Dying on Principle

by Judith Cutler

  It took Ian a moment to work that one out; then he looked sheepish. For such a stolid man he could look remarkably sheepish. I grinned. It was good to be friends with him.

  ‘But it’s rained a hell of a lot since, Ian. And I reckon they’ve been doing something with moss killer – weren’t there some tins of Patioclean or something in that skip?’ Yes, I could see them with my mind’s eye. And yet I’d never consciously registered them. I wondered what else lurked in my memory waiting for something to poke it to the surface.

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  He was going to say something else when the phone rang. I took it: Aberlene.

  Ian got up to go; as he did so, he mimed a drink and tapped his watch.

  I nodded.

  ‘The Court Oak. One,’ he mouthed.

  I shook my head. ‘Twelve. Teaching at one fifteen. Hi, Aberlene. Sorry about that. How’re you?’

  She seemed to be hedging. This was obviously my day for people to consider my feelings, Sunshine apart. On those rare occasions when Aberlene is tactful, it usually concerns male-female relationships. Or was it, in this case, male-male ones?

  I found I didn’t want to talk about Simon and Adrian yet. Not until I’d talked to Simon. So I offered her Richard Fairfax instead. ‘I had a lift home last night,’ I said brightly. ‘From the nabob himself. Mr Big in his BMW.’

  ‘Oh.’ This was obviously not the confidence she’d been expecting. But she gathered her wits quickly enough. ‘I hadn’t got the impression you’d liked each other all that much.’

  ‘Who worries about liking when there’s a Seven Series BMW involved?’

  ‘Sophie! You’re not like that!’

  ‘We’re talking lifts, not relationships, Aberlene. You know me: fall in love with poor impoverished poets.’ This was in fact a terrible lie. The last man I fancied myself in love with was a BMW man, but only Five Series. And before that—

  ‘You certainly can’t accuse him of being impoverished,’ she said. ‘Not when I have in my little hot hand a postdated cheque from him for a great deal of dosh for the Friendly Society raffle. And he says he wants just one ticket. Terribly good-looking when he was young, perhaps, but there’s something … unwholesome about him. I don’t know. Perhaps he’s just not recovered from his operation.’

  ‘What sort of operation?’

  ‘Don’t know. He was jetting off to the Middle East within five minutes, so it can’t have been anything serious. Doesn’t look healthy, though – the opposite of your Chris, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Chris is not mine. We’re—’

  ‘– friends. But he is yours, for all that. The way he looks at you.’

  ‘The way Tobias looks at you?’ I like bowling yorkers.

  And so I fended her off.

  But then it occurred to me that Aberlene might be able to tell me something that would help me understand Melina better, though it might be embarrassing to ask.

  ‘Tell me,’ I began, ‘though it’s none of my business, are you – are you a Christian?’

  ‘I suppose so. If provoked I might write C of E. Why? You’re not doing a Billy Graham on me, are you?’

  ‘Do you know anyone who is sort of right of centre in their religion?’

  ‘You mean speaking in tongues and all that? You need a Pentecostalist, surely. Come on, Sophie, you know I’m a coconut: I may be black outside, but I’m as white as you inside. You must know a proper black woman or two!’

  ‘As opposed,’ I said, laughing, ‘to an improper one. OK, Aberlene. See you – hey, will you lot be at the pub tonight?’

  ‘No. Nottingham. But don’t let that stop you drinking, eh? See you Monday – and don’t tell anyone else about Toby and me, not just yet, eh?’

  ‘Lips sealed, Ab. See you.’

  So no chance of seeing Simon casually tonight. I’d better gird myself up to phone him and suggest a friendly coffee. But first – and why hadn’t I done it already? – I’d better get on the phone to Barclaycard and breathe fire.

  In the event, my flames were quickly extinguished. What the young woman at the end of the line wanted to know was whether I was still in Birmingham.

  ‘’Fraid so.’ I gave her my college number and suggested she call back. But what she wanted was my mother’s maiden name. By now I was bemused.

  ‘And you’ve been in Birmingham all this week? Well, I’m sorry to tell you, your Barclaycard hasn’t.’

  ‘It’s in my wallet now,’ I objected, flicking it open just to make sure.

  ‘It’s just bought a car in Singapore,’ she said.

  ‘You’re joking.’ I waited a second. ‘No, you’re not, are you?’

  So I was the victim of another card fraud. It was the word ‘another’ that rankled. How many were there? Just to make sure, she said, she’d send my new card to my bank for collection from there. Just to make sure. And meanwhile, hell, I’d have to organise myself a Connect card and a guarantee card for my building-society account and – hell and hell and hell. And all I’d wanted was a simple ghetto blaster.

  9

  I never expected to spend my Friday lunchtime hurtling over to William Murdock and imploring my boss to protect me.

  I don’t think Mr Worrall expected to see me either, but I was admitted to his office straight away. Then he broke with all tradition and offered me a cup of the extremely fine tea he was drinking. I was even encouraged to sit down, and since his staff are usually expected to stand for audiences, in the manner of a junior rating before his captain, I took this as a mark of his considerable concern.

  ‘Let me repeat to you, Miss Rivers, the facts as I understand them. We at William Murdock nominated you as our representative on the computer-assisted learning project. Because of procrastination by our masters in Margaret Street –’ Mr Worrall always referred to Birmingham’s education administrators as if he were the narrator of a C. P. Snow novel – ‘the project did not actually commence until after the expected completion date. We should, in fact,’ he said, allowing a thin smile to show he was making a pleasantry, ‘have welcomed you back to what is now William Murdock Corporation at Easter, rather than bidding you farewell. Au revoir, I should say. And now –’ he consulted his jottings – ‘now George Muntz say they wish to reconsider their part in the project, and would like it to be relocated here.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And you were notified of this development only this morning, and by this memorandum?’ He touched the piece of paper I’d thrust at him when I arrived, and then he held it up delicately, the better to sneer at the rather garish logo that decorated it – more of the new corporation’s handiwork. ‘May I ask if your colleagues on the project have had similar notification?’

  ‘Two are on sick leave; the third was taking her morning off and I couldn’t reach her by phone.’

  ‘The union?’

  I shook my head: I hadn’t thought of that, and was surprised he should recommend what I’d have expected him to see as the enemy.

  ‘All this is most irregular, Miss Rivers,’ he tutted. His naval background had trained him very thoroughly in tutting. ‘We had after all a gentlemen’s agreement that the project would last an entire term. Have you discussed the memorandum with my opposite number at George Muntz? Mr Blake?’

  ‘Mr Blake was unavailable for comment, as they say. He doesn’t seem to be in college much at the moment,’ I said, conscious I was saying something Worrall might find useful. ‘He and the senior staff are working on a big project – the College without Walls, they call it.’

  He looked at me shrewdly. ‘I take it they haven’t admitted you into their counsels?’

  ‘Would you expect them to?’

  ‘In the old days, yes, I think I would. Staff involvement was always valued. But since April all has changed, changed utterly, as I think the poet Yeats tells us. Now we’ve left the umbrella of Birmingham LEA, we’re all to compete with each other. Money is the name of the game, Sophie.’ He smiled. ‘Tell
me, have they introduced the new College Employers’ Federation contract yet? The CEF contract?’

  ‘There’s a new contract, all right, but I’ve no idea which one.’

  He gestured at the teapot. I poured for both of us.

  ‘As you may know, the college principals have been invited to join an organisation apparently set up to enable us to run our colleges, our corporations, as tighter ships. Part of their strategy is to abandon the old contract that was negotiated between the LEAs and your union, the Silver Book contract – and let it be said that Birmingham’s own contract was even more favourable to the lecturers.’

  I nodded. ‘And will William Murdock be adopting the new contract?’

  He looked grim. ‘We shall rue the day if it does, Sophie, but I may be forced into recommending something not dissimilar if all the other further-education establishments adopt it. Costs, money, funding – those are what are important now. Students are valued for their capacity to attract money. Their education per se matters less.’ He sighed. ‘So George Muntz are, I suspect, asserting their independence and forgetting their agreement as soon as it suits them.’ He smiled and lapsed into silence.

  I looked around me: his office needed decorating, and he had covered some of the more worn sections of wallpaper with naval prints. Tall ships, a not very good Turner, and Nelson, with those liquid and seductive eyes. No wonder Lady Hamilton fancied him. I wondered what he looked like without the white wig.

  The silence was beginning to weigh heavy, and my lunch hour was oozing away. Perhaps I dared risk a prompt: ‘Would it be possible to house the team here? As Mr Blake wants?’

  He laughed, suddenly attractive. ‘This morning’s rain prevents me offering you hospitality: the top floors in both buildings are awash. Literally. The fire service did a fine job, but nonetheless I cannot envisage the rooms being in use again before September. We have a major rooming crisis anyway, with all the examinations coming up. Furthermore, your teaching timetable has been taken over in its entirety by a temporary member of staff, as I recall. On the strongest of educational grounds I would oppose a change of teacher at this stage.’

  ‘I don’t think your opposite number at George Muntz has considered that,’ I said.

  ‘I will suggest he considers it. In fact, I have an acquaintance on Muntz’s governing body. I will contrive to raise the matter when I see him.’ His face resumed its normal severity, as if managers were required to have frown lines to be effective. He must, I suppose, have been roughly the same age as Richard Fairfax. But Fairfax looked at least ten years older.

  He stood and, ushering me to the door, asked me about my singing and my cycling. And then he mentioned, rather dryly, my uncanny propensity for discovering sudden death. News travels fast.

  ‘I only found her,’ I said. ‘Someone else actually saw it happen. Suicide, it seems.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, with apparent relief. And the interview was at an end.

  I’d have liked to dash round the building and say hello to all my buddies, but I was supposed to be teaching back in Harborne in forty minutes. But I did think of someone I’d like to talk to, someone who might have some background knowledge of Melina’s brand of Christianity: Philomena, one of our cleaning staff.

  I could hear her voice in the porters’ lodge: she was berating someone soundly. It was the head caretaker, as it transpired. But she left off to hug me. The head caretaker made good his escape.

  ‘What’s all this about a body at George Muntz?’ She tapped the Birmingham Post. ‘I’d have thought you’d have had enough of bodies.’

  ‘Too right. And it seems I was one of the last people to see her alive. I feel bad about it, Philly: she wanted to talk to me and I didn’t make time.’

  ‘Not like you, that.’ She looked at me shrewdly. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was going out with Chris and—’

  ‘Out? With Chris? That lovely young man! I’ll have to tell Winston when I phone him. Says he can’t afford to phone me on his student grant, of course, but I tell him, you doctors earn enough when you’re qualified – a bit more debt doesn’t matter now.’

  I didn’t imagine he’d dare argue.

  ‘Not out like that – just out,’ I said. ‘But I feel bad about it. She was a nice girl. God-fearing.’

  ‘Not many of those about,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s not that that’s worrying you, is it?’

  I shook my head. I wished myself anywhere but here. Philly was a highly trained nurse with an OU qualification in computers. It would be as crass to ask her about obscurer forms of Christianity as it had been to question Aberlene.

  ‘I don’t know how her family would feel about my going round,’ I said. ‘Seems they belong to one of these churches that believes Saturday’s the Sabbath. Would that make them a bit – fundamental?’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me about fundamentalism! Come here!’ She pulled me to the door and gestured at some girls in the foyer. ‘Look at them!’

  They were dressed from top to toe in black: veiled, their faces covered so only their eyes showed, they’d not have been out of place in Saudi Arabia. But in Birmingham? And another thing – ‘But Philly, they’re Afro-Caribbean, not Arabs!’

  ‘Right. But these young girls have got it into their heads they’ve got to be Muslim. So they do that to themselves. And goodness knows what else besides,’ she added darkly. ‘You ask me, I reckon religion does more harm than good, and thass a fac’.’

  I grinned: I loved her excursions into patois. ‘You’re not a church-goer yourself?’

  ‘Humanist, Sophie. I don’t want no patriarch telling me what to do about sex and—’

  I grabbed. ‘That was one of Melina’s problems.’

  Philly looked at me sharply. ‘Pregnant?’

  ‘Lesbian.’

  ‘Not if she was a fundamentalist, surely?’

  ‘Can religion reorient someone’s sexual inclinations?’

  ‘Maybe not. But it can do a wonderful job repressing them. Lawks-a-mussy!’ she exclaimed as the head caretaker reappeared. ‘Look at dat ol’ clock. Philly, she way behind.’

  The 103 bus, which I caught at Five Ways, followed for a quite alarming proportion of its journey to Harborne a loathsome high-sided lorry carrying bones and other butcher’s waste. It stank vilely, and unsavoury bits and pieces escaped from the inadequate tarpaulin to remind us of its load and of our own mortality. Certainly I was glad to return to the comparative safety of George Muntz and occupy myself with some teaching.

  It was an A-level group, ready to take their exams in about five weeks. ‘Ready’ was the wrong word, perhaps. We started the afternoon with a quick revision of the apostrophe after one of the group had assured me that ‘its’ was the plural of ‘it’. Not a grade-A candidate, perhaps.

  At break I sought out Polly. Strange that it had taken Worrall to make me realise I needed union support. I could ask her about Sunshine while I was at it: it would be nice to know the identity of my roommate.

  Her door was unlocked, so I tapped and popped into her office. It was empty; the computer was switched off, but still warm. On her desk, neatly organised with stacking filing trays, there was a convenient Post-It pad, so I wrote a line asking her to phone me – at home, if she couldn’t find me in the building. I liked her room. It was newly painted, and someone had wax-polished the desk. The wall opposite her desk was covered with big railway posters and there were a couple of plants flourishing on her bookshelf. The chairs might be college issue, but the cushions were well-stuffed and covered in Indian embroidered elephants.

  The only thing out of place was an open filing-cabinet drawer. Ever the Girl Guide, I kicked it shut as I left. I wouldn’t want anyone to trip over it.

  I’d have preferred Polly’s support when I bearded Mr Blake, but on the whole I thought I’d go and see him while I felt angry enough. I had, after all, two legitimate complaints, and it would be courteous to let him know I’d already seen my old principal.

  I
had, of course, forgotten Mrs Cavendish.

  If the carpenters and joiners worked overtime, by Monday she and those she guarded would be sheltered from the hoi polloi in the foyer by a solid-looking wood and glass barricade. No doubt you’d have to have the right voice or the right code number to get in. Meanwhile she sat impregnable at her desk, deeply engaged in a phone conversation. This time she covered her mouthpiece and mouthed extravagantly at me: ‘Mr Blake is unavailable.’

  I nodded, hardly surprised, and waited.

  She glanced skywards in exasperation, and returned to the phone. ‘Mr Curtis was quite definite about it. And common sense must tell you, you simply cannot afford to take sick leave of those proportions. No: your contract is quite clear.’

  I pricked my ears.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will, Mr Teague. Quite sure you will. And if you take my advice, you’ll get that back of yours out of bed and back into the classroom on Monday.’ She put down the phone firmly. ‘You people don’t seem to realise the world has changed,’ she said, eyeing me with hostility. ‘No more feather-bedding. The new contract will see to that.’

  ‘What if people don’t want to sign?’

  ‘They’ll sign quick enough if there’s no food on the table.’

  I winced: people had said things like that in Dickens’s time, hadn’t they? But there was no point in yelling at a messenger, so I merely pulled myself up to my full height and said firmly, ‘I need to see the principal. On a matter of the greatest importance.’

  ‘Mr Blake sees staff on Mondays,’ she said, not bothering to open the desk diary.

  The tape was rerunning, was it? I looked at her sardonically. ‘I don’t suppose he’s even in the building, is he? Not at four on a Friday. He’ll be off back to – Solihull, is it?’

  ‘Knowle, actually.’

  Knowle considers itself posher than Solihull.

  I suppressed a snigger. ‘First thing on Monday. And perhaps he’ll want to know that I shall ask the union rep to come too.’