Gentlemen And Players Part 2

'I - I'm a part-timer,' said Meek nervously. 'I - tteach M-maths on FFridays.'

Oh dear. If I frightened him, 5F on a Friday afternoon would eat him alive. I hated to think of the mess they would make in my room. I made a mental note to be on call if there were any signs of a riot.

'b.l.o.o.d.y good place to have a pub, though,' said Light, gulping his pint. 'I could get used to this at lunchtime.'

Easy raised an eyebrow. 'Won't you be training, or supervising extracurricular, or rugby, or something?'

'We're all ent.i.tled to a lunch-break, aren't we?'

Not just a Jobsworth, but a Union man. Dear G.o.ds. That's all we need.

'Oh. But the Headmaster was - I mean, I said I'd take charge of the Geography Society. I thought everyone was supposed to do extracurricular.'

Light shrugged. 'Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? I'm telling you, there's no way I'm going to do after-school sports and weekend matches and give up my lunchtime pint as well. What is this, b.l.o.o.d.y Colditz?'

'Well, you don't have lessons to prepare, or marking--' began Easy.

'Oh, that's typical,' said Light, his face reddening. 'Typical b.l.o.o.d.y academic. Unless you've got it on paper it doesn't count, is that it? I'll tell you this for free, those lads'll get more from my lessons than they would learning the b.l.o.o.d.y capital of Khazistan, or whatever it is--'

Easy looked taken aback. Meek put his face into his lemonade and refused to come out. Miss Dare stared out of the window. Isabelle shot Light an admiring glance from beneath her smoky eyelashes.

Keane grinned. He seemed to be enjoying the fracas.

'What about you, then?' I said. 'What do you think of St Oswald's?'

He looked at me. Mid to late twenties; slim; dark-haired, with a fringe; black T-s.h.i.+rt under a dark suit. He seems very a.s.sured for such a young man, and his voice, though pleasant, has an edge of authority. 'When I was a boy I lived near here for a while. Spent a year at the local comp. Sunnybank Park. Compared to that, St Oswald's is another world.'

Well, that didn't surprise me much. Sunnybank Park eats kids alive, especially the bright ones. 'Good thing you escaped,' I said.

'Yeah.' He grinned. 'We moved down south, and I changed schools. I was lucky. Another year and that place would have finished me off. Still, move over Barry Hines; it's all good material if I ever write a book.'

Oh dear, I thought. Not a Budding Author. You get them from time to time, especially among the English staff, and though not as awkward as Union men or Jobsworths, they rarely bring anything but trouble. Robbie Roach was a poet in the days of his youth. Even Eric Sc.o.o.nes once wrote a play. Neither has ever quite recovered.

'You're a writer?' I said.

'Strictly a hobby,' said Keane.

'Yes, well -- I understand the horror genre isn't as lucrative as it used to be,' I said, with a glance at Light, who was demonstrating a biceps curl to Easy with the aid of his pint of beer.

I looked back at Keane, who had followed my gaze. At first sight, he showed potential. I hoped he wouldn't turn out to be another Roach. English teachers so often have the fatal tendency; that thwarted ambition to be something more, something other than a simple schoolmaster. It usually ends in tears, of course; escape from Alcatraz looks positively childish in comparison with escape from teaching. I looked at Keane for signs of rot; I have to say that at first sight I didn't notice any.

'I wrote a b-book once,' said Meek. 'It was called Javascript and other--'

'I read a book once,' said Light, smirking. 'Didn't think much of it, though.'

Easy laughed. He seemed to ha ve got over his initial faux pas with Light. At the next table, Jimmy grinned and moved a little closer to the group, but Easy, face half averted, managed to avoid eye contact.

'Now if you'd said the internet--' Light moved his chair a few inches, blocking Jimmy, and reached for his half finished beer. 'Plenty to read there -- if you're not afraid of going blind, know what I mean--'

Jimmy slurped his shandy, looking slightly crestfallen. He isn't as slow as some people take him for, and besides, the snub was plain enough for anyone to see. I was suddenly reminded of Anderton-Pullitt, the loner of my form, eating his sandwiches alone in the cla.s.sroom while the other boys played football in the Quad.

I shot a sideways glance at Keane, who was watching, neither approving nor disapproving, but with a gleam of appreciation in his grey eyes. He winked at me, and I smiled back, amused that the most promising of our freshers so far had turned out to be a Sunnybanker.

THE FIRST STEP IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST. I MADE MANY MORE illicit forays into St Oswald's, gaining confidence, moving closer into the grounds, the courtyards, then at last the buildings themselves. Months pa.s.sed; terms; and little by little my father's vigilance diminished.

Things had not turned out quite how he'd hoped. The teachers who called him John remained no less contemptuous than the boys who called him Snyde; the Old Gatehouse was damp in winter, and between the beer and the football and his pa.s.sion for scratchcards, there was never quite enough money. In spite of his great ideas, St Oswald's had turned out to be just another caretaker's job, filled with daily humiliations. It took up all his life. There never was time for tea on the lawn, and Mum never did come home.

Instead, my father took up with a bra.s.sy nineteen-year old called Pepsi, who ran a beauty parlour in town, wore too much lip gloss and liked to party. She had her own place, but she often stayed at ours, and in the mornings my father was heavy-eyed and short-tempered, and the house smelt of cold pizza and beer. On those days -- and others -- I knew to keep out of his way.

Sat.u.r.day nights were the worst. My father's temper was exacerbated by beer and, pockets empty after a night on the tiles, he most often chose me as the b.u.t.t of his resentment. 'Yer little b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he would slur at me through the bedroom door. 'How do 1 know you're mine, eh? How do I know you're even mine?' And if I was foolish enough to open the door, then it would start: the pus.h.i.+ng, the shouting, the swearing, and finally the big slow roundhouse punch that, nine times out of ten, would strike the wall and send the drunkard sprawling.

I wasn't afraid of him. I had been once; but you can get used to anything in time, you know, and nowadays I paid as little attention to his rages as the inhabitants of Pompeii to the volcano that was one day to extinguish them. Most things, repeated often enough, can become routine; and mine was simply to lock the bedroom door, whatever came, and to keep well out of his way the morning after.

At first Pepsi tried to get me on her side. Sometimes she would bring me little presents, or try to make dinner, though she wasn't a great cook. But I remained stubbornly aloof. It wasn't that I disliked her -- with her false nails and overplucked eyebrows, I considered her too stupid to dislike - or even that I resented her. No, it was her dreadful palliness which offended me; the implication that she and I could have something in common, that one day perhaps, we could be friends.

It was at this point that St Oswald's became my playground. It was still officially out of bounds, but by then my father had begun to lose his initial evangelism for the place, and he was happy to turn a blind eye to my occasional infringement of the rules, so long as I was discreet and drew no attention to myself.

Even so, as far as John Snyde was concerned, I only ever played in the grounds. But the Porter's keys were carefully labelled, each in its place in the gla.s.s box behind the Gatehouse door, and as my curiosity and my obsession grew I found it harder and harder to resist the challenge.

One small theft, and the School was mine. Now no door was closed to me; pa.s.skey in hand, at weekends I roamed the deserted buildings while my father watched TV, or went down the local with his mates. As a result, by my tenth birthday I knew the School better than any pupil, and I was able to pa.s.s - invisible and unheard - without so much as raising dust.

I knew the cupboards where the cleaning equipment was kept; the medical room; the electrical points; the archives. I knew all the cla.s.srooms; the south-facing Geography rooms, unbearably hot in summer; the cool, panelled Science rooms; the creaking stairs; the odd-shaped rooms in the Bell Tower. I knew the pigeon-loft, the Chapel, the Observatory with its round gla.s.s ceiling, the tiny studies with their rows of metal cabinets. I read ghost phrases from half-cleaned blackboards. I knew the staff - at least by reputation. I opened lockers with the master key. I smelt chalk and leather and cooking and wood polish. I tried on discarded Games kit. I read forbidden books.

Better still, and more dangerous, I explored the roof. The roof of St Oswald's was a huge, sprawling thing, ridged like a brontosaurus in stony overlapping plates. It was a small city in itself, with towers and quads of its own that mirrored the towers and quads of the School below. Great chimneys, imperially crowned, soared above the crooked ridges; birds nested; rogue elders sank their roots into damp crevices and flourished improbably, dripping blossom into the cracks between the slates. There were channels and gullies and monkey-puzzle ledges leading over the rooftops; there were skylights and balconies, perilously accessible from high parapets.

At first I was cautious, remembering my clumsiness in school gymnastics. But left to my own devices I gained in confidence; learned balance; taught myself to scramble silently over smooth slates and exposed girders; learned how to use a metal rail to vault from a high ledge on to a small balcony, and there down a thick, hairy elbow of creeper into a sallow-throated chimney of ivy and moss.

I loved the roof. I loved its peppery smell; its dankness in wet weather; the rosettes of yellow lichen that bloomed and spread across the stones. Here, at last, I was free to be myself. There were maintenance ladders leading out from various openings, but these were mostly in poor condition, some of them reduced to a lethal filigree of rust and metal, and I'd always scorned them, finding my own entrances to the rooftop kingdom, unblocking windows that had been painted shut decades before, looping pieces of rope around chimney stacks to aid ascent, exploring the wells and crawl s.p.a.ces and the great leaded stone gutters. I had no fear of heights or falling. I found to my surprise that I was naturally agile; on the roof my light build was a real advantage, and up here there were no bullies to mock my skinny legs.

Of course I had long known that maintaining the roof was a job my father detested. He could just about cope with a broken slate (as long as it was accessible from a window), but the leadwork that sealed the gutters was quite another matter. To reach that, one had to crawl down a slated incline towards the far edge of the roof, where there was a stone parapet that circled the gutter, and from there, to kneel, with three hundred feet of bluegreen St Oswald's air between himself and the ground, to check the seal. He never did this necessary duty; gave a mult.i.tude of reasons for failing to do so, but after the excuses had run dry I finally, gleefully guessed the truth. John Snyde was afraid of heights.

Already, you see, secrets fascinated me. A bottle of sherry at the back of a stock-cupboard, a packet of letters in a tin box behind a panel, some magazines in a locked filing cabinet, a list of names in an old accounts book. For me, no secret was mundane; no t.i.tbit too small to escape my interest. I knew who was cheating on his wife; who suffered from nerves; who was ambitious; who read romantic novels; who used the photocopier illicitly. If knowledge is power, I owned the place.

By then I was in my last term at Abbey Road Juniors. It had not been a success. I had worked hard, kept out of trouble, but had consistently failed to make any friends. In an effort to combat my father's Northern vowels I had tried - disastrously - to imitate the voices and mannerisms of the St Oswald's boys, thereby earning myself the nickname 'Sn.o.bby Snyde'. Even some of the teachers used it; I'd heard them in their staff room, the heavy door swinging open into a fug of smoke and laughter. Sn.o.bby Snyde, pealed a woman's voice. Oh, that's priceless. Sn.o.bby Snyde.

I had no illusions that Sunnybank Park would be any better. Most of its intake was from the Abbey Road estate, a depressing block of pebble-dashed council houses and cardboard flatblocks with was.h.i.+ng at the balconies and dark stairwells that smelt of p.i.s.s. I'd lived there myself. I knew what to expect. There was a sandpit filled with nuggets of dogs.h.i.+t; a playground with swings and a lethal scattering of broken gla.s.s; walls of graffiti; gangs of boys and girls with foul mouths and grubby, inbred faces.

Their fathers drank with my father down at the Engineers'; their mothers had gone with Sharon Snyde to Cinderella's Dance-a-rama on Sat.u.r.day nights. 'You want to make an effort, kid,' my father told me. 'Give 'em a chance, and you'll soon fit in.'

But I didn't want to make the effort. I didn't want to fit in at Sunnybank Park.

'Then what do you want?'

Ah. That was the question.

Alon e in the echoing corridors of the School, I dreamed of having my name on the Honours Boards, of sharing jokes with the St Oswald's boys, of learning Latin and Greek instead of woodwork and technical drawing, of doing prep instead of homework at the big wooden desks. In eighteen months, my invisibility had changed from a talent to a curse; I longed to be seen; I strove to belong; I went out of my way to take ever greater risks in the hope that one day, perhaps, St Oswald's would recognize me and take me home. So I carved my initials alongside those of generations of Old Oswaldians on the oak panels in the Refectory. I watched weekend sports fixtures from a hiding-place at the back of the Games Pavilion. I struggled to the top of the sycamore tree in the centre of the Old Quad and made faces at the gargoyles at the edge of the roof. After school I ran back as fast as I could to St Oswald's and watched the boys as they left; heard their laughter and their complaints, spied on their fights, breathed the exhaust fumes of their parents' expensive cars as if it were incense. Our own school book room was poorly stocked, mostly with paperbacks and comics, but in St Oswald's huge cloistered library I read avidly - Ivanhoe and Great Expectations and Tom Brown's Schooldays and Gormenghast and The Arabian Nights and King Solomon's Mines. Often I smuggled books home - some of them hadn't been taken out of the library since the forties. My favourite was The Invisible Man. Walking along the corridors of St Oswald's at night, smelling the day's chalk and the bland lingerings of the kitchen, hearing the dead echoes of happy voices and watching the shadows of the trees fall on to the newly polished floors, I knew exactly, and with a deep ache of longing, how he had felt.

All I wanted, you see, was to belong. Abbey Road Juniors had been shabby and rundown, a failing tribute to sixties liberalism. But Sunnybank Park was infinitely worse. I took regular beatings for my leather briefcase (everyone that year was carrying Adidas bags); for my contempt of sports; for my smart mouth; for my love of books; for my clothes; and for the fact that my father worked at that posh school (it didn't seem to matter that he was only the caretaker). I learned to run fast and to keep my head down. 1 imagined myself an exile, set apart from the others, who would one day be called back to where I belonged. Deep down I thought that if I proved myself, somehow, if I could withstand the bullying and the petty humiliations, then St Oswald's would one day welcome me.

When I was eleven and the doctor decided I needed gla.s.ses, my father blamed my reading. But secretly I knew that I had reached another milestone on the way to St Oswald's, and although 'Sn.o.bby Snyde' quickly became 'Speccy Snyde', still I was obscurely pleased. I scrutinized myself in the bathroom mirror and decided that I almost looked the part.

I still do; though the gla.s.ses have been replaced by contact lenses (just in case). My hair is a little darker than it was then, and better cut. My clothes too, are well cut, but not too formal - I don't want to look as if I'm trying too hard. I'm especially pleased with the voice; no trace of my father's accent remains, but the fake refinement which made Sn.o.bby Snyde such a dreadful little upstart has vanished. My new persona is likeable without being intrusive; a good listener; precisely the qualities needed in a murderer and a spy All in all, I was pleased with my performance today. Perhaps some part of me still expects to be recognized, for the thrill of danger was vivid in me all day as I tried not to seem too familiar with the buildings, the rules, the people.

The teaching part, surprisingly, is the easiest. I have my subject's lower sets throughout, thanks to Strange's unique timetabling methods (senior staff invariably get the better cla.s.ses, leaving the new appointees with the rabble), and this means that, although my timetable is full, it is not intellectually taxing. I know enough about my subject to fool the boys, at least; when in doubt I use the teacher's books to help me.

It is enough for my purpose. No one suspects. I have no top sets or sixth-formers to challenge me. Nor do I antic.i.p.ate any discipline problems. These boys are very different to the pupils of Sunnybank Park, and I have the whole disciplinary infrastructure of St Oswald's to reinforce my position, should I need it.

I sense that I will not, however. These boys are paying customers. They are used to obeying their teachers; their misbehaviour is limited to the occasional missed prep, or whispering in the cla.s.sroom. The cane is no longer used - it is no longer necessary in the face of the greater, unspecified threat. It's rather comic, really. Comic and ridiculously simple. It's a game, of course; a battle of wills between myself and the rabble. We all know that there is nothing I could do if they all decided to leave the room at once. We all know, but no one dares to call my bluff.

All the same, I must not be complacent. My cover is good, but even a small misstep at this stage might prove disastrous. That secretary, for instance. Not that her presence changes anything, but it just goes to show that you can't antic.i.p.ate every move.

I am wary, too, of Roy Straitley. Neither the Head, nor Bishop, nor Strange have spared me a second glance. But Straitley is different. His eyes are still as keen as they were fifteen years ago -- and his brain, too. The boys always respected him, even if his colleagues didn't. Much of the gossip I overheard during those years at St Oswald's was in some way to do with him, and though his role in what happened was small, it was nevertheless significant.

He has aged, of course. He must be close to retirement now. But he hasn't changed; still the same affectations, the gown, the tweed jacket, the Latin phrases. I felt almost fond of him today, as if he were an old uncle I hadn't seen for years. But I can see him behind his disguise, even if he does not see me. I know my enemy.

I'd almost expected to hear of his retirement. In a way it would have made things easier. But after today, I'm glad he's still here. It adds excitement to the situation. Besides, the day I bring St Oswald's down, I want Roy Straitley to be there.

St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys Tuesday, 7 th September THERE S ALWAYS A SPECIAL KIND OF CHAOS ON THE FIRST day. Boys late, boys lost, books to be collected, stationery to be distributed. The cla.s.sroom changes didn't help; the new timetable had failed to take into account the renumbering of the rooms, and had to be followed by a memo that no one read. Several times I intercepted columns of boys marching towards the new German departmental office instead of towards the Bell Tower, and had to redirect them.

Dr Devine was looking stressed. I had still not cleared out my old office, of course; all the filing cabinets were locked, and only I had the key. Then there were registers, pieces of holiday work to collect, fee cheques to be sent to the Bursar's office, locker keys to distribute, seating arrangements to be made, law to be enforced.

Luckily, I don't have a new form this year. My boys thirty-one of them in all - are old lags, and they know what to expect. They have got used to me, and I to them. There's Pink, a quiet, quirky lad with a strangely adult sense of humour, and his friend Tayler; then there are my Brodie Boys, Allen-Jones and McNair, two extravagant jokers who earn themselves fewer detentions than they deserve because they make me laugh; then red-headed Sutcliff; then Niu, a j.a.panese boy, very active in the school orchestra; then Knight, whom I do not trust; little Jackson, who has to prove himself on a daily basis by picking fights; large Brasenose, who is easily bullied; and AndertonPullitt, a clever, solitary, ponderous boy who has many allergies including, if we are to believe him, a very special form of asthma which means that he should be excused from all kinds of sports, as well as Maths, French, RE, homework on Mondays, House Meetings, a.s.semblies and Chapel. He also has a habit of following me around - which has caused Kitty Teague to make jokes at the expense of my Special Little Friend -- and bending my ear about his various enthusiasms (First World War aircraft, computer games, the music of Gilbert and Sullivan). As a rule I don't mind too much he's an odd boy, excluded by his peers, and I think he may be lonely - but on the other hand, I have work to do, and no desire to spend what free time I have in socializing with AndertonPullitt.

Of course, schoolboy crushes are a fact of teaching, with which we learn to deal as best we can. We've all been on the receiving end at some time or another - even people like Hillary Monument and myself, who, let's face it, are about as unsightly a pair as you're likely to find out of captivity. We all have our ways of dealing with it, though I believe Isabelle Tapi actually encourages the boys certainly, she has any number of Special Little Friends, as do Robbie Roach and Penny Nation. As for myself, I find that a brisk manner and a policy of benevolent neglect usually discourage overfamiliarity in the Anderton-Pullitts of this world.

Still, all in all, not a bad lot, 3S. They have grown over the holidays; some look almost adult. That ought to make me feel old, but it does not; instead I feel a kind of reluctant pride. I like to think that I treat all the boys equally, but I have developed an especial fondness for this form, which has been with me for the past two years. I like to think we understand each other.

'Oh, sii--iiiiir!' There were moans as I handed out Latin tests to everyone.

'It's the first day, sir!'

'Can't we ha ve a quiz, sir?'

'Can we do hangman in Latin?'

'When I have taught you everything I know, Mr Allen Jones, then perhaps we may find time to indulge in trivial pursuits.'

Allen-Jones grinned, and I saw that in the s.p.a.ce marked 'Form-Room' on the cover of his Latin book, he had written 'Room formerly known as 59'.

There was a knock, and Dr Devine put his head around the door.

'Mr Straitley?'

'Quid agis, Medice?'

The cla.s.s sn.i.g.g.e.red. Sourgrape, who never did Cla.s.sics, looked annoyed. 'I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr Straitley. Could I have a quick word, please?'

We went out into the corridor, while I kept watch on the boys through the panel in the door. McNair was already beginning to write something on his desk, and I gave the gla.s.s a warning tap.

Sourgrape eyed me disapprovingly. 'I was really hoping to reorganize the departmental workroom this morning,' he said. 'Your filing cabinets--'

'Oh, I'll deal with those,' I replied. 'Just leave it all to me.'

'Then there's the desk - and the books - not to mention all those enormous plants--'

'Just make yourself at home,' I said in an airy tone. 'Don't mind my stuff at all.' There was thirty years of a.s.sorted paperwork in that desk. 'Perhaps you'd like to transfer some of the files to the archive, if you're free,' I suggested helpfully.

'I would not,' snapped Sourgrape. 'And while we're at it, perhaps you can tell me who has removed the new number 59 from the door of the departmental workroom and replaced it by this?' He handed me a piece of card, upon which someone had written: 'Room formerly known as 75' in an exuberant (and rather familiar) young scrawl.

'I'm sorry, Dr Devine. I don't have the slightest idea.'

'Well, it's nothing more than theft. Those door plaques cost 4 pounds each. That comes to 113 pounds in all for twenty-eight rooms, and six of them are gone already. I don't know what you're grinning at, Straitley, but--'

'Grinning, did you say? Not at all. Tampering with room numbers? Deplorable.' This time I managed to keep a straight face, though Sourgrape seemed unconvinced.

'Well, I shall be making enquiries, and I'd be grateful if you could keep an eye out for the culprit. We can't have this kind of thing happening. It's disgraceful. This school's security has been a shambles for years.'

Dr Devine wants surveillance cameras on the Middle Corridor -- ostensibly for security, but actually because he wants to be able to watch what everyone gets up to: who lets the boys watch Test Cricket instead of doing exam revision; who does the crossword during reading comprehensions; who is always twenty minutes late; who nips out for a cup of coffee; who allows indiscipline; who prepares his work materials in advance, who makes it up as he goes along.

Oh, he'd love to have all those things on camera; to possess hard evidence of our little failures, our little in competencies. To be able to demonstrate (during a School Inspection, for instance) that Isabelle is often late to lessons; that Pearman sometimes forgets to arrive at all. That Eric Sc.o.o.nes loses his temper and occasionally cuffs a boy across the head, that I rarely use visual aids, and that Grachvogel, in spite of his modern methods, has difficulty controlling his cla.s.s. I know all those things, of course. Devine merely suspects.

I also know that Eric's mother has Alzheimer's disease, and that he is fighting to keep her at home; that Pearman's wife has cancer; and that Grachvogel is h.o.m.os.e.xual, and afraid. Sourgrape has no idea of these things, closeted as he is in his ivory tower in the old Cla.s.sics office. Furthermore, he does not care. Information, not understanding, is the name of his game.

After the lesson I discreetly used the master key to get into Allen-Jones' locker. Sure enough, the six door plaques were there, along with a set of small screwdrivers and the discarded screws, all of which I removed. I would ask Jimmy to replace the plaques at lunch-time. Fallow would have asked questions, and might even have reported back to Dr Devine.

There seemed no point in taking further action. If Allen Jones had any sense, he wouldn't mention the matter either. As I closed the locker I caught sight of a packet of cigarettes and a lighter concealed behind a copy of Julius Caesar, but decided not to notice them.

I was free for most of the afternoon. I would have liked to stay in my room, but Meek was in there with a third-year Maths cla.s.s, so I retreated to the Quiet Room (sadly a no-smoking area) for a comfortable chat with any colleagues who happened to be available.

The Quiet Room is, of course, a misnomer. A kind of communal office with desks in the middle and lockers around the edges, it is here that the staff grapevine has its roots. Here, under the pretext of marking, news is disseminated, rumours spread. It has the added advantage of being precisely underneath my room, and this lucky coincidence means that if required, I can leave a cla.s.s to work in silence while I have a cup of tea or read The Times in congenial surroundings. Any sound from above is distinctly audible, including individual voices, and it is the work of an instant for me to rise, apprehend and swiftly punish any boy who creates a disturbance. In this way I have acquired a reputation for omniscience, which serves me well.

In the Quiet Room I found Chris Keane, Kitty Teague, Robbie Roach, Eric Sc.o.o.nes and Paddy McDonaugh, the RE master. Keane was reading, occasionally making notes in a red-bound notebook. Kitty and Sc.o.o.nes were going through departmental report cards. McDonaugh was drinking tea whilst flicking through the pages of The Encyclopaedia of Demons and Demonohgy. Sometimes I think that man takes his job a little too seriously.

Roach was engrossed in the Mirror. 'Thirty-seven to go,' he said.

There was a silence. When no one questioned his statement he elaborated. 'Thirty-seven working days,' he said. Till half-term.'

McDonaugh snorted. 'Since when did you ever do any work?' he said.

'I've already done my share,' said Roach, turning a page. 'Don't forget I've been at camp since August.' Summer camp is Robbie's contribution to the school's extracurricular programme: for three weeks a year he goes to Wales with a minibus of boys to lead walking expeditions, canoeing, paintballing and go-karting. It's what he enjoys; he gets to wear jeans every day and have the boys call him by his first name, but still he maintains that it is a great sacrifice, and claims his right to take it easy for the rest of the year.

'Camp,' scoffed McDonaugh.

Sc.o.o.nes eyed them with disapproval. 'I thought this was supposed to be the Quiet Room,' he pointed out in chilling tones, before returning to his report cards.

There was silence for a moment. Eric's a good chap, but moody; on another day he might be full of gossip himself; today he looked glum. It was probably the new addition to the French department, I thought to myself. Miss Dare is young, ambitious and bright - one more person to beware of. Plus, she's a woman, and an old-timer like Sc.o.o.nes doesn't like working alongside a woman thirty years younger than he is. He has been expecting promotion at any time these past fifteen years, but he won't get it now. He's too old - and not half amenable enough. Everybody knows it but Sc.o.o.nes himself, and any change to the departmental lineup only serves to remind him that he isn't getting any younger.

Kitty gave me a humorous look, which confirmed my suspicions. 'Lots of admin to catch up on,' she whispered. 'There was a bit of a mix-up last term and for some reason, these records got overlooked.'