Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

One of the ladies I mentioned in Love Stories in Isis School is Ladrilla Carpenter. However, I wasn’t the only one that was entranced by Ladrilla. Her delectable frame, flowering girlishness, black silky hair, and pretty smiling face had attracted ecclesiastical attentions. However, this isn’t the most pleasant story one would expect. It is more of a cautionary tale like The Little Red Riding Hood.

Reverend Jones was our maths teacher. The bushy-eye-browed, tall, and skinny middle-aged Reverend would always wear his chalk-smeared ‘professor’s gown’ as well as his dog collar.

The teachers at the Isis embraced the pedagogical principle that is enshrined in the following verse:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Snips, snails
And puppy-dogs’ tails
That’s what little boys are made of
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice. 

Class Tutorials

In accordance with this ‘pedagogical principle’ the teachers at the Isis school would address the boys by their surnames; the girls were addressed by their Christian names. 

Reverend Jones went one step further in his appreciation of ‘sugar and spice, and everything nice’, thanking the heavens for little girls.

He would often call girls out to the front of the class while he sat at his desk.

“Ladrilla, my dear, … La-drilla-la can you come up here to me.”

As mentioned before, Ladrilla always wore a charming and shy smile. She got up from her desk, which was in the middle of the class on the left; all the girls sat on the left. She walked slowly to the front smiling down shyly at the floor, looking askance at two or three of her girlfriends, as she made her way between the desks.

Little Red Riding Hood vs. The Wolf

The Reverend smiled cunningly like a friendly wolf as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ went to the front and stood next to him facing the class while he was still sitting behind his desk.

“La-drill-la – I’ve been looking at your homework and it’s a good effort,” he said, glancing up and smiling at her.

She was too shy to meet his stare, but kept on shyly smiling, looking down to one side, but not saying anything.

“Come closer – look at this sum, what have you done wrong?” he asked, while he placed his hand round her waist pulling her gently towards him, so she could see the sum better.

As she bent down to look at the sum, he moved his hand from her waist to the backside of her knee at the hem of her dress.

“You see, X² + 3X is not 5X,” he said in his mild, wolfish voice still smiling at her with a twinkle in his eye beneath his bushy eyebrows. All the while, he gently pulled her closer, his hand wandering upwards along the backside of her thigh.  

Ladrilla’s Smile

We all had our whole attention fixed on this brief scene. Ladrilla was smiling and speechless; the Reverend was also smiling while his hand moved up and down massaging the backside of her thigh. We had seen this scene many times before, so it was nothing new.

The Reverend sometimes called other girls up to the front. However, it was the shy, demure, and smiling Ladrilla that was the most receptive to his mathematical admonitions. She was given more ‘tutoring’ than the other girls. After the mathematical admonition and thigh-caressing, Ladrilla would walk slowly back to her desk, still shyly smiling, but less so than before.

For us pupils, Reverend Jones’ teasing admonition about Ladrilla’s lack of mathematical understanding, the consoling caresses, and his encouraging smiles were more a point of amusement for us at the expense of Ladrilla. It gave us an entertaining break from the otherwise boring maths lessons. In other words, we giggled quietly at the Reverend’s jokey behaviour and Ladrilla’s ‘stupidity’. Ladrilla would just stand there innocently receiving his ‘pedagogical’ caresses with a demure and shy smile, while she meekly looked down at the floor. 

The Re-evaluation

It never occurred to me or any of the other pupils at the time that this behaviour by the Reverend was in any way ‘peculiar’, except for the fact that this was registered on my ‘hard disk’ for re-evaluation at a later point in life. With more experience and wisdom from the world, it was clearer now that such ‘peculiar’ behaviour would be given another name in the modern-day world.

To us children at that time, it never occurred to us that just because Ladrilla was always smiling, this didn’t mean she had wanted to be subjected to these ‘attentions’ by the Reverend. But, perhaps she didn’t think it was anything unusual? You will have to ask Ladrilla.