by Anon
They stood in a line in the playground as I took a paper register.
Everyone but Liam.
Fuck’s sake. Fucking Liam.
I consulted my sheet and found Liam’s number. I called his mum, who was apologetic, and said he was on his way, and that he was bringing his Reply Slip in with him. I said, ‘Thanks, but you can just tell me over the phone: are you happy for him to come home alone?’
She said she was.
Really? Are you sure? The guy’s a complete cretin.
Just as I was giving up on Liam, I heard the swish swish of the giant blue Puffa, and turned to see him running across the playground.
Tom and I designated group leaders, gave a final pep talk about how they were all ambassadors of the school and had to be on their best behaviour, yadda yadda, and we trooped off to the station.
Buying tickets for the bus was unfeasibly traumatic. Despite all the haranguing and letters adorned with bold imperatives, some of the kids still managed to screw it up. Either they did not have enough money, or they had forgotten their discount card, or they had forgotten everything. The bus was going to leave, so I screamed at them to get on the bus and promised that I would pay for any who did not have tickets.
We all crammed onto the top of the bus. Smart entrepreneurial types peered over their newspapers suspiciously. Who could blame them? In their giant Puffas, caps and trainers, my charges had reverted to common-or-garden hoodlums. In the space of a day, a reverse alchemy had taken place: the gold had been returned to base metal. I was pretty freaked out by them and I was their guardian.
The bus lurched off, sending Wally crashing over a woman who spilt her coffee on her blouse. I took a quick register. It felt good to assert control.
Don’t worry, folks. I’ve got this.
*
We left town.
Into the dark unknown. I thought about my Year 8s, and their narrow Weltanschauung. We should have got a plane. Here be dragons. Here be exurbs: airfields, Carphone Warehouses, golf courses, Tescos. A chorus of ‘go Tescos’.
The kids settled down and quietly revised or twiddled with their phones. Liam was reading Marketing for Dummies; Alexia hoovered up Nights at the Circus; Ella was reading a copy of the local newspaper she had found on the seat, which had an article about a recent gang murder. She was pointing at the boy in the photograph and saying that she knew him and babbling on about who was shanking who and so on.
As the green fields and open skies of Albion unfurled before us, the conversation changed. Everyone calmed down, and became lost in reverie. Liam asked if a cow was a cow. Wally teased Liam that a shed was his house. I shut my eyes and let the babbling lull me to sleep.
I was woken by Ella tapping me on the shoulder.
‘Oi, Sir. Oi, Sir. Sir!’
‘What is it, Ella?’
‘Innit, Sir, dat’s a peanut factory?’
*
After about a half an hour, Tom ushered me to the back of the bus conspiratorially. He checked that no one could hear him, then explained to me in a very loud whisper that things were not as they seemed. While we were all going to Oxford, not all of us were going to Oxford University … If you get my drift …
I didn’t get his drift.
The likely candidates – your Alexias, your Zainabs, your Wallys – were going to go with him to a big fat Oxford college. The rest were going to come with me to Oxford Brookes. I asked if he had told them this. He blushed and said that he hadn’t, not exactly, not in so many words.
‘So we lied to them?’
‘It’s fine. It will seem as if you are going to a different college.’
‘But when we get to the big sign that says OXFORD BROOKES …?’
‘Walk quickly. You’re good at that now.’
I had to get my lot off the bus before everyone else, so as we approached our stop I went around the bus saying, ‘Come on! Let’s get off here! No, not you. You!’ Which was met with great confusion and protestation.
Ella, Isaac, Liam and the rest of the rabble stood on the pavement, demanding an explanation. I told them it was fine. We were just checking out another college. We’d see the rest later.
After an underwhelming tour, Liam whispered to me that ‘This ain’t Oxford.’ I told him to suck it up. The dissent grew dramatically during the three-hour ‘interactive session’ in the lecture theatre in which student reps nervously explained student grants. At the end of the session, the student reps decided that it was a good idea for everyone to write down their feedback on a piece of paper and throw it at them as a paper airplane. As the airplanes bombed down upon the beleaguered reps heads I made an executive decision to cut our losses and get the fuck out.
We stood on top of the hill, admiring the honeyed rooftops of the place where we were not welcome. Liam asked why we couldn’t go with the others. I said that while he definitely had the ability – which he did, on his day – a rare day, admittedly – one day a week, perhaps – a day remarkable in its, and his, shining perspicacity, unsullied by skunk and World of Warcraft – his predictions weren’t good enough. He wasn’t having any of it. I explained that it wasn’t that we were saying he was too thick to go to Oxford. It was that we were predicting he would be too thick.
It was a nonsense. We had to go. I marched them down the hill and breached the medieval defences of the town.
Once in the centre of town, we looked up at the imposing heads of the Greek Philosophers bearing down at us while we established that they were not anyone’s mum. I guided them into the Porter’s Lodge of one of the more ‘liberal’ colleges, one of the ones which have something approaching a representative number of state-school kids, women and gay discos. Where some graduates aptually don’t go into the Tory party.
‘Wassa Porter?’ asked Ella.
‘Is it a toilet?’ asked Liam.
‘They keep a dragon in the back quad,’ I said, as we passed through the front quad. ‘So if you are a particularly gifted student, they might let you be dragon-keeper.’
We sat down in the dining hall with hundreds of other kids. A man in a gown stood on the stage and looked out nervously at the tapestry of blazers and Puffas. Behind him was a slide with photos of Benazir Bhutto and Aung Sang Suu Kyi, enlarged (Boris Johnson and David Cameron had been reduced in size, and pushed towards the margin of the slide). He finished his talk by declaring that the purpose of education was ‘Light, Liberty and Learning’. I felt a great stirring in my soul.
*
Strolling back across the quad towards the Buttery, Ella started laughing and saying, ‘Is this where all the butters students are?’ I told her to be quiet, as she perched gauchely on a giant oak chair and was handed a champagne flute full of orange juice.
‘Only posh people drink juice from champagne glasses,’ said Liam.
‘Innit,’ agreed Ella.
We met up with the others, who seemed to have had a lovely time. Wally was particularly energised; he grilled the students about which societies he should join – he was keen on Ultimate Frisbee – and had worked out exactly which room he was going to have (near the bar, so it was just a short stumble back, nudge nudge).
We ambled through the squares and cobbled streets in silence. Every statue, every gargoyle, looked down with disdain, stubbornly refusing to give up its secrets. Through the grand gates and onto Christchurch Meadow, crunching along the gravel of the broad avenue, lined with poplars, which leads to the river, watching rowers gently sculling over the water. We turned around and gazed over the fence at the Constable painting before us: fringing the horizon were russet and brown leafless trees, like arterial X-rays, and towers spiking audaciously into the sky; in the foreground, cows and bulls with giant horns huddled in the corner, munching on tufts of long grass coated with frost. There was silence, graceful silence, but for the lowing of the cows and the pealing of a distant bell. The fog from our breath joined the stubborn layer of haze that sat a few feet above the grass, obscuring the cows, and making it seem
as if the entire city was hovering on a cloud. I thought about my English teacher, who claimed to have had a duel on the meadow with a Polish count over a girl, which was why he had a scar on his cheek.
I never told him what he meant to me.
I should.
And Dad. And Granddad. This was their view.
Oxford begat Oxford begat Oxford. The secret rule of the game.
A profound melancholy gripped me and I shuddered, pulling my scarf up over my mouth.
‘Y’a’right, Sir?’
‘Fine thanks, Ella. You see those cows? Those are Clinton’s cows. You know why they are called that? Because Bill Clinton donated them to the university.’
‘No wonder dey’re so horny.’
We saw an old lady sitting on a bench, with a large bag beside her, sketching leaves. She looked up at us briefly, then returned to her sketch. We stood beneath Christchurch and looked up at the looming patriarchal edifice.
‘It looks burnt.’
‘True say. Burnt and sad.’
‘It’s like Hogwarts.’
‘Or Jordan.’
‘Is dat where you sleep?’
‘Yup.’
‘Naaaah!’
‘You can’t sleep in there! Bet there’s bare ghosts.’
I told them that the teachers slept there too; and they had to go to tutorials in their bedrooms.
‘Urghh!’ shouted Liam. ‘Dat’s NASTY. Why?’
‘That’s the way it works. Twice a week you stay up all night, hastily scribbling a wretched essay which you can’t remember anything about, go into some old duffer’s bedroom, read the essay, and then leave. The teaching is shocking. I spend more time on my Year 8s than these Dons do on their precious undergrads. Too wrapped up in their weird worlds. Lacking even the basic communication skills. You can leave this place without having learned a thing. But it will stand you in good stead, because once you are armed with the special skill of hastily cobbling together some bollocks you know nothing about, you can confidently go out and run the country.’
‘Hmm. Maybe it’s not for me after all,’ said Liam.
We walked back through the gathering gloom, out of which emerged pasty faces, ravaged by acne, with black eye sockets of unfathomable angst. Long lines were forming outside a pair of kebab vans, squatting and thrumming in the dusk.
‘Rah, they got everything here.’
‘Chips, Cheese and Beans?’
‘No way.’
‘NO. WAY.’
‘What did I tell you, kids? Welcome to Arcadia.’
After we had bought a selection of disgusting polystyrene-based snacks, we walked towards the bus stop. Suddenly, I grabbed Liam by the shoulder and pointed upwards. There, above a giant portico, was a triangular dark-blue crest, with three gold crowns around a gold-leafed book, emblazoned with the words ‘DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA’.
‘No way! No way!’
Liam grabbed Ella and showed her. Then she grabbed Isaac. Soon they were all looking up shouting, ‘Oooooh!!!!! ’LUMINATI!!!’
At the Martyr’s Memorial, Alexia recited, ‘We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’
‘Wassat?’ said Liam.
‘Latimer to Ridley as they were burnt alive for heresy. It’s in Fahrenheit 451.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I knew dat.’
*
On the bus, I felt a wave of relief. All we had to do was get on the bus and then a short walk back to school. What could go wrong?
The bus rattled through the darkness. Liam and Ella cuddled up on the back row, while the others propped their heads against the windows and looked forlornly at their reflections.
After about fifteen minutes, the bus pulled into a dark, forbidding place. A solitary figure stood alone. As our glancing eyes passed him, his face was briefly illuminated by the carriage lights. It was a terrifying sight: a spectral, gaunt visage pointed upwards towards Brylcreemed hair, on top of which was perched a small military hat. He wore a long trenchcoat and over one shoulder was slung a large bag, which was about the size of a Kalashnikov.
The other thing I didn’t foresee in my trip application.
He stepped onto the bus, turned and stared at us. Ella whimpered, hid behind the seat and whispered, ‘Sir, what shall we do?’
‘I don’t know, Ella. Why don’t you call one of your friends?’
‘Which ones?’
‘The ones in the gang.’
‘Dey wouldn’t be seen dead out here! Come on! You’ve got to do something!’
She’s right. What to do? Where the hell was this in teacher training? My noble chivalry is at stake. I should challenge him to a duel.
‘Sir. Sir! Shall we rush him?’ whispered Liam.
‘No, don’t be ridiculous.’
The man stepped a couple of steps closer and thrust his crotch forward, so it was inches away from Isaac’s nose, then slowly inserted his thumbs under his belt. Liam whimpered and clutched onto Ella. I took control and beckoned them into a huddle.
‘OK, everyone. When I say run … we run for the door,’ I whispered.
Whimpers of assent.
The man took another step closer.
‘RUN!’
Just as the bus was about to leave, I ran to the emergency button, and pressed it, shouting. ‘’Scuse me, we forgot – this is our stop!’
The doors opened. I grabbed Puffa after Puffa and hurled them screaming into the cold night.
We huffed and puffed and held our sides as the bus pulled away. I gathered everyone together, calmed them down, did a quick head count. Liam was bent over with laughter.
‘Oh, my daze! What were you playing at? He was just going to some kinky club up in town!’
‘Freak.’
‘What do we do now?’
I looked around. The wind was picking up and biting. Thunder rumbled across the hills.
‘Just stay close. And stay warm.’
Liam cuddled Ella under his jacket. Zainab asked if there was any room for her too.
‘Sir, I don’t reckon I want to go Oxford after all,’ said Liam.
‘It’s their loss, Liam. What are you going to do instead?’
‘Dunno yet, Sir. Maybe I’ll take a year off and think about it.’
‘What would you do on your gap year?’
‘Dunno. Maybe try to get to Level 15. Do a Dungeon Run.’
‘Well, you’ve got to have goals.’
‘Anyone else want to go Oxford?’ I asked. ‘Zainab?’
Zainab wrinkled her nose.
‘No, please! Don’t do this to me! You have to! It would be criminal not too!’ I pleaded. ‘What about you, Alexia? You’re in, surely?’
Alexia shrugged.
‘Anyone else?’
‘Reckon I might stay at home,’ said Isaac.
‘Don’t have to pay rent. Avoid weirdos,’ said Ella.
‘And cows,’ said Isaac.
‘Stay warm,’ said Alexia.
‘I’m all over it,’ said Wally.
16
Isaac
He liked to draw the poems. He wasn’t confident in writing or speaking in class, but was ‘Gifted and Talented’ nonetheless, particularly at art, so every lesson I let him draw the poem. On the walls of the classroom, between W. B. Yeats and Miles Davis, were sketches of gothic chambers and moonlit carriage rides.
He had ‘stuff going on at home’, as we say in the business. He was connecting to something darker within the literature. When I asked him for his initial response to a poem, he talked very fast – intensely, lucidly, imaginatively – and then tapered off, only to stare at the page in silence. It was like a flash of lightning illuminating deep darkness.
Orally, his ideas were extraordinary. But when he tried to put them down, there was a short circuit. As was often the case with creative students, the ideas were vivid and imaginative, but very weak in terms of structure and coherence, like this:
first –
chill – then stupor then the letting go this shows that Emily is feeling cold which shows that maybe she has loss as if she is in morning the use of hyphens looks like sticks beating her down this shows that she is falling
When I gave his essays back he became very discouraged. I had used green pen (more encouraging than red) and lots of praise, but he didn’t read my comments; he simply saw the mark, gasped, and slammed the essay on the table in disgust, shutting down for the rest of the lesson. I tried to encourage him, by printing off his and Alexia’s essay for Peer Assessment, but it backfired. Rather than feeling that his ideas were equivalent to hers, and that he just needed to learn to refine his expression a little, he saw only a glaring gulf between them, and thought we were all patronising him. I persevered, reading out his essay. It was like reading beat poetry. We all agreed that he should write poems. For a sweet few weeks, he wrote poems in response to Emily’s. And they were devastating.
But then the walls began to close once more. The pressure was ramping up, and he reacted very badly. The more he was pressured, the more he shut down. He stopped working across the board. Complaints rained in from all his teachers that he was falling dangerously behind. Even in Art.
His attendance became a Cause for Concern. If he did ‘deign to grace us with his presence’ – a phrase I had stopped using since he looked at me with a brow of thunder when I uttered it – I asked why he was late, but he did not reply as he plonked down behind the screen, still muffled by his coat. He had stopped asking anyone in form for work, too embarrassed to admit how far behind he was. His eyes became hooded and glacial. It looked like he had begun a heavy course of antidepressants. I tried to engage him, but he waved away my concern with brittle nonchalance, and stared into the screen like a man staring into a deep dark well.