by David Belbin
“You’ve hardly said a word to me since the play finished.” It was Nick.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”
“I noticed. I like your haircut by the way. It suits you.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said, and tried to smile. Despite her boyfriend’s misgivings, she’d had her hair cut short the weekend before, Mike had given her a funny look in Monday’s lesson, but Rachel hadn’t seen him alone since. She didn’t know whether he liked it or not.
“There’s something I thought I ought to tell you,” Nick said.
“What?”
Nick had an odd look on his face - a mixture of embarrassment and concern.
“There’s this rumour - I don’t know if you’ve heard it..
Rachel shook her head. “About what?”
Nick looked over Rachel’s shoulder, making sure that no one was listening.
“About you and Mr Steadman. Some people are saying that you’re …”
“What?”
“Having an affair,” Nick said, making the words almost delicate.
Rachel did her best to express incredulity and annoyance. “That’s ridiculous! Where do they get it from? Who’s saying it?”
“I don’t know where it comes from,” Nick told her. “But three people have asked me whether I’d heard about it: Marie, Kate, Steve Brown. You know what people are like - they were teasing me because I used to go out with you.”
“And what did you tell them?” Rachel asked, sharply.
Nick began to sound angry. “That I thought it was rubbish. I mean, I know Steadman gave you a lift home two or three times, but I was in the car, too, wasn’t I?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “That’s probably it. People saw me in his car.”
“Anyway,” Nick went on, “you know how rumours spread. I thought you ought to know.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said. Head clouded, she searched for something else to say, but could only manage, “I’ll be glad when I’m out of this dump.”
“Me too,” Nick told her. “Have you decided where you’re going in the autumn?”
“No,” Rachel said. “Clarendon, maybe. Or High Pavement.”
She wasn’t making a definite decision about sixth-form college until she knew what Mike was doing. He still hadn’t got a job for next term. They needed to talk.
“Walk you home?” Nick offered.
“Thanks, but I’m waiting for Becky.”
Nick left. Rachel was glad that he hadn’t actually asked her if the rumours were true. Nick was her only male friend - whatever that was worth - and she felt guilty that there’d been times when she’d hurt him. Rachel valued Nick’s friendship, especially at the moment, when she didn’t even know where her own father was.
“Do you know what happened in my year-ten lesson today?” Phil asked Mike on the way home.
“What?”
“Karen Wilks asked me if it was true that you were going out with Rachel Webster.”
Mike didn’t reply. He was too busy thinking. Karen Wilks must be Paul Wilks’ sister. Paul had seen Rachel kiss Mike. But it was a while ago. Even if he had told her something, Paul’s sister was unlikely to believe it.
“Funny thing was,” Phil carried on, “the way she said it. As if there was nothing wrong with a teacher going out with a pupil - she was just curious.”
“What did you tell her?” Mike asked.
“I told her not to be silly,” Phil said. “I told her that she shouldn’t spread rumours. She told me that it was already all over the school.”
Mike swore. “Rachel will have left in a fortnight,” he told Phil.
“But year ten won’t have,” Phil told him. “You’ve got problems.”
“People don’t take those kinds of rumours seriously,” Mike protested.
“Unless they’re true,” Phil warned.
Mike let him out at the end of Tracey’s street. They made no arrangements to meet at the weekend. Their friendship, Mike realized, was slipping away. Phil was his colleague and landlord now, but not a lot more.
When Mike got home, the phone was ringing. It stopped as he got through the door. That would be Rachel. She was practically the only person who phoned him at home. Mike was glad he’d missed her. He didn’t dare meet Rachel this weekend. He didn’t dare meet her at all.
Mike picked up the mail which had arrived after he left for work that morning. There was a letter offering him an interview at a sixth-form college in Mansfield. It wasn’t a great job, but Mike was glad that he’d applied for it. He needed a way out of Stonywood, fast. He’d be letting Judith down, but he hadn’t had a formal job offer for next year yet. They could always get someone else.
Anyway, it wasn’t Judith who counted. It was Rachel. If Mike stayed at Stonywood, he couldn’t openly go out with her, especially not now that these rumours were circulating. He had been working out a plan whereby, if he kept his job, he and Rachel would pretend to start seeing each other in the summer. They would build the relationship up carefully so that, with luck, Rachel’s mother would approve, and no one at school would suspect when the affair really started. But that would no longer wash.
Rachel rang again at six. She couldn’t talk for long, she said. She was in a call box and there was already a queue.
“I don’t think we can see each other,” Mike told her, tenderly. “We agreed.”
“There’s something you need to know,” Rachel interrupted. “People are talking.”
“I know. But it’s only talk.”
“If Kate and Lisa saw us …”
“I’ll say they were mistaken. As long as we’re not seen together again, we’ll be all right.”
There was a pause before Rachel spoke again. When she did, her voice was like that of a little girl, holding back tears.
“I don’t know if I can stand not seeing you at all.”
“You’ll see me in lessons.”
“That’s worse.”
“We’ll manage something,” Mike said. “But not for a while.”
“Can’t I come over this weekend?” Rachel pleaded. “I’ll take a taxi. There’ll be no chance of anyone seeing.”
Mike had to be firm. “No. Once you’ve left school, and I’ve got another job lined up, we’ll see. Hopefully, that won’t be long.”
He didn’t tell her about the new interview. He didn’t want to raise her - or his own - hopes.
“I love you,” Rachel said. “It’s hard, not being able to hold you.”
“Me, too,” Mike said, his willpower melting. “Look, maybe we can manage an hour next week, or something. I just ...”
He could hear someone tapping on the phone box with a coin.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
Rachel ran out of the phone box in tears. She didn’t care who saw. A car hooted as she crossed the road. Rachel charged on. How could he speak to her like that? We’ll see. You’ll see me in lessons. Mike was making her feel like a schoolgirl again, or, worse, a child being patronized by a parent. It was humiliating.
“Where’ve you been?” Mum asked, as Rachel walked in. “Dinner’s nearly ... have you been crying?”
The phone rang. Rachel only picked it up to avoid answering her mother.
“Rachel? It’s me.” Dad sounded almost as upset as she was. “I’ve made a bit of a mess of things,” he told her, his voice betraying an unfamiliar humility. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for a while.”
“I’ve missed you,” Rachel replied, realizing as she said this that it was true. Her father had many faults, but he was her father. She needed to know that he was around.
“I haven’t got a place where you can stay yet,” he told her. “I’m in a crummy bedsit. I don’t want you to see it. But I thought maybe we could meet up tomorrow or Sunday, go for a walk, like old times.”
“I’d like that,” Rachel said.
Over dinner, Mum asked about the conversation, but Rachel didn’t say much. From w
hat Dad had said, it sounded like he might be at fault in the breakup with Clarissa. Rachel didn’t want to tell Mum that. Mum didn’t press the matter. She was preoccupied with all the extra school governors’ meetings she had to go to. The cuts they had to make depressed Mum. She’d even talked about resigning, but didn’t want to let the others down. They’d agreed to stay or go together.
Rachel went up to her room. She began to compose a letter to Mike. She wanted him to realize how much she loved him, how much seeing him meant to her, how happy he’d made her. She would sneak it to him in an English lesson next week. No. He would say that was too risky. She would post it.
When she’d finished the letter, Rachel read it back. The first time she read her own words, Rachel was convinced that Mike would be moved by them. He’d sacrifice his job if necessary, give up anything to be with her. Maybe they would even elope and marry.
Rachel got an envelope, then addressed and stamped it. She put the letter in, but thought twice before sealing it. After a while, she got the letter out and read it again. This time, her words seemed soppy, immature. She imagined Mike marking it the way he marked her English essays, underlining points where she’d repeated herself. Even her handwriting looked young, unformed. If she sent this letter it might give him the excuse he needed to finish with her.
Was he looking for an excuse? Why did she doubt Mike? He’d told her he loved her, that he always would. Rachel believed him. Nevertheless, she put the letter away, in the drawer where she kept her pills. It was time to start a new packet. She’d started taking them on a Thursday and it was now Friday, so she was a day late. But Rachel wasn’t having sex at the moment, so it hardly mattered.
When she went to bed that night, Rachel got out the letter and reread it. This time, her words left her cold. All those protestations of love, what did they mean? They sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than she was Mike. You could promise to love someone for ever, but what if you stopped loving them, the way Dad must have stopped loving Mum? What if you couldn’t help it? What if what Mike called “romantic” love was only a lie, a convenient fantasy, an excuse for people to get into bed together?
For that was what Rachel wanted now: the wonderful feeling of Mike next to her beneath the sheets, his body pressing against hers, his warmth and softness, the sweet, yet slightly sour smell of his skin. That was what she wanted. And, yes, him moving inside her, their bodies grinding against each other until they both exploded, that too was important. But if she had to choose between the two, Rachel would settle for the holding, the cuddling, the physical certainty that, at that moment, she was wrapped in someone’s warm and tender love.
Whatever love was.
The next day, Rachel’s father took her for a walk in Woodthorpe Grange Park.
“Remember how I used to bring you here when you were a kid?” he asked.
Rachel said she remembered. She didn’t say that she had been here several times recently, with her lover. Dad didn’t ask about boyfriends. He was too wrapped up in his own love life.
“What happened?” Rachel asked, as they passed the pitch-and-putt in the May sunshine.
Dad seemed reluctant to tell her. “I made some mistakes,” he said.
“And what about Clarissa? Did she make mistakes, too?”
“I suppose so. But not the same kind of mistakes.”
Rachel grasped what he was saying. “You’ve been seeing someone else?”
Dad didn’t reply, but Rachel knew her father. That meant “yes”.
“Presumably things were wrong, between you and Clarissa?”
“I guess so.”
Rachel had so many questions, but didn’t know how to ask them. This was, after all, her father. Was Clarissa seeing someone else too? Was her father’s affair serious? Why couldn’t he open up and tell her?
“I’m supposed to be so good at this,” Dad said as they got back to the car. “Talking to people your age. How come when it’s my own daughter I can hardly express myself at all?” His eyes pleaded with her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said, because that was what she thought he wanted to hear. They hugged.
“I’d hate it,” Rachel went on, “if I didn’t get to see Phoebe and Rowan any more. I couldn’t stand that.”
“I’ll make sure you see them when I’ve got access properly sorted out,” Dad told her. “It’s a bit of a mess right now.”
Already, Rachel noticed, Dad was using social worker words like “access”. It meant that he and Clarissa weren’t going to get back together. Rachel felt a brief surge of triumph. After the way Clarissa had treated her when they last met, she didn’t want the woman to be happy. But Rachel loved her half brother and sister. Clarissa would be looking after them. How could Rachel wish hateful things for Phoebe and Rowan’s mother?
“How’s the revision going?” Dad asked.
“Fine,” Rachel lied.
“You know if you want any help, of any kind ...”
“I’ll be all right,” Rachel said.
Dad dropped her off at the house. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
Rachel kissed him on the cheek. Some more of the hairs in his sideburns had turned grey, she noticed.
“Take care, Dad,” she said.
Only as he drove off did Rachel realize that he hadn’t given her an address or phone number. It would be weeks before she saw him again.
Three
The following Thursday morning’s year-seven lesson was not one of Mike’s best. The class had spent a couple of weeks working on verse forms. Haiku and shape poems had gone really well. They’d moved on to the ballad, which some had coped with better than others. Today’s lesson was a kind of summing up. Mike had chosen to finish lightheartedly, with the limerick.
“People often dismiss limericks as a joke,” he explained to Judith Howard, as they walked to his classroom. “But they’re also a very precise form which requires an understanding of scansion and the ability to tell a story.”
It sounded convincing to Mike. Judith nodded politely, implying that she’d heard it all before. She was about to do his final assessment.
Unfortunately, the stories that half the class wanted to tell were smutty ones. Back in the autumn term, this class had been sweet, almost innocent. Now they revelled in jokes about condoms and men who only had one ball. Twice, Mike had to stop children from telling toilet jokes. As the lesson drew to an end, he was running out of reliable girls to read their work to the class. Paul Wilks put his hand up. “This isn’t a silly one, is it, Paul?”
“No, sir. It’s about you.”
“I’m not sure …”
But there was an immediate outcry from people wanting to hear the poem. At the back of the classroom, Judith Howard gave what, for her, passed as an amused smile.
“Go on, then,” Mike said, benignly.
The class quietened. Paul read, his voice constantly threatening to burst into laughter:
“There once was a teacher called Steadman,
Who thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
At the end of each day
After school, he’d stay
Screwing Rachel from year eleven.”
The class burst into hysterics. Mike felt his face turning red. He could see Judith Howard frowning. The lesson would be over in a minute. Somehow, Mike had to carry it off. He made a calming gesture with his hand, put a fixed smile on his face, and began to speak.
“Now, that was very silly, Paul, wasn’t it? But let’s ignore the subject matter. It did scan well, although Steadman and heaven are what we call a half rhyme. The only problem, I thought, came with the fourth line ...” Mike counted out the syllables with his fingers. “As well as being grammatically clumsy, you were one syllable short. Still, good try. Next time, come up with a more sensible topic.”
The bell went and Mike dismissed the class. Judith Howard came over. Mike could hardly look at her. The lesson hadn’t been that bad. He knew he’d passed his pro
bationary year. But he didn’t know what to say if she asked him about Rachel.
“You went a bit close to the edge once or twice there,” Judith said, sitting on Mike’s desk. Then she smiled. “I’m glad to see that not all your lessons are textbook perfect. It makes the rest of us feel more adequate.”
Mike gave a polite smile. This must be a tactful way of telling him that his lesson stank.
“But you dealt with the smut quite effectively,” Judith went on. “Especially that boy at the end. You must never react to such stories. That’s how rumours start.”
Mike breathed a sigh of relief. She’d heard the gossip, but didn’t believe it.
“You’ve got an interview in Mansfield tomorrow,” Judith went on.
“A sixth-form college, yes.”
“I don’t want to put you off,” Judith said, which meant she did, “but you do know nearly half the staff there resigned this year after a new Principal took over? They’ve got A-level class sizes bigger than ours in year seven.”
“No,” Mike told her. “I didn’t know that.”
“Just thought I’d warn you,” Mike’s Head of department said, as she left. “Interviews don’t always give a true picture of a place.”
Mike sat alone in his classroom, thinking. Did he really want to work in a sixth-form college? The marking and preparation would leave him even less time for a social life than he had already. He wanted to work at a school with a sixth form. But the jobs weren’t coming up. Every week, there were articles in the educational press about how half this year’s trainee teachers were unlikely to find any kind of post. Mike was more expensive to employ than they were.
If it weren’t for Rachel, Mike’s best bet might be to stay at Stonywood. But the atmosphere at the moment was hellish. Not enough teachers had volunteered to take redundancy. Everyone was waiting to find out who would have to go.
At lunchtime, Mike sat in the dining room, at a table reserved for teachers. He liked to have a decent lunch. Now that he was on his own at home, he rarely had the energy to cook dinner. Recently, though, kids seemed to be pointing in his direction. Nearby laughter might be aimed at him. Maybe he was imagining it. At least Rachel didn’t eat school lunch. Otherwise, he’d never dare come in here.
