17 THE SCHOOLMASTER'S SHAME

Ivan reacts to a very naughty boy.

Remarkably, the next few days passed like days ought to do for Ivan Bramble. His heating kept on working which meant he no longer feared freezing to death, his landlord’s representative popped in to apologise for the misunderstanding, as she put it, over the electric supply and, smiling, withdrew the notice to quit the premises that she’d previously handed him. And more important of all, after one more purposeless visit the two detectives seemed to have given up persecuting him.

He even visited the fish and chip shop and was gratified to discover that the offensive woman who had refused to serve him was no longer there.

He neither knew nor cared where Maureen went. He knew he didn’t love her, not now that she’d deserted him for another man, and what was more he was absolutely certain that he could never love her again. He had, once upon a time, he supposed, worshipped her, but those days were over, done and dusted, and he had a new life ahead of him which may, good or bad fortune providing it, present him with another woman primed to either break his heart or heal his soul.

Christmas came and went.

The season of good will meant very little to Ivan. He was friendless in the world, a schoolmaster whose raison d’être was over when the four o’clock bell rang and he could forget apostrophes for another day. So festivities meant little to him and he spent the great day itself writing yet another chapter one of yet another novel that would most likely never proceed past chapter one. He enjoyed doing that, comfortable with the knowledge that he had at least one great novel in him and that one day he would find it.

January came and with it a new school term and he had spent the days before it started planning his revenge. He hadn’t forgotten the awful day when he’d believed with all of his heart that he’d been permanently converted into being female. It had been in the Squire’s Head, a town pub that he had popped into after a scare over ladies lingerie, and the wretched Eddie Toothbalm, school bully and well under-age, had been there, drinking and twanging bra straps. His bra straps.

Now had come the day of reckoning. He didn’t care what came after it, just that there had to be a glorious reckoning for his own peace of mind. How could he face the boy after what had happened? How could he look at him and explain, in simple terms that a loony would easily understand, the intricacies of English grammar?

It was class 5Y’s turn to spend an hour with him, struggling with Shakespeare. And it was on the back row that he spotted the despicable bra-twanger of the Squire’s Head.

“Ah, Toothbalm,” he said in a reasonable, quiet voice, “I hear you enjoy interfering with ladies old enough to be your granny in the local pub, you know, the one where all the scumbags go?”

“Sir?” asked the boy, smirking at one of his friends, also on the back row.

“You know, lad, in the Squire’s Head … a good friend of mine was in there, a lady of my acquaintance, and she said she was most offended and almost brought to tears when a youth whose friends called Toothy grabbed hold of straps to her undergarment...”

“Sorry sir.”

At least the wretch isn’t trying to deny it. But how could he? He was there and he did it, and if that’s the way he treats the fair sex then it’s about time he was taught a lesson, and I mustn’t remember for one moment that I am, mercifully, not actually the fair sex...

“I think you and I had better discuss this after school tonight, Toothy,” he said, putting an absurd amount of emphasis on the boy’s nickname. “I think you and I had better hold a man-to-man discussion on how ladies should not be treated.”

“I can’t, sir, not tonight, there’s football...” grinned Eddie Toothbalm,

“Really, Toothbalm, and you play, do you? You heave your beer-bloated body onto the football pitch and actually manage to run? This I’d like to see. Yes, this I’d like to see very much, but first you and I are going to have our little chat, and I’ll inform Mr Splodger all about it. Now, Mr Splodger, he has a definite dislike of youths who abuse women. He’s famous for it. Oh yes he is. He won’t have them playing in his football team. Not ever. Not if they’re the sort of boys to actually twang the straps of a lady’s brassiere.”

“Please sir, don’t...”

“Don’t rat on you? Don’t let Mr Splodger know that one of his favourites is an abuser of ladies whilst he’s downing pints of mild at the local pub when he should be practising his free kicks?”

And Ivan Bramble walked up to the miscreant until he was standing immediately behind him, and actually did the forbidden. He aimed a mighty swipe of the boy’s head, clenching his fist as he did so, and would have aimed a second blow had not the boy collapsed in a dazed way, eyes closed, head on desk, out cold.

You’ve gone too far, lad, he told himself as he stared at the immobile head of the wretched Eddie Toothbalm. And he had. A very great deal too far.

There was a deathly hush in the classroom as thirty sets of eyes stared at the unconscious boy and back at the vicious schoolmaster. They had never seen anything like it in their lives before. Toothy was dead, they thought, Toothy couldn’t move… Toothy had been sent by Mr Bramble, the normally quiet and inoffensive Mr Bramble, to that great big classroom in the skies where he would twang bra straps throughout eternity.

But Toothy did move. At first he groaned. He moved his head as if to make sure it was still firmly attached to his neck, and groaned again. The groans set the rest of the class into action. The silence became a buzz, and the buzz became an uproar. Mr Bramble, it seemed, had gone quite insane and almost killed one of the pupils in his care.

Mr Bramble, the mass of voices decided, was a serial killing maniac.

“Silence!” he said, barely above quiet speech, but they heard it. They all heard it and they all decided that if the serial killer was loose and noticed them then it might be their turn next. And Toothy was obviously quite groggy from the assault. He was obviously half way to being murdered.

The events, of course, reached the ears of Mr Hatchip, M.A. B.Sc. And Mr Hatchip was the Headmaster who prided himself in running a very tight ship indeed. Nothing was allowed to go astray, and if something, however minor, did show signs of doing that then causes were found and the culprits eliminated. It was the way tight ships had always been run.

In this case it was a job for the police. Mr Hatchip could see that even though he had been trying to find a way of easing Eddie Toothbalm out of his school for at least two terms because the boy was quite clearly sex mad in that he had been caught brushing against female chests once too often.

And it was Ivan Bramble’s bad luck when the police arrived.

“So we meet again, Mr Bramble,” smirked Chief Inspector Piggott, “we very much meet again”….

© Peter Rogerson 01.01.19