The Languages Department has not been untouched by the merger, with a number of older colleagues taking enhancement to accommodate their younger counterparts. Kitty Teague is still Head of French, and Dr Devine Head of German, while I, the only Classicist, remain to defend my department of one. Miss Malone (aka The Foghorn) remains, and we have two new members of staff, both appointees from Mulberry House: a young woman of the Low-Fat Yoghurt type, and a young man with a small moustache, too effete for a Young Gun, and yet too trendy for a Suit.
You’d think that all this change might have prompted me to walk the plank. I don’t deny it crossed my mind; but what would I do with my freedom? Rarely does a Tweed Jacket ever thrive in retirement. Like the clothes of the dead, we wear thin: the air does not sustain us. Last year, we lost three: Harry Clarke; Pat Bishop, too young, of a heart attack – though his heart had been broken two years ago; and my old friend Eric Scoones, whose plan to retire in Paris was cut short by a stroke, followed by the savage onset of dementia. A shock will do that, my doctor says, and Scoones had suffered several that year, including the death of his mother. He ended up at Meadowbank – the hospice in which Harry had died – and died of a second stroke three months later. It was a mercy, I suppose: by then he had lost the power of speech, and his eyes were those of a lost dog. Of course, he was lost to me long before that – but we do not speak of that old affair, or of my suspicions regarding the boy, the erstwhile David Spikely. Besides, it’s over now, isn’t it? No need to go digging up the past. St Oswald’s moves on, and I with it.
I have a new form this year. My old 4S have become 5M, with Miss Malone, aka The Foghorn, in charge. I dare not think what carnage my Brodie Boys – Tayler, Sutcliff, McNair and Allen-Jones – will manage to wreak under her reign. The Foghorn may sound imposing, but as soon as they realize that she is all sound and no substance, they will be in their element. And damn it all, I miss them. I’ve had them in my form for two years. They know my little foibles. Too much has already changed this year – new Head, new staff, new school. Is it really too much to hope that something, at least, would stay the same?
My own form is 2S this year, and I will be teaching both boys and girls. Thirty-two of them this year; but the merger with Mulberry House has increased our class sizes as well as proportionally raising standards and (according to the new Bursar) improving our finances immeasurably. Like a marriage of convenience between an impoverished nobleman and a merchant heiress, this merger will save our fortunes, while sadly curtailing our old way of life. Certainly, this year there has been no more mention of selling off the School playing fields. I have to admit that is a relief, but this is tempered somewhat by the fact that admitting girls to the School also means disruption: new scents; the sound of high-pitched laughter; the introduction of salads for lunch as well as the construction of various new amenities. Hence the new netball courts, changing rooms, toilets, showers and even a new sports hall, complete with swimming pool, paid for by the parents of Rupert Gunderson, who have also lent their name to a prize: the Rupert Gunderson Medal for Academic Excellence. Not that Gunderson was ever outstanding in anything but his ability to exploit weakness in a younger boy, but most things can be forgotten, I find, with the help of a large enough donation.
However, the work on the Gunderson Building has, like the young Rupert Gunderson, been both slow and disruptive. Far from being a credit to the School, it has already defied deadlines, ignored planning permissions and finally come to a standstill, with the result that, instead of a brand-new pool block ready for the new term, we still have a muddy building site around an unsightly concrete shell, surrounded by a chain-link fence, awaiting a ruling from the Council Planning Office next month. Thus I sensed that, during this term, Breaks would largely be spent patrolling the site, keeping it clear of intruders.
But I had other work today. The first day of term at St Oswald’s is traditionally free of boys, while staff attend meetings, do paperwork and ease gently into the old routine without the hindrance of teaching. Which is why I was here at 7.30 a.m., drinking tea from a St Oswald’s mug and surveying the view from my desk like Canute attempting to hold back the tide. A tide of Formica-topped tables, which, during the summer holidays, has taken all the old school desks, with their inkwells and lids scarred with over a hundred years of Latin graffiti, much of it woefully ungrammatical, but alive with a youthful exuberance that mere Formica cannot reflect. My Master’s desk has remained untouched, in spite of an offer from the new Head to replace it with something more ‘masterly’. I suppose she means something with gravitas, like Dr Devine’s new cedar-wood affair, or her own mahogany writing desk with its ormolu inkstand.
But I have sat at this shabby old desk of mine for over a hundred terms. I know every mark, every cigarette burn, every piece of graffiti. The third drawer sticks, and there is a blackened residue of something at the back of the topmost drawer that might once have been liquorice. I shall keep my desk until the day I am carried feet first from St Oswald’s. As for the new Formica desks, thanks to the Porter, Jimmy Watt, they will shortly be relocated to a different Department, and the old desks (currently in storage in the basement, pending disposal) returned to their original places. Rather a big job for Jimmy, who will have to carry them one by one up the stairs to the Bell Tower, but he has the advantage of being both good-natured and corruptible, and the promise of fifty quid, plus a round of drinks in the Thirsty Scholar, proved more than enough incentive to commandeer his services.
I lit a furtive, delicious Gauloise. The scent of smoke was moody and nostalgic. Autumn has come early this year; the trees in the Upper Quad look scorched, and at the top of the playing fields, the rosebay willowherb has turned from fiery pink to smoky white. It is my favourite time of year; melancholy, rosy and ripe, but this time, it is melancholy that dominates.
Ye gods, but I miss Eric. He was like the smell of chalk and mice and floor polish on the Middle Corridor; barely noticeable until it was gone. Now the Middle Corridor smells of floral disinfectant, and the chalk has been replaced by the reek of whiteboard marker. I know he’s gone, but I still keep expecting to meet him on the stairway; to see him in the Common Room; to hear his greeting: ‘Morning, Straits.’
It’s the time of year. It will pass. But I do miss the old idiot, even after that sad business. Or maybe I miss who I thought he was. Who I wanted him to be. The thought makes me uncomfortable: that, during so many years, he could have kept his dark secret from me. Still, sixty years of shared history counts. I still remember the boy he was. I still remember him as a young man, before the Harry Clarke affair. And whatever he did, I know that, at heart, there was kindness in him, and love, along with the anger and darkness.
According to the Ancient Greeks, five rivers led to the Underworld: Acheron, the river of sorrow and woe; Cocytus, the river of lamentation, Phlegethon, the river of fire; Styx, the river of anger and hate; and, finally, Lethe, the waters of which conferred blessed oblivion. If this is so, then I am at least four-fifths of the way to Hades. The events of past years have taken me through fire and water, darkness and grief. All I can hope for now, I suppose, is the blessed gift of oblivion. Did Eric Scoones welcome Lethe? Or did he struggle against the flow? And in his place, what would I choose? Forgetfulness, or eternal remorse?