Now, the light is beginning to fade again. It is that kind of winter’s day when there is only real daylight for a short time. Outside, people will be out in the high streets, in the shopping centres, making their way home from work. The warm and inviting lights of the shop windows will be reflecting on the pavements, and may entice some people in, but it is Friday, and many will be hurrying home from work, looking forward to a night out. Maybe they are going to a Christmas meal, or a party. I think about my colleagues at school and wonder how they are. How many will still be there? Many of the younger ones were thinking of giving it up, just like I did in the end, but I wish I was still there now. There is no feeling like the end of term, and I don’t know if I will ever feel it again.
***
Things got better and better after the visit to Greg. I was spending so much time at Richie’s flat that we decided I should move in and let mine go, and although I was sad, it was another milestone in our relationship, another indication of permanency. I even took him to meet my parents with a remarkable degree of success, and I met some of his family too. By the time we came to the last week of term I was physically tired, but there was still nothing from Greg and I began to believe that Richie and Nat’s visit may have worked after all. That meant I was more relaxed, and my last few lessons were the best I’d had for a while, despite the undercurrent of excitement that always precedes a holiday.
Added to that, we were invited to join a group of mostly Richie’s friends who had managed to get a last-minute deal on a cottage in Cornwall, so now there was the prospect of nearly a week away from it all. There would be no internet access and the phone signal was intermittent, so it would be only us and our friends.
“You, me, a few mates and a bunch of cows,” said Richie, passing over his laptop so I could see the photos on the website.
“It’s not a bunch, it’s a herd, but it does look lovely,” I said, laughing and ducking as he aimed a cushion at my head. I realised then, with something of a shock, that I was happy again. Being anxious and wary had worn me down slowly, gradually, so that I had almost forgotten what I had felt like before, but now it was all over and I could be me again. I could have a laugh, I could be in love and I could enjoy my job. That’s what I thought, anyway.
The cottage was amazing. It wasn’t what I would call a cottage at all, as it was huge, with enough bedrooms for the three couples and three singles in the group, an enormous kitchen-diner, a lounge, a laundry room and a games room. The central part of the building was obviously older than the rest, and there were extensions to both sides, with the tasteful use of outhouses and barns providing something that seemed just about perfect. It nestled in a natural dip about halfway up a hill, with views across farmland and the sea beyond that. The only disadvantage was the distance from any useful habitation – shops and pubs in particular – but there were several vehicles between us and a shop about a fifteen minute drive away so nothing was too great a problem.
The first day was spent mooching around and doing very little. Some people went to the nearest town to buy food and drinks, and Nat cooked a Mexican meal for everyone in the evening, but I spent a lot of time reading in the garden. Nobody seemed to mind, and I was grateful. The next couple of days were taken up with trips to various beaches and then Nat, Richie and I went to a beautiful little town called Fowey the day after that, whilst others did their own thing. That was the nice thing about that holiday; nobody felt obliged to do anything, and it was a lovely mix of communal living and independence. I hardly knew some of them, but we all got on well, especially in the evenings when we tended to congregate in the lounge or the kitchen with a plentiful supply of wine.
The week went by all too quickly, and we had a barbecue on the penultimate evening. Everyone was there, the weather was dry if a bit chilly and there was plenty to eat and drink. I can remember looking across at Richie as he prodded yet another batch of sausages, and feeling such a rush of love for him that I had to prevent myself from jumping up and rushing across to him, throwing my arms around his neck. His face was slightly illuminated by the glow of the coals, and there were matching rosy streaks in the sky as the sun went down. I took a picture on my phone and it was something I treasured afterwards, after he had gone. Now I don’t even have my phone, or my laptop, and I suppose I may never see that photo again, but it will always stay in my memory.
For some reason, I didn’t drink a huge amount that night. I don’t remember making a conscious decision, but it just didn’t happen. Maybe it was because Richie was busy with the food and we didn’t spend so much time together or maybe I wasn’t in the mood. Whatever the reason, the upshot was that I was one of a very small group of relatively sober people by the end of the evening, and most of the others, including Richie, had staggered off to bed by about 11.30pm, which was very early by our standards. Eventually it was just me, Nat and a couple called Becky and Sam and we spent half an hour or so clearing up the worst of the debris outside and stacking the dishwasher. Then Nat opened a bottle of red and we sat around the kitchen table, the conversation ebbing and flowing. Someone had left an ipod playing on shuffle and sometimes we would stop talking to listen, or to remark on what was playing. I hardly knew Becky and Sam, but they were lovely and I wished I’d spent more time with them earlier in the week, especially as Becky sang in a choir and there was a lot we could have talked about if only we’d had more time.
Anyway, that was how I came to be left alone with Nat. Becky’s yawns increased in frequency until she dragged Sam off to bed, but Nat was in the middle of a long story – I can’t remember what it was about – and it would have been rude to follow them, so I stayed, but with the intention of saying goodnight as soon as possible.
I don’t know how we came to be talking about our childhoods. It was probably me making a joke about Mum and Dad. That was something I did a lot, now I think about it. Better to trivialise their unhappiness than take it seriously, I guess, or to consider the effect it may have had upon me. Anyway, that led to Nat telling me about his own childhood, about the death of his parents and older brother in a plane crash in South Africa, about how he should have been on the same plane but was too ill to travel and how he was brought up by his grandparents.
I think that was when I began to get to know him properly. Of course he was often with us, as he was such a good friend to Richie, but we had never been alone before and certainly never discussed anything personal. Now I found that he was very easy to talk to, a good listener, and that he clearly valued the opportunity to explore some of his own background. Richie may not have been very good at that – he was so resolutely positive about life he would probably have said, “Ah well, that’s all in the past now mate! Got to think of the future!” But I love to piece together the jigsaw of people’s lives and I am a good listener too.
It’s a pity that we opened that second bottle of wine. Although I hadn’t been in the mood for drinking earlier, now I found I was enjoying it and I topped up my glass from time to time as Nat talked. He was telling me about being shunted from one family member to another as his grandparents became too frail to care for him. Honestly, it’s amazing how well adjusted he is, given what he went through, but it was a sad story and I felt for him.
That was when that song came on and we both looked up at the same time and said the same thing: “Oh, I love this track!” I couldn’t help but sing along to it a bit, but Nat didn’t. He just closed his eyes. It was ‘Street Spirit’ by Radiohead, a song that had meant a lot to me in the past and now it transported me back ten years or more whenever I heard it. It was redolent with memories of school and being in love with a boy two years above me who didn’t even know I existed. I had played it over and over at the time, lying on my bed and crying adolescent tears, and now it made me want to cry again. In fact I did cry, a little, and it was all rather embarrassing in the end. That’s drink for you. It can bring all sorts of things to the surface, as when I looked up, there were tears in Nat’s eyes too.
>
The rest of the Easter holiday passed just as quickly. By the time we had got home and unpacked, done the things we hadn’t had time for before we left, marked books, prepared lessons and tracked down resources, the new term was upon us. But I didn’t mind, not really. I had thoroughly enjoyed my holiday and I wouldn’t have minded it lasting a little longer, but I was also looking forward to teaching without the cloud of anxiety hanging over my head. I knew I hadn’t been performing as well as I could, and I knew why, but now all that seemed to have passed. There were no messages on my school email account, no likes on Facebook, nothing to indicate that Greg was continuing his campaign of adoration or whatever it had been. I was free and I was happy.
It was only two days into the new term that we received the notification of an inspection to take place almost immediately. The Head summoned everyone into the staffroom and gave a prolonged lecture about how we should behave and how prepared we should be, but even that did little to spoil my mood. I was a little anxious about being observed, but I was pretty used to members of the senior management team coming into my lessons, and most of my feedback had been positive even when I had been under par. Richie was also quite sanguine about it, but we must have been unusual, as there was a feeling of near-panic in the staffroom. The Head and his minions were running around like headless chickens the whole of that day, with entire classes of Year 7s out picking up litter, new displays in the entrance hall and even advice about dress code in one of the many emails we received.
When it came, the inspection hardly affected me at all. Of course I was aware of the group of suited men and women stalking the corridors but none of them came into any of my lessons and I assumed everything was going well until I went down to the staffroom early in the morning of the second day. I made myself a coffee and slumped down in a corner with the intention of reading through my lesson plan once more, just in case, when I heard voices.
“It’s not looking good, is it?”
“Well, what did you expect?”
“I don’t know, I thought we might be OK, with the new predictions ...”
“Yeah, well, we all know about them. Inspectors aren’t stupid. They can see what’s been going on.”
It was two of the deputies, and they hadn’t noticed me, so I rummaged in my bag, put my headphones in my ears and sat there with my phone in my hand until I was sure they had seen me. Only then did I make a show of packing up as if I had heard nothing of their conversation. Obviously I told Richie later, but we kept it to ourselves and tried to look as shocked and dismayed as everyone else when the Head called everyone together again, after it was all over. He tried to put a positive spin on it, but there was no getting away from it, the interim report showed that the school Required Improvement. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, as teaching had been judged as good, but leadership and management were poor and results in some departments, especially Maths and Languages, were much lower than they should have been.
That judgement may have been the trigger for all that happened later. Maybe if we had scraped through, Richie would not have been in the street that night and everything would have been different. The trouble was, it was difficult to remain positive, even for Richie, whose nature was the antithesis of anything negative, and my renewed enjoyment of my job was short-lived in the culture of blame and increased expectation that ensued. Now we had two headteachers to knock the school into shape: the old one, who stormed around the school with a permanently angry expression, and an ‘executive head’ who had been drafted in from another more successful school across the city to oversee our improvement. Neither of them seemed to have taken on board the fact that it was not us teachers who had failed and life became an almost unbearable round of departmental briefings, new initiatives and lesson observations, even in my department, which had fared quite well.
By half term, we were demoralised and short-tempered. We spent half our lessons following up petty infringements of the new, rigid uniform code, and the pupils were picking up on the atmosphere of stress with a resultant dip in behaviour. This led to a new and stricter behaviour policy, more exclusions, poor relationships and further stress. Richie and I had more arguments during that time than we’d had in the rest of our relationship. We hardly went out, and when we did, we were often too tired or jaded to enjoy ourselves.
It was a Friday evening when Richie saw it. In the old, pre-inspection days, we would have had Friday evening to ourselves, leaving preparation until Sunday, but now we had taken to working for an hour or two then going out. “Just to break the back of it,” Richie had said.
“Look at this,” he said, turning his laptop towards me. We were sitting on the sofa, side by side, going through our emails, so I pushed mine to one side and read it. It had been forwarded from the Commonwealth Teacher Exchange Programme, and it advertised the fact that they had a few late vacancies for Science teachers in Canada for the new academic year.
“I meet all the criteria,” he said. “What do you think?”
Well, that was a bolt out of the blue! I hadn’t considered doing anything other than carrying on as we were, however awful it was. Surely it would get better in time, and I wasn’t unhappy, not really. Then I had a moment of panic, as I had only been teaching for less than a year, the minimum requirement was five years experience and there was no way I could teach Science. Was Richie thinking of leaving me behind?
“No, don’t be stupid,” he said, kissing me. “We’d have to see if you could get a visa, and if you could get work too, and obviously we wouldn’t do it unless we’d both be happy, but … well … it would be an experience and it couldn’t be much worse than this!”
In the end, we didn’t go out at all that night. We talked, we researched, we talked some more and, by the time we went to bed, we had determined to at least find out if it would be possible. If our school would agree to the exchange, if I could get a work permit, if I was allowed to live with him … if, if, if. If all those questions were answered and it was a possibility, then he would apply and I would resign my post, as there was no chance of it being held open for me. It was a risk, but we were young and we felt as if our youth and energy were being stolen from us. We would give it a try.
After that, everything happened so quickly that even Richie, who was most logical person you could ever hope to meet, said that it seemed as if it were meant to happen. It was like watching a computer-generated sequence of a jigsaw being completed, each piece sliding effortlessly into place, with no hesitation, no false moves. By half term I had handed in my notice, and shortly after that, Richie received all the details of his new school, his flat, even some of his teaching commitments. We were going to Ontario, to a town called Hamilton, and now that it was a reality, I couldn’t wait.
We decided to have our leaving party a couple of weeks before the end of term. Even though we weren’t due to fly out until the end of July, many of our teacher friends would be on their way to France or Spain or Italy as soon as the holiday started, and the last week of term was always busy. It was to be on the Saturday and we had booked the back room of The White Horse for the venue. It seemed fitting, given that our relationship had experienced its first faltering moments there, and of course the band was going to play. This would be my last gig with them for a year, and of course I was sad, but they had assured me I could step right back in as soon as we returned.
“A year isn’t that long,” said Olga, laughing and crying at once when I told her. “We’ll probably still be playing most of the same songs!”
So, by the Friday, everything was more or less ready. Richie’s flat – our flat, as it was by then – was still in disarray, with half-full storage boxes everywhere, but we had plenty of time to finish packing. The party was our priority, and we both had our tasks that evening. Mine was to go to The White Horse with Olga and put up the decorations and Richie’s was to go into town. He had to visit the Indian restaurant providing the buffet, check that everything was in hand, then meet his p
arents at the station. He’d go with them in a taxi to their hotel and settle them in, before having a last drink with a friend who was leaving the country the next day and so would be unable to attend. We had a list of things to do taped to one of the kitchen units, and I got a strange, muddled feeling of excitement and panic every time I crossed something off.
Olga was an absolute star. She had told me to leave it all to her, saying that this would be her contribution to the party, and nothing I could say would change her mind, so I did, arriving at the pub completely empty-handed. She was already there, and had started arranging the tables so they formed a horseshoe around the dancing area. There were balloons and little arrangements of dried flowers in pots already in place, and boxes of other decorations by the stage.
Tears came to my eyes as I saw her there, working so hard to make everything right. She was my best friend and I was leaving her. Was I doing the right thing?
“Don’t be daft,” she said, when I had finished snuffling on her shoulder. “It’s absolutely the right thing to be doing. I wish I was coming with you, the way things are here, and you’ll be back before you know it, all refreshed and enthusiastic. You know I’m right.”
I did know, but that didn’t make it any easier, and it wasn’t the last time I shed a few tears that evening, but the room looked brilliant by the time we had finished. It was almost unrecognisable from the fairly spartan back room we were used to, and Olga’s eye for design had given it an ambience that was at once chic and cosy. It was all I could have asked for and more, and so I insisted on taking her into the bar for a drink before we left, even though we were both driving and it would have to be fruit juice. Richie would probably be quite late, and the flat was hardly welcoming, so I enjoyed an hour or so with her, just the two of us. There wouldn’t be many more opportunities for this, and I wanted to make the most of it.
The Butterfly Effect Page 8
