One

“Spirit of Adventure”

In which my big mouth bites off more than it can chew – cold feet attempt to back-pedal – I am buoyed by a surprise gift – but eventually packed up, I am packed off.

“Class, I think it’s important that I let you know at this stage that, as of the beginning of next year, you will be having a new French teacher,” I said, staring down at my fingertips, which rested amongst the dusty slag heaps of paperwork on my desk.

“Yes, I shall be leaving at the end of this Summer Term.” Glancing up surreptitiously, hoping for at least some muted sign of disappointment, I was greeted by a blank wall of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old faces seated in front of a faded background of posters and last year’s displayed projects. Any cogitative processes that were taking place behind the passive masks were, I feared, much more likely to be revolving around considerably more important issues:

Whether Charlie was going to be back from injury for the game on Saturday; how to avoid having to hand in homework to old Jerry for the third week in a row, not that he’d probably notice; why Nat was such a bitch or, probably overwhelmingly, how to get rid of that wearisome burden of virginity. Bet Scott had made it up about him and Danielle – not in the school secretary’s office, anyway.

I soldiered on.

“Yes, I shall be leaving teaching and shall be going to live in a little village in the Solomon Islands.”

This revelation, too, was met with impressive indifference.

Oh, come on! It was quite interesting surely. A stirring in the front row. Good, the class swot. Robert was fresh-faced, keen, all hands up and smug glances to his left and right whenever he handed in another tome of homework or eventually received some back. We all loathed him but he would probably ask a bright question, the answer to which would kill off the last five minutes of the lesson.

“Yes, Robert, what is it?” I stood and pointed to him enthusiastically. Everyone else sat and cast their eyes heavenward.

“Sir, I just thought I would remind you that you haven’t set us any homework yet, sir,” he simpered. Both of his parents worked for the tax office.

“Robert!” we chorused. I searched around haplessly for the textbook, trying to work out which exercises had already been completed, while the others searched around morosely for their notebooks, praying that I wouldn’t be able to remember.

“So where are these Sodomon Islands, then?”

“Thank you, er, Sonia, er, Sarah. Yes, well the Solomon Islands, Solomon Islands, Sarah, are in the South West Pacific, about four thousand kilometres off the north-east coast of Australia.”

This much I had ascertained. Checking the map of the world on my classroom wall, I had eventually found the microscopic dots. It had not been an auspicious introduction. Seconds later the rickety wooden chair, on which I had been standing for a closer view, had collapsed. Falling, I had sliced my chin on the corner of the empty filing cabinet, which, ironically, had only been put there to furnish me with an air of efficiency. The next thing I knew I was lying on my back, bleeding onto my favourite tie and blinking up at a piece of graffiti which had been dextrously inscribed on the underside of one of the desks: “Randle is a wanker!”

“So what kind of stuff can you do there?”

“Excellent question, Ricky, excellent question. Er, yes…” I picked at the scab doubtfully.

With a boxer’s relief, I heard the bell ring. Eleven ten – morning break until eleven thirty-five.

“I tell you what, why don’t we have a prize for the person who can come back and tell us the most about the Solomon Islands next time, eh?”

“But what has that got to do with French, sir?”

“Robert, why don’t you just shut up and bugger off?” (Actually I said, “Robert, let’s get going shall we? We don’t want to waste our break time do we?” but the sentiment was much the same.)

Sorry to relate it was perfectly true that, once again, I had little more knowledge of the matter in hand than my pupils. I had signed on the metaphoric dotted line and agreed to go to live in the furthest reaches of the back end of outer nowhere but knew next to nothing about the place.

‘Be Prepared’; even though my association with the organisation had only been brief I still remembered the Cub Scout motto. So, in the hour-long lunchtime break I had made a brief appearance in the school library but had hastily backed off when I came upon half the aforementioned class in the geography section. I grimaced as I caught a snippet of their conversation:

“I bet it’ll just be some crappy old Mars Bar.”

“Yeah, like all the other ‘prizes’ he owes us.” As I slipped out and pulled the heavy door to, I did have the satisfaction, however, of hearing a thump and a yelp from Robert after he piped up:

“And he never did set us any proper homework.”

Lessons finished at three-twenty, so after school that day I ambled down the High Street of the small market town, past the door of the travel agent’s, waving briefly at the harried-looking manager. He was half out of his seat the moment he saw me. I hurried on: he wanted paying for the ticket. The one thing I did already know about the Solomon Islands was that it was not one of your cheap holiday destinations. Walking up the granite steps of the possibly eighteenth-century town hall, I strode enthusiastically into the public library.

“Ah, yes!” I said cheerfully to the steely lady librarian who stood behind the counter, her half-moon glasses swinging from a safety chain around her neck.

“I shall be going off to the Solomon Islands pretty soon and would like to do a bit of research.” I laughed a sort of ‘we’re all in this together’ kind of laugh. We obviously were not.

“Are you a member?”

“Er…no, I don’t think so.”

She snapped on her spectacles. After a few formalities and a good deal of snorting, I was directed, by the point of a carefully sharpened pencil, to the travel section. After a brief distraction by a slim but illustrated publication entitled Bournemouth: A History of Sun, Sea and Sex, I quickly ascertained that there were no books with any mention of the Solomon Islands in the title. In fact there was nothing I could find with any mention of them inside or out. Attempting to dodge the barrage of glares that were being howitzered in my direction, I moved to the reference section. Nervously, I pulled down a dusty red volume of encyclopaedia ‘Sl-Pr’. Riffling past Slov’yansk; Snoilsky, Carl Johann Gustaf (Count); snoring and social Darwinism (all of which, had I had the time, would no doubt have been fascinating), the page fell open upon the following entry:

Solomon Islands, island nation in the south-western Pacific Ocean, extend south-eastward from Papua New Guinea and Bougainville.

Yes, knew that.

Formerly British Solomon Islands Protectorate (independence 1978), democratic government, Head of State: Queen Elizabeth II. Discovered by Spanish explorer, Don Alvaro de Mendana y Neyra in 1587.

Ah si, si, Don Alvaro!

Centre of widespread missionary activity from mid-nineteenth century but slow acceptance due to strong tribal beliefs and headhunting.

Hmm.

Centre for slave trade. Fierce rebellion Malaita Island (1927), subdued by British with great brutality.

Wonderful. Should make me really popular.

Scene of intense fighting WWII between American and Japanese (Battle of Savo, August 1942). Recent political unrest and fighting between rival militia groups over land rights.

Not exactly a history of tropical harmony, then?

Capital Honiara.

Well that sounded nice enough. ‘Horniarra’; I tried it with my best Spanish accent, a quick stamp of my feet and a very quiet click of my fingers.

Total population 360,000.

About the same as…er…Northamptonshire? Maybe?

Total area 1.35 million sq km. 992 islands, approx. 350 inhabited. Total land area 27,556 sq km.

Not quite the same as Northamptonshire then.

Tropical climate, hot and humid. Flora and fauna: virgin rainforests, six varieties of rat and two of crocodiles.

Virgin rainforests, six varieties of rats…and two of crocodiles. Marvellous.

Malaria is a problem.

Of course.

The population is largely Christian of various denominations although animist beliefs

…Animist…hmm?…

animist beliefs still exist and cannibalism is thought to be practised in remote areas.

As in they still eat people. Great.

No more than 3,000 visitors a year.

Well that was hardly a heel-rocking surprise. I wondered how many of them made it back intact. “The capital is called ‘Oniara, sir.”

“Good. Anybody else? Yes, you there, um…”

“John, sir. There’s loads of rats and crocodiles, sir.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything I don’t know already, thank you,” I said irritably as I gazed out through the diamond panes across the small courtyard at the back of the school. An elderly caretaker creakily snipped the edges of a square of grass.

“And sharks, sir.”

“Sharks, who said anything about sharks?” I turned as if – as only very occasionally happened – someone had fired a paper pellet at my backside.

“My mum says it sounds horrible, sir.”

“And my mum says it hasn’t got anything to do with French, sir.”

“Oh will you just shut up, Robert!” I sat down behind my desk with a jolt. The figures in front of me swam away and into view swam smiling sharks, tearful crocodiles – and six varieties of synchronised rats.

I suddenly felt very hot and humid – was I really doing the right thing giving all this up: the holidays, the house, what was left of the car? Teaching was fun and there weren’t too many drawbacks, apart from the marking. Even Robert was nice enough really, just a bit misunderstood – by everybody.

For ten years now my life had been steered by the comfort of bells, the regular ringing shaping my days, putting their events in order. In the main, the course had been smooth and I had carved myself a cosy niche in the life of the stone mock-Gothic school; even the buildings themselves were warmly ensconced in the soft valleys of the West Country. As I gazed above the faces that would surely one day become permanently distorted from all the leaning on fists and jaw-cracking yawning, I realised that my classroom had become very much my own; clothes, books, the jumble of pictures and mementoes all gave my work a setting, a backdrop. From the leaded windows I was used to watching the seasons come and go, scattering the quadrangle with petals or leaves. I was used, too, to watching the youngsters arrive as bright-faced, pencil-case-toting innocents, only to slope off a few years later with a ‘Seeya’, never to be seen again apart from, perhaps, the occasional appearance in the court report of the local newspaper.

My home, on the other side of the stone bridge, high above the valley where the sharp incline of the road met the level top of the hill, provided me my landscape. Green always but for the occasional smearing of wet snow, the countryside stretched from my bedroom window away to the sea. My wages were fair, Roberts a rarity and the pub was on the way home.

I opened the classroom window. The room could be insufferably stuffy on warm days but then again so could most of my colleagues all the year round. Outside Colin, the cheerful, curly-haired driver of the sanitary towel dispensing machine van, raised a mock salute as he went about his Monday morning round.

“Morning, Will. Not had to throw anybody out today?” he chuckled gently.

He was referring, a little unkindly, to an unfortunate incident earlier in the term. One of my charges had, entirely voluntarily, although perhaps with a little help from his friends, stuck his head through one of my classroom windows. It had not been open. There had not been too much blood and I did not feel that I could be held responsible as I had not even been in the room at the time.

“Having a smashing time?” he laughed again.

I waved back and closed the window. Of course it was true there had been the odd disaster; I fingered the soft, new putty round the glass. There had also, unforgettably, been the school inspection. I shook my head to dispel the memory.

On balance though, I was, as much as one can expect to be, happy with my world. Swapping all this for a few bouts of malaria before featuring as the slightly disappointing main course at the Sunday barbecue was the action of a madman.

I would get out of it. That was it – I would just say no. I had reconsidered and, in light of my professional aspirations, whatever they were, I was terribly sorry but it was just not possible. I couldn’t imagine that anyone was going to be that upset – apart from a few rapacious reptiles. So that was that.

Easy. Sadly, as so often seemed to happen, any plans that I had for my own future had already been wrestled from my grasp. I had again been relegated to the role of timid onlooker at this runaway disaster. It soon became clear that I had discussed the venture with far too many people. It had become a fait accompli.

“So, you are off to pastures new, Will? Or should I say jungles new, ha, ha!”

Oh, ha bloody ha. Anyway, they were virgin rainforests. “Well, I, actually, I was thinking that perhaps…”

“Damn good idea. Do something a bit different. Breath of fresh air, eh?”

No, breath of hot air. Hot, disease-ridden air.

“Wish I’d done something like that myself, you know, when I was a bit younger. Too late now, of course.” The elderly Headmaster shook his head as he looked down rheumily at his frayed tweed turn-ups.

“Still,” he said more cheerfully as he looked up at me again, “we’ll accept your resignation of course.”

“Oh, yes, well, thank you very much…” I faltered, “but I don’t want to leave anybody in the lurch, you know, perhaps it would be better if I stayed. I hear the Under 14C hockey team needs a coach next season and er…”

“Nonsense. Nobody is indispensable. Least of all you, eh? Ha, ha!”

In hindsight I am not sure how flattered I should have been by this last remark but I suppose it must have been a joke.

“I always thought you had a bit of the old spirit of adventure about you.”

Spirit of adventure? Spirit of adventure! The most adventurous thing I had done in years was to go to the funfair in Torquay with a coachload of pupils. Even then the height of my daring had been to allow myself to be driven on the dodgems by an eleven-year-old.

As my employer turned on his heel and walked quietly down the parquet corridor, I reflected on how quickly events were overtaking me, how helpless I was to change their course and how extraordinarily baggy and shiny the seat of his trousers was. Anyway I realised, as I wandered off in the opposite direction heading for the two-forty German lesson with Year Nine, that my fate was sealed because my lips had not been.

The end of term came in a flurry of kind things being said and some, at least, meant. On the final afternoon, I sat in a large tent and listened patiently to interminable speeches of self-congratulation about the good old School and there always being an England. I decided, though, to forgo the tepid cup of tea and the ‘He’s doing fine, fine, bit more effort, nice lad, do have a lovely holiday’ conversations that were twittering away on the lawn as everybody took this last chance to be appallingly nice to each other and the sparrows hopped around the curling sandwiches.

Skulking away, I found myself alone, glum and grumpy, in my classroom. After a desultory attempt to tidy up my belongings, I was just about to give up. Convincing myself that the new incumbent of my job and therefore room would find the mounds of yellowing files and folders invaluable, I was doodling absent-mindedly on the blackboard and wondering whether the pub was open when a knock came at the door. Before I had a chance to answer it burst open and in bounced Tom and David. The two sixth form school-leavers wore smart suits and the wide grins of those who realise that liberation is at hand. They were glowing at the prospect of leaving, full of a belief that the worst was over, that life, from now on, was going to be fun; that you would not, through your own inherent ineptitude, find yourself banished to the other side of the world to meet your fate.

“We just came to say bye, sir, so bye, sir.” They ran back out only to burst back in.

“Sorry, forgot we’ve got a present for you, for you to take to your island,” they laughed.

Reaching into a school bag, David pulled out a package which he thrust under my nose. The pink bow was a work of art.

“My girlfriend wrapped it,” he answered my look of surprise.

“Hope it’s useful,” said Tom. “Go on, open it then, sir.”

I did and inside, folded in its own neat container, was an inflatable life jacket. A ripcord dangled from a small brass gas canister, waiting for the dire emergency that would require it to be tugged. I was touched. I was actually quite moved.

“Thanks, thanks very much,” I stumbled, “but it must have cost you a fortune.”

“Not really, nicked it off of a plane when we went to America last year. Couldn’t think what to do with it. Cheers then, sir.” And with that they disappeared through the door to their futures leaving me alone to face mine.

They say that selling your house, packing up and moving is to be considered on a par, in terms of stress, with getting divorced, married or bereaved. I cannot understand why anybody should wish to leave their home, let alone the country, for all the palaver it causes. In fact, looking back on it, it was a much more momentous time than, in the middle of the affray, I had truly realised. I had over the years amassed not much more or less than most but my possessions were not just material belongings that could simply be thrown away without a second thought, cast aside in order to adopt a new identity. Actually most of them were but some things did seem to have a particular hold…

By the time I had got halfway to making my mind up about what to keep it was all too late. To any passing burglar peering past the roses and in through the window, it must have appeared that one of his colleagues had beaten him to it, as I crammed everything I could lay my panicking hands on into an eclectic variety of receptacles. Eventually it was all done and lightly dusted.

Everybody wanted to say goodbye either because they were truly sorry to see me leave or, conceivably, because they wanted to make absolutely sure that I really was going. Friends, on hearing of my intentions, seemed to divide themselves into two distinct groups: those who said that they thought I was so lucky, who really wished they were doing what I was and who were clearly not telling the truth and the rest who informed me with startling sincerity that they thought I was barking mad. I was unsure which of these two groups I sympathised with more.

The only person who did not seem to pass any judgement was my ninety-three-year-old great-aunt, who had lived through all the major events of the twentieth century and therefore had a better sense of the ridiculous than most. One afternoon I visited her in her book-lined cupboard in the hinterland of West London to say my farewells and, of course, have a cup of tea.

“I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time, dear, but you’ll need something to read, so I’ve made you up a little parcel.”

From under her velour- and lace-covered armchair she produced a package of brown paper and white string and made me promise not to open it before I arrived.

“It’ll be more fun like that,” she assured me.

As it was, I only just had time to cram it in to the top of my rucksack and do up all the complicated zips, clips and drawstrings before I had to leave. Time was plodding on and, with neo-adolescent recalcitrance, I was being forced to follow. The car was sold, covering the cost of a couple of last-minute parking fines, and furniture and belongings were spread evenly between ungrateful friends and relations. Finally the date on my ticket, eventually paid for, caught up with me. Grasped firmly by the arm, I was frogmarched off towards the South Pacific.