‘Did you take all your clothes off, or just some of them?’ Tricia asks.
‘Did you feel embarrassed?’
‘What happened after?’
‘What if you get pregnant?’
‘Are you going to do it again?’
We have so many questions, and we’re so stimulated by the things she tells us that it isn’t long before Sir’s name is mentioned. It always is at some point, whatever the conversation, because it’s as though everything we discuss is a prelude to get to him.
We’d all long since agreed that he’d probably had sex hundreds of times so he would be an expert at it. When we talk about this we pause, eyes closed, to imagine ourselves with him, and then we dissolve into riotous giggles when someone makes noises as though it’s really happening.
We aren’t the only ones who fancy him. Some of our younger female teachers do too, you can see it in the way they break into smiles when they spot him coming their way, or are always willing to join in any project suggested by him. Some even openly flirt with him, like Mrs Blake, the PE teacher, who sometimes joins our special Wednesday classes to show us how to dance like the Go-Jos or Pan’s People. She’s really good with the moves, whether she’s dancing to something slow like ‘Honey’ or wild like ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. No one can take their eyes off her, except me, because I’m watching Sir and the way he looks at her makes me certain he’s had sex with her. I’m furious about it. She’s married and has no right to him. I will her to fall over or break wind or do something to make herself ridiculous or disgusting in his eyes. The only thing that allows me to forgive her is her praise of my dancing. She says I’m one of the best in the class, a natural, and if I carry on this way I’ll end up on Top of the Pops.
‘Don’t you agree, Mr Michaels?’ she asks him, and without quite looking at me he smiles and says something like, ‘absolutely,’ or ‘she certainly has talent.’ Of course I love it when he agrees, but it upsets me that he doesn’t really seem to be paying attention.
‘It’s because he’s not seriously into the same sort of pop music as us and Mrs Blake,’ my friend Joy says when I complain to her, and I think she’s right.
As far as pop goes, Sir is mainly into Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, the headbanging stuff that makes a lot of the girls shudder and groan. I don’t mind it, but I especially enjoy it when he puts it on the turntable and laughs when everyone boos and cries ‘Off, off, off.’ We all love it when he laughs. It’s as infectious as measles, and no one wants a cure.
One day he plays us ‘The Gaelic Blessing’ and asks us to write down the images it evokes for us. I think it’s a strange choice, but he’s like that, always throwing something different at us, and collecting up our reactions as if they’re musical notes he’s going to use for a symphony he’s composing.
When the piece has finished he asks Prunella Jones to read out what she’s written, but every time she tries she bursts out laughing.
‘It’ll be something rude,’ someone calls out.
He moves on to Tricia Hill who gets booed when she says it made her see churches and choirs and hymnbooks.
‘Stating the obvious,’ Mandy Gibbons informs her loftily, and rolls her eyes as if Trish is an idiot.
Trish throws her exercise book and pen up in the air. ‘So let’s hear yours, if you’re so brilliant,’ she challenges.
Mandy’s eyes sparkle and we all know something outrageous is coming, but before she can read out a single word, Sir says,
‘What about you? What did you see?’
Startled and thrilled that he’s asked me, and embarrassed and desperate to impress even though I know what kind of reaction I’ll get from the others, I tuck my long blonde hair behind my ears (I always wear it down for Sir’s class) and begin. ‘I saw myself floating over a meadow like a bird,’ I read out loud. ‘I was a weightless ballerina looking down at the flowers in the grass and up to the sun and out across the sea to where angels were beckoning to me to join them.’
A couple of girls actually clapped, but more gagged and Sir says, ‘Very good.’