The Art of Persuasion

by Midalia, Susan;

  Maybe she’d look cool in glasses. Sort of sexy. If a myopic man should chance to look her way.

  She asked for the name of the school.

  ‘Cranfield High. It’s a bit on the rough side, but it’s only two classes. Years eleven and twelve.’

  Until the end of the month. Just over two weeks. Which would mean missing two weeks of doorknocking. Which would be a good thing, wouldn’t it, all things considered? Which wasn’t very noble of her, but would it really matter if she gave it away? She wasn’t indispensable. And she’d have some distraction by distraction from distraction. T.S. Eliot again, in his pre-conversion state of secular despair. Maybe she could just get religion and turn a pile of easy answers into fridge magnets. Or maybe she could stop joking around, stop using humour to ward off the blues. The mopes, you might call it, a made-up word: a neologism. She’d tried to explain that to her students once—from the Latin, neo meaning new, she’d said, and logos meaning word—but it was hard for them to see the point of any words when the youth unemployment rate was nudging twenty percent.

  She dried her hair, slipped on a dress and decided to phone the school. Heard a feverish female voice tell her they’d been looking everywhere for a teacher. Only part-time but she had to come in every day. The school was really desperate.

  Good to know that even Hazel West would do in a desperate situation.

  No Adam for the next two weeks. She could go cold turkey, release herself from a man who must be wanting something substantial. Enduring. Who wasn’t the kind of man to take advantage of a needy young woman.

  She wished he’d take advantage of a needy young woman.

  Then her phone buzzed. Another message from Adam.

  Jessie is rapt with his new animal. He says it’s awesome. He says to give you a massive thank you.

  Well, at least she’d made a little boy enraptured.

  He’s very welcome. I was just about to text because I can’t do doorknocking for the next couple of weeks. I have a job.

  A space. A long one.

  Congratulations. What is it?

  What could she say? I’m working at going backwards. ‘I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas’: a Goons song.

  Relief teaching. Don’t laugh

  I would never laugh at you, Hazel.

  He sounded so tender. Could a text possibly sound tender?

  And then:

  So will you doorknock after you’ve finished teaching?

  Wasn’t it time to bite that damned bullet?

  I’m not sure

  About so many things, she didn’t know where to begin. Then another long gap; more of those slow, pulsating bubbles on the screen.

  You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.

  She took this in. I will try to make it. OK?

  Another long pause. OK.

  That seemed to be it. And tomorrow she’d be going backwards. As if she hadn’t already started.

  That night Hazel dreamed that the carcass of a gnu was being picked clean, with frightening, malicious efficiency, by hordes of ravenous vultures. And while she feared that the dream might be prophetic, she was glad she wouldn’t have to tell Jessie about nature red in tooth and claw. Because you couldn’t sit him down, a nearly-five-year-old child, a cup of Milo in his little hands, and tell him the cruel facts of life. It wouldn’t have been her place, anyway. It wasn’t written in the stars, if you happened to believe in a light you could see even though the stars were dead.

  Yet she wanted to see Adam’s face, take his hand, take him to her bed, make love, talk. They would give each other their stories, they would pleat their moments together, and it would be more beautiful than she’d ever imagined.

  She’d watched too many crappy rom-coms.

  She struggled out of bed at seven am—had she really done this for two long years?—showered quickly, put on a respectable dress, ran a brush through her hair. Packed a sandwich, a muesli bar and one juicy red apple for the teacher, grabbed a book to read on the bus: a short story anthology she’d stolen from her former school because theft was meant to be empowering. Or maybe it was a reward for those two long years of the horror, the horror. So what was she doing now, returning to the heart of darkness? She told herself it was only for a couple of weeks, and what was the worst that could happen? Backchat, resentment, gum chewing, swearing, being bowled over in the corridor, being mocked, truancy, the odd punch-up or two.

  She ran for the bus and just managed to catch it because the driver had seen her coming. Must be my lucky day, she thought.

  Slumped in her seat, she could see what lay ahead of her: boring worksheets on plot, theme, character and setting, boring documentaries about drugs and the media, tolerance and intolerance. Showing movies the kids must have seen a hundred times just to fill in the time. What had she shown her students on her more desperate days? Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Shrek. The best part of Shrek was when the bluebird of happiness puffed up and exploded. Or maybe she’d have to do some real teaching. Proper lessons. She started flipping through her stolen book. Everyone liked stories, didn’t they? Roald Dahl: he’d been a hit with the year eights, especially his grisly tale of the landlady who’d killed a young male tenant and kept his body in her bed. Hazel remembered how one of the kids—an observant girl, precocious—had noticed the woman’s strange kind of interest in the corpse, and she’d quickly changed the subject. Necrophilia. That was one word she hadn’t wanted her students to know. Well, not when they were twelve years old.

  She ran her finger down the table of contents. What would fifteen, sixteen-year-olds like? Joyce: too depressing. Hemingway: too flat. Chekov: also too depressing, and probably much too subtle for kids who didn’t read between the lines. And then she saw it: a story she’d studied way back in year twelve. Joyce Carol Oates. A woman. Even better. Such a creepy tale, it had knocked her out, knocked everyone out, even the science brainiacs. Everyone loved creepy, didn’t they? She could talk with the kids about what made their hair stand on end, what made them afraid, and why. Because we were all afraid of something, even if we didn’t know it, even when knowing it didn’t make it disappear. Like her fear of sharks. Of being useless. Of being alone.

  She returned to the title of the story: ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’

  She’d been knocking on doors and hadn’t made one definite conversion. She’d been to a toyshop and made a little boy rapt. She’d met a man, and then…nothing.

  And where was she going? Back to where she’d started: with a book, a lunchbox, an ache in her heart, and already counting down the hours.

  Cranfield High had the look of a government school strapped for government cash: too many demountable buildings, straggly gardens, a grey carpet in reception that was thinning in patches. The red-faced receptionist handed Hazel some notes, asked for her Working with Children card to ensure that she was safe. When some of the children Hazel would be teaching might already be driving cars, binge-drinking, having sex, possibly all three at the same time. Still, you could hardly blame them, when they didn’t have much else to give them pleasure. She sometimes used to wonder, as she stood in the front of a class, how the hell they managed it: seven hours a day of boredom and frustration, hating every single minute of compulsory education, with teachers who tried to help them see the point of compulsory education and others who couldn’t give a flying fuck. That’s what a teacher at her old school had said: Tony Tucker. Phony Fucker, she’d heard some kids call him, and you couldn’t blame them for that either. And now here she was again, about to front up to a bunch of strangers, most of them taller than her and some of them slightly threatening and all of them checking her out. The relief teacher. Who, according to the scrappy notes in her hand, must have some kind of knowledge to impart.

  She made her way to the classroom and stood outside for a moment, breathed in, breathed out, made her hands go loose. Year twelve English…she headed inside…maybe twenty, twenty-five, of them…and sure enough, mu
rmurs of derision and rocking back in chairs, making their obvious point: slacking off time, try and make us work, Miss. But she wanted to be strong, hold her nerve. She’d been doorknocking, after all, and survived. So she looked at particular faces instead of an anonymous crowd: the scowling boy with the row of heavy piercings in one ear, the thoughtful-looking redhead, the hulking boy who could knock you for six. She pulled back her shoulders and waited for silence (that much she remembered from her more-or-less useless Dip. Ed.), as they looked her up and down, or looked at their friends, delighted. A woman. Yay. Even slacker.

  ‘Hey, Miss, what’s your name?’

  It was a member of the acned brigade, the kind of boy who deflected his embarrassment through insult or bravado.

  ‘I’m Ms West. And what’s your name?’

  ‘Superman,’ he said, and looked around, grinning, for approval.

  She refused to be smart-arse, like him.

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘Now, your teacher wants you to write a feature article. The pros and cons of using social media.’

  There was an immediate chorus of borrrring…we do that every year…and Hazel held up her hand. She had to agree in her head—borrrring—but she couldn’t undermine their teacher.

  ‘Let’s do a deal,’ she said.

  Many eyes narrowed, because a deal usually meant them losing.

  ‘If you spend ten minutes making dot points about the pros and cons of social media, I’ll read you a story.’

  Loud moans and groans all around.

  ‘But it’s a really creepy one,’ she said, trying not to sound like she was talking to infants. ‘It’s written by a woman called Joyce Carol Oates.’

  More laughter, and wisecracks about breakfast cereal and feeding pigs, but she needed to make a start before she lost her nerve. So she ignored the sniggers, cleared her throat, waited for silence, and began. With the story of working-class Connie: fifteen years old and restless, fond of looking at her reflection. Whose only source of pleasure was flirting with boys, whose only form of power was attracting them. Someone in the class whispered cockteaser but Hazel let it go, kept on reading, sensing that the story was drawing them in to their familiar, garish world: generic shopping malls, fast-food outlets, drive-in this and that, the tacky merchandise, the aimless hanging around. She paused for a moment, looked up to see them attentive and perfectly still, as the girl in the story—pretty, vain, sexually naïve—walked headlong into danger, lured by a charming, flattering man with big dark glasses and a flashy gold car. Who seemed much older than Connie was aware. And suddenly someone called out, He’s soooo creepy, watch out for the creepy man—as though the characters were real. A plea, a warning, straight from the heart. And then a girl, Asian, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, suddenly put up her hand and flapped it around, announced that she’d discovered a code.

  ‘The creepy man’s name,’ she said. ‘I wrote it down. Arnold Friend. If you take out the letter r, his name spells An Old Fiend.’

  Which got the whole class buzzing. How’ja work that out?

  ‘It’s in the Bible, a fiend is the same as the devil.’

  A drumming of applause on desks and way to go Mavis, the girl’s face glowing with pride.

  Hazel didn’t tell them the code had already been cracked. She didn’t mention the many critics who’d dissected and debated this terrifying story. Because Mavis was entitled to the pleasure of discovery, and the pleasure of being admired. And there were other things as well, to consider. Like what it might mean to be a teenage girl with nothing in her head but vanity and flirting and sex. Where this might lead you, and how there might be a better place to go.

  Hazel finished the story, put down the book, and someone shouted out, Hey, Miss, what happened to the girl?

  ‘We don’t know,’ she said. ‘That’s the end.’

  There were grumbles, a few shouts…but we wanna know…that’s so not fair…and then someone waved a hand.

  ‘That’s what makes the story creepy.’ Mavis again, shouting now, finding an even bigger voice. ‘It’s like the girl, Connie, she’s become a missing person.’

  ‘That’s exactly right, Mavis,’ said Hazel, and took in a sea of puzzled faces. ‘Imagine if one of your friends went missing. How would you feel, not knowing what had happened to them? That might be worse than knowing they were dead.’

  A girl raised her hand and Hazel asked her name.

  ‘Shareen. You’d feel like there was hope,’ she said. ‘But every day they’d still be missing and you’d die a little bit more.’

  Hazel was about to praise her—a sensitive, intelligent response—but another girl with fierce dark eyes waved her hand about.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Jaycie. I’d feel gutted if my mum was missing, but not my dad.’

  A loud voice from the back row called out: ‘So will you read us something else tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ll have a discussion first,’ said Hazel. ‘About what you think of this story, and why.’

  More moans and groans.

  ‘But we’ve already done that,’ said a dark-skinned boy.

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Jamal. Can we hear another creepy story?’

  Joyce Carol Oates had set their pulses racing, without the need for a nurse.

  ‘Do you have a suggestion, Jamal?’

  She could have kicked herself. Asking a student if they had a suggestion could lead to something crude.

  ‘No, you choose,’ he said. ‘You’re the teacher.’

  And then the siren blasted. She’d always hated that sound: piercing and officious. But right here, right now, she saw open, interested expressions, heard the energy of their talk, and she found herself wondering if they’d ever been read to as children. If they’d ever sat on a parent’s lap, encircled by love and the wonder of words, pleading for just one more story.

  ‘See ya tomorrow, Miss.’

  She couldn’t tell who’d said it, but a cheery voice had said it and, for the moment, that was enough.

  She watched them leaving the classroom, jostling and laughing and—fuck! She’d forgotten to call the roll. Who knew how many kids were missing? And she’d forgotten the dot points about social media as well, the deal she was meant to have done. She looked around at an unknown, familiar space: marked walls, smeary windows, a badly scuffed floor, but there were many bright movie posters of vampires, gangsters, outer space, boy meets girl. A chart about Genre, Audience, Purpose. GAP: there was always a handy acronym to fill the gaps in a student’s head. There were the usual laminex pages about text types, grammar, classroom rules, and a map of the world, with some sappy words of inspiration: A good book can take you anywhere. Well, maybe she’d taken them somewhere today, those unknown kids with their unknown lives. Maybe she’d raised a few questions. It wasn’t a bad start to the day.

  Which became steadily worse. She should have known that the next lesson would give her nothing but aggression and indifference: the usual bookends of a teacher’s life in a school like Cranfield High. Year eleven. Their teacher had left another lesson plan on social media (he or she must have run out of ideas early in the year), and the kids were beginning to shout, call each other names, stroll casually round the room. After ten pointless minutes, in which she failed to quieten them, indeed barely stopped a riot, Hazel slotted ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ into the giant TV. They’d seen it twice already, the kids told her, but no one objected to a third.

  Thirty minutes of a movie that seemed hammy. Portentous. The siren had never sounded so sweet.

  She should also have known, when she went for morning tea, that three teachers talking in the queue were just twiddling their pedagogic thumbs until they retired in five or ten years’ time. She should also have bet heavily on the odds of a male teacher sloping up to her, looking her up and down and resting his lecherous paw on her hip.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.

  ‘Jeez Louise,’ he said, b
acking off. ‘What’s your problem?’

  And how could she not have foreseen that one of her colleagues deserved to be shot to improve the national IQ: a middle-aged woman with beady eyes and a slit for a mouth who warned Hazel not to do anything political in her classes because they weren’t her classes, were they? Teaching ideology, she said, pursing her lips, as though she’d just tasted something foul in her coffee mug. Literature had nothing to do with gender or race or class, she vehemently declared. All that reductive business about power and victims, people choose to be victims, everyone can make it if they try.

  Her name was Penelope. Call me Penny. And I need to hold my tongue, Hazel thought, or I’ll end up calling her a fucking idiot.

  What she hadn’t expected was the warm welcome from another English teacher, who smiled toothily, took her by the elbow and guided her to another table. Asked how she was settling in. Marcie, or Martha, Hazel didn’t quite catch her name, who told her that Penny yearned every day to teach in a private school but none of them seemed to want her, despite the head of department’s brilliant reference designed to give her a hefty shove. An earthy woman, this Marcie or Martha, smiling now at an approaching figure. The school principal, it seemed. Hazel straightened her back, shook hands with Ms Hipkins, a striking apparition with shrieking blonde hair, a leopard-skin blouse and bright red skirt. She welcomed Hazel, thanked her for helping out in a very tight spot, her voice like a flutter of welcoming birds. Not like Hazel’s former principal; the only time he’d made contact was knocking her tea cup to the floor when he’d rushed to get at the Shortbread Creams.

  The principal waved to someone in the distance, excused herself, and Hazel turned to Marcie? Martha? Asked if the principal always dressed like that.

  ‘Inappropriately, you mean? She sometimes shows more cleavage but hey, she’s a damn fine principal. Knows the names of all the kids. Really cares about her staff. So.’ That toothy smile again. ‘You must have enjoyed teaching the year twelves,’ she said.