Gentlemen & Players (2 page)

I understood then that this was far more than a line in the dirt, after all. It was a barrier no amount of bravado or desire would permit me to cross. I was an intruder; suddenly I felt very conscious of my dirty jeans, my scuffed sneakers, my pinched face and lank hair. I no longer felt like a daring explorer. I had no right to be there. I had become something
low
; common; a spy, a prowler, a dirty little sneak with hungry eyes and light fingers. Invisible or not, that was how they would always see me. That was what I was. A Sunnybanker.

You see, it had already begun. That was St. Oswald’s; that’s what it does to people. Rage flared in me like an ulcer. Rage, and the beginnings of revolt.

So I was an outsider. So what? Any rule can be broken. Trespass, like any crime, goes unpunished when there’s no one to see it. Words—however talismanic—are only ever words.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment I declared war against St. Oswald’s. It wouldn’t have me? Then I would have it. I would take it, and no one, nothing—not even my father—would stop me. The line had been drawn. Another boundary to be crossed, a more sophisticated bluff this time, secure in its ancient arrogance, unaware that therein lay the germ of its destruction. Another line, daring me to cross it.

Like murder.

KING

1

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysMonday, 6th September, Michaelmas Term

That’s ninety-nine by my reckoning, smelling of wood and old chalk dust and disinfectant and the incomprehensibly biscuity, hamsterish smell of boys. Ninety-nine terms strung across the years like dusty paper lanterns. Thirty-three years. It’s like a prison sentence. Reminds me of the old joke about the pensioner convicted of murder.

“Thirty years, Your Honor,” he protests. “It’s too much! I’ll never manage it!” And the judge says: “Well, just do as many as you can….”

Come to think of it, that’s not funny. I’ll be sixty-five in November.

Not that it
matters. There’s no compulsory retirement at St. Oswald’s. We follow our own rules. We always have. One more term, and I’ll have scored my Century. One for the Honors Board at last. I can see it now; in Gothic script: Roy Hubert Straitley (B.A.) Old Centurion of the School.

I have to laugh. I never imagined I’d end up here. I finished a ten-year stretch at St. Oswald’s in 1954, and the last thing I expected then was to find myself there again—a Master, of all things—keeping order, doling out lines and detentions. But to my surprise I found that those years had given me a sort of natural insight into the teaching business. By now there isn’t a trick I don’t know. After all, I’ve played most of them myself; man, boy, and somewhere in between. And here I am again, back at St. Oswald’s for another term. You’d think I couldn’t keep away.

I light a Gauloise; my one concession to the influence of the Modern Languages. Technically, of course, it’s not allowed; but today, in the privacy of my own form room, no one’s likely to pay very much attention. Today is traditionally free of boys and reserved for administrative matters; the counting of textbooks; allocation of stationery; last-minute revisions to the timetable; collection of form and set lists; induction of new staff; departmental meetings.

I am, of course, a department in myself. Once Head of Classics, in charge of a thriving section of respectful menials, now relegated to a dusty corner of the new Languages section, like a rather dull first edition no one quite dares to throw away.

All my rats have abandoned ship—apart from the boys, that is. I still teach a full timetable, to the bafflement of Mr. Strange—the Third Master, who considers Latin irrelevant—and to the covert embarrassment of the New Head. Still, the boys continue to opt for my irrelevant subject, and their results remain on the whole rather good. I like to think it’s my personal charisma that does it.

Not that I’m not very fond of my colleagues in Modern Languages, though I do have more in common with the subversive Gauls than with the humorless Teutons. There’s Pearman, the Head of French—round, cheery, occasionally brilliant, but hopelessly disorganized—and Kitty Teague, who sometimes shares her lunchtime biscuits with me over a cup of tea, and Eric Scoones, a sprightly half-Centurion (also an Old Boy) of sixty-two who, when the mood takes him, has an uncanny recollection for some of the more extreme exploits of my distant youth.

Then there’s Isabelle Tapi, decorative but rather useless in a leggy, Gallic sort of way, the subject of a good deal of admiring graffiti from the locker-room fantasy set. All in all a rather jolly department, whose members tolerate my eccentricities with commendable patience and good humor, and who seldom interfere with my unconventional methods.

The Germans are less congenial on the whole; Geoff and Penny (“League of”) Nations, a mixed double-act with designs on my form room; Gerry Grachvogel, a well-meaning ass with a predilection for flash cards, and finally, Dr. “Sourgrape” Devine, Head of the Department and a staunch believer in the further expansion of the Great Empire, who sees me as a subversive and a pupil poacher, has no interest in Classics, and who doubtless thinks
carpe diem
means “fish of the day.”

He has a habit of passing my room with feigned briskness whilst peering suspiciously through the glass, as if to check for signs of immoral conduct, and I know that today of all days it will only be a matter of time before I behold his joyless countenance looking in on me.

Ah. What did I tell you?

Right on cue.

“Morning, Devine!”

I suppressed the urge to salute, whilst concealing my half-smoked Gauloise under the desk, and gave him my broadest smile through the glass door. I noticed he was carrying a large cardboard box piled high with books and papers. He looked at me with what I later knew to be ill-concealed smugness, then moved on down the corridor with the air of one who has important matters to attend to.

Curiously, I got up and looked down the corridor after him, just in time to see Gerry Grachvogel
and
the League of Nations disappearing furtively in his wake, all carrying similar cartons.

Puzzled, I sat down at my old desk and surveyed my modest empire.

Room fifty-nine, my territory for the last thirty years. Oft disputed but never surrendered. Now only the Germans continue to try. It’s a large room, nice in its way, I suppose, though its elevated position in the Bell Tower gives me more stairs to climb than I would have chosen, and it lies about half a mile as the crow flies from my small office on the Upper Corridor.

You’ll have noticed that as over time dogs and their owners come to resemble each other, so it is with teachers and classrooms. Mine fits me like my old tweed jacket, and smells almost the same—a comforting compound of books, chalk, and illicit cigarettes. A large and venerable blackboard dominates the room—Dr. Devine’s endeavors to introduce the term “chalkboard” having, I’m happy to report, met with no success whatever. The desks are ancient and battle scarred, and I have resisted all attempts to have them replaced by the ubiquitous plastic tables.

If I get bored, I can always read the graffiti. A flattering amount of it concerns me. My current favorite is
Hic magister podex est
, written—by some boy or other—oh, more years ago than I like to remember. When
I
was a boy no one would have dared to refer to a Master as a
podex
. Disgraceful. And yet for some reason it never fails to make me smile.

My own desk is no less disgraceful; a huge time-blackened affair with fathomless drawers and multiple inscriptions. It sits on an elevated podium—originally built to allow a shorter Classics Master access to the blackboard—and from this quarterdeck I can look down benevolently upon my minions and work on the
Times
crossword without being noticed.

There are mice living behind the lockers. I know this because on Friday afternoons they troop out and sniff around under the radiator pipes while the boys do their weekly vocabulary test. I don’t complain; I rather like the mice. The Old Head once tried poison, but only once; the stench of dead mouse is far more noxious than anything living could ever hope to generate, and it endured for weeks until finally John Snyde, who was Head Porter at the time, had to be called in to tear out the skirting boards and remove the pungent dead.

Since then the mice and I have enjoyed a comfortable live-and-let-live approach. If only the Germans could do the same.

I looked up
from my reverie to see Dr. Devine passing the room again, with his entourage. He tapped his wrist insistently, as if to indicate the time. Ten-thirty. Ah. Of course. Staff meeting. Reluctantly I conceded the point, flicked my cigarette stub into the wastepaper basket, and ambled off to the Common Room, pausing only to collect the battered gown hanging on a hook by the stock-cupboard door.

The Old Head always insisted on gowns for formal occasions. Nowadays I’m virtually the only one who still wears them to meetings, though most of us do on Speech Day. The parents like it. Gives them a sense of tradition. I like it because it provides good camouflage and saves on suits.

Gerry Grachvogel was locking his door as I came out. “Oh. Hello, Roy.” He gave me a more than usually nervous smile. He is a lanky young man, with good intentions and poor classroom control. As the door closed I saw a pile of flat-packed cardboard boxes propped up against the wall.

“Busy day today?” I asked him, indicating the boxes. “What is it? Invading Poland?”

Gerry twitched. “No, ah—just moving a few things around. Ah—to the new departmental office.”

I regarded him closely. There was an ominous ring to that phrase. “
What
new departmental office?”

“Ah—sorry. Must get along. Headmaster’s briefing. Can’t be late.”

That’s a joke. Gerry’s late to everything. “
What
new office? Has someone died?”

“Ah—sorry, Roy. Catch you later.” And he was off like a homing pigeon for the Common Room. I pulled on my gown and followed him at a more dignified pace, perplexed and heavy with foreboding.

I reached the
Common Room just in time. The New Head was arriving, with Pat Bishop, the Second Master, and Bishop’s secretary, Marlene, an ex-parent who joined us when her son died. The New Head is brittle, elegant, and slightly sinister, like Christopher Lee in
Dracula
. The Old Head was foul-tempered, overbearing, rude, and opinionated; exactly what I enjoy most in a Headmaster. Fifteen years after his departure, I still miss him.

On my way to my seat I stopped to pour myself a mug of tea from the urn. I noticed with approval that although the Common Room was crowded and that some of the younger members of staff were standing, my own seat had not been taken. Third from the window, just under the clock. I balanced the mug on my knees as I sank into the cushions, noticing as I did that my chair seemed rather a tight fit.

I think I may have put on a few pounds during the holidays.

“Hem-hem.” A dry
little cough from the New Head, which most of us ignored. Marlene—fiftyish, divorced, ice blond hair and Wagnerian presence—caught my eye and frowned. Sensing her disapproval, the Common Room settled down. It’s no secret, of course, that Marlene runs the place. The New Head is the only one who hasn’t noticed.

“Welcome back, all of you.” That was Pat Bishop, generally acknowledged to be the human face of the school. Big, cheery, still absurdly youthful at fifty-five, he retains the broken-nosed and ruddy charm of an oversized schoolboy. He’s a good man, though. Kind, hardworking, fiercely loyal to the school where he too was once a pupil—but not overly bright, in spite of his Oxford education. A man of action, our Pat, of compassion, not of intellect; better suited to classroom and rugby pitch than to management committee and governors’ meeting. We don’t hold that against him, however. There is more than enough intelligence in St. Oswald’s; what we really need is more of Bishop’s type of humanity.

“Hem-hem.” The Head again. It comes as no surprise that there is tension between them. Bishop, being Bishop, tries hard to ensure that this does not show. However, his popularity with both boys and staff has always been irksome to the New Head, whose social graces are less than obvious. “Hem-
hem
!”

Bishop’s color, always high, deepened a little. Marlene, who has been devoted to Pat (secretly, she thinks) for the past fifteen years, looked annoyed.

Oblivious, the Head stepped forward. “Item one: fund-raising for the new Games Pavilion. It has been decided to create a second administrative post to deal with the issue of fund-raising. The successful candidate will be chosen from a short list of six applicants and will be awarded the title of Executive Public Relations Officer in Charge of…”

I managed to tune out most of what followed, leaving the comforting drone of the New Head’s voice sermonizing in the background. The usual litany, I expect; lack of funds, the ritual postmortem of last summer’s results, the inevitable New Scheme for pupil recruitment, another attempt to impose computer literacy on all teaching staff, an optimistic-sounding proposal from the girls’ school for a joint venture, a proposed (and much-dreaded) school inspection in December, a brief indictment of government policy, a little moan about classroom discipline and personal appearance (at this point Sourgrape Devine gave me a sharp look), and the ongoing litigations (three to date, not bad for September).

I passed the time looking around for new faces. I was expecting to see some this term; a few old lags finally threw in the towel last summer and I suppose they’ll have to be replaced. Kitty Teague gave me a wink as I caught her eye.

“Item eleven. Re-allocation of form rooms and offices. Due to the renumbering of rooms following the completion of the new Computer Science Suite…”

Ah-ha. A fresher. You can usually spot them, you know, by the way they stand. Rigidly to attention, like army cadets. And the suits of course, always newly pressed and virgin of chalk dust. Not that
that
lasts long; chalk dust is a perfidious substance, which persists even in those politically correct areas of the school where the blackboard—and his smug cousin, the chalkboard—have both been abolished.

The fresher was standing by the computer scientists. A bad sign. At St. Oswald’s all computer scientists are bearded; it’s the rule. Except for the Head of Section, Mr. Beard, who, in halfhearted defiance of convention, has only a small mustache.

“…As a result, rooms twenty-four to thirty-six will be renumbered as rooms one hundred fourteen to one hundred twenty-six inclusive, room fifty-nine will be known as room seventy-five, and room seventy-five, the defunct Classics office, will be re-allocated as the German Departmental Workroom.”

“What?”
Another advantage of wearing gowns to staff meetings; the contents of a mug of tea, intemperately jerked across the lap, barely leave a mark. “Headmaster, I believe you may have misread that last item. The Classics office is still in use. It is most certainly not
defunct
. And neither am I,” I added sotto voce, with a glare at the Germans.

The New Head gave me his chilly glance. “Mr. Straitley,” he said, “all these administrative matters have already been discussed at last term’s staff meeting, and any points you wanted to make should have been raised then.”