If Mrs Pig cared to know, Jennifer’s version would be that Brock had attacked her before the P&C meeting on the night of the fire. She had been in shock and unable to deal with her emotions, so she’d submerged them and chaired the meeting. Then with the fire and the aftermath it felt all too late to report it. But members of the P&C would recall that her distress over the fire was out of proportion with the situation. Some may even have picked up on her concealed panic in the meeting. Did anyone remember the pen? She was jumping and giggling at her own cleverness.
She turned and headed back the way she’d come. She wouldn’t say anything to Andy yet. She didn’t look forward to telling him about the tissue, why she had it and where she got it. But she would put the story to Brock (a story that she was rapidly beginning to believe really happened) straight away. If he didn’t leave, she’d go public.
MACK
He reached Stony Creek in one piece, but not before Jennifer’s car went round him at speed, failing to recognise him or the car or even caring to. Not more sex, he hoped. Was a woman ever in that much of a rush for sex? He couldn’t remember.
He carefully navigated the car to a spot across the road from the school gates, on the wide verge in among the sticks and stones and dry, clumpy tussocks. He was late. Parents doing the afternoon pick-up had already arrived and were leaving. He could tell kids were waiting, dawdling, at the front gates from the sound of their voices and the bounce of a ball and the whack of a stick. Mack stayed in his seat, hoping Jennifer wasn’t among them. He couldn’t see her car though. If she saw him and asked what he was doing he would just have to tell the truth.
When the noise had died down, he crossed the road. His joints were sore but he was still moving all right. It seemed a reasonable assumption that the principal would be in his office so soon after the end of school. But there was no one in the playground and no one in the lone classroom nor in the sports shed or the garden sheds. Didn’t teachers have marking and organising to do? And that woman who did the books, Susie Green, how come she wasn’t around? What about cleaners? Someone had to clean the place.
He looked around the school as best he could. It looked very different to what he remembered, with the new box that served as a classroom and the gap where the old one had been, its burnt foundations sitting as small blackened reminders. Behind a row of sickly conifers was the principal’s residence, a workmanlike oblong that hadn’t changed since Andy was at school. Memories of those days—of Andy and Frank proudly showing their work, running in sports carnivals and singing badly in the little choir hit him with a clarity that surprised him. Celie was there, too, smiling and as pleased and proud as anyone could be over such small achievements. If his memories were that clear then at least Alzheimer’s would be interesting.
He realised there was a car parked at the back of the residence: Jennifer’s car. She’d beaten him to the punch. So what was he supposed to do now? He didn’t want to knock on the door if they were having it away inside. But he’d come all this way; it would be silly to give up so easily. Besides, he didn’t know if he was quite ready for the return journey just yet. Without actually making any decision, he began the walk back to his car, in a long loop, the arc taking him a little closer to the residence. He didn’t know what he’d do if he heard something he didn’t want to. He’d be caught by his own immobility.
It took a little time, but he was soon close enough to the house to hear a conversation going on: Jennifer’s firm voice laying down a law of some kind. Had she taken it upon herself to do the job Mack had set out to do or was she organising something much worse? He edged closer, praying someone wouldn’t drive past and see him stranded in the playground between the residence and what were once the monkey bars. He made it to the welded mesh garden fence and leant on it as if waiting for someone or something. He could hear Jennifer clearly and maybe make her out through a curtain. She was saying: ‘I’ll take it all the way. I’ve got the evidence and I’ll have the community backing. Your position and your career will be over very publicly, believe you me.’
Then she was turning and marching out the door and he was crouching down like a silly old fool, hearing the front door slam and soon her car start, revving too high and screeching out of the car park in the highest dudgeon.
He stood up and inched his way down the fence. It sounded like there was no real need for his sermon anymore. Then the front door swung open again and the teacher stepped out, looking down the road the way Jennifer had gone. He turned back shaking his head and saw Mack leaning against the fence.
Mack didn’t know what else to do except give him a little wave and a smile. All the teacher said was ‘Oh bloody hell’, and marched back inside his house, banging the door behind him.
As Mack walked in slow time to the car he considered the return trip ahead. At least the journey had been productive; not by his own hand, perhaps, but productive nevertheless.
ABI
She had the sensation of emerging from a slime bath. Inertia was dropping off, energy was returning, bringing with it interest and curiosity. She was reading, paying attention to the media, accepting her friends’ invitations for coffee. Sometimes you just didn’t know how bad you let things get. She could see her improvement on the faces of her children and the way they relaxed around her and stopped behaving quite so well.
It didn’t stop her leafing through old photo albums, reliving the time when she had known Andy (a little bit) and the country she associated with him. The prospects of life were opening up again and she was even feeling thankful for her lot. She’d taken a job, three days a week, in a bookshop of all places. The owner was a friend of a friend and the business couldn’t afford real wages so she offered to do it for a ridiculous, probably illegal hourly rate and everybody was happy. Her friends dropped in to see her when they were shopping and she got to chat to lots of nice people (well, not that many nice people because not many people came into the store).
Eventually Lee and then Kate went to stay with Tim on weekends and then whenever they wanted to. She had done her best to explain to them that he had done nothing wrong and was no more to blame for the break-up than she was. It was a hard thing to do and keep on doing, even though it was more or less correct.
Sometimes when the kids were away and she was alone in the house, she felt a kind of terror of the void. Without them she was floating around without purpose or love, given or received. She would turn the TV or music up loud to try to block it out. And she was walking every day, everywhere, with the determination of someone who was walking off a sickness. She came to know her leafy suburb as if it were her own house and the track to her job felt like it should be worn down in the concrete where she stepped. On the days when she wasn’t at the bookshop and Lee and Kate were at school she walked further and further: to the beach suburbs, into the city and to the harbour. Outpacing her demons seemed to be working well. They weren’t large, nasty demons that thrived on the threat of violence or abuse or poverty or mental illness—just small, greedy demons that feared the future and warned that she was nothing and nobody. Walking made their colours fade and reduced their booming voices to small peep-peepings in the distance.
She went back to Facebooking old friends and boyfriends; stalking them, in fact. It didn’t feel too odd or naughty. Everyone did it. She was way too daunted by the risks and the disappointments of what she thought online dating might be, so tracking down (from a distance) men she’d already known seemed like a safe pastime. Some of them she even befriended and messaged and all of them agreed they should catch up some time.
But she only caught up with one: Tyler Williams, a quiet boy she had spent time with in her last year of school. Tyler had been the nicest person—too nice back then to hold her attention. She had wanted a little more risk, a little more bad boy. When she saw the sandy-haired man sitting at a corner table in the coffee shop they’d agreed to meet in, she immediately knew it was him. He looked like a larger version of his eighteen-year-old self
: his head was bigger; his hands were bigger; he was taller and his body was bigger, without being noticeably fat. ‘Upsize’ was all she could think.
He told her he had been married early and for a long time and then one day woke up terrified. He could see himself trundling his way through the last half of his life with the same woman and the same sort of job and the same dependable reputation. Maturity had accelerated his thoughts of death. And you were dead an awfully long time. So, in his own words, he went crazy: drink, drugs, parties, unstable new friends, all round risky behaviour. His wife kicked him out and his children decided they didn’t need to talk to him. For a while it didn’t worry him. He was going out with a bang.
And then the madness passed and he wished for security, companionship and friendship. His wife didn’t want any of it, she wanted to be an ex-wife. So here he was, at her table, the same nice person she remembered, in the same sort of job but without the same wife and the same reputation. He said he regretted it, the damage it caused to his children and his ex-wife, but it was just something that had to be done.
They had a long chat and she noted that he was still pleasant to look at and still nice to be around. She thought they could spend some time together and maybe she might even sleep with him. But the ‘need’ ingredient was missing. She was still thinking of Andy.
MADISON
Zumba had come on, quite literally, in leaps and bounds. He was responding to her direction and it seemed like he actually enjoyed it. She rode him most days if the weather was good, and instead of avoiding her in his small paddock, he began to wait for her arrival, snorting and stamping a foot. It was exhilarating to sense the link between them. The part she looked forward to most was when the day’s lesson was over and she could ride him freely and let her mind run just as freely through the ideas that were bedevilling her. Her parents had suddenly gone 3D on her: they had feelings and insecurities and failings and made mistakes. Unbelievable.
The question she couldn’t seem to come to grips with was: Should she do anything about it? Should she tell the blow-in to get the hell away from her mother? Should she let her mother know her father had a special friend in order to even out the playing field a bit? Should she tell her mother that she knew about the blow-in, her father knew, and even the cops were suspicious about what happened that night? She wanted to talk to Mack.
She let Zumba stretch out a little. Mack’s house wasn’t so far away and he would more than likely be sitting on his verandah or digging in his tiny vegetable garden.
But he was round the back at the car shed looking at his old car. He heard her arrive only at the last minute and when he swung round she saw he had tears in his eyes behind his glasses.
He apologised, removed the glasses and wiped the tears with a chequered green handkerchief.
‘Pathetic, isn’t it? The car makes me think of Celie.’ He put the handkerchief in his pocket, blinked a few times and put his glasses back on. ‘I went for a drive in it, you know?’ He looked old and worn but mentioning the drive made him suddenly brighten.
‘Sounds a little reckless, Grandpa. Next thing you know you’ll be throwing wild parties.’
He laughed, seemingly glad to be enticed away from his thoughts. ‘And what can I do for you? Painting finished?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Sure.’
They sat at his small kitchen table while he made a pot of tea. There were tea cups and bought biscuits and milk in a dainty little jug. She made sure she helped him with the pouring. She felt she was staring at his eyes so she jumped straight in to tell him what she’d found and ask what to do about it.
He was thoughtful for a while. ‘Do you honestly think your mother is the sort of woman to have an affair?’
The way he said it, so plainly and sensibly, made her immediately see how stupid she’d been. Of course it wasn’t about her mother.
‘Sometimes when you eavesdrop you hear things you’re not meant to hear. I don’t know what your father’s up to, but it probably has a context that we don’t know about.’
There was something hard about him now. Her kindly old grandfather had been pushed aside by someone who could do what had to be done. The change was unnerving. Something in her face must have said so because Mack smiled at her and put his hand on hers.
She realised she was staring at him intently again. She was seeing what she hadn’t been able to see before: the steel in his eye. She had been beguiled by his gentle manner and grandfatherly looks and had only painted that part of him.
What was missing was his resolve, as much a part of him as everything else and she hadn’t been able to see it. There was a lot she’d missed seeing of late.
BROCK
It was the biggest meeting they’d had for some time. The husbands were there, as well as the community. Andy had taken a seat just back from the table and he was joking with some of the other fathers. In the few months Brock had been at the school, these fathers had never been to a meeting. He guessed they’d been marshalled for support and it made him feel alone among people who disliked him. And then he saw Sarah’s face. She was smiling at him and he remembered there was support for him even if he couldn’t see it.
Jennifer was in her favourite position at the head of the table, at the top of the heap, calmly looking around and smiling, occasionally shuffling through some notes. Susie Green sat beside her, scribbling down the names of those present. Brock placed himself on the other side of Susie and looked at his hands and the lines in the desktop and the kids’ work around the room. He hadn’t told anyone of his plans except to say to Jennifer that he wanted to make an announcement in the meeting. When he told her this she smiled in a way that showed pleasure and firmness that he knew was designed to keep him on the hook.
He had spent hours thinking about his next move. A fight with Jennifer would be too destructive, for him and the school and maybe even Jennifer. If he was ever coming back, and he probably wasn’t, he had to leave them with something positive and something to remember him by.
Jennifer brought the meeting to order and went through the formalities. There was only one apology, Ian Howard. Someone unkindly muttered that he must be babysitting but Sarah appeared to take no notice.
‘Before we go into general business the principal has asked if he could say a few words.’
She’d never referred to him as ‘the principal’ before. It had always been Brock in these meetings. (And elsewhere. In fact, hadn’t she called him ‘babe’ at one point?) He didn’t get to his feet but he did take out some notes he had written.
He cleared his throat. ‘Good evening, everyone. I think we’d all agree it’s been a difficult time at the school recently.’ He took a deep breath. ‘As you probably know, the investigation has concluded that my cigarette caused the school to burn down. I told the investigators I was smoking in the office before the meeting. Because of the trauma something like this causes a school, I am prepared to accept the conclusion. I don’t think we want another investigation.’ He stopped and let the silence hold while he hoped the next few sentences wouldn’t stick in his throat. Discomfort rippled round the room, bodies wriggled, people coughed, chairs rattled and paper shuffled. He didn’t see what they were doing because he kept his head down, staring at the words to come.
‘For the record, the department has not suggested or asked that I leave this position. The department believes I am perfectly capable of teaching and looking after your children.’
And now he looked up at them. Andy was glaring at him, seemingly ready to leap out of his chair if his revelations went any further. Sarah’s face was composed, Jennifer’s a blank. He wanted to prolong the moment, and maybe even extract some more drama, but he couldn’t do it. The words kept on coming.
‘But I will not be teaching and looking after your children. This has been a very taxing and painful episode for me. I have decided to take stress leave and have told the department that you should be free to
select a new principal. They have asked Mrs Gwen Clift to stand in for me until you’ve found a replacement. Thank you for your support. I have very much enjoyed teaching your children.’
He turned to Jennifer and she immediately struck up a chorus of how good he’d been and how sorry she was and what a pity it would be to see him go, and the room clapped loudly.
He stood and then paused. They were still applauding and Jennifer had turned back towards them, waiting for it to finish. He bent down (taking his final gamble that in that blindsided moment, if she had ever felt anything for him she would show it, however briefly, there and then) and kissed her tenderly on the lips, letting it linger for a second, catching her unaware and unguarded, even as the crimson flush was rising in her face. The room clapped a little louder. He didn’t know why and he guessed neither did they. Then he turned and walked out, careful not to grin until he was outside. It felt like it was finally his day.
SARAH
All that and then: nothing. Brock was gone, and in the space of two weeks was becoming a memory. Stony Creek was a mud pool that could suck in and sink even the largest disaster, leaving not a ripple, so you never knew anything had ever been any different.
It was cold now and Sarah’s garden was still green and leafy except for the sticky branches of the deciduous trees etched into the fenced-in picture. Julia had a cold and Damien a cough, and as soon as she’d beaten the sniffles herself a new variant arrived from the school. It wasn’t just the weather that was bleak. Sarah felt empty and chilled in her skin. Someone had turned off a radiator somewhere. She kept stomping around the house saying: ‘Is it cold in here or is it just me?’ and ‘There’s a cold draught coming in somewhere. Did someone leave the hallway door open?’ Ian and the kids ignored her as they littered the house with clothes they had removed in the warmth.
The Good Teacher Page 15
