The Last Weekend (13 page)

‘She has heard. From Campbell.’

‘Then Campbell’s lying.’

‘It’s not what Campbell
told
her. It’s his ear.’

‘I barely touched it.’

She continued to dangle her spectacles.

‘They showed me a doctor’s letter. It speaks of inflammation and temporary loss of hearing.’

‘Nothing I did could have caused that. I’ll call on her after school and explain.’

‘It wouldn’t be in your interests, Ian. She’s very angry.’

‘What
should
I do then?’

‘For now, there’s nothing you can do. Obviously I’d like to avoid the matter going to the governors, but —’

‘The governors?’

‘That’s the usual procedure, as I’m sure you know: an independent investigation of the incident, followed by a governors’ meeting, and where the teacher is found to be at fault an official reprimand, suspension or even … But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ She slipped the glasses back on. ‘I’ll keep you informed of any developments, Ian.’

Em told me not to worry. That the parents of problem kids always sided with them as a matter of principle. But that with all the officialdom involved in lodging a complaint, few of them saw it through and fewer still succeeded. Em is a fount of good sense and I believed her.

Like Mrs Baynes, she strongly advised me against seeing Campbell’s mother in person. So when I knocked at 44

Wythern Road one night the following week, having prised the address from the school secretary, I knew I was acting rashly. But I have dealt with difficult parents before. What was there to lose?

‘Yeah?’ said a male voice. The face was pale, the body sprouting from the vest also. It threw me for a second. As did the tattoo on his shoulder and the shorts. There’d been no mention of a Mr Foster. Was this the father or stepfather? My confusion must have showed. ‘Yeah?’ he said again, more aggressively.

‘It’s Ian Goade from the school.’

His eyes stared at me through a fog. Then the sun came up. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me.

‘Petal!’ he called over his shoulder, then folded his arms and leaned against the door frame. I’d more sense than to ask could I step inside.

‘I was just passing,’ I said, to break the silence.

‘You wait there,’ he said.

Mrs Foster appeared, tall, attractive, unexpectedly straight-haired. Was Petal her name or an endearment? She seemed more friendly than her partner till he said: ‘It’s that teacher what done Campbell.’

‘Ian Goade, pleased to meet you,’ I said.

‘You’ve a nerve,’ she said.

‘I think if you heard what actually happened —’

‘We know what happened.’

‘— and let me describe the sequence of events.’

‘There’s only one event here,’ she said. ‘You hurt my boy. You, a grown man, and him an eleven-year-old. Think yourself lucky I stopped my husband settling the score.’ Whether her husband was the man standing there wasn’t clear — nor at that moment particularly relevant.

‘Campbell was misbehaving in the playground.’

‘We’re not stupid,’ she said, which she clearly wasn’t, though I was less sure about the partner. ‘We know Campbell can be a handful. But if you can’t control kids without hitting them, you’re not fit to be a teacher.’

‘I didn’t hit him.’

‘There were witnesses.’

‘I’m sorry you’ve been misled.’

‘You’ve only come here to save your skin.’

‘That’s not the reason.’

‘I’ve nothing more to say, mister. We’ll see you in court.’

I wanted to tell her that a disciplinary hearing isn’t like court. That she was wasting her time. That it would be better to settle this between us. But she’d already disappeared inside.

‘You heard,’ said the man in the vest, closing the door. ‘Fuck off.’

Em, exasperated, said I’d made things worse for myself. Campbell’s mother would proceed now whatever. I might even be accused of harassing her. I had better start preparing my defence. ‘If you have one,’ she added.

In bed, later, she apologised ('I’m sure you didn’t intend to be rough with him. You hardly ever lose your temper these days'). But I couldn’t sleep, and went online with my anxieties, and found references to outer-ear trauma, auricular cartilage damage, and the risk that lobular tears and excessive swelling could cause permanent damage to a person’s hearing.

Ridiculous, when all I’d done was hold him firmly.

My colleagues at school were vaguely sympathetic, because they know what Campbell is like. But none had been present at the time and I was too proud to approach the teachers’ union for advice. I knew we were allowed to use ‘reasonable force’ in restraining pupils. But when I consulted the relevant paragraph of the Education Act online, I discovered the
following: ‘Deliberate use of physical contact to punish a pupil, cause pain or injury or humiliation is unlawful, regardless of the severity of the pupil’s behaviour or the degree of provocation.’ I could see myself losing everything — my job, the respect of my colleagues, my reputation.

Though half resigned to the hearing going ahead, I did make two more attempts to prevent it. First I tried to catch a word with Campbell in the playground, not to apologise to the little bastard but to show concern for his welfare. ‘Not talking to you, sir,’ he said, rushing past. I also went to see Mrs Baynes: could we not come up with a compromise that would avoid the case being referred to the governors?

‘It’s good of you to offer,’ she said, ‘but even if you
do
resign the hearing will have to go ahead.’

‘I wasn’t offering to resign.’

‘Oh — what are you offering?’

‘I’m thinking of the good name of the school,’ I said.

‘So are the governors,’ Mrs Baynes said. ‘A disciplinary hearing will reassure the parents that physical abuse of children is not tolerated here.’

‘But I didn’t abuse Campbell. All I did was hold his ear.’

‘That’s for the governors to decide. I’m sure they’ll deal with it fairly.’

‘When the only witnesses were kids? Who’re all too afraid of Campbell to tell the truth?’

‘In a situation like this, children are essentially truthful. Anyway, there
was
one adult witness. Me. I saw the state Campbell was in when you brought him to my room.’

‘You know there was nothing much wrong with him then.’

‘I’ll report the truth as I saw it, Ian.’

That’s where the case stood when we broke up for summer. Had the incident taken place a week or two earlier, there might have been time to settle it before the end of term. But
the governors’ next meeting, of which the disciplinary hearing would form part, was scheduled for early September, the day before school resumed.

Now September had almost arrived. The hearing was next Wednesday.

No wonder I couldn’t sleep. And yet I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes again — sprung them from my dream’s dark loop — the yellow circle had risen behind the gingham and the beam through the curtain crack was brighter. I felt rested, and calmer than I had for weeks, as if the dancing dust motes were celebrating my release. Ollie’s news had put my problems in perspective: I had my health at least. Even the bet we’d made last night seemed less than threatening.

I threw some clothes on and slipped from the room without disturbing Em. The stairs were steeply raked and carpetless, but I negotiated them noiselessly, conscious that Daisy was sleeping just along the landing. Ollie, I assumed, would be fussing round the kitchen, kettle boiled, draining board cleared and radio tuned to the morning news — he’d always been an early riser. But the door was on its latch and when I entered there was only Rufus, paddling his tail with pleasure to see me. I let him out, made myself tea and sat on the terrace. The tea tasted odd — I’m used to tea bags, not the real thing — but I was grateful for the moisture. I closed my eyes and let the sun flood them. Ollie’s absence was surprising but a relief.

He had said that the nearest shop was the garage on the main road, and that’s where Rufus and I headed, left at the end of the drive and down through the village. The air was dry and the day already parched: no dew, no sap, no pollen, only seedless pods and flowers withering on their stalks. Even the rooks above the churchyard sounded hoarse. EVERYTHING MUST GO said the empty window of the
general stores, and everything had. But two other shops seemed to be in business: Auntie’s Antiques, which claimed to open daily from 11 to 4, and Two Wheels Good, which had old-fashioned bikes in the window, shiny and ready for hire. The pub, the Old Swan, didn’t look closed, either: out in front, a standing wooden sign — double-sided and held together with a rope, like the letter A — boasted a range of beers and snacks. I walked on, looking for life, but saw no one. Predictably, as we passed the best-kept verge in the village, in front of an Edwardian villa, Rufus hunkered down, arse just above the ground, in that hunched, embarrassed posture dogs adopt when they’re shitting. I’d not brought a pooper-scooper or a plastic bag. But nobody was around to see, so I pretended I hadn’t seen, either.

Beyond the primary school with its metal railings, we passed a cul-de-sac of pebble-dash semis from the fifties. A few cars were dotted about, Ford Escorts and Minis, but again there was no sign of life. Perhaps rural inhabitants are always like this, I thought, slow to rise and lackadaisical. Or perhaps the inertia was peculiar to Badingley. It seemed a little creepy, either way — as if the village were a ghost village, lost in the heat haze of its past.

At the junction with the main road, we reached the modern world. Cream caravans raced by, and Euro-juggernauts. I grabbed Rufus and put him on his lead. He’s normally obedient — I’m strict about punishing him if he misbehaves — but today he strained ahead, excited by the new habitat. ‘Heel,’ I said, reining him in until the road dipped before the garage (I could see the ESSO sign ahead), where he tugged so hard towards a blackthorn hedge that I let myself be taken, assuming he needed another dump. A couple of bluebottles were circling the source. Under clumps of cow parsley, an owl lay in a bed of its own feathers, freshly dead.

‘Sit, sit, sit, SIT,’ I urged Rufus, to stop him acting like the gun dog he was. Though the owl’s face was smashed in, and a trickle of blood tinged the flat beak, the feathers — pearl brown and lacy white — were unblemished. Male or female? If male owls are large, then male, but the whiteness seemed female, the shade of a wedding dress. If Rod had been there, he’d have dissected the owl with his penknife. Even I couldn’t resist slipping my hand into the feathers. The body wasn’t warm but it didn’t have the coldness of the grass. Had the owl died only an hour ago then, in the grey dawn mist? Whatever struck must have been moving at speed to hurl it so far. A high-sided van or lorry, perhaps. With the speed, and the weight, the windscreen must have shattered or cracked. Even if it hadn’t, the blow must have been terrific. Peering down at the corpse, like a surgeon in theatre, my faithful assistant trembling beside me, I could imagine it all: the huge white bird whirling out of the dawn, no time for evasive action, the driver instinctively ducking as it hit. Did he stop and walk back, or keep going? The heavy grass verge showed no sign of disturbance, nor was the road pitted with broken glass. He must have driven on, then. Well, why not? He would have known the owl was dead. Yet not to check and be sure … Owls were rare these days and this one might have young to feed. You couldn’t blame the driver for killing it but you could blame him for his indifference. Who can take a life, even by accident, and not feel a touch of remorse?

In the kind of books we give to our more advanced Year Sixes, a dead owl would be an omen of catastrophe. But I felt privileged to see one at such close quarters. Holding Rufus back with one hand, I uprooted a handful of ferns and cow parsley and covered the corpse as best I could.

As I paid for the milk and papers at the garage, I thought
of telling the lad behind the counter. But what would he care? And how to explain my sense of excitement? The English countryside is tarred and feathered with roadkills. To someone who lived there, it wouldn’t be news.

BADINGLEY, PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY the village sign said as we walked back, then underneath in smaller letters ‘Population —'. There’d been a figure once — 10? 100? 1,000? — till someone scratched it out. We passed the school, the village green, the thatched pottery, the church with its gangling spire — and saw no one. It was as though a space had been cleared specially for me. I’d a lot on my mind or should have had. But as I walked up the drive towards the farmhouse — the sun on my bare arms, dog rose in the hedges, Rufus’s fur burning gold — I felt sharp, bright, eager, refreshed, euphoric.

There was still no sign of life when I re-entered the house. I’d bought two papers to read, one tabloid, one broadsheet, a habit of Ollie’s at university which I thought he might enjoy seeing revived: ‘Important to see how the other half lives,’ he used to say, and though my chippy inner self objected to him saying it (I
was
that other half, the
Sun
had been my father’s daily paper), I kept my trap shut. Had I not gone to uni to better my prospects? And wasn’t a requirement of self-betterment learning to sneer at the culture I’d left behind? Nowadays I rarely bother with newspapers. But the prospect of reading snippets aloud to Ollie was oddly enjoyable — a deferral of the day when he would no longer be around.