Gentlemen & Players Read Free Page A

matter of time before I behold his joyless countenance looking in on me.
    Ah. What did I tell you?
    Right on cue.

    “Morning, Devine!”
    I suppressed the urge to salute, whilst concealing my half-smoked Gauloise under the desk, and gave him my broadest smile through the glass door. I noticed he was carrying a large cardboard box piled high with books and papers. He looked at me with what I later knew to be ill-concealed smugness, then moved on down the corridor with the air of one who has important matters to attend to.
    Curiously, I got up and looked down the corridor after him, just in time to see Gerry Grachvogel and the League of Nations disappearing furtively in his wake, all carrying similar cartons.
    Puzzled, I sat down at my old desk and surveyed my modest empire.
    Room fifty-nine, my territory for the last thirty years. Oft disputed but never surrendered. Now only the Germans continue to try. It’s a large room, nice in its way, I suppose, though its elevated position in the Bell Tower gives me more stairs to climb than I would have chosen, and it lies about half a mile as the crow flies from my small office on the Upper Corridor.
    You’ll have noticed that as over time dogs and their owners come to resemble each other, so it is with teachers and classrooms. Mine fits me like my old tweed jacket, and smells almost the same—a comforting compound of books, chalk, and illicit cigarettes. A large and venerable blackboard dominates the room—Dr. Devine’s endeavors to introduce the term “chalkboard” having, I’m happy to report, met with no success whatever. The desks are ancient and battle scarred, and I have resisted all attempts to have them replaced by the ubiquitous plastic tables.
    If I get bored, I can always read the graffiti. A flattering amount of it concerns me. My current favorite is Hic magister podex est , written—by some boy or other—oh, more years ago than I like to remember. When I was a boy no one would have dared to refer to a Master as a podex . Disgraceful. And yet for some reason it never fails to make me smile.
    My own desk is no less disgraceful; a huge time-blackened affair with fathomless drawers and multiple inscriptions. It sits on an elevated podium—originally built to allow a shorter Classics Master access to the blackboard—and from this quarterdeck I can look down benevolently upon my minions and work on the Times crossword without being noticed.
    There are mice living behind the lockers. I know this because on Friday afternoons they troop out and sniff around under the radiator pipes while the boys do their weekly vocabulary test. I don’t complain; I rather like the mice. The Old Head once tried poison, but only once; the stench of dead mouse is far more noxious than anything living could ever hope to generate, and it endured for weeks until finally John Snyde, who was Head Porter at the time, had to be called in to tear out the skirting boards and remove the pungent dead.
    Since then the mice and I have enjoyed a comfortable live-and-let-live approach. If only the Germans could do the same.
    I looked up from my reverie to see Dr. Devine passing the room again, with his entourage. He tapped his wrist insistently, as if to indicate the time. Ten-thirty. Ah. Of course. Staff meeting. Reluctantly I conceded the point, flicked my cigarette stub into the wastepaper basket, and ambled off to the Common Room, pausing only to collect the battered gown hanging on a hook by the stock-cupboard door.
    The Old Head always insisted on gowns for formal occasions. Nowadays I’m virtually the only one who still wears them to meetings, though most of us do on Speech Day. The parents like it. Gives them a sense of tradition. I like it because it provides good camouflage and saves on suits.
    Gerry Grachvogel was locking his door as I came out. “Oh. Hello, Roy.” He gave me a more than usually nervous smile. He is a lanky young man, with good intentions and poor classroom control. As