Back to the old schoolroom

Those cracks in the wood are as familiar as the wrinkles in my own hand. Those dark grooves I stared down at with the wastrel eyes of youth. I always wanted to etch my mark into them with my nails, grimy and chewed. Now polished and manicured, I have left every mark I ever will in this world, and the backs of my hands reveal a slight arthritic bent. 

I remember holding the fountain pen with the wrong hand, ink carving its way through the grooves in my skin. I tried to look as normal as the right-handed boys, lifting my hand slightly from the page as I wrote. I concluded each paragraph with a smudged flourish, blue stains down the heel of my hand, mapping my incompetence before the teacher could even cuff my tousled head. 

It was all part of the game, ducking the blows. You had to time it precisely, though. As sir approached in his clipped Oxford stride, I – we – used to watch the floor and at the exact moment the hand was raised, all necks shrank, chins tucked in tight to tie-knots. The backhand swipe generally missed. We were sitting ducks, however, and if he so desired, sir could drag us from our chair, dangling us as though fresh pulled carrots. Thwack! would come the blow as stick hit back or palm or calf. I feel the cold surge of fear in my legs even now, as I take the stiff walk amid plastic chairs and plastic tables in this neon facsimile of what the school once was. 

This is definitely the same room, deep in the bowels of the original building, gothic grandeur telling of the noble ambition of the founders. There are no wooden grooves now, not even wooden desks. These tables are not hallowed seats of education. It looks as though a fast food chain has exploded in this ancient room, spilling primary colours and toxic brightness where there should be still and silent reverence. Ah, the commercialisation of learning. 

There are posters here, charts there and a hum of technology around the walls. A white board commands the space behind the teacher’s cluttered desk, attached to scuffed plaster which must surely hide the original oak panelling. It reflects imperfect shadows of the bodies in the room around me. I shuffle towards it, up the centre aisle, a procession which used to feel funereal. The scruffy green carpet tiles muffle my slow steps. No click of cane on parquet floors now.

The room is somehow smaller. Yet the ceiling still arches high, lofty windows hinting at freedom: the Alcatraz effect. Tables block my path, clumped together in random bundles. Some students must face the back of the room for their lessons, I presume. The thought of showing my back to ‘Killer’ Campbell brings a wry smile, for I would no more have turned away from his desk than turned my back on a revered holy book or shrine. Megalomaniac monsters. Campbell the worst of them. Many of those teachers live on in fever dreams to this day. That’s what melded me, right here, in this very place.

At the front of the classroom a fresh-faced youth of a fellow, tie askew, is shaking hands with a toothy grin and the kind of enthusiasm that only ever engenders smiles in response. He will lose this in ten years or less, of course. It will fade with the black of his hair. It all falls away soon enough, leaving only the cynical husk. 

I step forward, shoulders hunched, although I am no taller than him, not anymore. My pale, blue-tinted skin is clasped in his dark hand. He is warm. His palm is warm. He has a military handshake – firm, brief, respectful. Our eyes meet. Green on brown. I am looking into a teacher’s eyes. In this classroom, of all places. A new experience, at the age of eighty-one.

‘Good evening, Sir, and welcome to King Edward’s School. This is the English department. I’m Mr Collins. Do you have family here at the school?’

He looks at me with focused intent, although I am conscious of the movement and murmured chat that surrounds us. My hearing is as sharp today as it was in the day when Billy whispered all the answers to me during a grammar test, while Campbell dozed in his chair, waiting for the interminable Friday afternoon to end.

‘Ah, yes,’ I reply. ‘My grandson is hoping to be admitted in September. Actually…’

I clear my throat.

‘I attended King Edward’s myself, when Mr Rettie was Headmaster. Rather a long time ago.’

‘Good Lord! Did you really? That must be, what, seventy years ago sir?’

‘Just about.’ I look around. ‘This was my English classroom. It has... changed somewhat.’

Words are pitiful sometimes. How inadequate they are for this moment.

‘Sir, I may have something of interest to you. We were clearing out some of our books from the library recently. I’m a sucker for books. The smell of them, you know, the history…’

There it is again, that smile. That puppy-dog enthusiasm. I smile back. Our eyes meet again. His are alight. My hands have a strange tingle.

‘Excuse me just one moment, they’re in the storeroom back there.’

He disappears, ignoring the crowds milling in his classroom, waiting for an opportune moment to ask their inane questions. My son and grandson are doubtless performing the same ritual in some other, more new-fangled block of the school.

‘Right here, sir.’

And there it is.

Gold block on green leather. 

An Elementary Guide to English Grammar.

My eyes fill with tears. I fumble for the cotton handkerchief I always keep in my trouser pocket, but very rarely need. The smell. That’s what brings the past tumbling back. That smell. Leather, and parchment-thin paper, rustling beneath my clumsy fingertips. The dry, sweet smell that immediately coaxes long-lost days. Ink and a touch of musty age: the scent of my education, right here, on this spot, in this book. 

All at once the classroom becomes the theatre in which my mind tumbles and turns. I feel my legs loosen and my arm is cradled gently as a plastic seat is placed behind for me to sink into. The tears continue, myriad as the memories. The scent of English grammar, rainy Tuesday afternoons, wishing it was Physical Training instead of an ‘indoors’ class, waiting for the bell, longing for weekends and holidays. And the secret thrill of silent jokes, tasks completed, essays graded, exams passed. Most of all, the camaraderie. Oh, those friends!

Fingers shaking, I fumble to the front of the book. There it is again, that brittle, familiar smell as the pages are turned. There will be a name. We always wrote our name in pencil at the front of each book at the start of the school year. The ritual taking of our own turn on the long list of the boys who had endured before us. 

There it was.

Thomas North

Terence Johnson

Norman Brown

Edward Moss

Eddie Moss. Corporal Edward Moss of the British army. Killed in action. My best friend and comrade through school and military life. Mossy to us all. That wit, that cheeky smirk, worn boldly even through the depths of old Campbell’s wrath.

A lump fills my throat. The hope we had, the days we ruled. The youth. The loss. 

My son and grandson appear at my side, a familiar hand placed on my shoulder.

‘Eddie! Son, you won’t believe it! This book is inscribed by my best friend at school. This is the gentleman you are named after. We sat in this very room together for our English lessons.’ 

I give him a watery smile.

‘In the fourth row. Right about here.’