by Anon
I no longer had to do much in class. Most lessons they taught each other. And it was during one of these lessons, in which I sat back and listened to the babble of contented learning, that Mentor came in and observed. I panicked. I had no slides, no Lesson Objectives – I hastily made some up – ‘to teach each other’, ‘to read’, ‘to live in another world’. She decided it was Outstanding. The irony. The lesson in which I prepared and did the least was deemed the best.
I was done. I had taught them to teach themselves, and therefore had realised my inbuilt obsolescence. I could begin the process of self-destruction.
*
Soon, Alexia was bossing it in class too: leading the discussion, giving presentations on Woolf’s experiments with time, style, mundanities. She became interested in how Woolf’s vision of a Modernist landscape is fundamentally an optimistic one – there is the possibility of a better world in her work, and you can see how it might be brought about. She compared Woolf’s optimism with Eliot’s pessimism. The whole class argued about who was the most depressing; in the end, most felt that Eliot and Woolf were, in fact, uplifting, and that they had become more positive and enriched since reading them.
Boom ting.
When I finally asked her for a title, she found it difficult to be specific. She said she wanted to do something about modernity and progress and the Theory of Relativity and how Woolf played with the disconnect between real time and inner time. I suggested ‘Progress Over Time’.
She began editing a Feminist Magazine with Zainab and a couple of other girls from her year. She dyed her hair blue.
I told her she had to try for Oxbridge. She asked why.
‘Because you’re more than capable enough,’ I said.
‘But I want to be a social worker,’ she said. ‘Why do I need to go to university at all?’
‘Because you’ll be doing what you love.’
She said she doubted herself too much – not just her talent, but the value of the degree itself.
‘What is the utility in doing a degree in literature in this day and age? I could better spend my time and money – lots of it – studying something with immediate real-world applicability.’
I told her it didn’t matter, it was means-tested, she wouldn’t have to pay anything, or very little. She still didn’t like the sound of it, all those posh, arrogant, cloistered Toryboys. Luckily, she met up with an Old Girl who had gone up the year before, who was humble, grounded and happy. She was convinced.
*
Alexia’s greatest transformation came during her preparations for her Oxford interview. We discussed poems one on one, and did some mock interviews. At one point, I asked her – rhetorically, but perhaps to allay my own doubts – why she wanted to study English. What was the point in the modern age? She said that nothing could be more relevant – at its most basic, what is English but the ability to absorb and analyse media? What skill could be more important in this world where the internet and the real world no longer seem separable? She said the medium was not only the message, but the whole universe. She talked passionately about how she wanted to go to Oxford because she needed to be challenged. She wanted to plunge further into Literary Theory, and to produce radical reinterpretations of patriarchal, canonical texts. She was committed to the new politics of identity – gender, race and sexuality had never been more significant. I said that was great, but that Literary Theory was like heroin. I’d seen some of the greatest minds of my generation hooked on that junk. They never thought or wrote clearly again.
I asked her why she didn’t want to do History or PPE or an Ology.
‘Because I am interested in the inner life. Literature has never been more vital. It is about understanding how we see the world in which we live. And how others see it. And how to make the world better. But more because of the love of it. The love of books. The love of life. The love of some infinite thing.’
Apparently, she didn’t say any of that in her actual interview. I asked what she did say. She just shrugged and said, ‘Oh, you know.’
*
Zainab didn’t say anything in her interview, so didn’t get in. She was fine about it all. She could go to Bristol and be happy. Wally didn’t do any preparation, but was lucky enough to have a room next to the tutors who were interviewing him, so he heard them discussing his interview the night before, and crammed all night. He got in.
Alexia sat down next to me in the Library one afternoon and started taking about her essay, and then said, as an afterthought, that she had got in. I jumped up and tried to hug her. She shrugged. Too cool for school.
22
You Taught Me Language
‘You know, iambic pentameter.’
‘You’re a what?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Iambic pentameter.’
‘What are you?’
‘I’m not anything.’ I said, ‘Iambic pentameter.’
‘You’re a bit what?’
‘You know. Like the heartbeat. Like all that stuff we did. Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum.’
‘Da-dum-da-dum-da-don’t.’
‘Let’s read it again:’
But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
T his airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
‘What is he doing here?’
‘Drowning his book.’
‘What else?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Anyone?
‘Anyone?
‘Bueller?’
*
I was going to finish The Tempest if it killed me. I couldn’t believe that we were finally reaching the end and still Ella didn’t get iambic pentameter.
The bell went.
*
The exam season brought relief; after the constant obsession, the mocks, the predictions, the strategising, they were finally upon us. GCSE and A Level students went on leave, so I barely saw them. Occasionally, they popped up to revise between exams.
The school had emptied out, so felt more like summer camp. My timetable had freed up; I wandered around, peering over kids’ shoulders as they revised, offering pithy asides like ‘Too late now’. Zainab and Alexia read over their highlighted tomes; Liam was lodged at the computer, frantically scouring SparkNotes; Wally pretended that it was all fine, and that he was spending his exam leave in the pub; Ella tried to get me to have her registered as dyslexic, so she could have extra time.
In the last couple of weeks, the English teachers shared out revision sessions. We tried to keep them as relaxed as possible by bringing in Jaffa Cakes and organising games, quizzes, lectures and seminars led by the kids.
In our last session, I was overcome with sadness. They had all worked so hard, and come so far. We had time for only a brief discussion about age, fathers, daughters, honesty, hubris, tragedy, nature, colonialism, art, what might be the exam, and what they would do for the rest of their lives, before the bell went. All the English teachers wrote poems for them, which were mostly riffs on what we had been studying.
Let you go then, you and I,
With your summer holidays
spread out against the sky
Like a patient revising upon a picnic table
The kids stuck their final Post-its on the way out as we wished them Godspeed.
*
I walked out of school with Liam.
‘Please tell me you’ll do some work, Liam,’ I said.
‘I will, Sir.’
‘And you won’t spend the next week playing World of Warcraft.’
‘No, Sir.’
‘But that’s what you said for the mock, and look what happened there.’
‘I was young, Sir.’
He winked at me and went into his house.
> I looked through the Post-its in my pocket.
‘HOORAY!’
‘DONE WITH SCHOOL FOREVER!’
‘Laters.’
‘Thanks, Sir.’
*
The night before the exam, I lay in bed, racked with nerves.
*
Fuck. What if nature doesn’t come up? Or colonialism? Or art?
*
I should have done more on magic.
*
I should have done more of everything.
*
There’s so much I have not told them.
Lesson #1001
You’ve Never Done Enough.
You Are Never Done.
Oh God. Oh God. What if … what if … what if I have been teaching them the wrong thing all along? Like the completely wrong play. Maybe the paper will be about The Merchant of Venice. Then what would they do?
Sue me.
They wouldn’t do that.
Would they?
I’ve had them for two years. We have an understanding.
They’ve driven me nuts, but I already miss them.
I really like them. They’re like my friends now.
I never told them what they mean to me.
*
I arrived long before the exam began to put all the papers out on the desks, just repressing the urge to sneak a peak.
When the kids arrived, I took a paper register and gathered in their textbooks. Alexia was Zen, Zainab looked terrified, Wally diffident, and Ella chaotic. Ella said, ‘Nah, please, Sir, just one more minute!’ as she flicked through the Introduction to the Arden Edition one last time. Liam arrived as they were filing into the gym.
They sat at their desks.
Stillness.
A hand went up for paper.
*
I took the red marker and put the time they would finish on the board, as well as the time for those with extra time. I cleared my throat and commanded, with the solemnity of a priest performing last rites, ‘Begin.’ (The rest of your lives.)
I perched on the desk at the front and opened the paper.
It was a gift. A gift! Such brilliant questions! Women. Colonialism. Art. Authorship.
It was all there.
Phew.
*
All my lot started to scribble spidery essay plans.
Go for it! They’re going to nail it.
*
I stood like a statue for the hour; a statue who occasionally walked, with stately authority, from one side of the gym to the other. And back again. As I walked around, I caught glimpses of what they were writing. Zainab had planned it all perfectly, but was thrown when her turquoise pen started leaking. She looked really panicked from then on; her handwriting became less than perfect, almost skittish. Not as skittish as Wally, who rested his head in the crook of his elbow, and scribbled like a life-support machine of a patient going into cardiac arrest. Isaac was all over the place, but he got something down, at least. Ella wrote slowly, but her plan had at least two quotes on it, so I breathed easier. I caught Liam’s eye. He smiled, winked and made the ’Luminati symbol at me.
*
Have I illuminated? There is so much I haven’t told them. A whole universe.
*
At the end of the exam, they ran out into the playground and signed each other’s shirts giddily.
Alexia was worried. She said she deviated from the essay formula, and from her essay plan. Wally had filled the pages, and was nodding incessantly, saying, ‘Nailed it.’
‘How did it go, Ella?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Pretty well.’
Oh dear. That means it was a disaster.
‘And you, Liam? You seemed to be getting stuck in?’
‘I wrote, like, bare pages.’
‘And you answered both sections?’
‘Er …’
‘Oh God, Liam.’
‘Got you there!’
‘“Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie”.’
‘Wassat?’
‘Nothing, Liam. Nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘See you at the ball, Sir!’
*
And then there was only joy. The sun shone on the girls dancing and the boys playing cricket at lunchtime. Whenever I walked past on my way to lunch, Mick was pretending he could bat. A boy bowled him out, followed by a great melee as the other fielders wrestled each other for the bat. I bowled a few balls at them, which tended to be smashed onto the roof. It didn’t take long for an SM to ban cricket, because the boys were becoming unbearably sweaty and smelly for their afternoon lessons.
*
The sun blazed down on Sports Day. It looked like a medieval jousting tournament. White lines had been drawn on the parched grass; flags fluttered; marquees were fixed to the ground; an ambulance parked near the podium; lines of eager children sat cross-legged in red shorts and blue aertex shirts. One by one, they leapt up as their names were blared from loudhailers and assumed the starting positions. An air of triumphant, final release.
I had hoped I might get recognised with one of the ‘glamour’ roles on Sports Day: medal giver; cameraman; starting-pistol firer. I got Toilet Duty.
The Toilet is in a brown brick bungalow in the middle of the park. The heat made it even more stinky than normal. I sat outside that shit-shack all afternoon.
Not everyone can go toilet at once. It just isn’t feasible. Imagine. The whole school going toilet. That would be chaos. There was a system. Each form got a laminated card. Only one child from each form could go at once. If a child wanted to go toilet, they had to take said laminated card and give it to me.
‘Can I go toilet?’
‘Do you have a card?’
‘No.’
‘You have to have a card.’
‘Oh, Sir, but please. I’m bursting.’
‘I’m sorry, but rules is rules. You’ve got to have a Toilet pass to go toilet.’
‘Please, Sir. Please. I ran the hundred and then I drank a whole Capri Sun. Please!’
I let the child go toilet. The child handed me the card when he came out.
On a day when they were very excited and had been drinking free Capri Sun all day, they definitely didn’t go toilet properly. And they definitely didn’t wash their hands properly. By the end of the day I had most of the school’s wee on my hands.
As the afternoon wore on, I noticed the smell sweeten to the unmistakable scent of sensimilla. Mercedes had been gone a long time and not come back. I knocked on the door of the Ladies.
‘Hey! Put that out! Now!’
A gruff voice replied, ‘A’right, Sir.’
‘Mercedes?’
‘Sir?’
‘Come out here now.’
She emerged sheepishly.
‘You are in a lot of trouble, young lady.’
‘Oh, please, Sir! Please, Sir! Please don’t tell nobody!’
‘I have to tell somebody! It’s my job to tell somebody!’
‘But I didn’t do nuffing wrong!’
‘You were smoking weed in the toilets!’
‘Yeah, but this is a park. It ain’t school.’
She had me there.
‘This is a school event and you are committing a heinous crime!’
‘Wassat mean!’
‘It means this is a criminal offence!’
‘Please, Sir! If I get ’scluded again it will be permanent. I’ll never be able to come back to school. Please. I’m begging you. Look, I’ll use AFOREST. (Whassa-first-one?) Oh, yeah, Alliteration: Please Please Please. F?’
‘Fact.’
‘Fact: I ain’t done nuffing wrong. Den what is it?’
‘Opinion.’
‘Opinion: I don’t fink I done nuffing wrong. I definitely don’t fink I done nuffing wrong. Den what?’
‘R. Rhetorical Question.’
‘Do you fink I done nuffing wrong? No. Didn’t fink so. Den?’
‘E, Emotional Language.’
She pretended to cry.
‘Boo hoo, please, Sir! Please! My heart is breaking! Don’t ’sclude me! If you do den I’ll be on the streets –’
‘Smoking weed in the park toilets?’
‘Zackly! Den?’
‘Statistic.’
‘Statistic: 99 per cent of people who get ’scluded is unfair.’
‘And how much of your brain is destroyed by this stuff?’
‘0.000000001 per cent. And den it is … wait don’t tell me … TRIPLE! TRIPLE! TRIPLE! OK: you won’t regret it because you are the biggest, bestest, most butters teacher in the world.’
‘Get back over there.’
‘Ooh, yeah! I got two hundred metres!’
She ran off, tripping over her laces.
*
Salim sidled up to me.
‘How you doing, Salim? You need to go toilet?’
‘Nah.’
‘Just come for a chat?’
‘I guess.’
‘Did you compete in anything?’
‘Javelin.’
‘How did you do?’
‘So are we going to do a dance at the end-of-year Assembly?’ he asked.
‘Look, Salim. I don’t think –’
‘I’ve worked out a whole routine.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Yeah. Do you want to learn it?’
‘Sure. Why not? Got nothing better to do.’
He looked around, shiftily, to check no one was looking, then pulled his beanie hat down, gathered himself and unleashed a killer set of moves.
‘So this is the Head Scratcher … and this is the Does My Belt Fit … and this is the Hell Yeah It Does.’
‘Wow. Wow.’
‘Come on, Sir! Your turn!’
‘OK.’
We danced. Soon a crowd had gathered around us. I heard someone whisper, ‘Dat is bare embarrassing.’
My severe persona undone in a moment. But what did I care? He was happy and confident, and such a dude.
