Different Class (2 page)

St Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys
Michaelmas Term, September 7th, 2005

Ah, yes. There she blows. St Oswald’s, a metaphor for eternity if ever I saw one, heaving into view like something from a boys’ adventure book – a Jules Verne, perhaps, as the mysterious island peers over the horizon. Or a Rider Haggard, in which sinister natives cower and lurk at the gates of the Forbidden City. You can see the Bell Tower from the road, the peaked turret that has never housed a bell a haunt for pigeons – and lately, mice. And behind it, the long spine of the Middle Corridor, mullioned with light, and the illuminated front of the Chapel, the rose window casting its fugitive gleam across the walk of lindens.

Home at last
, I tell myself, and the thought is at the same time a benediction and a curse.

Silly old fool
, comes my silent retort, in a voice eerily like that of my colleague and long-time adversary, Dr ‘Sourgrape’ Devine. I’ll be sixty-six on Bonfire Night, with a hundred and two terms under my fast-expanding belt – what will it take to keep me away?

Good question. It’s a drug, of course. Like the occasional Gauloise, taken in secret behind the door of my office, it helps to keep me going. And my ticker pills, of course, prescribed for me by my doctor after last year’s little incident – along with a good deal of unwanted advice on smoking, stress and pastry.

My doctor is an ex-pupil of mine (the Village is full of them nowadays), which makes him hard to take seriously. He means well, for all that, and I do try my best to humour him. But stress is a part of the job, and besides, what would the old place become without me? Thirty-four years I’ve served on this ship. I know it from every angle. Master and boy; teacher trainee; form-tutor; Head of Classics; and now, Old Centurion. Might as well try to knock the gargoyles off the Chapel roof as dislodge old Straitley, and if the management don’t like it, at least they have the sense to keep quiet on the subject. I did the School a service last year – the year that, after a promising start, became our
annus horribilis
– besides which my Latin results were the best we’ve had since ’89. At the time, I’ll admit it, I was close to giving in. But murder, scandal, deception and fraud have driven the old ship on to the rocks. How could I leave St Oswald’s to the scavengers and the wrecking crew?

So here I am again, two days before the official stampede, watering the plants, clearing my desk (well, I aim to) and generally planning next year’s campaign with the cunning and precision of a Marcus Aurelius. Or so I hope my colleagues will think, when they arrive this afternoon for the ritual pre-term staff meeting to find me already installed in my room in the Bell Tower, smoking a quiet cigarette and fully conversant with the new term’s class lists, timetable, gossip and dirt, the stuff on which St Oswald’s dines like the graveyard kings of old.

I owe much of my insider information to a single source. Jimmy Watt. My secret weapon. Reinstated after last year and promoted to the position of Assistant Porter. No intellectual, but sound, and good with his hands – besides which Jimmy owes me a favour or two, and through him I hear much of what is denied my more elevated colleagues.

‘Morning, boss.’ His face is round and good-natured, lit now with a brilliant smile. ‘Good holiday?’

‘Yes, thank you, Jimmy.’ I try to remember the last time I went on holiday. Unless you count that School trip to France in 1978, when Eric Scoones took the boys on foot to see the Sacré-Coeur by night, blissfully unaware that the famous basilica sits in the middle of the most notorious red-light district in Paris.

I suppose I must have
had
a holiday – if you can call it that, with its burden of wasps and cricket and bare midriffs and unseasonal rainstorms, with tea in the afternoons and the mantelpiece clock ticking away the long and somnolent summer days.
Gods
, I think,
it’s good to be back
. But how long for? A term? A year? What next? What then?

Holidays, I suppose. Leisure activities. Novels. An allotment, perhaps, somewhere up by the Abbey Road estate, where I will grow rhubarb and listen to the wireless. Hobbies. Pub quizzes. Sudoku, whatever
that
is. All the things I postponed in the name of duty, back in the days when such things were still to be desired. Depressing prospect. A St Oswald’s Master has no time for frivolities, and it is far, far too late for me to develop a taste for them now.

‘Yes, back in the jug for another stint,’ I told Jimmy, with a smile so that he would know that I was joking. ‘You’d almost think I
liked
it here.’

Jimmy gave his honking laugh. I suppose it must seem strange to him; but then, of course, he’s still young. He has his pastimes – such as they are – and the great white whale of St Oswald’s has not yet consumed him entirely.

‘Any sign of the new New Head?’

‘He’s in his office. I’ve seen his car.’

‘He didn’t introduce himself? Pop into the Lodge for a cup of tea?’

Jimmy grinned and shook his head. I expect he thought I was joking. But a good Headmaster knows his staff before he takes the helm of the ship – and that means the cleaners, the Porter
and
the ladies who make the tea. A good Head values the rank and file at least as much as the officers. But since his appointment in early June, sightings of the new New Head have been infrequent, to say the least. We know him by name and, to some extent, by reputation. But only a privileged few have seen his face. Rumours abound, however. Meetings held behind closed doors; whispers of insolvency and academic failure; all compounded by a far from friendly School Inspection which, added to the most appalling set of exam results in St Oswald’s memory, has brought us to this all-time low; a Crisis Intervention.

The dreadful events of last year; the murder of a schoolboy, the stabbing of a member of staff and the scandal that split the Common Room still reverberate, even now, and there have been many casualties. We lost our Second Master, Pat Bishop, as a result of those events, and since his departure there has been unrest, unease and downright rebellion among the rank and file, while Bob Strange – the Third Master, a clever administrator, but with no flair for people – tried to keep the old galley from sinking with the help of computers, management courses and internal assessment.

It didn’t work. Our Captain, the erstwhile New Head, unaccustomed to command, began to flounder. There were mutterings in the ranks; some staff deserted (or walked the plank) and finally, in June, came confirmation from the Governors of what they called an ‘emergency management restructuring’. In layman’s terms, the hemlock bowl.

Not that I cared much for the man. Suits come, Suits go, and in sixteen years he’d achieved little for us, and still less for himself. St Oswald’s tradition dictates that a Headmaster shall always be known as the
New Head
, until he has earned the respect of the crew. The
old
New Head never managed this. A state-school man in shades of grey, whose tendency was to dwell on the smaller transgressions of St Oswald’s dress code rather than turn his mind to the general health of the
corpus scolari
.

The new man, rumour tells us, is very different. A Super-Head, trained in PR – and
sound
, according to Bob Strange, which makes him eminently qualified to take the helm of our leaky old ship and to steer us triumphantly into happier waters. I personally doubt this. He sounds like another Suit to me – and his absence throughout the summer term, when he could have been getting to know his staff, suggests that he will be one of those men who expects the menial work to be done invisibly, by others, while he enjoys the benefits; the publicity and the glory.

His name, we know, is Harrington. It happens to be the name of a boy I once disliked very strongly: not the new man’s fault, of course, nor is it such an uncommon name, but I can’t help wishing that his name had been Smith or Robinson. We know little else about him, except that he is a guru of sorts, having already saved two failing schools in Oldham and in Milton Keynes; is a prominent member of Survivors, a charitable organization dealing with child abuse, and has an MBE from the Queen. We also know, thanks to Jimmy Watt, that he is young, good-looking, well dressed and drives a silver BMW (a fact that already ensures him Jimmy’s wholehearted support and admiration).

‘That’s what St Oswald’s needs,’ says Bob Strange. ‘A new broom, to sweep away the cobwebs.’

Well, I, for one,
liked
the cobwebs. I suspect that to Strange I am one myself. But our Bob has hopes of promotion. At forty-six he is no longer a Young Gun, and his flair for technology, which might have been unusual twenty years ago, is now the norm for the new generation. Failing the Headship, he covets the post of Second Master – and with reason; he’s been doing Pat Bishop’s job since Christmas. Of course, a post at St Oswald’s is always more than the sum of its parts, and the things that made Bishop a success – his heart, his humanity, his genuine affection for the boys and for the School – had nothing to do with his job description. Strange has never quite grasped this, and the rest of us have long since given up hope that he might emerge from his cocoon of paperwork as a flamboyant Second Master. On the other hand, it could be that the new man will need inside help; someone to show him the ropes, perhaps, and to give him the dirt on his pirate crew.

Strange most certainly fits the bill. His glaucous eyes see everything: who is late for lessons; who has trouble with the boys; who steals the Common Room copy of the
Daily Mail
to read in his form-room during Prep. He keeps to his office most of the time, and yet his ears are always open. He has his spies among the staff (some even suspect him of using hidden cameras), and as a result he is respected and feared, though seldom actually liked. He runs the timetable, and those unfortunate enough to be out of favour get more than their fair share of Friday afternoon cover and lower third-form sets. A sneak, in short. A management stooge.

This morning as I made my way up the stairs to my form-room I wondered – with some small apprehension – what the coming term might bring. So many things have changed since last year; so many colleagues reshuffled, or gone. Bishop; Pearman; Grachvogel; the Head – and, of course, our own Miss Dare. I could have been among them – in fact, I fully intended to retire – but for the state of the dear old place, and the gnawing conviction that the moment I left, Bob Strange would delete my subject from the curriculum.

Besides, what would I do without the perpetual soap opera of St Oswald’s to sustain me? And my boys – my Brodie Boys – who else but I could look after them?

The scent reached me as I opened the door.
Eau de Room 59
, a blend so familiar that for ten months a year I barely notice its presence. And yet here it is again, as nostalgic as burning leaves; a comforting scent of wood, books, polish, geranium, mice, old socks and perhaps a hint of illicit Gauloise. I lit one in celebration, knowing that when Dr Sourgrape Devine – Head of German, Head of Amadeus House and (more’s the pity) Health & Safety Officer to St Oswald’s and the world – made his entrance, such luxuries as a quiet smoke, a pasty or even a Liquorice Allsort (of which I have a small supply hidden in my desk drawer) would be once more forbidden to me.

Speak of the devil. Damn and blast. He must have got in early this morning, because I’d barely blown out the match when I heard a sound of footsteps at my door and glimpsed the end of Devine’s sharp nose behind the panel of frosted glass.

‘Morning, Devine!’ I disposed of match and cigarette under the lid of the Master’s desk.

‘Morning, Straitley.’ The nose twitched, but refrained from comment.

‘Good holiday?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ He and I both know that Dr Devine hates holidays. On the other hand, as a married man, he has, I suppose, some responsibility to Mrs Devine, and so grudgingly, once a year, he packs off to the French Riviera and spends two weeks planning lessons in the shade while his wife – a well-preserved fifty – sunbathes, plays tennis and goes to the spa. ‘And you?’

‘Oh yes. Great fun. Been here long?’

‘Been coming in since last week,’ he said, with a casualness that filled me with suspicion. ‘Things to do. You know what it’s like.’

I certainly do. Any excuse to get back to St Oswald’s. He’s an ambitious chap in spite of his age (sixty, damn him, and looks younger), and he must have guessed that there might soon be a Third Master’s job going begging, or if not, some new and highly paid administrative post. Besides, the New Head will surely need a friend on the ground, and Devine sees no reason for Bob Strange to be the only contender.

‘Inducting new staff?’ I said slyly.

I know that this year, appointments have been mainly overseen by Bob Strange, the New Head and the Bursar; and that as Head of German, Devine feels that he should have had a more central role in the department’s restructuring. Kitty Teague’s promotion to Head of French, for instance, he feels to be inappropriate, and he is aggrieved at the fact that two new appointments have already been made, largely at her discretion. For myself, I’m rather fond of Miss Teague, whom I’ve known since she was a teacher trainee. I think she’ll make a splendid Head of French, and I suspect old Devine knows it too.

As for his own department – well. The new German Master, his protégé, already strikes me as dubious. His name precedes him – Markowicz – though apparently his busy schedule means he won’t be in School until next week. I know that kind of member of staff – the sort who puts administrative work before the lowly business of actually teaching his subject – and I’m not sure his appointment will reflect well on his Head of Department.

‘I’ve not seen much of the new staff,’ said Devine in a frosty voice. ‘Even the New Head—’ He sniffed. Some say the eyes are the mirror of the soul, but in Devine’s case it is the nose that expresses most fully the hidden emotions. His had turned pink, like an albino rabbit’s, and twitched resentfully.