A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [3]
“That’s an enigmatic smile, Rachel. Is it the Sphinx or the Mona Lisa?”
His humour. I didn’t know I was smiling. If I was, it was only out of nervousness. Which is ridiculous. I’ve nothing to be afraid of, with him. He has never given a bad report to the School Board on my teaching, as far as I know. I don’t know why I should even think he might have. I can feel my face paling to the peculiar putty colour it takes on when I’m thrown a little off balance.
“I didn’t know I was smiling.” I have to explain my presence. “I was just going now. I’ve been sorting out the mimeographed pages for the –”
“Yes,” Willard says. “Well, I won’t keep you a moment.”
I know I must not stand up now, not until he’s gone. I am exceptionally tall for a woman, and Willard is shorter than I. He arranges it whenever possible so that when we are talking either he is seated or I am, and there is no comparison. He hates to be considered a short man. He makes up for what may seem to him his stunted stature by being six hundred times more brisk than anyone needs to be. He calls this efficiency. He reads books on Time-Motion Study and draws charts on how to make your head save your heels.
He strides across to my desk now, places his hands on the edge of it, leans down and looks at me earnestly from behind his glasses. His eyes are pallid, like the blue dead eyes of the frozen whitefish we used to get in the winter when I was a child, and I always choked on that fish, recalling the eyes.
At morning recess today James tripped Gil Maitland and made him go down on his knees in the gravel. I saw. I was standing near by and had my back half turned, so there was no necessity to let on I’d seen. Willard saw, too, did he? That’s what he wants now. “Just a word, Rachel – I’m not an old-fashioned disciplinarian, as I am sure you know, but – must restrain the child against his or her own violence – we must not hesitate, must we, Rachel, when it is in the child’s own best –”. I know he’ll say it. What he doesn’t know is that Gil jumped off the teeter-totter yesterday, purposely, when James was at the top end, way up in the air, and the plank crashed down. I didn’t go to James, although I knew he was hurt. I never do with any of them, because I know I mustn’t, unless they’re crying. He didn’t cry, of course. I should have told him off today, though, I guess. Tripping is forbidden. Willard likes using the strap on boys. He claims he only does it as a last resort. But he’s always looking for occasions.
“What is it?” An hour seems to have passed since he spoke, but it’s only a second. I can’t keep this stupid edge of anxiety out of my voice. “Anything the matter?”
“Oh no,” Willard says, looking surprised. “Angela and I wondered if you’d come over for dinner tonight, that’s all.”
That’s all he had to say. An invitation for dinner. Angela, his petulant do-gooding wife, forever proffering kindness to the single teachers. I don’t want to go. I can’t, I really can’t anyway.
“Oh – thanks – that’s awfully nice of you, but I’m afraid I can’t. Tonight is Mother’s bridge night. I always do the coffee and sandwiches. She gets too fussed if she has to do everything herself.”
Willard nods. There’s something reptilian about the look of him. Not snakelike – more a lizard, sleek, dry-skinned, dapper, and his eyes now dartingly quick and sly, glinting at me, thinking he knows all about me. The skin on his hands is speckled, sun-spotted, and small hairs sprout even from his knuckles.
“Well, I’m sorry you can’t make it,” he says. “An old friend of yours is going to be there.”
Then he is off, at the door already, with that scurrying walk of his.
“Who?”
He turns and shakes a finger at me.
“Uh-uh. Too late now. Unless you’ll change your