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definitelys’ of the vox pop telly interview. Their indifference to play and learning was sublime, and I found their cluster of blank staring faces, unnerving. I settled them down to an essay on ‘My favourite holiday’, a classic time-filler and waster, and rushed off to my own form, where the noise and chaos were almost refreshing. Tommy’s desk stood empty in the front row, and its proximity was menacing. I toyed with the idea of displacing him during his absence, but I knew there would be no volunteers for a front desk. It seemed the ambition of most of the boys to spend their schooldays as far from the centre of learning as possible, and on the first day of every term there was a veritable stampede for the back row. It was only the meek, but not necessarily the inheritors of the earth, who ended up in front. And Tommy, with half a dozen others, had been brutally sieved through the seven rows in the classroom, and had landed, bruised and complaining in his present, though absent, exposed position almost touching the blackboard. Had I been my own pupil in that position, I would have been terrified. So, on second thoughts, I decided that Tommy should on no account be displaced.
    I teach in a Comprehensive school, and we have a fair cross-section of pupils. I have often heard parents praise the school for this very reason. By ‘cross-section’, the middle-class parent squares his conscience with the jolly knowledge that his little Roger is in the same class as their charlady’s boy. And the charlady, touched too by the cross-section syndrome, delights that her Albert is mixing with a nicer class ofperson. But when I say cross-section, I have no axe to grind, and I mean quite simply that the pupils are poor and rich, together with a slight quota of ‘coloured’, who for some reason never seem to qualify for an economic category. They are simply ‘coloured’, and that, I suppose, says plenty. Our headmaster, a man of the cloth – I shall go into him later, preferably with a knife – our headmaster, the Reverend Richard Baines, is very proud of his coloured quota, limited as it is. They are his token guests, a handful in each class, whose black presence silences any suggestion that the Reverend Richard Baines is faintly prejudiced. He is a firm public believer in voluntary repatriation, but privately, they should all go back where they came from, tho’ a good number of them were born a stone’s throw from the school. Often, at the end of assembly, he can be seen sweeping through the centre aisle – from the balcony, I get a top-shot eyeful of his black gown and mortarboard – patting the odd crimped head to display his large humanity. His coloured quota, I may add, is strictly limited to the lower forms. He is dubious, he once confided to me, about the older negro boy. ‘They develop so early,’ he said, coughing discreetly behind his hand, a gesture that left no doubt as to what category of development he meant. But I digress again, and I do not relish it, for the headmaster reminds me of my father, both bullies, but my father less so, perhaps. At least, he was always drunk, which offered some explanation for his behaviour. But the Reverend Richard Baines is a bully, sober. But I don’t intend to discuss the merits of either. There is little to choose between them, and let them both rot.
    I got my class to some semblance of order, and started out with the register. I ticked off the answers as they came, and didn’t even bother to call Tommy’s name half-way down the list. But a register, especially towards the end of the school year, and it was already spring, has been subconsciously learned by rote as efficiently and as meaninglessly as the Lord’s Prayer. Try saying, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, He restoreth my soul’, and await the price of your omission. ‘You missed out Tommy Johnson,’ came a roar from the back row.