In the school Jonathan Drysdale was irritated, as he always was, by the younger children’s inability to concentrate. He would never have chosen to specialize in primary teaching elsewhere. Sylvia had been glad to help him with the little ones, and when they had first moved to Kinness they had worked together in the classroom. They had been happy then, he thought. The walls of the school room had been covered by the collages and pictures she had inspired in the infants, and he had taken the older ones for more formal, academic subjects. Then Maggie Stennet had begun the campaign of complaint because her youngest son was slow to learn to read. When the Drysdales had first moved to Kinness they had seen Maggie as an ally. She, after all, had been a teacher. Then twelve months before, her attitude towards them had changed. Sylvia was not qualified to teach, she said. She might have been to art college but she had no degree in education. Stuart could read fluently by the time he was six, so why was Neil still bringing home picture books? Jonathan wanted to reply: “Because he’s dim, he takes after your husband,” but he had promised more structure for the reception group, promised to spend more time on the basics with them. He had tried, too. He had sat at the double table where they sat, perched on a ridiculous small chair, surrounded by flash cards and Ladybird books, but he could get no response from them, and while he was there the bigger children got bored with the work he had set them, and began to chat and fidget. He had longed at times to be in a large city school with classes streamed according to age and ability. There had been no improvement in the infants’ reading skills, and at times of boredom Sylvia had drifted back into the classroom to help. Neil, miraculously, had begun to read, but Maggie continued to complain. Now she said that the Drysdales did not participate fully in island affairs, did not encourage the children to understand their own history. He had recieved a warning letter from the Education department on Baltasay. Maggie had started complaining there.

Jonathan walked to the infants’ table and started them copying letters in a print workbook. He set a series of arithmetic problems on the blackboard for the older group, then sat at his desk. He began to think of Sylvia again, but knew that would lead nowhere, so he returned to his favourite subject. He imagined his black guillemot paper, illustrated with immaculate diagrams, the argument followed through with perfect logic, and the credit he would receive when it was published in a respected academic journal.