Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

I talked about the many love stories I was involved with in the post, Love Stories in Isis School. I briefly mentioned Miss Moreau’s role in my unplanned confession to Susan. For this post, however, I am giving the spotlight to how two teachers inadvertently taught us about love when they were supposed to be teaching us French and History lessons.

Miss Moreau was a very attractive, tall, and slim woman, perhaps in her late twenties, with bouffon-like brown hair. Her gold cat-eye glasses that adorned her large, brown, expressive eyes, hinted at the repressed sexuality of a librarian (not shown in the photo here).

She wore fairly tight fitting knee-length skirts that showed her figure off to her advantage, and a half-high heeled ‘clickety’ dress-like shoes. Her white lace-edged blouse also revealed her long slender neck and as much delicate white skin as possible without verging on the vulgar.

Of course, I had none of these thoughts as a 12-year-old boy. To me she was just the ‘nice French teacher – Miss Moreau’. The reason I have given a fairly detailed description of her appearance is because it was most likely how Mr Fuglpikk, our Norwegian history teacher, ‘saw’ Miss Moreau during that time.

The Random Seatworks

Mr. Fuglpikk became enamoured of Miss Moreau. He was already getting on in years and starting to go bald. But obviously Miss Moreau had kindled the fading spark in his loins. During our history lessons, he would often rise up out of his chair at the front of the class and just leave the classroom.

Before leaving, he would say something like, “Tern to paige fifti tree an reed abut de Wikings, an ow dey murdered de munks at Linnisfarn and stealing de gowld. It portant yu knov de dates – I vill giff yu tist ven ai cum bak in fifteen minutt,” and then he would just disappear!

On other occasions, during our French lessons, the door would suddenly open a little. He would pop his balding head through, smile, and say, “Mizz Morro, der iz sum urgen bizines dat need fiks streit awey! Pleez kum.”

“I’m kumming Mister Fuglpikk. Chilren lern ze nuns on peig elefen ov yur buks. An lern de Frinch for, ’Opun yur mus’ (ouvrez la bouche) and ‘kloze yur mus’ (ferme ta bouche).” She would also disappear for fifteen minutes, and then reappear with a flushed face. It was as if she had just been riding a stallion or humping some large object up and down the hills and valleys.

What We Learned

What all this meant was that we hardly had any French or history at all.  Basically, I learned how to say, “ouvrez la bush,” and “ferme la bush”, and that the Vikings had sacked Lindisfarne in 793; that was about it. 

One day, we had no history or French at all. A rumour went around that Mr. Fuglpikk and Miss Moreau had eloped to the South of France and got married. Words was that they were sunning themselves on the beaches of St. Tropez.

We didn’t mind – it just meant that our school days were more relaxing. In fact, now we didn’t have any French or history lessons at all; instead, we were allowed to do nature studies in the woods, collecting plants, flowers and leaves, and pressing them inside our nature books. This also gave me more time to hold Ladrilla’s hand, as we ran through the woods together, finding flowers and plants. 

In retrospect, the teachers at this private school had a more relaxed attitude regarding ‘education’, which we as children appreciated. Admittedly, we didn’t learn much French, but do any English schoolchildren ever learn French?!