The Teacher's Secret

by Suzanne Leal

  How could she explain it to him, this cocksure man who had no idea? How could she describe the calls she’d taken day after day—calls from teachers like Brenda Cohen.

  Laurie knew to be gentle with people like her. ‘Brenda,’ she’d said, ‘what sort of concerns do you have?’

  ‘He touches the children; he’s always touching the children.’

  ‘When you say touching, do you mean fondling?’

  For a moment the other woman had been silent. ‘I suppose so. On their heads, he’s always patting them on the head, putting an arm around them, stroking their backs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Is there anything more?’

  There was more.

  ‘He gives things to the children: lollies, toys, things like that. After school, when the bell’s gone, he’ll encourage the boys to stay in the park. Sometimes there’s just a few of them, sometimes there’s a crowd. The thing is, he’s like a Pied Piper, that’s what he’s like. And I don’t understand why a grown man—and a single man at that—needs to spend all his day in the classroom with the children, then all afternoon in the park with them. I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.’

  ‘Does he single out any of the children?’

  Brenda had hesitated. ‘Yes, I’d have to say he does. A little kid, Riley, one of the Year 3 kids.’

  ‘Not one of his own students, then?’

  ‘No. He’s on Year 5 this year. But he spends a lot of time with Riley. Gives him things, too.’

  Laurie took a deep breath. ‘What sort of things, Brenda?’

  ‘Food, mostly: biscuits, fruit, a sandwich sometimes. And clothes, too. Last term, Riley was showing everyone the shoes he bought him. Who knows what else he’s given him? I just know I don’t like it.’

  Laurie didn’t like it either. She liaised with the police but they had nothing on him. So often that was the problem: there was enough to know it was a concern but not enough to take it anywhere.

  ‘He’s grooming the child,’ Laurie told Brad. ‘Clear as day that’s what he’s doing.’

  Brad didn’t agree.

  Sometime later, close to a year later, an unnamed teacher was arrested at an unnamed school up north. Brenda Cohen worked up north, too. And as soon as she read the report, Laurie knew it was him. She didn’t need a name, she didn’t need anything, she was sure of it. She didn’t care what Brad Hillier said. She’d been right. They just hadn’t listened. Her colleagues—Ellen, Joanne, Tamara—they all agreed with her: Brad Hillier was completely out of touch.

  Laurie had always been hardworking and vigilant, but after that she redoubled her efforts.

  Not that hard work had ever been a problem for her. After all, she had been the youngest assistant principal ever appointed to Red Hill Public School. And that doesn’t happen without a lot of work. It had been a great achievement and it had taken all her willpower not to flaunt it. For there was a certain poise, a certain gravitas required of an assistant principal.

  Not that Terry Pritchard displays any of that, she thinks. A spike of irritation shoots through her body. No poise, no gravitas. In fact, he seems to bring absolutely no respect to the position at all.

  And how dare he take a student in his car? How dare he?!

  It’s people like Terry Pritchard who enrage her, because it’s people like him who make the system collapse. What sort of message does it send when the assistant principal acts in blatant disregard of the rules? What sort of message does it send to the other teachers, the parents, the students? She doesn’t care how long he’s been at the school; Terry Pritchard is a man who needs to learn to toe the line.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, aloud this time, ‘Terry Pritchard needs to learn to toe the line.’

  Resolved now, she leans back and lets her gaze turn to the window. Quickly, so quickly she almost topples in the chair, she sits back up again. It is as though her very thoughts have somehow conjured him up, for there he is, right there in front of her, meandering towards the car park, his awful old briefcase slapping against the side of his leg. Even the way he walks annoys her.

  He has no children of his own, that’s what she’s been told. She wonders why not and why it is that a man like him—a man without children—should choose to be a teacher.

  The thought niggles as she watches him. Only then does she notice that he is not alone. There is a child trailing after him. When she leans forward to get a better view, what she sees astounds her. It is the same child, the same little one with the glasses. Brigid. Bree. No, Bridie. Bridie Taylor.

  Her head forward, she watches as they make their way to his car.

  Stop, she wants to cry out. Stop. But her window is closed and difficult to open and they won’t hear her through the glass. She could bang on the glass, but this is an idea that comes too late; it comes only after the engine has started and they have driven away.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she is too unsettled to focus on her work: too unsettled, too angry and too indignant to do anything but think about Terry Pritchard and his insidious behaviour.

  But what, she asks herself, can she do about it?

  She could report him, that’s what she could do. In fact, she should report him. Because already she has plenty to tell: the car trips, the defiance, his persistent touching of the children. It’s all there.

  And the more she thinks about it, the more certain she is of it.

  So she lifts up the phone and dials Ellen’s number.

  The call goes through but it isn’t Ellen who answers. It’s Lucy Carboni. Laurie has never heard of her. But when she asks to speak to Ellen Duncan, Lucy tells her that Ellen is no longer at the unit and that she, Lucy, has taken over her caseload.

  This comes as a surprise.

  ‘Can I help?’ Lucy asks her.

  Laurie takes a deep breath. ‘I’d like to file a report.’

  She tells Lucy everything.

  Once she has finished, Lucy is thoughtful. ‘I’m not sure there’s enough,’ she says. ‘Especially as he’s got the grandmother’s permission to travel with the child.’

  Laurie is incredulous. ‘But I’ve already told him not to let the child in his car—he blatantly ignores me.’

  On the other end of the line, Lucy’s voice is calm. ‘I’m just saying that, at this stage, it’s not something the unit would be able to look into; it would be better dealt with by the school principal.’

  ‘I am the principal,’ Laurie blurts out. ‘I am the principal and he won’t listen.’

  Lucy’s voice doesn’t change. ‘If anything else comes up, please call back. We’ll need something more before we can start investigating the matter.’

  Laurie is tempted to raise her voice but she knows it won’t help.

  When she rings off, she is almost rigid with frustration. First, Terry Pritchard won’t listen to her and now some upstart from the unit won’t listen either.

  So what else can she do but watch and wait for him to trip up again?

  Nina

  She does what she can to try to get to sleep. She changes positions. She turns from her front to her back, then to one side. She does some breathing exercises. She tries to clear her mind. She focuses on lying very still.

  Nothing works.

  Recently, he’s been coming home later and later. There’s always something at the club that needs his attention. She understands that, of course she does—he’s the manager so he needs to be available—she just wishes she could sleep better. But she keeps worrying that something has happened to him on the way home, that this time it’s not work, this time it’s something worse that is keeping him from coming home.

  When sleep still doesn’t come, she gets up, puts on her dressing-gown and makes herself a cup of tea. She turns on the television, flicking through the channels until she finds a movie. It’s an old one, one she has seen before, and although she keeps her eyes on the screen, she turns the sound down to listen out for his car.

  It’s 2.13 am and she is on to her seco
nd cup of tea when she hears a car pull up outside. Her heart skips faster. Pressing the warm mug against her cheek, she waits for him to turn into the driveway. Instead, the car drives away. A cab? It feels like many minutes, but perhaps it is only one or two, before she hears a rattling of keys at the front door. She stays where she is, in the dark, in front of the television. She is agitated, both with relief and—now she knows he is safe—with resentment.

  The door opens and he comes through it quickly, as though surprised the door should have given way at all. The smell of tobacco fills the room, all the more pungent in a house that, for years now, has been smoke-free.

  He doesn’t notice her at first. When he does, he starts. ‘What are you doing up?’

  ‘Where’s the car?’ she asks.

  He shrugs. ‘Thought I might be over the limit, so I got a lift home.’ ‘Right.’ She wrinkles her nose. It’s the wrong time to ask, but she does anyway. ‘You haven’t been smoking, have you?’

  He rocks on the spot. ‘And what if I have been? What are you going to do? Ground me?’ His voice, loose with alcohol, is spiteful. ‘I’m not your son, Nina.’

  The sharpness of his tone shocks her and she has to bite the inside of her cheek to stop the tears from forming. He doesn’t mean it, she tells herself. He is drunk and tired and she is upset and tired. There is nothing useful to be said tonight. And yet she keeps going. ‘But you were doing so well. You know how addictive it is.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, stop badgering me,’ he yells. ‘For once in your goddamn life, can you just stop badgering me? I’m sick to death of the nagging. Do you hear me? Sick to bloody death of it.’

  The tirade feels like a physical attack. ‘I was worried,’ she whispers. ‘I was worried you’d been in a crash or something. I couldn’t sleep because I was worried.’

  She waits for him to relent, to open his arms to her. It’s all he has to do to make things right again. Instead, he stays as he is, fists clenched, jaw clenched, staring at her through narrowed eyes. ‘You worry too much,’ he says. ‘You worry too bloody much.’

  It’s not the first time he has told her that. But never before has he said it with such anger. This is something new. This is something she doesn’t recognise. It unnerves her.

  ‘You coming to bed?’ she asks, her voice hesitant.

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ll sleep on the lounge.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ she says quietly. She needs to feel him beside her. Only then will the worry leave her, only then will her body relax enough to let her fall, finally, into sleep.

  But the alcohol has made him belligerent. He refuses to leave the lounge room. She finds him a sheet and a blanket, knowing that otherwise he’d just sleep on the couch without anything to cover him.

  Back in bed, Nina tries to keep it together. If she lets herself cry, it will be an admission that all is not okay. And this is an admission she will not make. Because it isn’t true. It isn’t true. It is a busy time for him, a difficult time. It will pass and things will get better.

  There is something at her ear. Something that tickles. Something that makes her shoulder jerk up to stop it, to stop the tickling. A voice, then, a familiar voice.

  The tickling is becoming stronger and the voice louder, so loud it vibrates inside her. ‘Up, up,’ it says. ‘Get up.’

  There is something at her eyes now, too, something that is both pressing on her eyeballs and pulling at her eyelids. What is it? She feels herself blink, and blink again.

  ‘Hello, Mummy.’ Emily is lying on top of her. ‘It’s morning, Mummy,’ she says.

  ‘What time?’ Nina asks, her voice throaty. With the curtains drawn, the room is night-time black, but when the little girl jumps down to pull them open, it is already light outside.

  Looking over at the window, Nina wonders at that: how one moment it can be night and the next it is morning.

  And late, too, as it turns out, so late she scarcely has time for a shower. She has one anyway. But God, she’s tired. She’s so tired her eyes close in the shower and her body twitches her upright when she threatens to topple.

  No complaining, she tells herself as she’s getting dressed. Head up, eyes open, mouth smiling.

  It’s a big ask, especially as they tiptoe past Steve and make their way to the door. When she looks at him, she becomes angry: angry that he should still be asleep while she, the walking dead, is not. She has an urge, then, to slam the door hard; to slam it hard enough to startle him out of sleep so that he, too, will be as tired as she feels. But she doesn’t. Instead, she closes it softly, a finger to her lips so that Emily, too, will stay quiet.

  She makes it to school on time, but only just. Almost immediately, she finds Paige is at her door, an expectant look on her face. When Nina looks at her blankly, her face falls.

  ‘You said to come when the bell went. You said to come straightaway.’ The girl’s accent—so broad, so harsh—grates on her, and instead of rushing to reassure her that yes, she has come at the right time, today Nina lets her silence weigh on the child and watches as her brashness gives way to uncertainty.

  It is difficult, after that, to get anything out of her.

  ‘Tell me,’ she tries, ‘what did you do on the weekend?’

  Paige keeps her head down. ‘Nothin’,’ she says.

  Nina is too tired for this. ‘I’m going to need a bit more than that, Paige. Think back. Did you go anywhere?’

  The girl shrugs her shoulders and slumps in her seat.

  ‘Your weekend. At least two sentences. Now.’

  Her curtness forces an answer from the girl. ‘I went to me dad’s place and on Saturday we went to the drag racing.’

  Drag racing, Nina thinks. God help me.

  ‘And me dad got plastered so Karen had to drive home even though she didn’t want to.’

  Nina nods. Keep her talking, keep her talking. ‘And how do you know Karen didn’t want to drive home?’

  Baulking at the question, the girl looks over at Nina, her chin tilted down, her lips pushed together. Nina nods her encouragement.

  The girl takes a deep breath. ‘I knew Karen didn’t want to drive home because she said to me dad, You’re a drunk fucker and I’m fuckin’ sick of being the fuckin’ driver.’

  Leaning back, Nina rubs a finger along her lips. Fair enough, she thinks, she’d asked for that one. ‘So,’ she says, ‘if we were to summarise what you’ve told me, we could say something like this: On Saturday, I went to watch the drag racing with Karen and my dad. Karen drove us home but she wasn’t happy about that. Is that a fair way to describe what happened?’

  The girl lifts her head so she can take a better look at Nina.

  Nina gives her a moment before she taps a hand on the table. ‘If you’re happy with that as a summary, I’d like you to write it down for me.’

  Again the girl hesitates before she opens her exercise book, turns to a fresh page and starts writing. When she is finished, she passes her work across to Nina.

  Nina nods as she reads it. ‘That’s good,’ she murmurs, and when she looks up, she sees that the girl’s face is flushed with pride. ‘You’ve done well,’ she adds, pleased. ‘You’ve done very well.’

  That evening, after she’s put Emily to bed, Steve rings to say he won’t be home for dinner. She doesn’t want an argument so she doesn’t protest, even though the dinner is in the oven and she has been waiting for him.

  When, later, she is in bed alone, she finally lets herself cry; she lets the tears run down the side of her cheeks, lets her nose run until her face is completely covered in tears and mucus. There are no tissues by the bed and, spent now, she is too exhausted even to get up. Taking a corner of the sheet, she wipes her face and blows her nose. It’s okay, she says to herself. It’s okay, it’s okay. Because tomorrow she’ll think of a way to make things better.

  Joan

  Once a week, on a Wednesday, Joan goes to Brindle Library. It’s a small library, and Joan likes that: likes that there
are enough books to choose from but not so many as to overwhelm her; likes that there is only one librarian, whose name is Kim and who always greets her with a warm smile. Although Kim is many years her junior, she calls her Joan and not Miss Mather. Part of her wants to be offended by this, but only a small part.

  When her mother was alive, the two of them would go to the library in the morning. Only once did they venture there in the afternoon; Joan’s mother was so appalled by the behaviour of the schoolchildren, she vowed never again to set foot in the library after 3 pm.

  Joan had not been upset by the noise of the children. She had been amused by the snippets of childish conversation trickling past. And now that she is without her mother, she has taken to visiting the library in the afternoon, when it is awash with children. It has become her habit to arrive just before three, return her books, choose a few more then settle down in one of the lounge chairs at the front of the library. There are floor-to-ceiling windows there and even though the weather is starting to cool, still the sun warms her.

  By 3.30, the library is filled with children from the local school, each of them in some variation of blue and white.

  A book open in front of her, she settles down to watch them. Today, there are two boys waiting at the counter. Kim isn’t there—she must be somewhere down the back of the library—but the boys don’t seem fussed; they just slouch against the counter and wait. One of them reminds Joan of a bulldog: his shoulders are wide and square and pushed forward. His head, too, is square, and although his legs are long, his torso is even longer. His friend is half his size: small and skinny with bleached hair that needs a wash and a brush and a cut. His school shirt is misbuttoned so that one side of the shirt hangs lower than the other. The bulldog boy hasn’t fastened even one button and his shirt hangs open to show a white undershirt. In her day, students would have been expelled for less.

  The little one is still leaning over the counter when he spies a bell on the desk. ‘Hey, Kurt,’ he says, ‘reckon we should give this a ring?’