Love is a kind of madness!

(Have had a good couple of days on this project and think I may have all 127 pieces written in just about a week. Of course, getting to the end requires a lot more thought for each of the stories. And I am not sure that I want to totally leave this Port Brokeferry place behind me.)

IT MUST BE SOMETHING

‘It must be love,’ whispered Dodie Bredwell into the ear of Alice Greyling.

He was close enough that when she turned to him, he almost kissed her cheek.

‘What?’ she said.

Dodie Bredwell pointed to Corinne and Munro sitting together in the playground.

Alice Greyling laughed and heads suddenly turned in the staffroom, and seeing Dodie Bredwell so close and so quiet raised eyebrows.

‘Look at them. Almost touching. And she’s laughing at everything he says. And she’s put the poetry away for today. Just the two of them and all the world running in circles around them and they are too fixed on each other to notice.’

Alice Greyling nodded at everything Dodie Bredwell said, not seeing that they were still drawing the attention of the rest of the staff in the room.

‘I blame you, Toadie Bredwell,’ she said.

She’d asked him why he did what he did with the names of everyone he knew. Then she’d given him one of her own. Toadie Bredwell. It was not meant nastily. He hadn’t taken it as so. ‘If you kiss me, I might turn into a prince,’ he’d joked. She hadn’t known if that was an invitation or a harmless flirtation.

‘Why do you blame me? What have I to do with any of it?’ he said.

‘It was you who introduced her to W.B.Yeats and his love affair with Maud Gonne and his poetry. That’s what she’s been reading recently. All that stuff about cloths of heaven and dreams and romance.’

Dodie Bredwell laughed this time, and though that was nothing so strange, it still occasioned whispers and nods of heads from the rest of the staff in the room.

In the playground, Munro looked up at the staffroom window. He saw that Mr Bredwell and Miss Greyling were there looking down at them. He pretended not to see. Corinne was telling him about sitting with old Tom and how she didn’t know what to say to him, so she had read him something from the book in her pocket.

‘I don’t think he heard. Just something to fill the time and the quiet. Not so quiet really, what with the noise he made with his breathing. Also it stopped me looking too closely at him as he slept. Reading the book, I mean.’

‘Talking of which – don’t look, but we’re being closely watched right now.’

Corinne turned to see who in the playground was watching them.

‘I said don’t look. Mr Bredwyn and Miss Greyling upstairs.’

Corinne laughed and this time did not look. Not immediately at least, and when she did, not directly.

‘Do you think they could be lovers?’ she said when she had seen them, Mr Bredwell standing behind Miss Greyling, his head level with hers.

‘What? Miss Greyling? Malice Greyling? She doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘love’. And as for Bredwell, he’s just too much for someone like her. He’s just too loud and too… well, too full on, you know, always cheery.’

Alice Greyling laughed then and Munro saw her laughing. He hadn’t seen that before and he wondered if he was maybe wrong in all that he had just said. ‘’Course we only know them as teachers. They’re maybe different as people.’

‘What do you suppose they are looking at?’ said Corinne.

Munro shrugged.