Maggie Gee - The White Family

(This way they’ll listen. Of course I’m famous.)

‘When we’ve done the register, children, 4P are going to join us, and Mr Lovell will talk about writing.’

It was very impressive, her control over the class. She strode about her classroom like a captain on deck, cheerful, confident, not missing anything, straightening a tie, removing some sweets, comforting a little girl who was crying because she’d forgotten to bring back her homework.

He tried to look modestly down at the floor and not watch the curves of her slender back, bent over her register to make a mark. But she was so good at this, and he was so proud. The children’s eyes followed her as if she was God.

‘Samuel. Are you listening?’

‘Yes, Miss Simons.’

‘Adil?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Beena?’

‘Yes, miss …’

And so it went on; thirty-three names, thirty-three children welcomed, calmed, and then the other class came in, and it was Thomas’s turn to take the baton.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Thomas Lovell. Some of you will know me from the library. Do you write stories? Who would like to be a writer?’

And so they were away, and the time began to fly, the eager little faces turned up towards him, their hands growing up like mushroom stalks, nearly all thirsty, curious. It seemed they had never met a writer before. They stared at him as if he were an alien life form, especially once he told them he had been on TV.

He took them back to the beginning of writing. The first marks on the first surfaces, feeling his own mind reel a little, watching their faces, so new in time, alive for nine or ten years at most, gazing through him into pre-history, following him back to the first human settlements big enough to need to write things down.

‘Please, sir.’

‘Yes.’ It was a tall black boy, who had been listening carefully, chewing a pink pencil.

‘Where do words come from?’

Thomas was silenced. That was the mystery, where language came from. It was part of us. Born in us.

‘I know! I know!’ A girl shouted out, her hand so far up she was almost climbing up it.

‘All right, Philippa,’ Melissa said, resigned. ‘Do you want to tell us where you think words come from?’

‘Do they come from God?’ the blond child asked, shining, shining with faith and enthusiasm. ‘Cos God made the world.’

Melissa looked bemused, but Thomas nodded. ‘You might be right,’ he said, smiling. ‘Writers don’t know where their stories come from. They come like magic, in the middle of the night. I say magic, but you say God.’

Somewhat thrown off his stroke, but also encouraged, he took some chalk and wrote ‘TIME-TRAVEL’, huge, squeaking and sliding across the chalk-board. ‘Writing is a way of bringing people together,’ he told them, feeling like a missionary, now. You can speak to people even after you’re dead. Writing is a kind of time-travel.’

(But would it still work for the twenty-first century?)

‘Do you know who Thoth is?’ he asked them.

‘Please, sir! Please, sir!’ Nearly all the hands shot up at once.

‘He’s up on the wall.’

‘Yes’ — They all looked, as Thomas pointed. In the picture on the wall, Thoth’s body turned towards them, but his proud bird’s head gazed out across the world.

Everyone had something to say about Thoth.

‘He’s like half a bird.’

‘Sometimes he’s a monkey.’

‘Sometimes he makes jokes, like a monkey.’

They offered so many things, but not quite the one he wanted, till a tall Asian girl said, ‘The god of writing?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very good. Well done. And he was a peace-maker, did you know? After Seth killed his brother Osiris, Thoth made peace between Seth and Osiris’s son.’

‘Please, sir!’

‘Yes?’

It was a tall, round-faced Asian boy with multi-coloured glasses and a cheeky smile. ‘When I kicked Christopher in the goolies, I had to write him a letter saying sorry.’

Everyone laughed, but Melissa nodded. ‘It’s school policy,’ she said to Thomas. ‘When they’ve upset someone, they write letters of apology.’

‘There you are,’ said Thomas, pleased. ‘And did it make Christopher feel better?’

‘No!’ shouted Christopher from the back. ‘It smelled of Shiram’s pooey lunch.’

But a small fat red-headed boy had his hand up. He spoke very slowly, and everyone listened. ‘I liked it when Praveena wrote me a letter because she always said I was fat.’

‘Why did you like it?’ Thomas led the witness.

‘Because she had to miss her play-time.’

Praveena, a grave-looking girl by the window, saved him: ‘I felt better too,’ she said.

‘Why?’ Thomas smiled at her encouragingly.

Her answering smile was flushed and smug. ‘Because Miss said my letter was good. I did a picture of Patrick on it.’

‘It made me look fat though!’ Patrick complained.

‘Did not. ’

He stuck his tongue out at her, and grinned round at the class. ‘In any case, I frew her letter in the bin.’

‘Praveena, Patrick, please,’ said Melissa, but Thomas could see she was trying not to laugh.

He decided to quit while he was ahead. ‘So remember: Thoth is a writer, disguised as a monkey, or a holy bird. And he’s very pleased when you children write things, here in the classroom, under his picture.’ And it did look to Thomas as though Thoth was smiling, his proud beak dipped in the edge of the sunlight.

‘Every one of you can tell stories,’ he told them, lifted by his own eloquence, especially now Melissa was smiling at him, approving of him, surely, her head on one side. ‘Miss Simons tells me you’re good at writing stories. Every one of you was born with that gift. Human beings live by telling stories.’ But now he was losing them, their faces clouding over. Too abstract, he told himself, and tried again. ‘It’s how we make sense of things, telling stories.’ A boy put up his hand.

‘Please, sir, we aren’t all good at stories. Me and Shiram are hopeless at stories.’ More laughter. Melissa looked at Thomas, inviting him to deal with it.

‘I bet you tell stories in the playground. I bet you tell stories to your friends. It’s just that some people are shy of writing.’

‘It’s because Shiram can’t spell,’ said a voice from the back.

‘No calling out,’ said Melissa, swiftly. ‘Put your hand up, Christopher.’

‘Well that doesn’t matter,’ Thomas said. ‘A lot of professional writers can’t spell. There are people called editors who check your spelling.’

‘So could I write a book?’ the first boy said, a radiant smile transforming his face.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Thomas, cautiously. ‘If you were prepared to sit still a lot and be very patient, and not give up.’

He had been talking long enough, he sensed, but at least half the class had their hands up with questions. The giant plastic clock on the wall ticked on. He was sweating profusely, with half an hour to go … How does she manage to do this all day?

‘If we send you our stories that we write, will you publish them?’ an Asian girl asked, self-possessed, pretty, serious.

‘He isn’t a publisher,’ Melissa smiled, trying to protect him. But Thomas saw an opportunity.

‘Have you got a computer in this classroom?’

‘It’s broken, sir,’ several of them said.

‘Please, sir, it did the spacing all wrong.’

‘All right,’ said Thomas, Father Christmas, ‘if each of you would like to write a story, or choose the best story you ever wrote, and give it to Miss Simons, she can pass it to me and I’ll —’

Suddenly he wasn’t sure. How much was he letting himself in for here? He was used to working on his own, most evenings. But maybe, he thought, I’ve been too much alone. If I give up Postmodernism , I’ll have more time –