EVEN MORE KADISON

Bill Bramley and Plod Trickson started at Jepps High on the same day, Trickson because it was an ex-grammar and he was a snob, Bramley because he was skint.

"You’re not one of these union chappies are you?" the Head asked him at interview.

"Not at all," he said

The first thing he did after being appointed was to join the NUT.

Trickson was Head of English, Bramley was his inferior. It was obvious to Bramley as soon as he met him that he was gay. He had no trouble with that. It was equally obvious to Trickson as soon as he met Bramley that he was easy-going. He soon discovered he was a leftie. He went on demonstrations. He was a member of the Anti-Nazi League. He thought Karl Marx a witty writer. Trickson was soon flying around the school in a panic. He thought socialism tantamount to treason. Trickson’s father ran a sweet shop in Rawtenstall. He had made a handy fortune from rotting the teeth of the town’s children. Trickson was his father’s son. The Daily Mail was the household Bible. From his armchair, Trickson senior held forth on every topic under the sun and the less he knew the more categorical he became. Plod soaked it all up and grew into an ultra-conservative, unhappy, repressed homosexual with a 2:1 from Durham. On the mantlepiec his parents had a photo of him in his mortar board and gown. They had no inkling of his sexual longings. Sex was very much in the background of Trickon’s dad’s life. The foreground was all Mars bars, humbugs and profit.

Bramley decided Trickson was a boring fool. He kept him at arm’s length. The days and weeks came and went. Bramley was hoping to find another job. Trickson marched around trying to set the universe to rights, constantly complaining and spying on his colleagues.

It was three weeks from the end of the summer term and the weather was warm and pleasant. Bramley went up to his room to find seven second years.

"Where’s everyone ?"

"On the trip, sir."

He’d forgotten. It was the era and the season of form jollies. In those days before the National Curriculum, league tables and OFSTED, schools were still human enough to allow kids a day a year for fun. 2W had gone to Alton Towers.

"Well, we’re not going to do any English so just amuse yourselves quietly."

They were biddable, friendly pupils. They liked Bramley and weren’t going to cause any difficulty.

"Sir," one of them said, " can we go and watch the cricket ?"

Bramley had no idea. It didn’t interest him. Grown men hurling a hard object at one another’s genitals seemed too Freudian. He was wary because they might be having him on.

"What cricket’s that, Robert ?"

"Staff v sixth-form, sir. We went out to watch it last year."

Bramley wracked his brains to remember if there’d been any announcement. Maybe there was something on the notice board he’d missed .

"Well, to be quite honest, I don’t know if we’re allowed."

"Everyone went out last year, sir."

"Okay. I’ll tell you what. I’ll take you out and we’ll see how the land lies. If there are other people out and it’s clear we can stay, we will. If not, we’ll come back in. Is that okay."

"Sir."

He led his little troupe out to the field. Boys in their cricket whites were sitting on the steps of the pavilion. The game was in full flow, the staff distributed around the field, the Head of P.E. rubbing the ball on his groin, running up to the wicket with a threat of fierce delivery and unleashing a ball the sixth-form batsman whacked easily into the outfield, sending the diminutive, bald R.E. teacher running helplessly. Beyond the boundary were groups of lads sitting or lying on the grass and teachers wearing sunglasses and straw hats, their sleeves rolled up, chatting and enjoying the play. It all had that quasi public school aura which made Bramley nauseous.

"Well, it looks like we’ll be okay. I think we’ll go over there and join Mr Jackson’s group."

Jackson was a young, relaxed teacher so Bramley felt comfortable about asking him. The pupils dutifully followed him around the boundary.

"Sit down here, lads," he said. "Don’t make too much noise."

The boys joined Jackson’s group, sat down, tugged at the grass. Some of them got out cards and began a school. Those who were bored simply took the opportunity to lie on the grass and drift off into their thoughts.

"Are they okay to be out here ?" said Bramley. "I didn’t know the crack."

"Sure. Leave them with my lads, they’ll be fine."

The two chatted idly for a while, turning over the usual complaints.

"Play cricket yourself ?" asked Jackson.

"No. It’s a mystery to me. "

"Me neither. Matter of fact I could do with a fag."

"You go. I’ll stay with this lot."

"Aye. Okay. I’ll only be five minutes. Back of the bike sheds."

Bramley pretended to be taking an interest in the game. The sixth-form batsmen were thrashing the ball all over the ground. Some of the staff were well over fifty. They ran, their backs stiff and their pace hopeless, after shots that were zooming to the boundary like missiles. Bramley looked around at the groups of boys and the staff perched on chairs. He spotted Fran Dally sitting on the grass.

She smiled as he came near, pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms round them.

"Enjoying the game ?" he said.

"Oh yes. And getting my legs brown."

She stretched them out in front of her again. They were pretty legs and she was a pretty woman, which she knew well enough. Bramley stood facing her.

"Cricket is a closed book to me."

"Oh, I like it. It’s exciting."

"Is it ?"

"Oh yes !"

"Where’s the excitement ?"

"In the score."

"What is the score ?"

"Eighty-seven for none."

"Is that good ?"

"No, it’s awful."

"Is it still exciting ?"

"Oh, yes."

"Why ?"

"Because you never know."

"Don’t you?"

"Once they get they openers out the wickets might fall quickly."

"Might they ?"

"Oh yes !"

She sat back, her arms stretched behind her for support and as she pulled up her knees again they parted enough for him to see her white lace knickers. She smiled her sweet little smile and tilted her head.

"I can’t get excited over a cricket score," he said

"Oh, I get really excited !" and she smiled again.

"Yes, I can see that."

She giggled and let her knees open a little again as she stretched her legs out once more crossing them at the ankles. Jackson appeared.

"No need to stay out here then if the game doesn’t interest you. I’ll keep an eye on your lads."

"You sure ?"

"No problem. Go and have a cup of tea, read the paper. This is the time of year to take it easy."

"Okay. I will. Thanks for that. See you."

"See you later !" called Fran and waved.

Bramley went slowly to the staff-room, thinking of Mrs Dally. He had books to mark but fancied a drink and a quick whip through the paper. There was no-one else. He made himself a cup and sat down with the Guardian, thinking of Mrs Dally’s legs. He’d been reading five minutes when Trickson came in. Bramley looked up and noticed his ugly, slightly sneering expression. He turned back to the paper, thinking of Mrs Dally’s lace thong.

"You free ?" said Trickson.

"Eh ?"

"Shouldn’t you be teaching ?"

"Only seven second years, the remnants of 2W. They’re out watching the cricket."

"Unsupervised?!"

"No. Kevin Jackson’s keeping an eye on them."

"There are kids running wild all over this school," muttered Trickson.

"Are there ?" said Bramley.

"It’s ridiculous."

"I didn’t see any trouble," said Bramley. "They were all quiet and well-behaved."

Bramley looked up. Trickson’s eyes had a mad cast, as if he were about to commit an act of violence. He began stomping around the staffroom. He went to his pigeon-hole, pulled out the papers and began to mutter. He lurched to the notice-board read something and exclaimed:

"I can’t believe it !"

Bramley began to feel he was sharing the room with a lunatic. He turned back to the paper hoping Trickson would tire of being ignored and disappear.

"It’s ridiculous !"

But Bramley refused to be drawn. Trickson stormed out as if the place were on fire. Bramley went on trying to read, but Trickson had destroyed his mood. Even the thought of Mrs Dally’s thighs couldn’t dismiss the ill-feeling left by the madman’s antics.

Two days later, Bramley was called in by the Head. Gareth Larding was an ex-public-school, Oxbridge man who was glad to have landed the job at Jepps. There weren’t many places where he could have taken the job as Head, now that most schools were comps. A real comp would have scared him witless. But Jepps was only sort of a comp and its voluntary aided status meant it could keep the tide of egalitarianism at bay. Larding liked to think of himself as a liberal. He’d read John Stuart Mill. He’d listened to The Beatles. He believed the working-class were human beings.

"I believe you were left with only seven second years third period on Tuesday ?"

"That’s right."

"Can I stress the importance of keeping boys under supervision. I appreciate it’s only seven second years and you may have judged them to be well-behaved, but they can’t be left without a teacher."

"They weren’t. I took them out and Kevin Jackson offered to look after them."

Larding narrowed his eyes quizzically. He said nothing. Once more, Bramley felt he was in the presence of a mind from which something essential was missing. Perhaps it was the religion which had driven them all to distraction. Larding was staring at him. What was he supposed to say ?

"They were your responsibility," Larding said finally.

"Of course," said Bramley. "But Kevin was out there with his own group. He was happy to look after my lads. There were plenty of other staff around. Mrs Dally, for instance, was close by."

At once the delightful image of his colleague came into his head. He saw her brown legs, her flimsy knickers, her enticing smile, the darling tilt of her head.

"Yes, but it can create problems if staff don’t stay with their classes."

"I don’t see that there was any difficulty," said Bramley. "They were quiet lads. They just wanted to lie on the grass and play cards."

Larding stared at him. He narrowed his eyes again like an eastern mystic.

"Cards ?"

"Yeah."

"If they go out to watch the cricket, Bill, they must watch the cricket."

Bramley found himself hearing Mrs Dally saying, It’s exciting and Oh yes ! He saw her bring up her knees and flash him her crutch. Did she want to have sex with him ? Was she that brazen ?

"I see."

"The match is traditional. We allow boys to go out but on the strict understanding that they follow the game. It’s disrespectful to the players to have a card school."

Bramley didn’t know what to say. It seemed foolish to suggest the boys were being disrespectful. They were polite and biddable and pleasant. He thought of Trickson. The low sneak had reported him. Of course, he would defend his position by claiming professionalism: it was concern for the well-being of the boys and the school that motivated him. Bramley despised him for concealing his cheap behaviour behind such an excuse. Would he confront him ? He knew how useless it would be. In a different context he would have dealt with him more directly. But the restraints of the professional situation spavined him.

"Sure," he said.

"What are you doing over the holidays ?" Trickson asked him later that day.

"I’m going on an anarchist summer school," he said.

"Eh ?"

"Yes, it’s all free love and learning how to flypost. There are still places if you fancy ?"

" I’m going to America. I’ve booked it all myself."

"How clever of you."

"Eh ? Five-star hotels. Class."

"That’s what the summer school’s about."

"Eh ?"

So the summer came and went and it was deadly September again. Bramley knew he needed to move from Jepps. He wasn’t prepared to compromise his easy-going ways for a modest salary and continuity of employment. He scanned the educational press for jobs. They all asked for "enthusiastic" or "forward-looking" applicants, as if there were hordes of lethargic, regressive would-be teachers about to descend on schools. He applied for a dozen or so but none took up his references.

Trickson was in school at eight every morning and never left before six. He stomped and banged around. He complained that he had too much marking. He whined that no-one worked as hard. He was dismayed by Bramley’s relaxation.

"Have you seen him ? Eh ? Eh ? Have you seen the way he talks to the kids. It’s ridiculous ! It’s an outrage !"

He never missed a chance to undermine Bramley to his colleagues: he was ill-dressed; he never cleaned his shoes; his hair was too long; when did you last see him taking books home ?

But then his car broke down.

He was very proud of his car. He cleaned it every Sunday. He washed it twice and waxed it three times. His garage was full of spays, tubs, canisters: anything that could be applied to the bodywork of a vehicle. It was a BMW and he believed it adequately represented his superiority. Bramley, of course, travelled on public transport. All the same, his brother was a mechanic. Trickson had been brought up to make contacts. His father was in the Masons. He never paid the market rate for anything, though he was a great believer in the market. If a pipe burst, if the carpet was worn, if a window frame began to rot, there was always someone in the lodge who owned a business or knew someone who did. Bramley’s brother was reputed to be good and cheap. When Fran Dolly’s Beetle went on the blink, he fixed it in an hour and made no charge.

"Did he do a good job ?" asked Trickson.

"Oh yes !"

"No problems since ?"

"Not a thing."

"How much did he charge ?"

"Cheap as chips !" she giggled.

Trickson liked to catch people on the hop. He waited till an inappropriate moment and pounced. It was Friday afternoon. Bramley was just about to start teaching a difficult third year. Trickson marched into his classroom like Hitler into Poland.

"I believe your brother’s a mechanic, Bill ?"

"Sorry ?"

The boys were starting to fill the desks. Bramley was sorting out books.

"Your brother. A mechanic. Could you have a word with him ? My car won’t start. You know how much I think of my car," he smiled and leaned close to Bramley as if he might be about to grab his arse.

"He’s very busy," said Bramley. "I asked him to sort out a banger for me months ago and he hasn’t got round to it."

"But mine’s a BMW."

Bramley stopped and looked at Trickson to see if he was serious. He could discover no hint of irony on his face.

"If he could do it. Over the weekend. Cheap. You know. A favour."

Bramley stopped again. He looked Trickson in the eye. The man was utterly in earnest.

"Yes," said Bramley. "Of course. I’ll ring him tonight. I’ll sort it out."

"If you could, please. Sit down, lads."

Trickson strode out.

That evening, Bramley went to see his brother. They didn’t get on. Colin liked to get his hands dirty and thought teaching English a soppy way to earn a living. He was a fervent Man United fan and couldn’t understand why his brother was stolidly unmoved by football. In his teenage years he’d got involved in a bit of football violence and had appeared before the magistrates for smashing a bottle over the balding head of man he thought was a rival fan but who turned out to be a fishmonger making a delivery to the ground. Bill had called him a "goon" for which he’d never forgiven him. But he was a flourishing mechanic now with his own lock-up and a new Mercedes. He was quick ,thorough, honest and reasonable. His competitors were mostly expensive, lazy, bent or all three. He worked ten hours a day six days a week and earned twice as much as Bill.

"How’s Shakespeare, then ?"

"He’s okay. Can you do me a favour ?"

"Still after a banger ?"

"No. A bloke I work with wants his car repairing."

"What is it ?"

"BMW."

"What’s the matter with it ?"

"Won’t start."

"Has he hit the starter motor with a hammer ?"

"He wouldn’t know what a hammer is."

"Oh. Bit like you, eh ?"

"I want you to do the most expensive repair you can."

"Friend o’ yours, then."

"He’s a twat."

"Most teachers are twats, in my experience."

"Aye, well, you hardly made their job easy did you, Col ?"

"Jobs aren’t supposed to be easy, Billy boy. My job’s not easy. But I’m fuckin’ good at it. What’s he done to upset you ?"

"He reported me to the boss."

"What for ? Shaggin’ the secretary ?"

"If he’d reported me for that I’d have no complaint. For letting seven second years watch a cricket match."

Colin stopped wiping his hands.

"What ?"

"I left them with another teacher. He went and told the boss they were unsupervised. I got a little lecture."

"Why don’t you knee him in the knackers?"

"He hasn’t got any."

"Well, I’m busy. He’ll have to wait."

"Do it tomorrow. I’ll see you right."

"You really like this bloke, don’t ya ? Okay. Make sure it’s here by eight."

"And you make sure you charge him top whack. Don’t cut any corners. No scrap spares."

"I get the picture, brother."

Bramley rang Trickson who felt as pleased with himself as Stalin after a purge. Yes, he knew how to handle people. He knew how to get his own way. He dropped the car off at eight. Colin looked him up and down.

"When will it be ready ?"

"When I’ve finished."

"Will that be today ?"

"That depends."

"Will you give me a ring ?"

"Aye, if I’ve time."

Trickson held forth loudly in the staffroom about how he was having his car fixed on the cheap.

"Contacts ! That’s what you need in life. Contacts."

When Colin gave him the bill he said:

"This can’t be right !"

"Why can’t it ?"

"Eight hundred and forty pounds ! It’s ridiculous ! It’s an outrage !"

"Are you questioning the quality of my work ?"

"It was supposed to be a favour !"

"There are no favours here, mate. I don’t do favours. I’m a pro."

"But your brother said…."

"Don’t take any notice of that cissy little twat. I hate him."

"Eh ?"

"Make the cheque out to CB Motors."

Trickson told everyone on the staff who would listen about Bramley’s perfidiousness. He stomped, strode, banged, crashed and thumped around for weeks. And he refused to talk to Bramley.

A respite for which Bramley was intensely grateful.

I saw the picture of Guy Birney in the Evening Telegraph shortly after he’d been appointed Chief Executive of Advanced Logistics plc. He looked the part: dark suit and collar and tie, sitting stiff-backed, eyes turned to the camera, in profile, with his chin slightly raised and the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. I’d taught him twenty years or so earlier and fell to thinking what a prig I’d taken him for and how sure I’d been that he’d end up as Chief Executive of something or other. Long before I started teaching him though, at the age of just twelve, I met his mother and father. I’d finished university in an odd, drifting frame of mind and taken a job at the local office of the Department of Social Security. I was filing pink, blue and grey forms all day and looking up dusty documents and going mad with provincial boredom. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my supposedly promising life except play the guitar, go fishing and get to know sweet women. I had this idea that if I could take low-level work which would pay the bills it would give me freedom, but all it gave me was a headache and resentment and the only consolation was that some of the women in the office were very sweet and good-looking , even if they did have successful husbands, no doubt astonishing mortgages and demanding children. Mrs Birney wasn’t like that at all. Her husband was a ponderous senior manager in the place and for all I knew that’s how she got her job. She was very efficient and very intent on letting everyone know just how efficient she was. At the time I spent my few sad months in the place, her daughter had just started school.

" I believe in traditional education," she would declare in front of an audience of weary clerks, " St Hilda’s is expensive, of course, but you get what you pay for in this life, don’t you. Small classes, good discipline, a proper uniform. You can’t start too early making sure your children learn the right values."

On one occasion, when she was telling us about just how much better than the local authority schools St Hilda’s was, Don Brimley was in the office. He was a stocky, busy little man with a paunch and a bald head who wore his reading glasses low on his nose. He knew I’d read Latin at university and used to try to catch me out by putting a quotation from Terence or Juvenal in front of me. The time I got one wrong he snatched the paper from the desk:

" Now autumn

with its pestilential winds was yielding to winter’s frosts.

Sickly winds ! That’s a good one ! Sickly !"

And he waddled out of the office shaking his head. Just how he got hold of these quotations I never discovered, but after that I always folded the paper , put it in my pocket, looked up at him impassively and said:

" I’ll bring you the translation tomorrow."

Mrs Birney had just finished telling us about Miranda’s reading age:

" It’s just as well we decided to have her educated privately. The state system probably couldn’t cater for such a child. She has a reading age of fifteen already. She’ll have to go to Oxbridge, no other university would be able to challenge her. I’ve asked the headmistress if she can take some O Levels before she goes to secondary school. She’ll be ready."

When she left, Brimley turned to us:

"` She’s got her head screwed on that one. An astute woman. Very interesting. And her children. Very interesting. Very gifted family."

Brimley had me down as a classical scholar. He’d been educated at a local grammar like me, only he was twenty or more years older and had gone there when only the middle-classes got through the door. I was a scholarship boy from the lower middle-classes whose parents thought a place at grammar school was the next best thing to admission to heaven. I did Latin at university because my father wouldn’t let me go to art college.

" What kind of a job are you going to get with a degree in fine art ? In any case, those places are full of idle, sex-mad drug-addicts."

My father always knew how to keep things in proportion. In any case, Brimley seemed to think I’d studied a dead language to show off my superior brain and he was one of those people who was a fool for any test: he did the Times crossword every day and was always solving brain teasers and he was a chess fanatic, which he claimed was the best training a brain could get. He took it for granted the Birney children were geniuses and it was obvious to everyone he had a secret thing for Gwen Birney.

She was a tall, thin woman whose hair had fallen out through alopecia and had grown back wispily so her scalp was visible. Her face was always red as if her skin were sore and her forehead was sometimes dry and flaky. She did everything as if her life depended on it and apart from what needed to be said to get work finished, a word never seemed to come from her lips that wasn’t about herself. She was one of those people I left behind and hoped never to see again. Not least because she got me sacked.

Jane Whittle was the prettiest of the women in the office: dark, blue-eyed, energetic, thirty-four and in a foundering marriage. She had a lowly, routine clerk’s job but lived very well because her husband was a big-wig in an accountancy firm. You could tell from the way she dressed she had money. Every day seemed to bring a different outfit. I used to notice what she wore because I noticed her. She favoured short-sleeved jackets, usually blue, tight skirts with a slit in the back or the side, shoes with a good heel, as she was conscious of being small, and tops or blouses cut low and pulled tight over her breasts. She always managed to look effortlessly smart but behind the apparent effortlessness I sensed a surreptitious panic. Sometimes she looked at me furtively with a kind of pleading in her eyes and her brows used to rise and pucker a little as if tears weren’t far away. One day, needing to tell me about yet another mistake I’d made, she stood very close to my chair so that my shoulder was touching her midriff. I looked up into her face and she just gazed down at me very serious and still and with something that seemed to me infinitely hurt in her eyes.

" Fancy a drink at lunch-time ?" I asked without knowing where the question had come from.

" Yes," and she turned and went back to her desk and pretended to be very busy and absorbed.

She lived a little mile away and it was her idea to go to her house. I was amazed at how quickly we were out of town. Our office was on the western periphery, about three quarters of a mile from the centre, so less than two miles from the busy streets, the take-aways, the pubs that disgorged drunks in their thousands at the weekend, was this handsome house set back from the road with a big square of cropped lawn in front and a paved drive leading to a double garage; and behind it, nothing but fields, as far as you could see, fields and little copses and more fields.

"I’ve never been out here before," I said as we stood by the car in the garage.

She smiled, turned away and unlocked the blue door that communicated with the house. As I followed, I was thinking this must be one of the most expensive places in the vicinity and at the same time my eyes were watching her neat behind in the tight navy skirt and how it jogged to her quick movement, strong, contained and athletic. We were in the kitchen before I began to think clearly about the situation: this was another man’s wife, after all, and his house, or theirs, the place their kids thought of as home. Amanda stood facing me, leaning back a little, her hands at either side of her on the expensive kitchen surface. Her right ankle was crossed over her left and the toe of her dark blue shoe was balanced like a ballerinas on the terracotta tiles. She was looking straight at me.

" Would you like a sandwich ?"

There was a gravity in her expression which made the question ridiculous. She looked tense and uncomfortable, like someone waiting to be interviewed or examined, and I didn’t know what to say. I moved over to her and put my right hand on her waist. I was surprised to feel a little ripple of flesh in the curve.

The bedroom she and her husband shared was as big as my flat. There were built-in wardrobes of expensive, sunny wood and an ensuite spacious enough to live in. I surveyed its perfection from the bed as she skipped out and with a neat bend at the waist and flick of the wrist picked her bra from the floor.

" We better hadn’t be late !" she chirped, pulling on her skirt.

She gave a little hip wiggle to get herself in and I wondered if she did that when she got dressed alone. I was so comfortable I could have stayed all afternoon and sleep was creeping up on me like drunkenness at a party.

" Don’t nod off !" she called. " Come on, look at the time!"

I got out of bed and she cast a sideways glance my way. Her face had taken on a cheeky, girlish aspect and she pulled her head down slightly into her shoulders and pressed her small, pink lips together. As I pulled on my clothes she chattered away like a sparrow in the spring:

" Oh, the state of this room ! That’s what happens when you work full-time. I never get a chance to do anything except at weekends."

" You could come home at lunchtimes," I said. She chuckled, her face creased and her eyes almost closed as her shoulders lifted a little more and her head tilted to the right.

"I sometimes think I should hire someone, but the place is such a state I’ve had to clean it before I could let a cleaner see it."

I laughed out loud and she seemed pleased , as if no-one ever appreciated her humour. I looked around. It was probably the cleanest and tidiest house I’d ever seen.

"I’ll be in the kitchen. What kind of sandwich do you want?"

"Oh no !" I called, trying to go after her down the stairs and pull up my pants at the same time, "there’s no need to do that."

By the time I got to the spotless, everything-in-its-place kitchen, she already had the bread in front of her and a little, sharp, black-handled knife in her hand. She was quick and capable and I could imagine how pleasant it would be to live with someone who could do simple things with such grace and generosity. She took ham from the fridge, sliced cucumber and cherry tomatoes, arranged some fancy lettuce whose name I didn’t know and cut the square diagonally to make two triangles, talking all the while.

" I hope you like ham ? It’s lean. I always buy it lean, I can’t stand fatty meat. I’ll put some nice salad on it for you, make it a bit more interesting. A plain ham sandwich is so depressing."

She tore off some tin foil to wrap the item and was clearing up at the same time, wiping the surface, shaking the cloth over the sink, rinsing it, wringing it and wiping again.

" That’s okay. I can carry it in my hands."

" More hygienic. Who knows where your fingers have been."

She put on a very matter-of-fact expression, turned away, lifted her left foot from the floor as she reached for her keys from the hook on the wall and headed for the blue door.

She didn’t pause for breath on the drive back and I didn’t have to come up with a thing to say. The thought went through my head that it was kind to be able to talk that way and that there was feminine genius in it, but maybe that was all tosh and she was just a chatterbox. In any case, I’m hopeless at small talk and open my mouth only when I need to. I began to think a lovely woman like Mrs Whittle could do a callow man like me a lot of good.

She stopped the car in a lay-by a hundred yards from the office and turned her calm and pretty face towards me. The light caught her eyes and they shone with an icy blueness in the summer heat.

" You’d better get out."

" People must have seen us leave together."

" Best arrive back separately then." She gave a little, affectionate shrug of her shoulders and her face creased into a smile again.

So began a month of remarkable lunchtimes. I was fed an appetising range of sandwiches, all on wholemeal bread and assembled with concern for my palate and health: pate, cottage cheese, tuna, brie, chicken, beef, salmon, egg, pork, lamb, mackerel, all dressed with a selection of lettuce, peppers, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and always wrapped in a swift tin-foil square. And I heard too a satisfying small repertoire of helpless calls: "Oh, Frank !" "Yes, Frank !" which aroused a tender feeling for her and made me wonder about her husband. She never spoke of him except in clipped asides, abrupt enough to make clear there was no room for inquiry or elaboration. What she would talk about was her children. She always called them by their full names Thomas, James and Katherine. I never asked if she didn’t lapse into Tom or Jimmy or Kate but I could imagine her calling to them:

" Thomas take your plate to the kitchen, please. Katherine please don’t put your feet on the sofa with your shoes on !"

Whenever I pictured the domestic scene and tried to add the dialogue, it always came out that way, with Mrs Whittle being very proper and not allowing herself to slip into the use of lower-class, street diminutives. Did she sometimes put her arm round the shoulder of one of her boys and say:

" Come on, Jim ! Let’s go and get an ice-cream !"

Somehow I couldn’t imagine it. The formal use of the names was in keeping with the clinical order of her house. To call her son Tom might just be too redolent of easy-going ways or of down-at-heel lives or the informal camaraderie of working-class getting-along with all that implied of failure.

So I listened to her talk of James and his wonderous mastery of the clarinet, of Katherine’s remarkable victories on horseback and Thomas’s brilliant scientific mind. Sometimes I wished she’d just talk about how funny or sweet or annoying they were. The litany of their accomplishments could get pretty cloying. In a way it was a relief when I no longer had to lie beside her with the early afternoon sun slicing through the gap in the curtains listening to the latest tale of success as she planned her children’s futures as diligently as she cleaned her kitchen.

One morning, Merrick Birney summoned me to his top-floor office. He was smoking his pipe, as always in those days before the panic over passive inhalation. The air was full of the sweet odour of the tobacco and he puffed like a child absorbed in play sucking on a lollipop. He wore his usual tweed jacket and a tie pulled so tight I wondered if it alone wasn’t responsible for the ruddiness of his features. His thick, dark hair was brushed fiercely back from his forehead and was crimped in deep furrows which ran from side to side. He asked me to sit down without looking up from his papers or taking the pipe from between his stained teeth.

"It has come to our notice that an inappropriate liaison has arisen between yourself and a female member of staff."

He had lost none of his thick-tongued, heavy Yorkshire way of speaking during his years away from his home county. I couldn’t help but be struck by the incongruity of his straight-forward accent and his mealy-mouthed form of words. I’d have been happier if he’d just said:

"Now lad, we can’t have you shagging Mrs Whittle every lunchtime can we ?"

There wasn’t anything for me to say. I wasn’t going to kick up any kind of fuss to try to hold on to my lousy, poorly-paid, temporary job, not when the cost could have been so high.

"You may say what you do in your lunchtimes is your own business but we can’t encourage licentious behaviour among colleagues."

I did believe my lunchtimes were my affair. It struck me as absurd too that work discipline could extend to intimate behaviour outside the workplace, but I was in a position of absolute weakness and I knew this was the end of a boring job for which I cared less than nothing and a sweet adventure that delighted, puzzled, excited and irritated me.

The next time I met Mr and Mrs Birney, they were seated opposite me in a chilly laboratory on a November evening as I ran redundantly through the marks in my book. Guy Birney was an exceptionally diligent pupil and that, combined with his native gifts, made him one of the most successful boys in his year. That he was driven was beyond doubt. That he was unimaginative made him disappointing to teach. All the same, his parents knew exactly what the system demanded and they made sure he didn’t put a foot wrong. His shortcoming was that he was no great athlete and in a school like Summit Grammar, that could be a problem. The one thing he could do was play cricket. He wasn’t a fast bowler or good enough to open the batting, but he managed a place in the second eleven going in at number seven and trying hard to concentrate in the outfield. That was just about enough to win him some respect amongst the all-rounders who ruled the place.

"He’s doing very well."

I looked up into Mrs Birney’s eyes. She permitted no sign of recognition . Her husband kept his gaze on the note-pad on his knee where he slavishly wrote my every word.

" Top set, one of the very best, he’s sure to hit a high grade at GCSE and ought to aim for the very highest."

Under normal circumstances, I would simply have lavished praised and sent them away happy, but I couldn’t find the words to overcome their stiff demeanour.

" He doesn’t seem to get much homework," said Mrs Birney with a little push of aggression in her voice.

"Oh, they get plenty," I bluffed.

Merrick Birney looked up and I thought he was about to say:

"It has come to our notice…."

He just fixed me for a moment before returning to his pad and I noticed the grey hairs among the dark waves across his head.

I’d taken the job at Summit because a friend had given me a tip-off: they’d appointed an English teacher who’d given backword. I needed to earn, had done my post-grad training in English as Latin teachers were in about as much demand as sheperds, and Summit was a mile from my brother’s house so I could camp there till I’d saved a bit. Once a grammar with quasi-private pretensions, it was now a comprehensive which regretted its former status. Parents like the Birneys used their knees and elbows to get their sons through the door because they got private-school standard education on the taxpayer. The place was full of bright kids from the well-heeled suburbs.

"Well, he seldom brings any home, does he Merrick?"

"That’s right," her husband concurred without taking his eyes off his paper.

This was a class of sharp third-years who whipped through the work and produced reams for every essay. Loading homework on them wasn’t entirely sensible. We had an agreement: if we got through enough work in the lesson, homework would be reduced to once a fortnight.

" A boy as bright as Guy," I said by way of explanation. "He’s quick. He forgets nothing. He never makes the same mistake twice."

When the Birneys left, I wiped my wet palms on my trousers.

The terms and the years ground on. Guy decided to try for English at Oxbridge, my attempts to escape Summit had come to nothing and so he was the star of my A Level group. At lunchtimes and after school I gave him extra literature tuition. He had no real feel for it. He was one of those students who can give back anything they’ve been taught, but thinking for himself was a step too far. Week in week out we sat in my dowdy classroom where the pictures of Joyce and Conrad and Jonson I’d pinned on the notice-board were defaced by scrawled, adolescent obscenities, as I tried to make Arthur Miller or Jane Austen come alive. One rainy Friday midday when I was tired and exasperated we were talking about Miller:

"Well, what makes a man like Miller write a play like Death Of A Salesman ? I mean, literature doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere does it ? Why did Shakespeare write a string of history plays ? Why did Lawrence write about sexual relations ? What is that makes Miller write this kind of thing ?"

It was an unfair question, but I wanted him to start thinking. After a few seconds he gathered his courage:

"Maybe he wanted to show the difference between success and failure."

Was there an assumption I didn’t like behind that answer? In any case, it gave me something to go on.

"Yes, that’s true. But from what angle ? I mean Loman is typical isn’t he ? He’s a metaphor. What does he stand for ? He’s not just some guy who can’t make it, is he ? He’s a whole culture. An entire culture captured in the phoney ambitions and the hopelessness of the unrealisable dreams of a little man. That’s what interests Miller isn’t it, the way society makes the mind and the way individuals get mangled by believing in what destroys them."

"But Willy is pathetic. He’s got no drive and feels sorry for himself."

"Sure. But his drive’s been robbed from him. And no-one can stare unblinkingly at their own failure."

He gave an uncomfortable little shrug and turned away his face. My tiredness was nagging at me and goading me to let fly to overcome my sense of decline. I always had this trouble with restraint. There were obvious things to say which had to be suggested because of the sensibilities of the students and a lurking fear of parental objection. Turning back to me he asked:

" What’s his tragic flaw ?"

" We don’t need to think in those terms about Willy."

"Well, his tragic flaw might be a lack of ambition."

The idea seemed so ludicrous I wanted to laugh out loud.

"Loman doesn’t lack ambition, Guy ! His problem is the ambitions his society has offered him are empty ! He’s like everyone, his ambitions are formed by his context. They don’t fall down from the sky. He has the ambitions a good American is supposed to have. The problem is they don’t work and he doesn’t have an alternative. That’s what he needs. An alternative to the failed values of his culture. And that alternative exists. His own son is starting to feel that the values he’s supposed to live by are sneaky, underhand, grubby. But Willy has never found his way through. He’s not educated. His tragedy is that he’s just this one-dimensional, straight-down-the-line American."

It was bad teaching,I suppose, but I felt better.

"Maybe we should finish there, Guy. Perhaps you can think along those lines for next time."

I made as if I was tidying my papers and he got up and left without a word. I glanced at his back. He carried himself very straight and stiff, his head cocked back slightly like a starling on a lawn, nervous of disturbance. When I went to the window I saw him in the quad chatting to Melanie Steele. She was the girl in my A Level group who constantly pestered me about her progress and her grades. Her sister had gone through the sixth form and won a place to read medicine. As usual, the parents expected something similar of the sibling and though Melanie was no sow’s ear, she wasn’t a silk purse in her field either. She was blonde and pale and had a habit of twisting the ends of her hair around her fingers as she talked; and she had a way of holding herself like a little girl who wants a hug from her daddy or a pound in her hand to run off to the ice-cream van. She would stand by my desk with her chin down, her feet pigeon-toed, her big green eyes round and fixed with the hard intensity of the lunatic as she explained how she just didn’t get Salesman and how worried she was we’d never reach the end of the play and how was she ever to answer a question in the exam if we didn’t. I knew my assurances cut no ice because what she wanted was special treatment and above all, someone to blame if she didn’t get the grades her parents expected. I was canny enough to be wary of students like her. I knew she’d explode like a neutron bomb before she’d accept her shortcomings. I was very careful about marking her work and made sure she was always involved in class discussion. But it made no difference.

Her advantage was that Guy Birney was smitten. He cast sly little sidelong glances at her and became puppy-dog sloppy when she paid attention to him. As I tidied away at the end of a lesson I’d hear her squeaky voice:

"Did you watch Corrie last night ? It was so good. I knew she was going to have an affair with him. I mean it was obvious…."

Guy would follow her out of the room, nodding and producing a phoney little laugh at what he thought were appropriate moments. When I was called in by the Head of Sixth Form and he told me Melanie Steele had complained, I knew at once that Guy Birney would be in on it too.

"She says you’re nowhere near finishing the play."

" Not so. I’ve told her, we’ll easily finish. She’s just wound up about it. She’s made it a big issue in her mind and it’s out of proportion. And she’s looking for someone to blame if she doesn’t get an A."

Phil Prideaux was six-feet four and gangling. His feet were flat and splayed and his hands thin with stiff fingers which never curled naturally towards his palms. His shoulders were narrow and his chest shallow, his whole frame lacked power, grace and ease. He had always thought of himself as physically dominating and all his movements were over-emphatic. He banged a book down on a desk rather than placing it, he shoved a file into his briefcase as if against some magnetic, resisiting force, his feet slapped against the floor and seemed remote from his body and beyond the control of his thin thighs. Even when someone was six inches away , he spoke loud enough to be heard at twenty yards, as if everything he said was for public consumption. I found it impossible to respect him but he was my superior and there were plenty of reasons for him to want to bring me down. As Head of English before his elevation, he’d tried to exert the kind of complete control loved by the immature. Not a directive or suggestion arrived from Whitehall but he’d want it implemented in every detail and every detail required a meeting and every meeting went on beyond the limits of its business and was dominated by the sound of his strenuously over-conscientious voice. To all this I responded with the langourous boredom that comes with disdain for flummery. I liked my subject and I enjoyed teaching it but all this "hidden curriculum" stuff just drove me to distraction. Prideaux, on the other hand, loved it and pulled himself to his full, skinny height whenever he announced some new initiative which must be followed to the letter.

"These people are our customers, Frank."

"They may be customers to you, personally I believe in liberal education."

"Guy Birney says you sat in front of the class marking books."

" Sure. They were doing a timed essay. What am I supposed to do for forty minutes, twiddle my thumbs ?"

" The whole group is complainng."

"The whole group ?"

"Most of the group."

"Is it most or is it all ?"

"We’ve got a problem if Melanie Steele doesn’t get an A."

"Why should she get an A ?"

"Her parents are on the warpath. She’s told them she’s complained to you and you’ve done nothing."

"Her complaints are neurotic. There’s no problem except in her mind."

"You can’t call our customers neurotic, Frank"

" I said her complaints are neurotic. They have no basis in fact. She’s confabulating."

Prideaux was on his feet and standing too close. His brown, soft leather shoes were a few inches from my chair. I looked up at him and he was glaring down at me as at a recalcitrant pupil. His hair, parted on the right, was as neatly combed as ever. I noticed the plastic belt which held his trousers around his slightly swollen midriff. His arms in his shirtsleeves were thin and had a curious stiffness about them, as if it was painful for him to move them at the elbows. His fleshy lips struck me as faintly obscene and I was suddenly aware of how large his nose was.

"What about this essay ?"

"What essay’s that ?"

" On this essay about Death Of A Salesman you’ve written: Where do Willy’s values come from ? Aren’t they the stock-in-trade of the middle-classes ? The problem with your answer is that you blame Willy, as if he’s entirely responsible for his own fate. Clearly the play is touching on something bigger then that:, it’s the failure of middle-class values in the face of the terrible economic facts of American capitalism that Miller is pointing to…"

He paused, holding the essay out in front of him like a policeman who has just read a confession to a serious criminal.

"What’s wrong with that ?"

"Her parents think you’re using the play to push your own politics."

" I haven’t got any politics!"

"Attacking the middle-classes doesn’t go down well with parents in this school."

"I’m not attacking them gratuitously, or even from some parti pris, I’m trying to make the girl see what the play’s getting at."

"In your opinion."

"Intelligent literary opinion would agree. She needs shaking out of this idea that Miller is condemning Loman as a failure."

"Look Frank, this is all about results. What we want is an A for Melanie Steele, then everyone’s happy."

"To get an A she needs to get the play right."

"Does she ?"

"For Christ’s sake !"

After that, teaching my A Level group became unpleasant. Melanie came in with her eyes lowered, followed by the protective Guy Birney who held himself tall and set his fresh, clean face in defiance and opposition. My interpretation of Miller didn’t move a millimetre, in fact I pushed away at the idea of the social aspect of the play. Melanie and Guy diligently took notes, but never met my eyes and I expected any day to be called in by Prideaux or the Head to explain my wayward take on Miller or my eccentric teaching methods. One by one, I spoke to all the students: no-one had raised any objection, nor intended to, except Melanie and Guy. But the complaint stuck. When I found a job in a college and asked Prideaux for his support he said:

"I’ll have to put a reservation in your reference."

I threw the application form in the bin.

Melanie Steele got a B in her A Level. Guy Birney got an A along with three more and a place to read English at Downing. I handed in my notice as I couldn’t face a couple of decades grubbing away down at the bottom in Summit. For a while I did supply teaching, usually in the worst schools with disaffected kids who tore my lessons to shreds and left me exhausted and humiliated, but I never found my way back into a full-time teaching job. When I got married and my first child was on the way, I needed something steadier, so I took a job driving a van for a printing firm. I deliver all over the country. Small jobs. I usually drive a little Bedford van and sometimes a Transit. The work has been plentiful and by taking jobs at the weekend I’ve managed to pull in a decent income, probably as much as the average teacher. But things are on the downturn in the printing industry. Firms are moving work abroad to where labour is cheap and I don’t get the overtime I used to. When I started, there were four of us driving, now I’m the lone driver. Sometimes I think if they make me redundant I’ll go back into teaching but it’s a long time since I taught Miller or anything else and in any case, I’m not sure I have much stomach for putting literature in front of the likes of Melanie Steele or Guy Birney, these days.

Jill Texas loved America and Meryl Sprick loathed Jill Texas. Texas loved the place because it was big, because it was rich, because it was powerful. She was born into the Liverpudlian working-class. Her parents were socialists. But the lure of American glamour was irresistible. She went there as often as she could, taking her family each summer to Florida or Dallas, three weeks at a time. Once she went to New York. It was a great city but she preferred Florida. There was something suspect about New York. Some of the people weren’t typical Americans. They had the accents but their attitudes were cosmopolitan. Sprick scoffed. Texas delighted in Texas. She changed her name from Higton. Her motto was a slogan she’d learned in Dallas: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch," she said to Sprick after telling her she wasn’t giving her a discretionary pay rise.

Shortly after, she took a sixth-form assembly. The theme was: There is no such thing as a free lunch. She felt very pleased to be able to influence the students with her homespun, American wisdom.

"Before long, you will go out into the world. It’s a big world out there. There are opportunities. You will have to make your choices. What are you going to do ? You might do this thing, you might do that thing. You might think it’s all coming on a plate. But it isn’t coming on a plate. And do you know why ? Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you want that thing or the other thing, whatever thing you want, you’ll have to work for it. That’s why you should be working hard now. Every summer I take my family to America. It’s a great country. But you know what ? Even in America….."

The bell rang and Texas was still talking. The students began to fidget. The staff shuffled. Sprick twisted the papers in her hands. This was her assembly. She was Head of sixth-form. But Texas had usurped her without asking. She had merely announced:

"I’ll take the assembly on Thursday."

Sprick believed in hierarchy as much as the next woman. There was nothing unconventional about her view of the world. She had faith in the necessity of authority. She’d worked at Highfield for thirty-five years. All her adult effort had gone into this one job. When she arrived, it was a Grammar so she felt comfortable, having been at a minor public school. The mistresses went around in gowns; the prefects punished younger girls; there was a matron; the sports fixtures were against private schools; lesbianism was rife; everyone kept quiet about the games mistress.

But there had been the sixties.

Sprick had started at Bristol in 1964. They stayed up till three in the morning listening to Bob Dylan, drinking plonk, talking about socialism. Harold Wilson was going to change the world. He was elected by working class votes in remote places called Rotherham, Middlesbrough and Tredegar. To Sprick these were just names and what the working-class might be like she had no idea. But it was impossible not to rally to the idea of the working-class, the ideal of socialism, the atmosphere of change. Her parents were Conservative Anglicans. To vote Labour was an act of rebellious independence. And Dylan sang rebel songs like Guthrie, The Beatles came from the industrial north. She became a Liverpool supporter though she knew nothing about football and had never been near the city.

"The point is, man, we’ve had a fucking revolution in this country ! A bloodless revolution, but the working class have got schools and hospitals and pensions by organising and using their votes. The rich can’t fucking stop it ! It’s a democratic revolution and only the antediluvians are against it."

Sprick listened to the mouthing politicos and felt she was part of something noble and irresistible. Her parents and the sadists who ran her school were the antediluvians. She nailed her colours to the mast of the bright future of democratic socialism.

But then came the eighties.

She was in her mid-thirties, a mother of two young children; socialism was disappearing like the rain forests; the Tories were selling off the people’s assets. She bought shares in everything. She gave her copies of E.P.Thompson and R.H.Tawney to the Oxfam shop. When the miners struck, she joined in the general excoriation of Arthur Scargill.

"Tunnel vision type !" she said.

She resigned from the union to help her promotion prospects. She began to talk about the immutability of human nature. When the fleet returned from the Falklands, the waving flags and the bare-breasted girls brought a tear to her eye. She believed competition would make the railways more efficient.

Now Osama Bin Laden was sending planes to crash into tall buildings and Texas was Headteacher, because they could find no-one better, because someone had to be. She’d been appointed after the second round of interviews. The county adviser didn’t rate her. The governors weren’t sure. She made a nervous start. Highfield wasn’t what she was used to. She’d always worked in comps and made her way through obedience. Anxious that the staff were stick-in-the-mud she threw her weight around. She’d read in an American book of management techniques that playing one person off against another is a good way to maintain control.

"When Joan Marchant retires I’ll be able to do things differently in maths," she told a young mathematician.

She approached a teacher in the corridor and asked if she was considering early retirement. She never missed an opportunity to criticise one member of staff to another. She promoted hockey which she thought more democratic than lacrosse. She feared the authorities would be on her back for being laggardly; the place had to change and she had been appointed to change it.

Sprick knew the school couldn’t stand still, but it’s recent past was her life.

"Parents like tradition," she said to Texas.

"Tradition is an excuse for laziness."

Sprick spread the word among the staff: Texas thinks you’re lazy. What she’d said to one member of staff was repeated to another. The negative feeling towards her began to grow. People felt she wasn’t on their side, they were undermined. They watched askance as she strode through the staff-room, her head cocked back, her fixed smile showing her large teeth. They detected criticism in her tone of voice. They believed every new policy was a plot against them.

Texas needed to win them round. For a long time most of the staff had wanted the one-hour-fifteen minute, decades-old lunch-break shortened. It remained because the P.E. staff had lacrosse turnouts. Lacrosse was sacrosanct. The school had produced a long line of county players and even a couple of internationals, but the eternal pause left most pupils idle and finding mischief. In the afternoon, they were over-excited, tired, unwilling. No-one wanted to offend the sports staff, but everyone wanted a shorter break. Texas thought the existing arrangement un-American. What would they do in Dallas ? Why, they’d do what was modern ! Traditional values in a modern setting ! And wasn’t lunch for wimps ? Wasn’t this the change to win the staff to her side ?

Indifferent, Sprick went with the sportswomen for the sake of taking on Texas.

"But the survey shows clearly most staff want a change."

"So ?"

"So they’re unhappy with the existing arrangement."

"Tough."

"I think that’s unhelpful."

Sprick snorted and shrugged her shoulders.

"I’ve drawn up three possibilities. We’ll get the staff to vote and then I’ll confirm the choice with the governors and the county. We should be able to shift next September."

"Lacrosse is very important here. Lots of parents send their girls because they’ll play for the school. And sixth form numbers depend on them. Undermining lacrosse undermines the school."

"I’m not undermining anybody, it’s what the staff want."

"It’s weak leadership to give in to the staff."

Texas blenched. She stared at Sprick who sat stiffly staring back at her blankly.

"I’m behaving democratically. If I impose my will on the staff they’ll be up in arms."

"You can’t be a Headteacher and a democrat."

Texas looked at her opponent. She would do anything to controvert. And she was spreading disaffection amongst the staff.

"I’m the Head. I’ve been appointed to change the culture in this school…."

"What’s wrong with the culture ?"

"It’s out of date. It needs modernising."

"Lacrosse isn’t out of date."

"That’s ridiculous ! I’m not opposed to lacrosse."

"But you’re making things impossible for the sports staff."

"They can practice after school."

"Not in winter."

"The needs of lacrosse can’t dominate the school !"

"Why not ?"

"Because that’s what’s wrong with this place. It thinks it’s a little Rodean and it isn’t. It serves everyone. It has to become inclusive."

"Spare me the buzzwords."

Texas put the alternatives before the staff who voted heavily for the shortest option. She ignored Sprick, had the plan passed by the governors, ratified by the County and implemented on 1^st September.

What the majority of staff had long argued for, they had won. Texas had given it them. Yet their suspicion of her grew.

"Waste of space !" they could be heard to say.

Sprick was delighted. She and Texas stopped talking to one another. Sprick had sensed from the first Texas’s lack of confidence. Her public school mentality clicked in. People who lacked confidence, shy people, quiet people, people who didn’t use their elbows and knees, who didn’t push to the front of the queue and promote their inflated view of their importance and competence were natural victims. She had witnessed some nasty bullying as a pupil. There was a girl in her year who feared water. The P.E. mistresss forced her into the pool. She kicked and spluttered and panicked. She couldn’t even swim a width with a float held before her. The bullies waited till the P.E. mistresss left the side and dragged the victim to the deep end, shoved her head under till the bubbles rose.

"Get that girl out of the water !"

But secretly the mistress sided with the bullies. She hated a weakling. She loathed a girl who couldn’t swim or run . The school turned a blind eye to most bullying. It was looked on as character-building. Only the worst examples, when a girl lost an eye by being locked in a laundry basket while sticks were poked through its sides or another had hair spray forced up her nose, resulted in firm action. But the matter was always hushed up. Above all, the reputation of the school must not suffer.

Sprick didn’t want to take part in bullying but nor did she want to be bullied. She was a big lass, athletic and able to take care of herself. But the bullies were sly. They never left themselves vulnerable. They operated in groups. If they chose you as a victim, your time was very hard. So Sprick joined in the mockery of the weaklings, the outsiders. They were fair game. And the bullies left her alone, apart from the odd nasty incident when some ugly-minded prefect would whip away the glasses without which she was helpless.

"Can you see me, Sprick ! Come and get your specs. I’m over here."

But when she moved, she was tripped and, flat on her face, was laughed at. She learned to stand still, back into a corner and wait. She was poor sport. They never made her cry. They grew bored.

Now, thirty-five years after leaving school, the smell of a weakling stirred the old responses.

Sprick had believed she would be a headteacher but once she had started to climb at Highfield, she didn’t want to leave. It was a prestigious place with a large sixth-form, a middle-class catchment, an impressive tradition. If things fell right, the headship might come to her. So she pushed, played the game and waited. On the first occasion she was too young and on the second too old. She had risen to Head of Sixth-Form and Deputy Head. She would have to be content.

But Texas provided an opportunity.

If she were to fail, if she were to leave, if she were to be forced out, there might be a chance, even if only temporarily. And if that temporary elevation fell within her final three years, it could make a significant difference to her pension. Might there not be a chance of a long-term promotion ? She’d done it before. She had never had to make an application, fill in a form, go through an interview, and she’d slid up the greasy pole all the same. To end her career as Head, to see her salary go up by ten grand , to have a much bigger pension: it was attractive and satisfying. But she couldn’t do it alone. She and Texas at loggerheads wasn’t enough. The staff had to turn against her enemy. She had to be isolated. She had to feel the negativity of her colleagues day in day out. Sprick knew that a little poison can spread swiftly. She was subtle, almost understated. But she talked frankly to her confidantes on the staff, those she had taken under her wing, the future of the school.

Sprick noticed Texas spent more and more time in her office. She knew the major concern of the staff was discipline. Pupils were defying teachers at every turn. Some classes were unteachable. The school would get to the point of permanent exclusion; the parents hired a barrister; there was a technicality. The daily humiliation of being treated as skivvies by cocky teenagers drove some staff into depression, others ran for early retirement, some gave up the ghost and the pupils ran riot in their rooms. Sprick encouraged her colleagues to put pressure on Texas. She dug in her heels: poor discipline was a result of poor teaching. It was the government’s line; it was an American idea; she liked it. But being blamed for the epidemic of regression and boorishness among young people made the staff resentful. Why doesn’t she do something ? She’s the Head ! She should set the tone. Finally, Texas gave in. She would speak to the whole school in assembly.

She stood on the stage, Sprick seated to her left.

" I have to speak to you this morning about something my staff have asked me to speak to you about. It’s not a thing I like to have talk about but I have to talk about it. Some of you and I know it is only some of you aren’t doing what you’re here for. I’m not happy. My staff aren’t happy. If you think it’s funny to talk all the way through a lesson. If you give cheek to your teachers. If you never do your homework. What do I say to you ? I say maybe you shouldn’t be here. Why should you be here ? Some of you think the rules are for you. Well, the rules are for everyone and the rules will apply to everyone. I’ve seen things around the school, it may be the graffiti thing, it may be the litter thing, it may just be walking around with your blouse hanging out, but I’ve seen things I don’t like. I don’t like them. I want them to change. They will have to change. We’ve had new toilets. I go to those new toilets and what do I find ? Someone’s turned on all the taps and left them running. Is that funny ? Is that the way to treat what’s provided for your benefit ? It won’t do. And you know what my motto is ? It’s something I learned in America…….."

Sprick’s mouth curled into a smug, sardonic little smile. To stand in front of the girls, of the entire school and by implication suggest they were all letting her down, was the very worst thing she could do. By goading her into it, Sprick had hastened her downfall. In truth, Sprick had no complaint about the girls’ behaviour. The truly disruptive and disaffected were no more than a passing irritant. In the solvent of middle-class conformity their recalcitrance quickly dissolved. She had talked up the seriousness , claimed teachers were swimming against an impossible current, predicted a parental revolt. Texas had gone for it like a salmon for a fly. Now she was going to be caught as she leapt and clubbed to death.

Most of the staff were pleased, but many pupils,as Sprick predicted, turned sour. They weren’t to blame. They felt they were being told off for nothing. The ill-feeling spread and within days someone spray painted on a wall : TEXAS MUST GO. Sprick was thrilled.

The pupils’ behaviour didn’t change. Texas stayed behind her office door as much as possible. At a morning briefing, someone asked her to explain a decision.

"This isn’t the forum," she said.

The teacher protested, Texas lost her temper, closed the meeting and ordered the staff to their classrooms. The following day she was absent. Sprick started to feel sure the Headship would fall into her lap. She walked past Texas in the corridor and ignored her. She kept feeding stories of incompetence and stupidity. Whenever Texas appeared before the staff, the atmosphere was sinister. It was that vicious and cruel mood that seizes groups when they’re sure they are right and have an enemy in their sights; the mentality of the pack baring its teeth; the howling of the crowd that drowns the modest voice of reason. People whose true judgement of Texas was essentially neutral found themselves drawn into the vortex and condemned her out loud. Cowards who would never have stood up to a strong Head they knew was wrong, began to throw their weight around.

After the Christmas holiday, Texas announced she was leaving. Sprick knew they would never appoint in time for the next term. She was home and dry. She began to feel justified. Shouldn’t she have been appointed to a Headship long ago ? But when she took over, she found herself fearing the staff. Supposing they turned on her ? Supposing they saw her as weak ? Supposing they put two and two together ? Those loyal to her who knew they would be rewarded put the word out: she was working hard, she had the best interests of the school at heart, everyone should back her. The mood swung behind her, though in truth, little changed, but she surfed the wave of popularity and buffed-up respect. One day she brought sheaves of documents and armfuls of files into a staff meeting and dumped them unceremoniously on the table to show how overwhelmed she was.

She managed a paltry term as Acting Head. The following September a new, young woman took over. Sprick made herself like her. Undermining one Head was enough for anyone, and in any case, there were no stakes to play for. The new woman did much the same as Texas, but she was subtle, discreet, diplomatic. Put in the picture by the school adviser, she kept carefully on the right side of Sprick. She was on the verge of retiring. No need to face her down.

"You know," one member of staff remarked to another, "one of the things everyone hated Texas for was not allowing school trips. But have you noticed, this new woman is closing down even more."

"Yeah, do they ever change ?."

It was suggested Sprick might intercede on their behalf. Two older colleagues who thought themselves close to her were delegated.

"People feel closing down on the trips is narrowing what the school offers."

Sprick nodded.

"Some of these are long-established. A lot of hard work has gone into them."

"I know," she said.

She held out her palms and raised her shoulders. Her mouth turned down in sympathetic regret.

"It’s the new ideology," she said. "Children should be in the classroom."

When the supplicants left, Sprick went to speak to the Head.

"I’d better warn you, people are getting hot under the collar about trips. I’ve told them where you stand, of course."

"Thanks for that, Meryl."

As Sprick’s career neared its last few weeks, she began to put in review her years of making her way, playing one rival off against another. She was proud of her strategy. To think of herself as Machiavellian gave her a sense of esteem. She’d made it to Headteacher, however briefly, and the boost to her pension would be a constant reminder. Nearly forty years. It concertinaed in her mind. She could run through the major events in seconds. She’d made a memorable contribution. Yet in spite of herself, in defiance of her efforts to convince herself it had been a bagatelle, she couldn’t help returning to the thought that her ousting of Texas was her greatest achievement.

RUNT

For six months, Ken Bowen had been putting out resolute little notes to his members assuring them the union would have nothing to do with performance-related pay. When one busy morning he read an off-the-cuff quote from the General Secretary suggesting a slackening of opposition, his stomach shrank. Was he going to have to recant ? Would he have to apply ? Would he look ridiculous and time-serving?  No-one else bothered. Calculation was the dish of the day. But Bowen was  uncomfortable. He felt weak and insignificant. He was a diligent trade unionist, in his small way, at a very low level; but wasn’t that democracy ? Weren’t we supposed to have faith in the good sense and courage of the common people ? He hated the term. The common people or ordinary people. The condescension made him nauseous. Shouldn’t democracy obliterate the convenient distinction between the common people and the rest, whatever they were called: the elite, the plutocracy, the aristocracy, the untouchables? The trajectory of his confused life had been shaped by democracy’s apparent promise. Yet he’d fallen precipitately to earth and felt the ground crumble beneath him. On the march was a deeply anti-democratic sentiment. Teachers were being tested; the government was throwing two thousand pounds in the gutter and daring them not to get down on their knees and scramble. Bowen knew he couldn’t do it. To apply for a pay increase, to beg, to go as a supplicant, to be required to prove he’d been doing his job was humiliating and manipulative; and it was justified on the dishonest grounds of competency. The two issues were comingled in a muddy mixture intended to be impenetrable. But Bowen insisted: pay should be determined democratically, through negotiation. Competency was a separate issue which should be dealt with by its own set of procedures. All the same, he could see what was coming.

In a hopeless attempt to garner support he declared his steadfast refusal. At least he was at ease. But the measure did its work: people began to worry. They searched out with great diligence fawning evidence in support of their applications. Like lottery players they thought of their own chances. How many would go through ?  Who would they be ? In the end, the only question in most minds was: will I go through ? Still, there was sufficient residual solidarity for people to help one another. The management made as much data available as possible. The Deputy Head read through every application and did all he could to strengthen them. Nevertheless, David Blunkett reiterated his tedious mantra: the majority of teachers over time. It was obvious the government didn’t envisage most teachers getting through in the first cohort.

“Ninety per cent of teachers will get this money,” one of Bowen’s colleagues said.

“Not this time,” he replied.

“Then the unions will fight case by case.”

“We’ll be overwhelmed. If it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, they’ve won. We’ve lost the principle: pay should be determined in national agreements.”

“Yes, but it’s fair enough to reward those who do a good job.”

“That’s the management’s line. And who decides what a good job is ? Once we hand over to them the sole and absolute right to make that judgement, they’ll hammer us with productivity deals. We should stand firm: pay is one thing, competency another.”

“But you can’t pay people who aren’t doing the job properly !”

“That’s the red herring. Hardly anyone is incompetent but they make competency the very essence of the pay structure. Some people drink too much, but prohibition isn’t the answer.”

“I know, but it’s reasonable enough to try to make sure everyone’s pulling their weight.”

“It’s driven by ideology. They want to spread the myth the system is riddled with incompetence. They want to blame individuals for the failings  and they want to exculpate themselves. This is Pontius Pilateism. It’s a witch hunt. It’s a regime of fear and it will eat into the mind of every teacher.”

“Well, let’s get the money and see.”

“It’s the King’s shilling. Once you’ve taken it, you’re in their hands.”

Bowen was in a minority of one. The government’s cynicism was well-placed: there was  no will among teachers to stand for a principle at the cost of two thousand a year. Then Bowen read a sneering piece in the Guardian. The journalist declared it would require superhuman principle to refuse to apply. He thought it farcical. Superhuman ? Simply to turn down two grand offered in such demeaning circumstances! It struck him that was just the kind of comment to be expected from someone pulling in a hundred thousand for writing fifteen hundred words a week.  Some dinner-party Islingtonite, no doubt. He put the paper aside and felt more resolved than ever. Yet as he imagined his burning boats, saw himself falling further and further behind in pay, he felt a surge of anxiety. He wished he was out of this nasty business. He was forty-seven. He would lose tens of thousands before retirement and his pension would be petty.

“It’s an expensive principle,” one of his  members said.

“Principles are expensive, but only in money.”

When he told his wife he wouldn’t apply she said:

“Is that what trade unionism gets you ?”

She wouldn’t stand absolutely against him, but she couldn’t go along with losing the money. One of those excited by the extension and ease of credit, she had a burdensome and worrying little stack of debt. It amounted to about fifteen thousand, though she wasn’t sure. Somehow, it was difficult to keep track. Real money was easy. If she had three tens in her purse, she could do the subtraction as she spent; but plastic wasn’t real. In her mind, money evaporated to be replaced by a general beneficence of bankers who offered credit like a kindly uncle offers sweets. There, in the fashionable window, was a gorgeous warm winter coat for her youngest, stylish and beautiful, and here was her ever-complaisant plastic. People wanted to give her money. Why shouldn’t she take it ? Everybody did. Only when the statements arrived with their horrible demands for minimum payments, their cold insistence, their unsmiling demand for promptness and probity, did her feeling change. Sometimes she ignored them. The envelope stood on the mantelpiece for days.

“Do you know there’s a letter for you here ?” asked Ken.

She raised her brows and sipped her tea.

The more she thought , the more she resented her husband’s action. Two thousand a year ! And increasing as he missed moving up the scale. She did the quick sums and it was what, twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand  ? This was worse than her spending. After all, she spent mostly on the kids. This was wilful neglect of the family! At times she sank into bitter outrage from which she escaped by shopping.  If he wouldn’t seize what was offered, she would ! She strode through Marks and Spencer and Debenhams as if escaping persecution, on her face the blank, fixed expression of a woman who has ceased to think, who is rebelling against thought, and in the murder of her rational self as she handed over her credit card, she experienced a sense of absolute triumph. At other times she relented. He explained his stance. It was the long game. There was a future to fight for. Then she admired him and felt she’d behaved badly, nestled sentimentally against his shoulder and ran her long fingers along his taut thigh. But the feeling soon ebbed and  was replaced by anger at not being able to afford a new car or more holidays. One day she was probing: could they go to the sunshine at half term ? When he said they needed the money for new window frames, she snapped:

“Well, we’d have the money if you’d just fill in a form !”

The draining sense of letting down his family chewed at Bowen. Sometimes he would look at his heedless children and think of what they’d have to do without. Then a steely little resolution arose in him to suffer the bitter reductions himself. All the same, he was sometimes overwhelmed by a gush of sentimental relenting. He saw himself requesting the despicable form, completing it in a compliant whirl; but when he actually did ask and the paper was in his hands, when he read the stupid pages and realised how he would have to lie and twist and lower himself to get the money, he tore it in half in bitter spite and dropped it in the bin. He was an outsider and that was that. Let others do what they would.

It was uncomfortable, hearing the urgent conversations, seeing the anxious process going on around him and being as excluded as a runt. He almost wished he could be thoughtless and conformist.  Yet, when he asked himself who among his colleagues he would rather be, he was glad to be himself. Maybe his stern resistance was nothing more than an insignificant gesture, but it was him. Then a surprising development took place: the NUT was to take the Secretary of State to court for having promulgated a change to teachers’ pay and conditions. Bowen’s beleagured spirits rose. For a few minutes, he envisaged a government retreat; but if they lost  wouldn’t they simply put the changes before parliament? All the same, it was a chance to spavin. When the Judicial Review came to court, Justice Jackson ruled the government had acted unlawfully. The overweening arrogance of the Secretary of State had been brought low. Blunkett, in a panic, blamed his “Sir Humphrey”. At once his rhetoric changed: the months-old ritornello was replaced by a woeful moan that he was being prevented from giving money to teachers, all teachers, by the self-defeating actions of the NUT. Bowen chuckled. The Sunday papers, however, were filled with the same argument: now teachers might not get their £2,000; the NUT had scored a laughable own goal; the unions were insanely out of touch; teachers wanted and deserved the money, the legalities meant nothing to them; the scheme might fall; it was a disgrace; it was a farce; yes, Blunkett was a fool, but the NUT was worse; performance pay was a good idea; the NUT stood in the way of every good idea; now they had attained the apogee: they were denying their members money ! Never had the uselessness of trade unionism been so conspicuously displayed.

Bowen put his paper aside. The press delirium annoyed and amused him.  Blunkett had broken the law. He asked himself how the journalists would have responded had the NUT been the delinquent. That teachers wouldn’t get the money was ludicrous.  It was Blunkett who was drowning. The government would have to send out the lifeboats. Teachers couldn’t be asked to re-apply. They would have to be given the money. And the change in Bunkett’s chorus was telling: if only a minority  got the money, there would be uproar. It was a clever move by the union, for now the government’s majority of teachers over time was effete. Blunkett, from being the nemesis of the profession had transmogrified into honest Dave, the teachers’ friend. He portrayed himself as victim. He had been let down. He had been bullied. He wanted nothing more than to distribute largesse to hundreds of thousands of deserving teachers. If only those vicious Trade Unionists would get out of his way.

“Looks like you’re all in the same boat now,” said his wife as she read the paper.

“No, the press just won’t admit the union’s victory. They’re panicked. We’ve used the courts and defeated the government, but they’ll have to give us the money.”

“Including you ?”

“Those who’ve applied.”

“All of ‘em ?”

“Yeah, they daren’t do anything else now.”

“So some people will get the money who might not have done.”

“For sure.”

“Is that what they call performance pay ?”

“It always was a scam, Sarah.”

“What kind of performance pay is it if you give everyone the money ? It’s a joke. Fill in the form, get the money.”

“It is a joke. They didn’t want this. They wanted a minority through in the first cohort.”

“So two thousand is there for the taking and you still stick to your prissy principles.”

“In the long run this scheme is bad for teachers, bad for education, bad for the pupils, bad for society. It’s old fashioned productivity. Everyone’s being nailed down. First they do this, next they’ll go after our pensions. Then they’ll make a fuss about sick pay. The best way to resist is to say no from the beginning.”

“Ken contra mundum. You’ll just get crushed.”

“Posterity will see we were right.”

“Well, good for posterity.”

Sarah’s ill-will couldn’t completely expunge his frail sense of victory, but when he arrived in school on Monday morning he was met in the buzzing staff room by an aggressive, ugly, squat and solid Bob Wildgoose who came towards him  head down and  eyes fixed.

“Don’t you want two thousand bloody quid, then ?”

Bob was close enough for Ken to detect the stale coffee on his breath. He stepped back and smiled:

“What’s the matter, Bob ?”

“Your union’s the matter. Two thousand quid down the drain.”

“That’s not so.”

“They’ve gone to bloody court to stop us getting our money !”

Ken shook his head but Bob had turned away and was stalking out with the rocking gait of man looking for trouble. That was the beginning of a long litany of comments Ken had to parry as calmly as he could.

“Look,” he’d say, “the judgement puts Blunkett on the back foot. He’s got no choice now but to give as many teachers as possible the money. He’s broken the law and he’s fighting upwards. The NUT has done every teacher in the land a favour.”

But one after another his colleagues refused to meet his eyes, or shook their heads, until, near the end of lunch a few days later Nigel Cornthwaite said:

“Well, that’s not what Phil Nixon says.”

“What does he says ?”

Cornthwaite explained that over the weekend Nixon had rung round telling people the NUT action meant they wouldn’t get the two thousand, and he’d come into work early,  met people as they arrived and made sure they understood the message. Nixon was a Deputy Head and had once been on the national executive of the NASUWT.  The NUT had a minority position in the school: seven teachers out of fifty-five. Ken was stunned but his puzzlement over his colleagues’ aggression ebbed. The more he thought about, picturing the ungainly Nixon rushing to stop people, leaning from his thin waist, insisting in that whining monotone, exaggerating in his anxiously persuading way, the more it became clear and the more appalled he was.

“I believe you’ve been telling people the court action means they won’t get the money.”

He was sitting in the gangling Nixon’s office. Leaning back in his swivel chair, the older man nodded and smiled smugly.

“But that’s not true, Phil ?”

“Isn’t it ?”

“You know it isn’t.”

“Do I ?”

“Well, don’t you ?”

“Nope,” and Nixon swiveled, the little smug expression on his crooked lips.

“More people will get the money. Blunkett’s made a fool of himself. The rhetoric of “the majority over time” is dead. He’s flailing his arms and legs in white water. Who’s suggesting people won’t get the money ?”

Nixon pushed out his fleshy lower lip and held out his palms in exorbitant display.

“I thought Bob Wildgoose was going to punch me the other morning.”

When Nixon sniggered Ken felt like slinking out.

“I don’t think it was very wise to wind people up, Phil.”

“Me, wind people up ?”

“Isn’t the truth important ?”

“Is it ?”

“Nobody expects the Daily Mail to be objective, but from one union to another , to stir up this bad feeling and to give credence to the myth that the NUT has scuppered the scheme, the money will go back to the Treasury and teachers won’t get a penny. It’s pretty poor, Phil.”

“What your union does is its business, I was just telling my members they would have to wait for their money.”

“As I’ve heard, you told them more than that.”

“ I told what I knew.”

“And where did your knowledge come from ?”

“Responsible journalism.”

“There isn’t a paper in this country has told the truth. They’d rather see a Secretary of State break the law than a union enforce it. But just listen to the change in rhetoric. Blunkett meant what he was saying. Now he’s falling over himself to dish out the loot. Our action did that.”

“Maybe.”

“In the long run they’ll want to make the scheme do what it’s supposed to do.”

“What’s that ?”

“Sort the sheep from the goats.”

“Is that a bad idea ?”

“Isn’t solidarity a better one ?”

Nixon scoffed and smirked.

Only two teachers didn’t get through and they weren’t Ken’s members. In spite of the unions’ assertions that each case would be fought, they were abandoned on the grounds that the judgement was probably fair: one rarely took books home, the other was known to have problems with classroom order.

“The unions are doing the management’s dirty work,” said Ken to Sarah.

“But most folk have got the money.”

“There’s a right and wrong way of getting money.”

“What’s wrong with applying for it ?”

“It turns us into supplicants, for god’s sake. It puts all the cards in management hands. It gives them the right to make all the demands and us no right to make any. It’s as if we employed a cleaner and asked for an eight page form every twelve months to prove the carpets had been vacuumed.”

“It’s only a bloody form, Ken !”

“But it isn’t, is it ? That’s like saying a brothel is just a building.”

“Who’s talking about brothels ?”

Exasperated and weary, Ken stupidly wanted sympathy from his wife. Had he expected she’d smile and put her arm round his shoulders, give him a loving pat and say: “Good for you,love. Stick to your guns.” Hadn’t he been married to her for twenty-seven years ?

“Think about it,” he said, aware of an unpleasant insistence in his voice, “the existential difference between having your pay and conditions negotiated by third parties, which means you get them as of right and they’re collective, and having to prove yourself as an individual, to talk up your efficiency, to convince your boss you’re worthy of approbation, is huge. There’s no point of contact between the two. This is a regime of anxiety which makes everyone look into themselves to find fault or merit. It makes the victim show gratitude to the executioner. Its purpose is to drive people apart. It denies the social nature of employment contracts.”

“Existential,” she retorted with contempt, “what’s that supposed to mean ? You’re talking philosophy. What’s all the fuss about. Everyone else fills in the bloody form and gets the money. You admitted yourself the system’s rubbish. Apply and you’re virtually guaranteed to go through. I just think it’s sick to turn down money. We’ve got kids to look after.”

The letters accumulated on the mantelpiece. When Ken mentioned them, Sarah ignored him or flounced from the room as if she had more important things to think about. At length, his solitary protest was forgotten. The collective capitulation to the culture of individual advancement turned people inwards. No-one thought for a second about his stance. One day, a colleague, sitting by him at break said:

“The money’s not bad now though, is it, since we got the two grand ?”

“No, not bad,” he said.

He realised his tiny act of resistance was all but worthless. His colleagues, like his wife, could see nothing but the money. He began to feel acutely embarrassed and to search for the fault in himself which made him break ranks. The wrankling resentment over money wore away at the affection between him and Sarah and sure of her ground because with the majority she goaded him at every opportunity. At length, she came to him one Friday evening when he was sunk in the shifting cushions of the sofa, his legs stretched on the sheepskin, a book in his hands.

“Here,” was all she said as she dropped next to his feet a wad of envelopes and left the room.

Alone, he opened them slowly, one by one, as if they were Christmas cards and, his heart quickening with each statement, did the arithmetic. When he put aside the last, he’d calculated roughly sixty-one thousand.

“What’ve you spent it on ?” he asked.

She looked away and half-closed her eyes, leaning back against the kitchen surface. A girlish, self-indulgent little smile, as if she was eight and had eaten all the chocolate biscuits, almost jolted alive his desire.

“I don’t know. I just fritter it.”

“How do you fritter sixty-one grand, Sarah ?”

“That’s over a few years.”

“It would need to be. How the hell are we going to get out of this ?

She shrugged, lifted her chin and looked away, as if it didn’t concern her.

“You’ll have to go bankrupt.”

“I’ll lose my job.”

“Why ?”

“Don’t ask me, it’s just an FSA rule.”

She exulted a little in the fact she earned more. Seeing him crestfallen, the stack of shameful demands in his hands and sensing the responsibility passed to him, she felt he’d got what he deserved.

Ken spent the next week negotiating a loan with the building society, taking out credit cards at zero interest, until the entire debt was in his name.

“We’ll save about four hundred a month in interest payments,” he said.

She flicked her eyes from the television.

“So I don’t owe anything any more.”

He could have leapt at her and strangled her.

“It’s what we owe, Sarah. This is a partnership.”

“But it’s all in your name now,” she said, turning back to her programme. “I wouldn’t’ve done that.”

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Sap Capstick got most of such  education as he had in the Victorian town library where the oak fiction shelves were six feet high and stacked with complete sets of every author since Richardson. On his fortieth birthday, lugubriously surveying the thin set of biographies of celebrities, the single, small shelf of poetry and the drama section without a single play by Jonson, he was beset by a dragging sense of failure and futility: over twenty expectant years devoted to books and writing but no more than a pamphlet of two dozen poems which had been praised by faint damning in three small magazines, sold two hundred copies and sunk into deep oblivion. His definition of himself as a writer was hard to maintain. An embarrassing little panic at his pretension made him flush and wince. He had to write something that would find an audience! Surely biography couldn’t be too difficult. And he began to sift his poor brains for someone he could write about. It must be someone leftish to match his own views. Someone whose life was yet unwritten. As he slid his spoon beneath the froth of his cappuccino, the idea came to him: Barry Noonan! The popular leftist poet who’d pranced across stages from Inverness to The Isle of Dogs, risen on the wave of sixties pop culture and ridden it ever since: the perfect subject. He was about to turn sixty. What better way to celebrate than a life?

As soon as Capstick arrived home he sat at his computer and wrote:

Dear Barry Noonan,

Twenty years ago I attended a reading of yours: Barry Noonan at forty. I’ve been a fan of your work since Straight Talking and wondered if you’d be interested in a biography or even just an article about your life and work?

Yours,

He included his phone number and less than a week later Noonan rang him.

“Hi, Sap! Barry Noonan!”

“Oh, hello.”

“Got your letter. Great. Why don’t you come down and see us?”

“Yes, sure.”

Capstick told his wife.

“Barry Noonan! He’s really famous isn’t he?”

“Quite famous,” said Capstick not meeting her eyes.

The following gloomy Saturday he was on an early train to London. He felt very serious and literary among frivolous shoppers, football supporters, lap-topped businessmen. His trips to London had been few and short. He’d never met any of the capital’s literati. There’d been a time when he’d hung around notorious bohemian pubs in the hope of running into someone worth knowing. Didn’t friendships spark up that way? Once he bought B.S.Johnson a drink but when he tried to stimulate conversation Johnson said:

“Who the fuck are you anyway?”

Finally, he was gaining entry to the world he loved but from which he’d been excluded: writers, books, novels, collections, plays, directors, actors, reviews, biographies! And Noonan knew just about everyone.

At Euston he followed the anonymous crowd up the black platform. Everyone was hurrying. They all had their pressing little business. And he had his: an appointment to begin work on the book which might presently be on the shelves of every library. To be lifted from obscurity at last! To correspond with the famous. To meet them in pubs, restaurants, their homes. It was as if concrete blocks had been lifted from his shoulders. He took the rocking tube to NW3 and emerging pulled out the scribbled directions Noonan gave him over the phone. The day was overcast and greyness seeped from every surface. Hampstead, home of intellectuals, politicians, actors celebrities; but it seemed impossibly ordinary. The pavements were cracked and uneven, the tarmac as worn and weathered as at home, the trimmed hedges were conventionally trimmed and the untended  sprouted waving stems of privet just as they did where he came from. The place failed to meet his vague expectations.

He reconnoitred Noonan’s avenue and seeing a woman heading away from him with baguettes in her arms, wondered if it was Noonan’s wife out buying the titbits for lunch. But he was early and disappointed: he would have liked to arrive in a rush like a man with much to do, to have had the confidence to time his appearance to the minute; but the petty anxiety  he might not easily find his way made him cautious as a sparrow. He stood on the lonely corner wondering how to kill the eternal hour and a half. Was there a café? He wandered, but not too far for fear of getting lost, and coming across an estate agency, paused to consider the prices. A one-bedroomed flat on the fourth floor was thirty thousand more than his family semi. A place with four bedrooms cost more than he would earn in his entire teaching career. Walking on he passed a few shoppers, well-dressed, middle-aged, middle-class men and women with confident expressions and purposeful demeanours. He tried to look as if he knew where he was and where he was going. At length he came across a second-hand bookshop and ducking into its gloom felt more at home. He hoped he might find something, but the prices were high. Even foxed paperbacks were marked at what he’d pay for a hardback in the north. Then looking up from the rows of orange and blue spines on the packed table in front of him, he met the eyes of a face he recognised. For a few seconds, they stared into his own before the man moved to the biography shelves. Who was it? It took an instant for his aching brain to find the answer: Joseph Brodsky. He looked round in time to see him leaving. Should he go after him? What would he say? “Excuse me! Joseph Brodsky? Pleased to meet you. I’m a great admirer of your work. I’m just on my way to Barry Noonan’s. Yes, I’m working on his biography. Maybe we could grab a quick coffee?” But lacking the courage, his mind at once sprang to correction. Was he the kind of pathetic hanger-on who would do such a thing? All the same, the disturbing idea arose of mentioning it to Noonan: “Oh, I was in the bookshop round the corner and bumped into Joseph Brodsky.” The ambiguous suggestion of acquaintanceship pleased him. But the truth was he found Brodsky’s work boring.

He left the shop after what seemed a long hour only to find he still had forty-five minutes to waste. He mooched, looked in another estate agency window, read the headlines in a cramped paper shop before very slowly making his way to Noonan’s . Tall on its mound with three worn stone steps up to its racing green, brass-knockered door it immediately set Capstick thinking about prices. Three storeys and a mansarde. This alone made the famous socialist a millionaire. But perhaps he was mortgaged to his marrow. All the same, he’d need a fine income to pay it. He was trying to put these thoughts out of his mind and force himself into an easy mood when Noonan opened the door just wide enough to poke his head round as he struggled to restrain a barking, eager sheepdog whose muzzle was forced desperately through the narrow gap. Capstick looked down at the pointed snout, the unfriendly eyes and bared teeth.

“She’s friendly, honestly. Never bites. Won’t bite. She’s a guard dog, that’s all. We need a guard dog here. Quiet, Norma. It’s a friend. A friend, Norma. Quiet. She won’t bite, honestly. Just a second.”

The door closed on ferocious  yelping, the scratching of nails against polished wood and the sound of Noonan’s insistent voice:

“Quiet, Norma. Quiet. It’s a friend, Norma.”

When he opened for the second time he had his thick fingers curled round the dog’s black leather collar and as she lurched for Capstick, yanked her back so her paws lifted from the floor and her yelp rose nearly an octave.

“Come in, Sap. Come in. Quiet, Norma. It’s a friend, Norma.”

Noonan dragged the animal down the long hallway as Capstick closed the door behind him, trying to ingratiate himself with soppy baby talk, but the barking became only more fierce and Noonan’s struggle more strenuous. Capstick stood still. He became aware of the size of the place. The ceiling was at least twice his height. Ahead, broad stairs carpeted in burgundy went up to a little landing and doubled back.

“Look, I’d better put her in the kitchen for a minute till she calms down. She’ll be used to you in no time. Come on, Norma. It’s a friend. Come on.”

He tugged the sliding dog away down the hallway that narrowed to the left of the stairs leaving Capstick, who’d hoped for a smiling, handshaking welcome, looking around trying to understand why Noonan had brought the dog to the door and wondering if her obvious instinctive aversion to him was shared by her master.

“She’ll be all right now. Just not used to you. Never seen you before. She’s a friendly dog. Never bites, never bitten anybody. Come on through.”

“Thanks.”

The room they entered was divided in two, the rear part lower by two steps and in the front a great, bare wooden farmhouse table dominated, sitting in the half circle of the tall, lace-curtained bay window which, even on this dull day, shed a heartening dose of light.

“Good to meet you, anyway,” said Noonan extending his broad hand. “Did you have a good journey? I’ll just go and get Alison.”

He disappeared again and Capstick was about to sit down but restrained himself. He liked the room. It had the right kind of artistic feel. The chairs around the table didn’t match and in the lower half were two huge sofas and an armchair. There was no carpet but fringed, exotic rugs on the varnished boards and plenty of books and papers in the kind of disorder which spoke of a mind preoccupied with important things.

“This is Sap. Alison.”

Noonan circled the continent of the table, looked out of the window.

“Nice day. Good day.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Capstick shaking the hand of the little woman whose creased and ageing face still showed the strong, handsome qualities that had served her well on stage.

“Hi, do sit down.”

“Let’s have some coffee!” said Noonan.

“Yes,” said Alison. “What about  you, Sap? Coffee okay?”

“Fine, fine.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, no.I grabbed a sandwich on the train.”

Noonan bounced off to the kitchen.

“So, how was your journey?”

“Oh, okay. No delays.”

“No. How long does it take from….?”

“Three hours. Just a bit more.”

Alison’s legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Her hands lay with the fingers intertwined in her lap. She wore jeans and a big, heavy, sloppy, burgundy sweater that reminded Capstick of his student days: the dressing down, the hippy hangover, the general derision, at least in his circle, for slick consumerism. The emollient, gentle, controlled tone of her voice made him wonder if she was acting. Behind the smalltalk he detected her desire to get to the heart of him and it made him wary. Conscious of his nervousness, he realised his oikish accent and manners gave him away. Here was a woman, well-spoken, educated who had worked in the British theatre for years and, since her marriage , had rubbed shoulders with some of the most lauded writers in the country, and here was he, a teacher from a non-descript northern town who knew no-one, had no profile and spoke like a joiner or bus driver.

“So what do you do up there in……?”

“Teach.”

“English?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of school?”

“Comprehensive.”

“That must be hard work, I guess?”

“Well, quite. Not made any easier by the government’s lunatic policies.”

“I know. Our children went to comprehensives. They did okay, though Jessica had a troubled time. I was privately educated, like Brian, so what I know of comps is all second hand. Is yours in the centre of……?”

“No, it’s in the suburbs. Middle-class place as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, you’ve got it easy then!”

“Easier than some but it’s not easy anywhere these days.”

“But the children will be biddable, won’t they? Is it mixed?”

“No, boys to sixteen, then co-ed in the sixth-form.”

“A sixth-form. That must be better.”

“Yeah. It’s a relief from the younger ones.”

“Well, you’ve got it quite cushy! How long have you been teaching?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Are you Head of Department?”

“No, I haven’t managed to get promoted.”

“And do you come from…….?

“Born and bred.”

“Ah, never had itchy feet?”

“Oh yeah. Never thought I’d go back. But you know how it is, things happen you’ve no control over. My father was ill so I went home. Needed a job. Took this one. Got married. The kids came along and moving on became more difficult.”

“Kids haven’t stopped us! We’ve been all over the place. America, Australia, Kent, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Scotland, North Wales, East Anglia. We haven’t lived in a house for more than eighteen months.”

“Really.”

“Yes. In fact I tell a lie. We’ve been here, what, twenty months I think. That’s the record.”

“So, do you still act?”

“God, no. I gave that up when Billy was born. I run a little business. Theatrical agency. My contacts were useful. It ticks over nicely and supplements what Brian can bring in.”

“Oh, that’s good,” said Capstick, but he was thinking about their income. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be visiting the rich. Noonan was known, after all, for his excoriation of privilege and inequality.

“So, is your wife a teacher?”

“No, she works in Boots, in the opticians.”

“She’s an optician herself then .”

“No, no, she’s just an assistant. Does the booking and the preliminary tests and so on.”

“I see.”

Capstick thought he detected a little collapse of interest in Alison’s tone.

“She’s got a degree. Fine art. But she didn’t want to teach and finding a job using her skills where we live…”

“Yes, pity. She’s wasted.”

“She is.”

“And how old are your children?”

“Six and four. Boy and a girl.”

“God, six and four. Long time since mine were that age. Do they get on?”

“Yes, pretty well. They have their moments but in general…”

“And you’re a writer! I’m surprised you find the time.”

“Well, I try to do a bit. The holidays are useful of course.”

“Yes, I can imagine. What have you published, then?”

“Poetry.”

“Did it sell?”

“No, small print run. Usual independent press thing. Few hundred copies. Got some nice reviews though.”

“Oh, that helps. Brian always manages to get his books reviewed where it matters. Knowing a few people is invaluable. Who publishes your books?”

“Only one actually. It was done by Bluestream press. They’re based in Rotherham. It’s a one-man outfit. John Weights. He’s a writer himself and he does a good job.”

“I see. What was your book called?”

“Oranges and Lemons.”

“A children’s book!”

“No, not at all. The title’s from one of the poems which is about singing nursery rhymes to my kids.”

“Oh. Oranges and Lemons. I don’t remember hearing about it, and Brian didn’t mention it. Will he have a copy?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t send him one.”

“You must. Let us have a copy. I’d love to read it. Yes. So, is there a thriving poetry scene in……?”

“No. Nothing happens. A few of us used to meet in a pub once a fortnight and read our stuff to one another, do the odd performance and that kind of thing. But there’s no vibrant literary culture in the town.  Not that kind of place. It lacks imagination and with a small population you just don’t get sufficient numbers of interested folk.”

“That’s a shame. Brian is very friendly with the Liverpool poets, of course. But I suppose Liverpool’s a different kettle of fish. Do you get there much?”

“No, hardly ever. I go to Manchester more. But the Liverpool scene was very much of the sixties. The pop music and all that.”

“Oh, yes. Brian’s a great fan . He’s got all the records.”

“Coffee!” called Noonan balancing a wooden tray on which the cafetiere slid dangerously.

“Sap’s children are six and four, Brian. Remember those days?”

“Six and four. Yep. Great times when kids are little. Great times.”

There were three small, thick white cups decorated with a frieze of vines and little matching saucers, a bowl of brown sugar, three spoons and a generous plate of digestives nestling alongside irregular fingers of fruit cake. They had to wait for the coffee to brew.

“Have you got a copy of Sap’s book, Brian? Oranges and Lemons.”

“ Er, don’t think I have, no. Who published it?”

“Bluestream,” said Sap hoping Noonan would know the name.

“John Weights! I didn’t know he was still going.”

“Yeah, he does quite a lot. Still gets money from Yorkshire Arts.”

“He did some of Ted Byron’s stuff. Great. Great poet, Ted. Read with him in Liverpool.  Know him?”

Capstick was at once struck by the idea that being northern Noonan assumed he knew everyone who wrote poetry from Birmingham to The Borders; as if that mythical place The North was an homogenous destination where geographical, intellectual, moral and psychological distances were magically dissolved.

“No, I’ve never met him. I know his stuff of course, but our paths haven’t crossed.”

“Does he live in……….?” asked Alison.

“No, I think he lives in Manchester these days.”

Noonan pressed the plunger and poured the steaming coffee. They drank and ate, Capstick accepting a tapering column of the moist, brandy-rich fruit cake. The desultory conversation spluttered along, the Noonan’s at moments talking about matters which excluded the visitor who at once felt he’d failed to engage their interest.

“We’ll eat about two shall we, Brian?”

“Two, fine. That’s great.”

“Is there anything you particularly don’t like, Sap?”

“No, I’m pretty omnivorous.”

“Right,” said Noonan, “let’s go to my refuge!”

He led the way along the book-lined hall, through a couple of small rooms cluttered with odd bits of furniture and full of volumes at all angles, out to the garden and down the winding little crazy-paving path to a pitch-roofed shed the size of a four-berth caravan. It was served by the central system and was warm with that soporific stifle of small, over-heated places. There was a long desk which faced the stretching, oblong window out onto the garden, plenty more books and further inside, beyond the window’s extent, two armchairs, a coffee table, a television and a cooker. What Sap noticed first, however, was a little model of The Beatles sitting on the backwall shelf, complete with collarless jackets, forward-combed hair, replica guitars and a tiny drum kit behind which a beaky Ringo sat, the drumsticks in his bejewelled fists, his head tilted and thrown back in concentrated effort. Noonan noticing his glance turned to the maquette.

“I had it made,” he said, “after I first interviewed them. I was the first journalist in Britain to publish an interview. Fantastic. My proudest moment was reading on Paul’s world tour.”

Capstick nodded, smiled and pretended to be admiring the figures. He’d been a Beatles fan himself. At twelve he queued outside Hindley’s Record Shop to buy She Loves You, handing over the shillings he earned delivering papers, and from then on bought every single, E.P. and L.P., listening to them endlessly in his bedroom or with  friends in their living-rooms when their parents were out, the stylus arm rocking as it followed the groove, the thin sound emanating from the single speaker of the second-hand Dansette. It had been a delirious five years of identification with fabulous wealth and fame, a fantastic whirl of expectation that life would forever be as simple and undemanding as a Lennon-McCartney song; a mad confusion of realms in which the slick marketing of entertainment had been conflated with Harold Wilson’s promise of white-hot progress and cherry-sweet equality; and it had all come crashing humiliatingly down when at seventeen Capstick began to listen seriously to Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Stravinsky and Shostakovich and to read George Orwell, D.H.Lawrence, Walt Whitman and R.H.Tawney. He was deeply embarrassed to find himself duped, sold his pop records at once and in one of those revolts against a stupidity of our own which we can never expunge from our minds, swung to virulent dismissal of  pop culture and castigated The Beatles as musical idiots with three-minute minds.

He hadn’t expected Noonan to be as adulatory towards them as a thirteen-year-old knicker-wetter, those screaming girls whose factitious emotionalism put him off getting tickets for concerts. The image he’d evolved was of a serious man (and the house, after all, was full of weighty books); a thinking leftie, furrowed and with that dark tone to his character typical of minds that climb to the lofty and perilous branches of objectivity. Didn’t even the playful and childlike Einstein evince it? Capstick had long ago concluded that all entertainment was debased art and the reverse side of the economy’s compulsive work ethic. His instinct was to mock the childish little model and to say tush to admiration of pop music. But he was Noonan’s guest. In another man’s house, you behaved well. He’d been brought up in those strict ways of the northern working-class. He had no right. At the same time, he felt he was being tested. There was an inauthentic exaggeration in Noonan’s attitude. Was he trying to provoke him? Was he striking a pose as a man of the people, a thoroughgoing populist and daring Capstick to challenge him? He smiled and nodded as Noonan sat at his desk.

“I asked John Lennon why they’d chosen the name, and he said because a man appeared from a flaming pie and said…”

But Capstick wasn’t listening. Desperately trying to conceal his discomfort, he was running his gaze over the books. Fighting the thought he’d made a bad mistake, he was striving to adjust his thinking, already composing the sentences carefully expressing Noonan’s charming spontaneity in responding to Helter Skelter or Mary Had A Little Lamb. Noonan talked at length about his time as a journalist, how thrilled he was to get to know the Fab Four, his instrumentality in getting the first charts published in the British press, but little by little the conversation turned towards his own early life. They moved to the armchairs and Noonan sat with one heavy thigh over the other, the childlike little smile in which Capstick imagined he detected something forced often on his eyes and lips.

“Yeah, my dad was an economist. Worked for The Bank of England!” and the little smile flickered. “Don’t know what he did. Helped come up with some theory about money supply, something like that I think. He was a quiet man. When people came to the house he went out among his roses. He was a great rose-grower.”

“What was he like as a father?”

“Yeah. Er, he was kind. But my mother ruled the roost. My mother was all energy. She was a whirlwind.”

Capstick listened, threw in the occasional predictable question, nodded smiled and laughed as Noonan’s recollections oozed and spread like spilt paint. Capstick was surprised at how much his subject liked talking about himself  but at the same time struck by the odd sense of it all pouring involuntarily, as if some part of Noonan’s mind needed to unburden itself of what he knew about himself, as if there was a pursuit of blankness, of some atavistic purity, some state prior to experience. When he came to his first marriage, Capstick felt almost intrusive. He’d met Pam on a blind date organised by his great friend Doug Payne, now married to a best-selling popular novelist; they fell into a mad affair and went to Ealing Register Office after seventeen weeks; two children were born in the first two years and when the second developed a high fever and red rash at the age of three months, Pam refused to let Noonan take him to the hospital or a doctor. She belonged to a sect which believed all illness was sent from outer space; medical knowledge was powerless against it. Noonan took the child to his GP and he was admitted to hospital with measles. Pam threatened to kill him and in days he’d walked out.

Something in Noonan’s tone gave Capstick the feeling he was talking about someone else’s experience. As if it had all happened   without him being able to intervene to prevent it. And at times a curious glance appeared in Noonan’s eye, leftward and shifty which made Capstick’s heart quicken with unease. But the shape and tenor of Noonan’s life was coming together in his mind, in the way a crossword grid  fills with letters. The outline he’d created from the poems, articles and interviews was twisted into a new form. Noonan, he realised, was hardly anything like he’d imagined. 

The lunch was delightfully simple: baguettes, salad, tuna, sardines; the kind of thing Capstick might have hurled together for himself in his usual impatience with preparing food, but here, carefully combined and presented, as straightforward but attractive as Alison’s clothes. For dessert there were raspberries and ice-cream. The big tub of vanilla sat beside the steep white dish which gleamed starkly against the red juice of the marinating fruit and when Capstick wanted a second helping he hesitated to use the spoon he’d already eaten from. But as there was no communal cutlery, he wondered if the Noonans were unfussy. Perhaps the best thing was to do without. But then he thought that might appear churlish. To eat heartily was a compliment. So he sank his spoon in the soft yellow just as Noonan turned from the table, skipped down the steps and disappeared. In seconds he was back with a serving spoon, but seeing Capstick’s heaped dish, tried to conceal his motivation by tapping it against his palm before discreetly slipping it onto the table. Capstick felt the heat in his cheeks but what could he do except continue to lift the melting, sweet stuff to his mouth?

The little mortification of the table stayed with him all afternoon as they sat in the cabin, Noonan elaborating enthusiastically more details of his life.

“I’ve written a short autobiog. Up to eighteen. I like childhood. Publisher offered me ten thousand but I’m sticking out for twenty.”

Capstick nodded but he wanted to exclaim: “You turned down ten grand! I have to work a year to bring that home!”  

And as the one-sided conversation rattled along, Capstick became more and more conscious of the gulf between his socialist subject and his own experience as an easy-going oik. He couldn’t expel from his mind the thought that Noonan was very much a product of his upper-middle-class, public-school, Oxford background.

“I had to leave the Courier. Changed the office. I was put in this place with no windows. I couldn’t stand it. Gave me nightmares. So I walked out. Mortgage, kids, mmm. Rang Johnny Ovenden, he was editing The Mirror. Went down to see him and he gave me a weekly column and that let us move to London.”

“How did you know him?”

“He was at Oxford with me.”

Capstick ran the story through his mind: a change in working conditions; gives up his job; rings an old friend who finds him another and better; and comparing this to his own working life, the keeping going day after day whatever the conditions, which was most people’s fate, he felt flat and out-of-place. Noonan’s was the old-boy-network world, closed, self-flattering and hypocritical. How could that be squared with socialism? It barely even tallied with Tory meritocracy. It was essentially a nexus of inherited privilege. He was inured by the time Noonan told about the play on Richmal Crompton he’d written and sold for ten thousand to his old friend Sir Michael Horne at the National, even though it was never performed.

By the time Capstick had to leave to catch his train, he was beginning to feel a weight of negativity bearing down on his mind. Perhaps it would be better to give up the idea? But when, as he was pulling on his shapeless coat, Noonan said:

“Well, maybe the article then?”

Capstick insisted:

“No, no. I’d like to have a go at the book.”

The phone rang. Alison answered. It was Noonan’s eldest son. There was some problem so Capstick gently withdrew and waited outside while they talked. On the way to the station, Noonan said:

“My son Colin’s manic-depressive. Thirteen years this has been going on.”

Capstick looked at him, his eyes on the pavement, his face curiously intense but bewildered. He felt atrociously sorry for him and grateful for his hospitality and the kindness of walking him to the tube; but at the same time he felt an uncomfortable sense of revolt against the assumptions of his culture.

It wasn’t uncomfortable enough, however, to make Capstick change his mind; or rather, he persisted in a perverse defiance of a better impulse. The first draft of the first chapter went off to Noonan. Pages of questions were responded to by tapes of Noonan’s halting baritone. Capstick typed away, banged off letters. Wrote and rewrote and the manuscript was touching fifty thousand words. His wife excitedly told all their friends about the project. Capstick began to try to interest publishers and agents. He wrote to Henry Judge, the famous poet who’d been at Oxford with Noonan, but he refused to answer any questions until the manuscript had been placed. Then he needed to contact William Broughton who Noonan had worked with on a translation of Ovid.

“Do you have a current address for Bill Broughton?” he wrote.

Two days later came the brief reply:

Dear Sap,

How dare you call my good friend Bill? It’s William Broughton, even to those closest to him, among whom I’m proud to count myself.

Capstick was flabbergasted and at a loss. This little jab in the sternum from a man who proclaimed himself an enemy of all pomposity, who identified with all-boundaries-down pop culture, who claimed to be an avid supporter of Liverpool F.C., seemed like simple snobbery, a public school rebuke to a vertical-invading oik. To lift himself from his humiliation, Capstick wanted to write back:

Don’t be such a snooty toffee-nosed cissy. Do you think the working folk you claim to support go around calling one another, James, Kenneth, Joseph, Andrew, Stanley and Edward all day long?

But he was restrained by fear of Noonan’s withdrawal. It occurred to him that the response was perhaps a way of putting him off. Maybe Noonan just didn’t have confidence in him, was fed up with the project but too polite to say. The more it nagged, the more he wondered if Noonan was right: maybe it was intrusive and impertinent of him to use a diminutive about his friend; maybe the easy-going ways of the back-street culture Capstick was raised in were sentimental; perhaps the more formal manners of Noonan’s upper-middle-class culture really were superior. The thought that the fault was with him made him writhe and worry. But he soon rebelled and felt like giving up. He’d chosen Noonan because of his public image as a subversive, a mischievous imp, always willing to spike inherited privilege, inequality, the power of money. Now he found himself put down for a trivial lapse.

He thought better of renunciation, however, imagining his book on the shelves of Waterstones in every town from Exeter to Inverness. It was worth playing down Noonan’s brittle petulance for the prize of publication. It happened that Noonan was on tour. Once a year his agent organized a thirty venue sprint, he pulled in a thousand quid a night, and retired to his cabin for months. He was reading in York so Capstick said he’d get over, and bring his wife. Noonan promised to arrange free tickets and the generosity was a balm. The throbbing sore of Capstick’s injured pride which made his heart skip and his mouth go dry calmed. The Saturday arrived. They drove over early, ate in a gentle vegetarian, mooched in the busy, narrow streets. Capstick browsed a couple of well-stocked, dusty second-hands. At seven they turned up at the venue and, leaning on the tall, pale walnut counter he asked the little dark woman in glasses and a purple blouse unbuttoned to her cleveage:

“Is there a pair of tickets for Capstick?”

“Capstick?”

She foraged. Her long white fingers whose nails were painted black flicked through the tickets in a long, narrow wooden box.

“No, sorry. When did you ring?”

“Oh, I didn’t ring. Brian Noonan was supposed to be organizing it.”

“I see. I’ll just check.”

She clicked and twitched her mouse, her little dark eyes scanning the screen.

“No, there’s no message. Just hang on a minute.”

She disappeared through a rear door. Capstick turned to his wife who raised her brows and tilted her head. He shook his. She turned away and idly surveyed a poster. He drummed his fingers, tried to assume an untroubled demeanour. The two minutes before she came back seemed very long.

“No, he hasn’t left anything, but if you’d like to go through those doors at the end John South will have a word with you. He’s the arts officer.”

“Thanks very much.”

Capstick gestured to his wife who followed him as he strode. His confidence rallied. He’d come across South in writing workshops, at readings and their poems had appeared in the same little magazines. The couple passed through the swing doors and found the bearded little man spreading books and leaflets over a large table. He turned and looked at them over his round, gold-framed glasses, went back to his work and made them wait a few seconds.

“What’s the problem?” he said coming towards them.

He was dressed in clean, neatly-ironed jeans and a fawn crew-neck sweater which met the thick hair of his neck. It was obvious he wasn’t going to acknowledge Capstick.

“There should be a couple of tickets for us. Brian Noonan was organizing them.”

South shook his head and turned down his mouth. His fixed gaze was an accusation. Capstick felt a little rage rising.

“I’m working on a biography of him you see. He promised he’d set the tickets aside.”

South went on shaking his head in the same way and his look was all disdain for a cheap trick.

“There’s nothing here,” he said. “Brian didn’t mention it.”

“Has he arrived?” said Capstick.

“Yeah.”

“Can I speak to him?”

Capstick’s confidence was now at a critical point: if he got to speak to Noonan, he would make South look silly. The poet would admit his neglect, tell South to sort out the complimentaries. Capstick would be vindicated and take his seat serenely. But South shook his head again.

“No chance.”

Capstick, standing no more than a metre away fixed him.  South looked back, a little sneer on his lips. In those two seconds, Capstick had to decide: either there would be a row or he would have to withdraw, but he knew that if he started to raise the temperature he’d lose his sang-froid and in seconds he’d be saying things he’d regret.

“Okay.”

He walked out calmly, his wife beside him. When they were through the doors she said:

“Officious little man!”

“Pillock!”

“What shall we do?”

Capstick would have gladly left, gone to the cinema, found a pub, but the sense of duty the biography had become weighed. At the counter he handed over his card and as he waited for the quick little woman to process and deliver the tickets, the awful sense came over him that she thought he was a charlatan.

“That’s thirty pounds,” she said and once in his seat Capstick couldn’t keep himself from a quick headcount: three hundred. What was Noonan pulling in. A grand? Two? And then the book signings.

The lights went down. He galloped on stage, somewhat awkward and overweight and went through the routine he’d perfected over the decades: the early stuff first, the old favourites like Magna Carta Milk Shake , then the newer stuff, interspersed with songs and piano accompaniment. When it was over there were queues for signatures. Capstick caught Noonan’s eye as he was sitting down, but he quickly put on his glasses and picked up his pen.

In the car on the way home Capstick’s wife said:

“He’s a bit babyish, isn’t he?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the way he skipped on stage, like a lamb in spring. It just struck me as sort of, infantile.”

“Maybe.”

A few days later Capstick got a reply from Victor Brown, an old Oxford friend of Noonan’s, a poet who was close to Kingsley Amis and John Wain, and married to the biographer Sally Brown who had written lives of Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie and Marie Corelli:

Get back to me when you’ve done some proper work.

His wife had appended a little hand-written note:

I suppose it’s too early yet to go into details about the breakdown of the first marriage, all that heartache…

Capstick, who disliked Brown’s collar-and-tie poetry, was furious. Some proper work! It was true the manuscript was still first draft, but he was teaching full-time, looking after a young family and writing in the gaps. Brown, manufacturing marathon reviews for the Sundays, could get up in the morning and sit at his screen all day. Capstick was all but ready to give up, but though the work he’d done was only preparatory, it amounted to hundreds of hours. If he could interest a publisher, the effort wouldn’t have been wasted. He switched his attention. For weeks he did nothing in his spare time but bang out letters and sample chapters to publishers and agents. After seventy-five rejections, he decided they’d made his mind up for him.

He let time go by without adding a word or making contact with Noonan. At length, he got a note. He replied that he’d tried hard to raise interest, but no-one wanted the book. In the circumstances, he didn’t feel it worth carrying on. Noonan graciously thanked him for what he’d done, expressed regret that there was so little response and asked if he’d keep the material, just in case someone else came along.

Capstick packed it all in a cardboard box and put it in the attic. Eighteen months later a flyer arrived from the local theatre: Brian Noonan was on tour. He dropped it in the bin and didn’t mention it to his wife.

EH ?

In those days, he’d believed he would have his own office and the power to spend his days telling others what to do. He was relaxing strenuously in his extension: it’d cost £15,000 but that was before the credit crunch wiped £23,000 off his investments. He knew it was true: playing the markets meant you could get skinned, yet he felt an injustice had been done him: he was a small investor, he’d trusted the system; he expected to see his money grow steadily; and even though it might recover, it was a big loss and made him disgruntled and moody. He reflected on his place in the hierarchy; as he liked to say to the pupils, he was the ninth most senior member of staff. All the same, when he thought of what he’d expected, his feelings became ugly. He would’ve liked to hit somebody, to swing his thin arm and watch his petty fist break someone’s lips. He set the paper aside and got up.  He needed to be doing something but the lawn was shorn and clipped, the hedges had short back and sides, the flower beds were bare of weeds, the kitchen was spotless, his shirts were ironed, the carpets showed not a crumb, the bed had been changed, he washed the car the day before, nothing was out of place. How many people in Britain could say that ? How many people had his values ? He went into the kitchen and wiped down the pristine surfaces then picked up the phone and rang Gowling to see if he wanted a game of tennis.

Gowling brought along Durran and Kubick.

Though he’d worked with him for fifteen years, Strickland had never thought of Kubick as a tennis player, but here he was in his whites, a professional-looking, full-faced racquet under his arm, oozing  that infuriating ease which elicited such murderous impulses in Strickland. The other three were Sunday players whose approximate hand-eye coordination and slowness around the court marked them out as dilettantes, but from the first, it was obvious Kubick was a natural. He swung the racquet fluidly, struck the sweet spot, kept the ball low over the net, sent it skidding down the tramlines, tucked it in just behind the baseline, smashed it so it was impossible to return, served swerving aces and made Strickland look stupid as he lurched and reached or stood stark still as another passing shot left him nailed to the shale.

“How’m I supposed to get that back ? Eh ?” he called.

As they changed ends, he pushed his face close to Kubick’s and said:

“I just can’t get those back ! They’re impossible ! Impossible !”

Kubick and Gowling won the first set 6-0 the second 6-2, at which Srickland declared:

“Let’s change pairs, eh ?”

He ordained he was to play with Kubick. While his partner took his position for service at the baseline, he walked over to him, his head bowed as if great matters of State weighed on his mind:

“Play on Will’s backhand. Eh? That’s their weakness.”

Kubick gave a short nod, looked inscrutable, and when Strickland had taken his stance close to the net, delivered an ace which lodged the ball in the trembling green netting. Strickland came to speak to him.

“Good shot. Don’t try it this time. Don’t want any double faults, do we? Eh?”

Kubick served the first ball into the net. Strickland trotted to him:

“Slow it down. Put it on his backhand, eh ? I’ve got the net covered.”

Kubick’s second serve, faster than the first landed plum in the corner of the service court, kicked off to the right, rose no more that three inches and left the receiver bent and intent in anticipation. Strickland ran to Kubick.

“Lucky shot. Too risky. Second serves nice and slow from now on, eh? Remember. I’ve got the net covered.”

Kubick won his service game to love; he walked towards the net, Strickland alongside him:

“Good start, but take my advice. Play on the backhand like I said. Don’t take risks with the serve. You stay at the back for this game. I’ll cover the net.”

Durran took the serve; he was one of those players who have never mastered the sequence of throwing the ball, launching the head of the racquet from an arm crooked at the elbow, getting the whole weight of the body behind the shot, lifting both feet from the ground, and following through fully; so he tossed the furry, yellow sphere timidly in front of his face and patted it with a stabbing jolt; it flew high and plopped wearily into the middle of the service court. Kubick stroked it at moderate pace past Gowling who was gargoyling the net. By the time he looked behind him, the ball was rolling gently under the steel and netting door.

“Well done,” said Strickland, “but you should’ve played it cross court. Buddy could’ve reached that and put it past you down the tramline, eh ?”

Strickland stood a foot behind the baseline to receive, as if Pete Sampras were about to deliver the serve of his life. The first attempt hit the net, the second limped over so unwillingly, bounced with such apology and rose with all the energy of an octogenarian getting up in the night, Strickland, though he sprinted in his ungainly, lanky way, could only hold out the strings to the dead ball like a mendicant child offering her bowl to a politician.

“What was that ? Eh ? Was that supposed to be a serve ? How am I supposed to get that back ? I think you should take that again. What do you think Stefan ? Eh ? He should take that again. I wasn’t ready.”

“It was a perfectly legal serve,” said Gowling.

“Legal ? Legal ? We’re not in a court of law. Eh ? I wasn’t ready. That’s why I couldn’t get to it.”

“You looked ready,” said Gowling.

“I may have looked ready,” said Strickland with exaggerated reasonableness, “but I wasn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know he was about to serve.”

“The serve was good,” said Kubick.

“I know it was good, Stefan. I’m not saying it wasn’t good. There’s no argument about that. I’m saying I wasn’t ready. Do you get my point ? Eh?”

The other three looked at one another and acceded to Strickland’s unreasonable request. Durran tapped his first serve feebly into the net. The second went high, dunked into the service court, bounced in slow motion as Strickland came in for the kill; he swung with all the ferocity he could muster, attempting to put on top spin as he’d watched Kubick do, but caught the ball with the top edge and sent it sailing gracefully over the netting into the neighbouring garden.

“Can’t you serve properly ?” he called to Durran.

“It was in.”

“I know it was in, but what kind of serve is that ? How am I supposed to return something that bounces this high ? Eh ?”

When it came to Strickland’s service game, he rattled off three double faults in a row.

“Is that net the right height ?” he called.

Durran and Gowling won the set 7-5.

Back in his extension, trying to convince himself the effort had done him good and he was at ease, Strickland felt more restless than ever. He was convinced Kubick had lost the set on purpose. On the losing side three times ! Of course, he couldn’t convince anyone, not even himself, he was a better player than Kubick, but he was certainly a better tactician. Kubick’s problem was:  all talent and no guile. Was it any wonder they lost ? He went into the garden and trimmed the impeccable lawn. Coming back into the house, he noticed a faint footprint on the laminate floor and spent the next hour cleaning every millimetre with disinfected wipes.

At teatime, he decided to walk to the newsagents for an evening paper, though there was never anything in it. In the neighbourhood was a vagrant, a man wrapped in a heavy overcoat tied with thick string in the warmest weather; he was crossed-eyed, filthy-bearded, had only the black stumps of three teeth, and dragged his right leg heavily in his hurrying locomotion; if he came close enough, your nostrils would fill with his acrid stink, and if he could capture your attention for a second, he would limp along beside you as he told of the horrible accident which left him halt;  when he came to the point where he declared:

“But ah can still ger about ! Ha, ha!”

his survivor’s cackle would rise from his rough throat and fill your ears with the sound of madness. No-one knew where he came from or where he spent his nights, but day after day he would be seen, hauling his useless limb from rubbish bin to rubbish bin, sleeping in the afternoon on the bench in the little park, reading the inscriptions on the cemetery headstones, ducking behind the shops to ferret in the skips. As Strickland turned the corner out of his avenue of 1960s dormer bungalows, the old man appeared.

“I ‘ad a bad accident,” he croaked.

Strickland ignored him and tried to quicken his pace.

“Threw me t’other side’t road. Big van. Ah was in’t ‘ospital five month.”

Strickland crossed over and with a little skip onto the pavement, ran a couple of yards, but the tramp caught up with him; his breathing was short and heavy, the stench from his sordid clothes felt like an infection and he talked on and on, repeating the same phrases as if he’d learned them for a performance and the quicker Strickland walked, the more his exerted himself, till sweat ran down his filthy cheeks and thick spittle dripped from his lips and off his chin.

Not till he was in the shop did Strickland manage to shake him off.

“They should do something about that bloke,” he said to the newsagent. “He shouldn’t be allowed to wander the avenues like that. Eh ?”

“Freedom, innit,” replied the bald, paunchy Mr Hoque.

“What about my freedom, eh ? This is a good area. My bungalow’s worth 200 grand. I had an extension built, cost me nearly twenty thousand. People like that hanging round it puts buyers off. Eh? He should be locked up.”

“He ain’t a criminal innit ? Can’t lock people up for stinkin’ !” and the little Asian rocked lightly with easy laughter, pleased at his own formulation.

“I’m not saying he’s a criminal. I mean he should be locked away for his own good. Someone should be looking after him.”

“Who’s gonna pay innit ? You wanna pay more taxes ? He can walk the streets all I care. Come in my shop I spray ‘im with disinfectant. Only way innit?”

Strickland paid and left, an ugly sneer of hurt and disdain on his face. He saw the vagrant disappearing in the distance and wondered if he should ring the police when he got home. Wasn’t it harassment after all ? Such freaks were to be expected in town, but a residential area like this needed to be exclusive. His property  was at the lower end of the price range; there were no council houses, or as they say these days social housing; it was resolutely middle-class and above. Everyone who lived here was respectable. It wasn’t right the stench of a down-and-out should linger in the garden-fragranced air. It occurred to him there was something of the unwelcome outcast about Kubick. He’d been in his house only once: knowing he’d never be invited, he’d invented a pretext and turned up one Wednesday evening at eight; the three children, all under seven were running round naked; there were babygrows drying on every available hook; odd socks and shoes lay here and there; the dining table was piled with washing, newspapers, books and toys; in the kitchen, where he was taken for coffee, the two sinks were full of pots; the drainers hadn’t been emptied; pans were stacked on the hob; the lawn was weeks tall; the wrought-iron front gate badly needed painting. It was horrible. When he mentioned it to a colleague she said:

“Well, three young kids..”

He lifted his chin and turned away. The reminder of his unmarried, childless state pained him. Was she saying that kind of untidiness was justified ! And if he had three children, they’d be in bed by six thirty. No, Kubick lacked something. He had no values. Or not the right ones. He was always scurrying off to art galleries and classical concerts of course, and he played the French horn in some kind of outfit. But what kind of person puts going to an art gallery before mowing the lawn ? Eh ? It just wasn’t right.

On the first Monday after the half-term, Strickland took an executive decision: he challenged Kubick to a singles match.

“Too busy. And I’m knackered.Work and the kids and then Tina’s seldom home before seven these day….”

“Sunday,” said Strickland. “Eh ? You can get out for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon can’t you ?”

“It wouldn’t take me a couple of hours,” replied Kubick with a wry grin.

“Eh ?”

But Strickland couldn’t persuade him and slighted by the refusal he regretted he couldn’t order Kubick to play; he was his Subject Leader, after all. Perhaps he could arrange a departmental round robin ? That would be quasi official. Then it came to him that Laura Lindsell was leaving at the end of term; there would have to be a celebration; he could arrange a tennis party and barbecue. How could Kubick refuse ? He spoke to each of his six colleagues in turn, leaving Kubick to last.

“Stefan,” he said, sitting too close to him in the staffroom, “we’re having a little do for Laura. You know she’s leaving at the end of term ? Well, I’ve spoken to all the other colleagues in the department and suggested either going out for a meal or having a barbecue at my house. Could you let me know, no later than Wednesday, which you prefer. Eh? Is that okay ?”

Kubick nodded, went on reading the paper and said:

“I prefer going out somewhere.”

“Eh ?”

“A restaurant. Neutral ground. I always think that’s better.”

“Right. Right.”

Strickland sought out Wendy Dunmore, his dutiful second-in-department.

“I think we should have a barbecue, don’t you ? Eh ?”

“What’s the consensus ?”

“I’ve asked everyone to tell me their preference by Wednesday, at the latest, but I think I should make an executive decision. A barbecue at my house. It’s more personal. Eh? We can play tennis here first. Round robin. Everybody plays everybody.”

“Well, I don’t mind, but shouldn’t we go with majority?”

“That’s very democratic,” said Strickland with a squirm, “but I’m Subject Leader. I feel a special responsibility. If we go out somewhere, it doesn’t have the same departmental feel.”

“If the others are happy.”

“Stefan wants to go to a restaurant.”

“Oh.”

“Well, he would wouldn’t he ?”

“Why ?”

“Between you and me,” and Strickland lowered his voice conspiratorially, “he’s scared I’ll beat him at tennis.”

“I didn’t know he played.”

“Like everything, he does it sloppily. He’s got the shots but no discipline, no tactics.”

“Okay. Barbecue is fine by me. When ?”

“The thing is, I want you to speak to Stefan. You know what he’s like, if I tell him I’ve made an executive decision he’ll go all power-to-the-people. You talk to him. Tell him there’ll be a barbecue and tennis tournament and everyone has to come to make it work.”

“I can’t tell him he has to come.”

“For the numbers. Six. If there are only five it won’t work.”

“Why not, if everybody plays everybody?”

“What I mean is it won’t work as well. And if there are six we can make three pairs for doubles.”

“When will it be ?”

“Sunday 30^th.”

“I can’t tell him he has to come on a Sunday.”

“You can’t tell him he has to come but you can tell him everyone is coming. If he doesn’t turn up he’ll ruin it.”

“Well, I can ask him and see.”

“The other thing is, people will have to make a contribution.”

“Fair enough.”

“I can’t fork out for a barbecue for everyone, so I thought ten pounds a head. That’s reasonable. Eh ?”

“I don’t mind.”

“So if you could tell him and report back to me. Asap. Eh ?”

“Okay.”

Though she disliked being Strickland’s go-between and dogsbody, Dumore was too complaisant, too timid of authority and too hesitant of her boss’s moods to gainsay him. She knew his sulks, his tempers and she knew how he could request her to stay after school for a management meeting at which she found herself alone with his complaints, whines and demands. On one occasion he’d talked for fifty-five minutes about how he’d been through a black period, felt he was coming out of it, was overwhelmed with work, was the only person on the staff who did his job properly, was marking books till midnight every night and was paid a measly seven thousand extra for his responsibility. She agreed, commiserated, smiled, cajoled;  he talked for twenty-five minutes more about his extension: the workmen were lazy, the mess was atrocious, every day he had to complain, and it was costing him fifteen grand ! She had learnt to bend to his needs, whims and exigencies.

She took the message to Kubick.

“Sunday ?”

“That’s the only day everyone can make,” she lied.

“No, I’m busy that afternoon.”

She went back to Strickland.

“Busy ? Eh? How can he be busy on a Sunday? This is a departmental event. He can’t just say no. He’s letting the team down. Go back to him and tell him.”

“Tell him what ?”

“That it’s departmental. Ask him what he’s doing. What can be so important? Eh? This is a colleague leaving and I’m doing a barbecue at my home. The whole department should be there.”

“But it’s a Sunday, Leslie. We can’t order him to come.”

“I’m not ordering him,” he protested, while his head bent forward as if under the strain of explaining world-shattering complexities to an idiot, “but it’s departmental. Everyone has to make an effort. Eh ?”

She went back to Kubick.

“Leslie wants to know why you can’t come to Linda’s leaving do.”

“Sorry ?”

“He says it’s departmental. Everyone should be there.”

Kubick shifted in his chair.

“It’s my mother’s birthday. We’re having a party.”

The flatness of his delivery and the intentness of his stare made the lie blatant.

“You didn’t say it was your mother’s birthday before,” she said without thinking.

“I’d forgotten.”

She went back to Strickland.

“The lying bastard !”

“That’s his excuse.”

“Did you tell him everyone else will be there ?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not one of the team.What am I supposed to do ? Eh? I’m organising this in my own time. People are coming to my house. He should make an effort. Eh ?”

Having announced the round robin, he had to go ahead. He abandoned the doubles and in the singles was beaten by two of the women.

“You kept playing on my backhand !” he protested as he left the court after his first 6-0 defeat. “I can’t get them back. It’s impossible.”

The little red-headed woman looked up at him, her freckled face flushed from effort.

“You didn’t do too badly,” she said.

“Eh ?”

The barbecue began well. He’d made marinated pork kebabs, salmon in foil dressed with a lime and coriander sauce, coleslaw with his own mayonnaise, Cumberland thick sausages in hot dogs with caramelised onions, spicy burgers, chicken thighs drenched in a Mexican concoction he dreamed up the night before, three salads, one with mustard and honey , another with balsamic vinegar and garlic and the last with classis French vinaigrette; there was a tarte aux abricots, a fresh fruit salad, crème brulée, a richly alcoholised trifle and thirteen different cheeses with a selection of savoury biscuits.

“Good, eh?” he said as he served another hot dog. “Those onions, I do them my own way. You won’t taste better anywhere. Eh ?”

His colleagues and their partners complimented him on his skill and attention to detail; but shortly before five a sudden wind began to shake the awning, the branches of the blossoming apple tree rocked, black clouds swept in from the west and in ten minutes, a fierce rain whose giant drops seemed to explode on the dry patio and which battered the fuchsias in the hanging baskets by the door, whipped everyone indoors where the rescued food huddled on the work surfaces. The downpour grew worse over the next hour, the kitchen began to feel chilly and one by one the guests made their excuses. By seven he was alone with a ballast of food heavy enough to sink a small vessel, the house growing cold, the light fading and the rain, energetic and relentless, beating its mad tattoo on the windows. He spooned trifle into a bowl and went and looked out onto his front garden and the avenue. His colleague’s comment: You didn’t do too badly, tormented him. He saw himself at twenty-two. There was nothing in his way. The ambitious young man he’d once been, sure of advancement, disdainful of the competition had become a middle-aged, semi-success, thwarted, haunted by doubt and resentment. He hadn’t done too badly; but when he thought of those who’d risen beyond him, all the rains of the world lashed viciously about his head.

Something moved at the edge of his vision; he turned to see the tramp, dripping, struggling. He stopped directly opposite and nodding madly, holding his hands out under the deluge, began to cackle as if the apocalypse was imminent and he was glad. The black cavern of his mouth disgusted Strickland. He waved him away, but the old man thinking he was beckoning, clicked open the gate.

Strickland picked up his mobile and rang the police.

CASTILLOS EN ESPAÑA

Mrs Bremner was thrilled when she was called for interview at Whitechapel Grammar.   Its  reputation was severe. She would belong  to the educational elite; its results were the best in the county, outside the private schools, and though she would’ve preferred to work in one of those, Whitechapel was next best. There were four interviewees. What swung it for Mrs Bremner was her pedigree. She’d  been sent to private school herself. True, she got her degree from Portsmouth Poly, but her compliant demeanour and obvious bending before the centuries-old cachet was appreciated. She was determined to make the best of her good luck. She knew how to ingratiate herself. And her boss found her extraordinarily attractive.

David Scurfield knew how to ingratiate himself too. He was one of those public-school educated men, sensitised early to minute differences of status, who throw themselves at the world, like a baby onto a bed, in pursuit of full acceptance. Born as the Second World War ended, he was inevitably influenced by the new atmosphere. At the age when he began to think politically, the NHS was in place, rail, coal and steel were nationalised, trade union leaders on the television every day and The Beatles about to become a best-selling commodity.  The old order seemed to be crumbling. When Alec Douglas-Home was defeated by a grammar-school boy from Huddersfield who’d made common cause with an energetic orator from the Welsh coalfields, Scurfield felt his private-school background might soon become a symbol of dishonour. Had the Tories remained in power, he would’ve looked for a job in a private school. Instead, he applied to grammars. He wouldn’t’ve contemplated a secondary modern, but not wanting to look antediluvian if the social mind changed utterly, he became a firm supporter of comprehensive schools. He voted Labour because he believed social democracy was the best defence against socialism.

The day Caroline Bremner was interviewed, he decided he’d  have an affair with her. She was young, ambitious and ready to please.  He was sixteen years older, experienced, cynical and sure of success.

Twenty years later he still hadn’t got her into bed and comprehensivisation had done its work. The local ex-secondary modern, which had trailed badly when Bremner was appointed, now rivalled Whitechapel for results. The laurels on which the place had rested for years were withered. She was forty-two. Scurfield was inches from retirement, but his campaign didn’t falter. Tantalised but kept on a stiff leash, he rode the rising and crashing of his anticipation and disappointment without ever telling himself the truth. All he needed was the right moment to wrap his arms around her waist from behind or to press his palms on the breasts so diligently displayed beneath her tight, open-necked blouses. Like a boy who clings into adulthood to the illusion of a footballing career, he saw himself successful where in fact there was no possibility.  By astute manipulation, by batting her eyelashes and waving her marriage certificate, she’d kept him keen and got herself promoted, but she would have arced at the suggestion. She believed herself thoroughly professional and her advancement the proper reward for hard work.  All the same, eighteen more years ! She wished she’d taken a job in the private sector.

“I can’t go on for all that time !” she complained to her husband. “There must be a better life. The discipline is atrocious. Eighteen years ! There’s got to be a way out.”

Charlie Bremner was retired. He was twenty years older, had worked in education too, lecturing for a time and then finding his way into administration, which meant having an office of his own and pretending to take important decisions. He was old enough for the sense of age’s reductions to play keenly on his mind. He saw himself at eighty, slow and stiff, unable any longer to adequately tend the garden or walk in the hills, and though his own pension was enough, Caroline’s career would provide the compensatory material ease. He’d encouraged her to push, hoped she’d make it to Headteacher and filled the backs of dozens of envelopes with spatchcock sums. As she’d complained more and more about declining behaviour, increasing management intrusion and the long wait to maybe put on a dead man’s suit, disappointment dragged at his nerves. There must be some means to turn all this descent to advantage.

“Spain !” he said.

“Are you serious ?”

“Why not ? There are loads of opportunities in private schools. You can teach the cream. And we can get away from the rain and the milky skies.”

He believed Spain was relatively backward educationally. A well-qualified, experienced woman like Caroline could take a school by storm. There was easy money to be made from the monied looking for qualifications for their children. And wasn’t Britain still regarded world-wide as the best source of certificates? In the long run, they might own their own school; only the rich would get through the door; the fees would exceed the average income; they would pay the staff modestly and make them work for every penny. He imagined a white hill-top villa looking towards Africa. He would sit by the pool dozing or reading something light beneath a sky of taut, uninterrupted blue. The days would blend into one another and the hours would pass in untroubled delight. His old age would be warmed by gentle winds. He would decline slowly towards death as Caroline kept  money cascading into the bank. With no children because she found them noisy and importunate and thus denied the delight of grandparenting, the money, the light, the food, the wine, the villa would comfort him.

  They began their research on the web. There were plenty of schools  looking for English teachers. She got herself on an EFL course. They took the car on the ferry to Bilbao and spent four weeks of the summer touring.

“It’s a wonderful country,” she said to her colleagues in September. “The south is where I fancy. Malaga. You should see the skies down there.”

“Oh, lucky you !”

“Yes, I can’t wait.”

They sold their big house in the suburbs for three hundred thousand and moved into cramped rented accommodation. All their furniture was in storage. It was simply a matter of hitting on the right school. She applied to one in Badajos but they turned her down at interview. She’d gone alone and sitting at a café table in the early evening she tried to convince herself the alienation she felt was a passing phenomenon. Her Home Counties posture, her Marks and Spencer’s dress sense, her fixed little smile of tolerant condescension marked her as unflinchingly English and resolutely middle-class. She would always be an outsider. Some people were able, after a time in a foreign place, to modify their habits by imperceptible stages so they became, at least superficially, indistinguishable from the born and bred; but she could never be like these dark-skinned Spaniards who walked with a sensuous sway and seemed to inhabit a realm of timelessness. Mañana. She was familiar with the cliché but there was something more than just putting things off: even the men with briefcases, no doubt involved in serious business, looked as if they cared about nothing more than the next glass of  red. She ate an olive, gingerly skewing it on her pick. She noticed a man at another table targeting her with fanatical dark eyes. Walking back to her hotel in the stifling heat she was convinced he was behind her, but when she turned to look there was just a shuffling old woman in a black dress down to her ankles and a boy on a bike.

“The place wasn’t for me,” she said to Charlie. “Very unfriendly.”

 She tried another in Madrid. Nothing. She kept sending  her CV and carefully phrased letter. The weeks and months went by; she began to think it wasn’t going to be so easy after all.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Charles. “There are bound to be hoards of applicants. Everyone wants to work there. The life is amazing. For three hundred grand we’ll be able to afford a huge villa with acres of land. We’ll grow grapes, olives and oranges. Think of it, Caroline, stepping out in the morning and picking oranges off your own trees. Who wouldn’t want that ? You’ll get something in the long run.”

And wasn’t Charles proven right ? She was invited to attend at the Amanda De Rome Academy on the outskirts of Malaga ! Could it have been more perfect ? She considered she handled the jealousy of her colleagues with great aplomb. It was a shame for them. They were staying in the rainy north in the grim atmosphere of schools under threat from Ofsted, league tables, unreasonable parents and children who learned their manners from television chefs. She was on her way to a sunny, easy-going country, a school where the pupils had to pay to be taught, were kicked out if they didn’t behave, teachers were respected and the plentiful private tuition guaranteed to double her income.

There was a sentimental farewell at Whitechapel. The customary collection raised £187.56. When Laura Mountcastle, subject leader for Modern Languages, left, they bought her a kayak and a life jacket. How much would that come to ? She’d been in the school almost as long. Her position wasn’t as elevated, but all the same her title was senior tutor without departmental responsibility. Jealousy, she reasoned, must have held her colleagues back. She made a smiling little speech in which she fulsomely expressed how much she’d miss everyone and what a wonderful place Whitechapel was. Scurfield kissed her on the cheek and held her too long and too close.  A month and half  later, she and Charlie moved into their rent-free apartment. Concrete, flat-roofed, one-bedroomed, when the temperature fell that night they piled jumpers and dressing-gowns on the bed. The shower didn’t work, they found cockroaches in the kitchen cupboards and the rings on the gas cooker burned with such feeble intensity warming a pan of beans took half an hour.

She complained. They’d been promised proper quarters. They were used to comfortable circumstances. They must be found something else.

“There is nothing else,” said Ms De Rome. “This is the only temporary accommodation we have.”

“We expected a decent flat. The place is freezing at night and there’s no heating.”

“But it’s only temporary. You will find a house soon.”

Having to make do, they ate out every night, went back as late as possible, wore thick t-shirts in bed and left little trails of white, insecticide around the kitchen. They started looking for houses but the prices were far higher than they’d imagined and some of them were tucked away in the hills, ten or fifteen miles from the school.

“That’s for the long-term,” said Charlie philosophically, as if they could live as they were for a decade.

Eager to begin teaching, Caroline believed that once she was underway, the teething problems would resolve themselves; but her timetable was so heavy she barely had a minute to herself; she was expected to work on Saturdays (was that in the contract ?); the pupils were spoiled and arrogant and at the end of September, her pay failed to appear in her bank account.

“It sometimes happens,” said Ms De Rome as if a tap had started dripping. “I will speak to accounts.”

By the end of October, not a euro had appeared.

“How are we supposed to live !” protested Caroline.

“Oh, two months. You must have brought enough to live for a little while.”

Caroline  said nothing to the other staff, wanting to maintain a positive front, but it turned out no-one had been paid. Those who’d been there a few years began to talk apocalyptically. Two teachers disappeared overnight.

“What’s going on in this place ?” said Caroline to one of the English teachers.

“De Rome’s a crook, that’s what’s going on ?”

“What ?”

“Have you seen where she lives ? The police’ll be here any day I bet.”

Ms De Rome was taken away in handcuffs before the amused and scandalised boys and girls. The school was locked. Caroline and Charlie were told they had to leave the flat, piled their belongings in the car, booked into a hotel and sat facing one another and their future over an indifferent paella.

“I’ve worked for two months for nothing !”

“I know.”

“Suppose I don’t find a job.”

“There’s always supply.”

“Supply ! and she clanked her fork down on the table.  

“For the time being. In the right places.”

“I am not doing supply anywhere under any circumstances” she uttered.

On the day they arrived back in England there was a couldn’t-care-less wind and lashing rain which grew ever more resolute and fierce as they moved north. Their sad belongings were shipped home and put in storage and they moved in with Charlie’s reluctant brother and wife, an alcoholic barrister whose career had been ruined by the bottle and who lounged around the house in revealing nightwear from breakfast-time to the early hours. They stayed two nights, decamped to a roomy flat over a bank, discovered the car park was the haunt of the local youths who rode tiny bikes recklessly with their dark hoods pulled over their shaven heads, threw empty lager cans at their bedroom window, screamed and shouted raucously and left their used condoms on their back doorstep. Adept at dissolving into the night before the police cars arrived they terrified them by their lawlessness, though in fact they were merely bored youngsters showing off. Desperate to leave, they found a beautiful old house in an exclusive area, exchanged contracts and moved in within a month. Caroline had made sure the cul-de-sac was child-free, but a fortnight after their arrival, the house opposite welcomed a new family of five. The children were aged from two to thirteen.

“We can’t stay here !” she whined. “Imagine the noise.”

“It’s a good area. They’ll have to be kept in check.”

But the mere thought of the children kept her awake. They put the house on the market for twenty thousand more than they’d paid; people trooped through, smiled, made approving little noises and disappeared.

“Nothing, again !” sighed Caroline, setting the Times Educational Supplement on the coffee table.

“Don’t worry. Something’ll come along.”

“There are jobs I could apply for in London.”

Charlie made no response.

“Perhaps we should think of going south.”

“London ? Think of the house prices. We’d be living in a box in Fulham.”

She turned away to look at the honeysuckle whose leaves were brushing the broad, sash window. It was true. They could live well here, were high on the ladder of property and wealth; but they were eating into their savings week by week ( she’d even begun to think weekly rather than monthly). Charlie had advertised and found a few private pupils, but the pressure was on her. She wished she hadn’t left Whitechapel but at the same time her nerves grew tight at the thought of what she’d had to put up with. If only a job would come up at one of the exclusive private schools. Still, the dashing of her expectations in Spain had left a residue. She couldn’t envisage a better life without at the same time fearing she would be let down, and caught in this snare, she felt as if the air was thickening and it was getting harder for her to breathe.

People she’d kept in touch with at Whitechapel spread word of her return. One day, she ran into an ex-colleague in town. He was a scrawny little man, full of an energy which seemed too much for him and he talked excessively quickly, laughing at his own observations though she found nothing funny in them. She wanted to get away quickly but he quizzed her about Spain and the more she revealed, the more ashamed she felt. She was on the wrong side of a dream of happiness and it was shredding her heart. 

But two days later, Scurfield rang her: her replacement had thrown in her hand. They hadn’t seen him for a fortnight and he wasn’t answering the phone. Was she interested ?

It was fate. She couldn’t resist the thought some higher power was looking after her and her mind raced: she would go back to take the low-level English job, but surely they would promote her ? She would have to be complaisant of course,  exhibit humility, work diligently, stay on the right side of  David; but she believed this was her opportunity. It was too unlikely to be mere coincidence. It was meant to be. She would have to tolerate rude, ignorant youngsters with their I-know-my-rights arrogance, but only for a year or so. She saw herself elevated, given her own office, making decisions along with the other half dozen members of the Senior Leadership Team, and though she would still sit in the staffroom some lunchtimes, would chat amiably with her lower-level colleagues, she would rise above them, impose on them, become impervious to their complaints and behind the closed doors of elite meetings, exchange knowing glances and derogatory remarks about their fecklessness, laziness and general inadequacy. She would assume the burden of superior responsibility. She would be superior.

David Scurfield too felt providence was acting on his behalf. Like a lion sniffing out weak prey, he knew Caroline was injured. She’d confided to him her exorbitant hopes for her future in Spain and her prim-and-proper middle-class mentality predisposed her to believe life must deliver her pleasantness. Cruel blows, she believed, must be reserved for those who deserved them: principally the lower orders. The working-classes, of course, weren’t so sensitive. It was in the order of things their lives should be hit by disappointment and failure. They were untrustworthy, selfish, indulgent, uncultured. But her own kind were made for success, advancement, reward, belonging. Wasn’t that the meaning of meritocracy ? And as a thoroughgoing meritocrat she voted consistently for the party in the middle, not because she thought at all deeply about politics, but to distance herself from unseemly passion. When she saw Arthur Scargill on the television, her blood ran cold, but it wasn’t his arguments which offended her. In the mouth of a cool and measured Cambridge professor, she’d have found them the very model of reason. It was Scargill’s demeanour, his accent, his gestures. He was so obviously a cocky little working bloke, had he passionately defended the rotation of the planets she would have been impelled to disagree. He was the kind of man who drank pints in a working mans’ club on a Saturday night, whose wife went to bingo and whose scruffy children played noisy games in the street. He wore a suit and a collar and tie, but they looked awkward. She saw a picture of him in The Guardian, coming up from the pit, a young miner in his dirt, his upper chest and arms on show in his singlet. That was the real Scargill and that was where he belonged: underground, in the dark, getting on with the work ordained by his betters. So it had been a bitter lesson to her, the failure in Spain. She had to convince herself and others it was no fault of her own. Over and over her mind came back to her hopes and to their shattering and over and over she had to fight against the defeating idea that she’d made a bad judgement.

Scurfield knew the injury now at the heart of her. He would be kind, he would let her know at once he was on her side, would do all he could to push her on; she could use him to climb. But of course, he would extract his pound of flesh and the thought of her naked, that stiff correctness violated by his urgent thrusting, made him run around madly, as if night and day themselves depended on him. He had little time, but he was sure she would succumb. If her promotion depended on it. If he were subtly insitent.

  So Caroline returned to her familiar classroom and explained to the importunate pupils how things hadn’t quite worked out in Spain.

“Did they sack, you Miss ?”

“Did the food give you the shits, Miss ? My dad always gets the runs when we go to Tenerife.”

“The school ran into financial problems,” she said. “Quite beyond my control.”

All she’d wanted to escape was once again part of her every day routine. Some pupils came to her lessons without a pen or book. Others simply refused to do any work. The boundaries were constantly challenged and on the qui vive every minute, she went home exhausted. But she compensated by remembering it was Whitechapel, whose reputation, though fraying at the edges, was still intact, and there were excellent pupils and some good classes. She had a job. Scurfield had even swung it so she was paid on her former scale so £2,200 went into her account every month. The days and weeks went by and it was as if she’d never left.

“The problem is,” Scurfield said to her, “the authority insists on posts being advertised nationally.”

“Oh, well.”

“Of course, there’s nothing I want more than you doing the job.”

“Yes.”

“I’d give it you right now, if I could.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll have to try to find some way round it.”

“Is there a way ?”

“Oh, a man can always find a way, if the motivation’s strong enough.”

“What about the Head ?”

“He’ll want to do things by the book, but he’ll leave it to me if I speak to him.”

“I see.”

“Even if we advertise and interview, I can probably ensure you get it. But you never know, a good young candidate who’s cheap…”

“The Head would go for that.”

“I’d go for that, let’s face it. That’s the game these days. I’m doing you a favour, Caroline.”

“I appreciate it.”

He approached the Chair of governors and explained how much the school valued Caroline’s work, then he went to the Head with the governors’ agreement that the post didn’t need to be advertised externally and the Head informed the authority that on this one occasion, in this particular circumstance, they were waiving the rules and advertising internally. A tiny notice in eight point appeared in a top corner of the cluttered  staffroom board:

Colleagues are invited to submit applications for the post of  Teacher of English. Apply by letter to the Headteacher by the last day of the month.

Caroline wrote of her achievements, her commitment, her loyalty, her admiration for Whitechapel. She explained how she felt fate had returned her to the school where she belonged and she expressed her ambition to take on a leading role. She was sure Whitechapel was where she would stay for the rest of her career. She was now ready to assume serious responsibility. She gave the letter to Scurfield, who didn’t bother to show it to the Head.

She was re-appointed.

“I won’t be here much longer of course,” he said as she sat in his office to receive the good news.

“How much longer ?”

“I haven’t decided. It depends. There are things I still want to do.”

“You’re very committed.”

“I’m still energetic.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I can outperform a lot of men ten or fifteen years younger.”

“That’s obvious.”

“I could line you up for my job.”

“I’d be grateful.”

“We’ll need to talk a few things over.”

“I’m available.”

“After school.”

“I’ve no pressing engagements.”

“We keep this between ourselves.”

“Naturally.”

“There’ll be jealousies.”

“Human nature.”

“It’s yours if you want it.”

“I want it.”

He groomed her, fed her information and kept potential rivals in the dark, let the Head know how much she was helping him, what a fine colleague she was; but though she smiled and tilted her head so her blond hair fell sweetly onto the shoulder of her smart, navy-blue suit, though she laughed at his weary stories and limp jokes, though she stayed till six or seven alone with him in his quiet little office, he never found just the right moment to slip his arm round her waist or to kiss her long neck.

Two years passed quickly. Every day he hoped his opportunity would come. On many, he went home to his wife in a dismal mood. He was abrupt and sank in the sofa with the newspaper. When the time came to resign, he told himself he’d failed; he would never kiss her, take off her clothes, draw the duvet around them. Yet hope sprang up in him at the thought he’d stay in contact and, no longer employed, perhaps he’d feel less constrained. He was still robust. He played golf three times a week. He still had a physique. All that was necessary was that perfect instant in which he would know she was saying yes.

His post was advertised internally ,in keeping with the regulations. There were four applicants. The other three knew full well Caroline was favoured, but they imagined they could come across well enough in interview to overtake her. Such are the illusions by which injustice maintains its rule. On the day before the interview, she was modesty itself.

“I’ll be lucky if I get it. There are three very good candidates against me.”

But driving home she mentally prepared how she would conduct herself after her appointment: she would feign surprise, she would claim she interviewed badly, she would express anxiety about her ability.

The other three were no-hopers.

The collection for Scurfield raised £563.48. They bought him a plasma tv as he was a keen fan of sports transmissions. He made a heartfelt speech about how much the place meant to him, how he would miss everyone, how he would treasure the values of honesty and integrity on which the school was founded. There was a tear in his eye when they presented his gift. He laid on a lavish leaving party at the Masonic Hall. From one end of the room to the other an unbroken line of trestle tables supported whole dressed salmon, sides of beef, hams waiting to be sliced, deep bowls of salad, coleslaw, rice; enormous oval plates spilling triangular tuna, egg, ham, beef, prawn, salmon, cheese, and cheese and tomato sandwiches; castles of succulent pork pies, sausage rolls still warm to the touch; fruit salad in which apples, grapes, kiwi fruit, oranges, manadrins, pears, pineapples sat packed in alcohol-laced juice; cheesecakes, gateaux of lemon, strawberry and chocolate and a cheeseboard big enough to satisfy a medieval king and his entourage.

There was a disco.

The beer wine and spirits flowed. Scurfield got very drunk. He watched Caroline dancing with her husband who was three inches shorter and, grey-haired and pot-bellied, might have passed for her father or a seldom seen uncle. She weaved her way through the jigging  bodies and he thought she must be going to the ladies, but then her saw her veer to the right and realised she was heading outside. With all the discretion of a man whose speech is slurring badly and whose legs seem to be controlled from outer space, he lurched across the floor. Outside, the night was still and inviting, the clear sky had a bluish hue and the stars, which he noticed with a child’s surprise and delight, seemed to dance. She was alone leaning on the balustrade overlooking the bowling green and at once the idea seized him that she’d come out here to give him his chance. He approached her and as she heard the click of his Italian shoes she turned and smiled.

“Oh, hi Dave !”

He grabbed her by the waist which, to his astonishment had a little roll of fat, and pressed his mouth against hers. At once she began to struggle but his strength restrained her. It was true, he was still fit and strong. She was making little squealing noises and pushing hard against his shoulders and something filtered through to his consciousness to say this wasn’t quite right, but he was so sure she wanted him he went on kissing her warm mouth with all the passion he could muster till he felt strong hands on his biceps and  was unceremoniously yanked back. Two of his colleagues, a burly P.E. teacher and martial arts I.T. man held him tight.

“Leave her alone, Dave.”

She wiped the back of her hand compulsively across her mouth. People had spilled out of the building and their uninhibited drunken chat and laughter was carried on the motionless air. Charlie Bremner came across the gravel, his rubber soles making a soft crunching sound. He asked his wife what was going on; she shook her head and set off back to the hall. Scurfield’s arms had been set free. His glasses were awry. He took them off and staring towards the source of the party-noise made out indistinct shapes in a swaying fog, till he slipped them back in place and saw Caroline’s angry back and her podgy husband at her side, climbing the steps in a stiff-kneed way. The P.E. teacher slapped him on the shoulder and said:

“Don’t worry, Dave. We didn’t see anything.”

Scurfield nodded.

His rescuers put their arms round each other’s shoulders and, singing raucously, pulling and pushing one another like carefree adolescents, crossed awkwardly the expanse of white stones. He was alone. In a few days he would no longer be a Senior Leader at Whitechapel. In September Caroline would assume the responsibilities which had made him feel competent, superior, almost indispensable. Finally, he’d taken his chance and she’d rebuffed him humiliatingly. As he dragged slowly back to the gathering, careless of what anyone might know or think, what seized his mind was the image of Caroline in his office, addressing the school, talking to parents, writing references, interviewing applicants for jobs. That she was second-rate went without saying but what upset him wasn’t her advancement exceeding her competence but that he no longer had any power, she no longer needed to be nice to him; he’d lifted her to ascendancy and felt himself falling, falling forever  through an endless emptiness of  shame and regret.

There was nothing he could do but find his wife.

KIM RIGARD’S COMPLAINT

The exams were approaching and Kim was worried. Her sister got four As and a place at Oxford. She wouldn’t. Her parents would be disappointed. She needed someone to blame. She bit her nails and twisted her blonde hair around her finger.

“Will you come with me if I go to Mrs Fricker ?” she asked Colin .

He sat stiffly looking into her eyes, his usual wan smile making him look like a clown near to tears. She flicked her gaze to something across the room. For a long time he’d wanted to ask her out but didn’t dare. They were together in English and French and as he was the brainbox of the year, she was glad to befriend him. He was one of those obedient boys who never explore the wild and wanton ways characteristic of some of their gender, but stay close to parental aspiration. Lacking the frank, uncomplicated will to go after the satisfaction of his needs, he’d developed that compensatory mentality which sits sadly on fresh and vigorous youth. His affection for this curious creature who chewed her lower lip, inspected her split ends and let her head fall to one side like an inquisitive pigeon, had overwhelmed him. He stuck to the narrow path of diligence, but his heart pounded urgently when she threw back her chin and her top pulled tight over her chest. He helped her with translations and essays; she batted her eyelids and went all helpless; he got a hard on and hoped she didn’t notice.

“Yes,” he replied.

He had no idea what she was going to complain about. As far as he was concerned, Mrs Mellor was a good enough teacher. He was hesitant to ask as he was always shy of offending . He knew she patronised him but she was so good-looking, so much the kind of girl a straight-down-the-line, clean-behind-the-ears, boy-scout, Christian, do-your-homework-first, unprepossessing boy like himself couldn’t hope to attract, that he was always balanced on a razor’s edge in her presence.

“Do you want me to say anything ?”

“Well, I’m going to complain about the Hugo. We’ve only done, like, twenty poems out of sixty. I’m going to say, like, we’ve told her lots of times and it’s just totally unfair. I mean, I’m just well nervous about that exam. I’m just so not ready for it !”

Colin smiled in his weak, strained way. For his face to break into a real smile was as likely as snow in July.

“But didn’t she say we only needed to study, like, about twenty ?”

Colin didn’t normally pepper his speech with “like”. He’d been brought up to speak impeccable English. He was a bit disgusted with himself and even worse, she didn’t seem impressed. His mother was a teacher who’d studied Divinity at Cambridge and frustrated in her desire for an academic career, hoped her only child would surpass her. Aware of the early influence of rich language on a child’s mind, she’d spoken and read to him endlessly until he left her to begin school and would have curled her nose to hear him imitating American street slang.

“Yeah, but like, that’s so, you know, unfair. I mean what if those are like the twenty most solid poems ? Like, how do we know ?”

She watched him closely. He smiled unconvincingly.

“And remember when she gave us those sentences to translate ? I mean that was just so solid ! And she just sat there marking books, like, I mean, isn’t she supposed to teach ? I mean, isn’t that what, like, she’s paid for ? And my dad says, like, we’re the customers. I mean, she’s supposed to do what we want, like, results. You know? My results. I mean, Our results. And if I don’t get an A, like, it’s gonna be well her fault.”

“Yes,” said Colin wishing he had the courage to ask her out.

The next morning they were in Fricker’s office. Kim wound her hair around her finger, hunched her shoulders and made herself as pathetic as possible.

“Well, like it’s Mrs Mellor. I mean, me and Colin think she’s, like, not teaching us proper.”

“Why’s that ?” asked Fricker, perched on her swivel chair her glasses round her neck.

“Well, like, we’re doing this poetry, aren’t we Colin and I mean, it’s dead solid. You know, hard. Isn’t it Colin? And, like, even Colin doesn’t get it and he’s applying, like, to Oxford. And we’ve only done twenty poems out of sixty and we’ve told her lots of times and she just, like, totally ignores us, doesn’t she Colin ?”

Fricker put on her glasses and made a few notes.

“Is that all ?”

“No! She’s, like, such a bad teacher, isn’t she ? I mean, she puts stuff on the board, grammar stuff and all that, verbs and stuff and past particles and I’ve never heard of it and I don’t get it and when I say it’s solid she just says, like, you’ve got to learn it, doesn’t she? And, oh yeah, I said I didn’t know all these verbs and stuff and she said I’d just got to learn them too and that’s, like, so unfair. I mean. I’ve never seen them before. And she thinks it’s easy but it’s solid for us, isn’t it Colin? And one day she marked books and gave us some sentences and, like, I just had no idea. And she comes into the lesson and says, like ‘Now, what shall we do today ?’ Like, with no preparation and that’s , like, unprofessional and I’m gonna totally fail because of her.”

“I don’t think you’ll fail,” said Fricker. “Do you have anything to say, Colin ?”

“I agree with Kim.”

Fricker looked over her glasses. She went to her filing cabinet, took out a file, ran a finger down the report .

“You’re predicted an A in French, Colin.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t get any better.”

“No.”

“But Colin’s dead clever and he, like, works all the time and his mum’s a teacher but like me and Liam….”

“Where is Liam ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you talked to him about your complaints?”

“Yeah !” asserted Kim.

Colin shifted uncomfortably.

“Leave it with me,” said Fricker.

 Dimbare was away on the annual mountaineering trip so the complaint had to be passed to his second in department who confronted Mrs Mellor.

“There’s no problem,” said Mellor. “I’ve told them. They only need to study a selection of the poems. Colin is set fair for an A. Kim has a good chance of a C. It’s a chaos in a coalbox.”

But when Dimbare returned and demanded his usual blow-by-blow account, Ms Coward said:

“The upper sixth have complained about you-know-who. Apparently she goes into lessons completely unprepared, sits there marking books instead of teaching, hasn’t taught them the literature properly. They’re panicking. And you know what Kim’s parents are like. They’ll go mad if she doesn’t get an A.”

“Is she capable ?”

“I think so.”

“Right. We need to gather evidence. I’ll talk to the sixth-formers .We’ll establish our case. We’ll get her this time. Enough’s enough. She’s too relaxed altogether. But we need a cast-iron brief against her. She’ll go to the union if she gets the chance. We’ll have to be brutally honest. Pin her down. Don’t let her know we’re investigating. Tell the students not to mention it. We’ll assemble the evidence and then we’ll have her. We’ll call her in and put her on trial. The two of us. If she’s guilty we’ll go to the Head. ”

For the next week Dimbare and Coward gathered all the evidence they could. Coward went to the lower sixth French group:

“How are you getting on with Mrs Mellor ?”

“Fine !”

“Are you getting through the work okay ?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she always well-prepared for lessons.”

There was a silence.

“Fairly.”

“What do you mean, “fairly” ?”

“Well, she’s okay.”

“Okay isn’t good enough is it ? Does she come in unprepared ?”

“Well, she’s, I don’t know, laid back.”

“Yeah, she’d dead laid back.”

“So she is unprepared ?”

“Well, sort of. I suppose.”

“And does she mark books while you work ?”

“Sometimes.”

“Has she covered Media with you yet ?”

“No.”

“So she’s not even covering the syllabus ! Do you want to complain about her.”

No-one spoke.

“Look, if you’re unhappy, you can get your parents to write a letter of complaint and we can do something. But don’t be afraid to speak up.”

Dimbare and Coward sat down together.

“So, what have we got against her ?”

“Well, the students say she’s unprepared.”

“Right,” said Dimbare, making notes in his small neat hand. “She’s totally unprepared.”

 “I don’t know if we should say “totally”.”

 “What then ? Mega ? Shall I change it to mega-unprepared.”

 “I don’t know.” Coward’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “Maybe she isn’t always unprepared.”

“No, I know what you mean and you want to be nice to her. But if we’re going to make a convincing case.”

 “It’s not that I want to be nice to her.”

 “I know. What I mean is, you’re a nice person. You want to behave like a nice person, Ruth. But we’re dealing with a serious professional matter here and we have to be brutally honest. Brutal honesty is what’s needed, don’t you agree ?”

He leaned close to her in that falsely intimate way he had, as if they were old lovers or shared secrets the rest of the world would never know.

 “Oh yes ! But perhaps we should say sometimes unprepared.”

 “I’ll say often. No, Very often. Very often or virtually always unprepared. Are we agreed ?”

 “Okay.”

 “Now, what else ? Mmmm? Completely unprofessional?”

 “I don’t think we can say completely.”

 “But unprofessional, we both know that. Mmm? Thoroughly unprofessional ? Shall we say that ?”

 “That’s much the same as completely. I wouldn’t say she’s always unprofessional. And she has had some good results…”

 “Yes, but with good classes. Anyone can get good results with those. Eh ? She’s untidy, disorganised, she’s so laid back she’s almost horizontal ! Not that I’d want her horizontal. Mmm?”

And he smiled his broad unctuous, ingratiating, childish smile which displayed his ugly, uneven, yellow teeth, as if he had said something really funny and leaning towards her once more made her wriggle with discomfort, blush and smile milkily in return.

 “Overwhelmingly ? What about that ? Overwhelmingly unprofessional. Eh?”

 “Couldn’t we just say, at times she can be a bit unprofessional ?”

His upper lip rose in exaggerated disgust, and his big nose wrinkled ludicrously so he looked like an infant about to cry because his ice-cream had fallen in the sand.

 “But that doesn’t sound very good does it ? We’ve got to be brutally honest, here Ruth. If we’re going to get her sacked…”

 “I didn’t say I wanted her sacked !”

 “No, but you know as well as I do she should be sacked. Mmm? She’s not one of the team. Eh?”

 “Maybe not, but she does her job….”

 “She comes in the morning. She stands in front of classes. Eh? Is that doing her job ? Does she mark till midnight every night like me ? Mmm? I was marking sixth-form essays till one o’clock last night. They take me ages ! Does she do that ?”

 “But she has a family.”

At this reference to his bachelorhood, Dimbare took on the hurt demeanour of a teenage girl no-one invites to the disco. He thought himself conscientiousness personified and from the heights of his superior commitment viewed with disdain the lesser efforts of his colleagues. To go home without a bootful of exercise books he considered the epitome of laziness and that people might beguile their evenings in happy play with their children he thought an affront. All his life he’d been engaged in a fierce struggle to prove himself. His compulsion for invidious comparison dogged every second of his life: his car was more expensive than his neighbour’s, he had more holidays abroad than his golfing mate, he arrived at school earlier and left later than anyone, he prepared more, marked longer. Yet none of this could quell the little boy’s anxiety which lodged at the centre of his mind and which threatened at any moment to break its flimsy bounds, flood his consciousness and leave him tearful and bereft.

 “I live on my own,” he uttered after a second. “It’s hard. I have to go home, cook, clean, mow the lawn, keep the place shipshape. I have to do all that myself.”

 “Oh yes.”

 “I work incredibly hard. I have this department to run. I know you do your bit as second in department but I write all the policies, I keep all the files up to date, I do all the exam administration and that’s on top of my teaching load. And I mark properly. Eh ? How many people in this place mark as much as me ?”

 “I know.”

 “She may have a family, but she has to do her job. Eh ? When did you last see her take any books home ?”

 “You’re right.”

 “Utterly unprofessional. I’ll put that. Now, what about a letter of complaint ?”

 “What ?”

 “That’ll frighten her. You know how relaxed she is. We need something to set her nerves on edge.”

 “But there is no letter of complaint.”

 “No, but their could be.”

 “I don’t think we can make it up.”

He turned his head aside and grimaced.

 “I’m not saying we should make it up. I’m saying that there could be a letter of complaint. If the students are dissatisfied. It’s quite likely a parent will complain.”

 “I know, but we can’t say they have done until they do.”

 “I’m saying we can suggest it, to put her on the spot.”

 “Well, I’m not in favour of saying it until there is a complaint.”

 “Right. Now, what else is there……”

The following day he went into Mellor’s room at the end of first period. She was quietly tidying her desk. Her calm at once goaded him. What right did she have to be so blithe ?

“I believe there was a bit of a kerfuffle while I was away last week.”

“Sorry ?”

“The upper sixth have complained.”

“Not all three of them. Kim. It’s nothing. Storm in a teacup. She was in a flap about the literature but there’s no problem.”

“We’d like a meeting with you this morning break in room 33.”

“Why ?”

“There are issues. We need to sort out the issues. Will you be there, please ? Start of morning break.”

“Is there an agenda ?”

“Sorry ?”

“If it’s a formal meeting there should be an agenda.”

“It’s not formal,” he said, a sudden hint of jauntiness in his voice. “Can you be there, please ?”

The room was empty. Mrs Mellor walked among the desks and looked out over the field where the pupils were playing. Dimbare and Coward came in together. He had a black ring binder under his arm and bustled with his usual fuss. His tall frame seemed out-of-place. He always seemed to be trying to make himself fit and he bent his head forward and slightly to the left in an attitude of false modesty, as if about to appear before an adoring crowd. Coward was brittle and a bit shamefaced but hid her discomfort behind a show of schoolmaamish efficiency At once Mellor picked up on the atmosphere. They didn’t look at her. Their demeanour was official, frosty. They spoke to one another in barely audible whispers. They sat close.

“Sit down,” ordered Dimbare.

She sat opposite them.

“Ruth and I have been looking into these complaints, haven’t we, Ruth.”

Coward nodded.

“All three of the upper sixth are unhappy with the way you teach.”

“What, including Liam ?”

“Including Liam,” said Dimbare definitively.

“And the lower sixth are unhappy too,” said Coward.

Mellor looked at her. She was pulled up stiff; her neck seemed artificially extended; the corners of her mouth turned down; her stare was hard and condemnatory. She looked prim and obedient as a well-trained dog. She was one of those people whose demeanour exudes certainty and who respond curtly to the intrusion of doubt. She’d been brought up a Catholic and knew the punishments for disobedience. The terror of perdition made fear the abiding tenor of her life.

“How so ?”

“They’ve got exactly the same complaints against you as the upper sixth. The alarm bells have started ringing.”

“You sit in front of them and mark books,” said Dimbare.

“When was this ?”

“You go into lessons unprepared. You throw the text book on the desk and say ‘What shall we do today ?’. Isn’t that right, Ruth ?”

Coward nodded.

“You haven’t finished the literature. The lower sixth haven’t covered the syllabus. And there’s a letter of parental complaint coming into school, isn’t there Ruth ?”

Coward flinched, hesitated and nodded.

“The lower sixth have made no complaint to me,” said Mellor.

“Well, they’re unhappy,” said Dimbare. “I’m afraid this is quite unacceptable.”

“Very good,” said Mellor getting up. “You’re the managers . You do what you have to do.”

She walked out. She’d stayed calm but she was seething and had to restrain her tongue.

That evening she wrote an account. She made particular reference to the threat of a parental letter and finished with a threat of her own: a grievance procedure. The next morning she handed the account to Fricker and sent a copy to her union’s Regional Office.

Last lesson of the morning was the lower sixth.

“I’m not going to teach you today. We need to clear the air. I believe you’ve complained about me.”

Most of the dozen faces looked up in surprise.

“No,” said one of the girls.

“Well, I’ve been told you’re unhappy with my teaching and you’ve put in a complaint . I want you to speak to me frankly. Nothing will go beyond this classroom. There’ll be no repercussions. But rather than going behind my back, let’s discuss it. You tell me how you’d like me to change and I’ll do things differently.”

“We haven’t complained,” said one of the boys.

“So you’re not unhappy with the way I do things ?”

“No!” came the collective response.

“And what about the letter of complaint from parents?

They were all looking at her. She surveyed their faces for small signals of dishonesty or dissembling. But they were frank. Her instincts told her they were baffled. There was no hint of opposition. She felt her defensiveness ebbing away. She could relax and joke, teach them in her easy-going style. At the same time, she was angry at the accusations. These students were supposed to have complained. The sense of being conspired against sapped her confidence.

“You can tell me. Is there someone here whose parents are going to write to the school ?”

“No.”

They shook their heads.

“Okay. As we’ve come this far we may as well go the whole hog. Let’s talk about how we do things in these lessons. What would you like me to change ?”

Later that day she tracked down the third upper sixth student .

“Could I have a word with you for five minutes, Liam?”

She sat behind her desk as he stood awkwardly to one side. He was a big, overweight, untidy lad who constantly brushed his curtains of black hair away from his face. He was trying to grow a beard: his jaw line sported wispy black hair. Bright enough to do well, he was just on the cusp of that adolescent questioning which leads to compensatory certainty and having learned to strum a guitar as well as the majority of pop stars, spent most of his spare time in his garage with three other lads as versed in musical theory as in Sanskrit grammar, thrashing out a barely melodic noise they hoped would bring them overnight wealth and fame.

“Sit down, Liam.”

“I’m okay. I’d rather stand.”

“Look, don’t be nervous. You’re not in any kind of trouble. On the contrary, I’m the one in trouble. What I wanted to ask you about were the complaints you’ve made to Mrs Coward.”

“I haven’t complained.”

She watched him closely. He was fidgeting and trying to smile and pushing his recalcitrant hair .

“Well, Kim and Colin have complained and Mrs Coward says you wish to support their complaint.”

“No. I don’t really talk to them. I don’t have much to do with them, actually. They’re together all the time but they don’t, you know, talk to me. Not much.”

“So have you discussed my lessons with them ?”

“No.”

“Because they have serious complaints and if you feel the same I wouldn’t want you to keep it quiet.”

“No.”

“Do you mean you’ve no complaints, Liam ?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. I mean, I’m happy. The lessons are okay.”

She looked up at him and wanted to laugh. A big, clumsy, disorganised, benign lollop of a lad. At once the thought of Dimbare and Coward came to her. Wasn’t it all too ridiculous ?

“Okay, Liam. Thanks for your time.”

For weeks, she and Dimbare didn’t speak but the day after she’d handed her letter to Fricker, Coward came towards her on the corridor with a plastic smile as wide as a motorway.

“Morning, Fran ! Can I just talk to you about this course ?”

She took a letter from her bag. Mellor listened and nodded as she explained.

The days came and went. She taught her classes, marked books, had confrontations with unruly pupils. At home, she barely mentioned the events. She waited. When was Fricker going to get back to her? Surely she must have spoken to the Head by now ? What was she going to do about the threat of a letter from parents ? She wanted redress for the bullying tone.

After a month, she went to see her.

“I just wanted to know what you’d found out.”

“Not much.”

 Fricker looked down at her from behind her glasses.

“What does the Head think ?”

“I haven’t told the Head .”

“What about the letter of complaint.”

“I can’t find anyone who wants to complain.”

“So where do we go from here ?”

She shrugged.

“I’ve waited a month.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t the school going to do anything ?”

“About what ?”

Fricker bent forward and peered over her lenses as if looking at a specimen.

“I was told a letter of complain was coming into school. I think I should have some explanation.”

“There is no letter of complaint.”

“Then why was I told there was ?”

Fricker shrugged.

“I’m not happy if this is going to be brushed under the nearest heavy carpet.”

“I investigated and came up with nothing. What’s the problem ?”

“I was summoned to a little kangaroo court on the pretext of an informal meeting. My competence was questioned and I was told there was a written complaint coming from a parent. You know as well as me how quickly teachers can find themselves on competency procedures these days.”

 “No question of any such thing.”

“ Can I take it the sixth formers are happy with my classes ?”

“As far as I’m concerned.”

“So I can get on with my teaching and be left alone.”

“Sure.”

She got up and left.

It took a long time for a thaw to take place with Dimbare. Oddly, she felt sorry for him in a way. He was so lacking in confidence, so ill-at-ease with himself that his only way of boosting his feelings was to bully and control. But at the same time she knew his crawling obedience made him dangerous. He would tell tales to anyone in authority. Worse, he would make them up.

Her lessons with the upper sixth became stiff and joyless. She couldn’t trust Kim and Colin who continued as if nothing had happened. Kim chewed her nails and twisted her hair and Colin sat beside her like a parent next to a wayward child on the first visit to the psychiatrist. Lesson by lesson Kim asked questions which betrayed a need to be spoonfed and cosseted. Mrs Mellor did everything by the book and at the end of each lesson said:

“If there’s anything you weren’t happy with , please let me know in writing.”

Colin got an A and went to Oxford. Kim got a B and a place at Manchester. Many months later Kim was in the staffroom reading the paper when Dimbare strode through.

“Free ?”

“That’s right.”

“ By the way,” he said, as if a propos of nothing, “Did you ever hear anything of Kim Rigard ?”

She looked up. He was leaning with his palms on the back of the chair opposite. His thin arms in his short-sleeved shirt were faintly obscene in a way she found hard to pin down. Somehow he made himself too apparent. He seemed to be showing off. She had the feeling he was displaying his manhood for her admiration.

“Yes, she went to Manchester.”

“Doing well ?”

“What I heard,” said Mrs Mellor, putting the paper down, “ is that she became a Goth,took up with some guy who played in a Heavy Metal band and spent all his time smoking dope.”

“Really !”

“Apparently.”

“What about Colin ? I thought those two were an item.”

“Oh, she took the opportunity of the separation to get rid of him. She was only interested in what was between his ears.”

“And he was only interested in what was between her legs. Eh ?”

His face creased into his self-satisfied grin, as if he’d amused or impressed her.

“She was a bright girl, though,” he said, becoming quickly serious and professional. “She’ll go far.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mrs Mellor, “she failed her first year exams.”

“I find that surprising.”

“She dyed her hair black, had numerous body piercings and spent her time drinking and clubbing, so they say.”

“So is she being kicked out ?”

“Oh no, she put in a complaint about her tutor. Said it was his fault she failed.”

“She won’t get away with that !”

“On the contrary,” said Mrs Mellor, picking up the paper, “her complaint was upheld. The tutor, so I hear, was disciplined.”

KATIE JAMESON

Every Friday and Saturday the streets of the little town filled with drinkers. The young women wore flimsy tops and pelmet skirts, even in the most biting weather. The young men, in a display of macho resilience, strode around in shirt sleeves, barking and laughing joylessly; failing to reason that if the women could expose their flesh to the chill, it could hardly be proof of masculinity. The pubs were crammed and noisy with musak. In the cheap curry houses and low-grade pizzerias the waiters didn’t have time to blink. As evening declined into night the atmosphere gained a hint of threat. The dark police vans waited on the corners. Inevitably the sirens wailed, there was a scuffle, people were yanked and bundled to the cells. So it went , week after week, like a lathe set to run at a regular rate.

Matterface seldom went into town. It was too young, raucous and threatening. He liked his local where he could lean against the corner bar , slowly pour five pints into his rotund belly and hold forth, confident his education and quick temper would prevent contradiction. Everybody knew not to cross him. When John Vernon told him his views on economics were tosh, he threatened to break his teeth. He was one of those men who quickly flip into irrational, exaggerated reactions to the merest perceived slight. A challenge to his opinions was fended off with the violence of man fighting for his life. One Saturday, however, at a loose end, he went early to the Dog where, years ago, a group of bikers used to gather. He was still a motorcyclist; in good weather he would head for the hills and could take a bend at reckless speed or rev up to a hundred and twenty on a long stretch; but since he lost control on a left-hander, smashed through a hedge and ended in a shallow river his hip broken and his bike demolished, he’d become more cautious. It was a nostalgic visit. He was sentimental. The old days. The camaraderie, hard drinking and fights. But the pub was no longer  a rendez-vous. It was quiet and served a small, polite constituency. He swigged a quick, whetting pint and going out into the yet sparsely peopled street saw ahead a figure he recognised at once. Guilty about following, he slinked close to the buildings, hurrying to catch up. It was Watt all right, hand in hand with a blonde on tottering heels, twenty years his junior.  He followed till they slipped into a little trattoria, then caught a taxi home thinking all the while of the advantage he might gain.

On Monday he was up early and in that near-frantic rush which was his way of dealing with the demands of work, panted and sweated around the house before dropping heavily into the seat and driving to school. On the corridor he came across the despised Katie Jameson. A somewhat nervous but ambitious young woman he loathed her as he did all subordinates.

“You haven’t shown me those lesson plans yet,” he said abruptly.

“I told you, Mick, the union says I don’t have to.”

“And I say you do.  Today or I’ll flatten you.”

He wagged his stubby finger in her face and waddled away as fast as his bulk would allow. He was pleased with himself for having threatened her and he liked the shock and fear on her face. In his classroom he met Lou Wiper, pale, sullen, defensive she looked as though she’d passed a depressing weekend.

“I just gave it to Katie,” he said.

“What did you say ?”

“I said I’d lay her out if I didn’t get those plans.”

“She’ll go to the boss.”

He stared at his accomplice.

“No need to worry about him.”

“We should take a grievance.”

“For what ?”

“The meeting. She said we were incompetent.”

“Did she ?”

“I heard her.”

“Okay. We’ll take a grievance.”

Later, Matterface knocked on Watt’s door. The muffled call made his heart leap. He hated being summoned. Having to wait enraged him. He wanted to barge in. Why should he give way to a younger, lesser man ?

Watt was at his desk, his flimsy, gold glasses halfway down his nose, the usual wad of papers in front of him.

“Morning, Mick. Sit down.”

Matterface had an impulse to respond:

“Do you think I’m going to stand to talk to a  runt like you?”

Watt finished reading his page.

“Sorry, Mick. What can I do for you ?”

“Katie Jameson.”

“Sorry ?”

“We need rid.”

“Why’s that, Mick ?”

“Useless.”

“Brent seems to think she’s done well since we promoted her.”

“He’s a wimp.”

“Mick, I have to object to you talking about a colleague in those terms.”

“You’re wasting your breath.”

“I have to stop you there, Mick.”

“I was in town on Saturday.”

Sweat ran slowly down Matterface’s temples like rain descending a window. His face was flushed.  Watt blinked, unhooked his glasses and took his chin in his hands.

“What are you saying ?”

“I was in town. I saw you nipping into that little Italian on Brunswick Square. Good was it ?”

“Very good. You should try it.”

“I don’t eat out. Not much fun on your own.”

“No.”

“Wife enjoy it ?”

“Sorry ?”

“Mrs Watt. Is she partial to Italian ?”

“She wasn’t with me. She was unwell.”

“No, I didn’t think it was her.”

“Who’s that, Mick ?”

“The woman on your arm.”

“Oh, you mean my daughter !”

“I’ve met your daughter.”

“Have you ?”

“I’ve met her. More than once. She’s a brunette.”

“She is. Naturally. She dyes it. They all do these days. She dyes it peroxide.”

“She’s tall.”

“Sorry ?”

“Your daughter. She’s a tall girl. She’s taller than you. She must be over six feet.”

“That’s right. She’s tall. She’s a big lass.”

“I’d know her anywhere.”

“It must be a year since you’ve seen her.”

“I’ve a mind for faces, for demeanours. I’d know her. I’d pick her out in a thousand.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Mrs Watt better ?”

“Sarah ? Call her Sarah. She doesn’t stand on ceremony. Yes, just a tummy bug. She’s fine.”

“That’s good. I’m pleased to hear that. I must mention it to her next time we meet.”

“That’s kind.”

“Anyway. Katie. I’m taking a grievance.”

“Why’s that ?”

“She called me incompetent.”

“Did she ?”

“In a meeting.”

“Is it minuted ?”

“No. It was informal.”

“That may be a problem.”

“I doubt it.”

“You have to give it me in writing, Mick. We have to stick to procedure. Everything above board.”

“Of course. All proper and as it should be.”

“It can be an unpleasant business.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, I’ll wait for your letter then.”

“I’ll do it today.”

“Good. That’s good. No time like the present.”

Matterface went to the gents and swilled cold water over his cheeks. His heart was racing in spite of his beta-blockers. His breathing was short and rapid. He rested his palms on the edge of the basin. Once, he’d been quick and strong. He was school champion at wrist-wrestling. In a fight, he used his head and knees as well as his fists. He’d never imagined he would become slow, his thighs would tighten and he’d pant climbing stairs. He’d never imagined either being abandoned. For twenty-three years he’d believed his wife was too weak to go, but one day he came home to find a note and her wardrobes empty. If he’d known where to find her he’d have given her a thump. His face in the mirror scared him. Swollen, florid, marked by all the signs of age, it was the face of a man who has failed. He was subject leader for English. He earned almost forty thousand. The mortgage on his big house in a village four miles from town was paid. He’d bought his wife out and struggled with the repayments. He had plenty to congratulate himself for, but the knowledge of failure ran through his veins like sap through a stem. He should have been a headteacher. He was unfairly overlooked. Men like Watt, weak men, had overtaken him. And now the profession was feminised. Young women who couldn’t control a class were rising like drain-water in a flood.  He was fifty-eight. How much longer would he live ? Maybe he should pack it in. The stress couldn’t be good for him. But as he’d done a thousand times he ran through the quick calculations: a pension of about eighteen grand and a lump sum of fifty-four. He’d be okay. He could manage. He could cut back.  But his pride rebelled. His income would be lower than teachers thirty-five years younger ! It was the first step to an old age of scrimping neglect. He had to go on. He would keep going to sixty-five if possible. He wouldn’t sink. He would fight to his final breath to be as good as the next man and what did that mean if not earning as much and having the same status ?

Despite the cooling water, the sweat was trickling again. Under his arms, his shirt was soaked. He yanked a paper towel, dabbed his face and went to find Lou Wiper.

“I’ve told Watt we’re taking a grievance.”

“Is he on our side ?”

“He has to be.”

“I don’t get it.”

Matterface stared hard at her. Her frightened look made him want to seize her throat. Such a poor accomplice! Yet he admired her vindictiveness almost as much as her subordination. He pushed his face close.

“I saw him in town. On Saturday. With his floosy. He gets in my way, I go to his wife.”

“Shit !”

“We can do what we like. Let’s get Jameson in a meeting this afternoon. We’re all free last thing. Go and tell her to be in the office.”

“What if she says no ?”

“Nobody says no to me,” and his face came closer, his eyes bulged, he glanced down at her cleavage, met her gaze, looked again at her exposed flesh , turned and left.

Lou Wiper knew Katie Jameson was teaching year 7. She went straight to her room, walked in without knocking and held out a paper.

“Mick wants you in a meeting in the English office at half two. Don’t be late.”

“What’s it about ?”

“What does that matter ?”

“I need to know what it’s about,” said Jameson looking at the paper.

“Whatever it’s about, you have to be there.”

Jameson turned to look at the unusually silent and attentive class.

“There should be an agenda.”

“It’s informal.”

“But what is it about, Lou ? I don’t understand why you can’t tell me.”

“Mick’s called it.”

“Then why didn’t he come to see me ?”

“He sent me.”

“I’m not coming unless I know what it’s about.”

“You have to come.”

“No I don’t.”

“It’s non-contact time. If you don’t come, Mick will have you disciplined.”

“Disciplined ? For what ?”

“Do what you’re told.”

“Who’s going to be at the meeting ?”

“Ask Mick.”

“I’m not coming.”

“That’s up to you, but watch out.”

Wiper left. Striding the corridor, she was glad the pupils had heard.  It would spread like ‘flu in October. The thought of Jameson’s nervous face, the little tremble of her hands as she took the paper, the sorry plea in her voice, made Wiper glad. She wanted to see her prostrate, just like Connie Egger who had to be dragged out screaming, whose nervous collapse was complete and who never came back. She and Mick had done a good job. Drip by drip they’d poisoned the cup of her confidence till she couldn’t face a class. But that was nothing to what they’d do to Jameson.

“I told her,” she said to him at lunch.

“What did she say ?”

“She says she’s not coming.”

“I’ll have her on a disciplinary.”

“She wants an agenda.”

“My arse !”

At two thirty, Matterface and Wiper were sitting in the little English office with their mugs of coffee. It had once been a simple store-room but Matterface, feeling an office was in keeping with his status, threw out hundreds of books, had more shelving put up, bought a new desk and computer for himself and treated the place as his sanctum sanctorum. Gloomy, ill-ventilated and with a heavy oak door, a relic of the long gone days when the place was a grammar school, the room was chilly on the hottest days in August.

“She’s not coming,” said Wiper.

“I’ll have her in the Head’s office in the morning if she doesn’t.”

“Shall I go and look for her ?”

“No.”

“What’s our plan ?”

“Hit her with the grievance.”

“First off ?”

“Get the best punch in at the beginning.”

“She might flounce out.”

“She won’t flounce while I’m around.”

There came a timid knock.

“Come in !”

Jameson entered as if her presence brought with it an insupportable odour. Matterface and Wiper looked down at their papers.

“What’s this about, Mick ?”

“What’s what about ?”

“Why have you asked me to a meeting ?”

“It’s just a meeting.”

“What about ?”

“Sit down.”

“Is there an agenda ?”

“No.”

“There should be.”

“Who says ?”

“It’s good practice.”

“Who says ?”

“Union advice is….”

“I’m in a union.”

“I know. But I’m not staying unless…”

“Sit down.”

“I will if you tell me what the meeting’s…”

“Sit down, for god’s sake.”

He’d pulled off his glasses and thumped the table.

“I don’t have to put up with that kind of behaviour.”

“ Who’s running this department ?”

“I’m not questioning your position.”

“No, you’re not. We’re taking a grievance against you.”

“What ?”

“I’ve told Tom Watt today.”

“A grievance.”

“You said we were incompetent,” said Wiper.

“When ?”

“In the meeting.”

“What meeting ?”

“Departmental,” said Matterface.

“I didn’t.”

“You did. We both heard you,” said Wiper.

“I didn’t say that.”

“We both heard you,” said Matterface. “We’re taking a grievance.”

“You’re questioning our professionalism,” said Wiper.

“It’s slander,” said Matterface.

“You’re slandering us. That’s a legal matter,” said Wiper.

“I’m not staying.”

“You can go now,” said Matterface putting on his glasses.

“What about the meeting.”

“The meeting’s over.”

“You’ve got the information,” said Wiper.

When Jameson had left, she turned to Matterface. Sweat was dripping from his chin.

“Well, what do you think ?”

“What’s to think ?”

“She’ll bring in the union.”

“Screw the union.”

“We’ll have to synchronise our stories.”

“There’s nothing to fear. We’ll have her.”

They submitted their letters and a few days later Watt called them in one by one. The union’s local official had written asking to see minutes of the meeting.

“I told you, it was informal.”

“We need evidence, Mick.”

“We heard it.”

“That’s not enough.”

“Isn’t it ?”

“It might not be.”

“It should be.”

“Why ?”

“You wouldn’t question my word would you ?”

“Not me, Mick. Her union.”

“They don’t decide.”

“In a grievance, the governors decide, Mick”

“You appoint them.”

“Not all of them.”

“They’re in your pocket.”

“I don’t think I like that, Mick.”

“It’s true.”

“The union will fight hard. If there’s no evidence…”

“I told you, we heard her.”

The union officer requested a meeting. They gathered in Watt’s office at the end of a rainy afternoon. She was a big, bulky woman in her fifties, one of those radicals who had known the swirling expectations of the sixties and been battered by the eddying waves of reaction in her thirties, but who had stayed true to her vision of a sunny democracy whose beneficent light reached even into the workplace.  A hard-working maths teacher, running a department and leading a year as pastoral head, she was overwhelmed and had elaborated a slow, diligent, unflustered manner which allowed her to keep going seventeen hours a day; though the black moons beneath her eyes and the greyness of her complexion spoke of lack of sleep and fresh air. For Jameson, who sat beside her, the meeting might have been an appearance before a hanging judge, but for Martha Franklin, it was routine. She knew the school and had once caught Watt out badly: he’d changed comments on performance management documents to justify blocking promotions.

Matterface sat opposite her. He despised her instantly. Overweight, frumpy, she reminded him of his disappeared wife, except she exuded confidence, even nonchalance. He wanted her to fear him. He would have liked to have seen on her features the sparrow’s twitchiness he saw in Jameson. He suspected she would be competent and articulate which goaded him to insult her. After all, what could anybody do to him ? What he knew kept him safe.

“There seems some doubt,” she said, “over the accusation.”

“Both Mick and Lou heard the comment,” said Watt.

“But they’re hardly independent.”

“It’s a matter of perception,” said Watt. “Perhaps Katie didn’t quite mean it the way it was taken.”

“How else could it be taken ?” said Matterface.

“What exactly is she alleged to have said ?” asked Franklin.

“There’s no alleged about it,” said Matterface.

“We heard her,” said Wiper.

“The precise form of words is important,” said Franklin.

“She said we are incompetent,” said Wiper.

“So, in speech marks, she said: “You are incompetent”.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know she was talking about both of you ?”

“She was,” said Matterface.

“As the meeting wasn’t minuted, we’ve no way of getting the context. It just seems odd someone should pipe up in a meeting, a propos of not very much, “you’re incompetent”.”

“She did,” said Wiper.

“It’s slander,” said Matterface.

“It’s the way it’s taken,” said Watt.

“We can’t get agreement,” said Franklin. “Ms Jameson doesn’t believe she said it. She certainly doesn’t remember. It would be unfortunate for this to proceed to grievance. I’ve spoken to Ms Jameson, and though we’re not prepared to admit to the form of words Mr Matterface and Ms Wiper claim, we’re willing to accept they feel something was said which offended them. Ms Jameson apologizes for that. She is willing to say that anything she said which caused offence is withdrawn. Are you willing to accept that so we can find a modus vivendi and everyone can get on with their job ?”

“I want it in writing,” said Matterface.

“That’s fine,” said Franklin.

“I want my own apology,” said Wiper.

“We’ll do that. A letter to each of you and that will be the end of the matter ?”

“That seems a good way forward,” said Watt.

Matterface and Wiper went to his classroom. She sat on the edge of the table as he stomped about, shoving papers in his filing cabinet and generally tidying an already impeccable order.

“What do we do now ?”

“That bitch !” said Matterface.

“We’ve agreed not to pursue it.”

“We’ve agreed nothing.”

“We turn down the letters ?”

“I’ll have her sacked and nothing less.”

“The union woman will object.”

“She’s an impotent bitch. We’re having our grievance.”

The following day Matterface took a small, white envelope inscribed Mick, in a neat, tight hand,  from his pigeon-hole. The letter read:

Dear Mick,

                             I am sorry if during the last departmental meeting I said anything which offended you. I didn’t mean to. I hope we can now put the misunderstanding behind us and get on with teaching.

                                                        Sincerely, Katie.

He found Wiper and discovered the wording of the letter to her was identical.

“Silly cow !” he said.

He went at once to Watt.

“This is no good.”

“What’s the matter, Mick.”

“I’m not having if.”

“But she’s apologised, Mick.”

“She has to apologise for calling me incompetent.”

“She doesn’t recall that.”

“I do.”

“This is a way forward.”

“Not for me.”

“You’re making me think you don’t want a resolution.”

“She needs to be sacked.”

“People have rights. We can’t just sack her willy-nilly.”

“I’m taking the grievance.”

“I can’t stop you.”

“No-one can stop me.”

He recounted the interview to Wiper and she in turn went to Watt who summoned Katie Jameson. He explained to her. Pale and tense she twisted her hands in her lap.

“It would be easier if you write an apology for having called them incompetent.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Well, you don’t remember.”

“No, I didn’t. I never said it. They’re making it up.”

“Why would they do that ?”

“They want me sacked.”

“Oh, that’s getting things out of perspective !”

“Look what they did to Connie.”

“Sorry ?”

At Watt’s bridling, she felt her confidence subside. His face took on the alertness of a stalking cat. The tight suggestion of threat sat on his shoulders, arms and hands. She was afraid to speak but she knew clearly enough what needed to be said. It was no secret. The whole school was au courant. Poor Connie had been driven half insane, tranquillized and referred to a psychiatrist; it had taken her two years to start to function normally. Everyone knew she was a perfectly good teacher. Mick and Lou’s strategy wasn’t subtle or concealed. And Watt himself was a bully. Hadn’t he hunted down Aidan Richardson, put him on competency, destroyed him so his niece could apply for his job ? And wasn’t she now Subject Leader after only one year in the school ? The corruption was blatant, yet her tongue froze. To say what everyone knew was forbidden. All speech had become a form of deception and collusion. Watt stared at her.

“She was forced out,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I don’t think so, Katie. I think she left on health grounds.”

“But they destroyed her !” she cried.

“You’d better be careful what you say. Nobody gets destroyed here. That’s not how this school works.”

“Why won’t they accept my apology ?”

“You haven’t apologised for the offence.”

“I can’t apologise for something I didn’t do.”

“Why not ?”

Jameson sent long, rambling, emotionally-charged e-mails to Franklin. At every hurtful recollection, she turned on her lap-top. She had little capacity for objectivity and even less for discipline of style. The sense of the self-evident rightness of her position robbed her of the will to restraint and she fell into one of those outpourings of justified complaint which seem exaggerated and strained to those who hear them but utterly understated to those who make them.  Martha Franklin sifted them and did what she could but her efforts to settle came to nothing, Jameson crumpled under the stress, was signed off and prescribed heavy doses of anti-depressants which robbed her of the ability to read or express subtle communication,  and the grievance went ahead.

The Chair of the three-strong committee was Mrs Clatworthy, a small, dark, neat woman in a natty navy-blue suit. She smiled broadly at the tableful and welcomed them as if they were together to celebrate a christening. Beside Watt was his chétif secretary, a quick, vole of a woman whose nose twitched like a hamster’s and whose scrawny hand transcribed the proceedings like a machine. She looked over her flimsy glasses only when something shocked or delighted her, otherwise she might have been a recalcitrant learner on Ritalin. In addition to Franklin and Jameson were Dick Pullen, the County’s HR man and the two wing committee members: Mr Greencut, a rotund, be-suited local butcher, florid in complexion and dull in speech, whose daughters were in the school and Mrs Sander, another parent-governor, over-dressed like the poor invited to society events, who met no-one’s eyes and said nothing.

Wiper was first.

“Can you tell us exactly what Ms James said in the meeting on 24^th November ?”

“She said I was incompetent.”

“In what context ?”

“No particular context.”

“Everything has a context, Mrs Wiper. Nothing happens without a context. There must have been some subject under discussion.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember what the meeting was about ?”

“Not in detail. It was informal.”

“How informal ?”

“What do you mean ?”

“Well, was it just a chat ? Was there an agenda?”

“No there wasn’t an agenda.”

“Were the date and time decided in advance.”

“I suppose so.”

“And there were just the three of you ?”

“Yes.”

“But there are six in the department?”

“Yes.”

“Why weren’t the other three invited.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re Second in Department, Mrs Wiper. A meeting is arranged, a time and venue decided, yet three members of the department aren’t invited. Isn’t that a bit odd?”

“I think Mick just wanted a word with Katie.”

“About what ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wanted a word. That sometimes means something negative, doesn’t it.”

“It can do.”

“Was it on this occasion ?”

“I can’t remember.”

“But you can remember that Ms Jameson called you incompetent.”

“Yes, you don’t forget something like that.”

“Was she speaking to just you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not ?”

“The way she said it.”

“What way ?”

“As if she meant both of us.”

“So let’s try to get clear just how this alleged remark was made. What were you talking about.”

“I can’t remember.”

“You must remember something that was discussed.”

“We talked about levels.”

“What about them?”

“Making sure the sublevels were accurate.”

“Is that when Ms Jameson made the alleged remark.”

“It could have been.”

“Mrs Wiper, you’re as vague as a melting mist except over one detail. Given your recollection of the meeting is so inadequate, how can we set any store by your conviction ?”

“I just remember it because it was so hurtful.”

“Did Ms Jameson simply blurt out, you’re incompetent !”

“More or less.”

“That seems extraordinary behaviour, doesn’t it.”

“Her behaviour is extraordinary.”

Franklin had dug out a witness. Judy Nicol had been a supply teacher in the department at the time Connie Egger suffered her breakdown. She’d submitted a written statement about systematic bullying and hearing Mick Matterface tell Connie to “go and fuck herself”. No longer teaching, relaxed and pleasant, dressed in a dark green skirt and jacket she looked appropriately formal but exuded friendliness.  Mrs Clatworthy questioned her. Matter-of-fact and brief she confirmed what she’d written. When Franklin got her turn she said:

“Would it be true to say, during your time here, there was a culture of bullying in the English department ?”

“Yes.”

“And can you be sure you heard Mr Matterface tell Mrs Egger to go and fuck herself ?”

“Oh yes ! I was there. I heard him.”

When Wiper was asked what she thought she said:

“She was only a supply teacher. She wasn’t here very long. She’s not reliable.”

Matterface put up a much more aggressive defence. To every question he replied, you’re wasting your breath or I refuse to answer that or this isn’t relevant or I heard what I heard. When Mrs Clatworthy suggested he might be a little more forthcoming he said:

“If the questions were more intelligent, Chair, I would be willing to answer them in kind.”

It took three weeks for the judgement to appear. They recommended Ms Jameson should apologise for the inappropriate remark. Also, she should attend a course designed to improve her “communication skills”. External mediation to improve relationships in the department should be tried and Mr Matterface and Mrs Wiper should accept the intervention of a member of the Senior Leadership Team in their department until working relationships were restored.

Franklin advised Jameson to write the apologies: it would be worth it to get the mediation. Once Matterface and Wiper received their letters, they went to Watt and refused all intervention. Franklin made angry calls to Watt and Dick Pullen, but the protocol was voluntary. They were within their rights. When Jameson returned to work they ignored her. She lasted a fortnight. The doctor prescribed more Prozac.

Recently, the school has undergone an Ofsted. It was deemed outstanding, and in the paragraph on senior management is written: under the leadership of a very able Headteacher, the school is exceptionally well managed. Its anti-bullying policy was also singled out for praise. Tom Watt has been awarded a CBE, Mrs Wiper promoted to Advanced Skills Teacher, and Matterface  temporarily made Assistant Head.

Katie Jameson spent six weeks in a psychiatric unit. Her first suicide attempt was unsuccessful.  

ON Y VA ?

There was to be a trip to France organised by Arthur Wouldhave. He’d been in the school for three years but resisted insistent pressure from the brittle Subject Leader, Colette Bentham, being anxious about responsibility. At home, he refused to have other people’s children in the house or garden, in case something happened. His little son and daughter were puzzled but played together heedlessly as best they could. What might befall he didn’t see clearly; it was simply an ever-present possibility of disaster and therefore of blame, and his life was organised around avoidance of  both. There would be five members of staff, including Sue Willacy, fifteen years his senior; a woman of stunning beauty whose figure, demeanour, voice and intelligence fascinated him. Though she’d taught in the place for twenty-two years, she’d been passed over for promotion, principally because she spoke her mind. She was one of those people who take the slogans of democracy at face value. When the Head suggested something she thought stupid, she objected. When specious reasons were adduced for an ill-thought-out policy, she would carefully strip them bare in a staff meeting. Given the chance, she would have explained to the Pope the shortcomings of his views on contraception in the expectation of a rational response. The irrationality of power irritated and, at times, infuriated her, but it couldn’t nudge her from her truth-telling trajectory. All the same, watching time-servers and sycophants of dubious talent scurry up the booby-trapped ladder of advancement for more than two decades while she stood as fixed as a star, had wearied her, and a dragging hint of defeat betrayed itself in her slow gestures and considered speech.

When Wouldhave thought of being in St Malo with Sue, he began to lose what he thought of as his moral orientation. A Christian by default, as he would have been a Muslim if raised in Kabul, a Jew in Tel Aviv, a Hindu in Mumbai, a Lutheran in Stockholm and an atheist in Greenwich Village, he believed he believed in the commandments; in fact, like most Christians, he broke, in thought or deed, all of them every week. He couldn’t help imagining the fortuitous circumstance in which he might be able to get his hands on her inviting hips; his imagination took off like a horse before a firework and in seconds she was naked, his palms were on her tits, his tongue wriggling in her fishy cunt, his cock filled her succulent mouth as her diligently filed nails scratched his tight balls.

“Joshua, if you don’t stop that noise now, you can go on the naughty step !” he said as he wiped the kitchen work surface and looked sternly at the four-year-old.

The bemused child looked up with that blank expression which often met Wouldhave’s peremptorily inflicted discipline and which evinced in the father the anxiety he might be raising a psychopath. Jessica was dutiful, compliant, nervous-to-please but her brother had a wild streak: sometimes he would leave his shoes in the hallway, or on occasion even fail to tidy his bed. Wouldhave believed these serious deficiencies were hallmarks of a flawed inheritance: his wife’s father had once been convicted of driving without due care and attention. When this revelation had been jokingly made at an intoxicated family get-together, a small shock ran through him. No-one in his family had ever broken the law. The terrible thought flooded his mind that he’d married into a criminal clan and convinced from the snippets he read in newspapers of the determining power of genetic inheritance, he slumped inwardly at the fearful recognition of an immutable disposition to delinquency.

“Right, that’s enough, Joshua !”

He took the child by his upper arm and led him squawking to the stairs where he forced him onto the bottom step.

“Now you can stay there till you learn to do as you’re told.”

The child’s gasping sobs convinced him he was doing right and later, when from the bedroom came the little boy’s incantation, “Daddy is stupid, daddy is stupid”, on and on for an hour till sleep displaced mockery, he could only conclude that more of the same was going to be needed to stamp some morality onto the dark soul of his son.

He called a meeting. The terrible responsibility of taking forty-three children abroad for four perilous days and the floating possibility of some horrible disaster for which he’d be held responsible, meant everything had to be planned to the final detail. Anything which might drift for a second from his control filled him with the dread of perdition. Sue was the last to arrive, sauntering in with her usual nonchalance as if time didn’t exist and the congealed tragedies of the ages were mere bagatelles. It had to be decided who should look after the money. Wouldhave had talked to Sue about this and she’d said:

“Oh, give it out. That’s what I always did when I ran my trips to Rome. I gave everyone their whack of lira and said ‘That’s yours. Do what you like with it.’ That way, people are independent and if they fancy a coffee or a beer can get one. Nothing worse than keeping the other staff dependent.”

Wouldhave nodded politely but his heart filled with horror.

“I’m taking some of my own money,” he said. “Just in case I run out.”

“Spend my own money on a school trip ! God, Arthur, I’m not paying for the privilege of looking after forty-three manic teenagers.”

He reflected. Sue’s easy-going ways made him shrink like a slug before salt. Yes, he could simply divide the amount allocated by five and distribute it, but what if someone squandered their allowance?  Or supposing they were frugal and brought most of it home. A parent might find out; they could protest; this was the pupils’ money after all; there might be an investigation; would it be against the law ?; could he be taken to court ? Strict control of the funds was essential.

“Veronica, I’d like you to take charge of the money. The children will get an amount at breakfast each morning and the staff fund will be your responsibility.”

Veronica Toulmin, brisk, sharp, loud and loquacious was one of those young professionals, narrow in imagination and wide in ambition who impress by sycophancy, mistaking their compliance for courage and conformism for originality. At twenty-six she was an Assistant Head, strutting the corridors and paths like a starling after worms. Wouldhave believed in her because he believed in hierarchy.

“Also, Veronica, I’d like you to be in charge of toilet supervision. At the airport for example, if you can count the girls in and out. And Sean and I will do the same for the boys.”

This particular duty struck Wouldhave as especially important. The image of boys and girls stampeding to the facilities never to reappear turned his bowels to liquid. There was bedroom duty too, and mealtime duty. Who would pour milk onto the cornflakes at breakfast ? He pictured the pupils quietly seated, their bowls of dry cereal before them, as staff went round with jugs dispensing just the right amount.

“Can’t they pour their own milk ?” said Sue.

Despite his infatuation , and notwithstanding his violent impulse to possess as he looked into her oceanic blue eyes, this subversive intervention set running his internal clock of catastrophe. He saw them fighting over the provision. Someone was bound to take too much. They would tussle and snatch. A jug would smash to the floor. Someone would grab a viciously sharp ceramic weapon and slit the throat of his rival. Knives would be sunk into viscera. The shameful sound of sirens would fill his distressed ears. Riot police would rush into the dining hall with automatic weapons. Bullets would ricochet from the walls. It would be on international news: the bodies being stretchered out, the tearful girls clinging to one another.

“I think it’s better if one of us takes charge,” he said.

“I’ll do it,” said Veronica with a little wiggle of her torso and a compulsive straightening of her blouse.

“I can give a hand,” said Laurie Rainford.

“Thanks, Laurie. That’ll be fine then, if Laurie and Veronica look after milk at breakfast.”

Wouldhave had absolute faith in Veronica because she’d done what she had to do to gain promotion and was, therefore, the kind of woman who in every circumstance would do what she had to. As for Laurie, he was the NQT, willing but inexperienced and given the run around by pupils preparing for careers in annoyance. But Veronica would bully him and he’d do what he was told because he was ambitious and afraid.

“Nat, will you do bedroom duty? Make sure everyone’s in their room at the appointed time and the rest of us will patrol the corridors till they’re asleep.”

Nodding and smiling, Nat Penny agreed, as he would have had he asked him to wipe their noses or wash their underwear. On a temporary contract and breaking his spine to bend over backwards for the management, he agreed to anything. When an unruly pupil disrupted his lesson and spent the time doing nothing, he wrote in the child’s monitoring diary: Excellent lesson ! He worked really hard for the whole hour. To do otherwise was to risk the disapprobation of the Head, whose agreement with the government’s propaganda was so categorical he believed teachers were the enemies of learning and disruptive pupils merely misunderstood and presenting badly.

The meeting dragged anxiously through every possible contingency. What if someone was sick on the coach ? What if someone was late back after a stop on the motorway ? What if someone got lost ? What if someone developed an allergy ? What if someone was homesick?  What if someone complained to their parents ! Of all the fears that crowded in on Wouldhave’s tortured consciousness, this was the worst. A complaining parent could end a teacher’s career as easily as Stalin could end a dissenter’s life. Parents, now customers of the education service, consumers to be satisfied like visitors to the local massage parlour must be treated with the terrified respect accorded to funnel web spiders and komodo dragons.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to go,” said Sue.

“Yes, sorry. We have overrun a bit haven’t we ?” said Wouldhave.

Sue picked up her handbag and left without further fuss as Wouldhave looked down at his list and realised they weren’t yet halfway through.

“I think we may need another meeting,” he said.

It didn’t occur to him that for two hours Sue Willacy had sat  listening to responsibilities being attributed to others while she was by-passed like a village of narrow streets by a juggernaut. His interest in having her along was remote from her professional competence, about which he had grave doubts. After all, a woman who works for sixty odd terms and makes no headway must have something wrong with her. His faith in the discerning powers of the system was unflinching. Had Sue been ugly, he wouldn’t  have invited her. But her beauty, like a drug which transforms all perception, melted his criticism, and his brain, robbed of all power of resistance, was flooded with sweet thoughts of intimacy which made him her slave.

The arrangement had been that, leaving at one thirty, they would have the morning off, but when Wouldhave asked the Head he was turned down flat. He didn’t dare protest.

“So I arrive at school at eight thirty and keep going, without a break, till midnight, lose my weekend and will have worked twelve straight days. Does he know he’s breaking EU regulations ?”

Wouldhave always hated it when Sue quoted regulations. He followed management directives like an ant after sugar, but Sue’s objections were always to abuse of rules that protected teachers. His stomach began to feel queasy. His firm convictions oozed like butter in the sun.

“Well, it’s not really work.”

“What is it Arthur ? Up at seven, forty-three kids to kick out of bed and look after till they deign to pull the sheets over their heads at eleven. Is that supposed to be relaxation ?”

“No, I know what you mean. It is work, but we’re not actually in school.”

“If we were I could knock off at three thirty and adjourn for a glass of red. Go back to him, Arthur.  Tell him either he lets me have the morning off or while we’re in France I’m taking the day’s break I’m entitled to.”

“Mmm,” said Wouldhave.

He didn’t mention it again and assumed Sue must have forgotten. Meanwhile, she castigated him for his pusillanimity in one staff-room conversation after another.

The coach arrived an hour early encouraging the pupils to swarm it like the Taliban a lost American. Wouldhave ordered the hordes to retreat, with the success, as Veronica observed, of Cnut.

“A slight rearrangement of letters and you’d be more accurate,” said Sue.

“Get back, get back ! Come on, now ! Out of the way you lads !”

When the voyagers gathered with their elephantine suitcases, dressed in designer tops, trainers, jeans, they looked like petty replicas of airport adults, heading off for the sun on a package designed to make them hand over thousands in return for a little specious glamour, the chance to play at being jet-setters or envied celebrities. These children were ostensibly embarking on an educational visit, but education was as far from their thoughts as a Red Dwarf from earth. They were going on holiday ! Their teachers were couriers and they expected service. They had learnt importunate ways from their consumer parents, people who believed the world came into existence to satisfy their whims; who chafed at every restraint while regretting the excessive liberalism extended to the undeserving; their entitlement to whatever they saw fit was the defining trait of their mentality and they admired in their offspring the ability to manipulate every situation to their own ends.

“Sir !”

“What, Nathan ?”

“Can you lend me a pound ?”

“Why ?”

“I want to go and get a bottle of Coke.”

“You can’t go now !”

“Why not ?”

“Because we’re getting you on the coach. You can’t wander off.”

“Well, will you go and get me a bottle then ?”

“Of course not ! Anyway, you’ve been told. No fizzy drinks on the journey.”

“But I don’t like still drinks.”

“That’s too bad, Nathan. No fizzy drinks !”

“I’ll get one at the motorway services,” said the boy, turning away and Wouldhave couldn’t be bothered to have the last word.

The bald, pot-bellied driver sweated and grunted to pack the luggage in the hold and Wouldhave, wanting to show he was fit and strong, hauled a few bulging cases, leapt up and crawled inside to pack them tight and coming out with too much display of nimbleness caught his forehead on the bodywork, opening a neat one inch gash from which  blood rushed like bees from a hive.

“Look !” called one of the girls, “Wouldhave’s bleeding !”

The children turned and pressed to see the teacher with his reddened hand to his head and a great mocking roar went up which, as it subsided, allowed the chant of “ Loser ! Loser !” to fill the air. The staff went among the youngsters, reprimanding and demanding order, but it was minutes before the last cries disappeared and Wouldhave, an obliquely angled Elastoplast across his brow, could resume his baggage throwing.

“How’s your ‘ead, sir ?” cried one of the lads as he bounced up the steps.

Wouldhave was dutifully counting them on. He checked four times, then asked Sue to check again.

“They’re all here as is goin’ !” she declared having waltzed up and down the aisle.

Wouldhave was tempted to ask her for the number but thought better. They driver pressed the green ignition, the engine stuttered, chugged, belched, a great plume of black smoke choked the waving parents and slowly the coach manoeuvred out of the main gate.

Eleven and a half hours later, after being stewed on a bus, roasted in an airport, pressed on a plane and bumped and swayed along perilous roads in a darkened coach, they fell, staggered and stumbled into the little Hotel Voltaire whose shabbiness was matched only by its lack of space. The bedrooms were reached by a metal spiral staircase that trembled under the weight of Rabelaisian luggage and as Sue pushed her reluctant legs upwards she could feel the swelling in her ankles. When Veronica entered their room, she was surprised to find her colleague flat on the bed with her legs stretched and propped against the wall.

“Expecting company ?”

“My ankles are as puffy as a battered boxer’s eyes.”

Veronica neatly stowed her case, shrugged, brushed the hair from her shoulders, made a tight mouth like a controverted Pope and minced out:

“We’ve got to get the children to bed. It’s chaos out there.”

Out there, was one of the clichés Veronica used excessively and which irritated Sue badly. It seemed to represent some quasi-mystical realm which should be strenuously aspired after: the great out there, full of promise, progress and untold fulfilment. Sue had no belief in mystical realms nor any truck with progress. Resolutely practical, she adhered to a simple principle: avoid suffering. The myriad doctrines and creeds promising improvement which led to death, exploitation, the prison camp, the asylum and the torture chamber struck her as expressions of the same neurosis: an inability to accept limits. Veronica’s out there was nothing but a bunch of unruly, spoilt teenagers who needed to be told what to do by their elders and suffer consequences if they didn’t. She lowered her legs, rubbed her still fattened ankles and went to join her colleagues.

Wouldhave was patrolling the corridors yelping instructions at boys who, for the most part, ignored him the first time, the second time, the third time, till his voice was as strained as a siren. He was one of those people who compensate for sycophancy by exaggerated confidence. He strode with rather stiff legs, he swung his arms as if in the course of a great accomplishment; sorting out a nest of tired, refractory squabbling teenagers, which should have been as routine as shifting a cat from the bird table, became as great a task as circumnavigating the globe on a raft. When Sue appeared a subtle change come over him. He toned down. He tried to smile, but it was as  an advert. He leaned nonchalantly against the wall. She paid him no attention . He mooched, looked for something to do, shouted at a few boys and strode away as if the fate of the universe itself rested up his immediate actions.

The next days passed in a tedium of sweltering coach rides, visits to dull tourist sights, descents into predictable wine cellars or malodorous cheese –making basements. The evening meal in the Hotel Voltaire was chicken nuggets and chips or beefburger and chips followed by some sickly concoction masquerading as tarte au citron or crème caramel. When, on the afternoon of the third day, they found themselves in a pleasant little café overlooking the pool where the pupils were swishing down plastic tubes like building debris to splash furiously into crowded blue water or lining up like innocents before a firing squad to wait for the wave machine to send simulacra of Atlantic breakers to plash against their chests, Sue lifted the menu, saw at once it was real food and went to the counter.  Nat Penny joined her. They ordered salade nicoise, pitta bread, carrés aux pommes, fresh fruit and coffee. It was the first genuine food Sue had tasted since leaving home and relishing its care, intelligence and humanity she had to restrain herself from launching a tirade against the depressing and neglectful stomach-insulting mal bouffe chucked onto plates at the hotel. When the bill had to be paid, Veronica wriggled her upper body, picked the stray hairs from her shoulders and looked out of the window.

“Don’t worry,” said Sue to Nat as he reached into his pocket.

She paid by Visa. Thirty seven euros eighty. Though it was petty, it rankled. Later, when they stopped in  Montreuil for coffee on the way home, Veronica took the order.

“Oh, I’ll have a litte millefeuille with mine,” said Sue. “I hate to drink coffee without something  sweet.”

“I’m not sure we can run to that.”

“Oh, a little cake.”

“But if everyone had one…”

“Are they ?”

“No, just you.”

“Well then, the exchequer can afford it.”

“But I can’t buy you one and not everyone else.”

“No-one else wants one.”

“That’s not the point.”

“The point is Veronica, I’m in France with forty-three kids. I want a cake with my coffee. Is that so outrageous?”

“Arthur’s told me to be careful with the money.”

“Oh, Arthur’s a neurotic little prig. Forget it, I’ll buy my own bloody millefeuille.”

But she didn’t. She bought a complete tarte aux fraises. When it was brought to their terrace table she sliced it and said:

“Doesn’t that look wonderful ! Tuck in everybody.”

Wouldhave, looking put out, said:

“Who paid for that ?”

“The staff kitty,” declared Sue brightly. “Veronica and I thought it would go down nicely, didn’t we ?”

Before the outflanked Veronica could gainsay her, Sue was holding out a little plate to Arthur.

“Here, it’s on the kids. They can afford it the spoilt little darlings.”

He put the confection in front of him as though it contained Semtex.

“How much was it ?”

“Fifty-five euros,” said Sue.

“Fifty-five euros!” protested Wouldhave, leaping to his feet, his face as distraught as a five-year-old whose ice-cream has fallen in the mud. “We can’t afford that !”

“  ‘Course we can.” said Sue. “Sit down before you have a seizure. Eat your pie, it’s delicious.”

“Don’t eat it !” commanded Wouldhave.

Everybody stopped apart from Sue who spooned a chunk into her mouth and chewed ostentatiously.

“It’ll have to go back !”

“But we’ve sliced it, Arthur,” said Veronica.

“Too bad. They can still sell it.”

“Oh !” said Sue, her mouth full and her spoon nipping off another corner, “orgasmic. A real gastronomic orgy.”

“Anyway, Sue’s nearly finished hers !” declared Veronica compulsively shifting her ribcage.

“They can knock something off for that,” said Wouldhave. “Put all the slices back on the plate.”

“Give them to me,” said Sue reaching for the portions, “I’ll eat the bloody lot.”

“You can’t have any more !” yelled Wouldhave.

“I’ll have as much as I like.”

“Put it back on the plate !” he commanded. “That’s school property !”

Sue sat back in her chair and rocked with laughter.

“What did you say ?”

“That’s school property. It was paid for by the staff fund and I control that.”

“Well good for you, Arthur, and I hope you bloody well enjoy yourself. But I paid for it as a matter of fact. So make the best of it everyone before the coffee goes cold.”

“You paid for it ?”

“Sit down for god’s sake, you look like Adolf Hitler waiting to speak at Nuremburg.”

“Did she, Veronica ?”

Veronica tucked her elbows close to her ribs, shivered as if her backside had just been tickled with a feather and nodded.

“Fifty-five euros ?”

“And worth every penny. I’ll have your slice, Arthur, I wouldn’t want you to choke on it.”

“You must be mad,” said Wouldhave. “Spending that much.”

“We can’t be expected to survive on wartime rations.”

Wouldhave sat down as they all relished the dessert. He looked at Sue in utter confusion. She was beautiful and he couldn’t resist her; but he wanted to hate her for having humiliated him.

 Later, the pupils were divided into groups for different after-meal activities. Sue was allocated eight for darts.

“Do you think she’ll cope ?” Wouldhave asked the others.

“It’s only darts,” said Nat.

“Yes, but you now what she’s like. We saw that this afternoon. She’s no control.”

He went to find her.

“Shall I take this group?” he said. “You take a few girls for a walk on the park.”

“Why?” said Sue.

“Darts can be dangerous.”

She looked at him for a second during which he feared she might  leap at his throat.

“I think I’ll manage,” and she turned her back.

That night there was a kerfuffle: four of the girls claimed the toilet in their room was leaking. Nat Penny investigated, wiped the floor dry and concluded the water was coming from the shower because the girls didn’t close the curtain properly.

“This is a health and safety matter !” declared Wouldhave as if a case of yellow fever had just been confirmed.

“But the toilet isn’t leaking, Arthur,” offered Nat timidly.

“We can’t take any chances. We’ll have to demand a change of rooms.”

He spoke to the patron, M.Pardessus, who bore an uncanny likeness to Stefan Grappelli, was almost bald but such hair as he retained had let grow long and greasy, and chained smoked Gauloise, blowing the smoke diligently towards his interlocutor. Wouldhave talked of maladie sérieuse, santé menacée, poursuites légales, while Pardessus shrugged, turned down the corners of his mouth, spread wide his hands, and puffed. All the same, an alternative room was found, the bedding was shifted and Wouldhave sat in the bar with his demi panaché, waxing about how a serious catastrophe had been avoided.

The following morning he went in his pyjama bottoms into the empty room. The floor was dry as gunpowder. Everything would have to be moved back. He was standing between two beds when Sue entered on her get-them-out-of-bed round.

“Oh, no-one in this room ?” she said.

“No, this was the one we had to evacuate.”

He became suddenly viciously self-conscious. His upper body was bare. Did she notice how trim he was ? He pulled in his stomach. The few black hairs on his chest, which he’d always considered a potent symbol of his masculinity, seemed laughably inadequate. He put his hands on his hips. Sue was a few feet from him, surveying the room. She was wearing a white blouse with a little stiff, raised, winged collar, and her cleavage so full and visible was an invitation to bliss. His cock began to throb and stiffen and with nothing to hold it back but his flimsy pants, bulged ludicrously. Sue turned and looked at him, lowered her eyes to the little boy’s protuberance, fixed him in the eyes and left.

Wouldhave dashed to his room, pulled on his clothes and went briskly along the landings:

“Come on you lot, you’re going to miss breakfast at this rate!”

The return journey was terrible: the coach broke down and the mechanics took three hours to arrive. The problem identified, they shrugged with Gallic insouciance, retired to the local brasserie for oeufs plat jambon and un verre rouge, and an hour later began their slow artistry. The ferry was delayed for bad weather; pupils were sick on all the decks, in the bar, the cafeteria on one another and over Wouldhave’s suede shoes. One of them was mugged by a hoodie in the motorway services, his money, his ipod, his mobile all gone and his tears flowing like the Loire in spate. When Wouldhave arrived home weary, hungry and curiously flat his wife said:

“Well, how did it go ?”

“Fine,” he said, “fine,” dropping his bag in the hallway. “The pupils behaved very well, as they always do if I’m in charge. But the staff…..”

“Really ? What have they been up to ?”

“Not all of them. But Sue Willacy, she’s a very awkward woman.”

“Oh, her. What was it this time ?”

He went slowly to the kitchen, shaking his head.

“Do you know what she did ?”

He was leaning against the work surface his wife facing him, her arms folded across her breast. A painful idea struck him:  though she was almost pretty and in the right light could be mistaken for nearly good-looking, she couldn’t come anywhere near Sue’s overwhelming physical beauty. He was on the verge of tears and wanted to accuse her. But of what ? He had no idea.

“Well ?” she said.

“You won’t believe it,” he uttered. “You won’t believe it.”

He pulled himself to his full height and threw back his shoulders hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him.

“We were in this café and you’ll never guess what she bought…………..”

SUBJECTIVE EVIDENCE 

There was no doubt in Jackson Carrick’s mind about the superiority of public school education, but having been through Westminster and Balliol, he knew the kind of unthinking , vulgar Toryism such a background could produce; just as stupid and offensive as the thoughtless, reductive Marxism he considered characteristic of some Trade Unionists. In keeping with what he judged traditional British moderation, he placed himself in the middle. He would never have supported abolition of private schools, but the masses deserve their chance; they must be educated too.  The comprehensive system was a solution, though he hedged his bets by keeping it at arm’s length; he was prepared to work in it, but only in ex-grammar, Church of England, voluntary maintained schools, places with one foot in the later twentieth century and the other in the Middle Ages. He thought himself very liberal. His mentality was almost that of a teenager brought up to believe in god, Anglicanism, the monarchy, the Tory Party and the virtuousness of every middle-class habit, who, reading The Catcher In The Rye and The Road To Wigan Pier at eighteen  thinks he’s revolutionary because he finds Holden Caulfield’s disaffection attractive and Orwell’s style impressive.

The fear which haunted him about his choice of career was stagnation: he knew there were teachers who failed or were denied before they’d hardly begun  and spent twenty or thirty miserable years doing the same thing in the same room before retiring exhausted at sixty and dropping dead two years later, more or less of chagrin. He absolutely must be a Headteacher. The only way to be sure was to make categorical agreement with the system: he would exceed all his colleagues in diligent conformism and he would push. Though he knew his school and alma mater were probably enough to see him through, he wasn’t a man to leave anything to chance. The thought of getting stuck on the Deputy Head rung woke him up in a sweat. On the other hand, the idea a school under his control, funded by the taxpayer, run by the Local Authority but actually controlled by a compliant governing body he’d manipulate to create his own little fiefdom, filled him with ease and delight.

Of course, a Headteacher must have a wife.

The devastating ecstasy of falling in love struck him as unseemly; instead he thought of choosing a wife as akin to choosing a car. Once all the specifications had been checked, however, he permitted himself a little access of wildness ; he went to church without a tie; he kissed her on the cheek in public; he neglected to clean his shoes for two days. Sarah was a vicar’s daughter, gentle, kind and very correct. Her own ambitions to make her way in law would have to be set aside of course. She would make a perfect Headteacher’s wife.

It took him nine years and seventeen applications to achieve his ambition; for a terrible eighteen months after he’d failed at his sixth interview, he thought he wasn’t going to scale the last peak. He became depressed and overwhelmed by a sense of being thwarted and denied; the system was working against him, decisions were being made on eccentric grounds; for all six jobs he’d been convinced he was the best candidate. Especially galling was that people from the State sector and red brick universities were chosen. He began to feel his privileged background was weighing against him as the Labour hegemony after 1964 and the curious open atmosphere of the time, dissolved deference. Were Headteachers and governing bodies, mindful of the new settlement, favouring candidates from less rarefied conditions ? At the thought that his accent, demeanour, all the obvious concomitants of his upper middle class origins were being used against him, a sneer of hurt and opposition appeared on his lips. The idea made him aggressive. He almost wanted to sarcastically insult the next Head who refused him.

Salvation came from a school in the north.

It was a desperately difficult decision.

“But will we feel at home in Yorkshire ?” said Sarah.

“Oh, the school is middle-class, we’ll live in a good area. We may even buy a nice big place in the Dales. You can keep busy in the church. You’ll get to know all the best Anglicans in the West Riding.”

All the same, Sarah lay awake. The school might serve a middle-class area, but it was no more than two miles from the centre of the old, industrial town. When they visited, she found nothing to charm her and the Saturday streets were full of grey-faced people in cheap clothes carrying cut-price shopping in plastic bags and piling onto overcrowded buses. Her terrible fear was of her children mixing with them. And they were still young; would they pick up the vulgar Yorkshire accent ? But to all her worries and protestations Carrick replied they would be in the town but not of the town.

“The middle-classes make their own community wherever they go,” he said. “It’s a community of property. The house prices will keep us out of reach of the riff-raff.”

“I think that’s bit old-fashioned, Jackson. Labour are in power and the gap is closing. Coal miners and all kinds of people can afford houses in the suburbs.”

“We aren’t going to live in a Barratt house made for the masses, dear. We’ll find a commuter village full of professional people.”

They bought a five-bedroomed, dark stone ex-rectory with an acre of garden in a pretty little place where some of the houses were thatched and the plaques for the best kept village in England were displayed in the community hall. Jackson soon settled into school, establishing the fixed routine which was his mainstay: up at exactly six-thirty, breakfast ( cereal, bacon, egg, tomato and fried bread, orange juice and Darjeeling) at exactly six forty-five, fifteen minutes with the Guardian (he thought himself very progressive when he gave up the Telegraph), ten minutes in the bathroom, five minutes to put the finishing touches to his appearance ( he styled himself on the typical bank manager which he thought spoke of subdued power and unobtrusive confidence) and departure at seven thirty to arrive at school on the dot of eight; a quick eye at the mail; whole school assembly on Monday and Tuesday; coffee and biscuits prepared by his secretary at exactly eleven; back to work at eleven thirty; in the car at half past midday and home for one to eat the meal Sarah would have steaming on the table a minute before his arrival; leave home at half-past one to be in his study for two ( lunch  was officially one hour and ten minutes but he decided to establish the two-hour break in his first week and to any objection responded that he spent half an hour working at home) ; necessary phone calls and letters in the afternoon with a pause at three fifteen for tea and ginger cake ( his favourite since a boy as his grandmother made it for him and heavy, succulent parcels arrived regularly at school); all serious work finished by four; a little gentle tidying of his study and perhaps a quiet stroll ( once all the pupils had left) around the school; in his car again at four thirty and home for an hour’s regimented play with the children before eating at six. Disruptions such as meetings at County Hall, interviewing, discussions with worried or obstreperous parents, always put him in a tight little temper, as did perceived slights to his authority, untidiness, colleagues who didn’t clean their shoes or press their trousers and any attempt at open discussion of school policy. He quickly learned to keep few records, to say one thing here and another there, but as a matter of principle, to divulge as little as possible and at every chance, to use his access to information, especially figures, to confuse and confound any questioning.

His fiefdom was established. He reigned supreme.

The final appointment of his predecessor was Cal Chorlton, an English teacher who got the post because the previous appointee had given backword, it was July and they were desperate. In the welcoming letter left for him, Carrick read:

Keep an eye on Chorlton. I wouldn’t have appointed him unless I’d had to. He’d probably be more suited to an urban comprehensive where the standards are lower and traditions weaker.

Carrick hadn’t been in the school for three weeks when, on one of his rare excursions from his study, he passed by the staffroom and found a dozen boys milling and Chorlton disappearing through the door. At once, Harry Archer’s warning came to mind and he followed the young man.

“What are these boys doing out here ?” he asked sternly, clenching into a stick of disapproval.

“I don’t know,” replied Chorlton turning to him his hands still in his pockets.

“What do you mean, you don’t know ?”

“They’re nothing to do with me.”

“Aren’t they your class ?”

“No.”

“Well, where should you be teaching ?”

“I’m on a free.”

Knowing he’d made a mistake and should apologise, Carrick fought to maintain his stiffness, turned on his heels and left, saying nothing to the boys who were starting to shift into that giddy, mischief-seeking mood of all bored children. In his study, he rationalised: though he’d been in the wrong, Chorlton was clearly suspect: he’d walked past the boys without speaking to them;  kept his hands in his pockets and, worst of all,  exuded that cockiness, that devil-may-careism of nonchalant youth and disaffected intellectuals which had no place in a right-of-centre, Christian, ex-grammar school.

Over the next two years, Carrick found no significant reason to dislike or find fault with Chorlton. He was perfectly amenable and got on with his job without fuss, but all the same there was something about him. When he’d interviewed him, as he did all the staff, during his first two terms, to get to know them better, he’d asked about his education and the fact he’d been to a secondary modern which he left at sixteen. It turned out he’d joined the merchant navy as a ship’s radio officer travelling the world for two years; given that up and taken a variety of little jobs to keep going while boosting his qualifications at night-school and finally finding his way to university, having discovered during the long hours off shift at sea, the writers who remained his favourites: Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Carson McCullers. This odd trajectory troubled Carrick. He thought teachers should arrive at their careers through the standard route. Shortly after interviewing Chorlton he had a dream: the young man was on the deck of ship tossing in high seas, the waves crashed over him and he laughed; the ship pitched ferociously and he stood with his hands in his pockets; then he was below deck in his bunk swigging rum and reading Crime and Punishment while a dark-skinned, native girl with bare breasts and a grass skirt performed smilingly a sinuous dance in front of him; suddenly he was in an exam room, his feet on the desk smoking and drinking as the invigilator’s shoes squeaked on the polished floor and in no time in a lecture theatre in his naval officer’s uniform, kissing the beautiful girl beside him as the professor spoke about the importance of Pilgrim’s Progress to the English mentality. 

He noticed how Chorlton would slouch in an armchair in the staffroom, how he leant on the wall at the rear of the hall during assembly, his hands in his pockets, and on more than one occasion, passing through, he found him in what seemed intimate or at least over-friendly conversation with one or other female member of staff. Carrick was one of those men, so nervous of women, he interpreted the most passing, insignificant contact as a prelude to inevitable physical relations; but Chorlton talked with women as if the difference between the sexes didn’t exist and this insouciance raised in Carrick’s mind the dreadful suspicion of serial infidelity. Was there any evidence of affairs ? Carrick believed in what he called subjective evidence. In spite of his expensive, exclusive education he thought subjective meant mental or belonging to the mind and its operations, and he considered the evidence of his mind as good as any other. If his thoughts told him Chorlton was sexually flexible, relaxed, untroubled, careless of middle-class niceties, a man who seemed to go his own way and make his own decisions ( a tendency Carrick viewed, in spite of his philosophical belief in the freedom of the individual, as dangerous), what further evidence could be required? Wasn’t that the point, after all, of appointing men like himself ? Wasn’t it the raison d’etre of hierarchy ? The entire significance of having power concentrated in a few hands, was so those who held it could make decisions according to their perceptions. Subjective decisions. The purpose of democracy, of course, was merely to provide the masses with the illusion of influence; the real decisions were made behind closed doors at the end of long, quiet corridors which only people like himself should have access to. In this way, Carrick believed, society mirrored the structure of the universe where god presided and nothing happened without his setting it in train. God, like himself, was a great believer in tidiness and order.

Shortly before the Easter holiday of his second year, Chorlton came to ask for a reference.

“I don’t have time to discuss it now,” said Carrick who was locking his door to leave for lunch.

“Oh, it won’t take a minute,” said Chorlton.

“Come and see me tomorrow,” said Carrick, turning his back.

He was aware, as he headed outside, of the younger man still standing at his door. Annoyed that he’d been pestered a few minutes before the lunch bell, he was also disturbed by the thought of having to write a reference for Chorlton and began to rehearse a little diatribe of rejection:

“You’ve only been teaching two years and that’s far to little to assume responsibility for a department..”

But what if Chorlton was applying for some second-in-department job? He would use exactly the same formula.

“A second-in-department isn’t a sinecure. It’s an important position which requires judgement and poise. With only two years teaching behind you, terrible mistakes are possible which could make you a laughing stock and set back your career..”

He thought this particularly clever: to hold back Chorlton’s advancement by claiming to be concerned for it.

“It’s my responsibility to see only the right people get promoted. To advance people too quickly is as foolish as to hold them back. You deserve your chance, but you haven’t proved yourself. You need to ensure that you advertise your skills to me and that you make clear your willingness to do your duty as a teacher…”

At this point, he was thinking of making some oblique comment about Chorlton’s behaviour towards women. On more than one occasion he’d been seen leaving school in Mrs Tyler’s car at lunchtime. Where did they go ? What did they get up to ? Did they have the time and opportunity ? It infuriated Carrick who liked staff to be running the chess club or taking swimming or netball turnouts during the break. He took it as a personal insult because if Chorlton had been sufficiently deferential, he would have sensed disapprobation. Once again, Carrick thought of god who remained silent and inscrutable while insisting on strict adherence to his will.

But the next day Chorlton didn’t arrive.

When the written request for a reference appeared in the post, Carrick set it aside in a withheld fury. What was Chorlton up to ? Was it a deliberate slight ? Had he refused to come to see him as an insult ? Was he trying to humiliate him ? He knew the fair thing to do was to call him in, tell him the request had arrived and discuss it, but he had no inclination to fairness in the face of insubordination. He sat behind his broad, tidy desk, picked up his fountain pen and in the uneven, rather immature hand which as a teenager he tried to modify in the direction of floridity, wrote on a piece of headed paper:

To whom it may concern: re Mr C.Chorlton.

Mr Chorlton began teaching English with us in September 1978. While his classroom performance has been satisfactory and he passed his probationary year without problems, I feel he is not yet ready for promotion to the position of Second in Department. He has as yet assumed no responsibility within the department, nor has he made an extra-curricular contribution which could be considered consonant with the ambition to lead. His relations with pupils are generally good and he is both respected and liked. He has good classroom discipline and keeps his charges interested and working. Progress in all the classes he teaches has been at least at the expected level. Relations with his colleagues are also positive, though we would sound a note of caution over his occasional over-familiarity with female staff. Mr Chorlton does not always show sufficient sensitivity to the high standards demanded of teachers in their personal lives and we feel this is a significant barrier. He is also sometimes negligent in his personal attire and his demeanour can be less than punctiliously professional. While we feel that with attention to these shortcomings Mr Chorlton may in a few years be a candidate for greater responsibility, at present we believe he is unprepared for the demands of a leading role within a department.

He was very pleased with his style. He felt less than punctiliously professional particularly well-phrased.

“Mrs Jent, can you come and take some dictation, please ?”

The dutiful, demure secretary scribbled her sudden shorthand as he read.

“Type it today please, bring it to me for signing and be sure it goes in the post, first class.”

Mrs Jent, a model of discretion, left the typed letter on the corner of her desk while she and the other ancillary staff had their break and that evening said to her husband:

“You should’ve seen the reference I had to write for Cal Chorlton today !”

Three weeks later, in the morning, five minutes before his coffee, there came an importunate knock on Carrick’s door. He was inclined to push the button and light up his engaged sign, but goaded by the urgency called:

“Come in !”

Chorlton evinced none of the nervous respect Carrick liked to discern on staff coming into the sanctum sanctorum and on his face was the frank, determined resolution of a man who won’t be fobbed off.

“What can I do for you, Cal ? Please sit down.”

Chorlton perched on the edge of the chair, his elbows on his knees, as if, Carrick thought, he were chatting to a friend in the pub.

“Yes.”

“I heard from the school I applied to yesterday.”

“Oh, good.”

“I rang to ask the Head for a debrief.”

“A debrief ?”

“It’s becoming more common. You get told about the shortcomings in your application.”

Carrick made a face of what-do-I-care approval, as if such practices belonged on a distant planet.

“Apparently you told them I’m over-familiar with female colleagues.”

“That’s right.”

“What evidence do you have of that ?”

“The evidence of my eyes.”

“Sorry ?”

“Do you still go out for lunch with Mrs Tyler ?”

“What if I do ?”

“I only ask.”

“Are you suggesting I can’t be promoted because I have a sandwich and a chat with Mrs Tyler now and again ?”

“Not at all, but there’s a propriety which must be observed.”

“Which is ?”

Carrick’s chin rose, the corners of his mouth tugged downwards, he looked towards the window beyond which stretched the playing fields bordered by tall old trees swaying in the breeze, trees that were here long before himself, whose age, stateliness and beauty spoke of the centuries the school had existed. In comparison to them and to the rest of the school grounds, Chorlton seemed insignificant, a vulgarity sprung from the backstreets of the town unable to adjust his common ways.

“Do you think it isn’t noticed by the pupils, married members of staff leaving in a car together ?”

“I’m sure they notice. So what ?”

“Don’t you think it might play on their unformed imaginations ?”

“Mr Carrick, are you telling me you’ve blocked my promotion because you believe married men and women should never be seen in one another’s company?”

“You’re exaggerating Cal. I’m talking only about the context of this school.”

“In this context can’t married men and women socialise without an assumption of adultery ?”

 “I’m not suggesting any such thing.”

“So what do you mean ?”

“I mean there’s a way of behaving that’s expected in an establishment like this. We aren’t a comprehensive serving a council estate. There’s an expectation we’ll uphold a set of standards: smart dress, professional demeanour, care in our choice of social activities and places we visit, avoidance of any behaviour which could give rise to suspicion of….”

“I’m not in the army.”

Carrick stopped short and fixed his interlocutor.

“No, but in a way we’re under the same kind of regime. We’re servants of the State and the Church and this school has always been resolutely on the right of the political spectrum.”

“Why are you introducing politics ?”

“We have to be mindful of the constituency from which our parents are drawn. Many of them are people of property. We must be careful not to offend their sensibilities.”

“And I offend them ?”

“I’m not saying that ?”

“It isn’t very clear to me what you are saying, except you have a vague feeling that I don’t fit or come from the wrong side of the tracks or something…”

“Not at all. It’s a question of your being ready to assume responsibility.”

“What’s that got to do with Mrs Tyler ?”

“Nothing directly, but there’s a certain way of doing things which goes with taking a leading role.”

“A certain way of doing things ? Mr Carrick, I have a contract of employment. I come here to do job. You seem to be saying my contract extends into my private life. Are you going to tell me what I should do with my Saturday nights ?”

“Your private life is entirely your own affair.”

“My lunchtimes are my private life. I’m not paid for them. It’s no different from a Sunday afternoon. It’s my time. Why should you cite that as a reason for putting a brake on my career ?”

“That’s disingenuous. You have to leave the site and it’s accepted that five minutes after the bell is still school time.”

“I’m happy to wait six minutes.”

“Facetiousness isn’t appropriate,Cal”

“Is it appropriate you write a reference which scuppers my chances of a decent promotion?”

“You didn’t come to see me about it.”

“I did, but you were going for lunch.”

“Yes, and I asked you to come back the following day. Did you forget?”

“I knocked on your door. There was no answer.”

Carrick flicked his eyes down to his desk. Was it true ? Had he switched on the engaged sign ?

“Yes,” he said, looking up, “I suspected that might be the case.”

“Are you saying the reference might have been different if I’d spoken to you ?”

“Not at all.”

“Supposing I find another post. Will you support me ?”

Carrick entwined his fingers and looked towards the window, as if for inspiration.

“Come to see me and we’ll  put together a platform.”

Chorlton seemed to hesitate. For a second, he stared back at Carrick as if he were about to get to his feet and attack him; but without a murmur he sprang up and left, swiftly, quietly, decisively. Carrick rocked against the flexible back of his chair ? A little devil of anxiety ran through him. Had he done anything he could be held to account for ? He’d been badly caught out over the business of not being in his office; but was Chorlton telling the truth ? Why did he come back only once ? Obviously he was lying! He’d been right all along: Chorlton was untrustworthy, the wrong type. Carrick began to fill with a sense of his superior judgement. He new how to pick people out and how to spot the subtle signs of unworthiness; he knew where merit lay and how it should be rewarded; and what pleased him most of all, what filled him with pride and justification, what made him pour the dark, aromatic, afternoon coffee from the white, thin-necked, bulbous-bodied pot into his neat china cup with particular relish, was knowing all he needed was subjective evidence.

A SOUND INVESTMENT

The next day she began clearing his room. From the narrow wardrobe which she’d known since childhood, she took the brown and navy, tobacco-reeking suits and the tan shoes whose soles he mended over and over on his iron last. The dark chest of drawers was emptied of shirts and underwear; in the top left-hand drawer she found his papers. His will was in a simple, rectangular, unsealed manilla envelope on which he’d written in his looping hand: Last Will and Testament. Bert Dallas.   What shocked her was the building society book: £10,573 16s and 9d. She sat down in his armchair. How long had it taken? At once she wondered if Alice, Henry and Alf would get their share. She pulled out the will and tried to read without glasses. Getting up hurriedly she brought them from the neighbouring room. Even so, the language defeated her. She read through it once and had to begin again. Finally, she came to the clause: “All accumulated monies….to my daughter, Patience Derwent.” Her excitement was followed quickly by guilt. She ran up to her bedroom, put the documents in her dressing table and continued her work.

When everything was settled, she decorated the living-room. Hanging paper she found too difficult, so she emulsioned. She paid for a fitted green carpet with a beautiful gold and brown floral motif and bought a three piece suite to match;  when she sat in the armchair, alone, with a cup of tea and the evening paper, she had the feeling that at last life had done her a kindness. Her son came home from his hated office job. She heard him in the hallway, hanging up his coat and taking off his shoes. The familiar click and he popped his head inside:

“Our Billy in ?”

“No,” she replied without shifting her eyes from the paper.

He closed the door and she listened to his quick feet on the stairs. Once, the sound of him around the house had been her joy; now he was a stranger. She went to the kitchen to make his meal. He ate in the same room, at a square, dark-stained table pushed against the wall because the back room he used for his music. Sometimes she lay in bed and thought that he had more space in the house and her irritation made her resent him; but she had indulged him and now found it impossible to retreat. He ate the corned beef hash eagerly, pouring brown sauce and mashing with his fork; he lifted little heaps of the stew onto his folded bread and bit into it lavishly. When he’d finished, she took away his plate and brought him his mug of tea, as he liked it, almost black, with the merest  drop of milk and no sugar. He turned on the television and sat on the sofa as she read through the death notices for the third time. After an hour, he went into the back room and began on the guitar; she plumped a cushion, spread out on the sofa and, with the television still on, drifted into sleep.

There were repairs to be carried out and proud of her practicality and providence, she had the rotting window frames replaced and painted brown and cream, the cracked slates removed and the pointing done. In a fit of excess, she bought a new gas cooker, though the old was serviceable, and each time she used it, experienced a little thrill of extravagance. Billy, who at eleven had never had a new bike, she treated to a blue racer with ten gears. Yet when she’d paid for everything , there was still £8,800 . She wondered if she was now rich. She considered putting it in the Post Office because it was responsible and secure. One day she saw an advert for private investments in the paper and her heart skipped; her mind filled with pictures of Stock Exchange dealers, bankers in dark blue Saville Row suits, black Rolls Royces in the Mall and other parts of the capital she had visited only once as a child. She considered giving it to a charity or the church but the parable of the widow’s mite came back to her and she felt ashamed that perhaps she was trying to buy grace. Sometimes she woke in the early hours, her head full of odd, frightening dreams of exorbitant wealth, eternal damnation, speculation and ruin. For months she left it in the building society and tried not to think about it. Nevertheless, when she opened her brown wage packet on a Thursday and saw that for her wearying forty hours in the canteen she’d earned £9 17s 3d, she thought of her little fortune and wondered if she couldn’t give up work.

After tea, when Billy was out on the park with his pals and Paul not yet home from work, she sat down with a pencil and paper. She was fifty-two. At five hundred  a year her windfall wouldn’t be exhausted by pension age. But how much was the pension ? Would she manage ? And what if the roof needing replacing or the gutters collapsed ? Then if she spent it all there would be nothing to leave for the boys; and how long would she live ? If she went on to seventy or seventy-five or even eighty, might she need the money ? She put the paper aside with a sense of defeat. The responsible thing was to go on for another eight years and let the money grow; but the thought of work was barbed wire round her heart. She served meals to the men from the shop floor, wiped the tables, cleaned the floors, filled the salt cellars and  vinegar shakers. She was a dogsbody. Terrified of making a mistake, of being reprimanded or sacked, she was extravagantly conscientious; but no-one noticed. The effort left her weary, the fear drained her, the daily humiliation robbed her of worth.

She’d thought marriage would save her. When the war ended and Stan was demobbed, they lived first of all with her parents in their two-up, two-down. But he had a go-getting spirit and though she disapproved, she was glad when he landed a job as manager of a shoe shop and they could afford to rent. After two years they’d saved enough to buy and the modest self-sufficiency pleased her. The house was decent and big enough for a family. There was even a good-sized yard where they could grow fuchsias and begonias in pots. But Stan pushed ahead, always ingratiating himself with the big-wigs; he moved to a regional position. They bought a three-bedroomed in the suburbs. He got a black Wolsey with the job. She disliked his impatience to climb and his desire for more and better, but all the same, she had a good home for her children. She didn’t need to work. The area was stable, secure, the schools were good and there was a Congregational Church close by.

Then one Monday, putting the clothes in the tub, she found red lipstick on his shirt.

She took it to living-room and sat down with it in her hands. For an hour she reviewed carefully the time they’d spent together over the past week. She hadn’t kissed him and in any case, she didn’t have the shade. She saw the house sold, she and the boys going back to her mother’s, the poverty of her childhood returned. She would have to work. What could she do ? She had no skill or qualification. Her children’s lives would be ruined. Their father was on the side of the devil. She wept and wanted to hide away. When she confronted him he denied it but later, half contrite and half couldn’t-care-less, he confessed. It had happened only once. She was young and had thrown herself at him day after day. Finally, he’d given in. It meant nothing. Her mind filled with images of hordes of young women with neat waists. She responded with the absolutism of her faith. There were moments when she calmed down and it seemed forgivable, but at once she summoned her adherence to the ten commandments; he was expelled; the settlement gave her the house and he was free of further support. She lived in poverty in the affluent suburb and a terrible gloom descended on the home; no visitors ever came; the boys weren’t allowed to let their friends over the threshold; she worked, cooked, cleaned and slept; she had no friends; another husband was out of the question.

When her mother died, her father moved in because he was incapable of keeping house. His little terrace in the mean streets sold for £1,600. He offered it her but she told him to bank it. Though they barely spoke, she was reassured by his presence; the boys loved him because he was quiet and kind, took them to watch football and gave them pocket money.

She had lived without a man since the age of thirty-seven and though at times the lack of intimacy troubled her, what caused her pain was the shame. She was the only woman she knew who had divorced, the only woman therefore, she assumed, whose husband had betrayed her. Frequently before the boys, she let fly:

“If your father had been a proper husband….” or  “If your father hadn’t gone the way of the devil….”

If only her husband had been more like her own.

Her nephew, the son of her elder sister who sent her a card at Christmas, had become successful as a painter. There was to be an exhibition locally and some of his canvases would be on show. She thought of him as a baby, when she’d looked after him so his mother could work; a mischievous, cheeky little boy she’d loved him as her own and in her trance of retrospection she heard his sweet, soft voice: Aunty Patty! Aunty Patty! Though she had no interest in the arts, she went along to show support. She would send Jimmy a card:

Dear Jimmy,

                                 I went to see your paintings at the gallery. I thought they were very good. You always were good at drawing. I hope this finds you well.

                                                                   Love,

                                                                    Aunty Patience.

When she visited the exhibition, however, she was shocked to find the canvases were for sale. There were two by Jimmy, one for £300 and another for £200, but some of the others were £500, £800, £1,000. She went outside and sat on a bench to eat the cheese sandwich she’d made. There was a weak sun which warmed her mildly through her good grey coat. People were coming and going. How nice life was if you didn’t have to work. But she rebelled at the thought of her own laziness until a thought calmed her: working hard she didn’t mind, but being employed brought her pain. She thought of her work in the canteen and of her £9 a week and was stunned to think people could earn so much for a painting. When she went back in, she stood before each work for a long while. Most of them she disdained; she couldn’t understand  a painting which didn’t show a nice scene; but a portrait held her attention because the face was full of kindness and she said to herself that was real painting because you felt you knew the person. She wrote to Jimmy:

Dear Jimmy,

                                 I’ve been to see the exhibition and I think your paintings are very good. I don’t understand them but I suppose they aren’t for simple people like me. I would like to buy them and also the picture of the man with the blue eyes and the white shirt. Can you tell me how I should go about it ? I hope this finds you well.

Love,

Aunty Patience.

Jimmy came to see her. He still had his crooked little smile and the creasing around his eyes before he laughed. She explained she’d been left a little money by his grandfather and the paintings had made her think. Would they be a good investment ? He told her he was a very minor artist and his work would never be worth much, but Patrick Wardman, who did the portrait, was up-and-coming. All the same, a thousand pounds was a lot of money; did she want to risk it ? She clasped her fingers as she asked if it might lose value.

“Oh no,” he said. “It won’t lose value, not in long run. Keep it ten or fifteen years and it’ll be worth a lot more.”

Her mind dissolved at the thought of a lot more, but she felt she’d been sensible: buying Jimmy’s work was an act of kindness, the other she hoped would help her a little in retirement.

The two abstracts hung in the hallway where the light never made them noticeable, but the portrait she put in an alcove of the living-room; when she was alone in the evening she would study the face and attribute a life to the subject. Such a man could have been her husband; she knew from the look in his eyes he would be incapable of cruelty.

She worked on to retirement and they had a collection which raised enough to buy her a pair of candlesticks: she wanted something that would last and candles reminded her of her infant days, before the gaslights. Everyone signed a card, which she thought very kind, and sometimes, grateful for the friendly words and the compliments on how well she’d done her job, she almost missed the menial tasks. Her little horde, though it accumulated interest slowly, was nibbled at: Paul decided to give up his job and go to college to improve himself, so she supported him; there was a school trip to Rome which Billy wouldn’t have been able to go on if she hadn’t dipped into her savings, nor could she deny him his trips to away matches or the records she thought nothing but noise. Nevertheless, on her sixty-fifth birthday she still had six thousand so to the newly-married Billy and the second-time father Paul she gave a thousand each. As for herself, she lived carefully within her pension, never went out except to church, had no holidays, shopped wisely and thought herself perfectly comfortable.

Her one anxiety was the house.

There had been no major expenses, but the little things that went wrong made her worry. Would four thousand pay for a new roof ? Hadn’t Mrs Griffin had to pay five when they found dry rot ? It made her heart beat fast and she dreamed of a tidy bungalow, just big enough for herself and cheap to maintain. But where ? She mentioned it to her sons and they came back with suggestions, but she didn’t want to leave the area: she knew people and church was close at hand. Finally, they found, half a mile away, a two-bedroomed place in a cul-de-sac; the garden was small enough for her to potter in; it had been well-maintained. She knew she must move but leaving her big, old house where she had raised her boys, even though it had been the arena of much unhappiness, saddened her. It was valued at £26,000 and the bungalow was selling for nineteen. Seven thousand added to the four she already had: it seemed a huge fortune. To be done with the matter quickly, she told the estate agent to drop the price to twenty-four, he suggested twenty-four and a half and at that price potential buyers arrived every day. She considered herself very lucky, and when a young couple with a baby looked round, felt mean to be asking so much.

It was in the midst of all this that Jimmy turned up. He was losing his hair but in his face she could still see the little boy who laid his head on her shoulder to sleep and she got out her best teapot and cake-stand. He told her, as he chewed her home-made fruit cake, that the paintings of his she’d bought would now sell at £700 or £800 pounds each. It didn’t seem right to her that simply for hanging on her wall they could have gained so much value.

“Wait till I tell you about the Wardman,” he said.

The artist was now considered one of the best in the country. His big canvases sold for nearly a million. She put down her cup and saucer. The portrait would be worth at least £150,000. She felt as though she’d done something terrible. That night she dreamed the police came to question her. How had she come into so much money?  She pointed to the painting. They put on the handcuffs.

She asked Jimmy to say nothing to Paul and Billy, but she changed her mind about moving.

Every day she put on her glasses and studied the portrait. She’d grown fond of the face. Something in its expression reminded her of her father. She wondered, over and over, how he had managed to save so much. When she thought about selling the painting, which Jimmy had offered to handle for her, the idea of £150,000 in the building society filled her with dread. She would truly then be rich and wasn’t it harder for a rich man, or woman, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle ? She wasn’t sure how it could be that God condemned the rich yet still permitted them to make money, but she didn’t want to gain the world and lose her soul. It occurred to her she could sell it for £10,000 or £15 or £20, and that would be easily enough to keep her going; but she thought of her sons and grandchildren and what might lie in the future for them. The dreadful idea came to her that one of them, like her, might have to earn a living in a shameful way. Not that she was ashamed of the simple tasks. She took pride in them. No-one could wipe down a table as thoroughly, nor ensure the condiments were as quickly replenished; but to be ignored, invisible, to come and go day after day without acknowledgement, to work year after year and to leave no mark. She wished she could have millions. Not for herself, but to protect her children and most of all her grandchildren. How sweet life would be if they could have enough to get by and live simply without suffering the indignity of mean work and poor pay. But she was ashamed of her wish for wealth; it was vulgar and selfish. She looked at the face. If a gentle look like that could have greeted her every day she would have been happy. Wasn’t she happy once? But life had hit her like a sudden storm and she’d run for shelter as best she could. Life wasn’t happiness, it was keeping going in spite of everything.

She put the thought of what to do with the painting at the back of her mind and, now she was no longer working and didn’t need to worry about time, the days, weeks and months passed. She went to church, listened to the radio, watched documentaries, Coronation St and adaptations of Dickens who she’d loved at school. When she thought hard about it, having such a valuable item in the house made her fret terribly. Yet every time she went to stand in front of it, she seemed to see something new. In her dreams, the face appeared and talked to her in her father’s voice. She wished it had no value at all. She’d grown so fond of it, she wanted to keep it till she died. It had become as dear to her as the photographs of her children and grandchildren. She couldn’t reconcile her affection for the face and her admiration for the artist’s skill with the huge sum of money.

Then a terrible realization came to her.

She’d paid £1,000 and now it was worth £150,000, maybe more. When did Jimmy tell her ? She struggled to recall how long ago. She’d had it how many years ? She’d worked for eight, or was it nine ? She couldn’t hold the dates in her mind as she tried to think. In any case, it was a short time. If she lived another ten years, how much might it be worth ? She took up a pencil and paper and divided 150,000 by 1,000 in the way she’d been taught as a girl. The she multiplied 150,000 by 150. The number was so big she couldn’t say it. She flushed with embarrassment. Was it possible ? She decided she should sell it at once before she became too rich. She lay awake wondering by what mysterious process a painting could gain so much value. But just when she’d resolved she would write to Jimmy and ask him to sell the painting for her, she was struck by illness. One evening, after tea, she began to feel sick. She wondered if it was something she’d eaten. Then she began to sweat and a vicious hand gripped her chest. She went to the bathroom and vomited, thinking it would pass when her stomach was empty. She lay on the bed but the pain in her chest grew worse and spread down her arm. Slowly, the notion began to form it might be her heart. She got up and in spite of the horrible agony and sweating and turning cold, she rang Paul. When the ambulance arrived, she was on the floor by the phone.

After three days in intensive care she died.

The  afternoon of the funeral, Paul and Billy began clearing the house. Jimmy advised them to auction the portrait: an original Wardman was really something. It brought £2,500,000. They gave Jimmy £100,000 for his trouble. Patience  bequeathed a third of her estate to her grandchildren so the four of them got nearly £250,000 each. Paul and Billy bought big houses and lived lavishly; they drove Bentleys and Porsches, took long cruises, stayed in the best hotels and ate at the best restaurants. Billy established an estate agency which flourished across the county till he drew on the profits for an ocean-going yacht, his managing director walked out in protest and it collapsed for want of hard work and careful regulation. Paul indulged his habit for the horses, which had once taken him to the bookmakers twice a week, by attending all the major meetings and losing money faster than his investments could produce it. When she passed her test at seventeen, his daughter Lynn bought herself a red Ferrari, took her friends to London to celebrate, and driving back to the hotel on an unfamiliar, wet road in the early hours, lost control at high speed hit a lamppost and, in spite of the seat belt, died of head injuries before reaching hospital.

Patience Derwent was cremated. In the crematorium grounds is a small, insignificant stone on which is carved: Patience Derwent 1920 - 1993. 

TALKING TO THE DEAD

Laura Shelley Whiston had a demeanour which suggested fragility. She would stand with her head tilted, her dark brows slightly raised, her pale mouth pulling down at the corners. She flinched from a burst of laughter or physical closeness as if she was about to explode. You would have thought the air itself was assaulting her. The other students didn’t like her and made no bones about it.

“Well, what’s wrong with her ?” said Terry Shaw , the youngish form tutor when he overhead his charges sniping at her during registration.

“She’s weird !” exclaimed one of the girls.

“So am I,” returned Shaw. “All of us are weird somehow or other.”

“Yeah,” agreed a lad, “ but she’s really weird !”

Shaw found her weird too. She would hang behind after registration and speak to him as if his friend. In the little classroom overlooking the road, at the other side of which lay  fields of  lazily chewing cows, Shaw moved away from her as subtly as possible and stood with his elbow on the high window-ledge. Turning to her he saw her customary beatific expression. There was something of Christ or the Virgin Mary about her stance and the curious little self-satisfied half-smile which resided on her lips. Her voice intoned gently yet with absolute conviction, as if she were not speaking but were spoken through. He turned away. Some of his teaching was carried on in this room: small groups of sixth-formers or difficult sets of slow learners kicking hard against the objective disciplines of foreign languages. He was used to alarming behaviour, but he was relaxed and sympathetic. One of those radicals who had been swept into teaching on the tide of seventies counterculture and had run aground as the wheel of political fortune turned sharply to the right, the contempt for conventional ambition and material possessions which had so inspired him as a thinking teenager, now made him an outsider among the dogged careerists and property-conscious arrivistes.   

“You see,” Laura was saying, “I was talking to my friend in Americaon the phone last night. She’s a very good friend. I’ve known her since we were little girls. And the funny thing is, she died in a  road accident a year ago.”

“Really ?” replied Shaw.

“Yes. Don’t you think it’s strange but so lovely to talk to the dead ?”

He lowered his eyes.

“It’s not an experience I’ve ever had.”

“Not everybody does. You have to be initiated. I could initiate you if you like.”

Shaw raised his look . He was  handsome enough to cause a bit of excitement among the girls. Perfectly accustomed to their unconscious flirting and quite above it after twelve years, he knew that she was trying to steal a march on her contemporaries He despised her for it a little.

“No, I have enough trouble communicating with the living,” he returned. “Anyway, I’d better go. I’ve a class to teach.”

But she stayed by him. The length of the corridor she walked at his shoulder and talked in her, holy, other-worldly voice about communicating with her dead friend. At the bottom of the stairs he turned to the staff-room and she went straight ahead towards the sixth-form centre. He watched her. She went with small, deliberate steps and her head  held slightly to the left. Her hands must have been clasped in front of her. She moved as if about to be received, as if she were  to ascend  a stage and be presented with a supreme award, as if she were to receive the applause and admiration of all around her.

Shaw chided himself for not having spoken to the Head of Sixth-Form and resolved to see him.

Later that day, Gerry King stopped him in the staff-room. 

“Laura Shelley Whiston,” he declared in his usual gnomic fashion.

King liked to appear inscrutable, he felt it sat well with his authority. Educated at a leading public school, his father having been a diplomat, he had the public schoolboy’s typical blank self-belief, that psychological absence which is produced by being sequestered from the masses, moulded in a rarefied environment at once Spartan and privileged where the unspoken message is one of unquestionable superiority. Essentially unsure, this absolute inner self-confidence was a compensation. It led to insensitivity.  In all his dealings, he sought to make people feel unnerved. So Shaw looked at him, awaiting enlightenment. King merely stared down at him from his greater height.

“What about her ?” asked Shaw at length.

“She’s got a health problem.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about her.”

“Why?”

“She’s odd.”

“That’s because of her health problem.”

“What exactly is it ?”

“She’s got a weak heart.”

Shaw knew at once this was a story. She had spoken to him about her flimsy hold on life. As a child she had all but died from scarlet fever, but the second time she told him the story, it was pneumonia.

“You’ve been unlucky,” he had said to her, “almost fatal cases of scarlet fever and pneumonia.”

“Why do you think I had scarlet fever ?” she had replied. 

He had looked her in the eyes and seen the curious misting, the distance. She was looking at him but she wasn’t seeing him. Something was disconnected. Her invented reality had taken over . He wondered if he should remind her of her original story, but he felt the instability of her mind might deal with it badly.

“I don’t know,” he had said. “I must have made a mistake.”

She’d smiled at him and gone on looking into his eyes. At that moment, seeing her vulnerability and realising how utterly lost to herself she was, he knew she was on the verge of lunacy.

“No !” he declared as definitely as he could, “that’s a story, Gerry.”

“No it isn’t,” said the superior firmly, “she’s shown me a doctor’s letter.”

“Oh, don’t be fooled by that….”

King raised his eyebrows and drew himself to his full height as he always did when he wanted to put a colleague in his or her place. That little demon of sadistic anger which was revived in him whenever he was challenged had awoken. He liked to think of himself as liberal, even radical; he had a soft spot for Tony Benn, but that was his conscious view of himself. What  really lived in the depths of his feeling, was the  superior, snobbish public schoolboy who had grown up believing the lower orders were innately inferior, to be kept in their place. Though this  had been layered over with intellectual rejection, it had never been transformed. He was  a volcano sealed with cement. The public schoolboy’s assumption of superiority came to the fore in every dispute.

“It’s genuine,” he uttered, as if it were the word of god. “I’ve seen the letter.”

“I think she’s mad,” said Shaw.

King snorted and smirked. 

“I’m serious. I think her mind is utterly fragile. I don’t believe she knows fantasy from reality.”

King held up his hand to indicate that Shaw should cease this nonsense. Shaw felt a shot of anger through his limbs. He hated this military way of doing things, these ridiculous fixed hierarchies and the assumption that whatever a superior said or believed was sure to be wiser than whatever came from below.

“I’m going to talk to the sixth-form in assembly tomorrow. They need to know about her condition so they can treat her with due care.”

Shaw was about to declare: “You’re mad ! She’s fooling you ! You’ll make a complete idiot of yourself !” But he looked into King’s eyes and saw assumption. His whole demeanour announced he was pulling rank. Shaw nodded, looked down at the papers in his hand, and walked away.

The next morning, King came into the hall followed by the sheepish, delicate, Laura. There was a subdued murmur among the students. Shaw was on the front row, his register in its blue cover on his knee. King in his smiling, avuncular manifestation spoke to the girl who lingered by the piano.

“Okay folks !” called King.

Slowly the hum of chatter diminished and silence settled.

“Before I get to the main business this morning I need to tell you something about Laura Shelley Whiston. Here she is, by the paino. You all know her.”

Shaw looked over his shoulder and caught the eye of one of the girls from his form who raised her eyebrows in a look of disbelief.

“Laura has a medical condition which has weakened her heart. This makes her very vulnerable and we must all try to treat her with due care. Basically, any loud noise, any sudden movement could startle Laura and cause her heart to fail.”

Shaw looked  at his feet.

“So I ask you to be very careful when Laura is around. Please try not to be loud or boisterous in her presence. We wouldn’t want anything untoward to happen to her while she’s in school.”

Shaw turned to look at Laura who stood palely by the  Steinway, her head in its usual pathetic leftward pose, her toes pointing inward, the feeble little smile on her mouth. When he registered his form in the afternoon, Laura was absent.

“There’s nothing wrong with her !” said one of the lads loudly.

“She’s a liar ! She gives me the creeps.”

“Well, be careful of her,” said Shaw. “Mr King has asked, so you’ve got to go along with it.”

“She just wants special treatment !”

“Yeah, and she has no friends !”

“Okay. Let’s not insult her in her absence. I have no friends but I’ve made all the right enemies. She’s got problems. Be as sympathetic as you can.”

For the next two weeks, Laura spoke to Shaw every morning;. she’d been on the phone again; her dead friend was telling her what the afterlife was like.

“Would you like to speak to her ?”

“Me ? Why would she want to speak to me ?”

“I’ve told her all about you.”

Shaw looked at the girl and saw the sickly, out-of-touch expression. He felt afraid. He realised it was a mistake ever to be alone with her and hurried into the corridor. It crossed his mind to go back to King but he knew it was a waste of time. He would pull rank. Hewouldn’t listen. Then one morning  Laura was hanging back as usual and he was hurrying to gather his papers and get out of the room.

“Don’t you think it must be wonderful to be dead ?” she said.

“Oh, I’m pretty happy being alive,” he replied without looking at her and  rushed away leaving her on her own.

She came to the staff-room and asked for him. He disappeared into the gents. Leaving school, she came running up to him.

“I’ve missed my bus !”

“That’s a pity. Are you going to walk ?”

“Could you give me a lift ?”

“Not today. I’m on the bus. My wife has the car.”

“Oh, I’ll get the bus with you !”

Sitting next to him she told him about last night’s conversation:

“And she says that being dead isn’t unpleasant at all. As a matter of fact, she’s quite happy. And she can stay in touch with me because I believe. You have to believe to be able to communicate with the dead.”

He read the paper.

“Don’t you think it’s fascinating ? Most people are so boring  they don’t believe. Their minds are closed.”

“Mmm.”

She got off at the same stop. He hurried away.

The next day she was at the staff-room door first thing. He had a free period second lesson. She appeared in his room as he started on a pile of marking. He picked up the books and excused himself. As he was getting into his car at half past three, she bobbed up from nowhere and asked for a lift.

“I’m going the other way, I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay.”

“Sorry ?”

“I don’t mind. I can go either way.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to pick up my kids.”

During the night, Shaw’s wife heard something.

“Go and see.”

“It’s nothing. A cat or the wind.”

“Wind, Terry ? It’s as still as a morgue !”

He got up and pulled on his jeans. Downstairs he heard the letter-box snap closed. He went out. A female figure was running away, hidden by a dark top and hood.

“For Christ’s sake !”

His wife said:

“Well ?”

“Nothing. Like I said. A cat.”

The following day King called him to his office. He was standing behind his desk obviously livid.

“Read this !” he ordered holding out a letter.

It was from Mrs Whiston explaining that word had got back to her that Laura had claimed to have a heart condition. She apologised. Her daughter was prone to fantasy. Her heart was fine. Shaw looked up and handed the note back.

“Well ?” said King.

“Sorry ?”

“Did you know about this ?”

Shaw was speechless.

“Send her to see me,” and King began to tidy his desk.

“So she doesn’t know yet ?”

“Obviously,” said King without raising his eyes.

 Shaw sent her and subsequently she failed to appear for registrations. Days went by.

“Has anyone seen Laura recently,” he looked up from the register. The students were sitting on the desks.

“Nope.”

One or two of them shook their heads. She didn’t appear for two weeks. Shaw wondered if he should mention it to King but he knew the response would be sharp or derisive. Then came the assembly at which King began:

“Some of you may know, Laura Shelley Whiston has had health problems. I’m afraid she’s had to leave.”

It was very unusual for King to make such an announcement. Later that day he sat next to Shaw in the staffroom and opened his register.

“Your register bears no relation to the truth.”

“Why’s that ?” 

“According to you, Robert Fry was here yesterday.”

“Okay. I didn’t see him but the others said he was in school.”

King snorted.

“Why haven’t you marked Ellen Monk present today?”

“Because she wasn’t in registration !”

“I’ve seen her. Tighten up on it.”

He thrust the register at Shaw, got up and strode out.

Next morning, the students were talking about Laura:

“I’m glad she’s gone. She did my head in.”

“She was never going to make it was she ?”

Shaw smiled at his class of fifteen.

“Well,” he said, “she certainly fooled Mr King!”

And he began a little imitation: “Before I get to the main business this morning, I’d like to tell you something about Laura Shelley Whiston…”

To his delight, the students laughed out loud.

“Okay !” he said, picking up the register. “Lesson time!

When she saw handsome Jimmy Chowns lost in his diligent reading, Caroline sat opposite him at the big table by the window. The bustling square was  near. The tempting sound of student voices rang through the clear, warm air.  She wished she was on the lazy steps, doing nothing, smoking, with lovely Jimmy next to her. She set her burdensome bag on the table, took out her file and  textbook, hung her thin,  blue cardigan on the back of the chair and sat down. She thought by now he would have looked up, she could have cast a hard, swift glance and let the corners of her kissable mouth twitch momentarily into the withheld promise of a smile; but he was intent. He lifted his serious book for a second and she flicked her eyes to its  plain cover: Le Neveu de Rameau. She felt her cheeks go warm at the thought she hadn’t read it and swiftly flicked to the page she needed. The passage for translation was long and as she read through it rapidly for the first time, her mood sank at the dread of two hours detailed work and frequent reference to the weighty dictionary. She pretended to apply herself with alacrity and began writing and peeling the thin pages of the Harrap’s but after twenty minutes, she was so suicidally bored and desperate for a friendly cigarette, she could have thrown her heavy books to the wind. She stared into Chowns’s appealing face as she bit the ragged end of her pen, but he didn’t flinch. He had a reputation.  His returned translations had been known to suddenly disappear from the pigeon-holes; he regularly scored 75% or better. In a flurry of troubling petulance she ripped a blank page from her file, scrawled in her small hand a quick message across the middle and pushed it forward. He looked up, glanced at the paper, then back at her. She made her green eyes as iron as she could and smiled widely. With the crooked little finger of his left hand he pulled the vagrant paper towards him. For a few perilous seconds she felt weightless. He lay down his book, reached to pull hers into view and read as intently as before. Waiting, she felt unjustly rejected and thought she’d made a terrible mistake, but when he’d finished, he pulled a mouth and tilted his head as if to say: a cinch. Then he wrote on the paper and passed it back to her. Beneath her message of How do I translate “nous sommes dans de beaux draps”?  he’d written: Looks like you’re in a fine mess. I’m done in. Fancy a coffee ?

All the way down the open, clanking wooden stairs she talked without knowing what she was saying. As they’d never spoken before, she could think of no subject but herself and heard her strained voice, as if coming out of the plaster saying, When I as at Bennenden I was tip-top at translation. I must be out of practice or I just can’t be fagged with all these lectures. And rattling on compulsively, because for some reason silence frightened her, she was already becoming aware that he didn’t mind, that he was happy to let her ramble; he was somehow content with himself which made her all the more conscious of her own anxiety to please and impress. While he went to the little counter she lit a confirming cigarette and before he’d come back with the steaming coffees, she needed to light another.

“D’you want one ?” she said holding out the stiff, gold packet though she knew he didn’t smoke.

“Don’t smoke,” he said with a smile.

“I started when I was thirteen. God, if my father knew what I spend his

money on !”

Her hope had advanced and she thought, though he might be getting irritated by her disconnected chatter, he would’ve noticed how pretty she was as well as the magnificence of her breasts.  She was self-conscious and held her shoulders slightly hunched to offset, but she knew as far as boys were concerned they were a ringing asset.

“What does he do, your dad ?”

Slightly startled by the familiarity, she drew hard on her gentle filter. She dreaded telling him because what she’d learned about him by nonchalantly hanging around on the edge of his easy-going crowd, from astute gossip and  subtle eavesdropping, was that he was northern,  ferociously intelligent, a socialist and spoke with an odd accent she wanted to mock. In her own high circle, her father’s job wasn’t out of the ordinary but what would someone as curious as Jimmy make of it ? She wanted to boast, because so ill-at-ease in this alien place it might bolster her shredded confidence, but she feared astringent judgement.

“He’s a diplomat. He works in the Consulate in Nicosia. Nothing high-flying.”

“ A diplomat is pretty high-flying.”

The response set her at an advantage. She blew a cloud of smoke away to her right.

“His work is pretty routine, mostly. Unless some kind of crisis blows up. He’s hoping for a posting to Spain which would be nice.”

“Very nice. My dad’s hoping the foreman will drop dead,” and he lifted his black eyebrows and laughed.

As he lowered his eyes to his thick, white cup she fixed him hard. It was odd how much he conceded to her. She’d feared he might be sharp and intrusive and obviously disdainful of her displayed pedigree; but it was clear he was sweetly polite and left the space between them gloriously open for her to occupy. His expression showed no legible sign of dislike or discomfiture and she felt an overwhelming desire to deliver a volley of uninhibited confession. Already her whirring mind was working on how she could corner him. They could, of course, go straight back to his room ( as she shared she couldn’t invite him to hers) and she could be louchely seductive. Would he succumb ? She’d have had no doubt about the unceremonious Benoit: the slightest suggestion of willingness and he’d have been pulling off her knickers; but Jimmy was so polite and reserved she wondered if he’d laughingly resist or even be offended. If he invited her, would she go ? They were drinking coffee, so what pretext could there be ? Once she’d been to bed with him, he’d be very easy prey. She’d be able to poke bitter fun at those heavy final plosives. Yet, as a matter of fact, although he was the best looking of all the boys she’d noticed, there were several other things about him which appealed.

“We’re in a real pickle,” he said raising his blue eyes and smiling.

“What ?” she said quietly, her reassuring cigarette giving off a grey plume between her poised fingers.

“Nous sommes dans de beaux draps. That’s what it means. We’re in a right mess, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, thanks,” and she put the dry filter between her pale lips.

“So you live in Nicosia, then ?”

“No, we have a house in Godalming.”

“I don’t know that part of the world. Pretty posh I suppose.”

She shook her head as she stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette.

“Not really. Our house is a box.”

“Is it modern ?”

“Ah, ah. About ten years, something like that. Where are you from ?”

“Manchester, well, Salford actually. Just round the corner from Albert Finney,” and she couldn’t tell from his uneven smile whether it was true or a tease.

When his cup was empty and he’d played the spoon in the remains of froth for a few minutes, he said:

“I’d better go, I’m supposed to be playing tennis at four.”

“I think I’ll go back to my room,  I hope Turnip isn’t there.”

“Turnip ?”

“My room-mate. She’s the most boring person on earth. I can’t stand her.”

Once more, she couldn’t tell from his whimsical smile and his gentle nodding just what he was thinking.

“By the way, you wouldn’t have a clothes brush would you ?”

Her mind, dulled by fear and uncertainty, lit up.

“Yes. Why ?”

“Oh, my jacket got knocked from the back of my chair onto the floor of the bar last night and a few heroes thought it’d be fun to wipe their feet on it.”

“Yes, you can borrow it.”

“That’s kind. Thanks.”

They gathered their petty things from the crowded library (she noticed a girl with blonde, greasy hair reading childishly by holding a ruler under each line ) and walked to her room where he waited outside in the gloomy corridor. When she pulled the door ajar, holding the dark, wooden clothes brush by its handle, her putatively impossibly dull room-mate was standing a few feet behind her, pale and sullen.

“Thanks, I’ll bring it back as soon as I’ve finished.”

“That’s okay,” and she worked hard to make her voice and expression sweet and easy.

He did return it within half an hour then she didn’t get to speak to him for weeks.

What had she expected ? That he’d pester her; be waiting nervously outside lecture theatres; come knocking importunately at eleven p.m.; leave desperate little notes in her pigeon-hole ? She would have liked those things as she would have relished being cool and haughty . That he showed no sign of coming near her, engineered no little accidental encounter, tormented her. She wanted to hammer on his impenetrable door, to enter and occupy his caressive space; it drove her to distraction that he lived no more than a paltry hundred yards from her door but his enticing room was closed to her. Then more than once she saw him with the gorgeous Jane Egger; she would be wearing tattered jeans or a flowing cotton skirt, a top which showed off her cleavage and her dark curls hung tantalisingly at each side of her pale cheeks. Was he taking her to bed?  The thought of it, the image of him on top of her, with a nipple in his mouth, her legs around him, the imagined sound of her pleasure and her whispering Oh, darling ! in the warm, enclosed darkness of the room she’d never been in, drove her to paroxysms of shipwrecked jealousy. She knew she was prettier, she could be just as sexually available and inventive and ten times more cunning.

One day she bumped into a boring boy from Jimmy’s floor who asked her back for coffee, so she agreed and sat in the stark communal kitchen smoking distractedly, talking about herself and feeling ludicrously out of place.  Soon there was a tedious little crowd and she hoped Jimmy would turn up but the eternal minutes lingered and she wished she was in her enclosing room, alone, with a spliff, away from this oppressive reality which made her poor heart beat fast and gave her a headache. For a moment, her  thoughts switched back to school, seeking a time when she’d been happy, when this dreadful heaviness of experience hadn’t been her normality; but the past was a narrow corridor leading to a closed door. She’d been sent away at seven. Her parents stressed how good a school she was going to, what a wonderful opportunity it was and how she would meet some of the best people in England; but during her first days she felt she was being smothered, as if powerful hands were forcing a pillow over her face and her struggles were like those of a fish on a hook;  the silent sobbing before she went to sleep wondering what she’d done which could make her only parents want to be distant from her, never receded to allow ease and happiness to enter. All her hope was focused on what might be once she’d left. She worked hard; her tidy exercise books were filled with her neat small hand and she took great care in underlining obedient titles and dates; she listened devotedly to her conventional teachers as though they offered revealed wisdom; and in the high marks she received she saw the promise of all the sweet fulfilment which evaded her, as if the world would become her father’s shoulder, sure, comfortable and accepting. She swam with the ease of a salmon and in the house competition won the crawl, butterfly and back by lengths so her team-mates gathered round to hug, kiss and congratulate; and this sudden attention seemed almost like love, coming out of nowhere and being overwhelming; but her friends, though she depended on them utterly couldn’t reach that remote part of herself which remained untouched, curled and silent like a hibernating vole .

She’d almost given up hope and felt that flat mood overcoming her when she wanted to disdain everything, when her sense of difference and justification made her feel any selfishness was acceptable, as Jimmy swayed in with a blue mug in his hand. She lit a shielding cigarette and began talking, vainly wishing no-one would notice the pink flush on her cheeks. She’d no idea what she was saying but she hoped her insistent voice would be enough to retain him;  he spooned instant granules, held the cup under the chrome spout of the boiler, grabbed milk from the fridge, poured, stirred and smilingly left.

“Aren’t we interesting enough for you !” called one of the lads.

“I’ve got a translation to finish !” he called from the corridor.

That evening, dreary Turnip went to a concert. Alone in her semi-darkened room Caroline lit a supportive spliff and drank half a bottle of comforting red. The befuddlement of reliable intoxication was so much lighter than the clarity of uncertain sobriety. She recalled a distant line from a play, someone saying they drink to hear the click in their head and nothing matters any more. Her longing for calming oblivion was more powerful even than her troubling desire for Jimmy. She decided to write to Benoit. At her desk she took up a ballpoint and her unused pad. For a moment she hesitated, thinking she’d write in French, but then the idea of her greater nuance in English and of his struggle to grasp it decided the matter:

Dear Benoit,

                                 I hate it here. The north is a terrible place and my room-mate is brainless. She has no life about her, never goes out except to classical concerts and to church. We have nothing in common and I have to share this little space with her. I wish I could come to you. Why can’t we be together ? You said you wanted us to be but I don’t think you do any more. I don’t have to stay here. My parents would go mad, but I could leave. We could set up together, run away somewhere and not send them our address. I know you said when I do my year in France we’ll be able to live together, but I’ve got two years to get through ! I have no friends. Some of the people are nice, but none are really people I could be friends with. The only thing is, there’s a boy I like. I have to tell you because I’m so lonely and I think about him a lot. I haven’t been with him or anything, we’ve just talked, but I feel I could like him a lot and if he asks me I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to two-time you, Benoit, which is why I’m telling you this, but if you don’t rescue me I can’t stand being alone. This boy is very handsome and intelligent but he’s a red-hot socialist so not really my type from that point of view. My parents would throw a fit if I brought a socialist home. I don’t even know what a socialist is, except my father hates them. You know how much my parents were against us being together and they would stop me seeing you if they knew we’ve slept together. I’m in my room on my own because Turnip (my room-mate) has gone out. I’ve got some good dope. There’s a guy in my block who supplies. He sells it me cheap. I think he fancies me but he’s ugly and not very nice. The dope is  good though. All I want to do here is get stoned and pissed. I’m like Emma Bovary, I’m a bored woman. I wish we could be together and I’d never had to come to this place but if the nice boy asks me I feel I will say yes. What shall we do, Benoit ?

                                                         Grosses bises,

                                                                             Caroline.

She went out furtively to post it straight away and on the sad way back crossed Jimmy with one of his friends. Were they going to the bar ? If she smiled complaisantly would he invite her ? Should she look at him or ignore him ? She glanced towards them and Jimmy smiled and gave that little acknowledging nod which she liked but which was so peculiar; it seemed to be at once a recognition and a setting of distance. Her mouth twitched in the simulacrum of a smile and when she got back she threw herself on the bed and lay staring at the ceiling.

The following Saturday there was to be the usual thumping disco in Harris College bar. Some of the passing girls from her floor were going and she could tag unobtrusively along; but she wanted to know if Jimmy would be there, otherwise she might stay in her concealing room and smoke; so she wittered about it before seminars, after lectures, in the bar, in the kitchen, in the bookshop, on the square, in the café, and asked the girl with the glass eye who she knew from linguistics; the boy from the floor below who ate nothing but Alpen ;the boy who played keepy-uppy in the quad; the girl from her English seminar who’d said Jimmy was gorgeous; the boy with the flat cap and the limp overcoat who asked her if she’d ever been to Burnley, until one of the lads from his floor said they were all rolling into town on the growling bus to buy cheap wine from the bargain-rich co-op and going along once they’d drunk it in their kitchens.

Never had she taken such care in getting herself ready.

She brushed her heavy auburn hair till it shone and the light as she moved her head turned it almost black at its tips and near blonde by her crown; naked before the little mirror over her washbasin while Turnip was out, she plucked the arching, dark eyebrows over which her mother had always taken such care.

“Oh, you’ll break a few hearts with these, my dear,” she would say as she giggled.  

The only make-up she wore was mascara, applied lightly to her long already black lashes, and a little pale pink lipstick because her pallid skin was so lovely and delicate and she knew how beautiful it was, set off by her hair and her bright green eyes. She tried four front-fastening bras, white, black, red and pink before deciding on the lacy pink one which seemed the least provocative and most romantic and after pulling on her light grey cotton, flared jeans whose hugging of her rounded thighs belied their modest shade, she slipped into the ice blue, merino polo neck which clung to her like a child. Putting on her  pink nail varnish, relishing the catching odour of acetate, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was surprised by her own beauty; but the more she stared, the more poses she assumed, the more the effect faded and she began to see her faults: her cute nose was slightly crooked, her desirable mouth was too big, her high forehead too narrow. All the same, the certainty that in comparison to most of the girls who’d be there: the short, the dumpy, the long-nosed, the grey-skinned, the broom-thin, the blade-lipped, the slack- jawed, the spotty-faced, the greasy-haired, the plain, the plain ugly, she stood out like a raven in the snow, was enough to give her reassurance; she would linger close by; she might cast an insignificant glance; if he smiled she would return his look but retain a sad face and a hard glint in her eyes; if he asked her to dance she would; if he put his arm round her waist she would draw warmly close; if he kissed her she would  tenderly respond.

Turnip came in and disturbed her enchanted mood. She banged around, lit a defensive cigarette, picked up a difficult book and looked at her watch.

Still an interminable hour.

In the blue darkness, broken only by the disco’s flashing lights, and amidst the impenetrable noise from the deafening speakers, it was virtually impossible to hold a conversation or see someone’s face. She was one of those people for whom the fall of a saucepan to the kitchen floor was as loud as the roar of a thousand planes. She put her hands over her ears when a motorbike passed in the street. The rhythmic thump from the speakers was like all the drums of Africa since the start of time playing six inches from her head.  The grubby floor was slippery with drink and the sickly odour of beer and cheap wine which filled her nostrils made her wish she was in her room with an aromatic spliff. People shouted into one another’s proffered ears as vainly as a lunatic baying at the moon. One of the boys from her block yelled a brute invitation to dance, but because she’d already seen Jimmy and wanted to do nothing to deter him, she shook her head. She smoked languidly and sipped sweet white wine which stung her insides as it descended and made her slightly nauseous. She pushed through the crowd to the toilet and passed close to Jimmy who was sitting on the edge of a sticky table with one of his mates; she was careful not to look at him but slowed to what seemed to her an obviously loitering pace and hoped he would touch her arm or slip from his seat to talk to her. Half a dozen boys asked her to dance and she refused . She felt very virtuous and hoped he would notice. Part of her wanted to dance with anyone who asked; she found it funny to see some boy she considered impossibly beneath her jigging and smiling and looking expectantly into her eyes. Discos were great sport and the more ridiculous boys she danced with the greater became her contempt for them. So what was it about Jimmy ?

She’d had two lovers. The first was a prim Godalming boy who was at The Dragon’s School and wanted to be in a rock band . He could play barré chords  and when she heard him imitating Keith Richards or Eric Clapton she dreamt of her life as the wife of a future star. They would live in a mansion in Esher where she would spend her bored days in the blue-green pool, the sauna, or in fine weather, walking in the tended gardens; she would command the chauffeur to take her into town where she would buy in Harrods clothes and furnishings she would tire of in a week and give away to charity; pop stars and film stars would visit daily and in a room as big as a polo field with ceilings fifteen feet high, she would recline on a white sofa smoking dope or would snort in the enormous kitchen while the staff came and went; she would take lovers to assuage her boredom and send her children to Eton or Rodean; they would have houses in California, Melbourne and Morocco and minimalist flats in New York and Paris; when a dull mood overcame her, she would summon the private jet and disappear for a month; her husband’s fortune would fund her chain of boutiques which would soon become the most fashionable on the planet and her own wealth would mount to tens of millions; there would be a scandal when a pop star would be found dead in the swimming pool; she would wear dark glasses and hide from the cameras.

But James’s promising band turned out to be feebly incompetent, even at rock music. His parents bullied him to study Law. He put away his guitar and worked like an engine at his A Levels. By the time the panicky exams were over, she saw him as a commonplace swot who would turn into a workaday solicitor and the splendid relationship dwindled.

Her second lover was Benoit whose  father was a self-consciously successful diplomat. They met in Nicosia, in the summer, so the first time she saw him she was in her tight, blue bikini and he his hugging trunks. Far less good-looking than the pretty James whose delicate face always had something of the choirboy, he had a brute directness which excited and subdued her. His broad shoulders were slightly hunched like her own and her father’s, as if to protect something vulnerable in his breast and they gave off the sense of a terrible, constrained power. He seemed capable of awful destruction. Yet at the same time his eyes were pleading and in them she saw some of the hurt which seemed to linger in her father and which, vaguely, she associated with her mother. From the first, she felt a hint of unspecified threat. He prowled the  empty pool, dived as if for prey, thrashed the water with his ungainly stroke; while she swam with her smooth, long, rangey style, barely causing a splash as her hands sliced the water, her feet kicking rhythmically, he stood on the side his long arms hanging to his thick hairy thighs and when she looked at him she thought she saw an ape. He was a gangling baboon, a gorilla, and that risky animal power seemed to demand to be tamed by her body. Also, he spoke only French to her and made no concessions. He deliberately used lots of argot, refused to repeat, and the struggle to keep up with him alerted her. On their first meeting, he kept looking directly at her breasts and crutch and when she agreed to go with him to his parent’s flat, he closed the door and in the semi-darkness, before he’d even kissed her, pulled off her bikini top. He took her in a frenzied way, as if the world was about to end and without protection. When she accused him, he shrugged and turned away and until her next period she asked him every day what they would do if she was pregnant. In response came the same Gallic, so-what gesture which made her want to dig her nails in his eyes. In fact, she did tear at him. While he thrusted inside her she dug into his back and wrenched at his flesh till it bled. Soon, she suspected he was seeing other girls, but when she asked, he accused her of paranoia. Despite herself she gave in to his demands for sex in the park, in a bus shelter, in the back of the car, in a toilet, under a bridge, in a darkened, unsavoury  alley, in a cinema, in the tennis club pavilion, in his parents’ bed, in the garden at two in the morning and even accepted to hang around on the street wearing nothing but her raincoat so he could come and pick her up; and though she felt bullied, she believed him when he said he loved her. She felt she was destined to be with him, though in a negative way, and the opposition of her parents pushed her into his arms. They smoked dope together; he told her of his plans to open a chic restaurant in Paris. Like her he’d been sent to a private school he hated, but  wasn’t going to university: he would train as a chef. Their diplomatic backgrounds, unhappy schooling and the pressure of the enclosed  ex-pat community combined to make her feel the inevitability of their relationship. When she left to return to Godalming before coming to university, she felt like a child being torn from the embrace of her mother. She wrote him long, passionate letters in which she pledged faithfulness and love, demanding the same in return and never being convinced by his declarations. All the same, she was sure their lives were irrevocably entwined.

It came as a shock, then, when she saw Jimmy and was fiercely attracted by him.

Before she spoke to him, her mind was constantly nagging, like a clock ticking loudly which can’t be ignored. When did she first see him ? She thought it was walking towards his block, but perhaps it was on the way into Williamson lecture theatre;or perhaps in the library or the library café; or maybe the bar, leaning lazily with his pint beside him and his crooked smile on his lips; or perhaps in the Great Hall for the Vice-Chancellor’s welcome; or sitting on the steps in the square with Jane Egger ; or waiting for the bus in the subway in the milling, happy queue; or eating in the refectory with the boys from his floor. There were so many pictures of him in her head she couldn’t sort them into a chronological album and like a confluence of many streams which arrive in one still pool, all these images congealed into the sweet, smiling, beautiful face which always came into focus when she closed her eyes.  Curiously, she felt he belonged to her and this sense of her right over him, made her resentful of his friends. The weeks since she’d lent him her clothes-brush had been interminable. Why didn’t he come to see her ? Why didn’t he sit next to her in a lecture?  Wasn’t he attracted ? But she knew that wasn’t true. Boys were attracted to her like vultures to carrion. She’d never met a boy who wasn’t and she’d seen in his eyes his gentle appreciation of her beauty. Wasn’t she one of the two or three most attractive girls on campus? He would have to be made of stone. But the terrible thought seized her that he didn’t like her ! What had she said when she wittered; had she insulted the north, dismissed his class, scorned the poor, derided the unsuccessful ?  She was so used to being among people from her own class, she didn’t know how to talk to someone from what her mother called the lower orders. At school, boys like Jimmy had been termed undesirable, and her father talked about socialist layabouts and scroungers. To her and her friends the north was an uncivilised place full of uneducated, ignorant people with no taste, culture or discrimination and her prejudices fell from her lips so thoughtlessly she was terrified she might unknowingly have hurt him. But what should she say ? What was the right thing to say to a socialist from the north ? She had no idea.

She looked over to him as she stubbed out her cigarette and turning to her he nodded and smiled. She made her stare as unflinching as she could and stretched her lips over her teeth in an effort to smile which made her heart kick. All at once, he shoved off from the table and walked over to her.

“Nice to see you,” he called into her ear.

The closeness of his face, the mere few inches between their bodies made her want to put her arms around his neck; instead she talked into his ear without knowing what she was saying. What she wanted to say was: Let’s get out of here. Let’s be alone. In an instant, he was touching her left hand, so lifting her face to his she tried to look available, incapable of resistance. He said something to her which she didn’t hear. She twined her fingers with his and after what seemed more time than the universe could contain he was kissing her. What happened in the minutes after that she didn’t know, but she came to herself as they followed the walkway towards their college. He was beside her. When she looked at him, she saw the hint of a smile on his lips and the kindness in his eyes and she wondered how this had happened. She talked and talked as a defence against her feeling and he absorbed what she said; he smiled, he nodded, he said “yeah”, but himself he gave away nothing, or nothing she could interpret. He seemed to provide her so much room she felt limitless. Where were they going ? To his room ? Would she go in ? Would she lie on his bed ? What would happen ?  Suddenly, the image of herself as a child, holding her father’s hand came into her head and the skipping happiness of an untroubled little girl who knows nothing of the world’s corruption spread through her. Then she was on his bed and the kissing was wonderful and when he said:

“Does this bra open at the front ?”

She said:

“Yes, but don’t unfasten it.”

All the same, he did. All the same they were naked between his sheets and only when this first passion was over and she’d been beside him for a few hours, smoking, talking and saying to herself, Jimmy Chowns is my lover, did a cold doubt start to invade her.

“I’ll have to go,” she said.

“Why ?”

“I can’t stay here all night.”

“Why not ?”

“People will know.”

“What people ?”

“Everybody.”

“Everybody ? Who’s interested ?”

She was pulling on her trousers as he lay  in  bed.

“Don’t go.”

It was such a sweet request she wanted to throw off her clothes and get back in beside him but anxiety drove her. He got up and put his clothes on too.

“What are you doing ?”

“I’ll walk you back.”

“No, someone might see us.”

“It’s ten past four in the morning !”

“There are always people around.”

He was leaning against the wardrobe watching her as she pushed her arms into her little brown coat. She looked at him and was delighted at the thought she’d been to bed with him. Slim and handsome, relaxed and curiously stylish in nothing more than dark blue cords and a t-shirt, he seemed, in that instant, the very essence of what she could want in a boy; but she had to remind herself he was a man. She’d discovered he was twenty-one. Shouldn’t a man of that age be thinking about marriage ? Her mother was married at twenty-two and had a baby within a year.

“Why worry about the qu’on-dira-t-on.”

His use of the French amused her and once again she felt a little surge of desire to stay; but her fretting was growing more resolute. She pulled her belt tight and turned up her collar.

“I’ll go through the window.”

“The window ?”

She relished his astonishment and in truth she knew it was an exaggeration: ( who would she meet on the stairs ?); but the eccentricity was meant to strike at his nerves. Avoiding his eyes she drew the curtains and pushed open the big window which swung on horizontal hinges. As she cocked her leg over she expected him to protest again, but he stood silent watching her. She looked back, astride the frame.

“ ‘Bye.”

“See you later.”

It was nice to see him smiling gently at her. As she followed the little winding path between the lawns, she wanted to turn back. It would be lovely to be tight against him in the narrow bed; they could get up and have breakfast together; the day could go by in pleasant idleness; they would go for a walk, find a pub for lunch, wander back and get into bed again. But against this vision arose the fear she was giving herself too easily. Why had she gone to bed with him ? She would have preferred to get to know him. Had she expected he would have restrained himself ? She’d thought he might be very serious; he would sit with his legs one over the other, like her father, and ask her about herself. They would talk all night, he putting the questions and she confessing the details of her life so far. She would sit on his knee and kiss him or they would lie, face to face on the bed; but it would be like the first innocent kissing of young teenagers; she would become a virgin again; the inadequacy of her physical relationship with James, the frightening unceremoniouness of Benoit would evaporate; her little girl’s innocence would once more be waiting like a trembling dove for a pair of caring hands.

She sneaked in. Turnip didn’t wake. She got into bed and in the darkness and silence felt her heart beat furiously.

The next day she tried to get on, but whatever she did left her feeling she was acting. She tried to read Diderot but it made little sense. She began an essay but felt foolish,  trying to write as if she knew what she meant. She tidied her half of the room but felt she was imitating her mother who fussed endlessly and would say: “Oh, I can’t let the cleaner see the house in this state!” She went to the shop but there was nothing she needed. It was Sunday. In the big flat in Nicosia her parents would be relaxing after lunch. Her sister would be playing with a few toys on the floor her absorption punctuated by her mother’s: “Don’t make a mess now, darling. Mummy has to clean it up.” Her father would be reading the Sunday Times. Hidden behind the financial pages he would shift in the chair now and then. She remembered how, one hot day in Calcutta when she was a child, he’d been wearing khaki shorts and as he spread his knees she saw his manhood. There seemed no fit between the euphemism and the thing so she said cock and balls to herself; but that was no better. She could think of Jimmy’s cock and balls, but not her father’s. She lit a cigarette and went to look out of the window. Being on the third floor, she could see Jimmy’s across the quad, tucked in the corner by the door. She watched and saw him sit at his desk; but she could make out only his dim figure. The touching beauty of his face, the slim warmth of the body she’d held, the gentle caress in his blue eyes she had to imagine. She wanted to pull on her coat and go to his room with the same sad look on her face as when she needed comfort from her father. At this moment she wanted exactly that and nothing else; to leave her past behind and to make Jimmy her future; but exactly that and nothing else was just what she couldn’t do.

He’d said he would come and see her at eight. She tried to eat at six but threw most of the spaghetti away. She smoked four or five cigarettes one after another. She would have lit a spliff but Turnip was in the room and she didn’t trust her. Her watch stood still. At five to eight she was on the verge of going out. But where ? Anywhere ! To walk the perimeter of the campus three times. Anything but to have to face him. When the four quiet knocks came at eight o’clock exactly, she opened the door as if to her executioner. Turnip was behind her. Jimmy was wearing his long overcoat with the collar pulled up and one of the black polo necks he loved. He smiled and she glared back. She retreated a step and saw the small alarm on his face. She made her eyes as hard as she could. She willed her face into disdain.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry, we haven’t met” he said to Turnip, holding out his hand.

“Janet,” she said.

“Jimmy.”

Now he was in the room, he seemed bigger. His presence was overwhelming as if he was a giant with the strength to subdue her, to carry her away from all that was familiar and to keep her imprisoned. She wanted to push him away. She would have liked to ask him to leave and slam the door. She didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t flinch.

“Shall we go to the bar?” he said and sudden hatred  welled in her chest.

She didn’t reply, but raised her shoulders slightly and let the shadow of a grimace creep over her features. A little eternity followed. They looked at one another. Then in a sudden movement she hadn’t anticipated and which shocked her, without a word he turned and was gone. If Turnip hadn’t been there she would have shouted his name. She grabbed her little coat from behind the door and ran. She thought she’d catch him before he got down the stairs, but when she reached the bottom he was already out of the door. Pushing it, she saw him twenty yards ahead.

“Jimmy !” she pulled on her coat. “Jimmy ! Jimmy!” and because he didn’t stop she began to run. She felt foolish and a bit desperate and when he turned and paused she kept going for a few yards before slowing to a quick walk as she tied the belt round her waist. She was panting.

“Where are you going ?” she said.

“I dunno.”

“I thought we were going to the bar.”

“Sure. If you want to.”

So they went and sat in the gloomy haunt, he with his pint and she her half as if they were established boy and girlfriend; it occurred to her others would see them that way and the idea pleased her. One or two lads nodded at Jimmy and he acknowledged them. Was he comfortable here? Somehow he seemed to fit. She wished one of her old schoolfriends would walk in. Why did she feel out of place almost everywhere ? How did it happen that the world never seemed to be comfortable and she was always hoping that soon she would find a place where she was at home as she’s been when she slept on her father’s chest.

“So what’s the matter ?” he asked.

“I’ve got a problem,” she said.

“What’s that ?”

“I can’t say no.”

“You can’t say no.”