Part 2 Chapter 6 And afterwards

From my book 'School Portrait' (McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1987)

The kids were settling down to write. It was now about three weeks since we had pulled down the village, and our classroom routine was pretty much back to normal.

‘Steve, can I work on the doll's house?' asked Anna. ‘I'm not in the mood for writing, and I want to get the bedroom finished today.'

Anna had seen a picture of a Victorian doll's house in a magazine, and had decided to design and build a three-storied model of her own. With help from Bernie and Allen, she'd drawn floorplans for each level; measured, cut and assembled the three-ply; papered the walls; and was now making stairs and furniture.

‘That's OK,' I said, 'as long as you do the writing before Friday?’

Anna went off to the woodshed, while I sat on the stairs and supervised the writing. For the first fifteen minutes the children worked silently, and I took the opportunity to look again at some of the letters we'd been receiving from parents about the village project.

Most wrote of how history had come alive for their children. One described her daughter coming home each day ‘bubbling over with excitement and chatter about how her day had gone’. A father recounted the pleasure his family had found while sitting around the dinner table each evening, talking about the village or looking through books on medieval history. A mother felt that ‘the village allowed children to act out the familiar and the unfamiliar, to experiment socially and to take risks'. As one parent pointed out, the length of time meant that 'children had to start doing, controlling, shaping the village life - it wasn't like TV, all condensed into half an hour, or at times like school, more structured. Much more was left up to them to mould, create.' Many commented on the new confidence they noticed in the children, 'a greater maturity, an ability to make decisions'.

There were a few parents, though, who were not so pleased. ‘There was no day-to-day excitement at home,' wrote one. And another felt that village relationships caused considerable distress to her daughter. 'I became very impatient at the enormous waste of energy and the sadness that this created,' she wrote.

I looked around the room at the kids writing. Some, I knew, had found aspects of the village distressing, and I wondered whether we'd given them enough support. There were times when I'd been swept along by my own involvement and the excitement of the children around me. There had been times when I'd wanted the village to work to prove a theoretical point, and perhaps I'd not allowed myself to see that the project had demanded too much of a few children. These parent letters helped me to stand back, to see its results from a clearer perspective.

Chris's mother had written me a long letter, and I looked at it again as I waited for the kids to finish their writing. The village, she said, had come at a time when Chris was asking questions about the wider world, about relationships, job satisfaction, how businesses run, taxation, financial systems, and systems of power. ‘It has been exciting to watch the developmental pattern which had emerged be so thoroughly satisfied and fulfilled through the experiences of the village - and with a reality and a security that the family could not totally provide.'

'Interesting?' asked a voice close to my ear. It was Chris, who had finished his writing and was standing waiting to give it in.

‘I’ve just been reading the letter your mum sent in about the village,' he said.

‘I liked that village,’ he said. ‘I mean, I was glad when it was over, it was time to finish it. And I didn't want anything left standing. But there was a lot of learning in that village.'

‘What sort of learning?' I asked.

'About their currency, their times, and getting it really fixed in your memory. I think that the build up work that we'd done for the village came together. It was good to find out what the world was like in those days, and how you had to rely on yourself. I really enjoyed having some control.'

Chris was being unusually forthcoming, and I asked him to fetch a tape recorder. Perhaps, I thought, this would be an opportunity to record the thoughts of Paul, Anna and Dan too, they being the children I'd been writing most about in my diary.

While Chris was away, I looked round the room again. Many of the kids had finished their writing, and had put their books in a pile by my feet. But Dan was still sitting at his table, huddled over his page.

Oh no, I thought. I'd seen this sort of thing happen before with Dan and his writing. He would sit down determined to get his thoughts onto paper, but the difficulties would at first frustrate and then overwhelm him, and he'd end up in tears. We hadn't had any set writing sessions like this one since before the village. I really should have been more careful.

I walked quietly over to his table, and then realized that he wasn't crying at all. In fact, when he saw me coming, he smiled and put his hands over his writing.

‘You can't see it yet,' he said. 'Go away.'

Chris had come back with the tape recorder, and I invited Anna to join us.

‘I remember being adopted by you,' Chris said to Anna, 'which I regretted.'

"You agreed to it in the beginning,' she said.

‘Yeah, in the beginning. But then you were being nasty to me. You and Gail kept saying, "We're your parents. We control this ale house. Get lost. We want all your money. Now go and make something ...”’

Anna was smiling broadly.

‘ … and I found myself sort of being a slave. So I just avoided you as much as I could.'

‘Why did you agree to get adopted,' I asked him.

‘Because it was hard to run the ale house on my own and help was expensive and it was just hard to make all the drinks, cos everyone spent all their money there. I reckon you could have charged a shilling a drink and you still would have got a lot of money! Yeah, I needed the help, but I found out that I became a slave.'

'What about you, Anna?' I asked. How did you feel about the village?'

‘I really liked it how we had the life, walking around and all that sort of stuff. I think it was just like real life. Everything, like weddings, feasts, just everything happened the way it did in those medieval times. Everybody acted so well and it just worked out. You really did get punished. And if you spent all your money then you were in trouble!'

'It didn't always feel real.' This from Paul, whom I'd silently beckoned over.

‘I didn't feel as though I was in a real village when I worked in the manor house,' Paul said. ‘I kept reading comics there. There was nothing else to do. But in the monastery it felt like I was back in time. I remember on the first day when you monks were having baked beans or something, and you were all acting like monks and someone was reading something from the Bible and I thought, Oh my God, luxury!'

‘You actually decided to leave the monastery,’ I said, turning to Anna. "Why was that?'

'After a while I wanted a different sort of life, because if you're the Abbott you're not allowed to do anything, you have to do everything abiding to the Bible. I wanted to be sort of free, you know, to do what some of the other people were doing. I wanted to go and run outside and play, like some of the ordinary villagers. They went out and played games and played in the middle of the village square. And the busking - I really wanted to do that, but I couldn't.'

‘Was that a hard decision to make, to leave the monastery?'

'Yes,' she said. ‘I thought to myself, what am I going to do if no-one buys my stuff when I'm just an ordinary villager, and if I've got no money left? It's sort of like real life - if you've got nothing left, no-one's going to give you any. But I'm glad I changed from the Abbott, cos I got two parts - being rich and being poor. I lost all my money by changing, but I liked it how I tried it out to see how some people lived and what the bad times were like.'

Chris had wandered away by now, and Dan was still sitting at his table. Most of the other kids had gone outside to play, but Paul and Anna stayed.

‘I lost all my money just buying things,' Anna continued. ‘I thought, no worries, I don't care if I get poor. And soon I had no money and I couldn't buy hardly anything. The Pope sent me a letter saying I could leave the monastery if I was going to get married. I had to get married straight away, so I just got anybody. I just went and said, "Who wants to marry me?" and Gail said yes. And after that I wished I didn't get married because she spent all my money. I stayed with the steward for a little while, in his house. The other nobles tried to chuck me out, but the steward said, "If you want someone to go, go yourself!" so they had to take me. Otherwise I just slept in the street. We worked in the ale house, Chris owned it, and we made him our son. And we got a lot of money out of that, but it just goes, it really goes quickly. Anything we saw that we might like, we just bought it, anything. Lots of food, baskets, clay things, jewellery, a little bit from the blacksmith. We bought a lot from the bakers and we wanted to get things made from the carpenter, but we didn't have enough money.'

"What about the fair and the feast Anna,' I asked. 'Did you enjoy them?'

'Caitilin and me worked hard for the fair. I made soft toy food, Caitilin made little lavender bags and Jessie made sweets. I enjoyed that, but I didn't like seeing all the stuff go. You spent so much time making it, and people bought it for clay money. I watched stuff go that took so long to make. And just for bits of clay! … The feast on the last night was great fun, it was really fun. Everybody acted medieval, like people threw food, and that's sort of medieval. And we could demand servants all the time, and they were the parents. We could just demand food all the time. It was really fun.'

"So how about you, Paul?' I asked.

‘Well,' he said, 'it took a bit of getting used to at the beginning. At the start of the village everyone was called by their real names, and it seemed like we were all just our normal selves in funny costumes and bits of makeup. But I slowly got used to it after the beginning. In most old villages you hear music playing, a flute or whistle or something that you can hear over the whole village, and, when there wasn't that in our village, it was hard to feel that it was real. And if kids used other people's real names instead of village names, then for the rest of the day the feeling would be gone.'

'Like breaking a spell,' I suggested.

‘Yes,' said Paul. ‘You get one spell every day, and if you break it, it's gone … I reckon the gypsy house was the best house in the village. Even the manor house wasn't as good. In the manor house everyone talked normally, chatting about the daily news, but in the gypsy house you were always acting. We had two apartments next to each other and we had a secret door. We had a secret safe in the bricks - you would take the middle brick out and there was a latch on the next one, you'd open that and there was a latch on the next one, you'd open that, put your hand in to open the next one, and then you'd pull the money out. It was good, and no-one could ever find it.'

Then Dan joined us. His writing book was shut, and he put it very deliberately at the bottom of the pile.

‘No looking till I've gone,' he said.

‘We're just talking about the village,' I said. 'Did you enjoy it?'

‘Yes, it was good. I liked being a monk with a job and a special little room. Sometimes I found it boring just writing and writing every day. It took a really long time to write out just one thing. Once me and Kleete wrote about fifty of these things to sell for when someone died. Every one that gets bought saves a day for the dead soul in that place..'

‘Purgatory,’ I said.

‘Yes, purgatory, and me and Kleete wrote out thousands of them but only three got sold.'

‘It was terrible on the last day,' said Anna, 'when we pulled the village down. I mean, we just pulled it all apart and threw it all out and the classroom was in such a big mess and the next day it was back to normal and we'd forgotten about it. It was so much fun, the village. I wish it went on for longer. It was really fun. It's much better than school work. And I've learnt that when I get old, I won't just spend all my money. I'll have to get a job before I start spending, I reckon!'

‘What do you think, Dan?' I asked. 'Did you learn anything?'

‘I think I would say that I got a lot out of it,' he said thoughtfully. ‘I learnt how monks lived and how there had to be signs at dinner tables, and how they wrote, which I found awkward ...’

'It was fun, that village,' said Paul. 'But I know that a real village wouldn't be like that at all. It was sunny every day, not once it rained, we had a grand time, it was easy to make money, you couldn't starve because we went home and had a good meal at home, we had breakfast at home, we drove in the car to school, got our costumes on, walked in, pretended we were asleep, got up... it was nothing like I can imagine a medieval village was. I can imagine in a medieval village, sick people, dying people everywhere, starving people, beggars... there was not one beggar in our village. I tried begging at one stage but I only got a penny from the Lord. It was just not very realistic. I mean, it was the best we could do. We couldn't make it rain, we couldn't put it outside so all the bricks fell apart and the paint slid down, that'd be a disaster ... It was very educational. I mean, actually living in a village. I bet not many other kids in schools have lived in a village. I mean, you go to other schools and the kids sit at their desks writing, and if they go into history they say, "Oh yeah, medieval days, they starved, they lived, they ate, they died." They have this, but they never have the details. They never actually ... Well, for us it was sort of having two lives. You had one life in medieval times and one life now, and in that life you could just see what the past was like. I think it would be more educational than a whole year of history doing it the usual way. I never actually thought, "Oh yeah, well, I've learnt this and I'll write this down so I can remember it one day." It just sort of came into my head as it happened. It just sort of became like that.'

I'd switched off the tape recorder, and the kids were outside. I was alone in the room.

'It just sort of came into my head as it happened,' Paul had said. I liked the sound of that, I thought as I reached for Dan's book at the bottom of the pile.

He had written six pages. Six pages! The most he had ever managed on his own before was half a page at the very most.

And it wasn't just the fact that he'd written so much that thrilled me. It was the confident tone of what I read.

I am going good with my work. In my multiplication tables I got 79 to start with and then I got 84 two times. I am going good with my handwriting. I am about to start on one of the handwriting books. The village was fun. I got a bit bored of being a monk in the village. I was going to write to the Pope and I was going to become Chris's sister in the pub, but the village ended too soon. I wanted to die and become Chris's sister. The fair and feast were good. I got a lot of pay when I worked, so my dad got the pay at the fair. I had too much money to spend at the fair. I found that I should have spent my money at each market day, like Kleete, my best friend in the village. I think that I am not very good at making suggestions at meetings. I am very quiet at meetings. I am a quiet soul. I am doing a lot of things at school, like handwriting and reading and maths and tables and spelling. I did some cooking with Effie in the kitchen. We made Destiny cake and lots of little Destiny cakes. I learnt my spelling in two days, and I got tested the next day and got them all right, each one of my spelling words was right except for 'father'. It was the hardest of my spelling words. I had to spell 'doll', and 'don't' and 'door', and 'down' and 'every' and 'each' and the one I found hard 'father', and 'few' and 'find' and 'fine'. I am going good with my teacher and I don't know about my teacher if he is getting on with me or not. We are doing lots of exercises and I am getting fit. We did an obstacle course today. Yesterday we did running. We ran for ten minutes, and I got tired. I had to go to another place and we had to run that far as well and I got really tired. I got my dad to take my bag to the car. The day before yesterday we did some circuit training, and I got 303 points. I got most of my points in the skipping. [spelling and punctuation corrected]

I put his book down, and sat for a minute, quietly taking in the extent of Dan's achievement. Its connection with the bustle and fun of the village fantasy defied conventional educational wisdom, but was inescapable nonetheless. In the space of eight weeks, he had taken huge strides in both his reading and writing. No doubt much of this was a result of his hard work over the preceding years, but the village seemed to have acted as a kind of catalyst, as a trigger which released skills and abilities which had been blocked until now.

It was hard to believe, looking round the room, that less than a month ago this had been the medieval village of Middleton, where such different kids as Anna, Chris, Dan and Paul had each found a niche. I thought about how powerfully these children had been drawn towards the fantasy, the make-believe. And how this seemed not an escape from reality, but a reaching out towards it.

I picked up the pile of books, and went off to the staffroom for coffee with Allen.

The end