Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV

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Mr. Lewis:
Yes, well—thank you, everyone, for coming. I realise this may seem an elaborate convening for a single Fourth Form girl, but the situation appears to have developed… contours.

Before we begin—Mrs. Frobisher has sent up tea, and a tray of those ginger biscuits the kitchen’s trialling. I encourage fortification. As I was reminded repeatedly during the war, an army marches on its stomach—and I daresay this staff does as well.

Now then—George, I believe you were first to raise the matter?

Mr. Green:
Raise it? Headmaster, “it,” as you say, landed in my lap. de Vries failed to submit her geography essay. When questioned, she claimed—quite breezily—that it was in her dormitory. In fact, the essay did not exist. She absented herself from my lesson and ignored a summons from Matron when I sent for her return.

Eventually, I found her in Miss Clark’s classroom, participating in that class as if nothing had occurred.

Miss Kelley: (evenly):
You sent the girl to the dormitory. How then do you find it surprising she left your lesson?

Mr. Green (stiffly):
I think the reasonable expectation was that she would retrieve the paper and return promptly.

Mr. Johnson (mildly):
Did you say that? How was the girl to know?

Mr. Green (teeth clenched):
It was clearly implied. That she failed to intuit my implication is, I think, rather the point.

Having finally located the girl, I confronted her—an hour later—and she admitted the paper had never even been written so her leaving my classroom was entirely a ruse, as I had suspected from the start. 

de Vries’s attitude was evasive, her responses were unsatisfactory. Insolent, even, given the circumstances. I promptly administered six strokes of the tawse to her hands. This was, I might add, was a mild punishment, entirely within school guidelines and should not have been unexpected. That she chose to turn the matter into an epic for her detention essay is another issue entirely, but also indicative of her poor character and relevant to this discussion.

Miss Kelley:
Was a record of that punishment entered in her file?

Mr. Green (after a beat):
Not yet. I’ve been—preoccupied.

Mr. Johnson (quietly):
Yet you had ample time to draft your “contract”and send it with her to detention the following day, expecting it to be carried out. What was it again—marks for strokes? Education by ledger?

(not-entirely suppressed laughter)

Mr. Green (voice and colour rising):
She was assigned Saturday detention. She submitted an essay that was less the required reflection on her behaviour and more performance—full of slanted prose and gross insinuation. de Vries accused me—implicitly—of cruelty, concealment, and melodrama. She implied I maintain a drawer of implements.

The girl has cast herself as the heroine of some adolescent fable—Joan of Arc with a fountain pen. And I am the tyrant in the wings. This is not merely misbehaviour—it is manipulation. I suggest she be removed from the school and not allowed to return unless she makes a public retraction and apology that I deem acceptable.

Mr. Johnson (voice low):
Or perhaps it is as simple as a child not trusting some of us to treat her fairly.

Mr. Green (turning in his chair):
Nonsense! Come now, Bertie—

Miss Clark (turning to Green):
He’s asked you not to call him that. Repeatedly.

Mr. Green (ignores her):
—you, Bertie my boy, let her cry in your office, and leave having received less than half her punishment. You obviously don’t have any experience with females. That’s not discipline. That’s sentimentality, in Latin.

Mr. Johnson (coolly):
As if you’d know Latin if it conjugated itself on your desk.

(Pause.)

I administered twelve strokes. Used a medium cane. Over regulation uniform. Four sets of three, as recorded in her file. Following the caning de Vries was quiet. Remorseful. Receptive to advice on how to avoid such situations in the future. In the course of our discussion she told me she had panicked— when you initially questioned her. Understandable, given the circumstances, though not excusable.

Your “contract” was absurd. She asked whether the caning she received from me would “count.” Count? That phrase came from you, not her.

Mr. Green (eyes narrowed):
And did de Vries ask you to excuse her more than half her allotted punishment before or after describing her—what was it—“regulation navy knickers”?

(A loud, still, silence falls. A matel clock ticks away long seconds.)

Mr. Green (airily continuing, ignoring or not noticing the room’s tension.):
It’s in your report on the girl’s punishment, isn’t it? Her knicker colour? Odd detail for you to include, Bertie, clearly she (or her knickers) made an impression. Which they might have, considering your affinity for giving tea and sympathy to quiet girls in trouble.

Mr. Johnson (visibly freezing):
I would have thought such a remark beneath you. Even you. 

Mr. Green:
Is it? You’ve certainly taken up the role—soft-spoken, gentle, master, so terribly concerned. Rather taken to the white knight role, haven’t you?

Mr. Johnson (rising):
You’re a petty, insinuating man, Green. And nowhere near as clever as you think.

Mr. Green (smirking, also rising):
There it is. You’ve found a Cambridge spine, Bertie. Took its time, didn’t it?

Miss Kelley (tired):
George, you’ve called him sentimental, predatory, and cowardly—all in under a minute. What’s left? Treason?

Mr. Green (turning sharply on her):
I’m not the one defending a man who lets girls barter their punishment with tears and tea.

Miss Kelley (waving her hand as though he’s not with the trouble):
And you’re not the one who decides which punishments get quietly excluded from the official record. You’ve a tawse in your drawer and a file left blank despite a privately administered punishment. What do you imagine that looks like?

Mr. Green (now nearly-shouting):
It was six strokes! On her palms! I wasn’t the one admiring a fourteen year old’s under-things!

Mr. Lewis (finally cutting in):
Enough!

(Silence. Miss Simms drops her pencil and retrieves another. Someone’s teacup rattles. Mr. Lewis has, apparently, shouted for the first time in known memory.)

Mr. Lewis (quieter, but firm):
This is not, thankfully, about us. It is about a pupil—a Fourth Form girl—whose handling has clearly, shall we say, fractured this room. I have read her essay. I have read her file. I have also read her mother’s letter, which we shall come to in due course.

Before we continue, let me say this: until further notice: Miss Inez de Vries is not to be questioned, redirected, punished, or advised by any staff without my knowledge and consent given beforehand. I hope this is understood.

Now—others have yet to speak.

Elaine?

Miss Clark (coolly):
Thank you. Since it was my class that was interrupted, I’ll be brief.

On Friday my Modern History class with the Upper Fourth, including Miss de Vries, were midway through a discussion of the Marshall Plan and its historical precedents. Two prior lessons had led us there – a significant and complicated topic. Mr. Green opened the door as I was mid-sentence—without waiting for reply—and summoned Miss de Vries with a finger.

No explanation. No apology. Just disruption.

Had he waited but fifteen minutes, he might have spoken to her privately at lunch.

Mr. Green (muttering):
I knocked.

Miss Clark (turning toward him only briefly):
You knocked as you entered. Not quite the same thing.

I doubt you’d do the same in Mr. Carlton’s chemistry lab. Or if the instructor were not a woman.

(She lets this hang. Mr. Green consults his notes.)

Miss de Vries returned to speak with me the following morning. She’s a gifted student of politics. She remembered everything we had discussed and even extended the argument. Raised the issue of Soviet aid to East Germany, mentioned her father’s diplomatic involvement in government relations with Easter Europe. 

She had remarkable retention for a girl supposedly overwrought.

She also—unprompted—told me she hoped she hadn’t embarrassed Mr. Green. Her exact words, again quoting her father: “You can always tell who’s in control by who’s red in the face.”

(A glance around the room shows Mr. Green is notably red in both face and neck.)

Mr. Lewis (clears throat):
Thank you, Elaine. Matron? Can you further our understanding of young Miss de Vries?

Matron Rowntree:
Yes Headmaster. She came in Sunday complaining her backside was, quote, “throbbing with moral significance,” whatever that means. Dramatic, that girl.

I had a look. Noted mild bruising. Skin intact. No welts. Hands clean—no sign of tawsing. Temperature was normal.

Still, the girl claimed she had a headache. I gave her a spoon of cod-liver oil and let her rest. Come half-six, passed the dinner hour, she’s asking for ointment, a hot-water bottle, and a boiled sweet. Said perhaps she’d best stay here and miss her Monday lessons.

I said she’d best not, that it was time for her to return to her house.

For good measure I gave her two more tablespoons of cod liver oil, took her temperature again—still normal. When she started whining again while raising her knickers, I sat down, pulled her across my lap, and gave her a sharp smacking, scolding her for making such a childish fuss and telling her to stop before she found there was still more to cry about. There were some tears, but she was better for them.

Mr. Lewis (startled):
You, you smacked her?

Matron Rowntree (clearly):
With the flat of my hand only. Her knickers were down so on the bare. Nothing dramatic—just enough to sting her a bit. She needed to taken down a peg before the drama got away with her. She stopped carrying on almost at once. Then I walked her back to Miss Anne and advised an early bedtime.

(Mr. Johnson and Mr. Lewis both shift uncomfortably, as if Matron had just reprimanded their younger selves.)

Matron Rowntree (noting their discomfort): It’s recorded with my other notes on Miss Inez in the infirmary logbook, just as required.

Miss Kelley (dry):
Well, that’s the medical view recorded.

Mr. Lewis (adjusting his collar):
Thank you, Matron. I trust you acted… according to your good judgment.

Now. I had intended to share a selection from my ongoing correspondence with Lady de Vries. But as we are edging into dinner, and some of us appear alarmingly close to a second skirmish, we shall leave that pleasure for another day.

Suffice it to say: her letters are beautifully composed.

But let me reiterate: there is to be no further action toward Miss de Vries without my express approval. No detentions. No “contracts.” No impromptu corporal schemes.

We are, at the end of the day, I hope, professionals.

Miss Simms—this record is confidential, one copy for my files, only. Nothing circulated. Not a syllable.

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(Meeting adjourned, 4:57 p.m. A throat is cleared. A teacup rattles. The ginger biscuits—save for those in Matron’s apron pocket—remain untouched.)

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Post Title	Date Posted
Teaser – “Inez of the Upper Fourth” – a Saint Clare Summer Saga	21 July 2025
Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault)	22 July 2025
Waiting for Inez – It’s your own time you’re wasting…	23 July 2025
Start HERE: Inez’s Detention Essay	24 July 2025
Inez of the Upper IV – Cast of Characters	25 July 2025
The Real Motto of Saint Clare’s School for Girls	27 July 2025
The Staffroom Files Part 1: Inez of the Upper Fourth	29 July 2025
Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th	30 July 2025
Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV	2 August 2025
Inez’s Diary, 19 June 1955	3 August 2025
Clarissa’s Letters Home or The Jelly Baby Files	11 August 2025
The Elwood Files – Inez of the Upper IV	17 August 2025
The Lady and the Headmaster	23 August 2025