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she had already demonstrated on days when she had taken classes for Liam when he was sick or when he had had to be away from the village for some reason.
‘We are now conscripting men to fight a war in Europe,’ Liam argued. ‘Women will be called upon to do men’s work in farms and factories. We are going to need everyone who can teach. And Nora Carrick can teach. I can vouch for her ability with the younger children especially.’
‘You are speculating, Mr Dooley,’ said Father Devenney. ‘The question before us has less to do with Miss Carrick’s ability to teach our younger pupils than with the fact that you are putting forward as your assistant teacher a young woman, no doubt an academically qualified young woman, who suffers from epileptic seizures.’
‘Her epileptic seizures are not all that frequent, Father,’ Liam argued. ‘Only two or three have actually occurred at the school, and should it ever happen again while she is my assistant I shall be on hand to help—if, in fact, any help is required at all, for Nora is a very mature young lady, well able to control her own attacks. She is under a newly developed medication for her condition, one called phenytoin, and it works well to suppress her seizures. You cannot deny the children and myself the very valuable contribution that Miss Carrick can make to education in our village merely because she has occasional epileptic fits. Epilepsy is a personal affliction; it is not a contagious disease and it certainly does not prevent people from playing a major role in society. Caesar was an epileptic; so was Napoleon; and these men were emperors over half the world. Mohammed was an epileptic and founded a great religion. Lord Byron was an epileptic and produced immortal poetry. One of the world’s greatest novelists, the Russian Dostoyevsky, was an epileptic; and the French writer Guy de Maupassant; and the great painter Vincent Van Gogh …’
‘I think you have made your point, Mr Dooley,’ the chairman, Canon Charles Begley, interrupted. ‘Shall we put the proposed appointment to a vote?’
Nora was accepted as the school’s assistant teacher and took up her position at the start of the new term in January 1940. The evil gossip of the village revived like a breeze and blew up into a storm when the news of Nora’s appointment became known. The tempest that raged around her new position died down eventually, but not before irreparable damage had been done by harsh words hurled in anger, like Jove’s jagged bolts. Most shaken of all was Nora herself. Once Liam had had to spend a whole day talking her out…
Libros Libertad 