Adrian dropped a log on the fire and stared into the flames. He was as secure as anyone: a real teacher with a real name, real references and real qualifications. No forgeries or tricks had brought him here, only merit. No one on earth could bang into the room and drag him to judgement. He really was a schoolmaster in a real school, really stirring a real fire in a safe and snug common room that was as real as the winter weather that really raged in the real world outside. He had as much right to pour a finger of ten-year-old malt and puff a 'soothing pipeful of the ready-rubbed as anyone in England. The grown-up didn't live who had the power to snatch away the bottle, confiscate the pipe or reduce him to stammered excuses.
Yet the sparks that spat up the flue spelt Wrigleys and Coke and Toshiba in Piccadilly neon; the escape of steam from the logs hissed a meeting of prefects plotting punishment.
He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whisky his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bollocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through
He turned back to his work with a sigh. God could worry about what he was and what he wasn't. There was the tea-party scene to be written.
He hadn't been working for more than ten minutes when there came another knock at the door.
'If that is anyone under the age of thirteen they have my permission to go and drown themselves.'
The door opened and a cheery face peered round.
'Wotcher, cock, thought I'd come and cadge a drink.'
'My dear Matron, you can't have run out of Gees linctus again.'
She came and looked over his shoulder.
'How's it going?'
'The agony of composition. Got to keep everyone satisfied.
I'm preparing a huge part for you.'
She massaged his neck.
'I can take it.'
'Oh you proud, snorting beauty, how I love you.'
It was a private joke that the boys had somehow got wind of.
She was a thoroughbred filly and he was her trainer. Adrian had started it when he found out that her father bred racehorses for a living. She looked the part too, with a great mane of chestnut hair and dark eyes that she rolled in mock passion when Adrian patted her hindquarters.
She had come to Chartham as an assistant matron at the age of sixteen and had been there ever since. There were rumours amongst the staff that she was a lesbian, but Adrian put that down to wishful thinking on their part. She was now such an attractive twenty-five-year-old that they had to find some excuse for not desiring her and her liking for jeans and jackets over skirts and blouses made sapphic preferences an obvious escape route for them.
She had latched onto Adrian as soon as he had arrived.
'She always pretends to pant after new masters,' Maxted had said. 'It's just showing off to the boys to disguise her dykery. Tell her to bog off.'
But Adrian enjoyed her company: she was brisk and clean. Her breasts were high and handsome, her thighs strong and supple and she was teaching him to drive. Despite the heat of their language they had never come close to anything physical, but the thought beat its wings in the air whenever they were together.
He watched her wandering around his room, picking things up, examining them and putting them down again in the wrong place.
'She's restless, she needs a good gallop over the downs,' he said.
She went to the window.
'It's really settling, isn't it?'
'What is?'
'The snow.'
'I find it unsettling as a matter of fact. I'm on duty tomorrow and I shall have to find something for the boys to do. The rugger pitch will be four foot under if it carries on at this rate.'
'The school was cut off from the outside world for a whole week in seventy-four.'
'And it's been cut off ever since.'
She sat on the bed.
'I'm leaving at the end of the year.'
'Really? Why?'
'I'll have been here nearly ten years. It's enough. I'll go home.'
