Teacher's Dead (3 page)

‘Jackson Jones, my old friend, what can I do for you, or what can I do you for? You know I like to do you.’

He hadn’t changed one bit, but I had.

‘I suggest you start doing something for yourself,’ I said.

‘Tough talk, be careful or you may get a slap. I think you may need a slap,’ he said, stepping towards me.

‘I think you may need a job,’ I said, standing firm.

He laughed loud enough for his friends who were also dealing dirty tickets to notice.

‘You’re growing up quickly, Mr Jones.’

‘I’ve just come to ask you something.’

‘Ask away, Mr Jones.’

A couple of his friends came and stood next to him but I just wasn’t in the mood to be intimidated.

‘I saw you in the newspaper this week.’

‘The press are all over me, I know. Fame, I’m coming to terms with it,’ he said, looking to his friends, who smiled on cue.

‘Well,’ I continued. ‘Who are you to say that whoever killed Mr Joseph should burn in hell? Look at all the stuff that you’ve done.’

He laughed even louder. ‘Are you mad? I don’t like teachers but at least I’ve never tried to kill one.’

‘So you think bullying and driving people towards suicide is a good thing?’

‘What you talking about, boy?’ he said, moving another step towards me. ‘The only thing I did was run a protection business. You know me, I’ve always been a business man, and if you read the news and listen to the politician people they’re all trying to encourage small business people like me. Yeah, boy, I’m an entrepreneur. The police, they do protection, I was just running a private protection business.’

I kept standing my ground.

‘I can guarantee you no one ever felt protected by you, and yes, I can see by what you’re doing here that you’re a business man.’

‘You’re getting so brave. I still say I never killed anyone, and never mind saying whoever killed Mr Joseph, it wasn’t whoever who killed him, it was Lionel Ferrier who killed him. You know it, I know it, and by the time I’m done everyone will know it. He’s a weirdo, his mum’s a weirdo, and his friend’s a
weirdo. Just ask anyone on Fentham Road and they’ll tell you.’

‘And what happens on Fentham Road?’ I asked.

‘That’s where he lived. You don’t know anything, do you?’

‘I may not know a lot, but at least I’m not a bully,’ I said, looking for a way out.

His two friends began to walk around the back of me, and he moved even closer.

‘At least I believe in God, so yeah, they should burn in hell. Now go before I slap you,’ he said, clenching his teeth.

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him, and suddenly I wasn’t feeling so brave.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll go before you slap me, and you just keep believing in God.’

I decided to go to Fentham Road that evening. It was a road I had passed many times before but one that I had never been down. It was the kind of road that didn’t really lead anywhere, so if you didn’t have any reason for going there you wouldn’t. I got there at seven o’clock and children were playing football across the street, dogs seemed to be barking in every house in competition with the music, which seemed to be coming from every house. I also noticed that an unusually high number of men were working on their cars. The street was like a dog sanctuary, cum playground, cum car workshop, cum carnival. I know what this is, I thought, it’s a tight-knit community. How nice, I thought, until I was approached by a boy around my age dressed in denims that were so big he looked like he was hiding another person in them.

‘Not from round these ends, are you?’

‘Not really,’ I replied.

There was an empty plastic bottle on the floor; he kicked it towards me.

‘What do you mean, not really? You’re either from these ends or you’re not. Are you from central or what?’

‘No I’m not from central.’

‘So where you from?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Just talk when I talk to you.’

‘I told you,’ I said as convincingly as I could. ‘I’m not from central.’

‘I doesn’t matter anyway, just go before I blow.’

Of course I felt it very unfair that he should speak to me that way, but I realised as I replied that I was beginning to sound like my head teacher.

‘How dare you speak to me like that? I have the right to walk down this street.’

Suddenly he shouted out loud, ‘Tommer, Craig, Fudge, come here. There’s a kid here thinks he’s got the right to walk down this street.’

He called three, but six appeared. I decided to use the best self-defence move I knew – I turned and I ran. But as I began to run I was stopped by four more who were waiting behind me, the most frightening of them being two girls.

One of the boys shouted, ‘Let me do him.’

Another of the girls shouted, ‘No, it’s my turn.’

And a woman’s voice from nowhere shouted, ‘Leave him alone, what’s he done to you?’

I liked the sound of that voice but as she argued
with the small boy in the big clothes I just couldn’t see where it was coming from. The boy shouted at her as he continued to look my way.

‘Why don’t you shut your big mouth?’

She shouted, ‘Have some manners.’ I saw her leaning out of an upstairs window a couple of houses down from where I was standing.

‘Up yours,’ the boy shouted back.

Then a man appeared next to the woman in the window.

‘Hey, you, don’t talk to my missus like that.’

The boy replied defiantly, ‘I’ll talk to her how I want.’

‘No you won’t. I’ll come down and make sure of that,’ he said, leaving the window.

‘Run for it, lads,’ the boy shouted. And in a moment they had all scattered.

By the time the man got down I was standing there alone. I was beginning to see him as a bit of a hero until he spoke.

‘What are you doing around here anyway? We’re sick of people like you coming around here and starting trouble.’

Not sure what to say I said, ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me,’ he said, looking down at me as if he hated my guts. ‘I didn’t do anything to earn your thanks. Just think yourself lucky. Go, cos if you don’t they’ll come back and tear you apart, or they’ll get
their dogs to do it for them. Now change your location.’

The woman, who was obviously his missus, turned up.

‘Leave him alone, Jason. He’s had enough as it is, he must be freaked out. He’s not from round here.’

I wasn’t very good at reading faces on this day. She looked at me like she wanted to kill me and said, ‘Do you want to come in? Fancy a cup of tea?’

I was surprised. Her man wasn’t.

‘Do you have to invite every Tom, Dick and Harry in? What’s wrong with you? Is my company not good enough for you?

‘Meaning?’ she said, placing her hands on her hips.

‘Meaning nothing,’ he said as he walked back into the house.

She looked me up and down as if she was thinking of adopting me.

‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Jackson.’

‘Yeah, OK. Jackson. What’s your first name?’

‘That is my first name.’

‘Jackson, really? Don’t tell me your second name’s Jackson as well. Jackson Jackson, is it?

‘No. My name is Jackson Jones.’

‘Jackson Jones. I like it.’

Another woman was negotiating her way past us on the pavement. As she passed she said, ‘He’s a bit
young for you, isn’t he, Carla?

‘He’ll grow up,’ she replied.

Even the nice people around here are really frightening, I thought.

‘So is your name Carla?’ I asked.

‘Let’s say I answer to that name when I’m in a good mood. Now come on in before we end up in the papers.’

On entering the hall I was confronted by shoes that looked as if they were trying to escape. The living room was packed with furniture; it was difficult to see the floor. I made myself small and squeezed around a large wooden coffee table in the centre of the room and sat down on a settee. There wasn’t much room for sitting; like the other chairs in the room it was covered with cushions.

‘That’s right. Sit down and make yourself comfortable, I’ll go and make you a cup of tea. How do you like your tea?

‘With one sugar,’ I said.

She lifted her head towards the ceiling and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Jason, do you want a cup a tea?’

‘No,’ he shouted back. ‘Bring me a beer from the fridge.’

‘OK,’ she replied as she turned back to me. ‘Hey, you don’t want a beer as well, do you?

I shook my head.

‘He lives here but I never see him,’ she continued. ‘He’s fixing our wardrobe now, he’ll be in the loft tomorrow, the garden shed the day after, then he’ll break the wardrobe again so that he can fix that again. Anything to avoid talking to me.’

She left, leaving me staring into a blank television screen that was so big I couldn’t help watching it even though nothing was on. She soon came back with the tea. The tea tasted as if it had five sugars in it, or maybe one very big teaspoon. It was so sweet that when I tasted it I wanted to spit it out, but after all the effort she had made I thought I should at least act grateful.

‘Thanks. Great,’ I lied.

‘Everyone loves my cuppas,’ she said proudly.

‘I can see why,’ I lied again.

She sat down at the other side of the room next to television.

‘So where are you from, then?’

‘Why does everyone around here want to know where I’m from? Is it that important?’

Carla took a cushion and hugged it against her stomach. ‘The thing is, people around here want to know everything. Not just where you’re from, they want to know everything, and if you’re a stranger you stand out. Everyone round here knows each other. But not me. No, I mind my own business. Don’t go putting your nose in other people’s business, that’s
what I say. Keep myself to myself, that’s what I do.’

‘Do you have any kids?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. Two girls. One’s your age, and one’s a bit younger. They’re out now. So tell me, Jackson, what school do you go to?’

‘Marston Hall.’

‘Oh, you go to Marston, do you?’ she said, dragging her words. ‘They’re in the news a lot lately.’

I played ignorant. ‘You mean about the government calling us useless?’

‘No, you know, the murder. Terrible thing. Those two boys, you know, the papers call them A and B, but down here we know who they are. One of them lives on this road, Lionel his name is. Strange one, him.’

I nodded my head slowly to give the impression that I was thinking.

‘Oh yes. Yes. I know what you’re talking about. So what’s so strange about him?’ It was as if she was waiting for me to ask.

‘Well, he acts like he’s on another planet. He’s fifteen years old and still sucking his thumb, he’s in and out of that house at all times of the night, he’s always got his head down in the gutter, and when he raises his chin he looks like death warmed up. I mean, he’s so miserable. He grew up around here all his life but he’s never played with the local boys, he never speaks to the girls, he just never mixes with anyone. And he smells funny, and he’s always in the same
clothes, and if you say hello to him all he says back is, hello.’

She left a space for me to speak.

‘What do you want him to say?’

‘I don’t know, he should say something. Not just hello. What? Don’t they teach you conversational skills at that school?’

Jason appeared at the door with a large screwdriver in his hand.

‘Why don’t you go and teach them some of your so-called conversational skills. You could speak for England, you, no, Europe, you could speak for Europe.’

‘I’m just telling him about that killer boy Lionel.’

‘You should mind your own business,’ he said, pointing the screwdriver towards her and continuing his rant. ‘Just leave people’s business. He’ll get his comeuppance, the dirty little lowlife scum. Fancy taking a knife to school and killing a teacher. I know what I’d do if he was my son. They wouldn’t need to lock him up; I’d deal with the little toe rag myself. But he hasn’t got a father, has he? No, he’s got an absentee father, that’s what he’s got. Lowlife scum, that’s what he is. And his mother, they should lock her up too. Any chance of a bite to eat, love?’

Carla stood up and threw the cushion back on to the seat. ‘Do you want something to eat, son?’

She was talking to me more and more like an adopted son. A bit worrying, I thought.

‘No,’ I said, standing up. ‘I have to go now. Thanks for everything, and thanks for saving me from the mob. I’ve had to face two mobs today. Will I be all right out there now?’

‘Yes. Just turn right and keep walking. Come back sometime. You’re always welcome. Best tea on the street.’

Just as I was leaving the house her two daughters turned up. They walked past me in the doorway as if I wasn’t there.

Carla noticed. ‘Rachel, Pauline, this is Jackson. Say hello.’

They stopped, turned, and said, ‘Hello, Jackson’ in unison, and then they continued to head towards the kitchen.

‘Goodbye, Jackson,’ said Carla, shaking her head. ‘They’re in a bad mood, they always come home in a bad mood after they visit their father.’

Carla said I would be all right when I left the house, that I should turn right and keep walking. I turned right and I had to run for my life. But I didn’t hold it against her; she wasn’t to know that the local kids were waiting for me to finish my tea.

In the school assembly on Monday morning Mrs Martel gave us a lecture on the virtues of forgiveness. Using quotes from Jesus, the Buddha, Mahatma Ghandi and John Lennon, she told us that the inability to forgive would corrupt our humanity and twist our souls. She also said she was a little disappointed with the low numbers of people registering for counselling.

‘If this is pride,’ she said, ‘pride comes before a fall. Don’t be afraid to talk.’ Then she made an offer that I at least couldn’t refuse. ‘Tomorrow, after lunch, Mrs Joseph has agreed to give up some of her time to come and speak to you. This will not be an assembly address, this will not be a lecture or a lesson, this will be an informal session for you to speak to her, ask her
any questions, within reason, and get to know her. This was her idea – Mrs Joseph has made it clear that she wishes to keep strong ties to the school, and I think it could be an alternative to counselling for many of you. So that’s tomorrow after lunch. Those of you that want to go should let your head of year know today.’