An Honest Deceit Read online

  ‘As long as the kids don’t stop getting sick,’ said the school nurse, hanging the cups onto small hooks, ‘and I have a job, I’m all for change.’

  ‘Change is good,’ said Kraver as he appeared in the doorway.

  James dropped a mug into the water, with a soft plop.

  Kraver stood in the doorway. He was a rotund man, whose belly bulged from under the type of multi-colored waistcoat favored by eighties snooker players. He was balding, though it was his broad smile that was first apparent, and it revealed that he enjoyed the theatre surrounding his arrival. It also revealed two sharp, rather yellow incisors, which somehow glinted in the light.

  ‘Well, well, well, look at you all,’ he said, arms folded behind his back, walking back and forth in front of the crescent of chairs as if we were Royal Marines.

  A brilliant bunch of front line soldiers we’d have made. Me, blissfully ignorant of a large chili stain on my shirt, which I would only learn the existence of when Tobias Channing in 10D pointed it out later on that day. Ruth Unsworth sat next to me, who’d perfected the art of neurotic knitting, that reached a crescendo of clacking as Kraver spoke. Colin McGregor, the barrel-chested PE teacher, bouncing a basketball clumsily on the floor. I couldn’t help but notice all the other members of staff straightening their backs as Kraver found his groove.

  ‘You can all exhale now.’ He put his thumbs in his waistcoat pocket. ‘I might look like I’ve eaten one of you for breakfast, but I promise I won’t.’

  Some nervous titters.

  ‘Righteo,’ Kraver continued, ‘The best way to start is for me to let you know my policy. How I run a place, right? What I do, is, I begin with a splash.’ His hands waved in the air, and he mimed droplets falling on us. Colin pretended to wipe one from his brow.

  ‘Now, it’s no secret that this school is known as being the roughest in the district. Maybe even in the county, am I right?’

  The question was rhetorical.

  ‘Last year, you just about managed to claw your way out of Special Measures. Very good. But I want to do much more. I want parents to be fighting to get their kids in here. And how will I do that, I hear you ask? By showing off to the world the virtues of this place. So, I have decided in my first act as your new headmaster, to let camera crews come in as part of a new TV program called ‘Educating Bristol’.’

  A ripple of shock passed through the room.

  ‘I’d better get my hair done,’ Ruth said, setting down her needles.

  Kraver nodded, pleased at the reaction. ‘This fine place, Cranley Wood, is going to swagger into the public eye.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ Colin muttered.

  ‘We shall take the risk,’ he said, addressing him. The hands came out of the pockets as he started to wag his finger. ‘Every day is gamble, isn’t it, am I right? You might pull the rabbit out of the hat, or it might stay firmly hidden in there. What I’m saying is, that from today, we up the stakes. We have nothing to hide, and everything to be proud of.’

  ‘How do you know, you’ve just got ‘ere?’ the nurse murmured, touching my shoulder.

  Kraver swiveled to look at her. It was a remark that I had thought cheeky at best. But Kraver widened his eyes at her, and her reaction suggested that it felt like a blast of white heat had hit her face. ‘You don’t want to question me,’ Kraver said. ‘Unless you have something to hide. I’m sure you have nothing to hide, do you?’

  The nurse seemed to shrink in her uniform.

  ‘So - no questions, and everyone best of friends. Wonderful and tremendous. All is well on board the good ship Cranley Wood.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ Ruth asked, as laughter from outside pierced through. ‘Even 6F?’

  ‘Ruth, you talk of 6F as if they’re a small division of the English Defense League,’ Colin said. ‘They’re not that bad.’

  A few people laughed. It eased the pressure in the tightened air.

  ‘You try teaching them after they’ve been in the rain,’ she answered, poking a needle at him. ‘It’s a fight to prevent the vainer boys from going topless and putting their shirts on the radiators. Alice Jenkins nearly had a stroke when Rob Makin showed her his nipples. How’s that going to look on primetime Channel 4?’

  Colin turned to me.

  ‘Talking of behavior during rubbish weather, what about Ben’s habit of encouraging students to throw snowballs at teachers?’

  This roused a cheer. ‘He’s got you there, Ben,’ James said.

  ‘I only did that once, because they were throwing snowballs at you, Colin,’ I answered.

  ‘And weren’t you letting them do that in exchange for them coming inside quickly?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Unsworth,’ I said, cautious. ‘I was letting them paste Colin with slushy balls for the good of their own education.’

  ‘I see,’ Kraver said, eyeballing me with an intense stare. ‘A good school is a fun place to be. They will capture us at our ducking and diving best, delivering day after day, come rain, shine, or slushy snowballs. You watch. Things are going to change around here.’ He wagged a stubby finger. ‘Make no mistake.’

  I wasn’t sure what to make of Kraver. Later that day, in the school corridor, I saw a small crowd of younger pupils had gathered around him as he performed card tricks. Whilst the cooler girls in the sixth form watched, arms folded, the younger ones seemed impressed. ‘Show us how you did that,’ one said. Kraver addressed one of the sixth form girls. ‘Some secrets are more fun if they’re kept, aren’t they girls?’ he said.

  ‘I bet he can make my salary disappear, no problem,’ Colin said, hovering behind me.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, watching the girls consult, trying to discern what they thought of their new head.

  ‘There’s a hint of The Magic Circle about him. Isn’t there?’ Colin said.

  I watched Kraver as he moved through the door and outside into the playground. His peculiar, shuffling walk seemed to betray that he had spotted something outside, but to my eye the yard was clear. I waited, and a few moments later I was surprised to see a young boy walking in front of him, his head down, on his way back to class. I tried to catch what Kraver was saying to him through the glass, but only caught the tail end of it as the boy opened the door.

  ‘Or, you can continue to rile me and I’ll make your life a living hell,’ he was saying.

  The boy, his face white, hurried to class. Kraver looked up at me. ‘Got to keep them on their toes, eh?’ he said.

  Juliette had less concerns about the ongoing privatization, and decided that Marine should stay at the affiliated school over the road, with Christian. Making ends meet with two children wasn’t easy, but my main concern was putting food on the table. So once the new regime started I just focused on getting on with my life, and I very rarely noticed the cameras that had begun to become a feature of every school corridor.

  When the program finally aired, its viewing figures were so big it came second only to The X Factor in the Saturday night ratings. People kept asking me if, in the scenes I was featured in, I was playing up to the camera. The question was leveled at me more and more frequently as the season went on. I caught one or two episodes but didn’t really enjoy seeing my harried face on a TV screen during my few hours off. As far as I was concerned, I was just a bloke trying to inspire a struggling class to get through their GCSE’s.

  It was only after some of my teaching methods were shown on national television that I realized how eccentric they were. I’d thought a lot of them were just necessary strategies to get the pupils onboard. But once Colin showed me them, in YouTube clips which had over a million hits, I began to understand what the fuss was all about.

  In the first episode I was shown catching a wayward student, Aaliyah, writing a large phallic symbol and the words ‘Cranley Wood is pretty shite’ in black marker pen on a bench. So I gave her the choice of being in after-school detention, or taking my advice and using felt tips from the art departm
ent to alter the graffiti to something positive. Kraver admonished me for encouraging graffiti, but after Aaliyah had converted the phallus to a bunch of flowers, and changed the aforementioned slogan to the words ‘Crawley Wood is a pretty s i lky smooth place to be’ he reluctantly decided to praise me. The school caretaker, Morris, patted me on the back too. I’d saved him an afternoon of painting, and he said he’d buy me a pint.

  In the next episode I caught a student selling controversial computer games to Year 10’s. A couple of the more notable titles included ‘Bikini Samurai IV’ and ‘Halloween Booby Trap III’. A YouTube clip quickly appeared, in which I speculated with Colin, over a cup of Earl Grey, exactly what the storyline of Halloween Booby Trap might be. I wondered if in the game any boobies literally got trapped? Was there a booby prize at the end of each level? A few other members of staff joined in the riff, and to make the situation even more absurd I ended up planning, on the whiteboard, a staff tournament where the person who got furthest on Halloween Booby Trap bought a round at the pub at the next staff do. Once the video reached a million hits I realized that my fellow staff members weren’t just laughing out of kindness.

  But the reason I became famous overnight (or as Philip described it ‘a shoe-in for the next series of Celebrity Apprentice’) wasn’t just because of such tomfoolery.

  A student in my class, Marie, was left abandoned by her single mother when she departed for a summer job in Tenerife. Marie been bounced around various relatives up to the start of the academic near and the poor girl was having to divide her time between her grandparents’ house and a pretty rough local foster home. Marie was determined not to follow in the footsteps of her mother and fall pregnant as a teenager. She had gone from being a bit of a troublemaker when she first joined the school (she was briefly suspended for having too many facial piercings) to gradually deciding that she wanted to get the qualifications to go to college.

  The fifth episode of ‘Educating Bristol’ followed a conversation I had with her in after-school detention. As punishment for stealing from the canteen I’d asked her to write out her ambitions.

  Before letting Marie go, I distractedly asked her if she wanted to read out what she had written. I’ll never forget how Marie, in a voice that was at once faltering and determined, read out her piece.

  It opened with a description of the midwife that saved her mother’s life during her premature birth. With one hand on her hip, Marie told the detention that she was named after that midwife, who was now her heroine. As she related the story, I was struck by the change in this complex young lady. Schoolchildren are usually very cautious about sharing personal details of their life, and in my experience they are understandably wary of making themselves appear vulnerable in front of their peers. But as Marie read, a steeliness came into her voice which made the others sit up straight (no mean feat for a room full of students who’d offered little evidence that they owned a functioning spine in my class). Her mother, Marie said, described that midwife as one of the few people who had ‘made a difference’ in her life. As she neared the end she put the piece of paper on a table. ‘I’m going to pass my GCSE’s, and sit for ‘A’ Levels,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to go to college, train to be a midwife, and make my Mum proud of me. I think it is the only way to bring her home,’ she said, her voice breaking at the end of the sentence.

  I was amazed at the transformation. ‘That’s a beautiful piece of writing, Marie,’ I said. I motioned for her to sit down, and at this point in the program the camera zoomed in on the shocked faces of the boys watching for her next statement.

  ‘You have a very commendable sense of ambition, Marie,’ I said. ‘I tell you, if you learn to channel that ambition there is no reason why you can’t achieve your goal.’

  ‘University?’ one of the boys scoffed. ‘But Marie thinks hummus is a place in Palestine.’

  ‘Do you want to have his attitude towards life, or do you want to be like the midwife that saved your mother’s life?’ I asked Marie.

  ‘The midwife,’ she answered.

  ‘Complete your homework to the highest standard you can, Marie. Keep yourself focused in class, and hold onto that feeling you had when you read out that piece,’ I said, patting my hand on my heart. ‘I guarantee, if you do that, no one will stop you getting into college. The question is, can you start doing all that right now? Because I am afraid you have no more time to waste.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Marie said.

  ‘Then I’ll make a deal with you,’ I answered. ‘You get seven GCSE’s from A-C, and I will stand up in front of the whole school in assembly dressed in the kind of outfit this midwife must have to wear every day,’ I said.

  ‘You mean a nurses’ outfit?’ Marie said, clapping her hands to her face.

  The boys behind her guffawed. ‘Always knew sir was a bender,’ one said.

  I decided to let that slide.

  Marie didn’t need any more motivation. I like to think that the thought of me making a fool of myself in front of the whole school spurred her on. Perhaps I hadn’t thought through how I would feel when my parents saw me, on national TV, address a packed school assembly bursting out of a skin-tight nurses outfit. But I like to think that my embarrassment made Marie enjoy her eventual success all the more. Either way, I finally felt that I had become an educator. I could see no reason why life wouldn’t be smooth sailing from now on.

  THREE

  IN OUR HOME, we blocked out Daddy being on television every week. As a family we had no idea how well known I was becoming, or would that would lead to. Marine had turned ten and now Christian had been at school for a couple of years Juliette was at last starting to find her feet in her own career again. Christian was proving to be less of a handful than Marine and for the first time it looked as though Juliette might be able to focus on her own career.

  It was a relief to us that Marine had, at last become less of a constant challenge. When we had first become parents getting Marine to sleep had been almost impossible. I tried every trick in the parenting manual, and none of them seemed to work on the energetic scribble of energy that was our daughter. With her eyes red from tiredness, Juliette would drag herself into Marine’s bedroom. She’d cradle her daughter with a tenderness that seemed almost excessive. Juliette would sit, visible only by the faint luminescence of a white plastic moon chandelier, and rock Marine in her arms whilst singing the words to ‘Au Clare De La Lune’. ‘Under the Moonlight’ was the traditional French song Juliette’s grandmother had sung to her, and it became to Marine something of a lullaby. Often she would only fall asleep once her mother had sang it to her a few times, each rendition more weary than the last. Perhaps it is because I only ever heard that song in states of extreme tiredness, but its lilting, Gallic melody weaved its way deep into my subconscious. As my mind drifted in and out of a sleep I craved, often the thread that connected my dreams was Juliette’s voice, fragile and a little flat, with that distinctive French edge. That melody is now a part of my dreamscape, and it’s a melody that often returns to me when I’m at a low ebb.

  By the time ‘Educating Bristol’ aired Juliette had relaxed into being a mother. We now had new pleasures revealed to us - the pleasures of being a family unit with its own, unique strategies on handling life. Of course, like any family, our strategy was usually ‘to make do and mend’. Like all young couples, Juliette and I had had that hairy period in which, in rented flats with two young children, we’d quickly learnt to fit around each other. I liked to stay up with a cold beer, but Juliette liked to just sleep when the children would let her, and we grumpily worked towards compromises. We both jumped from short-term job to short-term job - me as a trainee teacher, and her as an architect’s assistant, trying to save the money to buy our own place. When we eventually bought our house the electrics and plumbing were a mess, and we weathered the storm of broken boilers and frosty mornings until we had saved more money to fix the place. I learnt, not only during childbirth, but also during this t
ime, that Juliette was stoical, tougher than her beautiful exterior might have suggested. Once the home was habitable, Juliette tastefully decorated our new house. The wood-paneled floors and low, beamed ceilings framed a chic, homely environment that often chimed with the excited voices of our children.

  Any Englishman needs his castle, and in my mind the creaky steps up to our first floor home were a kind of moat strangers had to overcome before they could reach my family. Though we owned the ground floor, we rented it to a student couple to help us afford the mortgage. I finally felt as if my family was safe in our little nest, and I looked forward to the day when we had enough money to have a whole house to ourselves.

  Juliette also finally had the space to paint. The light from the street outside would fall onto the corner of our living room where she worked. That golden shaft was often dappled with the shapes of flickering leaves from the oak tree opposite. I would return home to see that Juliette had propped an easel up close to the window, and covered an old coffee table in drying paints in preparation. But it was Marine who inspired her to actually begin painting.

  Marine never stopped moving. She recited, word for word, her favorite television shows. She asked old women in the street why they had moustaches, and did so with enough charm that she wasn’t hit. She asked bus drivers why they didn’t look happy. She got the shy children at school to join in the games she had invented. Games with complex storylines and characters. But it wasn’t only children that Marine brought out of their shell. Her energy, her lust for life, her ability to speak the unspoken all invigorated Juliette.

  After a few weeks finished canvases started to build in a pile under the window. In every one of them Juliette had captured Marine - playing, jumping, sprawling.