Separation for beginners, p.23
Separation for Beginners, page 23
And forget what I said in the pub about children being arseholes. Cx
The Grove is a primary school of RI status – Requires Improvement – and it’s been plummeting for a decade. The head who oversaw that decline was moved on a year ago and the school is being turned around by an interim head.
This much I was told on the phone by the chair of governors, who meets me in the school reception and signs me in and gives me a purple lanyard. Grove is a large, single-storey, 1960s school with a huge Millennium-era sports hall. The children who attend it come mostly from the terraced streets and estates either side of the industrial-estate-lined main road that splits this part of town. The corridors and classrooms are light-filled and messy. The atmosphere makes my heart lift. Young voices, far-off screams of play, teachers trying to get heard. It’s wonderful. But it is chaos.
A girl from, I would guess, Year 5, comes up to me and stands immediately in front of me. We’re toe to toe.
‘Who are you?’ she demands.
I’m terrified. She actually crosses her arms waiting for an answer. The chair of governors, Sharon Meek, doesn’t help me out with an introduction and my mind goes blank. I sense that whatever I say isn’t going to impress this girl, that she’s staring not at me but through me. She’s nine or ten and instinctively knows I’m divorced, broke, clueless, lonely and not going to be accepted here as a governor.
‘I’m Peter, I might be getting involved here, I’ve got two children of my own and I go deep-sea diving all over the world.’
She smiles and cocks her head to one side. ‘That’s quite good,’ she says, and leaves.
Later, after I have been introduced in passing to the Safeguarding officer and told about the higher-than-average SEN and Pupil Premium numbers at Grove (I will look all this up later, but nod through it for now) a much smaller boy comes up to us, his eyeballs bulging through Mr Magoo specs that are held on by an elasticated headband. He says hello to me and wraps his arms around me, around my legs. Tentatively, I let out a little laugh and pat his head, unsure as to what’s acceptable. And I do mean what’s acceptable, not what’s appropriate; what’s appropriate is to kneel down to his height and hug him back. But that’s not acceptable.
‘Hello, Albee,’ Sharon says.
‘Hello, miss,’ he replies, with a trace of the drone with which children greet their teacher each morning (or did, in the 1970s).
Albee lets go of me and walks off and we watch as a girl of his age crosses his path and he smacks her bum and runs off. She gives chase and as they disappear around a corner. I have no doubt that the girl is about to beat five shades of crap out of Albee.
‘What can you bring to us?’
Sharon has turned to face me. The corridor has fallen quiet. There’s a bell sounding somewhere outside.
‘Time and . . .’ I scroll the blank pages in my mind. ‘I’m a nice bloke.’
She hugs her stash of files a bit closer to her. A tired-looking woman walks past us.
‘Morning, Sharon.’
‘Morning, Jo. Stuart Case wants a conference call about the MASH proposals.’
‘Me and you?’
‘Please.’
‘Okay.’
By the end of this exchange, Jo, who has not stopped walking, is almost out of sight.
‘Perfect,’ Sharon says to me.
She takes me to a large empty room.
‘I’ll get Helen,’ she says, and leaves.
She returns with the school’s interim head. She is in her sixties, I would say. She looks tired but her eyes are a translucent pale blue and when she starts to speak, there is a music to her gravelly voice that suggests huge resources of energy and hope. Perhaps that is a minimum requirement for a school with, as she puts it, ‘a few little challenges at the moment’.
‘I was about to retire, but I had always wanted to be head of this school, all my career. I’ve been a headteacher twenty years and I love this school like no other. The governing body has nearly all been replaced since I arrived. The couple remaining are still here because we want them here. We want some non-educationalists. I’m enormously grateful to people like you, prepared to do this for our young people. People like you are amazing. What do you think of the school? Would you like to be a governor here?’
She stops talking. And that’s a shame – firstly, because I could listen to her for hours and, secondly, because it means I’m up.
‘I think’, I say, ‘it’s a matter of whether I can add anything. But I am drawn to a place that isn’t ticking along perfectly well. Where there is work to be done.’
‘That’s handy,’ Sharon says.
‘And what can you bring to us?’ the head says.
‘He’s got time and he’s a nice bloke,’ Sharon says, with the slightest hint of a giggle in her voice that makes me wonder if being a school governor might possibly, somewhere down the line, get me laid.
‘That’s more than enough,’ Helen says. ‘Anything else?’
I say, ‘Yes,’ immediately, just to stop Sharon answering for me. And I do have a pretty good idea of what I want to say, but I take a moment to think, given that these days I no longer have any confidence about what I think let alone what I say.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘I could list the things I don’t know, like how to be a governor—’
‘We teach that,’ Helen says. ‘We’re good at teaching stuff.’
‘But raising school-age children is the thing I was best at in my entire life. And I miss it. And the combination of those two things might make me okay at this.’
‘The key’, Sharon says, ‘is to ask questions and not to worry if they might be wrong. We’re here to support and challenge the teachers and to get the children the best school life they could possibly have.’
Helen smiles at me. She shakes my hand. ‘We’d love to have you if you decide to join us. Let Sharon know.’ And she checks her watch and is gone.
I turn to Sharon, glance at her ring finger (it’s occupied) and say, ‘I want to join.’
Sharon gets her iPad out and types some notes. ‘Our next job is replacing Helen. And that is not going to be easy. We won’t find another Helen. You should put yourself forward to be on the head recruitment panel. You’ll learn a lot about the school and the LA on that. There’s governor training courses available, if you can find the time.’
I nod and smile; it’s more dignified than revealing how much time I have.
‘I’ll send you a link. Okay, good, I’ll write to the governing body about you and let you know when you’ve been ratified.’
And that’s it. I have put myself forward and received a ‘yes’ in reply and the shock is so great that I walk home gripped by the ridiculous idea that I can sort my life out, and that all I need is a little time alone in my flat to get my head straight (because sorting your life out is something you do in an evening) and I develop a craving for the sort of celebratory tenth-rate takeaway curry that Niall has banned from the flat.
Niall is working on his tablet when I get back. Not slouched-on-the-sofa working, but seated-upright-at-the-table, with-a-mini-keyboard, wearing-clothes working.
‘That looks serious,’ I say.
‘It is.’
‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’
I’m hoping he’ll make me dinner later in return for this.
‘Yes, please.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Extracting fifty thousand pounds from your best friend, if I get all this right.’
‘So glad he’s there for you, that’s just Ed all over. I’ve got a favour to ask.’
‘If I can, I will.’
‘I need to get some things done tomorrow and I realise that I need some headspace. So, tomorrow, I want you to go out first thing and do your work wherever – hey, you could even do it in a garden – and stay out. I need a day to work and an evening to unwind with no one and no chit-chat to navigate. I just need space.’
Niall looks hurt. I think he even toys with the idea of doing his tears thing but realises it would be overkill. He quietly packs up his stuff and vacates the table.
‘I’ll go and work in my room.’
‘You having a sulk, Niall?’
‘A little one, yes. If I was paying rent you couldn’t do this.’
‘That’s a pretty hefty “if ”, isn’t it? Here’s your tea.’
‘No, thanks, I can make my own tea.’
I guess dinner is off the table. Niall goes to his room. I sit on the sofa and start a list.
Tomorrow: Governor research. Job for Josie. Re-book Mary Blair.
That’s my list finished. I’m going to devote nine in the morning to six in the evening to accomplishing this list and then I’m going to have a curry with a movie: Inception is the current front-runner, but Trainwreck could come up on the rails, so could Jaws, so could The Deer Hunter and so could Short Cuts. Let’s say I’m undecided. A few episodes of The West Wing is always a possibility. I once got so drunk with Claire after we’d had sex that I convinced myself I looked a bit like Rob Lowe.
That was good and drunk.
When Niall says goodnight he’s still pouting. In fact, he only says goodnight so that I can see he is pouting.
‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ he says, ‘but what’s happening? Why don’t you want me here for an entire day?’
‘Exactly what I said and nothing more. I need a little thinking time.’
‘Sure . . . course . . . I get it . . .’ Niall says, and leaves.
He’s back within seconds. ‘But—’
‘I’ve a list of things I need to get done, Niall. That’s all.’
‘I’ve got a list too,’ he says. ‘My list is of the three possible things you’re up to.’
‘I’m not “up to” anything. This is my house and I’m having it to myself tomorrow.’
‘One, you have a date. Two, linked but different, you’re having a porn day. Three, you’re showing my room to a potential lodger because you need the rent but you don’t want it to be me.’
‘Or, four, I’m signing you up to the Royal Paranoia Society.’
‘You don’t need to keep a date secret, for starters. Youthful people like me, in their prime, understand that old people like company.’
‘Gee.’
‘And you don’t have to be alone to watch porn. I don’t mean I’d watch it with you on the sofa – I would not – but it’s perfectly normal to watch it in one room when a flatmate or family member is home too.’
‘I can’t even begin to explain to you how wrong you are about that. But no, that’s not the thing, I’m not watching porn.’
‘So, it’s a lodger or a date then.’
‘And bravo by the way, if you devote whole days to watching porn.’
‘Is it a lodger or a date?’
‘Neither. Goodnight.’
‘Which?’
‘Still neither. If I had a date, would you understand that and leave me alone?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then, yes, I have a date. Goodnight.’
‘Who is she?’
I stare at him. Given that I know he isn’t stupid, he has to be the most stubborn man I know. Along with every other man I know. And myself.
‘Who is she?’ I say. ‘She’s a fiction invented right in front of you just now to give you an answer that ends this conversation. Go to bed.’
It is, of course, not enough to label Niall stupid or stubborn. He’s neither. He gets an idea in his head and allows it a good and full life. He knows I don’t have a date – he has seen me choose it as an answer to end the conversation – but he also wants to know who that date might be, if it existed. And he wants to keep the conversation going. Whether this is to annoy me or because he likes company, I still couldn’t tell you.
The most stubborn man or the most open? Niall thinks like this: Maybe Pete does have a date? Why not? Stranger things have happened (although I can’t think of any). Who would she be? What if I ask him? What if I bring my new girlfriend back to my ex-wife’s house for the night? Maybe she won’t mind. What if I run my own business on totally ethical grounds? What if I charge people what they can afford and pay people what they deserve, not the minimum I’m obliged to pay? I’ll do these things and see how it pans out. Even if it leaves me broke and couch-surfing in my thirties.
I get it now. Open-minded. Good-hearted. Stubborn. And a tiny, tiny bit stupid.
I hear Niall leave the next morning before six. I make coffee and open the doors and the breeze is less biting, with a promise of spring. I have been awake since a quarter to five, convinced that I can’t be any good as a governor and plotting ways out. Then I imagined being governor of the century and Sharon turning up on my doorstep unable to keep her feelings for me a secret any longer. It’s feast or famine up there in my head. A character in The West Wing in the early stages of dementia said he had a ‘demolition derby’ going on in his brain. I’ve not forgotten that line, proof perhaps that I both fear senility and don’t yet suffer from it.
Sunrise brings hope lacking a plan. It’s the most basic package of hope available on the market but it’s better than nothing. I shower, dress and place my laptop on the kitchen table. I work through the information sent to me by the school and by the Local Authority about being a governor. I complete the forms, activate my email address and my account with the Virtual Governance Office, sweat profusely at the sight of the word ‘virtual’ and spend half an hour writing and rewriting the fifty-word biography Sharon has requested for the school website. I sign up to do three courses: Effective Governance, Introduction to Safeguarding and Introduction to Growth Mindset. I commit to them before I can talk myself out of it.
It’s 8 a.m. That was all meant to take until midday. I walk into town, opting for a coffee in the place Susie took me to so that I don’t go too near the shop. This place is on trend. I wonder if Claire ever comes here. I write her a text:
Am having a coffee in the Boatshed coffee shop if you happen to be in town and fancy a coffee. X
I don’t send it.
I plan another text in my head:
I’m concerned I didn’t use the word coffee enough in my previous message.
I don’t want to send the first one, not without a guarantee of her responding to say that she’s free and would love to come and join me, but I do want to send the second one because it will make her laugh. But to send the second one I have to send the first one. Life’s a conundrum. And she’s probably at work anyway, like a normal person.
I get home shortly before ten which means I can set about the second item on my list: Josie. I have four calls to make, four people I feel I can call on, after a quarter of a century in the business. That means I have made one meaningful professional connection every six years. I’m such a people person.
I leave a message on Jack Kinney’s voicemail: ‘Jack, this is Peter Smith at Smith’s Holidays in Woking. Good seeing you in Birmingham last month, I hope all’s well with you. Listen, I have someone working for me here, nineteen, bright, trustworthy. I want to find her something in the area, somewhere better. She’s not learning enough with me, we’re too quiet. I can’t think of anyone better than you for someone like her. If you did have room for her, I’d be so grateful to you now and you would be to me in a year’s time. That sounds like a line, but it’s not meant to be. If you can help, I’d appreciate it hugely. Sorry for the long message. Cheers.’
I can’t in all honesty rave about Si, and Mrs H does not want or need my help, but I am determined not to let Josie down. I call William Cottrell and leave a shorter version of the same message with him. I slump at the thought that Claire has not replied to my earlier text, then remember that I didn’t send her one. I’m geared for disappointment. It’s as if I want it.
Third on my list is Bill Peet. He is friendly, sounds pleased to hear from me, and listens attentively to my pitch about Josie as the potential jewel-in-the-crown of his travel business.
‘Peter,’ Bill says, when I finish, ‘if I’m still here in two years’ time it will be because I have cut my staff from two, including me, to one, including me. I have already reduced from eight to two in the last three years.’
He then says some lovely things about me and my parents and I apologise for troubling him when he’s struggling himself.
‘It’s not that I’m struggling, it’s just that to not struggle I’ve got to work hard and do it all myself. You are obviously finding the same thing.’
‘Yes,’ I say. I ought to be honest and tell him I’m just giving up.
Call number four. Oliver Wallace. I can’t remember if it’s Oli or Oliver. But that, it turns out, is the least of this phone call’s problems.
‘Peter, I’m sorry to interrupt you and your employee sounds faultless, but I am really struggling to place you.’
‘Oh.’
That’s weird because I’m not struggling to recall the numerous times he and I have met, not to mention his offer to buy me out eight years ago which I turned down because I am a dick.
‘Peter?’
‘Peter Smith. Smith’s Holidays. We’ve spoken many times.’
‘Okay, if you say so, let’s pretend we know each other and continue, I’m perfectly happy to do that.’
I find myself tongue-tied that he could blank me like this. What a prick. I hang up.
Fuck!
It was Oliver Ford who I know. Who the fuck is Oliver Wallace? Now, a virtual stranger in my industry knows that I am probably closing down and that I’m an idiot. One of those two things is news. I step into the garden to calm myself down and write Claire a text.
Josie who works for me . . . I want to find her a better job. She can’t develop in her job here and she deserves a better job. Can you or anyone you know give her a job? She’d be good at any job she did, but I want to her to have a really good job. She’s bright and hard-working, but you’ve heard me say that before. I want to find her a great job. Any thoughts?
