‘Upton? You ran to the river? At Upton?’ (Mr McNamara was seeing the front page of the Malvern Gazetteer. STUDENT TEACHER SENDS 3 BOYS TO WATERY DEATHS.) ‘The footbridge, I meant, you cretins! By the tennis courts! Why would I send you off to Upton? Unsupervised?’
Ross Wilcox kept a straight face. ‘Sweat equals success, sir.’
Mr McNamara’d settled for a draw in return for the last word. ‘You boys have got a lot of problems and the biggest one’s me!’ After he’d retreated into Mr Carver’s cubby-hole, Ross Wilcox and Gary Drake got busy whispering round the hard kids and the in-between kids. A minute later Wilcox called, ‘A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four,’ and everyone ’cept us lepers began singing to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’:
Mr McNamara likes to take it up his arse,
Mr McNamara likes to take it up his arse,
Mr McNamara likes to take it up his arse,
And he wants to shove his up yours too – too – too!
Glory, glory McNamaaara!
He poked his dong up Mr Caaarver!
He even poked it up his faaather!
Now he wants to poke it up yours too – too – too!
The song had got louder by its third encore. Perhaps kids thought, If I chicken out of this, I’ll be the next Jason Taylor. Or perhaps mass gang-ups just have a will of their own that swallows up resistance. Maybe gang-ups’re as old as hunters in caves. Gang-ups need blood as fuel.
The changing-room door slammed open.
The song instantly insisted it’d never existed.
The door bounced off the rubber door-stop on the wall and hit Mr McNamara in the face.
Forty-plus boys nervously corking in laughter is still quite loud.
‘I’d call you a pack of pigs,’ Mr McNamara shrieked, ‘but that’d be an insult to farmyard animals!’
‘Ooooooooo!’ vibrated from the walls.
Some fury is scary, some fury is ridiculous.
I felt sorry for Mr McNamara. He’s me, in a way.
‘Which of you’ – McNamara bit back the words that’d lose him his job – ‘toe-rags have the guts to insult me face to face? Right now?’
Long, mocking, silent seconds.
‘Go on! Sing it. Go on. SING IT!’ That shout must’ve torn his throat. Sure there was anger in it, but I recognized despair, too. Forty more years of this. McNamara glared round his tormentors, searching for a new strategy. ‘You!’
To my utter horror ‘You!’ was Me.
McNamara must’ve recognized me as the kid trodden into the mud. He figured I’d be the likeliest to grass. ‘Names.’
I shrank as the Devil turned eighty eyes on me.
There’s this iron rule. It says, You don’t get people into trouble by naming them, even if they deserve it. Teachers don’t understand this rule.
McNamara folded his arms. ‘I’m waiting.’
My voice was a tiny spider’s. ‘I didn’t see, sir.’
‘I said, “Names”!’ McNamara’s fingers’d balled into a fist and his arm was twitching. He was on the very edge of belting me one. But then all light drained from the room, like a solar eclipse.
Mr Nixon, our headmaster, materialized in the doorway.
‘Mr McNamara, is this child your main offender, your chief suspect, or a recalcitrant informer?’
(In ten seconds I’d be sandwich spread or relatively free.)
‘He,’ Mr McNamara swallowed hard, not sure if his teaching career was minutes away from amputation, ‘says he “didn’t see”, Headmaster.’
‘There are none so blind, Mr McNamara.’ Mr Nixon advanced a few steps, hands hidden behind his back. Boys shrank against the benches. ‘One minute ago I was speaking on the telephone to a colleague in Droitwich. Abruptly, I was obliged to apologize, and terminate the conversation. Now. Who can guess the reason?’ (Every kid in the room stared very hard at the dirty floor. Even Mr McNamara. Mr Nixon’s stare’d’ve vaporized you if you met it.) ‘I ended my conversation owing to the infantile braying coming from this room. Literally, I could no longer hear myself think. Now. I am not concerned about the identity of the ringleader. I do not care who roared, who hummed, who remained mute. What I care about is that Mr McNamara, a guest in our school, will report to his peers – with just cause – that I am the headmaster of a zoo of hooligans. For this affront to my reputation, I shall punish every one of you.’ Mr Nixon lifted his chin one quarter-inch. We flinched. ‘“Please, Mr Nixon! I didn’t join in! It’s not fair if you punish me!”’ He dared anyone to agree but nobody was stupid enough. ‘Oh, but I am not paid my stratospheric salary to be fair.