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Natalia sat stunned from being told not to go to Maths, whilst Neill threw a cigarette into his mouth and rose to the window.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll let the teacher know. It’s Noble, isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Really what?’
‘Noble to bunk off?’
‘Mr Noble, smartypants. That ok?’ He half-turned his scrunched face, fag in mouth.
‘Erm, yes?’ What else could she say?
‘More tea?’
‘Ok. If you’re busy keeping your arm out of the window, I don’t mind making it?’
‘Ha! Very good. There’s no tap in here obviously, I fill the kettle from the bottle.’
She glanced to him as she poured. ‘I think you need to be careful with smoking, sir. Alarms going off, fire engines and all that?’
‘Sure sure, don’t worry about it,’ as he stretched further out of the window.
Sitting down again as the kettle boiled up, she pondered the topic he’d broached.
‘So, about teachers. I hadn’t mentioned yet one of the main reasons I truanted—’
She leaned over to check he could actually hear.
‘Yes?’ came his voice slightly distant from the outside of the window.
‘My worst lesson is the one I just came from, PE. Well, I had an excuse note this time. The combined horrible experience of being amongst the girls, and the teacher, Mrs Luxton, feels’ - she watched him peering back at her - ‘considering you don’t mind me being brutally honest, and won’t mistake it for petulant exaggeration, like hell itself.’
He did that face - the kind of knowing smirk combined with a stare and half a raised eyebrow - that seemed to push a button somewhere in Natalia.
‘Tell me more please,’ he puffed.
‘Well, I may be the deep-studious-introspective-whatever loner that you can’t do anything about’ - he smiled - ‘but, quite frankly the way the other girls treat me - or anyone else who is not in their awful bullish clique - is to mock and belittle them through whatever we’re playing, whether it’s rounders or netball, and make me feel like anything but endorphins and team spirit. Mrs Luxton’s just a tease herself, condescending rather than diplomatic, never able to help but rather exacerbate the situation, someone I think is simply… past it.’
Neill smoked out of the window as he listened intently, clearly digesting it, seeming to enjoy it. Natalia was pleased. Who’d ever given her this attention for unbridled critique, let alone someone who wanted to do something about it?
As the kettle again reached its climax and started bubbling, he exhaled with:
‘Fire Luxton?’
The kettle clicked off. Natalia was just in the act of standing to go pour the water when she stopped in her tracks.
‘Er, I wasn’t suggesting anything like that! I just—’
‘You said something I observed myself when I went round watching lessons the other day. She’s past it.’
‘But, does that give you grounds to fire her? On my account, too?’
‘Oh, it won’t be your fault she’s fired, Natalia. Totally on my account. I’m the Head.’
‘Well, I guess—’
‘Someone younger, someone ‘with it,’ someone friendly, someone motivating.’ He stubbed out in the ashtray on the ledge, and came over to the spot where Natalia stood. ‘I’ve already got someone picked out.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and I reckon, with a few tweaks to the lesson structure, I’ll drag PE from the 90s into 2017. Just give me a week or three and see for yourself.’
She swallowed, then shook herself. ‘Well, sir, that’s just…’ she laughed a little, stirred and picked up the teas to place on the table, and sat down continuing:
‘It’s fascinating really, to be having this conversation with you. I almost feel sorry for Mrs Luxton?’
‘Don’t be. She’ll easily slide into some haranguing hag role somewhere else.’
She half-stifled another laugh. ‘Oh dear!’
‘Thanks for the tea,’ as he sipped it. ‘Thing is, I’m rather incredulous that the Physical Education lessons only take place once a week here. Even Reception kids in primary these days have it up to three times! I’ll be increasing PE to twice a week—’
‘No! Don’t!’
He jumped upon her exclamation and stared.
‘Please, please don’t,’ she said aghast. ’Why not wait till next year when I’m gone? Prioritise, you know, other things?’
‘Hmm,’ his hand went back to his tea, his eye on her curiously. ‘Right, well. What teacher’s next?’
She deferred a possible hesitation, as she felt she could get into this. ‘Oh, it has to be Mr Cohen.’
‘Geography guy. Seems a bit lifeless from what I saw.’
‘Oh, worse than lifeless. Lessons with him are like a Nazi camp. A hatred for children emanates from him. I’ve no idea why he’s even working with kids.’
There was a pause. Then Natalia, infected with an unscrupulous smile, said:
‘Fire him.’
Not losing the eye contact with Natalia, he simply replied:
‘Done.’
There was another pause. Then Natalia threw back her head and burst out laughing.
‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing!’ She lowered her voice. ‘I mean, really? You’ll find another Geography teacher so easily? Are you joking?’
‘Give me a few weeks, he will need notice, but yes.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘Now I want to know more. Mrs Coleman?’
‘Oh, Mrs Coleman’s lovely. I don’t skive on her account.’
‘Mr Noble?’
‘Boring as fuck, but fine.’
He smiled cheekily. She tried to bat away a blush.
‘Now you’re getting into it. Mr Harrison?’ he posed next, looking down at a sheet, muttering: ’He’s a Head of Year, not sure how that happened…’
‘Ditto, sir. His test tubes have more life in them, but he’s alright.’
‘Mrs O’Callaghan?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t have her. Guess you’ll have to ask another pupil.’
‘Hmm. Tell me anyway what you think of her.’
‘Even though I don’t have her?’
‘Yes, because you know.’
She stared. ’Humourless, wizened…’ as thoughts kneaded her facial muscles, ‘…malevolent, opinionated…’ her eyes landing finally on Neill with: ‘manic-depressive.’
‘She’s gone.’
Natalia’s hands jumped to cover her face in a squealing frisson of disbelief.
‘Mrs Williams?’ he continued.
‘Oh Christ, her,’ she said, dropping her hands and composing her face in a trice. ‘She’s my form teacher as well as French. She has her own discipline about her, different from any teacher in the school. I’m not sure what to make of it, whether it’s a good or bad thing.’
‘I think I know what you mean. By the way,’ he added, ‘I like it when you swear.’
‘Fuck off, sir.’
He guffawed, throwing back his wide Cheshire cat of a mouth. ‘You know you’ll get detention for that?’
‘I’m already on it now, aren’t I?’
He laughed again, as she smiled politely and waited for him to continue.
‘So yes, Mrs Williams. Head of the French Department, but I’ll keep my eye on her,’ he noted with his pen. ‘Any other teachers you find despicable enough for a detour to the local home improvement store of choice?’
She sighed, eyes roaming the air in a mild liturgical ecstasy to rack her brain:
‘Oh. Mrs Clayton. Food Technology.’
‘And she…?’
‘Comes into school like each pupil that day…’ Natalia began, ‘must be reprimanded for every orgasm she missed out on in a previous life.’
It was Neill who now chin-rubbed into a wheeze of laughter. She watched with the sun of her smile creeping out from another nervous cloud.
‘I’ll go check the Food Tech lady out,’ he jotted it down, ‘find out what’s eating her, so to speak.’ He drew a breath and flexed back his shoulders. ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes sir, I think for now. But, you know, as well as my crap social life here.’
He stroked his pen tip round his mouth. ‘Yes, but you never know, that could get better,’ then paused, ‘although you’ve been here five years already so probably not.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Forty minutes of your lesson time we’ve been talking. How time flies when you’re burning deadwood! What’s the dinners like here, any good?’
‘Mediocre. Why don’t you try them?’
‘My taste may be different from the young people’s, for better or worse, but I’ll give them a go.’ He began to shuffle papers on his desk. ‘So much to sort out here, I’m still moving in.’
‘In terms of burning deadwood, how about improving the school by arson? I guess you almost did that earlier.’
‘Close, but not close enough. I’ll try better next time. I appreciate our talking, young lady. You are released.’
‘Thanks… for hearing what I’ve got to say,’ as she arose from the chair, before she froze and almost yelped:
‘Oh, wait, wait, wait!’
He looked up wide-eyed.
‘Goodness, Natalia! I thought you’d been stung on your bottom!’
‘I have, for five years. The women in Reception, you have to get rid of all three,’ she smiled hopefully, then frowned. ‘And I’d like to personally come watch.’
‘The Receptionists and the Business Manager? I only caught a glimpse of them. I thought it was drama students opening Macbeth.’
‘Well it’s fair to say you can trust me on their foulness.’
‘Ere the set of sun,’ he replied, ‘it will be how now, you secret, black and midnight hags. False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’
He saw her face of hesitation and added, ‘I’ll pay them a visit and get three P45s on standby before the day’s out.’
A look of awe crept across her face as she moved out, with a small cough:
‘I just want to check, sir, you’ll keep everything I said… to yourself?’
‘Of course. I won’t tell the Head.’
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*
‘Something funny about homeostasis, Natalia?’
‘Sorry, Mr Khan.’
Natalia fell back into a trance just as an unusually loud and merry laugh came from the corridor outside. Nestling her head down into her Biology book, she began to doodle Macbeth’s three witches falling into their own cauldron, until her reverie was interrupted by a loud, shrill bell.
Shrieks flew across the room; scrapes of chairs through every ceiling and floor of the school as Khan promptly directed the class.
‘It’s just the fire alarm, let’s move on and out calmly and quietly, please!’ The whole school swarmed down the stairs, forming their drill lines in the playground, happy enough to be yanked from lessons for idle chit-chat and breezy thrill blowing upon their unjacketed bodies, calling greetings and insults alike to fellow pupils as if they hadn’t seen them in years.
She spied a flustered Neill at the doors ahead, slowing into a saunter as he appeared in front of everyone:
‘It’s just a drill, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls! As you can hear, the alarms are working perfectly well. Too well,’ as he screwed up his face, ‘I can barely hear myself, and that’s loud!’
A wave of laughs rang over the lines of shivering pupils, and various mutters:
‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s the new Head—’
‘That’s Mr Neill?’
‘No, you div, he’s too posh…’
‘You’ll see in Assembly tomorrow.’
As Neill turned to the gathering teachers, Natalia could hear him delivering what she knew was a perfect lie to perfectly gullible faces - even bulldog Mrs Williams drunk it in - about there having been an accident with a bunsen burner, and his insistence to ‘make sure the fire services know not to come… all is under control!’
The teachers, happy and placated enough, busied around taking their pupil count, and soon Neill was waving his arms at everyone:
‘All good! Back in, back in! Back to work!’
He looked straight at Natalia, and winked.
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