Disclaimer

2. TWO YEARS EARLIER

I did feel sorry for what happened, I really did. He was only a child after all, seven years old. And I was, I suppose, in loco parentis, although I jolly well knew that none of the parents would have wanted me being in loco anything. By then I had sunk pretty low: Stephen Brigstocke, the most loathed teacher in the school. Certainly I think the children thought so and the parents, but not all of them: I hope some of them remembered me from before, when I had taught their older children. Anyway, I wasn’t surprised when Justin called me into his office. I’d been waiting for it. It took him a little longer than I’d expected, but that’s private schools for you. They are their own little fiefdoms. The parents might think they’re in control because they’re paying, but of course they’re not. I mean, look at me. I was barely interviewed for the job. Justin and I had been at Cambridge together and he knew I needed the money, and I knew he needed a head of English. You see, private schools pay more than state and I had had years of experience teaching in a state comprehensive. Poor Justin, it must have been very difficult for him to remove me. Awkward, you know. And it was a removal rather than a sacking. It was decent of him; I appreciate that. I couldn’t afford to lose my pension, and I was coming up for retirement anyway, so he just hastened the process. In fact we were both due for retirement but Justin’s departure was quite different from mine. I heard that some of the pupils even shed a tear. Not for me though, well, why should they? I didn’t deserve those kinds of tears.

But I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m not a paedophile. I didn’t fiddle with the child. I didn’t even touch him. No, no, I never, ever touched the children. The thing is, I just found them so bloody boring. Is that a terrible thing to say about seven-year-olds? I suppose it is for a teacher. I got so sick of reading their tedious stories, which I’m sure some of them laboured over, but even so, it was that sense they had of themselves, that at seven, for crying out loud, they really had anything to say that I might be interested in. And then one evening I had just had enough. The catharsis of the red pen no longer worked and when I got to this particular boy’s essay, I don’t remember his name, I gave him a very detailed critique of why I couldn’t really give a shit about his family holiday to southern India where they’d stayed with local villagers. Well, how bloody marvellous for them. Of course it upset him. Of course it did and I’m sorry for that. And of course he told his parents. I’m not sorry about that. It helped speed up my exit and there’s no doubt I needed to go for my own sake as well as theirs.

So there I was at home with a lot of time on my hands. A retired English teacher from a second-rate private school. A widower. I worry that perhaps I am being too honest — that what I have said so far might be a little off-putting. It might make me appear cruel. And what I did to that little boy was cruel, I accept that but, as a rule, I’m not a cruel person. Since Nancy died though, I have allowed things to slide a little. Well, okay, a lot.

It is hard to believe that, once upon a time, I was voted Most Popular Teacher in the Year. Not by the pupils at the private school, but by those at the comprehensive I’d taught at before. And it wasn’t a one-off, it happened several years running. One year, I think it was 1982, my wife, Nancy, and I both achieved this prize from our respective schools.

I had followed Nancy into teaching. She had followed our son when he began at infants’. She’d taught the five- to six-year-olds at Jonathan’s school and I the fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds at the comp up the road. I know some teachers find that age group a struggle, but I liked it. Adolescence isn’t much fun and so my view was, give the poor buggers a break. I never forced them to read a book if they didn’t want to. A story is a story after all. It doesn’t just have to be read in a book. A film, a piece of television, a play. There’s still a narrative to follow, interpret, enjoy. Back then I was committed. I cared. But that was then. I’m not a teacher anymore. I’m retired. I’m a widower.