Read Online The Quivering Tree by S. T. Haymon - Free Book Online

building bang into Mrs Crail, who just happened (of course!) to be descending St Gregory’s Alley at that fateful moment. The title of the book, which (of course!) just happened to be turned outward for anybody to read was: Father Gapon: Martyr of the Russian Revolution .
    Mrs Crail took Dr Parfitt’s letter from me, and opened it. Perusing the contents, her smile grew even jollier than usual.
    â€˜There are seven weeks left of term,’ she announced at the end, as if telling me something I didn’t know. ‘How your doctor can predict the state of your health in seven weeks’ time is beyond my imagining.’ Handing the letter back as if divesting herself of something subtly unclean: ‘Tell Miss Reade you are excused games for the next three weeks. Three weeks. I hope I have made that clear?’ I nodded dumbly. ‘Thereafter, failing a fresh letter, you will be required to join in all normal school activities, the same as everybody else.’
    â€˜Don’t let it worry you, dear,’ comforted Miss Reade after the headmistress had sailed away, smiling. ‘Her bark is worse than her bite. She’s all right, really.’
    Across the arc of the years I still have to say that I don’t think Mrs Crail was all right, really; and as between her bark and her bite there was nothing much to choose. You could catch rabies from either. It may be vanity which convinces me that she did not hate the sight of me the instant I first came within range of those smiling eyes. It was only after I had settled into the school and let down my guard that the rot set in. It was then that she made the shocking discovery that I was an enthusiast, a category of persons which, along with clever dicks, she seemed to regard as having been put on earth to try her, her especially. What she clearly aimed for in her school was a pleasing mediocrity on the part of all concerned, staff and pupils alike. No difficulties, no surprises. ‘You!’ she would exclaim, jabbing a pudgy forefinger at the miscreant who had dared to be difficult or surprising, and smiling all over her face as she returned an essay marked with a big blue ‘R’ (for ‘Repeat in the Detention Room after school’). ‘ You are a clever dick. A little less cleverness next time, if you please!’
    Mrs Crail taught English – her own tunnel-vision version of it, that is. Not the incomparable jewel-box of language, the treasure-house of literature my father and my brother Alfred had encouraged me to recognize it to be, but English as a pinched, sectarian cult devoted to the worship of an obscure deity called the Syllabus. According to its inflexible tenets, as promulgated by its high priestess, one did not inquire of a poem, ‘Is this good?’ or, for that matter, ‘Is this bad?’ but only ‘Is it in the Syllabus?’ If the answer to the question was no, then, even if its beauty took you by the throat or its unique insights transformed your life, thumbs down. Cast it into that outer darkness reserved for quotations that would never be required in an examination paper.
    As an enthusiast, I found myself – to my sorrow, for I would truly have preferred a quiet life to one poised forever on the brink of catastrophe – unable to keep my mouth shut. If only Mrs Crail had taught arithmetic, say, I could gladly have stayed mum from the beginning of the lesson to the end of it, and she could have marked me down as a model citizen. But how to stay silent when you had just that minute discovered ‘Christabel’? Not in the Syllabus! Or ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’? Not in the Syllabus! Or Oscar Wilde? NOT IN THE SYLLABUS !

Chapter Seven
    There was a lot of window glass about in the Secondary School. Seen from the bottom of St Clement’s Hill, the swell of the land lending importance, the two-storey main building looked fairly imposing, although its pomp and