Authors: Benjamin Zephaniah
Teacher's Dead
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH
For the truth, and the
seekers of truth
Chapter 4 A Mourning of Celebration
Chapter 5 A Small Tree Planted
Chapter 10 Rendezvous by the Pool
Chapter 15 Mr Edgar Arnold Joseph
Chapter 17 The Family Extension
Chapter 21 Night at the Round Table
Chapter 22 Hostilities Increase
Chapter 27 The Lady in Question
The Ending
The knife was pushed so far into Mr Joseph’s stomach that it almost came out of his back. Lionel Ferrier closed his eyes, held the handle tight, and turned it vigorously. Mr Joseph grunted towards the sky as the knife was twisted deep into his intestines, and as the sharp stainless steel sliced through his organs blood pumped out of his body with so much force that it splattered Lionel’s chest. Lionel pulled the knife out and jogged away slowly with his friend Ramzi Sanchin following behind him.
They weren’t hiding their faces as they ran, and they weren’t running to avoid being caught, they were just going somewhere else. The attack took place in front of dozens of other pupils, who looked on horrified, many of them screaming, and all of them too scared to go to their teacher’s rescue.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ screamed head boy Otis. ‘Get some help, go and get some help!’
His hands trembled so much that it took him several attempts to turn on his mobile phone; as soon
as it was on he called the police, who arrived ten minutes later. But it was too late; Mr Edgar Arnold Joseph had already drawn his last breath in the arms of Otis Westwood the head boy and Mrs Cartwright the history teacher.
The Crime Scene
My name is Jackson Jones. I stood and watched a teacher die. For the first time in my life I felt real shock. I didn’t panic, I just froze. I wanted to walk away but I couldn’t. I tried to walk towards the place of death but I couldn’t. I was the quickest at the one hundred metres in my year, I had only been beaten once in the long jump, and my reflexes were sharp, but all that stuff was useless. My whole body actually went numb. They say the brain is like a computer – well, my computer crashed.
Lionel and Ramzi were the same age as me. I knew Lionel, we were friends once, for a short while. Actually we were only friends for two days until we fell out over my MP3 player. I lent it to him and when I got it back it was broken, the screen was damaged. I’d say hello to him sometimes but we were never close friends. I didn’t hate him for it, I just didn’t trust him. I didn’t know Ramzi much, I hardly ever spoke to him, but there was something about him. I didn’t
trust him either.
I will never forget the way Lionel put that knife into Mr Joseph. He was so calm, and he did it with such ease. As I watched them both jogging away I thought they must have done this before. They were like hardened gangsters in a movie. It was like just another day at the office, and nobody dared try to go after them.
Films brainwash you. When people die in films the way the blood trickles down the shirt can look quite cool, the death is usually accompanied by music, and they always have just enough time to deliver their last lines, usually a message for the woman or man they love, or their mother, or a message for the whole of mankind. The way Mr Joseph went down was nothing like that. First there was the force of the blood, then urination, and then the very violent convulsions, and the desperate gasping for breath as his body tried to hold on to life. I knew exactly when his body gave up the fight: there was a moment of silence, his back arched, his body stiffened, and then he took his last breath. Trust me, it was nothing like in the movies.
The school was surrounded by police, all entrances were sealed off with that flimsy tape that they always use, and an ambulance came and put a curtain around the body before taking it away. Those of us who saw what happened were told to line up in the dining hall and wait for our parents to come so that we could be
questioned by the police. Although I was hungry I didn’t mind waiting, but I felt guilty for feeling hungry, after all this was much more important than my food. I should have been feeling sick after what I just saw, but I was thinking of food.
I looked out of the dining-hall window and saw my mother talking to a newspaper reporter. The reporter gave her a business card and she pushed her way to the front of the crowd and identified herself to the police who were guarding the school gate. As soon as my mother saw me she raced towards me. She’s small, but she’s strong, and when she put her arm around me and squeezed me she almost took my voice away. I could feel the relief in her voice.
‘Jackson, are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mum, I’m all right.’ I groaned into the collar of her coat.
She stepped back to look at me. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No, Mum, but Mr Joseph’s been killed. Lionel Ferrier stabbed him, I saw it. None of us kids were attacked, but that Lionel, he just stabbed Mr Joseph and went off. I saw it with my own eyes, I was right near.’
Boy A and Boy B
I was expecting something like an interrogation. Maybe television is to blame again, but I really thought that after witnessing a murder I would be subjected to hours of heavy questioning in a dark room, but all they did that day in the hall was ask me what I saw, and all I did was tell them what I saw. After speaking to other pupils I learnt that it was the same for all the witnesses. Then that thing happened, that thing when a group of people watch the same incident but see different things. Apparently it’s because of the shock and the stress, and the excitement, if you can call it that. We were also offered counselling but no one accepted the offer, or no one admitted to it, even though we were warned that the effects of what we all witnessed may not be felt until much later. There was lots of crying, especially from the girls. Some boys too, but mainly girls. To be really honest, I felt like crying but I didn’t. To be really, really honest, I shed a tear or two, but I was silent, and because I was silent I don’t think it can really be
called crying. Whatever.
Watching someone die is not easy, I don’t care what kind of front people put up. I put up a front, I had to, I’m a boy, but deep down I was feeling it. It wasn’t too bad when I was busy doing things, but it would get to me when I stopped, or when I was just about to sleep, or just after I woke up. But I never cried, not really. Sometimes I would see the whole thing happening again in my mind. When that happened I just told myself that this was the real world, and if this was the real world I should be prepared to see more acts of violence, more death, and more destruction.
After Lionel stabbed Mr Joseph he jogged to the park with Ramzi, put his shirt in a rubbish bin, cleaned the blood off the knife, and then he and Ramzi both lit cigarettes. When the police arrived they were sitting on the park bench puffing away and saying nothing. The police were surprised to see how relaxed the boys were. Lionel still had the knife in his hand, an officer took it, and without the slightest hint of resistance they both walked to the police car surrounded by officers. The newspapers picked up on this. Boy A and Boy B, as they were called, were being described as ‘Teen Killers’, ‘Blood Brothers’, and ‘The Unteachables’. They were being compared to other young killers, and many so-called experts were coming up with hundreds of so-called character profiles.
Radio phone-in programmes were swamped with people calling in with their opinions. Most of the callers were falling into two camps. Some were complaining that it was the fault of television and that if we kept allowing our children to get out of control we would end up like America. Others were saying the only way to stop them is to execute them like they do in America.
The school was closed down for a week, and every day more and more flowers were being placed on the railings. The Queen sent a message and spelt the school name wrong, the Prime Minister sent us a message saying how proud he was of the way we all handled a time of great difficulty, but a month before he had been on television calling us a failed school, threatening to close us down or send in a ‘super head teacher’. Suddenly kids who hated writing started to write short poems and place them with the flowers. A policewoman was given the job of making sure that all those who came to pay their respects were able to, and that all the flowers were properly placed and could be seen.
Lionel and Ramzi were taken to court the day after the killing and remanded in youth custody. The court ordered that reports were made ready for the hearing. The media made a big deal out of the fact that both boys were accompanied only by their mothers. ‘Fatherless Killers’ one newspaper called them. I
wasn’t going to judge them for that. I had never seen my father, I didn’t even know who he was, but that didn’t make me evil. I’d been alive for fifteen years and I’d never felt the need to kill someone because I didn’t have a dad.
Back then I used to listen to a lot of music, mainly dance bands like The Chemical Brothers, and hip-hop bands like Positive Negatives, I used to go for all types of British bands. Then all this happened. I kept listening to music, but I became more interested in the lyrics. I suppose I was looking for the meaning of life but I soon realised I weren’t going to find that out from a singer who was a spotty teenager like me. I also started looking a lot – I mean really looking. I would stare at people and wonder if they were capable of killing someone. I even started looking at myself in the mirror and asking the same question. Could I?
A Mourning of Celebration
The first time I saw Mrs Joseph I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She came to school to speak in the morning assembly. It was two weeks after the death of her husband and the school was still in mourning. As we sat through the head teacher’s speech I watched Mrs Joseph. I could not stop my eyes coming back to her, and when I was looking at her the head teacher’s speech just became background noise. I could only see Mrs Joseph; everything else in my field of vision became a blur. As I stared at her I realised that there were so many questions in my mind that needed to be answered. I knew how I felt having seen her husband die, but I began wondering what it was like for her to suddenly find that her husband wasn’t there.