Death of a Teacher (6 page)

Phil Dixon called in at The Briars in the middle of lunch, but he didn’t stay. He satisfied himself that his granddaughter was perfectly happy. That evening, as planned, Suzy called the Dixons with an update.

‘It’s very kind of you, Mrs Spencer,’ Judith Dixon said. ‘And I’m really glad Phil didn’t drag Becky home because of this. To be frank, this is giving me a chance to talk to him about these Dodsworth House scholarships. Is your daughter going to do it?’

‘I’m not in a position to pay fees, Mrs Dixon. Not even reduced
scholarship
fees.’

‘Won’t her father divvy up?’ Judith Dixon had asked sharply. People like Judith prided themselves on saying what they thought. ‘Or her stepfather? Robert Clark? He’s a college lecturer, isn’t he? That’s a good job. You should get him to pay.’

Mind your own business, Suzy should have said, but she was too taken 
aback. ‘We’ve never discussed it. I’m sure Molly will do perfectly well at Norbridge High.’

The idea that Robert might be inveigled into paying school fees for Molly left Suzy feeling uncomfortable. When it came to the children’s schooling, Suzy was happy with the state sector. Jake had sailed through, but then he was a bright, easy-going lad. Maybe with Molly it would be different. Perhaps she, too, should be thinking of paying for her daughter’s education. It would be a strain, though.

Judith Dixon’s blunt words made Suzy worry. So far, Nigel had supported his children, but where exactly should Robert come in? He wasn’t technically their stepfather, but if Molly was really having problems, could she ask Robert for help? A loan perhaps? Nigel talked a good act but she knew he spent his money on his new smart lifestyle whenever he could. He maintained that he disapproved of private education and his children should make it on their own merits like he had. And he was pretty unsympathetic to Molly as it was.

Perhaps it wasn’t so simple after all. The longed-for divorce seemed to bring unanticipated and embarrassing problems in its wake. Somehow, as the weekend went on, Suzy found it hard to find a moment when she could talk to Robert. And the longer she left it, the harder it got.

Mrs Rudder had arrived home at her villa in High Pelliter after sorting out the police and putting them right about the broken window. So much fuss! Alison MacDonald and those children shouldn’t have been in school anyway. She parked her car neatly in the garage. It was a hatchback, just too small to get her husband John’s wheelchair in the boot. There had been some talk at the hospital about trading up to a vehicle which could pack the chair and a Zimmer frame into the back, so that John could be taken out.

‘Let’s give it a try!’ her brother Kevin had said when the neurologist first suggested that John was well enough to come home.

‘If you can get him back on his feet it will really help,’ the consultant had said. ‘It could even increase his life expectancy.’

The physiotherapist had given them a sheet with a list of exercises for John to do. There had been some talk of a private physio coming to the house, but Liz had been worried about the cost.

‘But we can try taking John out ourselves,’ Kevin had insisted, and had loaded John into his SUV.

The trip had been a disaster. The barmaid at the Crossed Foxes had said, ‘Ah, bless him’, in a voice which had made Liz mad. John made a disgusting mess and Kevin had to feed him, which was downright humiliating. She didn’t want to be seen with an old man in a wheelchair, rather than the charming and attractive person she had married. John was getting all the help he 
needed from the National Health Service at home, and that was where he would stay. Liz didn’t really feel caring was her bag. She hired an agency for getting John up and putting him to bed. Her brother Kevin was such a godsend, sitting with John a lot, especially on Wednesday evenings when Liz had her Spanish lessons. Kevin had been John’s business partner in the past and he certainly owed the Rudders a lot. But even so, what he did now was above and beyond the call of duty.

‘Hi, Kevin, hello, John,’ Liz ruffled her husband’s dark hair and bent to kiss him, missing his face by an unnoticed half-inch.

Kevin watched her approvingly and said cheerily, ‘Was it bad? The attack at the school?’

‘It wasn’t an attack, Kevin. Just a broken window. We had rather an
inexperienced
teacher in there, doing extra-curriculum art without the proper procedure. Asking for trouble.’

Liz saw her brother out, and then went back inside and made herself some fresh coffee. Just before the agency workers were due to arrive that evening, she would put out a microwave shepherd’s pie from the freezer with a glass of juice. Till then John would be all right. He was grunting at her as she passed the sitting-room door, but she ignored him. How was she supposed to know what on earth he was mumbling about?

She went up to her own bedroom, redecorated in the Easter holidays. It was her favourite room. John now slept on the ground floor in what had been his office. The little dim room was quite adequate for his needs. John had been bothered with night blindness before the stroke, and he still had a bright Anglepoise lamp. Liz was glad to be rid of it. She’d hated having the light on in the night, and now she had the prettiest of pale-pink bedrooms, with soft cherry lamps.

She pressed a button on her cerise landline phone.

‘Hello, Callie,’ she said in her brightest teacher’s voice. ‘Have you got a minute? I think I may have something of yours. Are you missing a hammer?’

A
t half past twelve on Saturday morning, after the police had gone, Alison MacDonald set off to drive to her fiancé’s flat in South Manchester. Mrs Rudder had dealt with the police constable, while Alison waited in the staff-room. But the PCSO woman had come to chat to her. Alison had said, ‘At first I thought it was a boy from my class. But now I can’t be sure.’ As Mrs Rudder had said, she couldn’t be really sure, could she? But she felt vaguely ashamed. She had been convinced it was Jonty McFadden running away from the smashed window. So why had she been persuaded by Mrs Rudder that she might have made a mistake, or even have
wanted
it to be Jonty?

Alison picked up speed once she reached the M6 and turned south. It was a fine spring day, the blue sky and sage green hills momentarily lifting her spirits. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the ‘minor vandalism incident’, as Mrs Rudder had called it. If mere vandalism had been the aim, why hadn’t the vandals smashed the staff-room window or the big glass doors? Alison had experienced working with disruptive children in Manchester, but this was different. She felt personally victimized. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, she thought about handing in her notice at St Mungo’s.

But the Police Community Support Officer had put a different point of view. Alison felt the woman had been older, friendly, non-judgemental; and she had been the only person to ask how Alison felt.

‘You shouldn’t let these people affect your behaviour,’ Ro had said. ‘They’ve won if you change things. Make sure the school takes security
measures
. We can help you on that. But get back to normal and don’t let it stop you.’

Get back to normal, Alison thought. Right … That meant putting the
incident
out of her mind and looking forward to seeing Mark. He needed to relax at the weekends and had a very determined idea of how to do it. Sometimes she resented being jumped on as soon as she went in the front door, but in 
another way it was flattering. As always, she called him from her last pit stop on the motorway, and when she arrived she put her key in the door as if it were home.

‘Hi, honey,’ he called out.

Mark lived on the top floor of a beautiful Victorian house. His tiny flat was costing him an arm and a leg, but, as he told Alison, the high mortgage meant that when they were married he could transfer it to a house and they could get a really good start. And Mark liked style. It was one of the things Alison found attractive about him. The flat was an oasis. He had white wine chilling in the fridge, and there were flowers on the table. Alison started to cry. It wasn’t a dramatic bursting into tears, or a romantic weeping. She was snorting and snuffling, stuck in the doorway with her luggage and her coat over her arm, making a fool of herself. ‘Oh Mark, I’m sorry. It’s so good to be here after the school, and the kids. And the other teachers….’

Alison shuffled across the room and collapsed on the sofa, feeling the mascara smearing down her cheeks. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t stand it any more. Couldn’t we get married this summer on the cheap? I could junk the job and come down to live here with you. We could manage.’

Mark put a roll of kitchen towel into her lap. ‘Baby, pull yourself together. You know that wouldn’t work. This place is far too small for both of us and our stuff. If you jacked it in and came here you might not get another job for months. Then where would we be?’

‘But I hate it in Pelliter.’

‘Oh Ali, get over it. Have a good cry and then we’ll curl up in bed and talk about it.’

But talking, Alison knew, was what they wouldn’t do.

Brenda Hodgson was pottering at home. Saturday afternoons could be very  dull these days. She had washing to do. As usual she’d had coffee with Faye and Callie in the morning, and arrived back from Norbridge too late for lunch. The rich sticky cake Callie had pressed on her at the coffee shop was giving her wind. She sniggered at the sort of expressions Callie might use. Brenda had been brought up to be polite. Her parents, slightly older than average, would refer to ‘spending a penny’ or ‘paying a visit’ in an arch sort of way. No bodily functions were spoken of. When Brenda had started her periods she had thought she was going to die.

‘What on earth…?’ her mother had said in her usual cross voice. ‘Well, I suppose it had to happen sometime. I thought you’d know all about it. Didn’t anyone tell you?’ Somehow Brenda was to blame, as usual. No friends or teachers cared enough to keep her informed. Her mother had rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘And you’d better get used to it because it comes every month. And 
another thing … you don’t ever talk about this, especially not to men. It’s secret. Do you understand? A secret.’

Brenda nodded. She understood about secrets. But she couldn’t possibly imagine having a secret from Peter. Her brother was the only person she could talk to. That night she had confided to him about what had happened, but he sprang away from her as if she were contaminated. The next day at school, desperate for reassurance, she told the girl she sat next to.

‘Oh, you’ve started! But you shouldn’t talk about it.’ Liz had looked at her with round eyes. She and Liz had spent the whole of break-time discussing it in the corner of the yard. And so a friendship had begun which had lasted over forty years.

Forty years. One of the oddest things about getting old was that time suddenly seemed to have passed so quickly. Where had the years gone? The inevitable cycle of the year seemed to get faster and faster. First there was the start of the autumn term with the new children, all keen, clean and shiny, eager to please. Then came practices for the Christmas concert and nativity play. Then there was the dull routine of the winter, as the children somehow grew greyer and duller like the weather outside. Then in the first warmth of a spitefully unreliable spring, they suddenly became overconfident, rude and brutish, with pointy arms and legs, and flabby spare tyres of tummy. By April they were all overheated and flapping with grimy layers of clothing:
cardigans
, fleeces, anoraks, scarves and gloves for every occasion, so that teaching became overlaid with a constant search for missing coats, bags, books, and nowadays even mobile phones! St Mungo’s had never really had a uniform, though the children were encouraged to wear bottle-green tracksuits and the school shirt with the logo on. Brenda hated bottle green. The children looked like overcooked vegetables sitting there in their spinach-coloured sweatshirts.

Brenda had taught Year Four now for over ten years. It was a role she thought she found entirely satisfactory. Liz Rudder had always taken Year Five, which was of course the best year. The children were aged eight to nine, cute and enthusiastic, old enough to be responsible, but not burdened with SATs tests or puberty like Year Six. But it was only right that Liz Rudder should teach the easiest year. Liz was deputy head, and she had always had more responsibility, especially since the Findleys had gone to pieces.

Admiring Liz Rudder had been part of Brenda’s psyche for so long that she felt disturbed and dislocated now the need had gone. There was only one word to describe the way Liz had behaved to Brenda. It was such a horrid cruel word that Brenda hesitated to use it, but it was a word that came flying into her brain like a demented bat when she wanted to shoo it away. Dumped. That was the term the children used, too. She had been dumped by Liz. It was almost inconceivable and it was a total mortification. 

Brenda poured herself a gin and tonic, and sat in her spotless little sitting room. She had tried not to brood about it, and to find new friends, but it was hard to accept that since John had had his stroke Liz had cut her out. She just couldn’t understand why. For years she had been Liz’s confidante and support, her bridesmaid when she had married, her handmaiden really. But now, she was ditched. These Spanish lessons on Wednesday nights, for example. Liz had hardly ever done things without Brenda before, but she hadn’t even suggested that Brenda take lessons too.

Had Liz dropped her because she was embarrassed about John’s awful stroke, his lolling head and dribbling mouth? Was it because Brenda had known John when he was young and handsome, though now he had become a burden? A burden with his own secrets. Secrets were Brenda’s thing, and my goodness, now she had secrets galore!

Brenda thought about what she had recently discovered. It was
astonishing
, and if Liz knew she would be horrified. More than horrified. The satisfaction of being ‘in the know’ sometimes made Brenda feel triumphant. She had been genuinely fond of Liz and there wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t feel shocked and hurt that their friendship was in decline. And
humiliated
and vengeful too, she had to admit. But the whole business had left Brenda smarting to show Liz a thing or two, and there was no doubt that she’d found a way to do just that. The knowledge should have buoyed her up and made her feel better because now she, Brenda Hodgson, was the one in the picture, and clever old Liz, repository of all grown-up knowledge, was out of the loop, as they said on the TV.

Brenda sniggered, but the laughter didn’t console her. There was her new friendship with Callie and Faye too, but it wasn’t really enough either. Sometimes she felt bad about what she’d done, but
any
way she could find to get her own back was justified, wasn’t it? It wasn’t disloyal when you had been so badly treated. She had told her brother all about it, and he had agreed. And he was a priest, so that must be all right.

It had been a wearying day all round, Liz Rudder thought as she went to check that John was tucked out of sight in the little room where he slept. The carers had been, and he was in bed at eight o’clock. Back in the living room, Liz relaxed in her favourite armchair with a glass of Rioja at her side. She picked up the headphones connected to the laptop on the sideboard. Putting them on, she heard the relaxing voice, full of promise, saying ‘
Bu-en-os di-as
.’ The Spanish lessons had started partly as a way of getting out of the house, away from John and his squeaks and smells. But a few months ago, like an epiphany, Liz had suddenly envisaged herself living in Spain as soon as she could. Why not? 

If John died, this would be easy-peasy. Even if he stayed alive, he could eventually be put in a cheaper type of nursing home. No one would blame her. That way, she could afford something very attractive near Marbella when she retired. Of course she would need her full pension from St Mungo’s and the money from the sale of the house. She’d hoped at first that her oldest friend Brenda might come with her and purchase a neighbouring apartment, but practicality ruled that out. Now that Brenda’s brother had come back to Pelliter to live in their parents’ house, Brenda only had the little terraced house near the council estate. Property prices at that end of the market had tumbled far more than for the big villas in High Pelliter. There was no way Brenda could afford the sort of place in Spain Liz had in mind.

And recently Liz had realized that Brenda was so tedious. All those silly little secrets she made so much of! Who cared? Liz recognized that she and Brenda had been friends for forty years, but increasingly she felt that Brenda hadn’t been a confidante so much as a parasite, feeding from Liz and John’s precarious relationship.

But it wasn’t precarious any more. With John in his wheelchair, unable to move, it was just about as settled as any relationship could be. John’s roving eye couldn’t rove any further than the ceiling.

And there was a satisfactory element about being able to ditch boring Brenda. The Hodgsons had always been so snooty, with their son the vicar and their posh house. But now Peter Hodgson was back in Pelliter under some sort of cloud, and it was Brenda who had the mean little terraced house near the Pelliter Valley estate while Liz was contemplating an off-plan
apartment
in Andalusia. How things had changed!

Liz clamped the headphones securely over both ears so she could hear nothing but the sound of Spain. She could almost feel the sun, and hear the gentle waves on the shore under her balcony.