My first attempt was quite short so thought I'd try a longer story. Its a slow starter, but its good to set the scene.
I knocked softly, waited a respectful fifteen seconds before entering. The name plate said boldly: R B James, Head Teacher. The letters MSc to which R B James was entitled were absent. The term Head Teacher rather than Principal - the correct form for the appointment - was a small token of defiance.
Behind the desk R B James completed filling in a form and transferred it to a mounting pile in the out tray before looking up. She removed her glasses and gave me a weary smile. “Bureaucracy, Michael,” she said, with a dismissive gesture. “One day we will disappear under a landslide of forms, and what remains of education in this country will come to an end.”
It was a familiar theme. Ruth James - Jimmy to her pupils - was a brilliant communicator with a vocation for teaching. After graduation, she had spent two years in industry to experience the real world before taking up her first school post. Her impact was almost instantaneous. But such is the structure of education in this country, promotion leads inexorably to administration. Ruth was thirty-five, the youngest in the county and one of the youngest in the country, when she was appointed Principal at Spurfield High School. That much emerged in an article in the Guardian.
Local gossip suggested why she had been lured from the class room where she excelled. She and her husband needed the money. Spencer James was an academic, a professor of history, internationally renowned in his field; but the income from books, articles and lectures contributed only marginally to the mortgage repayments.
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So here was Ruth, at six o’clock on a dismal February Tuesday, filling in forms that should have been the responsibility of any half-brained clerk. I was sorry to have to add to her concerns. “It’s the Brown girl,” I said, taking a chair on the other side of the desk.
“Alice Brown, a credit to the standing of Spurfield High and a royal pain in the backside.” Ruth screwed up her nose. “In a few months we’ll be rid of her, thank the Lord. But what now?”
“She and Carole Thomas were supposed to stay on for rehearsal,” I said, “but Carole is apparently unwell. Apparently - because we only have Alice’s word for it.”
“With you in mind?”
“I can’t prove it, but you’ve seen her. Skirt an inch or two shorter than school rules, but not enough to make an issue of it. Until she picks up her cello and hikes the skirt up round her thighs. Well, she can invite you to look but when Carole is there, too, that’s all it is.”
“But today, no Carole.”
“No Carole.”
“So perhaps she wanted you to do more than look.”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t rule it out.”
“This is all to do with that orchestra - the Italy trip?”
“The Anglo-Italian Youth Orchestra, yes. Three weeks in Livorno during the Easter break. This will be Alice’s third year and she’s due to audition for the first desk. She’ll walk it. But today they were supposed to be working on their audition piece, the Kodaly Sonata. The one that starts right down in the cello’s lowest register. When Carole didn’t turn up, Alice said she wanted to try some unaccompanied Bach.”
“Was that a problem?”
“Not until she asked me to help her with the fingering. As soon as I stood behind her, she complained it was hot in the studio and undid the top button on her blouse.”
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