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‘When Shakespeare said music is the food of love, he wasn’t including recorders,’ Neill was remarking to Miss Francis as Natalia entered the office, where he was sorting through a box on his desk next to the demure, raven-haired Music teacher.
‘Oh hello, Natalia!’ he beamed. ‘Come in!’
‘Hi. I, er—’
Neill turned to Francis. ‘I’ll let you go now darling. Let me know if you need more exam samples before the end of play.’
‘Fine, thanks Neill,’ said Francis as he waved her off, and not waiting for her to be out of earshot, Neill spoke warmly at Natalia.
‘How are you? All good, I hope? Sit down if you like.’
The door clicked closed again.
‘Well Neill, I just er, wanted to say…’
She lowered slowly at his desk, as he tapped his computer to put it to sleep, turned his freshly shaven face and ran his eyes over her.
‘No pigtails today?’
She stared as her mouth opened to talk, and then faltered, her eyes meeting the gleam in his for the next four seconds. She shifted in her chair with a sudden pressing hot feeling in her bladder.
‘Er, no,’ she quietly laughed, whilst he held that enigmatically unwavering look. Oh god, she thought, Neill’s staring at her like an insect he’s holding between his fingertips, wiggling its legs without a clue of what to do or where to go.
‘Pigtails would be useful I guess,’ she began, ‘if someone hurls me over the gates with them like a javelin, as one way to escape this place.’
He blinked bemused.
‘Trunchbull, from Matilda, you kn—’
‘I know.’
A silence fell for a moment.
‘PE’s amazing,’ she piped up. ‘I don’t know how you did it. Just...’ She laughed. ‘Wow, just, yeah.’ She avoided saying thanks, for fear it would look like it was all about her.
‘Lost for words again?’
She smiled.
‘Does that mean you won’t mind me increasing PE lessons to twice a week from January?’
‘Ohh…’
‘This school falls short of Department of Education recommendations of 90 minutes minimum per week,’ he said smoothly, leaning back in his chair, ‘and will not meet the criteria for top-notch grants, awards, and inspections should they ever descend upon us. Teachers don’t like mid-year rejigs of the timetable but fuck them—’
‘Do it,’ she shrugged.
A smile crept across his face. ‘I’ve improved PE that much have I?’
‘I didn’t want to slit my wrists by the end of lesson. That’s as much improvement as I need.’
‘Miss Barnes is that good?’
‘So good I no longer need counselling for Luxton.’
‘I gave you that.’
‘True.’
They both smiled politely.
‘Firing teachers,’ he continued in a business tone again, ‘as you may suspect, is both tricky and costly. You have to have valid grounds, of course.’
‘Yeah, of course. And you did it so… quickly?’
‘Oh, I don’t waste time Natalia. I get to work like that!’ He raised his hand and snapped his fingers dramatically. ‘If something needs removing it should be gone like a shot, like that little blackhead from the end of Mrs Williams’ nose—’
She giggled.
‘…Even if I have to pull a few strings! And besides,’ he smugly put his fingers into a temple shape, ‘the faster I sort this place, the faster I erase that look of misery from your face.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘See? Right there. From melancholy to pretty Polly.’
A blush started. ‘It’s not for me is it, but the school…’
‘With Cohen, I mustered enough to file him for incompetence. I cited pupils’ accounts of his rudeness - well, yours, and fleshed it out with a few others - but I also found he’s not covering the full syllabus every term. When I nuked him, he barely said anything, just made a face like I’d told him his dog’s died, and padded out like he’s wanted to do for the last ten years.’
‘Oh! And Luxton?’
‘Well, I tried to do her for being a decrepit incompetent too. She fought back tooth and nail claiming ageism. I had to think harder, so I got her for discrimination.’
Natalia blinked. ‘Of what?’
He pursed his lips for a second. ‘Not letting Shaziya Begum play netball in her full niqab.’
‘Shaziya in Year 8? Thought she takes it off for PE?’
‘Until someone told her she shouldn’t have to,’ he said slyly.
‘Huh?’
‘Poor Shaziya ended up with a hole ripped down her backside and a chipped tooth. Luxton excoriated her with a lecture which I just happened to come round the corner and film on my phone. I filed it under defamation of religious orientation in my report which then completed her dismissal.’
Natalia stared. ‘And is Luxton reeling from that?’
‘If she did try crawling back she wouldn’t fit the remit of the job anymore,’ as he reached for a bottle of orange juice. ‘She’d need a hip replacement before she could teach Yoga and, well, two new eyeballs to go anywhere near Archery.’
’And can she sue for unfair dismissal?’
‘Darling, it’s my job to worry, or rather not,’ he sniffed. ‘She’s on video shouting at the Muslim girl. She’s done. Be happy.’
‘Oh, er, I am. And… O’Callaghan?’
He swigged his orange juice. ‘Still working on her.’
Natalia blinked to the window, then cleared her throat politely. ‘Well, the new Geography teacher’s great. Only two teachers gone yet the school feels brand new. Like it’s had a haircut.’
‘Quite, quite,’ he grinned, as he replaced the bottle with precision on the desk. Then he leant forward, licking his lip with the look of being about to speak in a low, confidential tone, as she instinctively leaned forward to hear:
‘Well, when word got round all the departments that I’d fired those two, the other teachers - bless them - are quaking in their shoes that they’ll be next, and oh, it gives them all reason to be on their best behaviour.’
She chewed her thumb, entranced.
‘Mr Harrison practically bowed when he held the door open for me in the staff room, looking all the more like a beggar with the husk of a baked bean he had stuck to his lip.’
‘Oh my god! Well, thanks again sir, not for my sake - well yes, for my sake - I mean, school doesn’t feel quite as, you know, skive-worthy right now! And Archery, too?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘Hmm. Not sure it’s going to be such a good idea to put into the hands of Killingbeck’s most notorious yobs the weapons of inflicting sure-fire death, including that of my own, if I don’t dodge fast enough.’
She laughed as Neill arose and began rustling empty lunch wrappers into a plastic bag. ‘At least you’re experimenting with ideas,’ she sighed.
‘It’s a start. Try one of these?’ His hand dug into a half-consumed pack of M&S salted caramel cookies, to which she gave a hesitant nod, as he brought one toward her face, quite close to her face - too close - as she ducked and put up her hand to take it.
He drew it away again. ‘But you haven’t had your lunch yet, have you?’
She stared. ‘No.’
‘You’re having that shlop downstairs?’
‘After my starter yes,’ as she reached to swiftly pluck the cookie from his hand.
‘Cheeky!’
‘Oh, by the way, I saw on my way in, nice plaque.’
‘What, had Miss Francis forgotten to brush her teeth again?’
‘Huh? Oh!’ she laughed, covering her mouth as she chewed.
‘We’ll both have nice plaque after these,’ as he threw a whole cookie into his mouth.
‘I noticed you put Headmaster and not Headteacher as Neary did.’
‘Yes.’
‘Some people don’t like it for… equality and all that,’ she spoke in between sharp swallows.
‘I’d rather think I was promoting it, by linguistically affirming that both men and women exist.’
‘I agree. I like it.’
‘Good. Besides, I’ll be doing more mastering here than teaching, as I once did.’
‘Which subject did you do?’ she blinked up.
‘I was an English teacher, as you may have gleaned.’
‘It was either English or French.’
‘I do speak fluent French young lady, when have you heard me?’
She smirked.
‘Oh. You got me there! So what about the other Brontë girls? Have you read Wuthering Heights? Agnes Grey? The Tenant of Wildfell Hall?’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it, you bookworm. Similarly staunch chick protagonists, from what I can remember. What about Austen, done her?’
‘I’ve read a couple. Pride & Prejudice. Half of Mansfield Park.’
‘Like you’re only halfway through that biscuit, whilst I’ve eaten three?’
‘I go faster than anyone in this school,’ she threw the last chunk of biscuit into her mouth.
‘Oh, I know. I do have a whole load you can borrow if you can’t find them in the library. I’ve lugged around enough over the past decade that at the very least, your hands will be a duster to blow off their cobwebs. Maybe I should just bring the whole bloody lot into the school but they’d probably end up obscenely desecrated or prudently pilfered by scatterbrained guttersnipes.’
‘Guttersnipes!’ she laughed delightedly. ‘Now that describes this school!’
‘Scapegraces. Urchins. Mudlarks.’
‘You’re the thesaurus now. But those sound too Dickensian for the scrotes here.’
‘Scrotes?!’ He enunciated the word as if he had something unpleasant on his lips.
‘Skanks. Scruffs. Scum.’
‘Don’t you start!’
She grinned.
‘Want some of this OJ?’
‘Oh, thanks.’
There was silence as she took a swig from his bottle whilst he shuttled papers into a tray.
‘So what literature do you like, Neill?’
‘Shakey Bill of course,’ he began - ‘that’s Shakespeare,’ he added, upon her frown - ‘George Eliot. Orwell. Dickens, as you observed. H.G. Wells. Lord Byron, Wordsworth.’
‘Oh, Wordsworth. The child is the father of the man.’
‘Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be.’
There was a silence.
‘Natalia! You have chocolate around your mouth!’
She hurriedly pulled her sleeve to her face just as there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ he cried, as he flourished her a tissue from a box.
Natalia turned round nervously, although she wasn’t sure why; their meeting was perhaps unconventional but hardly clandestine.
‘Sir Neill, I’ve been asked to bring you this from Reception,’ a boy handed over some papers.
‘Sir Neill?’ Neill scrunched his face. Natalia stifled a laugh.
‘Thanks, Dave is it?’
‘No sir I’m just dropping that to you.’ The boy left and the door closed again.
Neill frowned at Natalia. ‘Now what did he say that for?’
‘Day visit?’
‘Dave is it.’
‘His name’s Craig.’
‘Oh!’ He laughed, sat down and peered through the sheets he’d been handed. ‘Well well… after half term we have a new girl starting in Williams’ class - your class, I believe? Who knows, maybe you’ll be besties.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘I’ve no idea but her name’s Marcia Adams.’
‘Addams Family?’
‘Well she is black. Which brings me to mention - on the other end of the spectrum - that super-white-as-a-sheet, gaunt German girl I’ve seen you with. You claim to live the life of some tragic Robinson Crusoe but isn’t she your friend?’
‘Laura. She doesn’t count.’
‘Not unless you mean Dracula. I avoid smiling at it, lest Lestat will smile back at me with those canines, locate my jugular and suck me to death.’
She giggled. ‘Fangs good enough for the canteen burgers then. But not for a no-job?’
‘Ha. You pay attention!’
As she smiled coyly he took back and finished the last mouthful of juice, tossed the bottle in the bin and frowned. ‘What about those other Year 11 girls, with the pleasant complexions and athletic arses - Alanis, is one called - with a notch more an aspirational vibe about them? Can’t you get in and on with them?’
‘Alana. No, those aspirational, athletic arses are in the other class.’
‘Do you want me to move you?’
‘I already tried them ages ago,’ Natalia shrugged. ‘They’re on a different wavelength that I can’t stomach. If one end of the social spectrum here is toxic chav, then at the other end is lipgloss lush.’
‘Hmm. You’re a difficult bugger aren’t you? So you just prefer to be by yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why are you in here with me, Natalia Ma-loner?’
She paused. ‘You’re calling me what the twat boys call me in form?’
‘But you’re smiling.’
‘Because, Sir Neill, I can tell you how much everyone is a twat here, without you trying to correct me, silence me or put me in detention.’
‘Indeed,’ he chuckled. ‘Twats are twats, but some twats are twattier than others. Don’t you want a better class of twat to twat around with?’
She licked her lip with the same look he’d given her earlier as she inclined toward him, the sugar thoroughly hitting her bloodstream: ‘If you were talking to me in Year 7 when I was half-dying of embarrassment I’d plead for your help. But five years has acted like fifty years and I’m now a little old elderly dear who doesn’t give a fuck but to get away from these twats into the next life.’
He threw his head back in laughter. ‘Your fixation on that word is absolutely unacceptable, young lady!’
‘Sorry, we can say dicks instead,’ she continued, blinking at her own audacity. ‘So what have you made of the dicks… I mean, the school, in the three weeks you’ve been here?’
‘Mostly making a list as long as my… arm, to improve.’
‘How’s it going with the lunch rehaul?’
‘I’m changing our caterer pronto, boss,’ he said bemused.
‘Better than M&S?’ she glanced to his bag.
‘Probably not.’
They both laughed.
‘Well you deserve a half-term rest from your efforts,’ she smiled, adjusting back into civility as she arose.
He made a weary face up. ‘It’s Open Day tomorrow. I have to be here on a Saturday of all days, to warn all the prospective parents to keep their kids well away.’
‘Does that mean your family will miss you on a weekend?’
‘I’m not married,’ he wriggled his empty ring finger.
‘Oh, right—’
‘Can’t you be here standing on a chair like Jane Eyre like you said? Wax on about the awful teachers we fired and how the new Miss Barnes’ thighs are like two halves of a nutcracker? I’ll give you half my wages for this month!’
She laughed. ‘Oh, you can totally offer my testimonial that we have the best Head ever!’
‘Hmm…’
She frowned.
‘Well enjoy your lunch - whatever’s left.’ He arose patting his pockets for his cigarettes. ‘And think of me tomorrow whilst you’re indulging in your freedom and musing on your next life.’
‘Ok! Bye, Neill!’
She skipped off for the last of lunch break, almost colliding into Mr Noble; not hungry to eat, her heartbeat typing every word of the past forty minutes.
89Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj3Kr6RJs9W
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