With their colleague writhing on the floor behind me, I could not relax until we had turned off the square, out of sight and sound. Hubert, when allowed to get up, seemed to have lost a lot of his belligerence. In fact he was reaching the sleepy stage and when he arrived at his home, he walked quietly and fairly steadily up his garden path.
Back in Skeldale House, I went up to our bedroom. The big room with the double bed, wardrobe and dressing table was eerily empty without Helen.
I opened the door to the long, narrow apartment that had been the dressing room in the great days of the old house. It was where Tristan had slept when we were all bachelors together, but now it was Jimmy’s room, and his bed stood in exactly the same place as my old friend’s.
I looked down on my son as I had often looked down on Tristan in his slumbers. I used to marvel at Tristan’s cherubic innocence, but even he could not compete with a sleeping child.
I gazed at little Jimmy, then glanced at the other end of the room where a cot stood to receive Rosie.
Soon, I thought, I would have two in here. I was becoming rich.
Chapter
18
November 2, 1961
WE LEARNED THIS MORNING that we would not start unloading the sheep until this evening as the Ubbergen was still occupying the berth, so this gave me plenty of opportunity to explore the town.
Shortly after breakfast an important person came aboard, the head director of “Inflot,” which deals with the movement of all ships in the harbour.
He was a kindly-looking man of about fifty, with an attractive smile. He wore very thick glasses, and he told me that his weak eyesight had been caused by hours of studying at night. His English was very good.
Maybe it was because he was so pleasant that I was emboldened to broach the question of the school. Another reason, of course, was that I was somewhat puffed up by my own importance. When I was recently elected chairman of the Darrowby Parent-Teachers’ Association, it gave my ego a definite boost, and when our headmaster expressed an interest in Russian education, he started an idea in my mind.
Anyway, whatever the cause, I was about to do another of my daft things.
“Do you think I could possibly see inside a Russian school?” I asked him.
The eyes behind the glasses stopped twinkling, and he gave me a long, thoughtful stare. After a few moments he nodded. “I think it will be all right if you ask permission when you get to the school. As it happens, my wife is a teacher, and if you go to Skola Number Two, you could ask for Madame Juowskaya.”
I could hardly wait to get ashore, but again I couldn’t find any volunteers to come with me. When I finally approached the captain, he probably felt like throwing me over the side. He was short of sleep after our stormy voyage and weary with his long negotiations with the officials but still he had the goodness to humour me.
He smiled and said, “Of course, Mr. Herriot.” As he settled his peaked hat on his silvery head and pulled on a smart navy-blue coat, I thought how very distinguished he looked.
Down the gangway again, past the unsmiling soldiers and along the railway tracks towards the gate. But I just had to solve the mystery of the man-eating dog. As we passed the wagon of last night I caught the captain’s arm.
“Just a minute,” I said. “I want to have a peep behind here.”
For a moment he lost his poise and his eyes widened. “Mr. Herriot, no! What are you doing?”
“It’s all right.” I smiled reassuringly. “I only want a quick look.”
With the greatest care I edged my way behind the wagon, but the dog was gone. There was only an empty kennel. Then I noticed there was a kennel about every fifty yards and a chain attached by a ring to a wire that stretched along the entire length of the fence.
As I re-emerged, to the obvious relief of the captain, I saw in the distance groups of dogs being led towards us. We passed them on the way to the gate house; large, stringy creatures loping along on the end of their leads, looking neither to right nor left. They were of the Alsatian type but taller, and they certainly had a lean and hungry look.
I looked around at the soldiers by the water’s edge and in the watch towers, and back again at the dogs. Best of luck, I thought, to anybody who tried to get in or out of here after dark.
As we walked along, loudspeakers blared at us from all directions. This has gone on all the time the ship has been in Klaipeda; it is not music, but talking. Talk, talk, talk, all day. I do not know if it is political indoctrination or news of Soviet achievements, but it goes on without stopping, and I am getting tired of it.
Once outside the harbour, we began to make our way through the streets. Klaipeda is a town of 100,000 inhabitants, and we headed for what we thought was the centre of the place.
The streets on the outskirts were simply packed-down earth, and this applied also to the footpaths. Great muddy puddles stood everywhere, and there were holes, sometimes three-or four-feet-deep, dug in the footpaths and apparently just left with the heap of soil beside them.
Apart from the tenements there were the old Lithuanian houses, and these were in a very poor state of repair, with the paint flaking and roof tiles loose or missing. Many of the houses had little balconies in front of the upper windows.
There were quite a few people about, picking their way over the reddish clay.
We walked until we reached the main street, Montes Street. This had a cobbled surface and proper pavements, and there were shops on either side.
The book shops seemed to sell only technical literature. There was a store full of bicycles, scooters and mopeds and a sports shop with roller skates—of a different type from ours—fencing foils and table-tennis sets in the window. One shop was apparently devoted entirely to chessmen and chessboards.
We saw what looked like one of our licenced grocers, with lots of tinned and bottled goods and bottles of wine on show, but the place that really intrigued me was the fish shop. Its window was filled with large imitation fish of all colours. These models were covered with dust and were enough to put one off fish for life. Inside, I could see a high counter, with white enamel bowls filled with the real things.
A characteristic of all the shops was their general dinginess. The windows were all dirty and unwashed, and there was no attempt to display their wares attractively.
There was very little traffic—mainly commercial vehicles, with an occasional private car or taxi.
There were a lot of people in the town centre, most of the women in head scarves and undistinguished clothes. It occurred to me then that I had not seen a single smartly dressed woman since my arrival. In fact, women seemed to do a lot of the rough jobs. Back in the harbour, women, dressed in cloaks and hoods, operated some of the mighty cranes that served the ships. I noticed, too, on a building site a group of girls throwing bricks from one to another, as our bricklayers do. Their hands must have been hard and rough.
A column of youngsters marched by, led by a tall man, probably a teacher. They were laughing and singing and looked very like English children, except that many of the boys had peaked army-style caps and the little girls without exception wore long, brown woollen stockings of the sort girls used to wear in our country in my early schooldays. All the children looked healthy and happy.
I stopped a young man in the street and showed him the slip of paper with the name of the school written in Russian. Again there was the polite response. He went out of his way and led us to the door of the school.
It was a large, old-fashioned type of building set flush on the roadside, with no sign of a playground. It looked more like a big block of offices.
The man from Inflot had told me to ask permission, but there didn’t seem to be anybody about, so I did my second daft thing of the trip: I just barged inside, followed dutifully by the captain.
Once through the door there was something I noticed immediately—the intense silence, unusual in a school. We were in a long passage, with walls hung with brightly coloured pain
tings of every conceivable sporting activity and of Russian feats of arms. These latter were done in a very romantic style: soldiers with bandaged foreheads, bayonets outstretched, handsome faces gazing fearlessly ahead. There was a glass case containing diplomas and certificates.
Many doors led off the passage, and I began to work my way along, knocking first, then trying the handle. They all seemed to be locked, and when I reached one near the end I had given up hope. I turned the handle without knocking, and it flew open.
I almost fell into a big room with a lot of startled women looking at me. They were all seated around a long table, and at the top was a big, impressive man with craggy features. He was staring at me harder than any of them.
I was obviously in the staff room, and I realised that I must have presented a strange sight. I had brought only my working clothes with me on the voyage and was clad in the black plastic macintosh I wore round the farms. This coat was frayed at cuffs and collar, and tattered by many horn thrusts. When horns tore off buttons and ripped pockets, I didn’t like to pass it on to Helen to repair, because despite my efforts to keep it clean it carried the powerful odour of the farmyard deep in its seams. So I always did the sewing myself, using the thick, bright-blue nylon with which I stitched cows’ wounds. This, with the ends of the coloured threads hanging loose, gave the garment an even more bizarre appearance.
They all continued to stare, but the man at the head of the table had clearly seen enough. He rose from his chair and hurried through a door at the far end. It didn’t need a lot of intuition to know that he had gone to the telephone.
A realisation of my imprudence was dawning on me, but I swallowed a lump in my throat, gave what I hoped was a winning smile and said, “Madame Juowskaya?”
One of the women nodded; the others looked at her questioningly, and she turned deathly pale. She must have thought I was somebody sinister because she was undoubtedly frightened.
The captain could see it was time he took over. He stepped in front of me and addressed the company rapidly in German. He told them that I was chairman of the P.T.A. in Darrowby, but this information, not surprisingly, evoked no gasps of awe.
I stood there, the centre of all those female eyes. They were a very attractive lot of young women, for all the world like teachers in Britain except for one dark-skinned Mongolian miss, but it was easy to see that they were not similarly impressed with me.
The captain, a man of infinite resource, came to the rescue again and asked which one was the English teacher. The prettiest of them all came forward, and I was just about to speak to her when the door behind me burst open and two Russian army officers marched in.
They were massive men, very smart in their high-shouldered uniforms, epaulettes with stars, breeches and shiny high boots. They began to speak rapidly with the man who had returned to the top of the table, glaring over at me every few seconds. The man was wide-eyed, throwing his arms around, shaking his head, and I required no knowledge of Russian to divine that he was telling them that I had rushed in here from nowhere, he had no idea who the devil I was and he didn’t like the look of me one little bit.
I do not wish to be over-dramatic, but I am convinced that if Captain Rasmussen had not been with me, I would have been hustled off to the local jail, but he stepped in once more with a flurry of explanations in German.
Another thing that saved me was that the little English teacher began to talk to me about the school. I sat down by her side at the table, and the officers moved close to me as we spoke together. All the time I was very conscious of their towering presence; they hung over me, looking me up and down, no doubt mystified at my eccentric apparel.
On an inspiration, I asked the English teacher her name. It was a real jawbreaker and I couldn’t make much of it, but she said she was known as what sounded like “Kitty.” She told me she was married, with a child of six.
She clapped her hands together. “Oh, I am so excited,” she said. “I have taught English for so long, but I have never spoken to a real Englishman before. You must tell me if my pronunciation is very bad.”
“I give you my word, you speak better English than I do,” I replied. And with my thick Glaswegian, it was the literal truth. Kitty was delighted.
She told me that the director of the school had taken all the 1200 children away for the day on what was a regular visit to some local institution, where they saw a film show and listened to talks. This accounted for the silence. The big man at the head of the table was the deputy director.
As we swapped information, the other teachers pulled their chairs closer to us and listened with the greatest interest as Kitty passed everything on to them. Even the forbidding deputy director could not contain his curiosity and leaned across the table, elbows on the wood, watching me intently.
As the atmosphere grew more cordial, I was relieved to see the two officers move away and lean against the wall. Their previous hostile expressions were now merely impassive.
A hectic question-and-answer ensued, with Kitty relaying my words round the table.
“At what age do your children start school?” she asked.
When I replied, “At four or five years old,” it caused general amazement
“Ours do not start till seven or eight years old,” she said, and I was similarly surprised.
The deputy director got quite heated on this point. He banged his hand on the table and declared that, according to the principles of education, it was impossible to teach children of five. What could they possibly learn? he wanted to know.
When I told him they learned simple sums and words to start with, he shook his head vigorously in disbelief.
All the teachers were astonished, too, to hear about the normal school hours in Britain. Kitty told me that younger Russian children go from 8:30 A.M. till 2:30 P.M., and the fifth and sixth formers go from 2:30 P.M. till 7 P.M. or 8 P.M. at night.
Their classes average about thirty in number, and they teach all the mathematical subjects, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and Russian history. The principal foreign language at that school is English, then German and Lithuanian. French or Latin is not taught.
I had to get in a question about sport. “Do you have games in your curriculum?”
Kitty raised her hands and laughed. “Many, many games. Volley ball is the most popular, but there is also swimming, hockey, skating, football, P.E. and gymnastics.
“Also,” she went on, “we have many school clubs and outside activities. Do you have pioneers in your country?”
I presumed that this meant camping and hiking. I said yes, we did this, too, in our schools, and I launched into an explanation of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme. I struck an unexpected snag here because none of them had even heard of the Duke of Edinburgh.
I laughed. “Oh, surely you must know him. Our Queen’s husband?”
Blank faces and shrugs all round.
“Edinbor? Edinbor?” Kitty queried.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “The capital of Scotland.”
“But Dublin is the capital of Scotland,” she said, so I decided to drop that topic.
Just about then, the army officers, seeing the teachers grouped around me, laughing and talking animatedly, apparently decided I was harmless and left the room. The atmosphere, which had thawed remarkably, became still more cordial, and the questioning went on at top speed.
“Do you teach religion?” I asked. Of course, I knew very well that they didn’t, but I was interested to see what they would say.
Their reaction was pretty uniform—a kind of pitying amusement. One big dark girl, smiling sarcastically, put a question through Kitty.
“Do you teach about Darwin, too?”
I nodded. “Yes, we teach religion, and also about evolution and the scientific explanations of the beginnings of the world and of man.”
This caused general puzzlement.
We discussed their attitude to religion, and I gathered that it is regarded as a
private thing and people can go to church if they wish. It is not banned, nor is there any propaganda against it in the schools. The teachers seemed to be of the opinion that it would just quietly die out. There are three churches in Klaipeda, but in some towns of a similar size there are many more.
The teachers commiserated with me on the tremendous unemployment and poverty in Britain, and I got the impression that they thought I came from a land of starvation and soup kitchens. When I told them that British workers enjoyed a steady improvement in their living standards and that many of them owned cars, they looked at me with frank incredulity. Obviously they thought I was purveying capitalist propaganda.
And in one way, I couldn’t blame them. I could see their eyes flickering over my ragged coat with the torn-down pockets and the buttons with their blue garlands. If this was a British professional man, what were the ordinary workers like?
“But your teachers do not have our standard of living,” one of them declared.
I wondered if she had a point. These women were all beautifully dressed and clearly prosperous. I had the feeling that the teacher is a very prestigious person in Russia.
“What is the eleven-plus examination?” was the next question.
I tried to explain it as well as I could, but they really grilled me on this. The deputy director burst in, his deep-chested voice booming like an organ note amid the female chatter.
“There is absolutely no point in classing children according to ability as you describe!” He was clearly a man of immovable opinions.
I looked across at him. “Well, do you have all levels in one class?”
The answer came back through Kitty. “All Russian children are clever.” This was said with complete conviction and quite seriously.
In the ensuing discussion, I gathered that a very high proportion of the pupils go on to universities and that further education in the form of night schools is very popular. In fact, many Russians obtain a complete education up to university standard by working in these night schools.