some ways the head wasn't such a bad chap.
Phillipson himself came in just after eleven. 'Morning, Baines. Morning, Mrs. Webb.' He sounded far too cheerful. Had he forgotten that school was starting tomorrow?
'Morning, headmaster.' Baines always called him 'headmaster'; the rest of the staff called him 'sir'. It was only a little thing, but it was something.
Phillipson walked across to his study door and paused by his secretary's desk. 'Anything important, Mrs. Webb?'
'I don't think so, sir. There's this, though.' She handed him the letter marked 'Private and Confidential', and Phillipson, with a slightly puzzled frown upon his face, entered his study and closed the door behind him.
In the newly-appointed county of Gwynedd, in a small semi-detached house on the outskirts of Caernarfon, another schoolmaster was acutely conscious that school restarted on the morrow. They had returned home only the previous day from a travesty of a holiday in Scotland — rain, two punctures, a lost Barclaycard and more rain — and there was a host of things to be done.
The lawn, for a start. Benefiting (where he had suffered) from a series of torrential downpours, it had sprouted to alarming proportions during their absence, and was in urgent need of an instant crop. At 9.30 a.m. he discovered that the extension for the electric mower was not functioning, and he sat himself down on the back doorstep with a heavy heart and a small screwdriver.
Life seldom seemed to run particularly smoothly for David Acum, until two years ago assistant French master at the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School in Kidlington, and now, still an assistant French master, at the City of Caernarfon School.
He could find no fault with the fittings at either end of the extension wire, and finally went inside again. No sign of life. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled, his voice betraying ill-temper and exasperation, 'Hey! Don't you think it's about time you got out of that bloody bed?'
He left it at that and, back in the kitchen, sat down cheerlessly at the table where half an hour earlier he had made his own breakfast, and dutifully taken a tray of tea and toast upstairs. Ineffectually he tinkered once more with one of the wretched plugs. She joined him ten minutes later, dressing-gowned and beslippered.
'What's eating you?'
'Christ! Can't you see? I suppose you buggered this up the last time you hoovered — not that I can remember when that was!'
She ignored the insult and took the extension from him. He watched her as she tossed her long blonde hair from her face and deftly unscrewed and examined the troublous plugs. Younger than he was — a good deal younger, it seemed — he found her enormously attractive still. He wondered, as he often wondered, whether he had made the right decision, and once more he told himself he had.
The fault was discovered and corrected, and David felt better.
'Cup of coffee, darling?' All sweetness and light
'Not just yet. I've got to get cracking.' He looked out at the overgrown lawn and swore softly as faintly dotted lines of slanting drizzle formed upon the window pane.
A middle-aged woman, blowzy, unkempt, her hair in cylindrical curlers, materialized from a side door on the ground floor; her quarry was bounding clumsily down the stairs.
'I want to speak to yer.'
'Not now, sweetheart. Not now. I'm late.'
'If yer can't wait now yer needn't come back. Yer things'll be in the street.'
'Now just a minute, sweetheart.' He came close to her, leaned his head to one side and laid a hand on each of her shoulders. 'What's the trouble? You know I wouldn't do anything to upset you.' He smiled pleasantly enough and there was something approaching an engaging frankness in his dark eyes. But she knew him better.
'Yer've got a woman in yer room, 'aven't yer?'
'Now there's no need for you to get jealous, you know that.'
She found him repulsive now, and regretted those early days. 'Get 'er out and keep 'er out — there's to be no more women 'ere.' She slapped his hands from her shoulders.
'She'll be going, she'll be going — don't worry. She's only a young chick. Nowhere to kip down — you know how it is.'
'Now!'
'Don't be daft. I'm late already, and I'll lose the job if I ain't careful. Be reasonable.'
'Yer'll lose yer bed an' all if yer don't do as I tell yer.'
The youth took a dirty five-pound note from his hip pocket. 'I suppose that'll satisfy you for a day or two, you old bitch.'
The woman took the money, but continued to watch him. 'It's got to stop.'
'Yeah. Yeah.'
'How long's she been 'ere?'
'A day or two.'
'Fortnight, nearer, yer bleedin' liar.'
The youth slammed the door after him, ran down to the bottom of the road, and turned right into the Upper Richmond Road.
Even by his own modest standards, Mr. George Taylor had not made much of a success of his life. Five years
