Sunday Best (4 page)

My vanity case was my last birthday present from my wife. She bought it especially for me, and its contents are extremely generous. First I applied my moisture cream, which is a must for a base, and in my make-up, as with most things, I am very particular. I waited a while, while my skin absorbed the cream. If you're to make a good job of maquillage you have to be patient, and since this is the most exciting part of my Sunday ritual, I am prepared to spend a long time at it. I love the panstick application that comes next and the sudden transformation it effects to the texture and colour of the skin. A little rouge, high on the cheek bone, to give contour to the bone structure, then a mere soupçon of lipstick to offset what would otherwise be an interesting yet sickly pallor. My eyes came last, and to these I gave my all. Eye-shadow, eyeliner, lashes and mascara. And when it was all done, I added my blonde wig. This last I had originally bought as a birthday present to my wife, but I could not bring myself to part with it, and bought her a fountain-pen instead. To this day she does not know of its existence and I feel slightly guilty every time I put it on, though I console myself with the thought that it probably looks much better on me.

I took my time with my dressing, and had a little difficulty in closing the back zip – one of the hang-ups of dressing alone – and when it was done, I looked in the mirror and found it pleasing. I sat down in my chair with my legs neatly crossed at the ankle, and picked up the crossword puzzle. Between clues, I fingered my chiffon or patted my hair. All
thoughts of Mrs Johnson had ceased, and I was at peace with myself.

I ask very little from life. My tastes are very simple, and in such moments of happiness, I can even think of my wife by name.

I would get on with my story if I could, but I keep thinking of my father, and such thoughts are an obstacle to any undertaking. But I must not think of him. It is imperative to put him out of my mind. I can remember him only with hatred and bitterness, a bitterness that corrodes. I am not ready to think about him. When I can recall him with a modicum of affection, that will be the time for nostalgia. But I don't ever want to think of him with affection. Yet I can't not think about him. I am trapped in his leprous growth across my mind, an immortal cancer on my brain. I will not speak of him.

There was a post-mortem, of course. I am speaking of Mr Johnson. My father had one too. It was an accident, they said about my father. But there are accidents and accidents, and even my father, as he lay dying, knew that it was no accident. But enough of that. Mr Johnson's post-mortem showed unsurprisingly that he had died of heart-failure. So everybody was in the clear, and the neighbours tried to hide their disappointment. But all that came much later, and I must go back to save what little chronology I have forged for myself.

I went to school on the following day, taking a roundabout way to avoid passing the Johnson front door. I would be spared Tommy for at least the week before the funeral, a week to put my thoughts in order, and to organize a plan of action, if indeed there were to be one at all. I had a vague hope that Tommy would never put in an appearance again, indeed, that both of them would move out of the neighbourhood, or with luck, out of the country altogether. People said Australia was a good place, a happy hunting-ground for those who had failed elsewhere. The advertisements called it the start of a new life, and it struck me that Mrs Johnson and her wretched son could do worse than to forge a new path thousands of miles away from George Verrey Smith. I resolved that at our next meeting, I would tentatively suggest that a
change would do her good. But I kept thinking of those weeping breasts of hers, and at such thoughts, I didn't want her to go.

I had difficulty in settling down to my school work that morning. Monday, in any case, was a particularly heavy day on my timetable, and to make matters worse, Mr Parsons, our junior French teacher, was away with what he had spluttered through the telephone was ‘flu, but knowing Mr Parsons, was probably his Monday hangover. And so I was saddled with his work as well as my own, and far worse, with Mr Parsons's form, who frightened the life out of me. They were in what we call the Remove, a name in my opinion which should have been acted on forthwith, for they were a bunch of zombies who neither gave nor took any trouble. They constitute the embryonic ‘Don't knows' of a Gallup-poll society and the ‘Yes, definitelys' of the vox pop telly interview. Their indifference to play and learning was sublime, and I found their cluster of blank staring faces, unnerving. I settled them down to an essay on ‘My favourite holiday', a classic time-filler and waster, and rushed off to my own form, where the noise and chaos were almost refreshing. Tommy's desk stood empty in the front row, and its proximity was menacing. I toyed with the idea of displacing him during his absence, but I knew there would be no volunteers for a front desk. It seemed the ambition of most of the boys to spend their schooldays as far from the centre of learning as possible, and on the first day of every term there was a veritable stampede for the back row. It was only the meek, but not necessarily the inheritors of the earth, who ended up in front. And Tommy, with half a dozen others, had been brutally sieved through the seven rows in the classroom, and had landed, bruised and complaining in his present, though absent, exposed position almost touching the blackboard. Had I been my own pupil in that position, I would have been terrified. So, on second thoughts, I decided that Tommy should on no account be displaced.

I teach in a Comprehensive school, and we have a fair cross-section of pupils. I have often heard parents praise the school for this very reason. By ‘cross-section', the middle-class parent squares his conscience with the jolly knowledge that his little Roger is in the same class as their charlady's boy. And the charlady, touched too by the cross-section syndrome, delights that her Albert is mixing with a nicer class of
person. But when I say cross-section, I have no axe to grind, and I mean quite simply that the pupils are poor and rich, together with a slight quota of ‘coloured', who for some reason never seem to qualify for an economic category. They are simply ‘coloured', and that, I suppose, says plenty. Our headmaster, a man of the cloth – I shall go into him later, preferably with a knife – our headmaster, the Reverend Richard Baines, is very proud of his coloured quota, limited as it is. They are his token guests, a handful in each class, whose black presence silences any suggestion that the Reverend Richard Baines is faintly prejudiced. He is a firm public believer in voluntary repatriation, but privately, they should all go back where they came from, tho' a good number of them were born a stone's throw from the school. Often, at the end of assembly, he can be seen sweeping through the centre aisle – from the balcony, I get a top-shot eyeful of his black gown and mortarboard – patting the odd crimped head to display his large humanity. His coloured quota, I may add, is strictly limited to the lower forms. He is dubious, he once confided to me, about the older negro boy. ‘They develop so early,' he said, coughing discreetly behind his hand, a gesture that left no doubt as to what category of development he meant. But I digress again, and I do not relish it, for the headmaster reminds me of my father, both bullies, but my father less so, perhaps. At least, he was always drunk, which offered some explanation for his behaviour. But the Reverend Richard Baines is a bully, sober. But I don't intend to discuss the merits of either. There is little to choose between them, and let them both rot.

I got my class to some semblance of order, and started out with the register. I ticked off the answers as they came, and didn't even bother to call Tommy's name half-way down the list. But a register, especially towards the end of the school year, and it was already spring, has been subconsciously learned by rote as efficiently and as meaninglessly as the Lord's Prayer. Try saying, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, He restoreth my soul', and await the price of your omission. ‘You missed out Tommy Johnson,' came a roar from the back row. The omission of Tommy's name had thrown out the known rhythm of the register as if a foot had been dropped from a term-long persistent iambic pentameter. ‘What about Tommy Johnson?' they persisted.

‘He's patently absent,' I said, pointing to his untenanted desk.

‘So's Terry Burley,' they shouted, ‘and you called
his
name.'

‘I happened to know in advance that Tommy Johnson would not be in school today.' Why the hell was I defending myself? I thought. I had made a mistake, that's all. But I had already made an issue of an otherwise completely insignificant name.

‘What's the matter with him then?' The back row again. There never seems to be an identifiable voice from the back row, but wherever it comes from, it speaks for them all.

‘Unfortunately,' I said, ‘his father died.' It was one way of getting silence, and I toyed with the idea of using it again in some other context in an emergency. They stared at each other and then at the inkwells on their desks. Whatever people may say to the contrary, it is still possible that a class of twelve-year-old secondary modern boys can occasionally be moved to silence. It went on for a long time, and I felt they were unconsciously celebrating the late Mr Johnson with a two-minute shut-up, and I doubted that he deserved such a memorial. ‘I knew 'im,' one of them said at last, seeking a closer proximity with a man who had temporarily achieved a celebrity status.

‘So did I,' said another, with contempt. ‘So did lots of us. You weren't the only one. 'E was orlright, old Mr Johnson. 'E used to 'ave that clean car.'

‘'E wasn't so old, was'e?' said another. ‘When's the funeral, Sir?'

‘Yes, when, when? So's we can send flowers.'

They were wallowing in it now, and their chatter dispersed into little groups, excited, lump-in-throat chatter, of an event that had broken the monotony of a Monday morning.

‘Poor old Tommy,' one voice was heard amongst the din, and they fell silent again, as they came to relate the pain with one they knew, and possibly with the awareness that their own fathers, too, were mortal. I took advantage of this silence to call them back to concentration, and I finished off the register. I had decided to be very kind to them. I had one week in which to establish myself as a kind, God-fearing, pure and modest schoolmaster, who wanted nothing but people's good. A concrete image, indestructible, and impervious to the accusations and tall stories that Tommy no doubt would scatter on his return. I am not a man who goes round fucking other
people's wives, was what I wanted to say, and I had a week to make it clear. I looked at the rows of faces, and lost heart. It was a moment in which I had a tinge of doubt that I was not the boy's father.

But mindful of my resolution to present myself as unimpeachable, I sought ways and means of making such an impression. You see, I am not by nature a kind man, and it is always an effort for me to display a generous disposition. Moreover a Monday morning was not a propitious time to put such a resolution to the test, for it was the day devoted to an assessment of the week's work in all subjects, for which I, as their form-master, was ultimately responsible. Normally I would go round their desks examining each set of exercise books in turn. It was usually a morning of terror and silence, a routine that called invariably for reprimand and punishment. A fine time to have sudden notions of charity. Yet I had only a week, and there was no time to be lost. So I decided on calling the boys up singly to my desk. Kindness in private, especially when out of character, is less embarrassing than kindness in a mass. Each pupil would think himself solely favoured, and would hold my generosity as something of a secret, in which only he and I shared. I would imbue the whole class with a sense of private and single privilege, so that when the crunch came, as come it must, an army of protest and disbelief would rise naturally to my defence.

I called on Jack Tindall, the mainstay of the back row, deciding to start on the worst and to get it over with. He was surprised to be chosen as pioneer of the new procedure, and he gathered up his books, such as he could find, and in his bewilderment, stumbled over the outstretched legs punctuating his way to the front. Normally the back-row boys anticipated these hurdles, and a boy's passage from the back of the class to the blackboard was normally in the form of a slow canter, but Tindall was so bewildered by my sudden calling, that he forgot the fixed fences on the way. He landed on his face below the blackboard. Time for kindness and concern, I thought, and was grateful for a natural opportunity. ‘Are you all right, Tindall?' I said, surprised at the gentleness in my voice, and fearful of how true it was ringing. The prostrate Tindall was more thrown by my concern than by his minor injuries, and it took him some time to rouse himself from the floor. His books, loose-leafed, and shoddy already, were
sadly depleted by his fall, and it took a little time to collect the dirty scraps of paper which Tindall passed off as his homework. My concern had unnerved him, and already before spreading the scraps on my desk, he was apologizing for his lack of diligence, for his neglect of his work, for his thorough no-goodness, and promised to do better the following week, and for ever and ever, Sir, and to pull himself together. The class were stupefied by Tindall's submission.

Amongst them, there must have been a slight feeling of let-down, and thoughts of who was the bully-elect, now that Tindall had joined the Establishment. Tindall was practically genuflecting by now, and feeding my natural inclinations to cruelty, but I kept my kind head, alarmed at the thought that goodwill was possibly another name for blackmail. I dealt with Tindall as quickly as possible, tho' the sudden silence of the whole class made privacy difficult. I gave them my permission to chat quietly amongst themselves until their turn came, but their misgivings at my generosity silenced them.