Twenty Something (26 page)

But the second half kicks off and it's disastrous from the start. I don't know what Jeremy Piggott put in their half-time oranges, but Cotcote House are playing like little devils. Perhaps Mr Cox has offered them all extra pocket money if they win.

Despite my best efforts, Francis Cox waddles over our line to score two tries in quick succession. The score is now 10—5.

But then they have a scrum on our five-metre line and I see him deliberately kick our front row's shins.

I blow up for a penalty.

‘Cotcote House captain, over here, please.'

‘What?'

‘Don't “What?” me, young man. I saw you kicking our prop in the scrum. This is a warning. Next time, you'll be off.'

‘
Canis filius
,' I hear him mutter under his breath.

‘Right. That's it, early bath for you. I'm sending you off now.'

Cox Junior starts to trudge off the pitch only to pass Cox Senior trotting in the other direction. He ignores his son and makes straight towards me. He looks ridiculous with his Barbour over his suit jacket and his pinstripes tucked into green wellies.

‘Ah, Mr Cox! What an incredible coincidence. What can I do for you?'

The boys are all huddled around in a group, watching.

‘Lancaster, I thought I'd seen you on a playing field for the final time. Why did you send my son off?'

‘Because I will not have a ten-year-old tell me in Latin that I am a son of a bitch. Now, am I going to have to send you off the pitch, as well? Is this to be a gala red-card day for the Cox family?'

Mr Cox eyeballs me. I hold his gaze. And then he looks away and makes an elegant attempt to leave the pitch with his dignity intact. Both teams of boys collapse into fits of laughter.

In a second half that only lasted fifteen minutes, we beat them 15—10. Jeremy Piggott congratulated me afterwards with a twinkle in his ageing eye.

Stuart Ackland called me into his office.

‘Jack, you seem to be enjoying yourself here.'

‘I am, Stuart. I really am.'

‘Well, that's great. And we're enjoying having you here, too. That rugby report in the school magazine was very entertaining. You're a great addition to the common room.'

‘Thank you, Stuart. That's very kind of you.'

He coughed slightly nervously.

‘Well, Roddy Lewis's case is going to court, so I think it very unlikely that we'll be able to take him back. I'd like to offer you a full-time position here. We've missed having a Lancaster on the staff.'

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.'

I've accepted the permanent position. I rang Flatmate Fred to tell him the good news.

‘Fred, I think I might have found my vocation. I'm going to stay on here at Morley Park if that's all right. They're giving me a room in the boarding house, too.'

‘So your vocation is teaching posh kids a language which you can't speak yourself? You've found your life's purpose.'

‘Er, pretty much, yes. It's a start, isn't it?'

‘Well, I'm proud of you, Jack. It's a very good start. And, while we're in the mood for announcements, I've got something to tell you myself.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘I'm gay. Jasper and I are a couple. We are very much in love and he is my boyfriend.'

‘Fred, that is absolutely fantastic news. I'm very happy for you both.'

‘You're not surprised? Upset? Homophobic?'

‘Fred, you've become my best friend. I couldn't care less where you stick your genitalia. And I also guessed it a long time ago. It's absolutely brilliant news.'

And, after I put the phone down, I thought,
I've never had a gay friend before
. I remember Flatmate Fred used to joke, ‘Some of my best token friends are black.' Now I can say ‘One of my best friends is gay' whenever someone accuses me of being bigoted.

But I'm going to have to watch my vocabulary. I know we now live in a tolerant, accepting, libertarian society but it's amazing how many times you catch yourself and others saying things like, ‘Don't be so gay', or ‘Don't be such a faggot', or ‘Last one in the pub is a screaming poof.'

It's like being around a religious friend and having to remind yourself not to yell ‘Jesus Christ' when you stub your toe on the doorframe.

My kids have got exams at the end of the week. Nothing too strenuous — just extended quizzes really — but I feel a little bit like it's me who's being examined. I also want them to do better in French than they do in Science. Bob Lowson and I have become absurdly competitive over their marks.

This afternoon I wrote a few dozen words of vocabulary on the board for Form IV.

‘Boys, there's no way that I'm going to tell you what is in the exam. That would be immoral and reprehensible, not to mention morally reprehensible. It is an unseen piece of written
comprehension. Unseen. That means you haven't seen it before, Fereday. However, it might be useful to work on your French vocabulary before Friday.

‘Now, who am I to say that any French word is better than another? They are all crucial elements of the language of Voltaire and Molière. If I were any better at teaching, you would be familiar with all 100,000 of them. However, as life is short, and time before the exam is even shorter, I suggest you concentrate on these words on the board.

‘And no, Blenkinsop, this isn't cheating. I am merely preparing you for the exam to the best of my considerable abilities.'

I had a day off school today — no lessons during exams — and a long-forgotten interview (I applied some time in March last year) with the civil service, which I'd been deliberating about whether to attend. I mean, who would want to be a servant? Especially a civil one? And even if you get to the top, you're still permanently under a secretary (although that does sound quite fun). But then I worried that maybe I'd become a little too mature and boring in the last month. So I made the informed and grown-up decision to go along and take the piss at the taxpayer's expense.

And the taxpayer should be very grateful that I did. The problem with these assessment centres — as I pointed out in my debriefing — is that they can never get close to simulating real-life office situations. Sure, the e-tray exercise might test your prioritising skills, but where are the round-robin joke emails from your friends interspersed with the request from Jens Jenger Jengerson at the Danish EU Commission for this year's fish quotas? Where is Buddy's lame electronic banter amidst the stern reminders from the Cabinet Office that the deadline for delivering your report, ‘Delivering Target
Deliveries', is overdue? And how can you decide which email to reply to first if you don't know how attractive any of the senders are?

If, as I continued in my debriefing, they really want to assess people's familiarity with computers at work, they should test some of the following: 1) How quickly can the candidate minimise undesirable internet windows when a superior appears? 2) How quickly can the candidate press alt and tab to flick between the test match score and the BBC news website? 3) Does the candidate know how to recall offensive emails sent in error to his boss? 4) Is the difference between ‘reply' and ‘reply all' indelibly embedded within the candidate's soul? And 5) Can the candidate fake an IT fault which will allow him to waste an entire day doing nothing?

‘Thank you for that feedback, Mr Lancaster,' said my assessor, scribbling away furiously.

‘It's not a problem,' I beamed graciously. ‘Happy to share my expertise with you.'

The personality interview went well, too.

‘When have you worked together in a successful team to secure a common goal?'

‘When I was fifteen, I looked too young to buy alcohol, so I persuaded the local wino to purchase a bottle of vodka for me in return for a fifteen per cent commission. It was a mutually satisfying outcome for all stakeholders.'

‘And when have you shown good communication skills?'

‘The wino wanted a twenty per cent commission. I bartered him down to fifteen.'

‘And when have you demonstrated proactivity?'

‘I decanted the bottle of vodka, diluted it with water, kept half for myself, reapplied the seal and sold it on to a thirteen-year-old for twice the profit.'

‘And leadership?'

‘When I was caught by my headteacher for drinking the vodka in school, I blamed my best friend for forcing me to do it.'

‘And integrity in an awkward moral situation?'

‘I refer you to my earlier answer.'

They scribbled furiously.

But it was the group exercise that really gave me the chance to shine. I had to role-play a Treasury official attending a meeting with his colleagues to discuss proposals for a new national stadium. My brief was to resist any developments until the budgetary situation was clearer.

I decided to take control of the meeting.

‘Robin, you can take the minutes. Sarah, you little fittie, you keep an eye on the time. Everyone else, you each have a ten-second pitch in which to convince me that I should fork out money on a bunch of spit-roasting footballers and their Neanderthal, revolting supporters.'

Almost no one else got a word in edgeways. I would definitely have scored top marks in the group.

Afterwards, we got the chance to provide feedback on the other participants' performances. ‘Sarah,' I wrote, ‘probably would. Susan, definitely wouldn't. Kevin, spotty and obnoxious. Robin, first-rate minute-taker. Took orders well.'

I can't wait to hear their feedback on me.

Back where I belong, at Morley Park, to invigilate in the main school hall.

Bob Lowson and I played ‘Examiners' Chicken', which involves walking slowly down the aisle towards each other. The first one to flinch loses. I won 14—9, which boded well for my kids.

At one point I glanced over Anson's shoulder. Attempting to translate ‘I left the house' into French, he'd put ‘J'ai gauché la maison'.

One day that boy will be a Captain of Industry. I just hope it's somewhere in the English-speaking world.

It's 7.30pm on a Saturday night in the run-up to Christmas and I am sitting by myself in a small room in the Home Counties, looking over ten-year-olds' French exams. I have down-sized at the age of twenty-six. It's still not
la vida loca
. But I'm happy. My dad would be proud of me.

And, apart from Anson's, the papers are surprisingly good. I can always blame the dodgier marks on Roddy Lewis's deviant pederast influence in the first half of the term.

I put my red pen down and think about London and what I would be doing if I were still there. No doubt I would just be gearing myself up for a night of stumbling, mumbling and fumbling that I wouldn't remember in the morning. I would probably be sharking an unsuitable woman. I would almost certainly be trolleyed.

And I think about Flatmate Fred and Jasper, Rick and Lucy, Buddy and Leila.

Like animals going two by two into the Ark — Rick 'n' Lucy. Flatmate Fred 'n' Jasper. Jack and sixteen-year-olds. Jack and Miss P. M. Gilmour Jack and no one.

Leila, Leila, Leila.

I read back over this year's diary and there she is, idolised and idealised in vast streams of impotent prose. And I think:
Words are nothing. Nothing but post hoc justifications and poorly remembered trivialities. Semantics and pedantics. Bottled-up feelings, half-declarations, cowardly withdrawals at the last minute. The japes and scrapes of my reality and my imagination.
No wonder diarists are so unhappy.

Keeping a diary might have helped me to sort my life out: it's allowed me to think things through in a way that I wouldn't have done normally; it's shown me where I was going wrong with my career and my relationships. But it's now become an obstacle to my continuing happiness, a place of timid refuge
where realities are blurred, real life is ignored and emotions are sullied by their tawdry articulation.

I remember what Claire (doctors 'n' nurses) led me to conclude in February: I am not a piece of flotsam at the mercy of fate. I can influence events around me. I can influence others. Nothing matters and everything matters. The time for thinking is over. Stop writing; start doing. Quit observing; participate.

Il faut cultiver le jardin
, innit.

But how to put this Voltairean horticultural philosophy into practice? I reach for my mobile and scroll down to Leila's name. It's a month since I told her how much I liked her. And even then I left the issue hanging, even after she said that she liked me, too. I didn't try to argue it through. I just listened to her defence and beat a hasty and feeble exit.

Her phone rings once and I hang up in a sweat, tossing the phone away.
She's told me no. What am I thinking? She doesn't want to speak to me.
And I'm far too embarrassed to speak to her. It's a Saturday night. She's probably out with Buddy somewhere anyway.

But then my phone rings from under the sofa where it landed. It's a withheld number.

‘Hello, Jack Lancaster speaking,' I say, expecting an intrusive sales pitch from Bangalore.

‘Hello, “Jack Lancaster speaking”. It's Leila Sid-day-bot-tome calling.'

I gulp.

‘
Leila
Leila?'

‘How many Leila Sid-day-bot-tomes do you know?'

‘Er, one. But why are you calling me on a withheld number?'

‘Because I tried to call you before and you ignored me on my own number.'

‘And why do you think that is?'

‘Because you have rubbish mobile reception in the sticks of Zone 7?'

‘You horrible London snob. Maybe it's because I'm just a little bit embarrassed after my birthday confession.'