Certain Sacrifices Must Be Made

Morning.

It's been a little while since I posted, but I got married and everything in the interim.

But I have done a new story - performed at 'Tall Tales' at 'The Good Ship' in Kilburn on 29th July.

This one is called 'Certain Sacrifices Must Be Made', and I hope you enjoy it. But if you don't - you know - you got it for free.

Certain Sacrifices Must Be Made

Henry scrunched back in his chair and watched the television. It was later than it needed to be, and he probably didn’t need the glass of wine that sat on the table beside him, but he was going to have it. He nested down further into the chair. It was a good chair. Old, but extremely comfortable, unless you weren’t Henry, in which case it was very uncomfortable.

He turned the volume up slightly on the television. It was a good television. New, and expensive, and with very many different menus contained within it. Henry found the menus to be confusing, and once, completely by accident, changed the audio profile to ‘Village Hall’, and the colour and contrast settings to “Autumn’. Terrified that if he continued to press buttons in such a fashion he would end up with ‘Space Cathedral’ and ‘Pointillist’, he settled for the settings he had landed on. He was a fatalist in that way, and if the programmes were to sound like the tombola announcements at a fete, and look like they were being viewed through a puddle, then that was the way of it, and that was just symptomatic of improvements in technology.

It didn’t really matter what the sound or picture quality were like at this point in time however. Henry was watching a film he had seen many times before. It was an okay film. You won’t have seen it. It was the third film in a series featuring an inspiring teacher character, played by the Dutch-Irish-Italian-American actor Julio Smunt, and two of his most admiring pupils, played by Tilly Banks and Freddy Over. In the films, the inspiring teacher figure would get into scrapes attempting to do good, or foil a ring of smugglers or some such thing, and his two eager students, noticing his absence from registration, would embark on a series of daring escapades to rescue him, and once reunited, they would solve the mystery/capture the crooks/save the world, or whatever was necessary.

Henry was drawn to these films again and again. He looked back over his teaching career and wondered if, at any point, any of his students would have come to rescue him, if he had been taken by a gang of Puerto Rican Jewel thieves. He doubted it. Still, he was, in teaching terms, a success. He had climbed the ranks with all the speed and inevitability of a glacier, and now he was the head teacher of a middle-sized school, with some nice old buildings, and some horrible new buildings, and just over a thousand students, and a lovely school house on the premises in which he now sat, watching television, with a cat on his lap.

It was not a good cat. Even in cat terms, it was not a good cat. Bad-tempered, liable to scratch. Liable to ignore you, or push its hind quarters in your face. The only time it would lick you was immediately after consuming some particularly pungent catfood. An evening of stroking said cat, whom Henry had named ‘Vinyl’ because he scratched so much, so easily, would result in the kind of forearms you would expect to see on only the most dedicated self harmer. But Henry liked Vinyl, and sometimes, Vinyl liked Henry, and in either case they were stuck together. Vinyl came with the school, and so now did Henry.

Henry lifted his eyes from the screen to the window behind it. He could see the older part of the school silhouetted against the night, the chime-less bell tower, and the empty eyed large windows of the main hall. Beyond it were the flat-roofed sixties buildings housing the art rooms and drama studios, and beyond that the old fives courts, shortly to become careers and mixed-media suites, just as soon as someone figured out what the hell they were, and beyond that the sports pitches, and beyond that the main road and beyond that the rest of the world that Henry didn’t have any time for any more. Because he was the head teacher of a medium sized school.

And it was not a good school. Largely because Henry was too soft. And the students knew it. And so they ran wild. For a decade or more, behaviour had steadily declined, respect and discipline had fallen away like the edges of an over-baked quiche (I include this metaphor only because I have recently attempted to make a quiche. I over-baked it, and when I took it out of the dish, the edges of it fell away like respect and discipline at a not very good school). For Henry it seemed like there was no way back. There was graffiti everywhere except the graffiti encouragement area, books were destroyed, teachers terrorised, and supply teachers all but skinned alive. Students stole the white line making machine from the caretaker’s office and used it to write swearwords in 10 metre long letters on the cricket pitch. You know the words. The rudest ones. Not that one. Not that one. That one. Windows were smashed, and the faculty had no recourse. There were no punishments or deterrents available to them. Nothing in their armoury except detention - which would involve the staff member in question simply spending their precious free time with the offending student.

And Henry watched the school crumble out of his control. He knew he was betraying those who had come to learn, and those who had come to impart knowledge, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He sat in his office at the far end of the school, listened to the distant burble of people not listening and contemplated the situation, while Vinyl idly tore at the hems of his trousers, and was quietly sick into a houseplant. The framed black and white faces of previous headmasters looked scornfully upon him. Ashamed of him and his comfortable chair. And mounted above the door in a long glass case, was a cane. Patriotically painted red, white and blue in 1981 to celebrate the wedding of Charles and Diana. It served of a reminder of how things had got better. Somewhere near the geography block, there was the sound of something smashing. Henry pretended not to hear it.

It is most likely that nothing would have happened had Levi Stribb not joined the school, midway through the autumn term. Levi Stribb, with a terrifying display of fiery red hair, too short trousers, white socks, and teeth you could hang your keys on. He was a kicked wasps nest of a boy, constantly returning to his own lit touch paper. You would have thought he was the kind of child that would be bullied, but ‘no’. Levi Stribb bullied the world. And the world let it. He slashed tyres on cars, and stole from the tuck shop. He installed a channel showing nothing but extremely powerful European pornography on the sixth form common room television, but point blank refused to do the same for the staff room. He inspired terror in everyone who crossed his path. But still, there was no punishment, no recourse, no consequences.

The school turned from an unruly mess to a tiny country under a violent dictator with ADHD. But still Henry did nothing. He attempted letters home, sure, and detentions, but Levi Stribb was not the sort to be affected by correspondence on headed notepaper, or the offer of staying late. He continued his reign of terror.

It was only when Vinyl was found, one morning, nailed to the wall of the Main Hall that Henry changed. Levi Stribb admitted it was him. He said the cat ‘went for him’ and scratched him. He showed the scratches on his arms and legs. He said the cat deserved it, and he had only nailed it to the wall in self defence.

Henry didn’t shout. Henry didn’t scream or turn red. He was the calmest man you’d ever seen. He gripped Levi Stribb by the arm and pulled him to his office. Henry seemed bigger somehow. Stronger. A couple of the other teachers looked worried - what was Henry about to do? He shouldn’t be in the office alone with a boy like Levi... But Henry took Levi into his office, and closed the door behind them.

For a while there was silence. And then the sound of breaking glass. And finally the swish crack of a cane, and the scream of Levi Stribb. The swish crack continued for what seemed like forever, and the screams of Levi Stribb grew more and more pained. No words were spoken.

And at the end of forever, Levi Stribb left Henry’s office, silently. Limping. Where his trousers didn’t meet his shoes you could see a couple of inches of blood-stained white sock, and little flecks of patriotic red, white and blue paint on the seat of his trousers.

Silence fell over the school, and speculation as to Henry’s fate. He was a fatalist after all, and what would happen would happen. The police came, of course, the chairman of the governors, and Levi’s parents. They all huddled up in Henry’s office for hours on end. The school awaited the prosecution of Henry.

But all that happened was that Levi left, just two weeks after he arrived, leaving behind him one less cat.

But the school was a markedly different place. Because the student body had seen a different side to Henry. A darkness, an edge. They could all be the next Levi, couldn’t they?

And so began a new start for the school. The students began to listen. They still didn’t use the graffiti wall, but what they wrote illegally wasn’t so bad, and in some cases was quite funny. The classrooms once again became a place where the adult at the front was, for the most part, in charge. The story of Levi, the cat and cane was handed down from year to year, growing in ferocity and exaggerated detail. The one thing that didn’t change was the silence of Henry just before the storm. People knew to look out for the silence. That was the danger zone.

Years later, Henry retired from his position. He ducked out of his party in the main hall, and snuck into the sitting room in the school house. He sat in his chair, the good chair, and switched on the television. There was a gentle knock on the door, and Clara, his assistant entered with two glasses of good sherry.

They didn’t speak for a while.

“You’ll be moving out then, Henry.”

“Yes, Clara.”

“Off to Suffolk?”

“Yes Clara.”

“Henry?”

“Yes Clara?”

“What did happen with Levi Stribb?”

Henry chuckled and sank down lower in his chair. He indicated the television. Julio Smunt, Tilly Banks and Freddy Over were off on another adventure. They seemed so hopelessly dated now.

“You see the boy there.”

He indicated Freddy Over, who was attempting to untie Julio Smunt in a cave.

“Imagine him. With a fiery ginger wig, and buck teeth you could hang your keys on.”

Clara squinted at the screen. A slow realisation crept across her face.

“You don’t mean...”

“I for one think it was his finest performance. Don’t you?”

“You didn’t beat him, did you Henry?”

“Of course not Clara. It’s illegal to cane a child. But it’s not illegal to pretend to cane a child, now is it.”

Clara slumped down in the second best chair in the room.

“Well. Well. And that was the beginning of... Well. That, Henry, was incredibly clever.”

“That the beating of a child should create harmony is not clever, Clara, it is incredibly depressing, whether the beating is fictional or not.”

Clara said nothing, but put her sherry to her lips.

“All the same, not a word to anyone, do you understand?”

“Of course.”

Silence for a moment.

“And Vinyl, Henry, what really happened to Vinyl”

Henry looked over at her, illuminated by the television. He unthinkingly rubbed a network of tiny white scars on his wrist.

“This was a war, Clara. And sacrifices had to be made.”