Goodbye to Grimeford

Percy Thistlethwaite slumped into his seat, staring out the coach front window. Forty-five minutes of peace. The return trip was always better - kids too drained to cause trouble, their bloodstreams no longer fizzing with caffeine and anticipation. He glanced at Stella, Head of Year, tapping away at her phone. If anything kicked off, she could deal with it.

Ten years at Grimeford Academy. History Teacher. More Able Coordinator. Titles came and went with fashions in education (“Gifted and Talented”, “Aspire and Achieve”), but Percy remained. His job was simple: take the clever ones on trips and get them into Oxford.

This trip, taking their exam students to visit the sixth form of a nearby private school, ticked all the boxes. Beaumont Grange fulfilled their “Widening Participation” obligations by dangling a single scholarship in front of Grimeford’s best and brightest, and Percy fulfilled both of his self-set criteria. Everyone won, except of course, the students.

But Percy’s time at Grimeford was up. Done. Last trip, last term in the benighted abyss. Next time, it would be him welcoming the Grimeford rabble, as he’d finally managed to secure the ambrosial dream: a teaching post at Beaumont. He pictured it - engaged students, none of them late or reeking, civilised dinners in the great hall, sharing jokes with colleagues who never split infinitives. All of this, for higher pay. 

He was on the go: on to the fields of Elysium. (A happy accident that it would get the Grimeford leadership off his back about his “quality of teaching”.)

He reverently unwrapped a Nature Valley bar. It had been a long day. He heard some overexcited shouting from the back of the coach but couldn’t face even turning to look at them: he was sick of the sight of them, and one in particular. Jaz Laufeyson. Just the thought of her impish little face made his hackles rise.

He’d suggested not bringing her on the trip at all, but the leadership team at Grimeford were unaccountably fond of her. The Headteacher had called his suggestion irregular.

Percy hadn’t pushed it. It was clear she’d worked some kind of trickery to obscure her diabolical nature from them.

He’d taught her for two years - two teeth-grindingly long years. (Percy’s dentist said she’d never seen such rapid deterioration of the molars.) He’d known from their first lesson that she was going to be a problem, ever since the Duke of Normandy remarks. Admittedly, there may have been a small error in his workbook - referring to him as King too early by accident - but she need not have proclaimed it to the whole class.

The Nature Valley bar snapped in his pincer-grip.

He’d let it go, at the time. But she wouldn’t stop harping on about the workbook. He knew she couldn’t possibly have finished it - only two weeks into term, for goodness’ sake. “Please sir, have you marked my workbook this week?” So insistent and insolent. All a ruse to cause him public humiliation.

Well, naturally, there comes a certain point when one’s pride can’t be challenged any further. He’d sought a subtle revenge: something that not even this prodigious student would be able to detect. Oh, he would mark her work. But in handwriting so awful as to be too grotesque, too indecipherable, even for clever little Jaz. A victory as cunning as Ulysses’ horse - in its own little way, he thought, as he’d watched her squint at his angry scrawlings.

It was then that the items on his desk started changing places, as if rearranged by some unseen hand. He’d put them back, only again to be disturbed. He locked his classroom door when he left: still the “Doomed to repeat it” mug would switch from right- to left-side.

She proved impossible to catch. He left a dashcam in his room, but no one appeared on the footage. And so, her school life went on, unblemished by detentions, unscathed by bad grades.

He had been forced to seek justice by other means. As she swished into his class, precisely on time as usual, he looked at the wry “L” he had logged on the register. Tut tut, he thought. Late again, Jaz?

It was then that the war began. Displayed on his desk was his stack of “currently reading” books, and one by one, the bookmarks were moved, replaced at random spots. He’d reread fifty pages of The Prince before realising he’d been had.

He struck back with a note in her locker, crafted from cut-out letters: YOU ARE UTTERLY CLASSLESS. He allowed himself a chuckle at the aptness of his wordplay.

Somehow, despite it never leaving his pocket, she changed the background on his mobile phone to some mocked-up image of him as a rapper. He only hoped she hadn’t noticed how much he’d jumped at the sight of his own menacing scowl.

He subtly but consistently pronounced her name wrong.

She plagiarised with such finesse that her essays were both brilliant and not at all incriminating. Try as he might, he could not pin down her sources.

He started a rumour that she’d lied about being related to the Royal Family.

And so, it had gone on. But soon, Jaz and all her tiresome little tricks would be gone. He would behold her from a height she could never hope to attain, and the wings of triumph would flap majestically at his back.

The hubbub at the back of the coach was getting harder to ignore, and he felt a forceful tapping on his shoulder. It was Stella.

“What on earth is that racket?” he asked.

“It’s Jaz,” she said, eyes very wide. “We’ve left Jaz behind. Call Beaumont Grange. I’ll deal with Grimeford. Do it!”

A shout from two seats away. “ALL RIGHT, SHADOW DUKE PERCIVAL?” cackled Jayden Murphy, waving his phone at him. On the screen he saw - not himself, but that cursed image he’d seen on his own phone background. This time it was moving. Jerking at the camera with its chains, unspeakable gestures, and rapping to an insolent little drumbeat.

Tash Bennet gleefully popped her head above one of the seats. “We’ve found your 4chan profile, sir! ShadowDukePercival has some spicy opinions!”

“It’s not me!” he spluttered, lunging at the nearby phones, the students whipping them from his reach.

Stella shook him again. “Call Beaumont, for god’s sake!”

He fumbled for his phone. Ten missed calls. He rang back, surrounded by fifty screens of the imposter shouting his coarse lyrics. The cacophony was so great, he almost didn’t hear the Head answer.

“Mr Thistlethwaite.” His tones were clipped. Cold. “Good news first: you’ve given me a most outstanding scholarship student this year. I imagine you’ll be wanting her back.”

“Certainly - ” he stammered. “We’re coming to get her - straight away - so sorry - Head of Year miscounted - ”

Stella was arguing with the driver, who was shouting something about needing to get home for The Masked Singer.

“But now the bad news,” he said. “Since you left, certain facts about your personal life have come to light. Quite the alter ego, Shadow Duke. We work very hard to ensure that Beaumont students don’t tread that path. Plus, your serious oversight in leaving a student behind means that I’m afraid your journey with us - well, it ends here.”

The coach performed an admirably violent U-turn, hurling Percy sideways into the window. Phones scattered everywhere, screens flashing his disgraced doppelgänger. The driver slammed his foot on the accelerator and they set off, seventy miles an hour - straight back to where they came from.