Diary of an Assistant Mistress (10 page)

Saturday 21st May

Shopping in Safeways. Dwayne was on the checkout. He introduced himself by saying: "See."

I paused for a moment hoping I would eventually but didn't.

"Here I am."

He added by way of explanation. When he realised that more was needed, he added, "You said I'd never get anywhere but here I am."

Needless to say I congratulated him, there wasn't a trace of irony in his attitude and I suppose it is justified. I can't remember telling Dwayne that he wouldn't get anywhere but one teacher is much the same as another.

It reminded me of one of my first parents' evenings when a parent was bemoaning his child's poor performance at History and I'd comforted him - so I thought - by confiding that I had had difficulties with History too "and look at me."

The parent had looked at me. Pityingly. How was I to know that the man was a stockbroker whose taxes, if he ever paid any, would have equalled my income? So I could hardly begrudge Dwayne his moment of triumph.

Sunday 22nd May

Why do we bother with the Sunday papers? I spent the day doing third year marking and only got round to reading the papers in the evening.

Monday 23rd May

Why do we bother with the daily papers? I don't want to see Tony Blair's face over my porridge. I'd sooner see my porridge over Tony Blair's face.

Half term. There must be an error of some sort because I seem to have done all my marking and there aren't any reports in the offing. Spent the day reading Emma and contemplating the housework.

Tuesday 24th May

There is an error of some sort. Fifth year profiles are due in on Monday and I didn't bring any forms home with me.

Eventually tracked down Oz. He didn't have any spare forms. Indeed he didn't have any forms because he had been relying on me to tell him the profiles were due.

Wednesday 25th May

Got hold of George. Yes he did have some profile slips but when I got there he backed me into a corner and demanded "payment in kind." I didn't feel that kind. Edie was actually in the room at the time but she slipped out. Before she could return with the camcorder, I made an excuse and left.

Thursday 26th May

Profiles, profiles everywhere. It takes me back to my very brief sojourn in the civil service. Like all the civil servants I have met - but flat contrary to the stereotype - I hated bureaucracy, especially bureaucracy which prevented me doing my job.

I started teaching more-or-less on the side of the pupils, understanding their point of view. As I got older I suppose I started to see the parents' point of view. Now I hardly think about the children from one day's end to the next except as subjects for another form to fill in.

Concentrate on the pupils, ignore the paperwork and I could be sacked for incompetence.

Friday 27th Sunday 29th May

More profiles. Towards the end they became just plain fiction.

Monday 30th May

Handed in profiles and noticed rather nervously that all the other ones in the box were on yellow paper and mine were on blue.

Department meeting. It turns out that only George and I had used the correctly coloured forms for the profiles and consequently we were the ones who would have to redo them.

Oz wants us all to volunteer to do wall displays for the forthcoming parents' evening. I was undiplomatic enough to point out that we have no drawing pins because they have not been ordered by our beloved head of department. George is flatly refusing to do a wall display until he has a definitive ruling on which colour paper it should be on.

Tuesday 31st May

George's rebellion over the wall display lasted about as long as his periodic attempts to stop smoking usually do. As usual he had a complex self-justification. Actually I think it boils down to the fact that we like Oz and he is the only member of the hierarchy we can respect even if he couldn't run a beetle drive.

James wanted to "try something different" tonight. It was only after he had me tied to the chair in the black underwear that I realised he is beginning to run out of ideas.

Wednesday 1st June

George invited us to dinner on Friday with, I must say, rather more excitement in his tone than one normally associates with a dinner engagement. He started almost immediately to talk about the people in his area who held "wife-swapping" parties. He mentioned that one of his neighbours had gone to a wife-swapping party and come home with a lawnmower. I said that I usually called them husband-swapping parties.

The conversation ended there because the bell went. I assume this is just a spot of Georgeism because I can hardly see Edie going along with his fantasies.

Thursday 2nd June

Now I am worried. Edie caught me in the corridor and asked if George had invited me for Friday. Since she obviously knew he had, I thought this odd. Then she said that her neighbour had gone to one of the local husband-swapping parties and come back with a dishwasher.

Edie and George are good friends of mine but this is not on. [Actually, partly because they are good friends of mine and I would like it to stay that way]. In any case I have had experience of George's blitzkrieg technique and I think most Panzers are sexier.

I expect the whole thing is an elaborate George joke - he tends to mix his fantasies with his jokes. Still, forewarned is forearmed.

Friday 3rd June

Prawn cocktail followed by pork chops in a most unusual sauce (James has since suggested it was an aphrodisiac - this means nothing, he finds Tizer an aphrodisiac). I had taken the precaution of coming by taxi because George usually plies guests with brash young Algerian claret. On this occasion it was Nuit St Georges and I noted that they were drinking less than usual.

They have arranged the room with two grey sofa beds facing each other and we sat down on these for coffee - Edie asking James to sit with her. I will just mention that the coffee was better than usual as well but now I really must get on.

Edie brought in the coffee. She had undone a couple of buttons on her blouse and it was obvious that she was wearing no bra. She had to lean over James several times. He didn't really stand a chance.

The unexpected part was that Edie made most of the running. At this point, George had his arm across the sofa behind me and one hand on my thigh. By George standards this is cold modesty.

It was Edie who started to talk to all of us about sexual technique. It all sounded a bit clinical to me but James' Levis failed to conceal the fact that he was taking a more than academic interest.

Then I suddenly noticed that her blouse had come completely adrift. I later recognised that this was the point of no return. She started, as it were idly, stroking one nipple as she looked at us each in turn.

Up to this point, George had very wisely kept himself to himself. When Edie turned her attention to James, talking to him, idly resting her hand on his growing erection, then he started. I noticed later that neither George nor Edie had obstructed my view of James or his view of me.

The approach was not subtle, except by George's standards. He put his hand up my skirt. What he did with his hand suggested that he had been taking lessons. For a man whose idea of foreplay used to be boasting about the size of his equipment, he had made progress.

Edie knelt down and did what could be described as a party trick with a condom. She put it between her teeth and then transferred it to James' penis. I won't try to emulate that for a while - in any case I don't like the taste of condom. (I suppose I could put mustard on it.)

George and Edie had both learned patience (of course I hadn't had much experience with Edie!) and were more intent on giving pleasure to their partners than grabbing it for themselves.

I did notice that Edie was watching me a great deal, though she may have been watching George. We only made love once, George even used my favourite sideways position, though I wouldn't have thought it was sufficiently male-dominant for his tastes.

I later found myself helping Edie with the washing-up, George is obviously not completely liberated then.

Saturday 4th June

James did not want to discuss last night but I did. Had George got married solely in order to qualify for wife-swapping parties? It all seemed like Edie's initiative, was there something about the PE department we had never suspected? Most importantly of all, where did we go from here?

James mumbled a lot until I got on to more important questions, like how did Edie compare with me. There he was quite explicit enough, thank you very much.

Would we ever do it again? James seemed all too keen. I had to explain that it was the sight of his arousal that turned me on. He tried to say something complimentary in response and made such a mess of it that I hit him with a pillow and we left it at that.

Sunday 5th June

James insisted on making love first thing this morning. Then he started insisting that George was a better lover than he was. I pointed out that Victor was a better lover than he was which seemed to mollify him a little.

I suppose it was the lack of anything interesting in the Sunday papers but I managed to get him talking about last Friday. It seems that the simple truth was that he was embarrassed. I made noises about nobody being in a position to feel guilty because we were all grown-ups and knew what we were doing - well more-or-less what he was doing in George's case.

He insisted that he hadn't taken the initiative, Edie had. I said I could hardly fail to have noticed and went back to my speculations of yesterday.

Monday 6th June

Inservice Training day on assessment. George said he wouldn't mind assessing me and I replied that I wouldn't mind assessing him and showed Clair a ruler which I held at the three inch mark. The day was otherwise uneventful and pointless. I would be in a much better position to deliver the National Cur if I could spend the time planning lessons.

If Oz is going to assess my efficiency, perhaps Torquemada should assess my toleration, John Major could assess my charisma and Frank Bruno could assess my diction.

Tuesday 7th June

One of my first year pupils - the sort who always comes up to tell me what she had for tea last night - admired my pullover and when I said my mother knitted it for me, she replied, "But she's dead."

I am not given to superstition but I did ring mum to find out how she was getting on. She was a little surprised at the call and assumed I wanted to borrow money. In the end I settled for 50 quid. I will pay her back in a fortnight.

Wednesday 8th June

I told my Lit. group about the misunderstanding surrounding Hamlet's "fatal flaw." This was of course a misprint in many early criticisms. Provincial companies of players who didn't run to such things as swords, used to replace the sword fight at the end of Hamlet with a wrestling match and it was in this that Hamlet was fatally floored by Laertes.

Then I stopped. They carried on writing all this down. Notes really do go straight from the teacher's mouth to the page without touching the student's brain.

Invigilated Stage 3 Science SATS. This scientific test proves conclusively that nine out of ten pupils cannot answer daft questions under exam conditions with a lawnmower going outside. And as for Sandy with her hay-fever: this will disqualify her as a scientist for life.

Thursday 9th June

A typed envelope with 50 quid in pound notes arrived this morning. I had a job explaining it to James. In the end I said it was from a secret admirer.

The case of the Buddhist beefburger. Our staffroom is overrun with ants now. I think the constant spillage of sugar near the kettle may be a factor. When we suggested blasting the little blighters to kingdom some with a dose of Nippon, Pat was most upset and said that he never killed ants (or greenfly - and he grows roses!) We were all rather touched by this until we remembered that Pat is a carnivore, red in tooth and claw - usually from tomato sauce from his beefburgers.

Friday 10th June

George and Edie came round for a meal and, just to be on the safe side, I invited Oz and Jane as well. Oz and Jane are now on speaking terms but Jane has a learned distrust of any female who is under Oz, so to speak.

In the event, George was very proper and engaged Oz in a lengthy argument about CPVE, GNVQ and capitation and only made a half-hearted attempt to grope Jane in the hallway under the guise of getting her coat.

Saturday 11th June

Shopping in Sainsbury's. Everything is in the wrong place: not a bit like Safeways. There is also a different selection of pupils on the checkout.

Sunday 12th June

Finished marking Lit. essays. Fortunately they had taken my remarks about Hamlet as a joke, or at least as unreliable because Cole's notes did not confirm them.

Monday 13th June

"How do you feel about a teacher's responsibility for moral education?" was the rather unexpected question with which Mrs Snooks greeted me when I was summoned to her office after school. I did write an essay with a similar title when I was a student, it ran to 3500 words.