Different Class (15 page)

Oh.
This may be hard to imagine now. But things were very different then. I’d never thought of my colleagues – my friends – in any other context than that of St Oswald’s. I’d never been to Harry’s house, or asked him about his personal life. It was different with Eric Scoones. We’d been schoolboys together. I’d known him since we were first-year Ozzies in blazers and caps. I’d been to his birthday parties, in the little White City house he still shares with his mother. We’d fought for the same scholarships; faced our bullies together; waged imaginary wars; drawn legions of stick-men across generations of Latin books, and if it had ever occurred to me that he might be somehow –
different
, I would never have mentioned it. But Harry – I’m not proud of this, but it floored me completely.

He saw my expression. ‘Really, Roy? Did it never cross your mind?’

I had to admit that it had not. ‘Who else have you told about this?’ I said. ‘Did you tell Nutter? Or Harrington? Or anybody else on the staff?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t go out of my way to mention it, if that’s what you mean. But why should I lie? I’ve done nothing wrong—’

Of course, he was right. He’d done nothing wrong. But was he really so naïve as to think
that
would make a difference? Even nowadays, to admit to being a homosexual – especially when teaching in a boys’ school – is to incur suspicion and perhaps run the risk of dismissal. Twenty-four years ago, it was worse. Gay Liberation had barely begun. Harry knew the risk all right. He just didn’t seem to care.

He gave me a wry look. ‘Does it make a difference?’

‘No. No. Why should it?’ I lied.

The truth is that of course it did. It made me feel uncomfortable. I like to think I know languages, but this was a language I barely knew – the dialect of intimacy. I didn’t like Harry any the less for what he’d just admitted to me, but to know that I’d been his friend for ten years, and never even suspected—

Was I really so naïve? The thought was profoundly disturbing. I’d always thought myself rather a good judge of people. So how could I have overlooked something so fundamental – something, I now realized, so blatantly, stupidly
obvious
?

It occurred to me then that I, too, could be seen in the same light. I, too, was unmarried. I, too, spent my lunchtimes with the boys. Plus, I made no secret of the fact that I enjoyed Harry’s company. Could anyone – a colleague, perhaps – have ever considered that
I
might be gay? Could the
boys
have believed it? I am not proud of admitting it, but the very thought filled me with horror.

No, I am not the most liberal of men. I never had the chance to be. My parents were ordinary northern folk, the products of their generation. My upbringing was St Oswald’s, via a School bursary, then a dull university, then teaching in two lesser schools before St Oswald’s claimed me again. By the time I was forty-two, I was as institutionalized as my parents – both of them long-term residents at the Meadowbank old people’s home, not far out of Malbry.

Perhaps for that reason I appeared older than my years to Harry, whose background was very different, and whose lack of ambition and disregard for convention made him seem much younger than I. It strikes me now that one of the reasons I’m fond of young Allen-Jones is that he reminds me a little of Harry Clarke, especially in the eyes.

Harry took another Quality Street. ‘You have that look on your face,’ he said. ‘That
anywhere-but-here
look. It only makes a difference, you know, if you allow it to matter. We all find comfort where we can, and who’s to say that one kind of love is better, or more worthy?’

Of course he was right. I took his point. But this was all too personal, too unexpected for me to digest. We Tweed Jackets don’t like to talk about our innermost feelings. It’s one of the reasons I’d rather teach boys than a gaggle of Mulberry girls. Boys have a pleasing lack of depth; an emotional inarticulacy that means they talk about football; books; music; TV; computer games; but rarely matters of the heart. Of course I know they
feel
things; but, thank gods, they seldom
share
.

I said: ‘It’s none of my business, old man. It won’t make the slightest difference.’

He smiled, a little sadly, I thought. ‘Have another chocolate.’

7

September 12th, 2005

Another day of surprises as the assault upon St Oswald’s goes on. The first came just as I reached the School gates, which, as of today, are flanked with a billboard as big as a barn, depicting two young Spartans in St Oswald’s uniform, apparently conducting some kind of experiment involving test tubes, smoke and crème de menthe, below the giant slogan,
Progress through Tradition
.

I took a few moments to remember where I’d heard the phrase before; then I identified it as part of Harrington’s opening speech. Is this what he means by ‘rebranding’ the School? And what kind of a slogan is
Progress through Tradition
?

There were more of the photographs inside the School – the lobby and the Porter’s Lodge – all framed in light oak and depicting schoolboys engaged in a variety of exciting-looking extracurricular activities: theatre; sculpture; trampolining; training with the Army Cadets; competing in cricket and rugby. None of the boys were pupils of ours, being clean, well dressed and suspiciously lacking in skin blemishes of any kind. But it will impress the parents, of course – which, I suppose, is Harrington’s plan.

Personally, I prefer the battle-scarred lines of Honours Boards along the Lower and Middle Corridors, dating back to 1885 (not the School’s Foundation, of course, but when the New Building was opened), inscribed with the names of our old boys, in gold leaf, on a dark oak ground.

Over the years, some of these boards have faded in the sunlight, and the combined effects of damp and heat have caused the wood to warp and shift, breaking the varnished surfaces into a honeyed crackle glaze. This is most obvious in the boards that happen to face a window; with the result that the corridors have become chequered in light and shade, passing from gold to amber, to black, shifting like the seasons. Some of the names on the sunniest boards have faded into transparency, becoming insubstantial, legible only in sunlight. Others are almost as fresh as the day they were painted – traditionally, by a Sixth-Form boy studying calligraphy – and if you look under the frame, you’ll often find the signatures of the young artists, in Latin:

J. Jordan, scripsit.

P. Jolly, scripsit.

There is something very poignant about those names; those hopeful dates; those lists of awards. Boys who were dead before I was born immortalized in gold leaf, linking us all with past glories, every name a shared triumph, every scar a story. The School stopped commissioning Honours Boards when old Shitter Shakeshafte began his reign; but if you look on the Middle Corridor, opposite the window, you can still see, in the top right-hand corner, the name of R. H. Straitley – almost entirely faded away except for the last three letters, tucked into the side of the frame, gleaming out defiantly from a wedge of shadow.

Or so it was until today. This morning, on my way into School, halfway down the Lower Corridor, I found Jimmy Watt with a stepladder, taking down the Honours Boards, scars, stories and all.

‘Sorry, boss,’ he told me. ‘Orders from the New Head. We’re going to have display boards instead. You know, for the parents.’

I was too stunned to say anything. The spaces where the boards had hung were framed with dust, revealing the paintwork of decades past: powdery patches of sky-blue; iron-grey; or that curious hospital-green. Nowadays, the plasterwork is usually painted magnolia, with the wooden panels painted in brown to hide the scars; but no one paints
under
the Honours Boards, and the result looked unspeakably sad; a row of trompe-l’oeil windows, looking on to a blind wall.

‘The
parents
?’ I said at last. ‘What the hell have the parents got to do with it? The Honours Boards belong to St Oswald’s, they’re not something you can just move because some bloody interior decorator tells you they’re out of style!’

Jimmy looked mournful. ‘Sorry, boss.’

I took a breath. There was no point in berating Jimmy – nicknamed ‘Forty-Watt’ by some of my less tolerant colleagues, he’s paid to do what he is told, and would never argue with a superior.

‘What kind of display boards?’ I said.

Jimmy seemed to brighten a little. ‘Nice ones. Like in the lobby,’ he said.

For a moment I imagined it.
Progress through Tradition
. The Lower Corridor stripped of its past and converted into a glossy brochure. Yes, the parents would like it. The parents like anything that makes them believe that their money is buying them something more than just teachers, classrooms, chalk and dust. St Oswald’s parents are paying fees that seem to them extortionate; and value for money, in their eyes, means more than traditions going back to the sixteenth century.

It means computers; science labs; impressive new facilities. As if a good schoolmaster wasn’t worth a hundred new computers. I may have said something of the sort – I may even have raised my voice – because as I was expressing myself, Thing Two, aka Ms Buckfast, came out of the office that had once belonged to Pat Bishop and fixed me with the kind of smile a nurse might give to a lunatic.

‘Is there a problem?’ she said.

‘Yes, I think there is,’ I said. ‘Much as I appreciate the quaint reasoning that led to the appointment of a Rebranding Guru, if that’s what you are, St Oswald’s has been standing for a lot longer than either of us. I don’t think its demolition counts as progress of any kind.’

That might have been a little too blunt
, I told myself, a little too late.

Ms Buckfast blinked at me. ‘You must be Mr Straitley,’ she said.

I gave her the Straitley 3D-stare, the one that works so well on boys who overstep the mark in class.

Ms Buckfast stared back, with a little smile that totally failed to reach her eyes. A rather attractive woman – well built, and with that striking red hair – but I can’t help thinking there’s something far too polished about that exterior, like a Christmas bauble, shiny on the outside, but hollow and easily broken. I wondered just
how
easily.

I said: ‘In which case, you’ll know my motto:
Verveces tui similes pro ientaculo mihi appositi sunt
.’

The smile did not waver for a second.

So, she doesn’t know Latin
, I thought. Her eyes were exactly the same shade of green as the paint beneath the Honours Boards from 1913 to 1915, and their expression was just as flat.

‘I’m Rebecca Buckfast,’ she said. ‘The Head’s told me all about you.’

‘Has he now?’

‘Oh, yes, he has. He’s one of your biggest fans, you know.’

I grimaced. Somehow I doubted that.

‘He says he always expected to hear that you’d been given a senior post. Second Master, Head of Year – maybe even the Headship.’

I had to laugh. ‘A Headship?’ You don’t ask the barnacles on the hull which direction to steer in. Not that there’ll
be
any barnacles once Johnny Harrington has finished with us.

‘I was never Caesar,’ I said. ‘At best, a reluctant Cassius.’

She smiled. Once more, her eyes stayed cold. ‘In which case, I think our motto should be
Victurus te saluto
.’ And at that she went back to her office, leaving me with two conclusions.

One: Rebecca Buckfast may not be as brittle as I first thought.

Two: she
does
know Latin, after all.

8

September 12th, 2005

But that was only the start, I fear, of the New Head’s expansion plan. The pigeon-holes in the Quiet Room have also been removed, in preparation for the new workstations, which will be delivered some time during the week. There are rumours of staff assessments, to be carried out throughout the term by various senior colleagues. Even more disturbing, I hear that the
boys
are being asked to contribute – rating facilities, even staff, with a view to making improvements.