Sunday Best (11 page)

‘You heard about it, I suppose,' he said.

‘Yes, the Cloth told us on Monday. I'm sorry about it, Parsons.'

‘Mr Parsons,' he said, catching the accusing implication of
my mode of address. ‘I am not guilty. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have come to clear my name.'

I felt like giving him a sweeping brush for all the good it would have done him. ‘You'll have to have a pretty good story, then,' I said. Such sympathy as I had had for the man was rapidly waning. ‘A boy doesn't get into such a state for nothing.'

‘It's his word against mine,' Parsons said.

‘There's more than his word,' I ventured. ‘There were apparently other little boys.'

‘You've been brainwashed, Verrey Smith,' he said. ‘You and probably the rest of them. I've got a fiancée in Brighton. We're getting married soon. What would I be wanting with little boys?'

‘You'd better keep your defence for inside,' I said, nodding at the Cloth's door. I noticed Parsons's eyes for the first time. They watered but not with sorrow. There was something quite disgusting about them. I had no doubt that Parsons made his afternoon forays to the back of the maintenance shed, and there indulged his perversion. I was as sure of it as I was of my own hobby, and the moisture in his eyes was something I had often caught in my own, in moments of extreme sexual pressure and frustration. ‘Look, Parsons,' I said, ‘I don't care what filthy business you get up to, but I do care if it involves innocent little boys.' I could have been the Cloth himself talking, and when I heard echoes of that raspberry voice in my own, I was silent, and felt slightly ashamed. I put my arm on Parsons's shoulder. ‘Anyway,' I said, ‘it's a rotten business for you, and I wish you luck with him.'

The Cloth had opened his door. He had obviously heard my last remark, and he saw my hand on Parsons's shoulder.

‘It seems that my little homily of last Monday did not entirely reach home,' he said.

I kept my hand on Parsons's shoulder.

‘Such camaraderie,' he spat the word, eyeing my affectionate hand, ‘does little credit to you, Verrey Smith, and perhaps in the process of spring-cleaning this school, it would be as well to look into your own – er – records.'

I thought for a moment he was going to say wardrobe, and I smiled with relief.

‘You have an uncommon sense of humour, Verrey Smith,' he said tartly, ‘a humour which often leads to the back of the
maintenance shed, and other such dubious locations. I am ready for you now, Parsons,' he went on hurriedly, ‘and you would do me a favour, Mr Verrey Smith, if you returned to your classes.'

My hand was left in mid-air as he wheeled Parsons round by the tips of his fingers and into his study. I felt the situation was getting quite beyond me, but I didn't care for the consequences. All that concerned me was that nothing should interfere with my afternoon's debut.

I had been dealing with Mr Parsons's classes for most of the morning, and after the break was the first opportunity I had of taking my own. What confronted me when I entered my classroom was something entirely unexpected and which seemed part of the general conspiracy to thwart my afternoon's pleasure. A large wreath stood leaning against the blackboard, and for a moment I felt it was for myself, placed as it was against my inalienable property.

‘It's for Mr Johnson,' the back row chorused. ‘We all paid for it, Sir.'

‘That's very nice indeed,' I said without much pleasure, feeling that an inordinate amount of fuss was being made over Mr Johnson's demise. First, the headmaster's threatened attendance at the burial, and now this wreath, not to mention the fact that I was using the funeral as a funfair of my very own.

‘We thought you'd take it with you, Sir,' Tindall said. ‘Say it's from us.'

Another complication. I had to sort it out right away. ‘I think it would be nicer if one of you were to take it himself, as a representative of the class.'

‘Let's vote, let's vote,' they shouted, excited at the possibility of some diversion.

‘I doubt whether this is a question for voting,' I said. ‘I think it would be as well to draw a name out of a hat.' This method, I thought, would take a lot longer and pass the morning without undue frustration. Moreover, by the voting method, there was a sporting chance that one of Tommy's closer friends would be chosen, and after our last encounter, I couldn't risk exposing a pupil to Tommy's confidences. The offer of the hat method appealed to their natural gambling instincts, and they set about writing their names on pieces of paper happily torn from their exercise books. I walked
round the class as they each laid their claim, and noticed that most of them were writing in their very best hand as if the prize were a reward for calligraphy.

I decided to use a satchel as our bran-tub, and I went round collecting the papers. When I reached Tindall, I noticed that he put a handful of his signatures into the bag, and I made him retrieve all of them as a penance for his attempted cheating. It took me a little while to subdue his violent reaction, and coward that I am, I called upon the whole class to condemn him, because it was, after all, not wholly in their interest that Tindall should be represented a dozen times. The class turned on him and they settled the matter between them.

I took it upon myself to make the draw, for I trusted nobody. I stood in the middle of the classroom, in view of them all, and shook the satchel for a good mélange. I allowed the nearest boy to hold the bag while I fumbled around inside it. Everybody, with the possible exception of Tindall, was in a state of thorough enjoyment, myself included. What the hell, I thought. Why shouldn't we get a bit of fun out of old Mr Johnson? He'd caused me enough trouble by dying. I fumbled in the bag, longer than was necessary, in order to prolong the suspense, and then I withdrew a crumpled piece of paper and returned with it to my desk in order to lay it out with ceremony. It held the name of Michael Roberts, in his best writing, and it belonged to the smallest boy in the class, fortunately from my point of view, a close friend of nobody's leave alone Tommy's. I declaimed the winner and the name was greeted with roars of disapproval. ‘It's too big for 'im, Sir. ‘E won't be able to carry it.'

‘I can, so there,' little Roberts squeaked. The excitement croaked in his voice, and they laughed at him. Poor Roberts was close to tears, an appropriate demeanour, I felt, for wreath-hauling, and I proposed he should leave right away, while grief, whatever its cause, was still upon him.

‘'E doesn't know the 'ouse, Sir,' one of the boys tried again.

‘I do, so there,' Roberts croaked, as he came up to the blackboard to collect his delivery.

It was indeed mightily large for him, and he tried to conceal that he had difficulty in manoeuvring it. He held it in front of him, like a shield, and because of his lack of height and the wreath's length, he was obliged to hold it high, and
the strain on his thin little arms must have been appalling. I gave him the address, though he swore that he knew it, and I patted him ever so gently on his back. He put all his meagre strength into leaving the classroom with dignity, holding the wreath high and before him, like a lame Olympic runner. When he had gone, the class crowded round the windows to see him through the playground. After a while, he appeared, struggling with his charge, trying all manner of positions in which to carry it. Then half-way across the playground, he stopped, as if inspired. Then quickly he hung the wreath around his neck and belted across the yard as fast as his matchsticks would carry him. Behind him, he left a coloured trail of pocket-money tributes and I dreaded to think what would be left of the wreath by the time he got it to the Johnson house.

Shortly afterwards, the bell rang for the end of the morning, and I went back to the staff-room to deposit my books. I had plenty of time. The funeral wasn't until two o'clock. An hour and a half to go. I had generously calculated an hour to put on my Sundays, so I dawdled a little with trivial chat to other staff members. By about twelve-thirty they had all returned to the common-room, and it was a full and chatty house, when the door swung open and Parsons, dishevelled and overwrought, his upper lip spurting blood, blazed on the threshold, eyeing us all with such hatred, I could not help but admire him. My first thought was to question who had been his adversary, but when I saw Miss Price gather herself to her lisle feet, and almost bolt past him out of the door, I knew that Florence Nightingale was on her way to the Cloth.

‘What happened?' I said. It seemed I was the only one with tongue enough to talk to him.

‘He gave me the push,' Parsons said, without moving, ‘and I did the same for him. He's not looking too pretty himself,' he said. ‘I just came to collect my things. I'm not going to fight it,' he said, reaching into his locker. ‘I don't stand much of a chance. But I didn't do it, no matter what any kid says. I've got a fiancée in Brighton. I don't need any niggers in the woodpile.'

I could have hit him then, but I turned away, as did the rest of the staff as he ranted on into his locker.

‘I've got a fiancée in Brighton,' he kept repeating, as if a fiancée in Brighton, or indeed any other place, precluded
any dirty business elsewhere. Why, I myself had a wife, but there was little point in quoting my spouse to Tommy while my hot hand fumbled up his mother's skirt.

‘Well, you'd better go to Brighton, hadn't you?' Mr Gardiner suggested.

‘I've got a fiancée in Brighton,' Parsons said again, as if that were a reason for not going there.

‘So you keep on saying,' Mr Gardiner said wearily.

By now, Parsons had emptied his locker. His arms were full of exercise books and the odd textbook amongst the piles. He placed them all on the long table, then systematically took each one, textbooks included, and tore them into pieces, casting the shreds like confetti over the common-room floor. We all stared at him, but no one made a move to stop him. We were the sort of crowd that throughout history has indifferently watched the burning of books. One by one, they all left, and I remained for a while, while he shed his demoniac rage. ‘You poor old sod,' I said, as he tore up the last exercise book. ‘You'd better go and have yourself seen to.'

He turned on me as if he would lay me low as well, but I managed to get out of the common-room before he reached me.

In the corridor, I ran into Miss Price, hot from the Cloth, bearing a bloodied swab in her hand, and I had the feeling she'd lost her virginity.

I went into my house by the back door, trembling with excitement. I had almost an hour left in which to change, and the house was all to myself and my privacy. I went straight to my study and peered through the net curtains. A great black hearse stood outside the Johnson door, the coffin already inside. Over it lay a mound of wreaths, and on the pavement, the overflow. Amongst them, I caught sight of Tommy's form's contribution. It was, as I had feared, sadly depleted, but there was more grief in the cold wire armature of the circle, than in all the flowers that had stubbornly held their form.

I dropped the curtain, and on turning back into the room, I saw a letter that had been pushed under my door. It was my wife's habit to deliver my mail in this fashion, and on entering my study on my return from school, it had become automatic with me to take a high step over the threshold so as not
to damage any correspondence I might have received. I had seen the letter when I had first entered the room, lying under my raised foot, but recognizing the postmark, I had pretended it wasn't there. Now, with my back to the window, it stared at me and could not be denied. Over the course of relating this narrative, and indeed long before, I have received many similar letters, all with the same threatening Irish stamps, usually franked with some Emerald Isle jingoism. I delay opening them, for I know the message inside. It is always the same. The letters are from my mother. I haven't spoken of her before, except in passing, because I've given you enough to put up with, with that rotten father of mine, without burdening you with my mother as well. But I should tell you that since my mother remarried some years ago, she has had but two words to say to me, and they arrive regularly, once a week, under these green stamps. The message never varies, like a monotonous litany.

She married an Irish churchgoer, with all the trimmings. Massing and confessing together, she found herself once more in the church. Well, that was her problem and I rather resented the fact that each week I was the recipient of her green stamp neurosis. I picked the letter up. Even now, after years of weekly missives I nourished the hope that perhaps one day her theme would allow itself a slight variation. And on this day, which had already been fraught with incident, and threatened much more, the letter that I opened was indeed other than the rest. I spread it out on my desk. She wrote in purple ink. Always, for that was the colour of her sermon. ‘CONFESS, CONFESS,' it read, as it had shouted in capitals once a week over the past twelve years. And then, almost as a postscript, she had made the additional plea of, ‘My son.' I was moved by this sudden appellation, seeing myself gloriously in my filial role, and she in her maternal, but then it occurred to me that she might so totally have joined the ranks of the church, that she saw herself as a priest, and myself as one of her flock. Was she coming closer to me, or drifting apart? The codicil to her message could have meant either. I decided that either way she must be going off her rocker, and I gave her letter the same treatment as I had given all the others. I took my red pencil which screamed against her purple and wrote BALLS in large capitals across her plea. Then I screwed it up into the wastepaper
basket, and tried to forget about it. Over the years, it had taken me the better part of the week to get her admonishment out of my mind, and barely erased, yet another would arrive. As if I needed any reminder of my rotten father.