Different Class Read Free Page B

old gown and made my way down to the Staff Common Room in good time for tea and a chocolate biscuit before the Headmaster’s first Briefing of term.
    To my surprise, I found the Common Room already crowded. Curiosity, I suppose – besides which there’s not a lot of space when all the staff get together, and, today of all days, no one wanted to miss the chance of a ringside seat.
    My favourite chair was unoccupied. Second from the left, under the clock, at a comfortable angle of sixty degrees. Years of judicious lounging have moulded that chair to my exact measurements, and it will take more than a change of Head to affect its contours. I poured a cup of tea from the urn and settled in happily.
    Eric Scoones was already there. My colleague for over thirty years, and a friend since childhood, he has the same concerns as I – except that, being a Modern Linguist, he is considered more of an asset to the department, and therefore feels himself to be in a superior position to mine – a fact he likes to emphasize when he is feeling insecure, which, to be fair, is most of the time.
    ‘Morning, Straitley.’
    ‘Morning, Scoones.’
    The years have left their mark on us all, but on Eric Scoones they have settled like barnacles. The boy I knew at eleven years old – small, clever enough to have been put up a School year, mischievous and quick to flee in the face of trouble – has become a brontosaur; a large, slow half-Centurion with a drinker’s nose and an alarming tendency to wheeze when climbing stairs. The mischievous boy has become a man who sees every setback as a direct blow from the Almighty. A bitter man, who believes that Life has robbed him of pleasures as yet unspecified, and looks upon the success of his friends as a personal defeat. And yet, I’m fond of the old ass, as I believe he is fond of me.
    ‘Good holiday, Straitley?’
    Even after so many years, he calls me by my surname, just as he did when we were boys, more than fifty years ago.
    I gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘I’m not sure holidays are my cup of tea. Too stressful.’
    Eric gave me a look of weary superiority. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you could ever be stressed. Not with your workload.’
    Eric sees my timetable, with its small class sizes and emphasis on the Upper School, as a kind of hobby; a pleasant escape from the realities of teaching Modern Languages. Thus, Eric maintains a pretence of being perpetually overworked, in spite of the fact that he has no form, and therefore claims five extra hours a week to himself, while I have to cater to the needs of my boys, their work and their parents. Having been an indifferent form-tutor for the first ten years of his career, Eric now refuses to have a form, and rather despises, I suspect, the affection in which I hold my boys – a sentiment he feels to be undignified, inappropriate, and which will one day lead to trouble. In spite of this, he has a warm heart, which he hides (rather badly) beneath a façade of gruffness.
    ‘Spotted any newbies yet?’
    This was not an idle question. We lost quite a few people last year, including our Head of Department. This has left the Languages Department sadly depleted, with only the League of Nations (a husband-and-wife team of almost unbearable smugness), plus Eric, Devine, Kitty Teague – and, of course, myself – to man the departmental cannons.
    Eric huffed. I took this as an expression of general dissatisfaction. I suspect he had his eye on the Head of Department’s post – in spite of the fact that he ought to be planning his retirement. But Eric is one of the old school, and the promotion of Kitty Teague seems to him unnatural. In our day, women were secretaries, or dinner-ladies, or cleaners. For one to be his superior now goes against every principle.
    ‘It might as well be a girls’ school,’ Eric said morosely. ‘Two more women appointed for French. That’s what you get when you appoint one as Head of Department.’
    I drank my tea and