Should he splash into the sea in his shoes and tailored trousers, I'm obliged to dry his trousers and restore their creases, but for me he wouldn't have climbed on those boulders, thought Inger. It's a stroke of luck it isn't deep enough to float a match here.

Swinging her handbag, barefooted, she started padding toward town. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that the trainee had reached the shore safely, had picked up her sandals and was almost upon her, his shirt gleaming white in the moonlight.

Everything's going exactly the way I thought. Presently he'll inquire if these soles are of real or simulated cork.

And as sure as eggs is eggs, the student did take the measure of the sole by his thumb and, having caught up with the girl, asked doubtfully,

"What's your opinion, Inger, is it real cork or faked?"

"Phellodendron amurense," giggled the girl. "Or Quercus sober." And added tauntingly, "Why not cut them up and check? It might be sawdust and stuff that trickles out."

"Sawdust and stuff?"

"As often as not, cutting something up to find out what's inside, it will be sawdust and stuff that comes to light."

"Er yes ... yes. of course," muttered Kiur absently as if he had discovered a unique idea beneath her words and ran his eyes over Inger's figure, hardly discernible in the darkness.

There had to be something in this girl, why else had he drawn her name out of the feelered hat? She's a looker all right, the kind one can be glad to be paired off with. Compared with Riina she's a little on the short side, but, again, Riina's years don't sit lightly upon her.

"Ma there Inger, maybe you'll put on your shoes now." Inger shook her head.

"Boys from the mainland promised to come and see me. I wrote that the dames were quite something here. Then we'll have true revels ... I've got a bottle of whisky at home. I've talked to the men, we might get even eels. By the way, I was given a small room, separate entry and all. I've furnished it on the Japanese lines, I placed my mattress in the middle of the room and built a low table on bricks. If I added a curtain woven of rush it could look like the real thing, I thought. Come to my place, Inger, let's have some thrills in the back of beyond."

Once again it'll be square one: coffee-drinking, confabulating, playing games–all the things she has had up to the chin for ages and nothing interesting in the offing.

"Okay," sighed Inger. "However, salt marena is a better choice with whisky."

She took her sandals from Kiur, bid him good night and vanished into the house.

For a long time Inger was in a bright excited state between sleeping and waking, hugging a foretaste of joy to her heart. It felt like being a birthday-girl, getting a present or being sung to.

When at last she did open her eyes, the room was filled with morninglight, the sun poured in through the wide window, the scent of flowers drifting in from the garden. She put her feet on the sun-warmed floor, stretched luxuriously, slipped into the kitchen, lifted the big washbasin from the stool onto the floor, stepped into it, took a dipperful of cold water from the bucket and sluiced it all over her. Oops! It sent shivers down her spine. Then she rubbed herself with a terry-towel until she was glowing, donned her bright yellow dressing gown and placed the coffee-pot on the gas ring.

Today was a special day. That's why she had coffee in the living-cum-bedroom at a properly laid table rather than in the kitchen, sipping it slowly and peacefully.

It was only now that the alarm buzzed. "No go! Don't you see that I'm already up?" laughed Inger, stood up and turned it off. The clock stood on the endtable, was small, round and aquamarine-coloured.

Standing before the mirror she took her hair out of curlers and gave it a comb-out. Her white frilled blouse gave her a festive, even dignified, look. In such warm weather her black tailored suit was certainly too much, but tradition had to be kept up. Stockings, too, were something she'd have fared better without but there was no two ways about it–it was the first of September.

Walking with a quick, springy step, she went along the maple-lined street towards the schoolhouse, slim and stylish, carriage self-assured, aspiring and joyful. Overhead the leaves of the trees were rustling lazily, the sky was high and serene, over the corner of the schoolhouse sunshine caught her in the face. The schoolhouse itself–a country-red two-storeyed wooden structure, the very picture in a pre-war primer under "S" for school–was set on the right, a short way back from the street, one side in shadow, the other in the sun.

Inger pulled the door open. The house was quiet and empty, walls sending back her footsteps, the odour of freshly-oiled floors accosting her nostrils.

Odd, how everything was still the same. The same solemnity, the same shafts of sunlight, the same odour of oil. The same bitter-sweet twinge in her heart she had felt as a schoolgirl, starting the first term. And the selfsame familiar feeling of staffroom-shyness. As if in the meanwhile she hadn't graduated from the university and become a teacher herself. This here was an old and stable world.

As if verifying that it was really so, the Headmaster, Comrade Soova, was already in the staffroom, standing at his favourite place, propped against the stove, grey and constant like some brownie.

"Good morning, Teacher Uunvald," he acknowledged Inger's greeting in his habitual cool voice.

Inger put her briefcase on her chair at the large staffroom table and looked inquiringly at Soova. For a moment it had seemed as if the Headmaster at the stove had made a jerky movement, shifted his weight to one foot, which usually denoted his intention to say something.

But this time Soova kept quiet and it was hard to read in his faraway eyes if he had already had second thoughts or the jerking had been unintentional. Inger waited for a little while longer and when the Headmaster still continued to let the silence hold, scurried out vastly relieved. Moreover, she had been rostered for corridor duty today.

She mounted the stairs leading to the first floor. The sun poured through the window on the school honours board and on the board of school championship tabulation. They were the same. But the stickers on the doors of classrooms were new and clean. Strolling along the corridor, Inger tried to memorize where each form had their classroom this year.

The room of her own class was where it had always been, in a tiny room with a hard slate blackboard–the only one in the whole school and hard to write on; all the other classrooms had been provided with brown linoleum ones a long time ago.

Inger stopped at the classroom window, thinking about the early-morning spirit of the schoolhouse. An unusual, outright unaccustomed quiet, a prestressed time–it was so lovely.

Then she went to the corridor downstairs and took up her wait.

Already children started arriving, almost one and all with flowers in their hand.

They all had grown with the summer, had tanned, the timbre of boys' voices had changed,

Good morning, Teacher!

Good morning!

Classrooms became alive with a cheerful bustle and murmur of voices.

Every autumn children's new faces struck Inger with wonder and embarrassment. The growing and renewing processes of a person were still a bewildering secret for her.

She beamed with happy smiles at corners.

"Boy, where are your manners?" Soova's voice rang out from aside. The Headmaster had left the green stove to its fate and entered the corridor. He was an old hand at greeting and demanded thoroughness from his pupils, too. Here he was turning round a nipper of a fifth-former, making him come in at the door again and say his greeting with a hotly flaming face.

When the first period was over, the staffroom was veritably swamped with flowers. Flowers of all sorts and shapes were amassed on the table: carnations, asters, gladioli, chrysanthemums, marigolds, even roses. And during the break girls in cleaned and ironed clothes, their faces flushed, were conferring who else should be presented with such and such flowers.

All were glad and happy.

But in the fourth break Soova barred Inger's way in the corridor.

"Teacher Uunvald, there's a thing I want to talk about with you."

Inger gave a start, what had she bungled this time?

The Headmaster said quietly,

"I didn't want to ruin your mood the first thing in the morning, you were so festive and beaming. The point is that the night before yesterday I ran into your Toomas in the dark, and he smelled of liquor. Have this thing clarified, please."

And at once he moved on–big, grey and powerful–a class register and textbooks under his arm.

Thus it gets under way–not a single day unencumbered, carefree, letting you simply be and enjoy your existence. Toomas again. So that's why he was so strange at the discussion period with form-teacher–as if he were expecting an attack when Inger had a good word for his passing the second examination in maths in summer after coming a cropper at the first one in spring, thus enabling the class to be all together again.

Plain as a pikestaff–his conscience wasn't clear!

And on top of it Inger had spoken on the final straight, efforts, responsibilities and joy that go hand in hand with being a school-leaver. Again a world of fine words flung to the winds, so much of her enthusiasm gone to waste.

She went into the classroom and told Toomas to see her after classes. The boy was already at his desk, the bell had gone and their physics lesson was beginning. Reluctantly he heaved himself up from his place, peered at his form-teacher from under his shock of hair and muttered: yes. Closing the classroom door after her, Inger felt a surge of old familiar irritation.

After classes she didn't stay in the staffroom waiting for the boy, but herself went to the room of her eleventh form. Toomas was slouching at his desk, his eyes watchful. A shadow passed over his sun-tanned face when he saw the teacher. With a jerk of his head he shook the fall of his hair from his brow, already in his shell, deaf and mute, ready to be at the receiving end of a recurrent telling off.

Suddenly Inger felt that here her words wouldn't begin to register with him. Milieu would be present at their conversation as a third, nameless, upsetting party, knocking holes into every reflection, making hash of all her reasoning, forcing it into a rut and once again the outcome would be nothing but a senseless, useless twaddle.

"Come along, Toomas," she said.

Hesitantly the boy stumbled to his feet.

Inger took her armful of flowers from the staffroom and then they crossed the schoolyard and turned into the maple avenue. Flowers made Inger somewhat wistful, there was still so much beauty and festivity in one's life.

"I wondered if you could have a look at my radiogram," she said.

Flowers in her arms, she mounted the stairs, Toomas stomping behind. She took the boy to her radiogram and explained,

"No voice. For a while it speaks quite up to the mark and then, out of the blue, it begins whistling and the voice fades away. I've given it a knock or two but to no avail."

"Swanky box," grunted Toomas and began to prod and poke at it. Soon the cover at the back was removed and he was tinkering inside.

Inger arranged her flowers, using vases and bowls bestowed on her to mark her birthday or some other kind of milestone. Gladioli were good in the urn on the floor. The two roses, both of different colour, needed separate vessels–their colours clashed. Carnations in a tall angular earthenware pot Inger put in the window. The room was filled with colour.

Then she went into the kitchen to put the coffee on. I've carried it already so far that without the aid of a coffee-pot I won't be able to take a schoolboy to task, she essayed a small smile.

From the cupboard she took some bread and ham.

"Here you are, Toomas. Let's have some coffee and a talk. You, too, haven't had your lunch yet, have you?"

Toomas replaced the cover at the back, joined the set with the aerial, switched it on and began adjusting regulators. Strains of chamber music filled the room. "All fixed," he said happily. "But I'd better have a look at the record player some other day. I'll need some tools."

"Thank you. But do come and have some coffee now."

The boy lowered himself carefully on a chair and picked up a coffee-cup.

For a moment Inger leaned back in her chair to gather her wits.

"In one's life it's always easier to indulge oneself than to make an effort. It's easy to present an uncaring front: let things take their own sweet course, what can I do about it?" she began thoughtfully. "I've been through a period of disdain combined with inaptitude and know the feeling well enough. Being an undergraduate, I became interested in Indian philosophy. I used to sit at the library and mug it up–one thick volume after another, never going in for an exam. I thought: why bother with those vulgar, tedious exams when I'm spreading my wings for the heights of philosophy. There were other reasons as well," she smiled.

A flush swept Toomas' face.

"For quite a while I went about with an arrogant face before I began to figure out that such tiresome things as exams had to be passed, no two ways about it, then you could aspire to greater heights unobstructed. Try and skip four or five rungs, standing high up on a ladder. It isn't possible, you know. And that's how things are with you, too, I know you want to enter a nautical school ... "

Continued in Part IV...