Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

“All those people,” said Miss Palmer, her voice sharp. “How many times do I have to tell you? Do you want this switch on your legs? Now where were we? Oh! You’re going to Ireland to fight singlehandedly to save it from whatever they’re doing over there now — it’s just as well I never pay attention to the news, I’d learn more than I care to.

“Well, I see we have a modern Joan of Arc in our midst.” At the blank look on her students’ faces, Miss Palmer now delved into the problems of France’s Maid of Orleans, something apparently new, she decided, in the lives of these culturally deprived children.

Their eyes became glassy as they always did when totally devoid of interest in the subject at hand, but their ears and minds absorbing enough so that they could answer some of the questions they knew would be propounded later. Let’s get the hell out of this asshole at any price! their minds told them in unison. Get it right and let’s get out.

So they listened, the information going in one ear and about to go out the other — after they’d passed their examinations.

Miss Palmer did not care for the New Math. Her students were about to be instructed in the traditional arithmetic of her youth. “That New Math,” she told them, “Is a lot of balderdash dug up by some out-of-work teacher who wants to make a name for himself. It is anything but instructive and I won’t wonder that no one can make head or tail of it—”

“I did!” Maggie yelled. “I got A- in it last term!”

“Indeed?” Her teacher spoke coldly. “Well, this term, with our traditional arithmetic, you will get A-plus. Is that clear?”

In her zeal, Miss Palmer did not, of course, overlook either the cultural aspects of life as it was lived in the 1890’s or the proper social amenities.

She was determined that they should absorb all she was able to provide in the way of music and literature, although she did feel somewhat handicapped in her lack of suitable materials. However, she told herself with satisfaction, she had been able to make do.

So, although she had never owned a radio or a television set, considering them a deplorable waste of time and mind-bending instruments that perverted all the cultural potentialities of anyone who used them, she was determined to do her own mind-bending toward culture.

“Therefore, she one day produced an ancient phonograph with a flower-like horn, and an-equally ancient record of Caruso singing Pagliacci. After which, in an effort to improve her charges’ critical faculties, she then produced a newer record of Mario Lanza imitating Caruso,” her lip curled meanwhile.

“Now, do you see what I mean?” she demanded of her charges. “The first record is pure art, the second is trash.”

The children looked at her blankly.

She read David Copperfield to them and their eyes grew ever more glassy. She read Shakespeare and they struggled with their yawns. She told them that their whole futures depended on what they read and they stared at her in amazement — and disbelief. She struggled onward — arithmetic, geography, history, even civics (they knew only three presidents: Washington, Lincoln and the incumbent) in the morning, English and the classics in the afternoon, proper manners and social deportment in the evening.

The five children slept soundly on their hard pallets at night. They were exhausted.

Miss Palmer slept well for she was pleased with the progress that her charges were making.

They obeyed her now, they were learning what she was teaching them, all was right with her world.

But she did not listen, she did not hear.

She did not know that within these children was the silent sound of screams.

The lessons continued until time was forgotten... lessons in everything. At bath time, they took turns — the two girls in the bathroom, then the three boys, with Miss Palmer sitting rigidly at her desk, one hand on her whip, the other on her pistol. After a thorough inspection of ears and necks, they were chained back in their places.

They were watched as they ate, and reminded that little ladies and gentlemen did not eat with their hands and that they used napkins (linen, not paper), the small forks were for salad and the small knives for butter spreading.

They said please and thank you and may I be excused now, although there was no place for them to go. They learned how to extend an invitation, and to accept one, and to refuse one, all graciously, until finally a strange thing came to pass — they all began to look alike.

Not their features, but the fixed pleasant smiles on their faces, their eyes faintly glazed, the mouths slightly curved upward, the skin shining with cleanliness. Their words were mainly, “Yes, Miss Palmer,” and, “No, Miss Palmer,” and no longer did they interrupt to express their own opinions. They echoed her, and she was mightily pleased.

Thank God, she said to herself, my life has not been lived in vain.