When he was gone, Mack’s face turned serious. ‘I’ve got a confession to make and it’s important.’
Madison sat back, ready to listen. The old man in the next bed was muttering to himself in a cocoon of lingering antiseptic.
‘When you found that message on the computer—’ he looked at her and she nodded, ‘—I asked if you thought your mother was the sort of person to have an affair? You remember?’
She did remember. It had stopped her fears dead.
‘Well, I wasn’t being truthful and I don’t ever want to be untruthful with you.’
It was a touching thing to say but she could feel dread battering in her stomach.
‘Your mother was having an affair, with the teacher. That’s why he had to go—to put a stop to all that nonsense.’
It flattened her. She forced herself to sit up straight to combat the feeling. Her mother doing that to her father, to her, and then the removal of the principal.
‘Are you sure?’
He nodded gravely.
‘How did you get him to go?’
‘We …’ He looked down at his hands and thought for a moment. ‘We suggested it might be best, for everyone.’
It was difficult to take the information in. Would someone really leave their job on a suggestion? She didn’t want to know. Her mother had acted in a way that didn’t make any sense. It didn’t fit with the person she knew, but it did fit with Ian’s suggestion and her father’s hypothetical. Perhaps it was real. Mack wouldn’t tell her if it wasn’t. It seemed so selfish of her mother.
‘Thank you for telling me.’ She stood, tucked him in and kissed him. ‘I’d better get going. I’ll ring you and someone will drop in tomorrow, okay?’ He smiled wanly and she knew he wanted her to stay longer, but she needed space and time to deal with what he had told her. ‘You need to rest now.’
Driving home, she wondered what she was supposed to do with a lump of that sort of information: her mother had had an affair and her family forced the poor bloke out of town and out of his job. It was the Wild West and she was on the side of the bad guys. But the principal was back in his job so that part was fixed at least. She’d meant to tell Mack, but the appearance of the detective had put her off balance.
The best thing would be to forget about the whole thing. What happened at the school had no bearing on her life or her future and no one, not her mother or her father, had asked for help or even suggested there was a problem.
‘Leave well enough alone’ was the phrase she was grasping at but the emotions pounding at her chest were those that had assaulted her when she realised what her own actions might have done to Sarah’s little children. She knew now, better than anyone, that even her boring, stolid, seemingly unchanging community could be torn apart by carelessness or passion or a combination of both.
It seemed to Madison that it was up to her to put things right.
DETECTIVE JOHNSON
Detective Johnson drove back to his office from the hospital, alarmed at his own transparency. It was like he was trying to be an open book for the Booth family. That was not the way he worked, the way anyone worked. The girl would go back to her mother and warn her about the detective who thought the principal should have kept his job and believed he had the power to make it happen. So unprofessional.
But the fact that Brock had lost his job was eating at him. Grant knew in his heart that, had he pushed a little harder he could have found out who really burnt the school down, and he was pretty certain that person wasn’t the principal.
He wound his way past shops, service stations and fast-food outlets. On the corner, he saw two drug dealers he knew well and gave them a little wave. They turned away, which made him smile. Grant didn’t mind if the crooks he caught got roughed up a bit or treated a little unfairly. He wasn’t even that concerned about the corruption he had encountered back when he was young policeman in the city. But he didn’t like it when innocent people suffered because the police didn’t do their job. And what was more, he had a strong belief that teachers were important. They were undervalued, like police.
He drove in the back entrance of the yellow brick Fresh Well Local Area Command and into his parking space, assuring himself nobody had died, nobody was missing, nobody was injured and nobody had been assaulted. Of all the stuff he had learned in his many years in the police force one of the most significant was to let things go. You couldn’t solve every case, right every wrong or fight every injustice. Or so he told himself as he got out of the car onto the worn asphalt. Perspective, it was called. But he still couldn’t get his perspective on that case. The answer was, as always, cake. Especially now it had been forbidden by his wife, Brodie, and his daughter, Kia. He got back into his car and headed for the supermarket. The supermarket cakes weren’t nearly the same quality as the bakery’s, but he could cover them in his basket with healthy foods and get through the checkout quickly without anyone snooping on him and telling Brodie.
In the cake and pastries aisle he picked up a clear plastic container of mud cake with white and chocolate icing, and then for no good reason added a sponge roll. He quickly crossed the aisle to grab a box of cereal and a bag of muesli, then went to the stationary aisle for a packet of ten pens and a scribbler pad. He hadn’t seen anyone he knew, not even in the distance. There were queues at the counters, but not at the ‘8 items or less’ sign.
The bored girl on the checkout scanned his cakes and put them in a plastic bag. He had made it. He relaxed. A fist pump might not be out of place.
The girl said: ‘Getting your provisions, eh?’
‘What?’
‘Bit of cake. I like a bit of cake too.’ She licked a lip wickedly. ‘You like a bit of cake?’
‘Ah, not really. It’s for my son.’ He gave a little disdainful grimace and pushed away a panicked thought that he knew her from somewhere: a friend’s daughter, an ex-pupil of his wife, someone he’d arrested.
‘I’m not judging,’ she said, scanning the pens. ‘I just like cake.’
In the driver’s seat he pried the lid off the mud cake, tore off a handful and shoved it into his mouth. He was savouring it, dreaming over it and wishing he had a cup of tea to go with it, when his phone rang. He let it ring. It was his boss but the cake in his mouth didn’t allow him to talk and chewing would insinuate he was out to a long lunch. It rang again and he swallowed and sucked on his water bottle.
‘Johnson.’
‘Grant? Kirrily. My phone’s down so I’m using the boss’s landline.’
‘What can I do for you?’
Kirrily Asker was a junior in the office—sharp, efficient, reasonable, well-mannered and terrifying because of it. ‘Got a young woman called Madison Booth, rang in, wanted to talk to you about a case. Thought it might have been important.’ She read the number out and he scribbled it down on the supermarket docket.
‘Thanks, Kirrily. Big help.’
‘No worries.’ The phone was silent. ‘Ah, Grant, where are you? Boss is asking.’
‘Just coming back from the hospital checking on that hit-and-run.’
‘All good, thanks.’
He put the phone down and ripped off another large piece of cake. A call from the Booth girl fuelled his interest. Did she have more evidence against Brock? Was the family moving to have him kicked out of the teaching profession?
He cleared his mouth, smacked his lips and called the number.
BROCK
Driving in on that rough gravel road, the sun bright and golden above him, Brock felt like a victor—Caesar returning to Rome, was it? It was nearly spring and he wanted a hill to crest and then roll down into the village with crowds cheering on either side, waving palm leaves, songs starting up. He could see the jubilant faces of Sarah and the other parents and even Jennifer was there, begrudging at first, but gradually giving in to the mass desire to cheer him home.
But when he got out of his car at the principal’s residence, the fresh reality of the air told him that
he had driven back into the gaping, slobbering maw. Jennifer and her family would be very unhappy, and would do what they could to send him packing again. He might have the department on his side and even the parents, but it would be difficult and stressful. He really would have to gird his loins to survive what was coming.
He carried his bags to the house and wondered who might bring him a cake this time. The memory aroused him involuntarily and he pushed the thought aside in despair. How could he still respond that way to a woman who had done what she had?
The house was the same as he left it: empty, musty, unloved. Even the rats and mice hadn’t bothered to visit while he was away. It was frighteningly symbolic.
There were three days until he started and he had a lot to plan. He wanted to make sure the children went home at night bubbling with the exciting day they’d had. Brock had ploughed through piles of resources seeking topics that he could teach from different angles in different ways. Damien Howard, Sarah’s boy, nice kid, had become very interested in bushrangers. Brock had a few ideas for a unit on bush-rangers that might bring them to life. They could have a dress-up day and maybe make a movie and even go on an excursion.
No parent could deny a child who was happy and interested at school. It was one of his few weapons. But Jennifer had no primary-school-aged child to persuade her. His only weapon against Jennifer was persistence: keep on plugging away, doing the best job he could, enduring whatever she came up with to get rid of him. If she tried the sexual harassment thing he would have to fight it out, convince more people than Sarah that the sex had been consensual.
He put groceries in the fridge and this time it was food for an adult: fruit, vegetables, meats, grainy breads, not the frozen fast foods and chocolate he had brought first time round.
When he was fully unpacked, and had gone as far as placing clothes in cupboards and hanging shirts in the wardrobe, he made a cup of tea in the kitchen and almost laughed out loud. This place he had yearned to come back to was the most cock-eyed version of Shangri-la anyone had ever come up with.
A walk around the school grounds showed it had been well maintained. Anyone could tell a community cared about this school. A car passed in the distance and he wondered who it might be: someone on Jennifer’s side or someone on Sarah’s. But he dismissed the speculation as melodrama, because it wasn’t a friend or an enemy, it was just another white ute ploughing up the gravel.
The standard roses along the wall of the toilet block were starting to flower. He noticed the garden bed that ran the length of the front fence hadn’t received the renovation the P&C had been promising. Perhaps they would get around to it soon.
The children had left their work in their tote trays. It was within the curriculum, completed and signed off, and perhaps you shouldn’t ask for more than that. But there was no sign of an original idea or new way of presenting lessons that might excite and interest them. That was the challenge. Anybody could run out the same old lessons every year, even the same old jokes, and then be frustrated by how lazy or disconnected the children were, when they could sense it was you who was lazy and disconnected. He realised the sensation he was feeling was excitement: the greedy frisson of knowing he could do this job better than it had been done, that he could inspire and challenge and promote these young people. This was where he wanted to be, this was what he wanted to do.
He pushed the door open to his new office and couldn’t help re-live the moment with Jennifer. It rushed back at him from the new table and the new walls and the new wastepaper basket. An experience so rich and so powerful he knew he would return to it forever. But that’s all it was: an experience. He had given in to every small need and ridiculous demand of the women he had liked. It was time, his time, if he was brave enough to ignore the demands of others, to reach out and grab what he wanted.
He had reached the status of principal (of a P6 school) and he should have used that to look for a larger school, in a better, more populated, area. Leverage the experience. It’s what Emily would have done. It’s what Jennifer would have done. And he liked that about them.
But no matter how smart it was and how good it would have been for his career, his finances and his love life, he simply couldn’t go along with it. Instead he was the Stony Creek Primary principal, for better or for worse.
ANDY
He was angry about the principal returning. They had done such a good job in squeezing him out, a marvellous piece of manoeuvring now gone to waste. Couldn’t the principal take a hint? The community would be hostile, the P&C cranky, he wouldn’t have a friend in the district and this is what he wanted to come back to? The teacher was returning to stir things up and maybe get some sort of revenge. It was bloody-minded, that’s what it was.
Jennifer seemed particularly upset, which pleased him. She was quick to agree that they needed to get rid of him again as soon as possible.
It wouldn’t be so easy this time. The claim of sexual assault would be hard to sustain after that kiss. If Jennifer had been assaulted by him, she would have recoiled, slapped, punched, vomited, cried, you name it, not sat there, dumb-struck, like a blushing bride. That’s what Andy thought, anyway. He didn’t wish to revisit the whole shame-making business.
Perhaps Andy should offer the principal money to leave. Would he take $20,000? Or perhaps he should appeal to Brock’s better nature and point out what his presence was doing to the Booth family and the community and, as a result, to the schoolkids. No principal would want that. But in coming back this bloke was showing that he did want that—upheaval and uproar, to leave his mark on this community.
He drove down a soft black soil track alongside a wheat crop, the lush green plants pushing out their first heads. He parked, got out and strolled down along a furrow out into the crop. It was thigh-high and thick, free of weeds. It made him proud, but the discussion in his head was distracting. Maybe he was worrying too much about the principal. Perhaps Jennifer had genuinely made a mistake and was now over him. If she was, then there was nothing to worry about. Most marriages had a challenge like this at some stage, didn’t they? He just had to outlast it. And trust his wife. He had no sense that she was deceiving him or planning to break up their marriage. There was no indication that she wanted the principal to return or that she was planning to re-ignite anything that had happened between them. So shouldn’t he accept the evidence of his eyes and relax about the whole thing? He walked back out of the lines of green uniformity, telling himself there was nothing to worry about and wishing again he could chew it over with Abi. He considered ringing her, away from the house, removed from the sharp ears of his household.
What did she look like these days? Matronly, perhaps, round and jolly—voluptuousness turned into volume. He wouldn’t mind that. If you liked someone, you liked them, and the way they looked was no more than an extension of that.
Sitting alone in the ute, next to a couple of hundred hectares of promising crop, he could picture himself liking Abi. See them together. Him showing her the farm and all the things he had achieved, her filling him in on all the bits of her life he had missed. Laughter and handholding. Tim had moved on and so the fantasy seemed without moral hindrance. Jennifer had had her fun, so why couldn’t he?
He expelled a breathy half-laugh. Now he was being perverse. You couldn’t justify a scenario like that while expecting fidelity from your wife. The wandering mind was a dangerous thing for a middle-aged man, but there was plenty of time for it in the tractor or the header. Uncontrolled musing was the farmer’s companion. A kind of drunkenness, a flight of fancy, that you thought better of in the morning.
But so many of the things he had thought with and about Abi were at arm’s length, unclouded by the dreamy. He had talked to her about himself, about how he felt. It was something he almost never did, except with a few beers under his belt or in the early days with Jennifer when he’d said ‘I love you’ because even he knew it had to be said. He’d meant it too, couldn’t stop himself repeating it. When
he said it now he still meant it, but it had that funny tinny ring to it when it came out. The sound of something you had to say, like an apology. It didn’t mean you weren’t genuine, just that you felt obliged somehow. And then obligation came with other baggage. That baggage was heavy in his thoughts now, the whole time he was telling himself he needed to keep the marriage together, to keep the farm together, to keep the family together.
JENNIFER
She thought she would take one drive past the school and if she saw Brock and felt something, then that would make the decision for her. But if she saw him as the insignificant primary school teacher she knew him to be, then she would lie about the timing and say the child was Andy’s. As long as she held the line he would most likely be happy to dispense with disbelief.
She had been talking to herself as she drove, rationalising and reassuring, and had forgotten to take much notice of the road she knew so well. So when the school loomed it came almost as a surprise, all straight lines and colour. And there was Brock, in all his daggy-socked splendour, wandering the grounds like the unmoored soul he could be. The sight of this unremarkable man, to whom she had done so much wrong, made her stop the vehicle in the middle of the road. If she drove any further she would be unable to control herself. The thought of returning to that sort of lunacy was terrifying enough to trump her desire. But she knew now that she had to be with Brock and she had to find a way to make being with him possible.
Jennifer turned the car around, hoping she wasn’t seen, and headed towards home, running through scenarios, sensible and insane, that would allow them to be together.
Near her house, she saw Andy getting out of his ute in the paddock. He waved a hand without commitment. She waved back, feeling like chattel or a taken-for-granted employee and knew instantly that she didn’t love him: a dead, flat understanding that in her quietest moments she had done her best to water down. She also knew that Andy would do what he could to keep their marriage in one piece, even if, in the end, it was only for commercial reasons.
The Good Teacher Page 19
