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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2009, 2013 by Brian Stableford
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER ONE
LEARNING TO RELAX
Steve had never thought that the time would come when he would be glad to see Rhodri Jenkins, but the deputy head still seemed to be the only member of staff who was talking to him—or, at least, the only one who was actually prepared to sit down opposite him in the school canteen, which seemed like a very large and lonely place without any pupils in it. Although there was still an entire fortnight to go before the new school year started, the staff had been summoned to pay homage to the latest idol adopted by the local authority: Continuing Professional Development. The “refresher” course had sucked them all in, from the Newly Qualified—a category from which Steve had only just escaped—to those with thirty years service, like Jenkins.
Steve had hoped that the new year might be a chance to start again with a clean slate, but four weeks of absence had not been sufficient to make the hearts of the female staff grow fonder, or the inclination of the male staff—who were in a conspicuous minority—to withdraw their manifest support for the outrage felt by the female staff. The Tracy/Jill affair obviously would not be forgotten for some little time to come. The school’s deputy head, however, could not sensibly refuse to talk to any of those to whom he had occasionally to assign additional duties, so Jenkins actually made a point of filling one of the empty chairs on the table where Steve would otherwise have been condemned to eat alone.
“Don’t look so depressed, boyo,” Jenkins instructed him. “If you’re in that sort of a mood now, imagine what you’ll be like after thirteen weeks of teaching. Can’t let it happen. Give in to the pressure and you’ll go under.”
“CPD is enough to make anyone suicidal,” Steve told him. “It’s ten times worse than teaching. I thought I’d put that sort of bullshit behind me when I got through my probation, but now it looks as if I’ll have to put up with it for the rest of my career.”
“The secret,” Jenkins assured him, “is to let it wash over you. You have to learn to relax. Mind you, a young fellow like you ought to be perfectly relaxed after four weeks’ holiday. You’re still young enough to go on those Club 18-30 jaunts, aren’t you? Unlimited sun, sangria and sex, so they say. Or did you run out of prophylactics and catch some horrible venereal disease?”
Jenkins pronounced the first syllable of “prophylactics” to rhyme with “toe” and the second to rhyme with “pie”. Steve had never figured out whether it was a purely personal idiosyncrasy or whether everyone west of Cardiff pronounced it that way.
“I didn’t manage to get away,” Steve admitted. “Never got out of Salisbury, in fact—and now I’m back on site, everyone’s picked up exactly where they left off in July. You’re the only one who’s addressed more than a monosyllable to me all day.”
“Ach, it won’t last. Once the kids are back and life reverts to normal, they’ll relax the freeze and issue your return ticket from Coventry. They have to go through the motions first, to teach you a lesson. This is a special kind of community, not like uni, where you can play Don Juan to your heart’s content. Here, the rule is don’t shit in your own backyard…or if you do, keep it quiet…and if you can’t keep it quiet, ration yourself to breaking one heart per term.”
Steve looked glumly down at his corned-beef-and-salad sandwich, which he’d painstakingly assembled and wrapped in clingfilm all by himself that morning, because the canteen staff wouldn’t be returning to duty until the pupils were back. He couldn’t meet Jenkins’ eye for the moment, because he knew that the old man was right. If he’d just been able to keep a lid on his affair with Tracy, everything would have been fine, but a messy break-up in mid-term would have been bad enough even if the cause hadn’t been his taking up with Jill—and to break up with Jill with two weeks still to go until the end of term had been fatal. Even Steve thought that he fully deserved the universal cold shoulder, and wasn’t yet fully qualified for remission and rehabilitation.
“Still playing cricket to keep fit, are you?” Jenkins asked.
“Yes,” Steve replied. “Saturday league games for the seconds and Sunday friendlies. Took three wickets yesterday, and a good catch down at long leg.”
“Don’t confuse me with technical terminology, Boyo—I’m a rugby man, as you know, and was only asking to be polite. I’m sorry the school doesn’t have a cricket pitch, but you could always volunteer to help us out with the rugby. Mrs. Jones would be glad to have you aboard. No chance of an injury that would spoil your looks while playing with kids, is there?”
“You’re joking,” Steve said. “I’m only five-nine—half the boys in the second year sixth are taller than I am, and the ones who play rugby are mostly two stone heavier. I manage to stay fit in the winter without risking a broken neck. I get plenty of exercise.” That wasn’t strictly true; his sporting interests over the winter consisted entirely of watching horse-racing on Saturdays, while betting on the internet exchanges, and playing internet poker—neither of which activities did much for his muscle-development.
Jenkins sighed. “That sort of exercise won’t do you much good in the long run,” he said, obviously thinking that Steve meant sex. “What you ought to try, by way of learning the art of healthy relaxation, is hypnotherapy.”
“No way,” Steve said, immediately. “I’m not letting anyone put me in a trance—and no matter what you and everyone else might think, I don’t need treatment for sex addiction.”
“For once, boyo, I’m not only thinking about sex,” the deputy head informed him. “I’m thinking about getting through the working day, week after week and term after term. Hypnotherapy’s not about trances, if there’s any such thing, and it’s certainly not about planting posthypnotic suggestions that make you think you’re a chicken and act accordingly. A proper therapist would no more dream of playing that sort of silly game than your GP would dream of using leeches. If there’s one thing people in this job need more than anything else, it’s the ability to relax when the stress mounts up. If you can’t get through a two-week refresher course in Best Practice without tensing up, that GCSE group of yours will drive you to an early grave. Since we aren’t allowed to switch them off, it’s a great advantage to be able to switch off ourselves, whenever we need to. It’s pricey, mind, but worth every penny.”
“I don’t think so,” Steve said, dubiously. “It’s not my sort of thing.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, boyo,” Rhodri told him, in the kind of authoritatively patronizing voice that schoolteachers of thirty years’ experience invariably cultivated, whether they were Welsh or not. “I only wish I’d known about Sylvia—or someone like her—when I was your age.”
“Sylvia?” Steve repeated, questioningly.
“Sylvia Joyce—my hypnotherapist. You can take that lustful gleam out of your eye, mind. She’s a handsome woman, but she’s old enough to be your mother. If she were of an age to have her heart broken, you can be certain that I wouldn’t let you anywhere near her, the way you carry on.”
Steve honestly didn’t think that having slept with four of his female colleagues in two years made him into a Casanova, even if two of them had been in the same term. After all, none of them had been married—which was probably more than Rhodri Jenkins could claim about all the female teachers he’d slept with in the course of his long career. Even so, Steve had sworn an oath never to get involved with a colleague again after the Tracy/Jill fiasco.
“I’m going out with someone else now,” he said, defensively. “Not a teacher. From now on, my sex-life is strictly out of school hours and off school premises.”
“Glad to hear it,” Jenkins said. “Not an ex-pupil, I hope?”
“No,” Steve said, patiently. “She went to the other one.” Although Salisbury qualified as a city, by virtue of possessing a cathedral, it wasn’t even as big as Swindon,