It was quiet this lunchtime. There were only a few people in the bar. I caught sight of Fallow, the porter, with Mr. Roach—a historian who grows his hair long and likes the boys to call him Robbie—and Jimmy Watt, the school’s man-of-all-work, skillful with his hands, but not much of an intellect.
He beamed on seeing me. “Mr. Straitley! Good holiday!”
“Yes, thank you, Jimmy.” I have learned not to tax him with long words. Some people are not so kind; seeing his moon face and gaping mouth, it’s easy to forget his good nature. “What are you drinking?”
Jimmy beamed again. “Half a shandy, thanks, boss. Gotta get some wiring done this after.”
I carried his drink and my own to a free table. I noticed Easy, Meek, and Keane sitting together in the corner with Light, the new Games man, Isabelle Tapi, who always enjoys socializing with new staff, and Miss Dare, slightly aloof, a couple of tables away. I wasn’t surprised to see them together. There’s safety in numbers, and St. Oswald’s can be intimidating to the newcomer.
Putting Jimmy’s drink down, I ambled over to their table and introduced myself. “It looks as though some of you are going to be sharing my room,” I said. “Though I don’t see how you’re going to teach Computer Studies in it”—this was to the bearded Meek—“or is it just another stage in your plan to inherit the earth?”
Keane grinned. Light and Easy just looked puzzled.
“I—I’m a part-timer,” said Meek nervously. “I—t-teach m-maths on F-Fridays.”
Oh dear. If I frightened him, 5F on a Friday afternoon would eat him alive. I hated to think of the mess they would make in my room. I made a mental note to be on call if there were any signs of a riot.
“Bloody good place to have a pub, though,” said Light, gulping his pint. “I could get used to this at lunchtime.”
Easy raised an eyebrow. “Won’t you be training, or supervising extracurricular, or rugby, or something?”
“We’re all entitled to a lunch break, aren’t we?”
Not just a Jobsworth, but a Union man. Dear gods. That’s all we need.
“Oh. But the Headmaster was—I mean, I said I’d take charge of the Geography Society. I thought everyone was supposed to do extracurricular.”
Light shrugged. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m going to do after-school sports and weekend matches and give up my lunchtime pint as well. What is this, bloody Colditz?”
“Well, you don’t have lessons to prepare, or marking—” began Easy.
“Oh, that’s typical,” said Light, his face reddening. “Typical bloody academic. Unless you’ve got it on paper it doesn’t count, is that it? I’ll tell you this for free, those lads’ll get more from my lessons than they would learning the bloody capital of Khazistan, or whatever it is—”
Easy looked taken aback. Meek put his face into his lemonade and refused to come out. Miss Dare stared out of the window. Isabelle shot Light an admiring glance from beneath her smoky eyelashes.
Keane grinned. He seemed to be enjoying the fracas.
“What about you, then?” I said. “What do you think of St. Oswald’s?”
He looked at me. Mid to late twenties; slim; dark-haired, with a fringe; black T-shirt under a dark suit. He seemed very assured for such a young man, and his voice, though pleasant, had an edge of authority. “When I was a boy I lived near here for a while. Spent a year at the local comp. Sunnybank Park. Compared to that, St. Oswald’s is another world.”
Well, that didn’t surprise me much. Sunnybank Park eats kids alive, especially the bright ones. “Good thing you escaped,” I said.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “We moved down south, and I changed schools. I was lucky. Another year and that place would have finished me off. Still, move over Barry Hines; it’s all good material if I ever write a book.”
Oh dear, I thought. Not a Budding Author. You get them from time to time, especially among the English staff, and though not as awkward as Union men or Jobsworths, they rarely bring anything but trouble. Robbie Roach was a poet in the days of his youth. Even Eric Scoones once wrote a play. Neither has ever quite recovered.
“You’re a writer?” I said.
“Strictly a hobby,” said Keane.
“Yes, well—I understand the horror genre isn’t as lucrative as it used to be,” I said, with a glance at Light, who was demonstrating a biceps curl to Easy with the aid of his pint of beer.
I looked back at Keane, who had followed my gaze. At first sight, he showed potential. I hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be another Roach. English teachers so often have the fatal tendency; that thwarted ambition to be something more, something other than a simple schoolmaster. It usually ends in tears, of course; escape from Alcatraz looks positively childish in comparison with escape from teaching. I looked at Keane for signs of rot; I have to say that at first sight I didn’t notice any.
“I wrote a b-book once,” said Meek. “It was called Javascript and Other—”
“I read a book once,” said Light, smirking. “Didn’t think much of it, though.”
Easy laughed. He seemed to have got over his initial faux pas with Light. At the next table, Jimmy grinned and moved a little closer to the group, but Easy, face half-averted, managed to avoid eye contact.
“Now if you’d said the Internet”—Light moved his chair a few inches, blocking Jimmy, and reached for his half-finished beer—“plenty to read there—if you’re not afraid of going blind, know what I mean—”
Jimmy slurped his shandy, looking slightly crestfallen. He isn’t as slow as some people take him for, and besides, the snub was plain enough for anyone to see. I was suddenly reminded of Anderton-Pullitt, the loner of my form, eating his sandwiches alone in the classroom while the other boys played football in the Quad.
I shot a sideways glance at Keane, who was watching, neither approving nor disapproving, but with a gleam of appreciation in his gray eyes. He winked at me, and I smiled back, amused that the most promising of our freshers so far had turned out to be a Sunnybanker.
4
The first step is always the hardest. I made many more illicit forays into St. Oswald’s, gaining confidence, moving closer into the grounds, the courtyards, then at last the buildings themselves. Months passed; terms; and little by little my father’s vigilance was diminished.
Things had not turned out quite how he’d hoped. The teachers who called him John remained no less contemptuous than the boys who called him Snyde; the gatehouse was damp in winter, and between the beer and the football and his passion for scratch cards, there was never quite enough money. In spite of his great ideas, St. Oswald’s had turned out to be just another caretaker’s job, filled with daily humiliations. It took up all his life. There never was time for tea on the lawns, and Mum never did come home.
Instead, my father took up with a brassy nineteen-year-old called Pepsi, who ran a beauty parlor in town, wore too much lip gloss, and liked to party. She had her own place, but she often stayed at ours, and in the mornings my father was heavy-eyed and short-tempered, and the house smelled of cold pizza and beer. On those days—and others—I knew to keep out of his way.
Saturday nights were the worst. My father’s temper was exacerbated by beer, and pockets empty after a night on the tiles, he most often chose me as the butt of his resentment. “Yer little bastard,” he would slur at me through the bedroom door. “How do I know you’re mine, eh? How do I know you’re even mine?” And if I was foolish enough to open the door, then it would start; the pushing, the shouting, the swearing, and finally the big slow roundhouse punch that, nine times out of ten, would strike the wall and send the drunkard sprawling.