Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2025
The Little Ones, story by Kate Mahony.
The name of the school in the headline in the Melbourne newspaper caught Frankie’s attention. She put her cup of coffee down on the table in the hotel lobby and glanced at the article, pausing when she saw his name.
Long ago, they’d worked in the school together in a quiet suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne. Frankie’s was a temporary position, filling in for teachers attending professional courses.
The first time they met she’d gone into his classroom looking for big sheets of brown paper for her class of nine-year-olds. The little ones in his class were sitting on the mat, the girls so cute with their sparkly hair bobbles, the boys in their too big sports tops. Some were busy “reading” their books.
He had a family photograph on his desk. Him, his wife and their two boys, all posing perfectly. He had his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
He didn’t often join the other staff at the break times but stayed in his classroom doing his work plans. All the teachers complained about the endless paperwork. Sometimes after school he was still there and she’d go in and say hello.
One time they talked about travelling – she’d been to Europe on a gap year after university, taking the long route up through Asia to Paris, backpacking, staying one place for a while and working in a bar, before moving on. There’d been overnight train rides. He said he envied her. He wanted to travel. Something he hadn’t done. Not yet.
She stole a glance at that family photograph. He would’ve been young when he got married. Maybe later on, she said.
She took his class just the one time when he was off sick. The head teacher asked if she could cope with the “little ones.” She hadn’t taught that age before but said it would be fine.
It was harder than she had expected. The children had finished their activities and became unsettled as it drew closer to the lunch break. One boy grabbed the hem of a girl’s dress, pulling it up, exposing her underwear, making her cry. Other children squealed and Frankie tried without success to quieten them.
The head teacher must’ve been lingering outside in the corridor. She came in to the classroom and took Frankie to one side. She explained, quietly, modelling good behaviour, that it was wise to have plenty of extra activities on hand to give the children when they finished a task early. She found the advice the head teacher had given her worked just as well for unruly adolescents in the school in London she went to next.
This trip to Melbourne was only a fleeting visit to catch up with two old friends. In all those years in London, she had barely given the school – or him – a thought. But now she was remembering standing in the entrance to his classroom, seeing him at his desk, smiling at her, beckoning her to come in.
They were young women now, the ones testifying against him, the newspaper report said. One by one they had given their accounts of the indecent assaults. The lasting memories: one told the judge she’d been too frightened to go to the girls’ bathroom next to their classroom in case he came in. Instead, she’d wet her pants. Another spoke of the nightmares for years afterwards. Words like vile, depraved and unrepentant were used.
Afterwards, a police officer commented how brave the young women were in coming forward now. Some of them had been only six years old at the time.
Frankie sat staring at the newspaper, pondering what she had missed those times she’d gone into his classroom. Then she remembered how busy and quiet the little ones had been when he was in charge of the class.
© Kate Mahony
Kate Mahony is a long-time writer of short stories and flash fiction with an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington – Te Herenga Waka. Her work has been published in anthologies and literary journals internationally and in New Zealand. Her debut novel, Secrets of the Land, was published by Cloud Ink Press in 2023 and was voted onto the Whitcoulls Bookstores Top 100 Books 2024-2025. She lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara ( Wellington) in Aotearoa New Zealand.
www.katemahonyauthor.com; https://www.instagram.com/katemahonywriter/ https://www.facebook.com/KateMahonyAuthor