campervanbard

The classroom sweated that wet afternoon, the children’s coats steaming on the pegs. Rain  swelled into fat teardrops and raced down the window pane. When the clouds parted, the sun burst through and lit up my otter on her plinth.

            “Look, Miss,” Joey cried. “Your otter’s doing a jig.”

            Shane drew circles in the air at his temple.

            “Crazy Joey.”

            That did it.

            “He’s far from crazy, Shane. Right, all of you, drawing pencils, sketchbooks – out now, off we go.”

            There was the usual scrum at the coat pegs, and then we were out, the sun warmer now, a rainbow over Lugnaquilla. The rusty topped mountain looking down on us.  I’d be in trouble for this, as I always seemed to be these days.

            My otter stared up at the mountain as we passed, the sun gilding the bronze. Moulding her took me hours, the sweat pouring off me in GrandDa’s old forge. His voice once more in my head.

            “Make the wax mould first. Lost-wax it’s called. You can do it…”

I failed time and time again.

“Sure what is failure but the other side of the moon,” he said.

            And then at last, there she was, the bronze otter.

Out the school gates and along the valley floor, mountains ranged above us on each side.

            “Let’s go and see the real thing,” I said. “Frankie stop pulling Greta’s hair. Greta, don’t stamp on his foot. In twos, quick now.”

            Lambs hopped, banded together in groups. The gorse smelt of coconut. Over the humped back bridge, we followed the path by the Avonbeg, tangled oak roots beneath us, moss cushioning the ground, until there it was, the granite boulders making a pool of the river. Otters slid down smooth rocks, chasing each other, play fighting and nipping.

“Sit on this tree trunk. Draw whatever it is that captures you.”

            Twenty heads, brown, blonde, chestnut, copper, black bent over the sketchbooks. But Joey’s pencil moved over the blank page, catching the flick of a tail, paddling legs, sliding, twitch of whiskers, the laughing mouths of the otters.

            Counting them back through the school gates, Mick stood waiting for me to look his way. But I wasn’t going to invite a telling off from the Principal in front of the children. There he stood in his navy suit, slim-line tie done up tight, the whiter than white shirt digging into his Adam’s apple.

            “Miss Rossiter, after school, my office.”

            His long shadow fell over my bronze otter as he stalked away.

            Joey blushed. Every time his father ordered me into his office, the poor child looked as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. It was hard enough being the Principal’s son, but Joey was more sensitive than most.

            The rap of my knuckles on the office door echoed, my stomach lurched.

            “Enter,” his voice abrupt.

            His eyes focussed on the computer screen, he didn’t deign to look up.

            “Taking children out of class again? You know I’ve said classroom pedagogy must be maintained at all times?”

            The words snuck out before I could stop them. “Is that all you learned in your ten years in London?”

            This man, who wouldn’t grace me with a glance, had my life in his hands. So, I don’t know what I was at, when my hand half-reached out to brush the fringe from his eyes.

            He cleared his throat, a flush on his cheek. “I have your class’s reading scores here.”

            “And you’ll see that 18 out of 20 of them have made 12 months progress in 6 months.”

            “Except for Shane,” he paused, his long fingers fiddled with his tie, “and Joey.”

            “Ah, that’s what this is all about –  Joey?”

            “All he does these days is draw.” He raised his eyes to me, those lion’s eyes with the amber flecks, eyes that still ambushed me when I least expected it. “He’s obsessed with drawing.”

            “Your Joey has a gift, the best I’ve come across in years.”

            “Drawing’s not going to put food on the table for him is it?”

            “Time to leave your past behind, Mick. Have you forgotten children learn in fits and starts? He’ll read in his own good time. Just…” The breeze from the window cooled my face as the otter blinked, my voice steadied. “Celebrate what he can do.”

            I could feel the heat of him as he stood beside me.

            “You always did have to have the last word.”

            My laugh was more of a bark. “And you always had the first.”

            That lock of chestnut hair flopped over his forehead, a dusting of silver at his temples.

            “Joey should have been yours,” he said.

            “But you left.”

            “And you stayed. This valley, your Grand-da’s old forge, that otter. You chose them.”

            The waters of the Avonbeg rushed on by. Clouds swelled and shifted. The sun flicked across my otter. Mick’s shoulder was close enough to lay my head on. Inching away, my mind cleared.

            “Why did you come back?”

            A sudden crumbling, and he laid his head against the window pane.

            A sudden ray of sun stroked my otter. “Look,” he said, his voice like it was when he was a young teacher, light with wonder, “your otter. I could swear she moved. She’s staring at us.”

My otter’s head had turned away from Lugnaquilla,. She stared right at us as if she was reading our souls.

How I did it:

The Otter was inspired by a notice board in Glenmalure, County Wicklow, which told me of the otters which live in the Avonbeg River. The story was also inspired by Glenmalure Valley and its sheer beauty, but I combined this with my past experiences as a teacher. Over the years the attempts of government ministers to make English a colouring by numbers subject is one I object to. I find the mechanical approach, especially prevalent in current directives to primary schools, terribly limiting as teaching English teaching should have an element of magic to it . Preferably, it should have an element of the unexpected.

But I also wanted to include hints of a relationship lost to the age-old question of whether to stay close to home or to emigrate and the lasting consequences of this decision.

If you want to have a go:

• Choose a place that you have been to, or where you live, as long as it is potent in  your imagination.
• Choose something that has separated two characters.
• Choose an animal that lives in your special place.
• Bring all these elements together again for your piece of flash fiction.