Vacant Spaces

The demolition date had been fixed for the following week.

The last of the staff and students, including Brenda, had left Thrushcroft School for Girls at the end of the 90s, by which time Jane was long gone. Since then, the school had become the home of spiders, rats, and broken things. After years of neglect, parts of the building were unstable.

Driving past, Brenda occasionally caught the outline of the octagonal hall rising from the redbrick frontage of the main building. Now, keeping just under the speed limit, the car was her last link to independence. Her fifty-year-old son, Neil, had given up persuading her to let it go.

She was not thinking of Neil now, though she was grateful for his presence. Instead, her mind dwelt on the face that had mapped itself in the vacant spaces of her mind and heart. She thought of the unsaid things, the promises she hadn’t managed to keep. Mostly about Flossie, Jane’s old cat, who had vanished decades ago, after never quite settling into Brenda’s home. She had finally reached a point where she could no longer ignore that part of her life.

Jane.

She was the only reason Brenda wanted to revisit the old school.

As the site’s demolition manager, Neil had reluctantly agreed to his mother’s request. He could only guess her intentions. It wasn’t as if she’d ever talked about the place with much affection. But then, so much of her life was a closed book. The only time he’d seen her cry was at Jane’s funeral. Certainly not when his dad had walked out on them.

They drew up onto a deserted patch of land that was often missed by vandals or thrill-seekers. Behind a wooden board, one of the fire doors still held. Knowing cameras had not been installed here, a few days earlier Neil had loosened the security board screws, and now, after a bit of manoeuvring, the panel swung open onto the gloom inside.

His flashlight illuminated a courtyard choked with weeds and shattered glass.

“We’ll have to be quick. I shouldn’t really be doing this,” he muttered, offering an arm to steady his mother.

The courtyard was surrounded on one side by the old science blocks and on another by the home economics and art departments. Brenda recalled the chaotic surge of girls scrambling for the tuck shop mid-morning. No one had wanted to supervise the bedlam; it had been every teacher for themselves. Many times Jane had been sent out to perform the thankless task. Through a broken window, Brenda glimpsed one of the labs with its long metal tables and discoloured cabinets still intact.

The back of the school’s main building lay directly ahead. Clutching Neil’s arm, she navigated her way through a broken door. Stepping into one of the downstairs classrooms, she took a sharp breath.

At various times she had taught in this very room. What had once been a scene of order — at least in her lessons — was now a place of peeling grey walls, grimy, torn-down radiators, and endless shards of glass strewn across the floor. On one wall, a noticeboard clung on for dear life. Though the blackboard had been removed, the main desk had survived, spattered in ink and graffiti.

Jane had taught here too. Her lessons had been a riot of confusion. One time, Brenda had seen the disorder through the narrow door window and kept walking.

“Let’s get out of here,” Brenda said aloud.

“Ready to leave all this spookiness behind?” Neil asked hopefully.

“I’ve hardly even started yet. The main corridor is just on the other side of that door.”

Standing in the long hallway with its terrazzo tiles, Brenda could almost smell the heady scent of floor polish and the perfume of girls rushing to lessons in their blue-and-white checked uniforms. It was rare to make it past the headteacher’s room without someone getting pulled up for some minor misdemeanour. A stickler for appearances, Mrs White was determined to pull the place up by its bootstraps during her tenure. She almost succeeded.

When they reached the old head’s room, the door was locked.

“Never mind,” Brenda said, half-relieved. “Some things aren’t meant to be.”

They passed notice boards along the walls now devoid of photographs of smiling girls holding trophies. They continued walking, passing under a low archway that led to a room tucked away at the very end of the corridor. The staffroom door was hanging off its hinges. 

“I want to be alone here,” Brenda declared firmly, letting go of Neil’s arm. 

He pleaded with her to be careful. “Don’t touch anything. Call out if it’s unsafe. I’ll be in the corridor.”

To the detached eye, the old staffroom was nothing more than another scene of chaos. Paint peeled off yellowing walls, and a single light dangled from the ceiling. The carpet was still the same shabby grey, almost certainly an updated version of the one she had known. 

Only one space mattered. Her eyes were drawn to the table in the far corner where the smokers had once gathered. Drawing closer, she saw the stuffing was spilling out of a lone settee.

Embedded in a lingering memory, Brenda heard her old colleagues discussing the trials and tribulations of their beleaguered colleague, Jane Weeble.

Brenda’s brain was as agile as ever. She could recall entire conversations, sometimes word for word. As she closed her eyes, the voices echoed back down the years. 

There was the maths teacher, tartly observing, “She’ll be tottering along any minute now in those heels. Beats me why she wears them.”

What was his name? She could see him so clearly: the irritating way he crossed one leg over the other, hands perched above his head.

Then her own voice: “What do you mean by that? Why shouldn’t she wear them if they make her happy?”

Denis. That was his name.

“I don’t mean anything by it, Brenda. It’s just they’re strangely at odds with that faded cardigan she always wears. She looks like a leftover from the war years.”

“A refugee, maybe?” Sally, the sociology teacher, suggested.

“Exactly.”

“Maybe she wears them to give her height. I mean, she’s such a slip of a thing, it’s not surprising she can’t hold discipline in the class.” This pert observation had come from Lesley, a geography teacher who held it together by a hair’s breadth.

“It’s sad, really. She has a first-class degree in English.”

“I don’t know why old Whitey puts up with it. Didn’t one of the girls climb out of a window during one of Jane’s lessons? Stell Hartless, wasn’t it?”

“Now there’s a troubled girl, if there ever was one,” Lesley said.

“The bane of Jane’s life.”

“Apparently Whitey heard the commotion and stepped in to calm things down. But she didn’t get rid of her.”

Brenda had interjected.

“Don’t be unkind, Lesley.”

“I’m not being unkind, Brenda. I know she’s your friend, but you’ve got to admit Jane’s a liability.”

And so it went on. What could be done about this hopeless teacher?

Brenda felt as if they were all sitting with her in the room now. Casting judgement. 

The interminable voices droned down the hallways of time. 

“You’re her friend, Brenda. Does she ever talk about her discipline problems with you?” Denis had asked this more than once.

“Not in great detail. Only obliquely. I don’t like to humiliate her by bringing it up. She’s a nice person. Very witty when you get to know her.“

”Being nice doesn’t cut it when it comes to getting the pupils in order, though, does it?”

”No. It doesn’t.”

”And the days are fast approaching when giving them a quick slap or threatening them with the slipper is acceptable.”

“What are you talking about, Denis? We’ve never used the slipper here that I’m aware of. Not with girls.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they ban smoking too. Our one refuge in this dingy establishment.”

“Well, it’s been known for some time that it’s bad for you,” Brenda heard herself say.

“Well, give it up then.”

“I enjoy it too much.”

“But back to Jane…”

“What about her?”

“I don’t know. She fascinates me. There’s a kind of heroic quality to her, wouldn’t you say? I mean, battling on in spite of everything. I don’t think I could put up with prolonged abuse like that.”

Someone else asked. 

“Wasn’t her brother some kind of war hero?”

Brenda felt obliged to answer. 

“She actually had two brothers. One of them flew a Hurricane during the London Blitz. Must have saved many lives. Your family hail from North London, don’t they, Denis?”

“My grandparents did, yes. I’d like to know more about the pilot brother.”

“Shush,” someone said. “She’s coming over now.”

The voices faded like mist. 

Back in the present, Brenda avoided the jutting springs by spreading her jacket over a moss-infested cushion. A final act of settling in to the room. 

Seated in that familiar corner, she longed to snatch back time: the bad, the good, and everything in between. She wanted to hear every person’s voice, even with all the imperfections and rivalries. 

Jane’s most of all.

Where were they all now? How many were alive? 

Any minute now she’d have to leave, otherwise Neil would be calling her.

She closed her eyes again. The voices returned and this time she allowed Jane’s in. It had a sweet, pleasing cadence.

“What are you all conspiring about today?”

It was as if Jane were there now. Perhaps she was.

“The idea that one day smoking in public places will be banned, including this staffroom.”

“Our only haven,” Denis commented. “The last refuge for the sane.”

Jane shuddered. “What a horrible thought.”

“Come and sit down. You look done in. Here, have one of mine,” Brenda recalled saying.

A collective groan went up at the knock on the door — a violation of the inner sanctum. One of the younger teachers had risen to answer it while Brenda handed Jane a filter-tipped cigarette.

“Oh, thank you. Just what I need.” Jane’s face had lit up, and for a fleeting second she turned into the woman she might have been.

“How’s it going today, or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Definitely not.”

Brenda checked her watch, just as she had done then. “Only two more hours to go and the agony will be over, eh?” 

That was the closest they came to referring to Jane’s troubles in the classroom.

One time when they were alone, Jane admitted she inhaled to forget. 

As the chemicals filled her lungs, she shared the memory of her first cigarette with her younger brother, Tom. They had been exploring the ruins of a burnt-out church in the summer of 1941. The smell of war fires hung in the air. Jane had been twelve; Tom eleven.

Jane had watched spellbound as he breathed in manfully.

Laughing at the recollection, she had said, “He looked just like Dad when he did that — even if he was wracked by a coughing fit the next second.”

Jane’s smile reached her eyes. “He showed me how to make rings in the air.”

Brenda smiled back.

“Mum said we were far too young to be smoking. Of course she was right.”

Brenda tried to remember what else Jane had said that day. Something about following her brother into the recess of a bombed-out church where they discovered an empty sarcophagus. An old man who’d supplied her brother with roll-ups had fled the scene, leaving Tom disappointed.

Brenda’s eyes caught a hard, dark object beneath the coffee table. A heavy old ashtray had rolled onto the floor. She knelt, picked it up and turned it over in her hands. 

She would have died for a cigarette right now.

Her memory was working overtime, pulling up the time Jane had spoken of her other brother. Bill, the oldest sibling, had been a fighter pilot. She was so proud of him, she had knitted a lucky charm: a miniature pilot knitted from rough cloth and string.

In the gloom of the old staffroom, Brenda recalled almost verbatim the passage from Jane’s diary. She had found it in her belongings after the funeral.

London, August 1941

Bill must have woken at dawn and driven out to his aircraft. He used to say once the order to scramble had been given, he had a surge of energy. I hope he checked his jacket pocket for the lucky charm. I actually made two dolls and gave him the best. I hope he feels the rough cloth and bumpy stitches beneath his fingers, and thinks of me. I only hope it gives him the strength to see this thing through.

“You will come back, won’t you, Bill?” That’s what I asked when he last visited. He said he would do his best.

I imagined his plane soaring into the air, clouds dusting the wing tips, as he met a brilliant crimson sky.

Brenda’s eyes stung and her throat tightened. Bill had not come back.

One last time, Brenda told herself, summoning a final vision of her colleagues sitting sprawled in this corner, puffing away in smoggy contentment. Only this time Jane hadn’t joined them.

Brenda had seen her walk off after stubbing out a cigarette, and joined her on the fringes of the room. 

“What are you doing hiding over here? What’s the matter? You look pale! Are you alright, Jane?”

Then the hushed explanation. “I’m afraid I can’t join you, much as I want to. You see, I’ve decided to give up smoking.”

“Have you?”

“Yes, for good.”

“It’s something we should all do. I mean, we all know it’s not good for us, really.”

“The difference is I have to give it up. I’ve got lung cancer.” A tear slid down Jane’s cheek, which she hurriedly brushed away.

Brenda’s face fell. “Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry. How long have they given you?”

“A few months, maybe less. There’s nothing they can do. It’s gone too far. But if I stop smoking, I may have a little longer.”

“I’m so sorry,” Brenda said again.

“Don’t be,” her friend said, surprising her. “You see, for the first time in a long time, I’m free.”

“Free?” Brenda asked, incredulous.

“Yes, free. It no longer matters if I’m a lousy teacher who can’t keep discipline in the classroom. It no longer matters what anyone thinks. For the first time in my life, I am free. I want to shout it from the rooftops.”

**

Neil had been standing in the doorway all the time, but Brenda had only just noticed. 

She turned to him, “One more thing. I need to visit one of the outside classrooms. That’s if it’s still standing. Then we can go. I promise.”

“You mean one of those awful rotting prefabs.”

Brenda nodded.

Even from the outside, it was obvious the hut was on its last legs. The rusting metal window frames bore testament to years of decay.

Neil couldn’t stop her from going in any more than he could have stopped his own heartbeat. All he could do was insist on checking it first to ensure there were no crumbling floorboards, or that one of the ceiling panels wasn’t about to come crashing down.

He came out looking slightly relieved. 

“It’s full of dust and puddles. Avoid walking in the middle. Part of the floor has caved in. And whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

Fibrous ceiling tiles had toppled from the roof onto the floor. A faded chalkboard clung to the bowed wall, and a few desks remained, along with a rusty, upturned chair. The old cupboard at the back of the room was obscured by a fallen beam. Jane had spent her final year teaching here. Brenda stood at the threshold wanting desperately to convince herself of Jane’s presence, but there was no sense of her here.

All she captured was the uncertainty of her own breath. 

She was about to leave when she heard a rustling. Perhaps it was a rat? She stepped back instinctively. Then she heard a distinctive mewing.

A black cat with white ears peered out from beneath the wooden beam. A shelter of sorts.

Her heart skipped a beat. For a second, she thought it was Flossie, Jane’s old cat.

The cat pawed the air, golden eyes blinking at her, and mewed again. 

Brenda moved quietly. Tucked in a shadow of the panel was a knot of kittens, squeaking softly against their mother’s side.

She sank slowly to her knees, gently reaching out a hand. The cat stretched forward and brushed its cheek against her knuckles.

Neil stepped into the doorway, his frame broad and strong. “We really must go,” he said.

Then he saw something in his mother’s eyes he hadn’t seen for a long time. Without thinking, he held open his arms and waited for her.

“Thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”