The New Samurai (6 page)

She read it through slowly and carefully, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“That’s well wicked! It’s a good poem for a bloke called ‘Frost’. Bit cheerful, though, innit, sir, for the first day back?”

Sam laughed. “Yes, perhaps not the most cheerful thing ever but I’ve always liked it.”

“Well, you
are
a bit weird, sir,” said Holly, kindly.

Sam grinned. “Well, you’re welcome to bring in any poems or song lyrics that you like if you want – so long as I get to see them first.”

“That’s censorship, sir!” Holly complained, loudly.

“Yep,” Sam agreed, still smiling.

Gavin and Mark slouched through the door, tedium and tiredness dripping from their skinny shoulders.

“Morning. Welcome back,” said Sam.

The boys barely looked up but managed to grunt something unintelligible. Sam suppressed a smile; he remembered being that age, barely able to articulate a word, let alone whole sentences.

The rest of his tutor group arrived, either crashing through the door and earning themselves a look, or sliding in, as if wishing they were invisible. The noise level began to rise slowly. Ayesha was one of the last to arrive.

“Sir! Sir, is it rugby practice tonight, sir?” she bellowed.

“Turn the volume down a bit, Ayesha,” he said, calmly. “But no: I’ve got a department meeting tonight.”

She pushed out her lower lip and sucked on her teeth.

“We’ll have practice on Friday after school, and back to the usual schedule next Wednesday,” he reminded her.

Ayesha wandered off to her desk, muttering beneath her breath and throwing him filthy looks. Sam knew it was just part of her hard girl act. He just hoped he’d be able to keep her interested in rugby long enough to stop her joining one of the gangs that circled her like sharks.

He took the register, noting no absences, and entrusted Amirun to return it to the office. The bell rang and everyone piled off to the first lesson of the day.

Sam carried his crate and laptop through the yowling hordes and started to set up in one of the IT suites. It wasn’t ideal but it was the only room available on the timetable for his Year nine class. It was a new day, a new term, a new year, and he was starting them on ‘Macbeth’.

He’d had quite a struggle to persuade the jejune Mr Jones, Head of Department, that this lower-ability set would be able to cope with the language.

“Look, Sam,” Mr Jones had said, his voice patronising, the old patriarch to the younger man: “most of them struggle with ordinary English; how are they going to cope with Elizabethan cadence?”

“I’m not saying it will be easy, but it’s such a powerful story,” he’d replied. “Loyalty, ambition, murder, power, ghosts, mental breakdown – I think they can cope with that; it’s your average soap opera. The rest, well, I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Now he had to deliver.

The students shuffled in. Some were still young-looking 13-year-old children, while others could have passed for late teens. Sam had reason to suspect that several of the taller girls already managed to buy drinks in their local pubs: one reason that he made sure he never went for a beer near the school, and a very good reason for living nowhere near Kidbrooke.

“Greetings, everyone,” said Sam. “This morning we’re going to start off with an exciting new project: we’ll be studying Shakespeare’s play ‘Macbeth’.”

There were a few groans, but most of the students had never heard of Shakespeare. Sam wasn’t very surprised or worried: at least it meant they had no preconceptions.

“Stanley, can you hand out copies of the play, please? One between two.”

The eager, skinny boy wiped his hands on his trousers and picked up a pile of the scruffy texts and started chucking them across the room.

“I said
hand
them out, Stanley, not launch them!”

Stanley smiled disarmingly, then gave out the books delicately, as if he were handling live grenades.

“What’s this about, sir?” said Brendan, eyeing his copy with distaste even before he’d opened it.

“It’s about a man on the edge,” said Sam. “A man whose life is about to change in ways he could never imagine and…”

“Does he win
X Factor
, sir?” asked Hassan.

“Does he win the Lotto?” said Kristen.

Sam smiled and held up his hands. “No, neither of those. Although he kind of thinks he’s won the Lottery big time, but what he wishes turns out to be a poisoned chalice. That’s a metaphor: who can tell me what a metaphor is? Yes, Hal.”

“When you’re describing something and the words mean that it really is it, but it isn’t really,” said Hal, strangling the sentence nervously.

“Pretty much,” said Sam. “It’s using an image to represent something intangible: ‘a heart of stone’ would be another example. Okay, turn to page 27. This is going to give us our first introduction to the man Macbeth. Instead of him talking, we’re going to hear what one of his friends says about him.

He read slowly and clearly:

“
For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name – Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,Which smoked with bloody execution,Like valour’s minion carved out his passageTill he faced the slave;Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,And fix’d his head upon our battlements
.”

“Oh, sir, that’s gross!” said Anna, wrinkling her nose. “He’s cut off some scuzz’s head and stuck it up.”

“Wicked!” said Brendan, his eyes alight with interest.

“Yeah, but he’s called ‘brave’, complained Leila. “And then he goes and gets all trippy!”

“Yeah, is he on drugs, sir?” asked Brendan.

“You could say that,” said Sam. “He’s on the most addictive drug of all: power. And his ambition is going to be a big part of that. But at the moment his friends still call him ‘valiant’ and ‘worthy’. Now turn to page 220. Here’s how he’s described now: ‘Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen’…”

“Oh, oh! I know this, sir!” piped up Luka. “His wife, innit! She’s that crazy ho! Messes with knives and that. Yeah, yeah! She’s got mad cow disease!”

The class laughed but Sam was impressed: somehow, the depths of south east London and the ninth-floor flat of a council block had produced a boy who knew the story of Lady Macbeth.

Just then Sam’s door flew open. It was Sylvie, breathless and agitated.

“Oh, Mr Patterson! A word, please!”

The class looked up, a murmur of anticipation rippling through the room at the sudden interruption.

Sam stepped outside, his face worried.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. But there’s a fight in the playground. It looks serious. Can you go? I’ll sit with your class.”

Sam ran down the corridor, startling two girls who were dragging their feet to class. One nudged the other, but Sam was too worried to notice as they followed quietly behind him.

Tearing open the door at the entrance, Sam sprinted into the playground. A ring of students were standing loosely around two boys who were bloody-nosed and wrestling each other on the ground. The bigger boy had the smaller on the ground and was kneeling on him, landing some solid punches.

“Stop that!” roared Sam.

But the boy ignored him, too maddened to hear anything.

Sam pulled him off and swung him round. The boy struggled wildly.

“Calm down,” said Sam, loudly. “Come on, take it easy. That’s better.”

“He started it, sir,” said one of the boys watching from the side, and pointing at the prone figure.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Sam, firmly. “We’ll talk about this in the Principal’s office.”

Suddenly one of the girls screamed.

The smaller boy was on his feet, a long evil-looking knife held in one hand. A stream of obscenities started pouring from his mouth.

He took a step towards the bigger boy, who cowered back.

“Don’t do this, Jason,” said Sam, stepping between them. He recognised the boy from his year 10 class, a loner, thoughtful, but never before violent. Strain made Sam’s voice rougher than he wanted.

“Put the knife down.” He tried to speak calmly.

The boy didn’t seem able to hear him. Sam took a careful step towards him, his hands held out in a peaceful gesture.

“You don’t want to do this, Jason,” he said.

The boy’s eyes were wild.

“Jason!” said Sam, sharply.

The boy’s head snapped towards him and this time he seemed to hear Sam.

“Don’t do this, Jason,” Sam repeated softly. “Put the knife down. If you hurt anyone, your life will change forever. Here. Today. Put the knife down. Now.”

Sam held his breath.

Slowly, the boy’s gasps seemed to ease and he sank to his knees, dropping the knife.

Sam breathed deeply, relief filling him.

“Well done, Jason. That was the right choice. Okay, you with me,” he pointed to the other boy. “Everyone else back to class. Now.”

The small crowd dispersed reluctantly, along with the two itinerant older girls, giggling to themselves. Sam picked up the knife, careful of the wickedly-sharp blade. Jason stood up shakily and the two boys silently followed Sam to the Principal’s office.

It was some time before Sam was able to get back to his class and finish what was left of the lesson. The students’ eyes were bright with curiosity and Sam knew the story would be all round the school by lunchtime. He hoped something could be done to help Jason: he wasn’t a bad kid, just confused and listening to the wrong people. The boy hadn’t injured anyone so maybe he’d get a temporary suspension instead of a permanent exclusion.

For the rest of the day both pupils and staff came up to Sam to hear a firsthand account of what had happened. To the pupils, Sam said nothing; to staff, that Principal Skinner was dealing with it.

He was very happy to slump after school and listen to the first-day-back chatter of the other Arts Faculty staff.

Joan, one of the older teachers, a motherly woman in her fifties, was bemoaning the miserable weather. “I’m really looking forward to some sunshine,” she said.

“Who isn’t?” agreed Nora, one of the teaching assistants.

“But Summer. Sports day! All those young men in shorts,” sighed Joan. Then she looked speculatively at Sam. “Will
you
be wearing shorts?”

Sam reddened and ducked his head, trying to ignore their laughter.

Luckily Mr Jones started the department meeting promptly, although he seemed to be having some difficulties finding the right papers.

“Lucy shuffled his notes,” Joan whispered to Sam. “Petty, really, but he’s such a tosser.”

Sam bit back a smile as Mr Jones finally found the agenda.

The meeting was typically boring and Sam was almost relieved when Bill King kicked off about the lack of TA hours this term. Mr Jones made some anodyne comments about the depressed state of the economy and everyone pulling together, and then headed off on a tangent talking about some changes to the exam syllabi.

When the meeting finally broke up, Sam turned on his phone. The school enforced a strict no-mobiles policy: any pupils caught using one had them confiscated for a week, and staff were expected to restrict their use to out-of-school hours.

When the phone blinked into life, Sam saw that Elle had sent him a text. The brief message was warm and sweet, saying that she was dying to see him and maybe they could go out on Friday.

All the staff and students were delighted when the weekend finally arrived. The first few days back after a holiday were always harder – getting back into old routines was draining.

But Sam’s week wasn’t over yet.

The first rugby practice of the term was a scrappy affair, not helped by the fact that Sam made Ayesha go and cut her half-inch long nails before she took someone’s eye out. She’d moaned and grizzled and complained and whined about her human rights but Sam ignored her stoically.

The team had some work to do, but they’d be in good shape for the second round matches that were coming up. Sam was quietly pleased by their progress.

It was a pity the PE staff didn’t think the girls’ team worthy of their interest; Sam was pretty sure his first team could take the boys. Ayesha alone was a force of nature and ruthless in the scrum.

He changed out of his muddy clothes and let the hot water in the staff shower-room ease his stiff shoulders. It was a better shower than the one he had at home; some days he got into school early just so he could use it.

Now the week was over and school was out, he didn’t have to worry about dressing smartly. He pulled on a pair of jeans that he knew Elle particularly liked and a long-sleeved grey T-shirt that clung damply to his chest.

He stuffed everything else in his sports bag and jogged to the car. Two sixth-form girls were just stubbing out their cigarettes.

“Oh, sir!” giggled one. “I wouldn’t kick you out of bed on a wet Tuesday morning!”

The other shrieked with laughter while Sam wished the ground would open under his feet. Instead he tried to ignore them and drove away with what little dignity he could muster. He saw them waving in his rear view mirror then dissolve into more giggles.

An hour later he was weaving his way through the Friday night crowds of Soho, slightly later than arranged. Elle had chosen the venue, of course, and he expected it would be expensive. To be fair, she’d promised it was her treat, so he couldn’t really complain.

He saw her immediately, her bright hair distinct beneath the bar’s gloomy lighting. His heart sank when he saw that she was surrounded by her work colleagues. This really wasn’t the reconciliation that he had in mind.

He studied the group carefully: he couldn’t see Crispin, which was definitely a good thing. Sam couldn’t promise himself that he wouldn’t have punched the older man. And if he did, Elle would not be pleased.

Just then one of Elle’s colleagues, gazing in Sam’s direction, murmured something and Elle looked up. Her face brightened immediately and he couldn’t help smiling back.

“Sam, darling! I was beginning to think I’d been stood up!”

The confidence in her voice made it clear that she’d thought no such thing.

She pulled him onto the seat next to her, forcing everyone else to shuffle round.