Short fiction: A History Lesson

Why do we study it? 

It was the last lesson of the day. Mr Balcombe donned his mortarboard and his gown. White chalk powder adorned the latter. This was from the Latin class after Assembly; he had flung the blackboard wiper at Brockley Minor, an especially dense member of the Remove who failed to conjugate the verb manere. The missile had missed, hitting the rear wall of the classroom with a dull thud and releasing a white cloud that caught the morning sunshine that streamed in through the high sash window. “Since you cannot conjugate manere, you will, er, remain in detention after supper this evening,” said Mr Balcombe, delighted with his own wit.

Perhaps he’d been a little hard on Brockley; after all, the boy was a useful fly-half. He sighed, and entered the classroom where Mr Lawless was teaching the fifth form History. Mr Lawless had joined the school at the beginning of the term. He was a slim, rather quiet man in his 30s who said little in the staff room although he was always polite. But Mr Balcombe had noticed that when he supervised a table at suppertime, the conversation was a little louder, a little brighter, and sometimes the boys were laughing.

He also had the overpowering sensation that he had met him, at least briefly, years before.

“I understand, Balcombe, that his lessons are a little – er, unorthodox,” the Headmaster had said before lunch. “Sir Rodney Bush and one or two others have enquired. It seems their boys have mentioned them.”

“The lessons worried the boys in some way?” asked Mr Balcombe. He sipped his sherry.

“Well, no,” said the Headmaster. “They said they enjoyed them. So you might sit in on a lesson or two and check he is teaching properly.”

If Mr Lawless thought this unusual, he gave no sign of it. Mr Balcombe seated himself by the window and watched his colleague write on the blackboard, then turn to the class. On the board he had chalked:

EMERGENCE

And in a smaller hand:

Of what? When? Why? What happened? Then:

DID WE KNOW?

“Last week I asked you to consider these, with reference to a change, or incident, of your choice,” said Mr Lawless. “You have written essays. Bush. Tell us of an age and its emergence.”

“I thought of the Black Death, sir,” said Bush.

“Very good. The emergence of – what? A disease yes, but of what new phase or age?”

“Men asked more for their labour, sir,” said Bush. “So farming changed.”

“It did. The Acts of Enclosure, the arrival of sheep – what is emerging, Bush?” 

“A prosperous new world, sir.”

“Indeed. For some. But as the plague raged, none knew of that; only of the terror they felt. So. Thorpe. Your essay. Most original. Tell the class what emerged.”

“The age of steam, sir. Newcomen’s engine.”

“Yes. But did we know what was happening?”

“A few Cornish miners may have done, sir.”

“Exactly. The rest did not know,” said Lawless. He was walking back and forth before the class, stroking his chin. “That was in the 1690s. Two hundred years later, we cannot imagine life without the train. The cotton mill. And now the Dreadnought.” He looked around the class. “Now, someone – Bush, I think – asked me earlier this term why we study history.” He looked at a spotty youth at the back of the class. “Grimbly, tell me why we study history.”

“So that we can spot it happening, sir?”

“Precisely,” said Mr Lawless. “Tell me, everyone; is an age emerging today? Now? In this year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twelve? And how shall we know?”

No-one answered, for there was a hullabaloo from an adjoining classroom; and then a noise appeared from outside, a clawing, ripping sound, and doors banged as boys poured through the corridors and out onto the terrace that led to the playing fields. All turned their heads upwards, eyes shielded against the late afternoon sun; the noise grew louder and a shadow crossed the First Form cricket pitch and there it was, an assemblage of sticks and wires and stretched doped linen, a trail of black smoke behind it, drawn across the sky by two spinning discs that caught the sun. It drifted past them, perhaps a hundred feet above, the ripping, tearing sound assaulting one’s eardrums, the boys cheering and tossing their caps in the air.

“Well I’ll be damned!” Mr Lawless chuckled. “I do believe it’s the Daily Mail aeroplane!”

“It must be,” said Mr Balcombe. “I did hear it might come this way; how splendid! I suppose that’s that Grahame-White chappie conducting it.” The latter’s hunched figure was just visible as the aeroplane passed over the Headmaster’s house and proceeded in the direction of Great Billingham. In the quad a horse neighed and whinnied between the shafts of the Chaplain’s dogcart and Cook craned her neck at the sky saying “Well I never! Well I never!” over and over again, twisting her apron between her hands.

When the aeroplane was out of sight the two men rounded up their charges and chivvied them back to the classroom. As they followed the last stragglers across the terrace, Mr Balcombe said: “I did say I was sure I had met you before you joined us and now I fancy I know when. Were you ever in the Cape Colony?”

The other frowned. “Yes. That was some years ago.”

“Indeed. During the South African War. Were you serving there? I met you, I think, on a visit to the Second Hampshires.”

“Yes, I served with them. I remember you now you mention it. We left for the Transvaal about then.”

“How was the Transvaal?”

“We were engaged in farm clearances,” said Mr Lawless. He was silent for a moment, then said: “I resigned my commission not long afterwards.”

“Oh.”

As they reached the door Mr Lawless paused for a moment, then turned and looked at the sky. “I wonder, Balcombe. What has just emerged… and what new beastliness will we commit with the machine we have seen today?”

________________________________

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

Sport is Character-Forming A migration through a muddy river
It Turns on a Sixpence The CEO has a rotten day
The Man Who Lost the Plot When the character you write is cardboard
The Long Road from the Black Death A history lecturer retires
Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now
A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth
Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story
In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer
A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place
A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit
Time After Time When you have to warn the children
Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style
A Time of Darkness History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes
Another Time A tear in the fabric
Evolution The world is turning
When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square
Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala
A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip
A History Lesson Why do we study it? So we can spot it happening
The Creatives Meeting a tech bro
Cold Everything is cold here
Homecoming A sort of love story
Solitude A Cold War memory
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography
Hiraeth A yearning…
Strange Places A spirit in the sky 
A Sideways Journey Things might have been different
Displaced Encounter on E94th Street
Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
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Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.