The Good Teacher

by Richard Anderson

  ‘Get rid of? Maybe. He’s not a local.’

  ‘Might help solve the problem.’

  Andy nodded at this. Devising a practical plan of action was much more his territory.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who it is?’

  Andy said nothing.

  ‘It’s up to you. If I knew I might be able to help.’

  ‘It’s the fucken teacher. Weak, nothing sort of a bloke that he is.’

  Mack didn’t bother with a reaction. It was better that it was the teacher, rather than a mate of Andy’s or someone who worked for him.

  ‘You know he’s the chief suspect in the school fire?’ Mack said.

  Andy looked annoyed at the irrelevant addition, shaking his head. ‘Right now I couldn’t care.’

  As he watched his son, Mack realised there was even greater significance in the information than he’d realised.

  ‘You know the fire was started by a cigarette?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He was barely listening.

  ‘Well. Jennifer has an occasional smoke.’ He left it for a moment. He knew it was too early and he was moving too fast for Andy, but if Andy was looking for strategies he needed all the information. ‘She and the principal were together in that classroom before the fire, that’s what the investigator told me. If they’re an item, it stands to reason that Jennifer might have started—’

  Andy hadn’t heard any of it. He was leaving.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. I’m not in the condition to chat. I might push off. Everything okay with you?’

  ‘I’m good. You look after yourself.’

  Mack watched him walk down to his car and thought about what a powerful thing it was to have a son no matter what age, to know their every weakness and strength and still feel this tenderness.

  ANDY

  His intention when he left his father’s place was to knock Brock’s lights out: to drive back down there, kick open the door and smack him in the face. It wasn’t necessarily smart or even productive but it was doing something. He would be taking action, like a man should.

  But when he parked and got out of his car, he couldn’t cross the road. The idea of seeing Jennifer locked in some sort of embrace terrified him. Surely they would have finished by now. But what if the teacher was some sort of sexual athlete who could keep pleasing Jennifer for hours at a time? Was she in there now trying to make up for years, decades, of disappointing sex? He had to stop that line of thinking.

  The other thing that was stopping him storming that particularly ugly brick parapet was his understanding that the ineffectual man inside was not taking his wife away: she had gone looking for something else and he happened to be there.

  It was shocking to think his wife of twenty years might have many unknown and unmet needs. Her body in ecstasy kept rising up to assail him. He’d never imagined he was anything special when it came to sex, but he always felt like he’d done a pretty good job. Jennifer had never given him any idea that she wanted anything more or different. ‘Less’ had always been her general attitude. And now this.

  He wished he could share all this with Abi, online, in secret. She would have the benefit of distance and be able to make sense of it. He tapped out a hypothetical on his phone mentioning no names and sent it to her.

  He walked up the table drain, away from the schoolhouse, stomping his feet and muttering to himself. Had he really understood her so little? Not long ago he’d been sniggering at the idea of her having an affair, probably right about the time she was rooting her brains out. All these years and so little knowledge between them. He couldn’t believe the power of the emotion he was suffering. Yesterday if Jennifer had said she was leaving him he might have laughed and even considered it a good thing to have a break for a while. Today? Disaster.

  What to do? He could just keep walking: to town, to the highway, to the coast, to the airport. Or maybe the pub was a better spot. Drink until he fell down, and then everyone would know there was something seriously wrong in the Booth household. Or perhaps he should go home and move his things into one of other houses on the place. Let her make up her own mind; wait for her to come to her senses.

  And there it was. The key. Solid and smooth in among all his mental, emotional crashing about. No matter what she felt for this teacher, even if she loved him, there was no way she could make him fit with her life. He did know her well enough to make that bet.

  He turned back. Jennifer Booth was not the person to accept community opprobrium, to shack up with the principal in the schoolhouse, to walk away from her family home, endure gossip, and accept the scorn of her daughter. Whatever she was doing in that house was at odds with the person she was outside of it. Of that he was sure.

  To reconstruct their lives he had to accept that this was a madness that would pass. He could help by setting up a structure for her to find her way back. He took out his phone and removed the app for messaging that he used with Abi. In order for this to work he’d have to swear off talking to her; to save his own relationship he needed to focus all his powers on it.

  What did Mack say? Something about Jennifer and Brock and the fire being started by a cigarette? As per usual Mack had been talking his own brand of good sense.

  JENNIFER

  In the car Andy was quiet. She’d taken extra time to make sure she presented the appearance of someone who had just finished a painstaking meeting with a blundering principal. She’d even concocted discussions she’d had with Brock. She prattled on for a while about the meeting and added some exasperation at how things had proceeded. Andy smiled grimly at her in a way she couldn’t read.

  On the roadside, a white cockatoo lay motionless, its brilliant white feathers in random snowdrifts around it.

  For a time Andy said nothing and then: ‘Did you know they’ve established the school fire was started by a cigarette?’

  It was a very scary question. Not in itself, because she had that covered, but because it had the faintest sound that it was leading somewhere and she didn’t know where. Probably nowhere, but that didn’t stop her heart thumping.

  ‘No. Wow. How did you find that out?’

  ‘The investigator is the son of an old friend of Dad’s. He told him.’

  Everything outside disappeared. All that remained was the interior of the car, herself and Andy.

  ‘God. Have they decided whose cigarette it was?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Maybe yours.’

  Only the motor had the insolence to say anything. It purred like a cat.

  He looked sternly across at her and she tried to hide the panic on her face. Did her eyes give her away?

  He smiled. ‘Just kidding.’

  She laughed, trying to relax her chest and sound natural, knowing that she didn’t.

  ‘Yeah. I do a bit of smoking in the principal’s office.’ She hoped she wasn’t flushing.

  ‘Is Brock a smoker?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Yes.’ It was a thoughtful I-see-what-you’re-getting-at tone she had conjured.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  Oh God, she did like him. ‘He’s the best principal, best teacher we’ve ever had. Probably doesn’t look that good for him, does it?’

  ‘I think you could say that.’

  Something else was happening in the conversation and it wasn’t of her creation.

  Andy didn’t look at her now; he kept his eyes on the road as if surrounded by Friday-afternoon city traffic. ‘It’s a pity. He’ll probably have to go. You can’t have a principal burning down a school, can you?’

  He was throwing a rope and she had to choose whether to grab it or not. ‘No, you cannot.’

  ‘The person responsible for the welfare of our children needs to be trustworthy and stable and sensible,’ he said.

  ‘Imagine if the children had been in the classroom at the time.’

  ‘He’s probably not what he seems. I think he’s capable of a lot more than we realise. Has he ever put a hand on you?’

  The car w
as very quiet. He must have seen something. Had he spied on her in the new classroom or in the house that afternoon?

  ‘Yes.’ She turned away from him and looked out at the paddocks of perfect symmetry rippling past, weighing up how far she should go. ‘But nothing too bad. He grabbed me on the bum—once.’

  Andy was blank-faced. ‘That’s something to look out for, too, if it comes to that.’

  She didn’t recognise the calculating man in the driver’s seat. He had already thought this through, walked through his bloody scenarios, and assumed her co-operation. No matter what it took, Brock would go and she would accept it. No discussion needed. Unless she decided to reject the deal.

  ‘When will they release a verdict?’ she asked.

  ‘Pretty soon, I’d imagine.’

  ‘Sooner the better, I suppose. Then we can get this whole thing cleaned up.’ And she meant it.

  Several days later Jennifer took the car to Woolama, their nearest big centre, big enough for her to go the whole day without seeing someone she knew or who knew her. It had taken a couple of days for her to work out a reason for going and to give Andy enough warning so he wouldn’t think it was some sort of clandestine panic trip. But it was a panic trip. In all that had had happened, Jennifer had forgotten to take the pill. She kept telling herself she shouldn’t worry—she was only a few hours, maybe a day late, and the chance of getting pregnant from one sex act had to be very slim. It had taken a long while for her to get pregnant with Madison. Nevertheless, in bed at three o’clock in the morning, her imagination had her pregnant with twins or triplets, all of them Brock’s. She had to do something about it.

  The pharmacist asked her lots of questions, but she made sure he could tell she was a respectable, level-headed woman who just wasn’t up to having another child (her fifth, she said). She paid for the morning-after pill, went to the cafe next door, asked for a glass of water, downed it and felt better immediately. In the light of her relief, she realised it was hysteria about something that couldn’t even happen. Best put it behind her.

  SARAH

  A group email arrived from Jennifer asking for a special meeting of the P&C. Sarah thought about not going—she didn’t want to relive the last experience. But that didn’t fit with the new model of Sarah Howard. So she lined Ian up to babysit, got her minutes, folders and pens, and went to the school.

  There were already people there when she arrived. Only for a moment in the doorway did she feel shaky and a little sick, but she took her seat and was fine. Brock wasn’t there. She was safe. She would take the biscuits she had made for him to his house.

  On the hour, when the seats were filled, Jennifer called the meeting to order, and then in the sincere, caring tone of someone managing a crisis, said: ‘Thank you all for coming. I know it’s a bit irregular but I thought it was important to sort something out. I haven’t asked Brock to this meeting because I need to talk about his position.’

  She looked around the room, almost daring them to challenge her.

  Sarah scribbled madly on her copy of the minutes of the last meeting: What’s she going to do? What’s she going to do?

  ‘I’ve had it from official sources that our principal will be found guilty of starting the school fire.’

  An ‘Ooh’ went round the room. Sarah realised one of them had come out of her mouth.

  ‘I’m told they believe the ignition agent was a cigarette.’

  Once again, shock and dismay rippled around the room. Sarah bit her lip. Should she say something? Was it the right moment?

  ‘It’s my understanding that the department will dispense with his services. They think his conduct makes it inappropriate for him to have children in his care. This is why I decided that he shouldn’t be present tonight.’

  Mouths opened to ask something and hands lifted slightly as if to be called on in class, but no one said anything.

  Then Pam said: ‘I just can’t make up my mind about this. There doesn’t seem to be a clear way through.’

  ‘What if we want him to stay?’

  It was Angela. Thank god for Angela.

  ‘I’m sure we’d all like him to stay, but the department has duty of care protocols to follow that cannot be contradicted. Besides which, would it be responsible of us as parents to accept someone who smoked in this building and was negligent to the point of burning it down?’ The mumbling of objections was quieted. Jennifer let the thought hang.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Susie Green. ‘And to think what he’s put us through, and our children, when all along he was the culprit!’

  The meeting gave no indication as to whether they supported her or not.

  ‘When do we hear officially?’ Sarah heard herself ask.

  ‘In the next couple of weeks, which is why I’ve called this meeting. We need to set up the interview panel again. Can I have some volunteers?’

  The meeting was quiet again. Its soundlessness may have been a veneer over shock and indecision or maybe the silence of assent.

  ‘You all know how this works. There’s the initial panel calls to referees and setting a shortlist. Then there’s the face-to-face panel interviews.’

  ‘Shortlist everyone who applies,’ someone said, and the meeting was grateful for the opportunity to snicker.

  Sarah looked up at the ceiling, missing the impartiality of the papier-mâché fish and wishing she’d better anticipated this. Driving home from the last meeting, worrying what would happen if Jennifer tired of Brock, had been a forewarning of sorts. But she hadn’t expected such a Machiavellian manoeuvre. The fact that Brock had started the fire made it much more complicated. She paused in her thoughts. Her intuition—the intuition she promised herself she would trust—told her that something was slightly off beam. If Jennifer felt it was time to get rid of Brock was it too sweet a coincidence that he had started the fire?

  She sat fingering her notes, unsure whether she should be mentioning infidelity and that pack of cigarettes in Jennifer’s bag or waiting until after the meeting to marshal her thoughts.

  Looking at Jennifer’s impassive face, she thought it would be better to find out what the other parents thought, whether they would rally behind a call to keep Brock. At the same time, she began to question her own judgement. Did they really want a principal who had an affair with the married president of the P&C and who incinerated his own classroom?

  MADISON

  Ian had sent another message, this time with the excited claim that he had seen Jennifer and Brock together, in Brock’s car, on the side of the road near the Greenslope turn. ‘You’d better be ready to pay up.’

  She didn’t believe him for one second. There was no world that existed where her mother would do something like that. Madison knew what Ian was up to and only kept communication open because there was so little else to be entertained by.

  With her mother at another school meeting and her father still on a machine or in a shed somewhere, Madison took the opportunity to break from not working at her books. She had been looking at them for hours, re-reading headings without absorbing even that amount of content, doodling in the corners of the page and listening to music. She had hit a wall of some sort, hopefully temporarily. Mack was still gazing across at her, unresolved and unfinished.

  She made herself some noodles and wandered around the house humming to herself and trying not to think about Ian. He and their bet had been appearing like computer pop ups in her thoughts. The idea of getting with him again tantalised her, especially now that she had forbidden herself, and the suggestion about her mother being up to something intrigued her even more. She was certain her mother wasn’t having an affair, with anyone or anything, but an idea like that didn’t spring from nothing. It had to be started by something: a misunderstanding, a Chinese whisper, a malicious fabrication. Something.

  She slumped in front of the TV on the soft couch and flicked through multi-channels, balancing the bowl and slurping noodles from it at the same time. Nothing that went pa
st distracted her so she got up and wandered into the office, eating and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

  The office was a place she stayed away from. It was her parents’ sacred area, more sacrosanct than their bedroom and no more interesting. It was a crappily made museum, full of things from the past that no one cared about: photos of unknown people; financial and farm records that meant nothing; diaries of years long gone that were just blah, blah; her paintings from year four; a smelly old pipe, for goodness sake, and the most garish calendar imaginable. It was always a shock that there was a recent model computer with a large screen in these musty old surroundings.

  She plonked down at the desk, careful not to spill any sauce, and pulled up the mail server. It was possible that her mother had sent emails that explained why she was at the school so much. She checked messages and folders. There were minutes and budgets and treasurer’s reports and records of food and alcohol bought for various functions but nothing personal. Nothing that could interest a real human being. Absent-mindedly and out of boredom she clicked on Favourites. A social network site came up, the same site she used. She checked History and saw that that site was regularly visited. She was livid. Obviously they were keeping tabs on her. Nothing was ever her own. Everything had to be overseen or shared or spied on. It was beyond their tiny imaginations to let her live a life of her own making.

  She tapped on the site and was automatically logged in. In Messages, she found exactly what she hadn’t been looking for. A catalogue of correspondence from her father to a woman called Abi. In the picture (presumably a photo of herself that she liked) Abi looked middle-aged, maybe appealing, and unremarkable. Not exactly hubba hubba. She didn’t think Abi was someone her father could be remotely hot for, and the idea of her father being hot for anyone was disturbing in itself. Was Abi a relative she’d never heard of?