Sunday Best (5 page)

It was difficult to find anything good to say about Tindall's work, such as he had done, but with his promise of a better start, and a new leaf, I dismissed him quickly because I knew that if he humbled himself much longer, they would lynch him in the playground at break, and I already had one murder on my hands of which I was not guilty.

I took each boy in turn, and stunned them with my concern, and they returned to their desks, paralysed by my goodwill. Each felt himself the favourite, and though outwardly they maintained their bombast, fearing to lose caste as the teacher's pet, inwardly, or so I liked to think, they had sworn eternal allegiance to the cause, right or wrong, of George Verrey Smith. It was a good beginning.

The bell went to signify the end of the lesson, and there was actually an audible sigh of regret across the classroom. It was the first time in my career as a schoolmaster that I had heard such a sound, and I could not help but relish it. But I must take a hold on myself. I don't want to get too soft.

I went back to the common-room for a quick cup of tea. There was a crowd murmuring about the notice-board, and when I managed to worm my way to the front, I understood what all the noise had been about. A large printed notice in red capitals, announced the calling of an extraordinary staff meeting at the end of the day, and grudging apologies for the
necessary overtime. Now the Reverend Richard Baines was not a man given to hyperbole or histrionics. He was the understatement, not, as he thought, out of subtlety, but out of the conspicuous lack of anything of interest to say. So that when our clothed boss called a meeting extraordinary, then extraordinary it must be, and over our tea, there was much conjecture amongst the staff as to its matter. Miss Price, the Scripture teacher, and our only woman member, who had been on the staff longer than any of us, and was close to the Reverend's ear, kept a pointed silence and a fixed look of disapproval about her chin. Whatever the extraordinary meeting was about, it was no doubt serious, and there was also no doubt that Miss Price was in the know. Mr Gardiner, our man in Geography, offered the suggestion that Baines wanted yet again to limit our coloured quota, and if so, he, Mr Gardiner, would certainly have a word or two to say, but Miss Price's unchanging inscrutable look did not favour the possibilities of that offer. Mr Lewis, panting from P.T., suggested that it was something to do with the gymnasium, and the mishandling of equipment by the extra-mural classes after hours. Mr Lewis firmly believed that nothing that took place outside the gymnasium or playing fields, could possibly have anything to do with education, but a quick glance at Miss Price's face confirmed that his suggestion was way off the mark. We kept our eyes on her face while we threw out possibilities, reduction in salaries, longer lunch duty, shorter holidays, and it was only when Mr White from Chemistry, bored with the game, and with complete frivolity, tossed off the suggestion of immoral practices amongst the staff, that Miss Price's eyelids were seen to flicker, and a clue was at hand. But whether they had wavered on account of her own personal modesty, or because there was a glimmer of truth in Mr White's proposition, was hard to assess. I myself felt suddenly unwell, and so overwhelmed by my own feelings of guilt, that I quickly convinced myself that the staff meeting extraordinary was on my account, and I turned to my locker to hide my trembling from the others. I had thoughts of going straight to the headmaster's study and confessing. But to what? To the suggested fatherhood, or to my Sunday hobby? How could he know about either, unless Tommy had already sneaked into school, hot from the corpse, and spilt the beans. I found myself wondering which exposure I would prefer, since the one
confirmed my manhood, while the other radically questioned it. Some choice. I would deny both, of course, the one with justification, but what possible evidence was there of my innocence? Tommy's word against mine. I had no children of my own; that was a known and staff-room-pitied fact. My wife was to blame, they had no doubt murmured, so it was natural that I should sire elsewhere.

Tommy's story would be wholly believable. But ‘I didn't, I didn't', I heard myself saying, ‘I didn't m'lud, that's not my scene. I've got a wardrobe of Sunday clothes to prove it.' I shuddered at the sensation such evidence would generate, and I truly couldn't decide within myself which guilt was preferable. I returned to the tea-drinking crowd, and threw out suggestions with the rest of them. My isolation and non-participation could have singled me out, and I shuddered at my sudden intuition of all manner of self-defence, as if indeed I were a criminal. ‘Perhaps it's just the Reverend creating a little bit of drama, and all it's about is who is going to open the school fête.' I tried not to look at Miss Price, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her sneer, and I knew that it was not a sneer at the suggestion itself, but at the quarter from which it came. I knew now with irrefutable conviction, that I was in the dock, and I shivered.

I don't know how I got through that day. I plodded through my classes with my kindness, but it was a kindness that was killing me. At the end of the day, I rushed blindly into the headmaster's study. I was the first to present myself, and I composed myself on a chair with as much dignity as I could muster. I felt like an aristocrat of the French Revolution, who, not wanting to cause a delay, stood waiting for the arrival of the tumbril.

They arrived in groups, or singly, with Mr Hood, the musicmaster, absentmindedly whistling in the rear. The Reverend glowered at him, but Mr Hood, a man after my own heart, stared right through him, and not only finished whistling his air, but added a coda for good measure. The Reverend Richard Baines, to whom a perfect and imperfect cadence sounded exactly the same, and on whom the finesse of a coda was completely lost, felt his authority questioned.

‘That's enough, Hood,' he thundered.

‘It's finished,' Hood said with satisfaction, and he smiled with an innocence that I envied.

Miss Price took her seat beside the Cloth, with a smug ‘I'm-in-the-know' look smeared on her face. Mr White placed himself in front of me, and I was glad because I could steady my foot on the back of his chair to stop my leg from trembling. During the course of the day, I had half-heartedly composed a speech in my defence, half-heartedly, not because I was unaware of the urgency of my case, but because I was unsure of the charge. So I was obliged to fashion a defence that would answer to the charge of Adultery and Eonism, no mean assignment, I can tell you. I had in the end decided on a flat denial of both, and if my wardrobe were called into question, it was the overflow of my wife's, and as for Tommy's story, he was a bloody liar, and what his motive was I couldn't imagine. In fact, my whole speech was one of righteous indignation at their suspicions. How dare they cast such aspersions on a God-fearing upright citizen like myself. By the time the Reverend Richard Baines was ready to open the meeting, I had worked myself up into such a state of hostility, that I had to fumble at nothings in my brief-case to hide my rage. Mr Gardiner, sitting next to me, remarked on my sudden sweating and hoped I didn't have a cold coming. I coughed to oblige him, and hoped the same of myself, while the Reverend waited
until my feeble wheezing had subsided.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,' he began. He always pluralized Miss Price, tho' she had hardly enough about her to indicate even one of her kind; flat-chested and overall hirsute, it was difficult to determine her gender except perhaps by touch, if anyone could bring himself to do it. She tut-tutted at her chief's incorrigible sense of humour and waited agog for him to launch the tidings she had already juicedly savoured.

‘I would like to apologize to Miss Price beforehand,' the Cloth continued, ‘for having to discuss what you will agree is an unsavoury subject in her presence.' I hung on to my chair, and I felt my bowels melting. All memory of my speech had evaporated, and I felt myself swaying.

‘But I thought it best,' he went on, ‘to confide in her the matter of this meeting, so that she would be well prepared to withstand whatever embarrassment would ensue. I apologize to her once again.'

Miss Price smiled. ‘I hope I am broad-minded enough,' she said, ‘to overcome the delicacy of the situation. But a trespass is a trespass, and must be dealt with.'

A nodded approval from the Cloth. ‘Let us pray,' I expected him to say, and I myself at that juncture felt in need of a prayer, a good solid, infallible invocation that the Reverend and Miss Price would lose no time in dropping dead. I inadvertently lifted my leg from Mr White's seat and set up such a vibration throughout the row that Mr Gardiner was convinced that my cold had burgeoned into pneumonia. This time there was less sympathy, and he shifted his seat to avoid contact. I wanted very much to cry.

The headmaster smiled at Miss Price, and I wished to God they'd get their wretched bonhomie over and done with. He coughed and composed his face with a seriousness that indicated he was coming straight to the point. ‘You will have noticed,' he said, ‘that Mr Parsons is absent from school. You especially, Mr Verrey Smith,' he offered with a sick smile, ‘would have noticed his absence, since the bulk of his work has fallen and will continue to fall on your shoulders.'

His use of the future tense heartened me a little, and I returned a smile that was a mere arrangement of my features, rather than an expression of goodwill.

‘You will have been told that Mr Parsons has the 'flu,' the Reverend went on, ‘but I am bound to tell you that Mr Parsons,
in body at least, is perfectly well, but that I have found it necessary to suspend him from his duties until an inquiry is complete.' He left a pause for anyone imprudent enough to ask why, but we all knew better than to question his authority. The answer would surely be forthcoming. As for myself, I trembled less, tho' I still did not feel absolutely in the clear.

‘I have called this extraordinary meeting,' he went on, ‘because it has come to my notice that Mr Parsons has been indulging in perverse practices on the school premises.'

My body slackened, and I slumped in my chair, overcome by a mounting fit of giggling that I could not control. The relief that I felt at my acquittal was finding its full expression. And while rocking to and fro with my convulsions, I desperately sought some excuse that would account for my hysteria. Mr Gardiner eyed me with horror. Whatever the cause of my outburst, it was certainly no symptom of pneumonia. Most of the staff shifted with their disgust, and a few of the more generous amongst them thought I was simply mad, and I wondered whether I should offer to the Cloth a plea of temporary insanity. By now, I was laughing aloud. Bless you, Mr Parsons, I said to myself, you poor little bugger, but bless you and your buggery for putting me in the clear.

‘I fail to see what is so funny, Mr Verrey Smith. Perhaps you would care to explain yourself. This is a very serious matter.'

I took him up on it, feebly inspired. ‘It is because it is a serious, and, I may add, a tragic matter, that I laugh, in the same way that I laugh when told of someone's death. My laughter is close to tears, Headmaster.' It was a game try, and I think it convinced nobody. But then nobody could call me a liar, and I was by then able to control my hysterical relief and to assume a serious air. The headmaster decided to be satisfied, and to drop the subject since he had no notion of how to handle it.

‘If I could have your attention,' he went on, ‘I would like to tell you how the matter came to my notice, to outline the events, so that you will all have a true picture. A situation like this one is open to all kinds of rumour, and I want you to shut your ears to it, and to remember only the facts that I shall give you. The decision as to what to do with Mr Parsons is mine and mine alone, but as his colleagues, you are entitled to be aware of the facts that make any decision on my part necessary.'

That, in a nutshell, was our headmaster's version of democracy. He often referred to his ‘game little band' of staff, and dropped us tit-bits of confidential matter, professing an interest in our opinion, but determined to ignore it. He had already made his decision. Of that there was no doubt. Mr Parsons would get the push, and the Reverend, who was a vindictive man, would make jolly sure that poor old Parsons wouldn't get another job. It struck me that Parsons was a very unfortunate name to be saddled with such an offence and I wondered whether our chief was taking it as a personal affront to his own collar. Poor old Parsons. Apart from my own personal indebtedness to him, I felt wholly on his side, and I was determined that, whatever the consequences, I would fight to get him a square deal.

‘The Parsons affair was brought to my notice by a parent of one of the children in the lower forms.' The headmaster had already put Parsons in the dock. He had robbed him of his title and reduced him to a case. ‘The parents shall be nameless,' the headmaster went on, ‘but I feel it pertinent to the case to tell you that the child concerned is one of our coloured quota.'

I wondered how this fact in any way shed new light on the matter, or new dark, as the case may be.

‘I intend to make an issue of the case simply because the child concerned is coloured, and I want it to be known that the cudgels will be taken up on behalf of any pupil, irrespective of his race or creed.'

‘I fail to see, Headmaster, that the colour of the child concerned is in any way relevant, and why a larger issue should be made of the case simply because of this factor.' I was pushing my luck, I knew, but an innocent man, or rather, an acquitted man gains strength and courage to defend others, and at that moment I would have devoted my entire life to the cause of Parsons's acquittal.

The Reverend Richard Baines was not pleased. ‘You and I, Mr Verrey Smith,' he said with loaded tolerance, ‘do not see eye to eye on some matters. I have no intention of arguing the point. To me, the colour of the child is a decisive factor. There is no point in pretending that we are all the same and that society draws no distinction. I make an issue of the colour of the child in order to underline the justice of my system.'