The Day Mr Finch Lost His Voice

Mr Finch usually greeted the class from the doorway. His good morning could be heard halfway down the corridor. On Monday, he held up a card instead. GOOD MORNING. Vincent read it twice. Mae looked at their teacher’s face. Mr Finch opened his mouth, produced a small, scratchy sound and closed it again. “Oh,” Mae said. “That’s different.”

He pointed to another card on his desk. His voice needed a quiet day. Vincent raised his hand. “Can you still hear us?” Mr Finch nodded, then pointed to his ears with an expression that made Mae bite back a laugh. “He’s lost his voice, not his ears,” she whispered. Mr Finch heard that too. He lifted one eyebrow and reached for his notebook.

For the first task, he drew three small pictures on the board: a book, a pencil and an arrow pointing to a chair. The class stared at them. “Read, then draw a chair?” Vincent suggested. Mr Finch shook his head and mimed opening a book. Then he pretended to write. “Read and write at your seat,” Mae said. Their teacher gave her an extravagant bow.

Working quietly was easier than Mae expected. She could hear pencils scratching and a pigeon landing on the outside windowsill. When Vincent needed help, he caught Mr Finch’s eye instead of calling across the room. Mr Finch came over and pointed to the sentence in Vincent’s book. Vincent read it again, tried another word and nodded. The pigeon watched all this as if it had come for the lesson.

After break, Mr Finch brought out the class storybook. Everyone waited. He was usually excellent at the dragon’s enormous voice. He looked at the book, then at the children, and spread his hands. “Could we do the voices?” Mae asked. He wrote a short list of names. Vincent leaned forward when his own appeared beside Dragon. “I’ve been practising,” he said. Mae hoped he had not been practising during her reading time.

They took turns reading. Vincent’s dragon began as a roar and ended in an unexpected squeak. Two children giggled. Vincent went red. Mr Finch held up his hand, pointed to the smallest dragon in the picture and nodded thoughtfully. “A young dragon,” Mae said. Vincent looked at the page, took a breath and tried the next line in the same squeaky voice. This time, he grinned.

At the end of the day, Mr Finch managed a soft thank you. It was barely louder than the pigeon had been. Mae gathered the picture cards from his desk. “Shall I put these away?” He nodded at the top drawer. Vincent kept looking at the book. “Could I be the dragon again tomorrow?” Mr Finch wrote two words on a scrap of paper: If needed. Vincent decided that was not quite a no.

On Tuesday, the familiar good morning returned to the doorway, still a little rough at the edges. Vincent glanced at Mae. “So much for my dragon.” During story time, Mr Finch reached the dragon’s first line and paused. He looked across at Vincent. Vincent sat up, cleared his throat very carefully and gave the smallest dragon its voice. Mae leaned back in her chair. The pigeon tapped once at the window.