Skippy Dies (9 page)

The dearth of eye candy in the staffroom doesn’t do much to brighten the atmosphere, which on a rainy morning, after a fight
with your significant other, can seem singularly lethargic, or even, why not, deathly. Ambitious teachers go on to deanships
– each year has its own dean, and each dean his own office; the denizens of the staffroom are the career mid-rankers, doing
the same thing for twenty years, happy to run out the clock. How dismal and old they seem, even the ones who are not old;
how hidebound, how cut off from the world.

‘Good morning, Howard,’ Farley chimes, crashing through the door.

‘Morning.’ Howard looks up grudgingly from his essays.

‘Good morning, Farley,’ chirrup Misses Birchall and McSorley from their perch by the window.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ Farley returns.

‘Ooh, ask him,’ Miss McSorley prompts her companion.

‘Ask me what?’ Farley says.

‘We’re doing a questionnaire,’ Miss Birchall informs him. ‘ “Are you a kidult?” ’

‘Am I a what?’

She tilts back her head and peers down through her glasses at the magazine. ‘ “The twenty-first century is the age of the kidult
– adults who shun responsibility, and instead spend their lives in the pursuit of expensive thrills.” ’

‘I’m flattered you should ask me,’ Farley says. ‘No, really.’

‘ “Question one,” ’ Miss Birchall reads. ‘ “Are you single? If in a relationship, do you have children?” You’re not in a relationship,
are you, Farley?’

‘He’s never in a relationship,’ Miss McSorley contributes. ‘He only likes
one-night stands
.’

‘ “Question two,” ’ Miss Birchall reads over Farley’s protests. ‘ “Which of the following do you own: Sony PSP, Nintendo Game-boy,
iPod, Vespa or other classic scooter –” ’

‘I don’t own any of those things,’ Farley says.

‘But you’d like to,’ Miss McSorley suggests.

‘Oh sure, I’d like to,’ Farley says. ‘If I had any money I’d own them.’

‘The problem is that we don’t get paid enough to be kidults,’ Howard says.

‘We aspire to be kidults,’ Farley says. ‘How’s that?’

He excuses himself from the rest of the questionnaire on the grounds that he is in urgent need of a cup of coffee after his
second-year Biology class. Since September, Farley’s been teaching the seven characteristics of life, and as they approach
the class on reproduction, the boys have become increasingly agitated. ‘They’re concentrating so hard I can practically hear
it. Today I accidentally mentioned
wombs
. It was like letting a drop of blood fall into a tank of piranhas.’

‘You could feed my entire second-year class to a tank of piranhas and they wouldn’t even notice,’ Howard says morosely. ‘They’d
snooze right through.’

‘That’s History. This is Biology. These kids are fourteen. Biology courses through their veins. Biology and marketing.’ Farley
shunts a pile of newspapers off the couch and sits down. ‘I’m not exaggerating. They’ve been like this since the first day
of term.’

‘Surely they know all of that stuff already. They’ve got broadband at home. They probably know more about sex than I do.’

‘They want to hear it from an adult,’ Farley picks up a photocopy of today’s crossword from the table and with a biro begins
meticulously blacking out the white squares. ‘They want to hear it confirmed officially that for all our talk, the adult world
and their subterranean sex-obsessed porno-world are basically the same, and no matter what else we try to teach them about
kings or molecules or trade models or whatever, civilization ultimately boils down to the same frenzied attempt to hump people.
That the world, in short, is teenaged. It’s quite a frightening admission to have to make. It feels like a capitulation into
anarchy, frankly.’

He returns the crossword, now a single square of blackness, to the table, and leans back Byronically on the couch. ‘This isn’t
how I imagined the teaching life, Howard. I saw myself naming the planets for apple-cheeked sixteen-year-old girls. Watching
their hearts awaken, taking them aside and gently talking them out of the crushes they have on me. “The boys my age are such
dorks, Mr Farley.” “I know it seems like that now. But you’re young and you’re going to meet some wonderful, wonderful men.”
Finding poems on my desk every morning. And underwear. Poems and underwear. That’s what I thought life was all about. Look
at me now. A failed kidult.’

Farley likes to make lugubrious speeches of this nature, but he does not in reality share Howard’s sentiments vis-à-vis deathliness;
on the contrary, he genuinely seems to enjoy ‘the teaching life’ – enjoys the noisy egoism of the boys, the cut and thrust
of the classroom. Howard finds this baffling. Working in a secondary school is like being trapped with a thousand billboards,
each one shouting for your attention, but, when you look, with no idea what it is they want to tell you. Still, it could be
worse. The state-run school not
half a mile away caters to the children of St Patrick’s Villas, the run-down complex of flats behind the more easterly of
the shopping malls; horror stories regularly emerge about teachers pelted with eggs, threatened with sawn-off shotguns, coming
into class to find the blackboard covered in spit, or shit, or jism. ‘At least we’re not in Anthony’s,’ the Seabrook staff
console each other on bad days. ‘There are always vacancies at St Anthony’s,’ the management jokingly-but-not-really tell
staff when they complain.

The door opens and Jim Slattery, the English teacher, bustles in to a flurry of good-mornings.

‘Good morning, Jim,’ chime Misses Birchall and McSorley.

‘Good morning, ladies.’ Slattery shakes rain from his anorak and removes his bicycle clips. ‘Good morning, Farley. Good morning,
Howard.’

‘Good morning, Jim,’ Farley returns. Howard grunts perfunctorily.

‘Pleasant enough day out there,’ Slattery remarks, as he does every morning it’s not actually raining fire, and makes a beeline
for the kettle.

‘Kipper’ Slattery: as re deathliness, Exhibit A. Another old boy, he has taught at Seabrook for decades – in fact he is wearing
the same jacket this morning that he did in Farley and Howard’s schooldays, an eye-searing, headache-inducing houndstooth
that reminds Howard of a Bridget Riley painting. He is an amiable, shambling man, with shaggy eyebrows that bristle from his
forehead like two Yetis about to hurl themselves from a cliff, and has never lacked enthusiasm for his subject, which he communicates
in long, rambling sentences that very few of his students have ever had the tenacity or will to disentangle; instead, by and
large, they take the opportunity to sleep – hence his nickname.

‘Speaking of frenzied attempts to hump people,’ Farley remembers, ‘did you decide what you’re going to do about Aurelie?’

Howard frowns at him, then glances about in case anyone has heard. The Misses, however, are occupied in their horoscopes;
Slattery is drying his feet with a paper towel while waiting for his tea to
draw. ‘Well, I wasn’t planning on “doing” anything,’ he says, in a low voice.

‘Really? Because yesterday you sounded quite het up.’

‘I just thought it was a very unprofessional thing to say on her part, that’s all.’ Howard scowls at his shoes.

‘Right.’

‘It’s just not the way you speak to a work colleague. And this whole business of not telling me her name, it’s so
juvenile
. It’s not like she’s even all that hot. She’s got a highly inflated sense of her own worth, if you ask me.’

‘Good morning, Aurelie,’ the Misses chant; Howard’s head snaps up to see her at the coat-rack, divesting herself of a modish
olive-green raincoat.

‘We were just talking about you,’ Farley says.

‘I know,’ she says. Beneath the raincoat is a pencil-line tweed skirt and a delicate cream sweater that exposes clavicles
like parts of some impossibly graceful musical instrument. Howard can’t help staring: it’s as if she’s walked into his memory
and chosen her outfit from the wardrobe of all the preppy golden-haired princesses he yearned for hopelessly across the malls
and churches of his youth.

‘Howard here is wondering why you won’t let him know your first name,’ Farley says, intuitively dodging to one side so that
Howard’s sharp elbow finds only the back of the couch.

Miss McIntyre dips her little finger into a small pot of lip-balm and gazes down appraisingly at Howard. ‘He’s just not allowed,’
she says, smearing translucent gunk on her lips. Howard is embarrassed at how erotic he finds this.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he retorts gruffly. ‘Anyway, I know your name.’

She shrugs.

‘Well, what if I decide that’s what I’m going to call you? What are you going to do then?’

‘I’ll throw you out of class,’ she says expressionlessly. ‘You don’t want that, do you? Not when you’re doing so well.’

Howard, feeling all of thirteen years old, is lost for words. Fortunately the door opens, and her attention is diverted. You
can always hear Tom Roche coming: since his accident, his right leg barely moves, so he uses a cane, and with every second
step must heft forward his full weight, making his passage sound like a body being dragged. It’s said he’s in constant pain,
though he never mentions it.

‘Tombo!’ Farley raises a hand for a high-five that does not arrive.

‘Good morning,’ Tom responds, with deliberate stiffness.

As he passes the sofa, Howard gets a faint whiff of alcohol. ‘Hey, ah, congratulations on the swimming race the other night,’
he calls after him, hearing his own voice girlish and obsequious. ‘Sounds like you really cleaned the place out.’

‘It was a good team performance,’ the taciturn response.

‘Tom’s taken over as coach of the swimming team,’ Howard explains woodenly to Miss McIntyre. ‘There was a big race at the
weekend and they swept the boards. First time the team ever won anything.’

‘Tombo’s inspirational,’ Farley adds. ‘The kids’d follow him to the ends of the Earth. Like the Moonies.’

‘It makes such a difference to have someone who inspires you,’ Miss McIntyre says. ‘Like a genuine leader? It’s so rare these
days.’

‘Unless he just slipped a little something into their food the night before,’ Farley says. ‘Maybe that’s his secret.’

‘We worked damn hard for that race,’ Tom rejoins from his locker. ‘The boys take it seriously, and we work damn hard.’

‘I know that, Tom. I was joking.’

‘Well, I don’t think it shows a very responsible attitude for a teacher to talk about drug abuse in such a frivolous way.’

‘Would you relax? It was just a joke. Jesus.’

‘Some people around here joke far too much. Excuse me, I have work to do.’ Gritting his teeth Tom jerks himself forward and
lurches out the door.

After a moment has elapsed, Miss McIntyre observes, ‘What an interesting man.’

‘Fascinating,’ agrees Farley.

‘He doesn’t seem too fond of you two.’

‘It’s historical,’ Howard says.

‘Howard and Tom and I were in school together,’ Farley says, ‘and it so happened that the two of us were there the night of
his accident – he had this terrible accident, I’m sure you must have heard about it?’

She nods slowly. ‘He had some kind of a fall?’

‘It was a bungee jump. Up in Dalkey Quarry, on a Saturday night in November – just this time of year, actually. We were in
our final year. Tom was the big sports star – tipped for greatness, just waiting for the call-up to the national team, the
rugby team, although tennis, athletics, he was no slouch at those either. The jump ended everything. It took him a year just
to walk again.’

‘God,’ Miss McIntyre says softly, her head swinging back to the door he just left through. ‘That’s so sad. And does he… have
anyone? To take care of him? Is he married?’

‘No,’ Howard says reluctantly.

‘He’s sort of married to the school,’ Farley says. ‘He’s been here ever since. Teaching civics, helping out with the track
and tennis teams. Now he’s coaching swimming.’

‘I see,’ Miss McIntyre says obscurely, still studying the door. Then she rouses, issues them both a brief summary smile. ‘Well.
I should get some work done too. I’ll catch you boys later.’

She whisks away, leaving a tantalizing spell of perfume that lingers to torment Howard as the ambient lethargy redescends.

‘Minus fourteen in Minsk yesterday,’ Farley reads from the newspaper. ‘Thirty-three in London… Wow, sixty-seven in Corsica.
Maybe we should move to Corsica – what do you say, Howard?’

‘You don’t think she’s into Tom, do you?’ is what Howard says.

‘Who, Aurelie? She just met him.’

‘She seemed
interested
by him.’

‘I thought you decided she had a highly inflated sense of her own worth. What do you care if she’s interested?’

‘I don’t,’ Howard remembers hurriedly.

‘Are you worried she’ll tell him she doesn’t want to sleep with him too?’ Farley says slyly.

‘No, it’s just…’

‘Maybe she’s planning not to sleep with the whole faculty!’

‘Just let it go, would you?’ Howard snaps.

‘Not-to-be-taken Aurelie,’ Farley chuckles, returning to the weather report.

‘Hey, Von Blowjob, let me see your homework.’

‘No way, there isn’t time.’

‘I just want to
see
it, that’s all. Come on, Cujo won’t be here for – hey, Skippy, let me see your homework… hey! Skippy?’

‘Earth to Skippy!’

‘Hmm? What?’

‘Whoa, are you feeling okay? You look sort of green.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Like you’re actually green, like frog-coloured?’

‘I’m just a bit –’

‘Hey, everyone, look at Skippy!’

‘Shut up, Geoff.’

‘He’s turning amphibious!’

‘Hey, maybe if you turn into a frog you’ll be able to speak French better. Hey, everyone, Skippy thinks if he turns – ow!’

Max Brady, waiting to get his homework back from Dennis, scans the doorway. ‘Where is the old bastard?’

‘Maybe he’s feeding his snakes.’

‘Maybe he had a meeting with Satan.’

‘Or he’s off delivering lard to the poor.’

‘ “What is this, lard?” “You’ll eat it and like it!” ’