‘Will you stop that?’ says Dennis.
‘Juster!’ Someone’s calling Skippy. It’s Howard the Coward, hailing him from across the hall. What can he want?
‘I wonder how many condoms I will need?’ Mario ponders as Skippy trudges away. ‘Probably I should get a couple of boxes, to be on the safe side.’
‘Make no bones about it –’
‘God damn it, Geoff –’
‘We’re going to have a wail of a time!’
Leaving the Automator’s office yesterday evening, Howard had little intention of following through on his promise to talk to Daniel Juster. The Acting Principal loved to issue orders, but that was usually as far as his interest extended, meaning that if Howard could just keep out of his way for the next couple of days, there was a good chance he’d forget their entire conversation. This seemed to Howard, who didn’t see why he should be lumbered with extra work, to be the best course of action – until this morning, when a very strange thing had happened.
He’d stayed up late the night before to finish Goodbye to All That, and in his second-year class today he decided to begin with a brief excerpt from the book before wrapping up the First World War and moving on to the Easter Rising. Graves’s account bore little resemblance to the barren history textbook. It fluoresced with imagery – the skeletons in the craters in no man’s land, picked clean by the rats; a wood full of German corpses, whose overcoats Graves brings back to his trench for blankets; the officers-vs-sergeants cricket game, with a rafter for a bat, a rag tied with string for a ball, and as a wicket, a parrot’s cage, ‘with the clean, dry corpse of a parrot inside’: every page contained some nightblack gem.
After reading aloud for a couple of minutes, Howard became aware of an unusual silence. Instantly he was on his guard. A silent classroom, in his experience, meant one of two things: either everyone had fallen asleep, or they had planned some sort of a trap and were waiting for him to stumble into it. When he scanned the desks, though, the boys appeared fully conscious, and there was no hint of impending attack. It dawned on him that this must be what is known as an attentive silence. Attempting to conceal his surprise, fearful of breaking the spell, he continued reading.
The book held their attention right up to the end; when the bell went, Howard had the giddying sensation of actually having imparted knowledge. It was an unexpectedly replete and heartening sort of feeling – so much so that when he spies Juster now, examining a poster for the Hallowe’en Hop, instead of turning in the other direction he decides to call him over. He watches the boy shuffle across the hall, and readies an avuncular smile.
‘I just wanted a quick chat,’ he reassures him. ‘You don’t need to look so freaked out.’ As he speaks the words, it strikes Howard that the Automator made a shrewd move, picking him to talk to the youngster; certainly he’s going to be more on his wavelength than some septuagenarian priest. ‘I hear you tossed your cookies in French class yesterday,’ he says.
‘I what?’ Juster says.
‘You threw up. You got sick.’
The ends of the boy’s mouth turn down.
‘I just wanted to see if you were feeling better.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yes, you’re feeling better?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You and Father Green have buried the hatchet?’
Juster nods.
‘He can be a tough old buzzard, but I wouldn’t take anything he says to heart,’ Howard says. The boy makes no response. Frankly he does not seem to Howard all that appreciative of his interest – but kids often hide their vulnerability behind this kind of attitude, he reminds himself, you have to give them space, let them come to you. ‘And how are things generally? How are you doing?’
‘Fine,’ Juster suddenly looks wary, as if Howard is trying to catch him out somehow.
‘Your schoolwork going okay? Not finding it too hard this year?’ The boy shakes his head. ‘Your family’s doing well? Your parents?’ He nods. Howard searches around for another question. ‘How about swimming? I hear that’s going great.’ The boy nods again, pale brows furrowed apprehensively like he’s playing chess with Death for his soul. Howard begins to get exasperated. This is like pulling hen’s teeth. Still, he ought to put in another minute, just in case Greg does ask about it. ‘You know, I was talking to your swimming coach yesterday,’ he says. ‘He told me some really –’
But the words die away on his lips, as he is caught in a smile as sudden and bright and paralysing as a prison searchlight… Miss McIntyre has appeared beside them; the smile is, evidently, for him. He hears himself speak to her, without knowing what he says. God, those eyes! Just looking into them is like being kissed – or, no, like being magicked off to another world, where it’s just the two of them alone, the rest of the universe mere tinselled scenery, orbiting in a slow waltz around them –
‘Uh, sir?’ Howard is returned to reality by a small voice tugging at him. He turns and stares at the owner as though he’s never seen him before in his life.
‘Oh – I’m so sorry!’ Miss McIntyre brings a hand to her mouth. ‘I didn’t realize you boys were in the middle of something.’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ he assures her hastily, then returns to address Juster. ‘Daniel, you’d better head off to your next class.’
‘It’s lunchtime.’
‘Well, to your lunch, then. We can finish this later in the week.’
‘Right,’ Juster says dubiously.
‘Good man,’ Howard says. ‘Okay, well, off you go so.’ Juster obligingly stumps off down the corridor. ‘We’ll catch up later in the week,’ Howard calls after him. ‘And have a good talk, okay?’ He turns back to bask in the lovely light of Aurelie McIntyre.
‘Sorry,’ she repeats gaily. ‘I didn’t see him there, or I wouldn’t have interrupted you.’
‘No no, don’t worry, it was nothing,’ Howard assures her. ‘He had a little run-in with Jerome Green yesterday. Greg asked me to have a word with him, make sure he was all right.’
‘I think he’s in my Geography class,’ she comments, adding, ‘He’s so small!’
‘Usually he’d be sent to the guidance counsellor, but Greg thought he’d prefer to speak to someone younger,’ Howard elaborates. ‘You know, that he could relate to.’
She absorbs this thoughtfully, or mock-thoughtfully: many of her gestures, he’s noticed, have this disconcerting hint of unseriousness, of artificiality, as though she has lifted them for her own amusement from some antiquated sitcom. How to get to the real Aurelie?
‘Oh, here, I meant to say to you –’ he chucks her arm ‘– I took your advice and got that Robert Graves book. I was reading it to my class just now. You were right, they loved it!’
‘I told you.’ She smiles.
‘It gives the war a whole new dimension, you know, hearing from someone right there in the thick of it. They really connected with it.’
‘Maybe it reminds them of school,’ she suggests. ‘Didn’t someone describe the trenches as ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent terror?’
‘I don’t know about boredom. God, the chaos of it, the brutality. And it’s so vivid. I’d definitely be interested in reading his poetry, if only to see how he can go from describing, you know, people getting their guts blown out, to writing about love.’
‘Maybe it’s not that much of a leap,’ she says.
‘You don’t think?’
‘Have you ever actually been in love?’ she says teasingly.
‘Yes, of course,’ Howard professes, flustered. ‘I just meant, in terms of writing, that stylistically it must be quite a, a jump from one to the other…’
‘Mm-hmm.’ She is doing the thing with her tongue, examining her upper lip with the very tip.