Chapter 2

Feeding time

Leahy was an enigma in so far as he’d been teaching for the past ten years and had been head of economics at St. Wilfrid’s for the previous four years, and yet openly admitted that he couldn’t abide kids and had not the slightest interest in anything pertaining to economics. As the term went on, I found that he was very rarely sober and always in a very sorry state first thing on a Monday. His breath generally smelled of brandy or whisky, although occasionally it carried a top note of peppermint.

And in a school where subjects taught from textbooks generally took second place behind those like drama, PE, and woodwork, his economics classes were always fully subscribed, and not because those who attended were forced into taking the subject but because they actually chose to study that and not music or technical drawing.

I use the word ‘study’ here, of course, in the very loosest of senses because Brendan was rarely in a fit state to teach, and his pupils were never really in the mood to be taught – leastways, not by him. Of his own volition, Rory Peters admitted to me that he regularly ran a poker game in Leahy’s lessons, and it was Sharon Mackenzie who, even before young Rory’s revelations, told me how she’d often seen Robert Milford surreptitiously fingering Susanne Clarke in the economics class. For a minute or two when Sharon and I were talking, I’d puzzled over her use of the words ‘economics class’, initially thinking that she was just using some strange new euphemism for the female reproductive parts, but as the conversation went along, I came to realise that she actually did mean the economics class.

And these kids weren’t exactly the brightest stars in the firmament, so how on earth Brendan managed to get them through their exams I’ll never know. True, if you’d asked any one of them to work out the winnings (after tax) on a £5 each-way bet on a 10:4 favourite that came in second at Newmarket, they’d have come back with the correct solution before you could draw your next breath; but ask them to calculate three years’ compound interest on £150 invested at 5½% and you’d still be waiting on an answer when the devil was struggling to de-ice his windscreen.

‘I’m going down to first sitting,’ Brendan had said when he came to call to my lab on day one. ‘Didn’t know whether you fancied coming down with me … it being your first day here and all?’

I was a bit taken aback by his visit but happily said yes and, as we walked across to the dining hall, he explained that it was one of the few proper perks of the job that we didn’t have to pay for our lunch.

‘You just have to sit and suffer eating at the same table with the little brats,’ he said, ‘trying as best you can to ignore them while they argue over the sodding gravy and jab each other with forks.’

When we entered the dining hall we were greeted by an overpowering smell of boiled cabbage, which was somewhat surprising because it wasn’t on the menu that day. Brendan and I were each provided with a piece of battered cod, some rather sorry-looking chips, and a spoonful of peas, and he then directed me quickly to head for the two remaining seats at a table that was otherwise occupied by six little girls. It didn’t take Einstein to figure out why Brendan had picked that particular table, those surrounding it generally being populated with very menacing-looking individuals that I would not have wished to meet in a dark alley at night.

And yet although the six small freckle-faced females seated at our table initially looked to be innocence personified they soon made it manifestly clear that they were not. The more garrulous of the set introduced herself as Madelaine.

‘I had such a stiff neck when I got up this morning,’ she said apropos of nothing. ‘Is yours stiff when you wake in the morning, sir?’ she asked me, wearing a smirk that stretched from one ear to the other. Her friends all tittered and one of them choked up a pea.

‘Don’t spit it out, Mary, swallow it,’ Madelaine said, and she qualified her remark drawing a parallel with the bishop’s instruction to the actress. Her friends all tittered again.

I took my lead from Brendan, studiously ignored the girl, and concentrated hard on my cod and chips.

‘I do like your jacket, sir,’ she said a while later, and I stupidly took this to be a genuine compliment and gave her a little nod and an appreciative smile. ‘My mum’s got one the exact same,’ she said, and her friends all tittered some more.

She was a laugh a minute was young Madelaine.

Thankfully though she eventually fell to eating her fish and chips and Brendan and I were glad of the intermission. Gazing around me I took stock of the assembled throng and began seriously to wonder whether taking this job had been a wise move. My morning’s brief encounter with Sharon Mackenzie and Tracey Watkins had been bad enough, but that pair now seemed positively angelic compared to those that I saw and heard at the adjacent tables.

‘Look where you’re bloody going then you dozy fat git!’ said a spindly-legged boy as he turned and collided with the short and wide-bodied boy who was coming up behind him in the serving queue. The little tubby kid took objection to this and gave the lanky lad a hefty shove. There was then an almighty smash as the lanky lad fell backward and toppled a pile of dinner plates to the floor.

I seemed to be the nearest member of staff and felt that I ought to do something, so I made a move to go over but Brendan laid a hand on my arm. ‘Stay put and eat your lunch,’ he said. ‘Leave it to Jackson. He’ll sort them out. He likes that sort of thing.’ Brendan nodded his head to point the man out as he bounded across the hall with all guns blazing. ‘He’s head of boys’ PE,’ Brendan informed me. ‘42-inch biceps, with an IQ and a mouth to match,’ he added with a grin.

Jackson did a lot of yelling and waving his arms about and arranged for the warring parties to clear the broken plates with dustpans and brushes. He then gave each of them a clip round the ear and sent them down to the back of the queue. Brendan and I finished our first course and moved to savour the sweet and sticky delights of our jam roly polys and custard.

Part-way through my pudding, as I was struggling to unstick some of the stodge from my back teeth, a little chap with an RAF moustache came and leaned in beside me. He introduced himself as Pat Feeney, the Head of Fifth Year. ‘Sorry to interrupt your lunch, Mr. Wilde,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid I’m going to have to call on you to look after a form for me this afternoon. Miss Taylor’s been taken ill with her legs again and the deputy head’s had to run her down to the hospital.’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘No problem. I’d be happy to help.’ But I really didn’t mean that.

‘It’s 5V,’ Feeney continued. ‘They’re in room 24, at the top of the first staircase. Registration is 1.25 to 1.40 and the register goes back in the secretary’s office when you’re done.’

‘No problem,’ I repeated, and he patted me on the shoulder, thanked me, and departed.

Brendan and I scooped our pudding bowls clean, gulped down the last of our water, and rose to return our crockery and cutlery to the counter. As I turned my back to go, Madelaine delivered some remark which I think made reference to my bum, but I pretended I hadn’t heard.

Once outside the hall, Brendan and I parted company. I walked back to the Upper School staff room, while he made his way to the school gates, heading for the pub at the top of the road. ‘5V?’ he checked as he went off, and I said yes.

‘Right, yes. I know them,’ he said. ‘Joe Painter had them when they were 4V. Complete bastards the lot of them. You need to watch your back, son, or they’ll have you for breakfast.’

And as I circumnavigated the school pond hastily seeking the sanctuary of the staff room, I started to feel a little bit sick. To distract myself, I tried to recall the different symbols they’d told me to use to distinguish between late attendances and authorised and unauthorised absences in the class registers – and I couldn’t for the life of me remember. And did you use a red pen for attendance and a blue pen for absence or was it the other way about? I couldn’t remember that either. I made a mental note to make sure that I paid proper attention when people explained things to me in the future. And I also gave some thought to handing in my notice.

Madelaine and her friends came charging past me, and they giggled as they went by. Madelaine turned and ran in reverse for a while and shouted back to me, ‘Mary says you tickle her fancy, sir. Do you want to come and tickle mine?’ But she and her grey-skirted gang had disappeared behind the bike sheds before I could summon the wit to answer.

When I later mounted the stairs to room 24 my feeling of nausea had intensified considerably.