Week 7 Chapter 1; The First Mistake; Taking the Job The brown Hillman Avenger rattled to a halt on the opposite side of the road to the school gates. From the passenger seat of the car, Barratt turned to his sister and smiled wanly. Midway Road was a busy road; it needed a school crossing patrol at the gates of the Peckman Community School. What it didn’t need was a crossing patrol lady sitting on the wall outside the school sharing a cigarette with a group of children who looked like 4th or 5th form lads and lasses. It caused him to wonder if any member of staff was meant to be on duty at the front gate. The tableau hardly looked wholesome. Viewing the scene with distaste from the passenger seat of his sister’s car, David Barratt screwed his face up in thought, raising his eyebrows at the questioning look he received. He looked back at her uncertainly. She shrugged her shoulders. “Give me a bell at the end of the interview and I’ll come and pick you up,” his sister Kathryn said surveying the scene with some trepidation. He gave Kathryn a reassuring smile and shrugged off the first impression. “See you in a couple of hours,” he responded pushing open the car door and reaching onto the back seat for his briefcase. Such blatant disregard for school rules and the law unnerved him. However, he’d taught in the east end of London, Brixton, Peckham, Southall during the riots. Even with the initial impression, it seemed unlikely that the school could be worse than any of his previous experiences and he’d coped with them easily enough; he had no idea how wrong he was to be. The entrance to the school was simply an opening onto a drive. Some distance from the road, at the end of a long drive that opened out between two large houses, was the school building. It was as if it were hiding it’s presence from the gaze of the general public; concealing it’s nature from those that passed by; as if the school didnt want people to know where it was. Probably considered modern in the sixties it looked worn, tired and in need of attention. The crossing patrol lady didn’t bother rising from her perch on the wall to stop the traffic so that he could cross the busy road; she simply eyed him with suspicion as she handed the cigarette butt to the child next to her. As he passed the entrance to the school, a couple of the pupils gazed upon him with barely concealed contempt as if he were new meat for the grinder. One of the insolent little sods held out his hand offering Barrett the cigarette he was holding. He’d taught children who thought they were tough before but he’d never seen open defiance of this nature. Before he’d entered the premises, he knew that this was a school that had serious problems. Seeking employment in this area so that he could finally own a home of his own, he’d applied for every job within ten miles of his sister’s house. With the price of houses in London, there was no chance that he could afford a house on a teacher’s salary. Barratt regretted the necessity of leaving Raglan High School, in West London, as he’d learned so much from the head and deputy head of maths. (He was later to conclude that they really had been in a league of their own.) Dave Hines and Brian Fox were the kind of teachers that good young teachers should aspire to become and the kind that Barratt hoped he was well on the way to becoming. Barratt knew his references were excellent; he knew his job. His head of department at Raglan was the best he’d ever met and was the best he ever would. It was only his second interview in the area but already he was questioning the decision making processes of ‘the powers that be’. He’d already been rejected by a junior school in the area. (He later found out it was because his references were considered unbelievable – they were too good.) Reaching the end of the drive, he entered the school by the main doors and turned right into the school office. The secretary asked him to take a seat and after a short phone call informed him that Mr. Fairchild, the deputy head, would be with him momentarily to escort him to the waiting area for the interviews. Barratt sat, twiddling his thumbs, taking in the appearance of the front office. It might have been described as possessing a faded elegance but for the fact that Barratt couldn’t possibly see how the room could ever have been described as elegant; it was functional at best. The outer door to the office violently swung open, its hinges protesting loudly as a woman in her thirties, who’d obviously never missed a meal in her life and couldn’t spell the word diet (let alone understand it), burst into the room. Barratt observed her with interest; you could tell a lot about a school by its parents. She marched up to the counter, not even sparing the teacher a sideways glance. Pugnacious looking with cheeks that wobbled with each of the small steps she took as she lurched across the room, with a complexion that contained hues of blue and purple, she gave the impression of her being one sizeable meal away from a heart attack. She looked like a woman on a mission; a mission at the outbreak of hostilities. Bracing herself with both hands on the counter, the school secretary greeted the arrival with stoic resignation. It looked very much like confrontations with this woman were a common experience. “One of your teachers took a knife off my boy yesterday!” the woman declared as if it were an accusation. Without a word, the secretary reached under the counter and produced what looked to Barratt like a hunting knife with a twelve inch blade. She placed it on the counter between herself and the woman and stood back, maintaining what appeared to be a carefully engineered neutral expression. Grabbing the knife with what sounded like a grunt of contempt, the woman turned on her heel and proceeded to wobble her way out of the room; attempting vainly to slam the door behind her. Looking up at the young teacher, the secretary gave a helpless shrug; she gave the impression that this was not an unusual, if not regular, experience. Barratt couldn’t help feeling that in London the woman would have collected her son, as well as the knife, from the local police station (always assuming they let her have the knife back). A few moments later, the door to the office glided open smoothly and a small dapper, middle aged man entered the office. “Morning,” he greeted Barratt cheerfully; “You must be Mr. Barratt.” He offered his hand to the newcomer. “If you’ll just follow me, I’ll take you upstairs to the waiting room.” Opening the office door, Fairchild invited Barrett through it. Walking steadily across the small hall outside the office, the pair ascended a flight of steps to the first floor. A commotion proceeded the arrival of two teenage boys at the top of the stairs; one obviously chasing the other. The pair careened down the first flight, the pursuer catching his prey on the staircase landing and cannoning him into the banister before landing the victim with several solid punches. Whilst it was obvious that one of the protagonists wasn’t taking the incident particularly seriously, it was equally obvious that the other was. Blows rained down on the target of the pursuer’s ire. Barratt looked to Fairchild, who simply ignored the pair and walked past them as if they didn’t exist. For a moment Barratt considered shouldering into the pair and breaking up what was obviously turning into a fight; it was what you did or at least what you were meant to do. The question was; should Barratt follow the lead of the deputy head or should he risk blowing his interview chances by taking action to break up the fight. In danger of being left behind by the deputy receding into the distance, Barratt opted for discretion and leapt up the final flight of stairs attempting to make up ground on Fairchild. Having taught in most of the riot areas in London, Barratt was convinced he must have taught in the toughest schools in the country; he was wrong.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 10:37:24 +0000
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