Chapter 8

Mrs Cannon

When Friday finally ran out of excuses to avoid going to class, she was happy enough to go because it was third period, which meant English.

Mrs Cannon always encouraged them to spend the first twenty minutes of every lesson silently reading. She said this was to encourage the students’ literacy, but really it was so she could have some peace and quiet to study the job ads. Mrs Cannon couldn’t do this in the staffroom in case the head of department caught her. But the children were much more understanding about her desire to get out of her career in education. In fact, sometimes she would interrupt their silent reading to ask the children’s opinion.

‘Here’s one,’ Mrs Cannon said. ‘Chef wanted. Grilling skills essential. Must be available to work nights and weekends.’

‘But you have tango lessons on Thursday evenings,’ said Melanie.

‘You’re quite right,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

‘And you can’t cook,’ added Peterson.

‘No,’ admitted Mrs Cannon. ‘But how hard can it be? It must be easier than being an English teacher.’

The children nodded. They would not like to have to teach themselves English either. Then they all went back to their quiet reading until another job would catch Mrs Cannon’s eye.

‘How about this one, children?’ Mrs Cannon would interrupt. ‘Nanny needed to work in Kuwait. Six days a week, room and board provided.’

‘But, Mrs Cannon,’ called a boy, ‘you don’t like children.’

‘True, very true,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

‘And you don’t like sweating,’ added another girl. Mrs Cannon was a large woman. ‘Kuwait is a very hot country. A job like that would be sure to involve sweating.’

‘Good point,’ agreed Mrs Cannon.

This is how the lesson would continue until the last ten minutes when someone would point out that they didn’t have long to go. Then Mrs Cannon would reluctantly put down her paper and launch into a literary discussion, which would always end up with her concluding that the author they were discussing, be it Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Arundhati Roy, was extremely lazy for not including more gunfights, explosions and murder mysteries in their stories. And it was entirely the author’s fault if students could not get through the first fifty pages of their books without falling asleep.

On this particular morning Friday arrived when the job adverts were unusually lacklustre, so Mrs Cannon was getting the class to help her with the crossword puzzle instead.

‘What’s an eight-letter word for the fourth stomach of a cow?’ asked Mrs Cannon.

‘Abomasum,’ said Friday as she walked in through the door.

‘Well done,’ said Mrs Cannon, filling in the squares. ‘You’re not late because you’ve done something dreadful I have to punish you for, are you?’

‘No, Mrs Cannon,’ said Friday. ‘I was helping the Headmaster.’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘As long as I don’t have to fill in any slips, or report you to anyone. It was so much easier back in the day when you could just cane a child and get on with your lesson plan. These days everything involves filling in paperwork.’

‘Did you really cane students back in the olden days?’ asked a boy.

‘No,’ admitted Mrs Cannon. ‘It seemed like such a lot of effort. For a start I’d have to stand up, and you know I dislike doing that. Then I’d have to catch them. And the wicked things children do always seem like exactly what I would do if I were in the same position, so my heart was never in it.’

Friday made her way to the back of the class. Melanie was sitting in her usual seat next to the window, staring out. Friday sat down beside her. The desks were arranged in a horseshoe pattern, so Friday had her back to the window. Looking across she could see Ian smiling his usual smug smile, but then it transformed into a glare. It was an unexpectedly hateful glare. Friday was baffled until she heard a tapping sound behind her.

She turned around to see Christopher standing outside the window, waving to her. Friday glanced across at Mrs Cannon, who was concentrating hard on her crossword, so Friday slid her chair back towards the window.

Christopher raised the sash.

‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘Hello,’ whispered Friday. She wasn’t used to making small talk with boys, so she paused here.

‘Friday,’ said Mrs Cannon, ‘if you are going to talk to your friend, please hold a book in front of your face while you do it, in case the Vice Principal walks in.’

Friday dutifully took her copy of Proust out of her bag and opened it to the page she was on.

‘Proust? Very impressive,’ said Christopher.

‘Oh, I’m not reading Proust,’ said Friday. ‘I just cut the cover off my copy of Swann’s Way and stuck it over a book on forensic psychology. I wouldn’t want Mrs Cannon to get in trouble if I was caught reading non-fiction in her class.’

‘I heard that you were the smartest girl in school,’ said Christopher. ‘I was wondering if you could help me. I’ve got to try to catch up with the academic standard here, particularly in geography. Would you be able to meet me some time to give me a few pointers?’

‘Keeping up with Mr  Maclean’s class isn’t very hard,’ said Friday. ‘He barely knows anything about geography himself.’

‘He’s asking you out on a date,’ said Melanie, turning away from the window.

Friday looked at Melanie, then at Christopher and then back at Melanie. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘What boy would want to catch up with academic work?’ asked Melanie.

Friday looked at Christopher. He smiled at her. Friday felt alarmed by this unforseen situation.

‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Friday.

‘Okay,’ said Christopher with a smile.

Friday slid the window shut. ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with him?’ she whispered.

‘There definitely is,’ said Ian from the far side of the room. ‘He’s a smarmy git for a start. All that fake smiling, it’s enough to make you sick.’

‘I would have thought that for you, it would be like looking in the mirror,’ said Friday.

‘Good one,’ chuckled Melanie. ‘They do both like to smoulder, don’t they? Although Christopher has more of a twinkly smoulder, whereas Ian’s smoulder is more broody.’

‘I’m not broody,’ argued Ian.

‘I meant in a nice way – broody like Byron,’ said Melanie, ‘not broody like a chicken.’

‘He’s coming!’ hissed Peregrine, the boy whose turn it was to sit by the window and watch out for the Vice Principal.

Mrs Cannon got to her feet and started speaking loudly, ‘And so through his use of assonance, alliteration and bottom humour, Chaucer teaches us of the dangers of … oh, good morning, Vice Principal Dean.’

The Vice Principal was standing in the doorway, watching the children suspiciously as they dutifully wrote notes in their books. ‘Is everyone behaving themselves here?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘Such a wonderful class. Great lovers of literature.’

The Vice Principal scanned the room. Everything was as it should be. Which was, of course, suspicious.

‘I’ve got my eye on you, Barnes,’ said the Vice Principal.

‘Me, sir?’ said Friday.

‘Yes, you,’ said the Vice Principal. ‘Just because the police didn’t have enough evidence, does not make you innocent in my eyes.’

‘You don’t believe in the fundamental tenant of our judicial system – the presumption of innocence?’ asked Friday.

‘Of course not!’ said the Vice Principal. ‘This is an elite private school. Brutal arbitrary punishment is our tradition. That’s the way it was in my day. And no-one was getting arrested for terrorism back then.’

‘Sir, since you’re here and it is our English class you’re interrupting,’ said Friday, ‘could I ask you a literary question?’

‘Me?’ asked the Vice Principal. ‘But I’m a maths teacher.’

‘Naturally,’ said Friday. ‘Vice principals usually are. But I thought you could share your unique insight into the author of The Curse of the Pirate King, since you were here at school the same time as E.M. Dowell. Weren’t you in the year below him?’

The Vice Principal went bright red. It was hard to tell whether it was from embarrassment or anger, but it was probably a combination of both. ‘I never had anything to do with that wastrel,’ he said. ‘Jumped-up little upstart. I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss of him.’

‘Really? I thought he was a lovely boy,’ said Mrs Cannon. ‘Such a nice smile. Whereas all I remember of you, Vice Principal, was that you were terrible at spelling.’