5. Teacher Wetting His Pants

THE SANDS OF TIME Part 5

Damn it, thought Gavin as he noticed that the wretched retired policeman, Desmond somebody-or-other who’d been a schoolboy a long time ago and who reckoned he knew something about him. There he was lingering by his own gate as if he wanted to taunt him until he confessed to something.

But what could he confess to? He’d lived a blameless enough life, hadn’t he? Years ago he’d been a history teacher and had done his best to teach teenage boys how to live decent and respectable lives. And afterwards when the television company changed its plans, doing the council’s mowing when the grass needed cutting. He’d done that. At school, he might occasionally have used the stick on some of the more wretched boys, they’d been pesky beasts who tried to taunt him with their young bodies, especially the pretty Desmond Boniface who had grown old and was lurking next to his gate right now. Lurking to threaten hm when all he really wanted to do was go into his house and have a piss.

Desperately. Before he wet himself. Before he gave that one dreadful weakness away and left a trail of urine behind him.

There was no way out. He could either relieve himself against someone else’s garden gate and be arrested for indecent exposure or brave his tormentor, because that’s what the boy had become. His tormentor. A retired detective who thought he knew something about him, and he was probably senile. Yes, that must be it: the old fraud was deep in the grip of Alzheimers and making stuff up. Or if not making it up exactly, exaggerating little things in his almost empty mind. And that’s how he’d treat him when he found his way to his own front door. As a mindless hollow man.

So hoping his bladder would stay in control for a few moments longer he brazenly went up to his gate and nodded to the man who had rapidly become a bitter enemy, at least he had in his own mind.

“Afternoon, sir,” greeted Desmond Boniface with half a smile, “I was hoping to see you, sir…”

Gavin sniffed. Sir was it now? Like it should have been when the boy had probably called him anything but sir when he was out of range and not been heard. He knew they’d called him names, the young b******s. Thrasher had been the favourite, and he’d thrashed them for it if he heard, just to let them know that he wasn’t either deaf or stupid.

“I wanted to let you know that I did hear,” said the almost smiling ex-policeman.

“You heard what?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound authoritarian, snap in a decisive sort of way, and not quite making it. That’s the trouble with old age, the voice runs away with itself and before you know what’s happening it comes out all wrong.

“Why you stopped teaching,” replied the other.

Oh, so it’s not about poor David. He doesn’t know about him. He was buried properly and what if they did dig him up? Who’s to say the damned statue didn’t fall of its own accord and smash the poor darling’s skull?

“You got the sack,” smiled Desmond, and he walked off.

He was going to say no I didn’t, I got a better job with one of the new independent television stations, looking for someone to be in charge of schools broadcasts in opposition to what the BBC was putting out. Better programmes. Less stodgy, less middle-class, and I was just the man…

But Boniface, the wretch, was out of hearing before he could utter a simple word in his own defence.

And his bladder was shouting at him, so he rushed to open the door, fumbled, dropped his key, stooped to pick it up and the inevitable happened: he couldn’t stop an explosion of urine from filling his underpants and running through his trousers.

He staggered into the toilet. His zip and his trousers were wet and he hated touching them, but he had to. He slid the trousers awkwardly down. How come they get to be so cold so quickly?

Then he finished what he’d accidentally started.

And the front door bell rang, a jolly little tune, one he’d always liked, he had no idea what it was called but it always cheered him up.

Who on Earth could that be? Nobody called on him these days, not even with bills that he’d forgotten to pay...

Kicking his trousers and his underpants off he want to the door without opening it. Dressed as he was he’d never open that door to anyone before cleaning himself first, and getting dressed decently.

“Who is it?” he asked, and added “it’s not convenient.”

“I spoke to you not two minutes ago,” came the voice of his tormentor. At least, that’s how he was beginning to look at him because that’s what he was becoming.

“I said, it’s not convenient!” he repeated.

“You got the sack. That’s what happened. You got the sack because of the way you treated the boys in your care. They weren’t going to have anything to do with you and let the courts decide, but they gave you a simple choice. Tell a fairy story about promotion and glory or go to court and probably to jail.”

“How dared you say such a thing! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“I was there, don’t forget. Now open this door or are we going to have to spend the rest of the conversation with a piece of painted wood between us?”

“I can’t. It’s … it’s awkward.”

“How come?”

“I’ve taken my trousers off. That’s what’s awkward.”

“Oh dear. Like you did for the Reverend David Hobson before you killed him?”

“What the…”

Gavin was physically shaking. He hadn’t killed lovely David, had he? It wasn’t how he’d remembered it. The truth in his head said that he’d been there all right, but that statue had fallen onto the young man’s lovely head all by itself, hadn’t it? Something to do with a lorry rumbling past...

But Desmind Boniface was almost enjoying himself. So he continued.

“But that’s not what I wanted to say, so don’t you worry on that score. I’m still working on that! But I was saying, do you want the whole street to hear? Because I’m going to say it anyway. So just open the door and let’s have a civilised conversation, man to man, face to face.”

Gavin gave in. He was feeling his age and wanted to get rid of the tiresome ex-detective as quickly as he could so that he could sit back in his reclining chair and put his tired feet up. So he opened the door a crack and held one wrinkled hand in front of him so that there was no chance his offensive visitor could get a glimpse of his intimate parts.

“Wet yourself, I see,” observed Desmond with a half smile.

“I couldn’t help…” mumbled Gavin, “at my age…” He knew that he sounded pathetic, but couldn’t help it.

“And there was a time, many years ago, and you may well remember it, when a teenage lad called Desmond Boniface had a similar accident and you caned him as hard as you could because of it. Do you remember the way he cried, you old sadist?

“I never…” stammered Gavin.

“Oh, but you did. And my parents were so offended when I told them that they arranged a secret meeting with other parents who were also worried about the way you treated their sons before they agreed to take a serious complaint to your Headmaster. Did you know that? Thrasher? Did it ever cross your mind that the way you treated a scared boy with wet trousers was the reason you were sacked? Because you were. You know that. Sacked.”

“I got a job in television… schools programming about history, noble kings and queens, civil wars…”

“Tosh, Mr Pottle. That was the story you put around but it had nothing to do with the truth. You must know that, you old fraud. In truth you moved here, to this part of the country, and took a job as a council gardener. You mowed the parks here. You tried to make the parks beautiful, but it never worked, did it? You see, you were poison and pretty flowers don’t grow well in poison…”

“I scripted a programme for the television…”

“And it was rejected because the company who might have made it didn’t want to have anything to do with a teacher who’d lost his job like you had. Now let me see… you’ve wet yourself. You wouldn’t have a nice cane anywhere, would you? So that I can thrash some sense into you?”

“It was about the Tudors.. It was good.” Gavin pulled a chair towards himself and almost fell into it.

Desmond leered at him. “I’ve seen your script,” he said, “it’s still in a folder in a dusty cupboard in a long forgotten office, and the only time its seen the light of day is when I consulted it a few weeks ago. It reminded me of the history you taught us at school, the unbelievable worship of sadistic monarchs. You’d have fitted in well back then. Now, when you’ve got your breath back you can tell me all about Glenda… You did kill her, didn’t you?”

© Peter Rogerson, 11.3.22

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