of his classmates to whom he was, and would remain, an unknown outsider.
Content with her performance Miss Grinter smugly returned to her desk where she scanned the classroom with an icy glare until the sniggering ended on her cue to be replaced with the eery scratching sound of the wooden-handled pen nibs. Her work was done. She may not have even known his name but he would never forget hers.