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Neill’s irises, calm and blue as a cloudless summer sky, gazing low and intently into her brown bewildered own, suddenly conjured in Natalia’s memory a portrait of Jesus hanging in her primary school, whose eyes had seemed to follow her round the hall as the droll piano notes of This is My Body now chimed in her mind’s ear:
‘Take it, eat it, do it in love for him.’
Almost in a trance, as though she were seven years old again, as if in slow motion, she puts out her hand. Her fingers push through a floppy flap of cold banana skin, brushing briefly against his warm forefinger that now retreats, and her eyes widen as though she were being unwittingly saddled with a bright yellow grenade.
Holding it freely now, she laughed, with a look that cued: ok, I have it, I will just eat it while you continue working, and everything will be normal?
But Neill still didn’t speak, just raised his eyebrows with the softest enquiry - and now outrageously, unbelievably - he was folding his arms and sitting back, gazing right at her.
Like the judge and the whole jury in one man, his body language had no intention, it seemed, of looking back to his screen before she put the banana to her lips, where the blush from her cheeks like a blazing forest wildfire now reached.
Her lips were blushing.
Tingling, like her mouth was now hungry to end the silence, she found her hand compelled to raise that thing to her mouth before it went brown.
Her eyes fell to the floor as the top of the banana entered her lips, then through her teeth, and she ate as demurely as she could, for a man was watching, for God’s sake - and it was Neill her Headmaster, for Christ’ssake… and once it was swallowed, she glanced to see him still looking, not directly at her mouth but vaguely upon her, as if taking in all of her spirit, soberly with a tender awe, whilst the blood fizzed like a breaking wave in her thighs and she suddenly liked to be doing what he asked of her, to feel his approval.
She took another bite, faster, easier now. Throwing the last chunk into her mouth whilst cockily looking him right in the face, her nervousness was gone, her heartbeat regulating, but the smell of banana she thinks she will now always associate with this moment.
Neill held out his palm, and she lay the skin upon his hand, and after a micro-moment of studying the fine brown hairs on his upturned watch-wrapped wrist, he took it just like he took her tie ten minutes earlier, but this time tossing it into the bin behind his desk.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and he finally spoke.
‘Good.’
In a low tone as if merely concluding a business matter, he was genially looking back to his screen again as if nothing had happened.
‘There’s building repairs needed on the third floor, I’ll put that down. The school also needs a Spanish teacher - that’s something I might actually do if we have money left once I get my office refurbished - naturally with a nice, new, mahogany desk that doesn’t creak and a shredder that takes what it’s fed without hesitation. Natalia?’
Natalia’s mind was up on the ceiling somewhere, sliding her tongue around banana-starched teeth.
‘Lost for words?’
Her eyes came back to his.
‘Oh, er, no I think that sounds fine.’
‘My mahogany desk?’ he scoffed. ‘Am I better off just proposing a workshop to show the kids how to pick their feet up when they walk?’
‘Erm, maybe. Why don’t you print off what you’ve got and let me look over it.’
He hit a key, then flashed his swivel chair round to his printer, sighing, ‘another disobedient office accoutrement!’ He knocked on it like a door, entreating, ‘are you feeling ok today?’ as Natalia emitted a small, only half-conscious laugh.
Swinging round for a few more clicks and grunts, he finally gave the printer a huge whack on the side as Natalia jumped.
‘Ah, that usually works. We have life!’
The printer spewed three sheets and he scooped up, stapled and passed them to her with a newscaster smile, as she took them warm in her hand.
There was a knock on the door. That might have come three minutes ago, Natalia thought.
‘Not now,’ Neill called out flatly.
The door opened, as Neill’s eyebrow raised cynically.
‘Neill, Miss says you have sellotape?’
‘Miss who? Sellotape for whose mouth? On a lunch break?’ He noisily rifled through his drawers to produce a super-large roll of clear tape. ‘This one do?’
‘For Miss Doris. Yeah that one thanks sir.’
‘Should be enough to truss her up from head to toe and the whole playground too,’ as he stiffened his jaw and threw it over.
‘Good catch!’ As the boy left, he added: ‘Or maybe not, with those sebaceous glands.’
Natalia would have laughed, but she was gazing down trying to connect the words on the page to her brain.
He exhaled loudly. ‘You ought to have read that by now, clever clogs. What’s the delay?’
She looked up. ‘The delay is you Neill, always you with your indecorous requests—’
He gave the softest shrug of indifference.
‘I mean, what’s this bit? ‘Thornwood does not have sufficiently equipped football pitches as it could benefit from changing the goalposts.’ Is that supposed to be a pun?’
‘No. Shit.’ He started clicking and typing. ‘Changed it to upgrading.’
‘‘…As the old ones bear the funk of forty-thousand years,’’ she screwed up her face. ‘Are you really gonna quote the words of Thriller?’
‘Oh no, forgot to take that out. Bear the funk of forty years.’
‘Are you still sure on that line? Funk?’
‘I like it. It’s close to swearing without swearing.’
‘I’m not sure even shades of euphemism are what you want. How about just avoiding offence, with: ‘We require new goalposts for the football pitch, as the current ones are in ageing disrepair.’’
He blew through his lips like a teenager. ‘If you must be so sensible.’
‘Are you sure your Deputy or another teacher couldn’t work with you on this?’
‘Now you risk offence. What would I want with Dinkey-Donk or the rest of that guileless lot? Besides, what else are you going to do on your lunch break?’
‘My work?’
‘You don’t work on your lunch break. I see you wandering the grounds like the perplexed ghost of a Victorian schoolgirl or scribbling away in your notepad smirking to yourself like you’ve just perfected the most amusingly detailed cock graffiti.’
‘Pardon?’
‘So to make sure I don’t make just as much an elaborate cock-up on this application, help me out with your insights, and having far more prudence than I have, as well as literacy that bypasses every single person’s in this school including mine, well almost - and in the time left, which is - ’ he checked his watch, and then glanced at the clock, and then his computer - ‘bloody cock’s - clock’s - wrong—’
‘Fifteen minutes till the end of lunch.’
‘Fifteen minutes, each of which you will now surpass the standard as you have done with every corresponding year of your life, to rewrite that whole thing for me, otherwise you’ll miss your afternoon lesson till you do.’
He slid over an A4 pad and pen.
‘You’re disgustingly demanding.’
‘Yes.’ His face as bold as brass.
She narrowed her eyes back. ‘Two can play at that game. Where’s my tea you promised?’
He leaned to click the kettle then rummaged at some bottles. ‘I have a splash of milk just for you!’ he enthused.
She nudged her chair up to the desk and began busying herself between his papers and the pad; pausing, writing, reading, then pausing again.
She cleared her throat.
‘‘Employ Muslim Learner Services for Assembly visits to challenge misconceptions about Islam from Year 7 to Year 11.’ Are you really going to do that?’
‘Nope.’
Her eyebrow raised. ‘Imran and Amir in Year 9 might appreciate it.’
‘I’m sure they challenge misconceptions every day, why do I need to pay a charity to come do it?’
She continued reading and frowned. ‘Are you really going to create a mindfulness room?’
‘Nah.’
‘Oh. Thought that was hip, like the Archery.’
‘We’ve already got a room to escape into. It’s called the lavvy.’
‘Lavvee?’
‘Southern for bogs, love.’
‘Exactly. The toilet is where all the teenage boys… meditate.’
The kettle bubbled and clicked off.
‘‘Monthly walks for all years to experience local wildlife,’’ she continued. ‘Just more bullshit?’
‘Yep indeedy do,’ he swivelled the other way to pour her tea.
‘But you’ve put the nearest green space from here, Wykebeck, where they’d be spotting a different kind of wild life… more rabid dogs than roaming deer and any squirrels they spot will be carrying syringes—’
He chortled.
‘I’m rewriting that they take the footpath up to Primrose Valley Park.’
‘Footpath, really? How far?’ He swivelled back round with her tea in one hand and the almost empty milk bottle in the other.
‘Twenty minutes. Or if they’ve got all afternoon for pond life with some stately history thrown in, forty minutes to Temple Newsam Manor.’
‘Perfect! Slap it in!’
‘I will. Just like my milk and sugar. Two pl—’
‘I know.’ He stirred her tea and pushed it over.
‘Shame this isn’t going to happen for real,’ as she took the mug and sipped it.
‘Would you like to go on walks with your class?’
She pondered as she put down her mug again. ‘Actually… nah.’
‘Ha!’
‘Far rather I go alone than with all those thick twats in tow,’ as she took up the sheets again.
‘You’re not excited to go with all the twats in tow to Brontë town then?’ he blinked bemused, squashing the milk bottle into the bin.
‘That’s different. I looked it up and it would take two bloody buses, a train and four fucking walks for me to get there.’
‘Yep, sod that. You will enjoy your coach all the way there and back.’
‘Thought you were coming?’
‘I am, in my car. I don’t do coaches. I’ll wait for you all in the pub.’
‘Right, well I don’t do duff government claims!’
She tossed the papers across the desk, which flapped like a nose-diving chicken in front of his aghast face.
‘What!’
‘You’re the fuel to this school, the fuel to this trip,’ she rose over him like Alice after a size-inducing Eat Me, whilst he looked up with the shocked round mouth of the Doorknob’s, ‘and the fuel - literally - to the fire! And so how is this fat fucking coach full of ASBO plebs going to move at all without your fuel?’ her eyes flashed.
He stared up at her for a moment, then bit his lip.
‘I’ll come on the coach.’
‘Thank you,’ she put her hand out to take the sheets back, ‘but you don’t have to go that far.’
He almost guffawed, as she sat back down, tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear and continued.
‘So here we go: ‘Thornwood High students could benefit from a minimum of a monthly walk to the nearby woods and meadows within twenty minutes on foot. I’ve taken out your bit about ‘helpfully vacating the school premises, and building their mettle to walk the doleful streets of the impoverished economic class—’’
He raised and stroked his chin, tittering.
‘And I’ve put in, that ‘the manor house Temple Newsam is within a forty-minute walk which would constitute a day trip, fulfilling aims on History, Geography and Physical Education curricula, as well as Pastoral criteria, contribute to class ethos and morale, as well as moving us into line with the Government’s Healthy Teen-Active goals.’
‘Perfect. More spiel weaponry than I even considered. You’re so fucking good at this,’ he sighed. ‘Do you want to take this home?’
‘No, you gave me fifteen minutes and I’m doing it in fifteen minutes,’ as she continued working and sipping her tea.
He laughed softly, rubbing his ear as he watched her.
‘Besides, I’ve got better things to do at home than your dirty work,’ she added.
‘Have you?’
‘No.’
He laughed again. ‘So what else. Which of my other corkers are you going to censor, I mean, correct?’
She squinted down. ‘This part about painting new car parking bays, which I assume is—’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Yep. You say it will help the ‘more spatially-challenged silver seniors allow ample space for all staff to arrive and depart from the grounds without dispute.’ It makes it seem like the school has daily stand-offs between harassed oldies in their hatchbacks and the smug, swaggering, space-hungry saloons swinging in—’
‘Worded exactly! Put that in!’
‘Creating an aura of argumentative ageism—’
‘Even more alliteration! A girl after my own heart!’
‘I’m rewording this entire thing into something insipid, rational and grant-winning.’
‘Pah.’
‘Also, you should add in something on this form to do with sexuality. A consultatory bureau of sorts to help gay and trans and whatever else.’
He screwed up his face. ‘I have enough fags in my pocket.’
She shrugged. ‘If you’re going for brownie points…’
‘I don’t think I can bring myself to write it.’
‘Well I’ll write it.’
‘But I’ll have to type it up and press send. I won’t be able to look at the screen. I’ll need you to stand by me holding my hand…’
‘Maybe these woke people have a point. If there’s a trans person in the school that needs somewhere to go for advice—’
‘There are no trannies in this school. Unless you count Miss Bailey.’
‘She just has short hair.’
‘And walks like she has bigger bollocks than mine!’
‘Anyway, things like this are for the pupils, not the staff—’
‘And despite the vast shortcomings of the ilk of kids in Thornwood, if you asked any of them whether their dick’s really a cunt, they’d laugh crisp-spit in your face thinking you were talking about their mate. Kids here are tragic but traditional. There’s no-one here confused about what they’re pissing over the toilet seat with.’
‘Not till you invite in… TransLeeds,’ she said, searching on her phone.
‘Don’t you be so foul—’
‘Mermaids UK?’
‘I’ve seen enough of those salacious sirens on your phone. Put all those cracks away. Look, the Mosque-mobile is as far as I’m willing to lie. Anything more and I’ll need my own support service of fifteen fags in my mouth,’ he stretched and placed his cigarette packet on the table. ‘All kids know they can get enough queer, dick and fanny from Enid Blyton.’
‘Ohh-k.’
The bell went for the end of lunch.
‘Is it finished, as you promised?’ he asked.
‘I need a couple of minutes.’
Once she finished writing, she stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked right up to him.
‘Get typing that, and don’t dare embellish anything.’
He let out an extra long, husky sort of sigh, that she couldn’t tell whether was in appreciation of the papers she’d laid over his keyboard, or of her torso that his eyes were exaggeratedly fluttering down like injured butterflies, till she saw they were levelled at something else.
‘God, all this grant-grovelling makes me gag for a fa…. cigarette.’
She picked up the box and slipped one out, as he pushed his neck forward and puckered his lips to take it.
‘Put the right end in girl, that’s it…’
Looking at her like a forlorn puppy, she couldn’t help giggling, momentarily mesmerised before declaring:
‘You, sir, are bananas.’
81Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqVyIVDllTJ
*
That had to be the strangest visit to Neill, hadn’t it? She couldn’t get the picture of his face, waiting for her to eat the banana, out of her mind. What if she told someone? The Headmaster kind of forced me to eat a banana in his office. Kind of? Forced? How? Well he just looked at me and wouldn’t stop. Just sat there and stared till I did it. And why didn’t you leave? Because he is so sweet and cheeky and fucking alluring, and he peeled it so beautifully that I wanted to do it, but at the same time I was mortified by it. How on earth would that sound?
How small and helpless it made her feel, and yet, how by the time she’d finished eating it, it was like she’d swallowed a part of him, ending the meeting with a nerve that unnerved herself! Did she really toss his papers with an indignant articulation to have him cower with a face like Miss Doris?
What was this whole charade today? Were all the other staff really ‘guileless’ enough to warrant calling her up for her services for a full hour of rewriting a lie-filled grant form on his behalf? How did he get so far in his career if he couldn’t help swearing and lying and making close-to-the-bone comments as effusively as a sprinkler in the grass in summer?
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