I awoke feeling big, bouncy and bumptious. (Take advantage while stocks last.) Not even my impending unemployment was enough to capsize my spirits. Scroope had decided to keep me on until Christmas, but he made me pay for his leniency by assigning me Late Duty every bloody day.
It was the last day of term, a wet Thursday afternoon and I was waiting in the bleak pre-fab building designated as the late room’ with one child whose working mother had called an hour and a half ago to sob hysterically that she was stuck in traffic. Been there; been driven mad by that. Because I didn’t want the kid to be in trouble or the mother to be blacklisted, I went to the office and signed out, called goodbye to my hideous Headmaster, loudly and firmly — then sneaked back down the hall to wait with the little boy, on the sly, in the quiet of the sick bay. Once he’d been dispatched home, out through a side gate and into the arms of his harassed parent, the atmosphere grew eerie. There was usually
one caretaker holed up in the basement, smoking, but he too had left for Christmas. The school, all shut up and locked, seemed to be holding its breath.
Unnerved by the silence, and suppressing my sadness at having to leave my job, I snatched up my bag and tiptoed back past the Headmaster’s office towards the staff car park. I was nearly out of the door, when I heard the strangest noise. The muffled thuds and moans emanating from the Head’s office made me think he was definitely still in there and possibly having a heart attack. Except, of course, he didn’t have a heart. With the stealth that comes from years of maternal spying, I squeezed open the door to Scroope’s inner sanctum.
The look on my face must have registered more surprise than the congregation at Michael Jackson’s wedding. Because there was my Headmaster with his trousers around his knees, spanking a bare-buttocked Perdita who was lying across his desk, skirt up, panties down. As the ruler swished across her porcelain buttocks she whimpered, ‘I won’t let other boys touch me again. Only you, sir.’
It was torture not to erupt into hysterical guffawing but I didn’t want to alert them to my presence. Not until I had savoured the delicious piquancy of the moment — and videoed it for posterity on my mobile phone camera.
Their whacking and whimpering was so loud that I got a good minute of footage before Scroope caught sight of me standing there, filming. He then looked like a hippopotamus having an epileptic fit. His Adams apple zoomed up and down his oesophagus like a mouse on amphetamines.
‘Gee, I’m not sure this complies with Health and Safety regulations, are you, Mr Scroope?’ I said loudly. ‘Did you fill in the Risk Assessment form? Hmmm, let me think. What would fucking
a member of staff on your desk rate? A medium, low or high-risk category? I would say high, wouldn’t you? I mean, let’s just think about the perceived risks and possible outcomes, shall we? Are you wearing a condom? No. Well, that would make it a high risk then. Oh. And what about a splinter or a paper cut — on a very private part of your anatomy. Not good Health and Safety is it, hmmm? Then there’s the possible risk of me reporting you to the Board of Governors.’ His ginger eyes, under fizzing brows, skittered around the room. ‘Would you say that counts as a low, medium or high risk? I would say high, very high, you asshole. Unless I get reinstated. Possible outcomes if I don’t? Let’s see . . . accusations of corruption, public disgrace and humiliation — oh, and of course, divorce. Risk assessment of me calling your wife right now and forwarding her this video footage I’ve just taken on my mobile phone? Oh, high. Very, very, very, fucking high actually!’
‘But. . . but. . .’ Scroope gurgled in the quicksands of moral justifications for a while before he went under. ‘My marriage has been sexless for so long. But this has nothing to do with Perdie — with Mrs Pendal getting the promotion. It was a very hard decision.’
‘Yeah. That’s what it looks like in the video.’
Perdita was scrambling back into her panties. ‘ I didn’t mean to borrow your ideas Cassandra. It’s just I do suffer from this terrible inferiority complex, and—’
‘Its not that you have an inferiority complex. You’re just inferior, Perdie.’
‘Have some compassion,’ she begged. ‘Some teacherly loyalty. Some sisterly solidarity.’
‘Gee, I don’t know,’ I said, then parroted her response when she’d caught me sneaking into school after the Science Museum excursion. ‘Duty before friendship.’
‘What do you want?’ Scroope asked bluntly.
It was then it came to my attention that I might not be as nice a person as I’d always thought I was. ‘The promotion.’
‘What?’ Perdita’s gasp was louder than her faked orgasm.
‘Yes. I think this is just the excuse I need for you to promote me.’ I mimicked his line to me. ‘In fact, as you have made your hostility to your new Deputy Head i.e. mot, so apparent, it seems clear that it would be best for the school if perhaps you saw this as a lifestyle down-scaling opportunity and moved on, Mr Scroope,’ I paraphrased.
‘You little bitch,’ Scroope spat. ‘Get out of my school.’
‘Okay then.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps we should just meet with the Board of Governors where you can discuss your um . . . extremely close working relationship with a member of staff whom you’ve just promoted?’
Scroope went pale. When he finally spoke, it was in a monotone. ‘I am sixty-four. I suppose retirement is not out of the question.’
Perdita fired off a round of explosive expletives. Probably because she knew she’d have to change her sloganed herbal- tea mug, from Best Teacher, to Scheming, Lying, Treacherous Amoral Teacher Who Does It 50 Times After Class With The Headmaster Who Makes Me Do It Till I Get It Right! And all, as it turned out, for nothing.
I don’t know if‘gloat’ is the right word, but a definite feeling of warmth spread through my body.
‘Oh, and by the way.’ I paused at the door, ‘Re. your rather obvious marital problems, Mr Scroope . . . Maybe therapy would rekindle a sense of wonder and mystery. I do have the number of an excellent marriage therapist — Bianca’s her name. I’ll email her details to you, shall I? Oh, and Happy Christmas to the both of
you. Looks like they’ve all come at once!’ It was an obvious pun, but oh, the pleasure it gave me.
As if Life couldn’t get any better, the next cab off the Happiness rank involved Rory.
It was Christmas Eve. The kids were tucked up in bed and I was wrapping their presents under the tree, when the key turned in the lock and there he was, zigzagging towards me, weaving and tacking around the furniture, tilting dangerously to starboard.
T’m soooo ssssorry,’ he said blearily. You could have used his breath to clean my oven.
‘Rory, did you drive here? You’re completely smashed.’
‘Naw, I walked. I was fiddling around with the camcorder
I groaned and flinched, dreading that he might tell me why. Bianca had cast him in her sex video, I recalled. ‘Yes?’ I said.
‘And anyway,’ he hiccoughed, ‘unbeknownst to me, Jenny video-ed the r-r-r-race.’
‘The what?’
‘The Mothers’ Race. At her S-s-s-sports Day. It was bumpy and there was a lot of footage. Really. I mean, she shot half an hour of her foot. But Bianca did push you. I’ve replayed it twenty times. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.’
When he bundled me up in his arms, I felt hidden, sheltered. From within the deep, crinkly folds of his cuddle I thought I heard him ask me to take him back.
‘What?’ I pulled away to look at him. It was a change of direction which could give a girl whiplash.
It was then my husband got down on a penitential knee and made a cursory stab at reconciliation. ‘Please take me back. I don t
know what came over me. I must have been having a midlife crisis.’
‘Um . . . How can you have a midlife crisis when you’ve never left puberty^
‘I feel so guilty. Believe me, if I were one of my own dogs, I’d have myself put down. It’s the only humane thing to do. I should never have abandoned you for that woman.’
‘Where is Bianca, by the way?’ In a helicopter flying too low towards an electric cable, one could only hope.
‘What I’ve realized is that Bianca . . . well, she’s only in love with herself.’
‘She’ll have no competition there.’
Most love affairs, when stripped to their bare essentials, are as ridiculous as people stripped to their underwear. And my husband’s was no exception.
‘She needs a humility transplant.’ He hiccoughed again.
‘Well,y(7w aren’t qualified to be the donor, Rory, take it from me.’
Rory laughed. ‘You see how clever you are?’ His smile was like an embrace. My heart beat insubordinately. For a moment, it seemed that he really could metamorphose back into the man with whom I had fallen in love.
‘I’ve changed, Cass, I really have.’ He took me in his arms once more.
Looking up at his face, I studied him. Can men change? I asked myself. Gear — yes. Tyres — yes. Underpants — occasionally. But their behaviour? Never. A new invention was required. The monogamous husband. Patent Pending.
‘The only thing you’ve changed is that you’ve grown longer nose hair,’ I told him.
For a moment he looked thrown, then rallied. ‘Lemme guess. You’re still carrying a little residual anger over the whole YOU
SLEPT WITH ANOTHER WOMAN thing. If only you’d never taken me to those bloody classes, Cassie!’
‘Hey, I did not make a fool of you, Rory. You did that all by yourself. We went to the classes because we were unhappy. You left me. And you know what I realized? That I don’t need you. I was doing everything on my own anyway. Actually there’s much less work to do without you. Women don’t need husbands any more. If Jane Austen were alive today, she’d be writing about a Mr Bennet, arranging to marry off his four sad sons.’
Rory, whom I’d always thought would only ever cry if the local football stadium got washed away in a global-warming- related freak wave accident, sniffed back a tear.
‘Just because I don’t always express my feelings, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’
I attempted a sympathetic smile, but it was too tiring. ‘I’d like to feel sad for you, I really would, but I’m all depressed out. I just don’t have any depression left in me.’
‘Don’t you . . . Don’t you love me any more?’
It was a painful question. His mouth stiffened to meet the blow.
‘I just don’t need you any more.’ It was breaking what was left of my heart, but for the first time in my life, I was independent. And the way I saw it, if I was standing on my own two feet, then he could never again walk all over me.
‘But. . . but. . . I. . . can’t survive without you.’
‘Oh, you’ll survive. You’ll bivouac and build a campfire by rubbing two twigs together and slay an elk or whatever it is you men do.’
And then he enveloped me, hands everywhere. ‘Take me back.’ It was like being at the mercy of an octopus.
‘Get off me, Rory. See? You haven’t changed. You still think sex is the solution to everything.’