Different Class (5 page)

I drew the flap of my gown across the tea-stained crotch of my trousers. Not quite trusting myself to speak, I gave the man a curt nod.

The smile broadened still further. ‘Of course. We’ll catch up later,’ he said. ‘Maybe after the meeting.’

Of all the boys I’ve watched grow up, moving from larva to chrysalis, and then to dubious butterfly, in time taking wing as accountants, bankers, journalists, researchers, soldiers – God help them, sometimes even
teachers
, which, according to Eric Scoones, rank even higher on the perversion scale than Clive Punnet, who ate his wife – none have surprised me as utterly as little Johnny Harrington.

The arrogant, sullen little boy has been reborn as a smiling, smooth-voiced politician, whose lack of essential warmth is now all too ably camouflaged beneath a veneer of surface shine. But people rarely change at heart, except in the growing sophistication of their various disguises, and it doesn’t take much for me now to see beneath the surface.

Still, I have to admit that Harrington had made an impressive entrance. His opening speech to the Common Room was a kind of masterpiece; rousing; funny; articulate and shot through with that self-deprecating charm that only the most dangerous of politicians can manage. He spoke of his affection for St Oswald’s; of his sadness to see the dear old place so run-down and neglected; of his hope that together we would raise the phoenix from the ashes.

‘We have to think of St Oswald’s,’ he said. ‘But not through a veil of nostalgia. There’s a joke we used to tell, back when I was still a boy.
How many St Oswald’s Masters does it take to change a lightbulb?
’

He gave the Common Room a smile as bright as a toothpaste commercial.

‘The answer, of course, was:
CHANGE??
’

The audience laughed obediently. The New Head laughed with them. I noticed that, as he delivered the punchline, Harrington altered his posture a little, adopted a voice to match the stance, and for a moment, I was convinced that the little rat was mimicking
me
—

But Harrington had already moved on. Humour had suddenly given way to a politician’s earnestness. The middle section of his speech now had a yearning quality; a dewy, romantic quality, peppered with every cliché in the orator’s manual.

‘Change,’ he repeated. ‘Change can be hard. But, like the lightbulb, change can also be illuminating. The Bursar, the Third Master and I have worked hard with my team and the Governors to put into place a number of necessary changes. Some are financial – the Bursar will explain them in greater detail later, but I’m sure you must know that St Oswald’s has been living beyond its means for years. Others are domestic, and may prove the greatest challenge. But I have every confidence in the staff of St Oswald’s. We have a strong tradition of battling against adversity.’

And then he looked right at me and said: ‘My Latin Master taught me that, along with so many other things.
Ad astra per aspera
. The rocky road will lead to the stars. The road to recovery may be rough. But I hope we can get there together.’

And in the applause that followed that speech, perfect in its cynicism, I wasn’t sure which I hated most: the fact that, for some reason, the man was trying to woo me, or that he was doing it in the language of Caesar.

Harrington beamed at his audience. I raised my teacup in tribute. The Senate – I mean the Common Room – gave him a standing ovation. Devine’s expressionless features were almost animated. Even Eric said: ‘Hear hear!’– a fact that depresses me more than it should – and Bob Strange looked like a schoolboy cricketer who has been allowed to carry his hero’s bat.

Ye gods. Can’t they
see
him? His fakery? But Julius Caesar had his charm – so, too, had Caligula. And so I prepared myself for the worst – for the Bursar’s financial plan and that list of domestic changes – with a sinking, rebellious heart, as Johnny Harrington – now reborn as
Dr
Harrington, MBE – watched me with a tiny smile, almost like a challenge.

‘And now for a look at the future,’ he said, turning towards the Bursar. ‘In his presentation, the Bursar will outline the changes that will make us more competitive, better equipped to deal with the world of business and innovation.’

Innovation.
That explained the viewing screen and the laptop computer on the desk. The Bursar is much addicted to something he calls PowerPoint, a kind of electronic crib-sheet for idiots. I settled in for a little nap. As an Old Centurion of St Oswald’s, there are a number of unnecessary innovations to which I will not submit. PowerPoint is one of them, as is e-mail, in spite of Bob Strange’s persistence in ‘copying me in’ to the minutes of meetings I do not attend, or summoning me to his office by electronic messenger, as if just opening the door and calling down the corridor (or even scribbling a note to pop into my pigeon-hole) were henceforth completely impossible.

Fortunately, Danielle, Bob’s secretary, is rather more amenable, and for the price of a few kind words and a box of chocolates at Christmas had arranged to print out my e-mails this term and deliver them to my pigeon-hole. This was why I had been surprised to find my pigeon-hole empty this morning, even though the beginning of term is always a morass of paperwork.

The Bursar’s PowerPoint soon explained the mystery. Apparently, St Oswald’s is to become a paper-free office environment, run entirely online. This, according to the Bursar – a sharp-nosed Scotsman with a reputation as a wit – will make for a greener St Oswald’s as well as a more efficient delivery system, and will make the old wooden pigeon-holes (which have been in use since 1904) redundant.

According to Harrington, their removal will create more space in the Quiet Room, which needs to be refurbished and supplied with staff workstations – here the Bursar paused in his speech to show us a series of diagrams to illustrate the new desks and the cubicles, each one supplied with a computer, in which we are to sit like battery hens, efficient and productive. For members of staff requiring extra training in what he calls ‘developing technology’, there will be an after-hours surgery with Mr Beard, the (beardless) Head of IT, to which we are all invited to bring our ideas and suggestions.

I, for one, shall not do so. I’m far too old a dog to learn that kind of new trickery. If necessary, I shall remain at my desk in room 59 during my free time, with a bag of Liquorice Allsorts and only the mice for company.

However, there was more to come from the Bursar’s budget. Most of it I’d heard before – consolidating of resources; sale of School assets; streamlining of departments; maximizing efficiency – all Bursar-speak for less money and less space for some department or other. I’m used to fighting my corner, and the prospect of doing so again was, if anything, invigorating.

But it was his next statement that made me sit bolt upright, clutching the armrest of my chair with a deathly grip as he announced ‘an exciting new development, which we hope may be the beginning of a long and successful partnership with our sister school, Mulberry House, and which, as you will already know, begins as of next week in Sixth Form . . .’

I said: ‘Excuse me, Bursar. But what exactly are you talking about?’

The Bursar gave me a look. ‘I’m talking about Mulberry House,’ he said, ‘and our plan to introduce a system of consolidated classes in certain subjects at Sixth-Form level.’

Consolidated classes
, forsooth.

‘You mean
mixed
classes, Bursar?’ I said.

He gave a rather narrow smile.

‘Our boys and Mulberry girls?’

‘That’s usually what we mean by mixed, Roy,’ said the Bursar, playing to the gallery. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’re more than satisfactorily equipped to prevent any inappropriate behaviour.’

I made a sound much like the one favoured by the Old Head.

‘Don’t say you didn’t know about this,’ the Bursar went on impatiently. ‘The details were e-mailed to you months ago.’

‘I don’t
do
e-mail, Bursar,’ I said.

‘Don’t do female, did you say?’ The Bursar was hitting his stride now, playing for laughs at my expense. ‘Well, you heard the Head, Roy. We’re all facing changes. Besides, with class sizes as they are, I thought you’d be grateful for the extra bodies.’

I suppose he had a point there. Last year, my Lower Sixth Latin set consisted of four boys, one of whom dropped the subject at Christmas in favour of Business Studies.

Still – girls.
Mulberry
girls. There’s something about our sister school that sets the whole of my being on edge. I don’t know if it’s the girls themselves – the rolled-up skirts, the giggling and the look of superiority – or if it’s the mistresses, most of them dowdier versions of the girls; or the current Headmistress, a bottle blonde of indeterminate age and increasingly predatory temperament, whose hemlines over the past ten years have risen in inverse proportion to her dwindling chances of snaring a man.

But in thirty-four years at St Oswald’s, I’ve usually managed to avoid dealing with our sister school, linked as it is with St Oswald’s by our own Foundation, as well as by decades of collaboration in school plays, concerts and trips abroad.

‘Gods preserve us,’ I muttered.

Sitting beside me, Robbie Roach gave a lecherous snigger. ‘I think you’re being ungrateful,’ he said. ‘What I’d give to have a few of those Mulberry girls in
my
class.’

Robbie teaches History – so badly that Bob Strange ensures he never has a Sixth Form. Instead he runs field trips and Scout Camp, which he enjoys enormously, whilst maintaining the pretence that this takes up a great deal of his valuable leisure time, and therefore deserves compensation.

Now he gave me a wink and hissed: ‘
Berry fresh, old boy. Berry fresh.
’

To hear him you might imagine an elderly roué of the kind featured in one of Eric’s French films. In fact, he is harmless; all talk; unable to control his hair, let alone his classes. The idea that he, of all people, might be capable of seducing a Mulberry girl – or even getting one to hand in her homework on time – was beyond ludicrous.

I addressed the
real
enemy. ‘Bursar. May I venture to ask whether
all
subjects will benefit from this proposed consolidation? Or is Classics the only area in need of – er – curricular corsetry?’

Robbie Roach sniggered again.

The Bursar gave him a sharp look.

‘Just the usual,’ he said. ‘And the Languages Department.’

By
the usual
I guessed he meant Music and Drama, both departments which have had more to do with Mulberry House than most over the past few years. As a result, their members of staff have gone native to an alarming extent, staging productions of musicals with exclamation marks in the title, running yoga classes after School and
getting in touch with their feminine side
.

All very well, I suppose, but it’s an open secret that Mulberry House wants a merger, which St Oswald’s, like a cautious bachelor faced with the threat of matrimony, has so far neatly avoided.

This seemed to me the thin end of the wedge. It’s not that I don’t like girls, of course, but I prefer to like them from afar. I also like kittens and ice cream, but would rather not see them brought into class.

Harrington gave me a sympathetic look. ‘I know this must all seem very new,’ he said. ‘But we must face the facts. The dinosaurs have had their day. It’s time for St Oswald’s to
evolve
. Survival is our priority now. And we
will
survive. Well, maybe not
all
of us—’ His smile grew a little more pronounced. ‘But those who face the future instead of clinging to the past.
They’ll
survive.
We’ll
survive.
Because we are survivors!
’

Once more, the Common Room rose
en masse
, to give him a standing ovation. I remained seated, though Eric stood, clapping furiously with the rest. Harrington accepted their tribute with an air of amusement – and maybe a hint of veiled contempt, which of course only I saw. Once more, I thought his gaze shifted to mine, as if to assess the potential threat. Is this how the snake-charmer feels, when he locks eyes with the cobra? And if so, I can’t help wondering which is the charmer, and which is the snake?

4

Michaelmas Term, 2005

In every Common Room in the world, certain well-known tribes are represented. The Suit, brought into the School by chance on a plague ship during the Sixties, as exemplified by Bob Strange; the Stickler, by Dr Devine; the Old Boy, who, like Eric Scoones, can’t seem to keep away from the place, and, of course, the Tweed Jacket, of which I am the prototype. Ladies are either Dragons or, most often, Low-Fat Yoghurts, a damp subspecies of female who sits in a corner, discussing by turns the latest diet, or scandal, or episode of
Neighbours
. And then there is the Snake-Charmer; a type that occurs only once or twice in a Master’s lifetime. How strange now to see Johnny Harrington reborn into such a disguise; how strange, and yet I am not surprised. Haven’t I always known he’d come back? Haven’t I known it for twenty years?