Work Text:
Twenty five years later:
Everything at his old school was smaller than Scripps remembered it. He crossed the playground in a matter of strides, and felt like a giant perched awkwardly on the flimsy plastic chair Posner offered him at the front of his un-populated classroom.
"You look great," said Posner. "Like a total media wanker, but great."
"Is this because of the glasses?"
"Partly, and also because of the jeans and tweet jacket combo. You've even got a takeaway espresso in your hand, Donald."
"Well, I've got to look the part for the kids, I guess. You certainly do." Posner certainly did. In his brown corduroy suit replete with elbow patches he looked older, not just older than in their student days, but older than actually was. An air of assumed authority exuded from him, which made Posner laugh but the kids who filed through the door seemed to take him seriously.
"6A, meet Mr Scripps, Guardian Books' staff writer and alumnus of St Johns College, Oxford. He has come to tell you the secrets of Oxbridge application success, and I suggest you take him very seriously because, as you know, I refuse to tell you so much as a word about it. Medieval quadrangles do not an education make."
"Don't be a hypocrite, Sir," piped up a girl from the back row. "We all know you went to Magdalen."
"Hypocrite. Definition, Annie?"
A tiny girl with mousey hair looked up from a hefty dictionary which made her look even smaller. "A person who indulges in behaviours he condemns others for."
"Indulges, not indulged. I learnt my lesson, and now I pass it on to you. Such is the sacred role of the teacher."
Scripps was intrigued. "I didn't know you were unhappy at Oxford," he said.
Posner threw him a quelling look. His authority was starting to feel more real; Posner held the room, was directing everything that went on. "One moment, if you please. Business before pleasure. It is Tuesday, which means the class have something for us. Daniel, it is your turn I believe."
"Indeed, Sir!" Daniel was the tallest boy in the class, gangling his way to the front where there was a piano. That very same piano. Scripps' deja vous tasted... uncomfortable for some reason. He drained his takeaway espresso.
"We kissed at the barrier;" Daniel recited solemnly, soft chords on the piano, "and passing through / She left me, and moment by moment got / Smaller and smaller, until to my view / She was but a spot."
Annie, the dictionary girl, wrapped herself in a white muslin throw and shuffled slowly down the classroom, waving to her imaginary lover. As the poem continued, Daniel gradually shifted into speak singing, then sang flat out, his young baritone untrained but pure.
"We have penned new plans since that fair fond day, / And in season she will appear again— / Perhaps in the same soft white array— / But never as then!"
Scripps stifled a wry smile as Annie joined in, in harmony, for the final stanza. Posner, by contrast, old softie Poz, was smiling the smile of someone holding back tears.
"—‘And why, young man, must eternally fly / A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well?’ / —O friend, nought happens twice thus; why, / I cannot tell!"
The class applauded enthusiastically, Posner leading. "You have so much potential, Daniel," he said. "Don't waste it on a history degree, I implore you."
"Was that your own composition?" asked Scripps. "Very impressive. Exactly the kind of thing that could make you stand out in interview. Though I hope Mr Posner has told you there are other poets in the world than his favourite Hardy."
"You know it, Sir?" beamed David. "And it is my own, yes."
"Departure Platform—" The class applauded enthusiastically,
with cries of "Very good, Sir," and "Who said poetry wasn't useful?"
Hector surveyed his class with great fondness, and sighed happily. Sorry, Posner. Posner surveyed his class with great fondness, and... That's when Scripps realised.
Naught happens twice, his arse.
*
"I always thought that poem rather undermines itself," said Scripps. "It's all very well to say events are never the same twice, but it's exactly because we recognise patterns in events that literature, and this poem specifically, has its effect on us."
"Are we calling Hardy a hypocrite then, Sir?" called out a girl in the back row. Scripps took a good look at her. She had dark hair pulled high over her forehead and an inappropriate revealing shirt pulled low down her chest. Her black leather jacket, hooped earrings, and silver nose stud completed the look. Scripps imagined that she didn't drive a motorbike herself, but enjoyed getting rides on them from her gentlemen callers.
"I think it is Mr Scripps is being a little disingenuous here, Marianne," intervened Posner. "It's clearly not Hardy's intention to propose a grand argument about the nature of history."
"But that doesn't mean we can't use it as a jumping point, Sir. The author is dead, isn't he?" This biker girl clearly had potential.
Posner sighed heavily, and Scripps took the opportunity to jump in. "Does history repeat itself? And excellent topic for discussion in your interview... it's one that you can discuss with almost any given historical source."
"You're so... mercenary," cried Posner in despair. "So..."
"Journalistic?" supplied Scripps with a sharp grin. He was warming to this topic. "Words and the stories we create from them are the beginning and end of history. They exist as historical sources, of course, but what we mean here is that story is the only tool we have to create and consume histories. It's not controversial to say all history is literature—or in my inferior case, journalism."
Posner rolled his eyes at this. "Well historiographers often say that what may seem on the face of it to be a pattern of occurrence in history may, in fact, merely be a pattern of narrative, a cognitive bias caused by our tools for analysing the past. But what does that have to do with Hardy?"
"The lover is unnamed, and in fact has no features apart from her white garb, symbolising youthful innocence. She could be anyone, at any time, and Hardy does this on purpose to make the subject of the poem universal and therefore relatable. This is how stories work."
"Hardy believes his parting from his while-clad lover is unrepeatable, yet by turning it into a poem he makes it exactly that, repeatable, recitable on demand. " said Marianne, the biker girl.
"Exactly!"
"So we are calling Hardy a hypocrite then," said Annie from her seat over the aisle from Marianne.
"The alliteration helps, I'm sure," said Posner with a mocking smile at Scripps.
"Our purpose," said Scripps evenly, "is to be interesting and memorable, not—"
"—to be right." They finished in unison, and laughed.
Marianne and Daniel exchanged a meaningful glance. Marianne muttered something.
Posner turned back to the classroom, "Miss Dakin, do you have something to share?" he said dangerously.
Miss Dakin. Marianne Dakin. Miss Marianne Dakin.
"Are you Stuart Dakin's daughter, Marianne?" asked Scripps, feeling in need of another coffee.
"Yeah. He says 'Yo', by the way."
Scripps stared at her. "When's morning break?"
*
"This is creepy as shit, Poz," said Scripps when they were settled outside on the sports field bench with a coffee each and a packet of cigarettes.
"Hmm?" said Posner, blowing on his very milky coffee. "It's OK as far as staffroom muck goes. If you want posh coffee, go work at the Guardian."
The coffee was pretty horrible, but "I'm talking about Dakin's daughter being in your class."
"Well she's a clever girl, just like her father. Did you notice she took your side in the style vs substance debate almost immediately? Exactly as he would have done."
Scripps lit two cigarettes at once and passed one over to Posner. "I remember when we used to smoke with Dakin behind the bike sheds."
Posner let out a short, sharp laugh. "You used to smoke with Dakin behind the bike sheds. That was the sort of think I was excluded from." He took his cigarette and balanced it over his coffee while he adjusted his overcoat.
Scripps felt the cold too. "Do you have to see him at parents' evenings and stuff?"
"Not as often as you'd expect. He's doing well, very well, but that means he's busy all the time. Parents' evenings don't seem very important to him. Marianne will follow in his footsteps to Oxford, if any of them do. If she doesn't get pregnant first."
"Poz!"
"I know it's a stereotype, but in her case it's also a genuine risk. You've met her. You've met her father."
"But, isn't it hard for you? Seeing his features rearranged in her every day?"
"Oh, I see. You think I'm pining on my master's grave like a loyal spaniel." Posner blew smoke towards him: cigarette smoke, breath steam. "Well I suppose I shall always be a little bit in love with Dakin the boy behind the bike sheds... but Dakin the overworked tax lawyer and father of two? Not so much."
"In season she will appear again—perhaps in the same soft white array— but never as then."
"Exactly. Do you want another smoke?"
"Disgusting habit, but it's that sort of day."
*
After the break, Posner took the sixth off for a rehearsal of the school play, leaving Scripps to catch up on reading in his empty classroom. He was a chapter and a half in to the latest Booker winner when Annie Joel, the mousey dictionary girl from earlier, knocked softly and hovered in the doorway.
"Aren't you needed for the play?" Scripps asked her.
"No, Sir. I play Montague's wife."
"Ah. Not the meatiest of Shakespeare's roles." Indeed, Montague's wife, Romeo's mother, appears only twice. She does get to die of grief, presumably very dramatically, but this takes place offstage. "Who is to play your son?"
"Daniel, Sir."
"And Juliet?"
"Marianne."
"Somehow I don't find that surprising."
"She's a beautiful Juliet. I think I'm in love with her."
Scripps closed his book with a snap. "I think you'd better come inside and close the door."
Annie came and sat by Posner's desk, for all the world as though it was Scripps' desk, and she his pupil. "Does Marianne know about this?" asked Scripps.
"She doesn't think it surprising."
"Does Mr Posner know about this?"
"He doesn't think it surprising either. He lent me a book of Hardy and recommended the teaching course at Durham."
"Yes, he would." As she approached, Annie brought with her a faint whiff of grease paint, and a hint of wet grass.
"What would you do though, Sir?"
Scripps observed her looking up at him with something akin to respect in her eyes, respect he had done nothing to earn. If this is what happened after one morning with a high-school class, he was very glad not to be a teacher full time. Poor Annie. Poor Posner.
"Hardy does seem to be the traditional way forward in these cases, but I would encourage you to look at a wider range of literature. Unrequited love is a common theme."
"Do you ever look at your life, Sir?"
"I avoid it where possible. Escapism is one of the most useful functions of literature."
"I'm Jewish. I'm small. I'm a lesbian. And I live in Sheffield."
"You're fucked."
*
After lunch, Scripps took questions from the school's stage. The wider sixth form and the teachers who would otherwise have been teaching them that period were arrayed below him in untidy rows. Daniel wanted to know about writing for the Guardian. Annie wanted to know about choral scholarships. Everyone wanted to know about the interviews, and how to get through them.
"Ultimately," said Scripps, "everyone invited to interview has already proven their academic worth. What the tutors are looking for is people who they will find interesting, or personable, and who will make the most of what Oxford has to offer. People they are happy to be shut up in a room with for a few hours a week for the next three years of their life."
"How did Mr Posner get in then, Sir?"
Scripps quelled the heckle with a look. He was getting better at this teaching lark, a suspicion confirmed when the headteacher, a short and square sort of woman who tried to soften herself with vaguely ethnic chunky jewellery, came up to him afterwards. "You must give me a bell if you ever decide to move home," she said. She had a bit of a military clip to her voice. Scripps wondered if she was ex-Army. "It would be such a coup to have not one but two Oxonians in the history staff here."
A group of students has come to meet Scripps (one had what looked like an autograph book, which was alarming), and he seized the opportunity to extricate himself from the headmistress. She promised, somewhat menacingly, in Scripps' view, that she would see him later, and slid off to do whatever it is headteachers do when they're not presiding over assemblies.
The last kid in the queue was Marianne. "As part of the new admissions process we have to submit an extended essay by post," she said, "I don't suppose you'd have time to look over mine before you go back to London?"
"Aren't Posner's comments sufficient?" he asked, unable to keep the beginnings of a smile out of his voice. "Mr Posner, I mean."
"He refuses to help, Sir," she said, twisting a lock of her hair between her fingers. "He says I don't need any help to write sensationalist rot."
Scripps didn't try to conceal his laugh that time.
"Perhaps we could meet for a drink after school," she said. She reached out as if to straighten his suit jacket, but her hand didn't quite reach him. "That gives you time to have a look over it first, and gives me an opportunity to repay you for your help."
Scripps froze. There was no one left in the assembly theatre, and he was backed up against the wall. He watched her lick her lips, hypnotised.
She had her father's eyes.
"I have other plans this evening," said Scripps, sidestepping the girl and heading towards the double doors that meant his escape. "You can email me the essay of you like. I'll try and have a look on the train back down to London."
"Drink with Mr Posner, Sir?"
"That's right."
"At least he's not a coward."
Scripps paused with his hand on the door. He felt this situation called for a deep sigh.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" He turned around to look at her, aware that this attention was exactly what she wanted, but unable to refuse it her. She had crossed the floor and was close to him again. She was tall, just a few inches less than Scripps, and exuded the air of confidence Scripps had always admired so much in her father. “Have you taken Mr Posner for a drink?”
Marianne was considering her words carefully. "Teaching is fundamentally an exchange of commodities," she said. "Knowledge is a commodity that you possess, and I am asking you to exchange it for one of my commodities. Namely my great tits. If we both pursue our rational self-interest, we’ll both be happier for it, won’t we?"
"I'm not sure Ayn Rand intended her philosophy to be used to justify prostitution, Marianne."
"Ayn Rand, like the author, is dead, Mr Scripps. But I'm not. And I don't think you are either—"
"Please let go of my tie."
*
After school, Posner met Scripps in the playground, huddling in their coats against the chill air. "Rudge and Akhtar texted me," he said. "They're already in the King's Arms, a few drinks in, to judge by Rudge's spelling. But then you never know with Rudge's spelling."
Posner handed him a motorcycle helmet. “Who’s for a lift?”
Posner even had the glasses, the gold half rims Hector perched on the very end of his nose. A snowflake landed in his hair.
When they’d been at school, Hector’s fumblings had been little more than a joke to them. Scripps didn’t think their lifts home had effected them at all in fact, especially not when compared with dealing with the harsh consequences for Hector for his infractions, and with losing their teacher before he had had a chance to lose them.
“What?” said Posner. Scripps must be staring through the thickening snowfall.
But looking back on it now, everything took on a more sinister tone. The fairly innocuous grope with an admissions-term student was one thing, but had it gone unchecked, who knew where it would have lead?
“Oh, Poz,” sighed Scripps, handing Posner’s helmet back to him. “What have you done to yourself?”
The snow was falling freely now as Scripps trudged back to the school.
*
Dakin threw open the door to the headteacher’s office and marched in, still in his slightly shiny work suit. Scripps and Posner jumped – there had been no footsteps. The headteacher herself didn’t so much as blink – she was definitely military.
Dakin was still Dakin. He still had that old swagger, the way he would lean forward into whatever he was doing. When he shared a brief, self-consciously manly hug with Scripps, he saw Dakin’s scalp was stained black with hair die.
“Is this all a ploy to get me to leave work early for your blasted reunion drinks, Poz?” he said, exchanging a manhug with him too, this time with added back slapping.
“Don’t you think you ought to take this a little more seriously, Mr Dakin?” said the headteacher, her jewellery clacking anxiously. “Your daughter has accused Mr Posner of gross misconduct-”
“That doesn’t sound much like her,” said Dakin. “What actually happened?”
“She implied quite strongly that Mr Posner has been accepting sexual favours from her,” said Scripps.
“So she didn’t actually say he had been?”
“Well no, but...” Scripps trailed off as Dakin raised an eyebrow smugly. (He’d forgotten how Dakin could raise eyebrows smugly.) He felt like a witness being cross-examined, which, he supposed, was actually an accurate summation of the situation.
“I guess we should check with her then. Is she around?”
“She’s in my classroom,” supplied the headteacher. “Can you go an talk to her? I think it would be better coming from you.”
Dakin opened the headteacher’s door again to go an find his daughter, revealing a man Scripps didn’t recognise, a PE teacher, by the looks of his clothes, who had clearly been peering through the keyhole. The whistle around his neck gave the game away, actually.
“You might as well come in,” said the headteacher, as Dakin strode off down the corridor.
The man put a hand on Posner’s shoulder. “You Ok, David?”
“Yeah, it’s a just a misunderstanding,” said Posner. “Scripps, this is Larry, the PE teacher and, perhaps more importantly, my partner.”
“Only perhaps?” said Scripps as he shook the man’s hand. Larry was blonde and slightly overweight. He couldn’t be less like Dakin if he had dressed himself on purpose. “You don’t hate me?”
Posner's eyes crinkled at the edges. "You owe me a drink."
*
Twenty five years later, again:
“The first duty of the historian, therefore, must be to examine their tools for imperfections, their minds for patterns they might be predisposed to impose on the truth - that our reality is, at heart, random.
“It may not be true that history repeats itself, but what we can say for certain is that the stories historians tell us about it often do.”
Daniel resumed his seat in the classroom to light applause. The school’s chairs were too small for him now. Hard to believe he had once fit in them comfortably.
Annie shot Daniel a grin, so familiar from all those years ago, before getting up to invite questions from the sixth form class who had assembled, with fresh gleam to their eyes, to learn more about applying to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.