by David Belbin
Embarrassed, Rachel tried to apologize. “I wasn’t spreading gossip. I don’t want to fall out with you, sir. You helped me get the part in the play and I’m very grateful.”
Steadman sighed. “I suppose I kept the wrong girl behind,” he said.
He got up to go, but seemed in no hurry. “Did you have a good time?” he asked. “Christmas and all that?”
Rachel shrugged. “Rock City was all right. Christmas was pretty awful, as usual.” She could have left then, but found herself lingering. “How about you?” she asked.
“Not much better than yours, I suspect.” He frowned, then added, “My parents divorced while I was at university. Going home isn’t much fun.”
“Mine split up when I was five,” Rachel told him.
He smiled sympathetically.
“Your friend seemed nice,” Rachel said, trying to be cheerful. “Evelyn. Are you still seeing her?”
Steadman shook his head with a wry smile.
“On that point, at least, Carla was right,” he said. “She was a little too old for me.”
“They say age is all in the mind,” Rachel told him.
“In that case,” Steadman replied, with a boyish grin, “you’re probably older than I am. I still feel about fourteen half the time.”
Rachel wanted to tell him that part of her seemed permanently stuck at twelve. The better part. But then the bell went for the end of break. Steadman opened the door and they both hurried to their next lessons.
At home that night, Mum was playing old records. She had everything by the Beatles, who were cool again at the moment. John, Paul and George were asking Rachel whether she believed in love at first sight. She didn’t. For some people - the Romeos and Juliets of this world - it might happen all the time. Not Rachel. She knew that for her, if she was lucky, love would come more slowly, like a cut flower which steadily swelled until it reached full bloom. Though not all flowers opened fully. Some wilted and withered before they’d opened at all.
It was the second weekend of term and Rachel was surprised to find herself with feelings for someone new.
“Penny for them,” Mum said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Rachel told her.
Sometimes Rachel felt like her mum could read her mind, and it was comforting. Today, though, Rachel didn’t want Mum to know her secret thoughts.
“Are you disappointed about not seeing your father?” Mum asked.
Dad had cancelled her visit this weekend at short notice. “Something came up” was all he said by way of explanation. Rachel shook her head. “Hardly,” she said, “except that it leaves me with nothing to do. Becky’s out with Gary. Carmen’s got a boyfriend now, too.”
“That’s the trouble with girl gangs,” Mum said. “If you’re not careful, as soon as boys become important, old loyalties get swept aside. But maybe you’re sorry about dropping Nick. You could call him, you know.”
“Definitely not,” Rachel said. “I’ll be seeing enough of him once the play rehearsals start on Tuesday.”
“You could come to the pictures with Janice and me. We’re going to see that film that’s on at Broadway.”
“It’s all right,” Rachel said, “I don’t like films with subtitles. I’ll stay home and revise.”
“Suit yourself,” Mum said. “But it is Saturday night.”
When Mum went out for the evening, Rachel read her science textbook for a few minutes, then ran herself a bath. She put some bubble bath in, and while the bath ran, looked at her naked body in the mirror. She was trying to decide what an older man would think of it. She was a bit skinny. But some men liked skinny girls. Rachel wondered if her new English teacher was one of them.
As steam misted the mirror, Rachel got into the bath. She wondered what sex would be like. Becky was always surprisingly coy on the subject. With one hand beneath the bubbles, Rachel imagined what it would be like with Mike (that was his first name - Rachel had heard Evelyn use it). None of her friends knew that she found him attractive. Oh, Becky had made a couple of jokes about the teacher keeping Rachel behind. She thought that Steadman had a thing about her. Rachel wasn’t so sure. She liked the way Mike talked to her today, like she was an adult. She caught him looking at her sometimes, too. But it was probably her imagination.
Rachel would never go out with the English teacher, she recognized that, even as her head flooded with feeling. This was only a fantasy, something to keep her going through cold, boring January. Steadman was too old and too straight to contemplate a relationship with a girl her age, even if Becky was right and he did fancy her. But it was fun to fantasize about Mike, her forbidden lover. Daydreams would have to keep her going until summer, when the exams were over, and she had time to look for the real thing.
Three
Something happened to Mike’s teaching in the spring term at Stonywood. He began to enjoy it more. He no longer started some days filled with terror at the prospect of all the things which might go wrong. He still finished each day exhausted, especially when there was a play rehearsal, and needed to sleep as soon as he got home. But at least Phil was there. Unlike Emma, Phil understood the pressures of teaching. They could share stories about nightmare lessons. And the really bad days were now few and far between. Mike even found himself looking forward to some lessons - his year seven for instance, where Paul Wilks had just written a story which was a whole page long - and he no longer dreaded parents’ evenings.
Year-eleven parents’ evening was the big one. Since Mike had a top group, nearly every parent would be attending. His subject was worth two separate GCSE grades - Language and Literature - to each student. Naturally, therefore, the parents were anxious for their child to do well. Many questioned Mike closely.
Some teachers hated parents’ evenings, but the more committed ones seemed to enjoy them. Mike began to understand why. Now and then, to his surprise, the parents told him how much their kids enjoyed his lessons.
“We were a bit worried when Mr Scott died so suddenly, but our Matthew says you work them really hard. We were pleased with his mock exam results.”
A few parents brought their child with them. Kate Duerden squirmed by her mother’s side while Mike read the Riot Act.
“She’s perfectly capable of getting a C if she puts her back into it, but her concentration is poor and she often distracts others. She needs to grow up.” The working-class parents, Mike was beginning to realize, appreciated plain speaking. The more middle-class ones preferred him to sound academic. For Nick Cowan’s parents, he gave a detailed analysis of the skills which Nick excelled at, then highlighted those where there was room for improvement.
“His use of quotations is slapdash. He knows his stuff, but assumes that the reader knows he knows, which won’t do in an exam. His punctuation is still haphazard, too. Shakespeare could get away with changing the rules whenever he felt like it, but he didn’t have to sit GCSE English.”
Guiltily, Mike reassured Nick’s parents that his being in the play wouldn’t interfere with his exam preparation. “The mocks show him well on course for two As. Being in the play will help him with Romeo and Juliet.”
“Some of his other teachers are worried about the time he’s already putting into the play,” Mrs Cowan said. “Take his maths, for instance. He’s never been terribly good at maths, but he needs to get a C to go to university.”
“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” Mike told her, lamely.
The most intriguing meeting of the evening was with Rachel Webster’s parents. Mike knew that they were divorced, but they turned up together towards the end, when he was getting very tired. The father was a thin, intense man with a receding hair line and an arrogant glint in his eye. He quickly let Mike know that he was a university lecturer, slipping it into the conversation in a casual but calculated way. He praised Mike’s teaching, but it was easy to see that he wasn’t sincere. Like many upwardly mobile, middle-class parents, this one wanted special treatment for his own child. The mother seeme
d embarrassed.
Rachel, as it happened, was already getting special treatment from Mike. He spent longer marking her work than he did that of other students, and took every opportunity he got to talk to her. They had a warm, easy relationship. Mike was sure that Rachel thought he was only being friendly. The truth was, he had a bit of a crush on the girl. Some nights, unable to sleep, he manufactured a fantasy where, forced together by circumstance, the two of them ended up together.
But it was only make-believe. Probably most teachers his age had similar feelings. They were only human. And Mike would no more make a pass at Rachel Webster than he would at the year-eight girl who was always staring at him, moon-eyed, during reading lessons. Mike tried to keep these thoughts far from his mind as he rambled on about what a good student Rachel was.
Finally, Rachel’s mother managed to get a word in edgeways. She, too, praised Mike for the way he’d taken over the class. But she was worried about the time that being in the play would take away from Rachel’s other subjects.
“Rachel’s not all that academic. She struggles with languages and her maths is very borderline, Mr Hansen says.”
Mike promised to have a word with Mr Hansen. He’d do it tonight, if Phil didn’t want dropping off at Tracey’s, which happened more and more often these days.
Mike tried to talk calmly to Rachel’s mother, but had trouble concentrating. He kept seeing traces of Rachel in the woman’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, after a while. “I’m repeating myself. It’s been a long day.”
“We understand,” Mr Webster said.
There was a queue of parents waiting. Mike’s appointment system was way out of kilter. He shook hands and said goodbye. No sooner were they gone than another couple took their place.
“Mr and Mrs Guest. Good to see you ...”
Mike ran way over. When he finished, there was only the Head of Year and one of the Deputy Heads left. Phil must have got a lift with somebody else. There was a drink on in a local pub, but Mike had had enough of talking about teaching for one day. He was heading for the car park when he bumped into Sarah Poole. Sarah was a geography teacher a couple of years older than him. She was also his Union representative, so he’d talked to her, briefly, a couple of times.
“You look as tired as I feel,” she said. “Phil asked me to tell you he’d gone for the bus. An hour ago.”
“I don’t blame him,” Mike told her. “Why’re you still here?”
“I’ve got a year-eleven tutor group as well as the group I teach,” she told him. “This evening has taken for ever.” Then she added. “You look like you need a drink. Come across the road. I’ll buy you one.”
Why not? Mike thought. He was too tired to drive. Too tired even to think.
Mike was afraid that Sarah would tell him off for not attending Union meetings, but she seemed more interested in finding out how he was getting on.
“It was a nightmare the first few weeks,” he told her, “commuting from Sheffield, but I’m sharing a house with Phil Hansen now.”
“Why’d it take you so long to move?” Sarah enquired.
To Mike’s surprise, he found himself explaining about Emma. He was too tired to be concise, and the explanation took longer than it should have. Sarah listened patiently.
“You never saw it coming?” she asked, when he’d finished.
“Not for a moment.”
“It’s rotten,” Sarah told him, putting her hand over his in sympathy. “It happened to me last year. We’d been together since university.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He met someone else, at work. I had no idea. He told me on the last day of the summer term: it’s over, I’m leaving you, bye. I’m only starting to get over it now.”
Mike didn’t know what to say to that. This was the first sustained conversation he’d had with Sarah. Yet here they were, exchanging intimate secrets like a Lonely Hearts Club. After a couple of silent minutes they finished their drinks. As they were getting up to go, Sarah wrote something down on a beer mat.
“This is my new phone number,” she told him. “If you want to do this again some time, don’t talk to me at school, call me. OK?”
“OK,” Mike said. “I’ll do that.”
He drove home slowly, thinking about Sarah. She was nice. He would appreciate her friendship. Aside from Phil and people he talked to in passing at his local, Mike had no friends in Nottingham. But maybe Sarah was interested in more than friendship. Mike wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, going out with someone you worked with. Not only that, but, with her strong features and long black hair, Sarah reminded him of his first girlfriend, Vicky. He could do without that.
Mike stopped at some lights. The thought of resemblances took him back to Rachel Webster and her mother. Most women turned into their mothers, so it was said. If so, Rachel’s wasn’t bad. A little tired-looking, perhaps, but ... There was a honk behind him, and Mike snapped to attention, realizing that the lights had turned green.
Four
There were only three people left in the drama studio when Nick kissed Rachel. It was a brief kiss, not as soft as the ones they’d shared before Christmas. Then he spoke, softly, “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”
Rachel replied, “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”
Nick gave her his familiar, mischievous smile.
“Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”
The next kiss was longer. “You kiss by the book,” Rachel told him. Then she turned and spoke to Mr Steadman. “What am I supposed to mean there?”
“You’re teasing him,” the teacher said. “Saying that he’s learnt how to kiss from a manual.”
“But how would I know?” Rachel asked. “I’m not even fourteen yet. I’ve probably never kissed a boy, whereas Romeo’s at least eighteen ...”
“Isn’t that what young lovers do?” Steadman suggested, lightly. “Don’t they like to pretend to be more experienced than they are?”
“I suppose so,” Rachel agreed, after a little thought. “Are we going to do the bit where the nurse comes in?”
“Can’t,” Steadman told her. “Maxine’s gone home. And the next section’s crucial. We should do it when we’re all more awake. Why don’t we run through that last page one more time?”
Rachel and Nick kissed again, and again. Was this why he’d wanted the part? Rachel wondered. Did Nick think that acting the part of lovers might change Rachel’s feelings for him? If so, it wouldn’t work. This wasn’t a real kiss. This was acting. When they kissed, the kiss might taste the same as when they went out with each other. But Nick wasn’t Nick. He was Romeo. Nick ought to understand that.
Outside, it was raining heavily.
“I’ll give you two a lift home,” Mr Steadman said.
Nick looked disappointed. He had an umbrella, Rachel saw. He’d been hoping to walk her home alone. There weren’t many rehearsals where it ended up with just the two of them, together. Rachel felt grateful to the teacher.
She and Nick got into the back seat of Mr Steadman’s Escort. Nick’s house was nearer and they went there first. Mr Steadman drove in silence. He seemed tired. Rachel and Nick sat apart, with Rachel’s bag between them, not saying a word to each other. Rachel wished that she was sitting in the front, next to Mike Steadman. Nick gave directions to his house, then thanked the teacher politely as he got out.
“Can I move to the front seat?” Rachel asked, as Nick hurried up the path to his front door in the rain. “I can see where we’re going better.”
“Sure.”
He opened the door. Rachel hopped out and back in again, tucking her bag beneath her feet. She hoped that Nick hadn’t noticed what she was doing. Back in the car, she fumbled with the seatbelt. The teacher leant over and pulled the buckle out for her. Rachel felt the warmth of his body press against hers.
“You’d better tell me where to go,” he said, moving into first gear.
Rachel gave him directions. Mr Steadman drove slowly in the teeming rain. Rachel wanted to make conversation but wasn’t sure what to say. She had been alone with Mike Steadman before, but never so intimately. “Left here?”
“Yes.”
The teacher kept his eyes on the road, but Rachel saw him frown. She hoped he hadn’t realized that she was taking him the long way home.
“You did well today,” he told her.
“Thanks,” Rachel said. “It’s a bit odd, kissing someone again and again like that.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Mike said, his voice becoming awkward. “But I can see it could be embarrassing, if you and Nick are ... finished.”
“We never really started,” Rachel told him, a little dishonestly. “That was Kate, mouthing off.”
They’d reached her road.
“Turn in here,” she said, sorry that the conversation, which was just getting going, had to end. Yet, as he parked, the teacher seemed in no hurry to leave.
“What do you do now?” Rachel asked. “Go home and spend the evening marking books, like Ken Barlow in Coronation Street?”
“Not tonight,” Mike said. “Mr Hansen and I are driving to Leicester. We’re going to see Suede.”
Rachel was jealous. “I love them,” she told him. “I wish I was going.”
Mike turned and gave Rachel a fleeting look which seemed to say that he wished she was coming with him, too. Rachel smiled. She opened her mouth to make conversation about other groups. Carmen and Becky weren’t into the music she liked. But she didn’t speak because, suddenly, she was too nervous. In her fantasies, this would be the point where the teacher made a move.
She moved closer to him, reaching to unfasten her seatbelt, quivering like a fish out of water. His face was inches away from hers.
“I meant what I said,” he told her, “about the acting. I know you’re not as experienced as Nick and you lack confidence sometimes, but you’re coming on. Today, you were really good.”
