MORNING SERIAL

AND on the white driveway, beneath the white trees, they had sought out Issie to say that their daughter had told them in her letters that she was the kindest of the teachers. Tears had spurted from Issie’s eyes. She had held out a mittened hand to the mother, who took it in her leather glove, their breaths mingling in the freezing air. Issie had felt that a partial absolution had been tendered by the only person qualified to offer it. But as she had turned away, and left the chapel steps, the absolution had dissolved away to nothing in her mouth, a wafer void of substance. How innocently barbed was the tribute: kindest of the teachers. As if one should congratulate the least venomous of snakes.

She had gone storming in to Patterson, now that it was too late, to have it out. She’d blurted it all, the bullying and the brutality, the way it was a system and not simply isolated instances of neglect.

The way he ought to be ashamed of this cult of Donitz and his sailor boys. It was play-acting, sham, a farce. All those beastly relics, dredged up from the lake ... while up there at the Blutehof... didn’t he know?

Patterson, shrugging off the attack on his beastly relics as female vapours, had assured her he ran a well-ordered ship at Confessor’s. Every care was taken for the welfare of his young charges. He’d urged Miss Dahl not to take things so much to heart, but to strive to see the larger view: which seemed to be the standpoint of an expatriate head, full of years if less full of honours than he might have wished, about to retire without a significant blot upon his name.

Not that there was any harm in soul-searching, he had felt. On the contrary. His gowned figure had leaned forward on his elbows, behind a glossily polished desk, to suggest a chat with the padre, as a means of setting Miss Dahl’s mind at rest and enabling her to see this sad loss in a clearer light.

Then there had been the Christmas festivities to organise jointly with the Blutehof orphans.