She went out into the passage and he could hear her sweeping the dust along the lino, banging the brush against the wall as she moved towards the door.

My brother has come home.

Why?

That’s what I would like to know.

That’s what I ask myself from time to time.

He has money rattling in his pockets.

Money that folds in his wallet.

He says he earned it by working very hard.

Over there he worked.

Making a packet.

How?

My mother says I shouldn’t believe everything I’m told.

Why not?

He chewed the plastic end of his pen. It was all much easier if you didn’t have to make rhymes. But, then, was it poetry at all. There were people wrote it like that, he knew that for sure. He had read it. It was rhythms that mattered, so that it didn’t sound like ordinary sentences.

A hand was clamped on to his shoulder. There was a murmur of laughter.

‘How many times have I told you, Joseph, that the classroom is for working in? Don’t bother to answer me, I doubt if you can count that far.’

She removed her hand. The laughter swelled hopefully.

‘It’ll have to be the head this time.’

‘Sorry, miss.’

‘Sorry.’ She spoke the word with contempt.

His hand crept over the paper, covering the so-called poem.

‘Do sums bore you so much?’

‘Yes, miss.’

Someone laughed aloud.

Her face became dark with anger.

‘No laughing. This is no laughing matter.’ She banged her clenched fist on the desk beside Joe’s book.

‘How do you pass your time? I feel I have a right to know. It is also my time.’

She plucked the paper out from under his fingers. His writing danced sideways away from him as she pulled. His face boiled as she held the paper up and read what he had written silently. After a moment she laid the paper down in front of him again.

‘In the long run, Joseph, sums would stand you in better stead.’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Ten years ago I would have given you a good walloping, but progress …’ She moved away from him towards the front of the class.

‘I don’t want to waste the head’s time as well as yours and mine. I’ll give you extra homework. I am angry.’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘As I said before I don’t want your sorrow. I want your attention. Do you call that poetry?’

Someone laughed. She raised her head and stared down the length of the room at whoever it was.

‘Well …’ he hesitated.

‘A waste of time.’

She picked up the chalk and drew a circle on the board. One of last year’s bluebottles buzzed hopelessly in a corner of the window. The sun came out from behind a cloud and for a moment the room was filled with dancing dust. She drew a line across the centre of the circle.

‘The diameter,’ she said. ‘Are you all paying attention?’

‘Yes, miss.’