It’s
the last time she’ll do this. The last time she’ll look
up from her desk at the audience of uninterested heads, some sleeping
on their workbooks, some chatting and playing. The last time she’ll
get up and write the date on the whiteboard, the last time she’ll
wait for silence, then call for it. The last time she’ll shout
at this kid—the last time she’ll shout at any kid. The
last time she’ll suffer an answering back, the last time she’ll
send a chatty student across the room to an empty seat, the last time
she’ll receive cheeky questions from the cocky ones, the last
time she’ll see the timid ones trembling on a table of loud
ones. The last time she’ll look at the clock and rally at the
hand ticking towards the hour. The last time she’ll let the
class deteriorate into chatter for the last ten minutes. The last
time she’ll replace the chairs after the class’s exit,
the last time she’ll wipe the board, the last time she’ll
collect her things into her bags.
There
was a little leaving do at lunchtime with colleagues from the
department—cakes and cards and coffee—and she suddenly
felt bad for not having ever spoken to most of them. Returning to the
staff room now for the last time to empty her pigeon hole, she bumps
into the head of department who wishes her well and thanks her for
her years of service.
She
leaves the building she has worked in for half of her career. It is a
mobile building, slowly falling apart, which was meant to serve as a
temporary measure for a couple of years but is still in use twenty
years later. In the car park she passes an old colleague who joined
the school the same year she did. Her face expresses great pity, but
then she cheers up when she says, “but by God you deserve it.
Now you can prioritise yourself and do whatever you fancy. I might
just have to join you, it’s not getting any better around
here!”
She
gets in her car and leaves the school grounds for the last time.
Fifteen minutes later she is back home; she drops her bags in the
hallway, shouts up to her mum, goes to the kitchen to put the kettle
on before taking off her shoes and coat: this routine she has done on
countless occasions she does now for the last time.
Ahead
of her is a holiday without the dread of its end. She still can’t
imagine such a thing. She doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t
know yet how to profit from her spare time, has never in her life
made the best use of it.
“You
alright, love,” her mum says now as she opens the door to her
room. “Good day? That’s the last one now. Blimey,
you’ve done all these years, it goes everso fast,
doesn’t it. Goh, I remember the day you started…”
“Yeah.”
She remembers that day too: her mum made her sandwiches in the
morning, gave her a kiss on her forehead before she went. Her
colleagues were all new, her pupils, the school, the clothes she
wore. She had enthusiasm too.
“I’ve
brought you up your tea, look.”
“Oh
you are a dear. I was just watching that
what’s-his-face
on the telly. You know the one I mean. Funny hair and northern
accent. What are you going to do with yourself now, d’you
reckon? Oh!, the phone went earlier. I heard it go but couldn’t
get up in time, don’t know who it was, you should go and check
whether they left a message or not.”
“I’ll
have a look. There’s more of that cottage pie in the freezer if
you fancy it, if not there’s some other things if I have a
rummage.” She sits on the bed with her own mug of tea and looks
at the telly which is nothing she recognises.
“It’s
going to start getting hot next week,” says the old woman.
“Not
too hot, I hope.”
“How
was your, err… Oh, what am I saying? Did they give
you
a send-off, like? Any presents? Your colleagues, I mean. Or the kids,
I don’t know.”
“I’ve
got some cards and… nice messages. And we had a little do in
the staff room at lunchtime. Just within the department, you know.
But rather a hushed affair. You know, everyone’s so busy, and…
I suppose an old bird like me isn’t going to be missed too
badly.”
“Nonsense.
They ought to be grateful for all the years you’ve put in down
there. You’re one of the longest serving, I’ll bet
anything. And you’ve stuck it out more than most.”
After
a minute: “Do go and see who it was on the phone. I do hope it
wasn’t Janet again. Haven’t seen her in years and long
may that continue!”
She
goes out, but first goes to the bathroom. Washing her hands, she sees
her face in the mirror. Of course there is nothing new in it, it has
not changed in the past few years. The fat around her eyes has not
collapsed yet, her cheeks are not yet gaunt, the bones not yet
protuberant. She is pleased with it. One might even say that she
looks good for her age. All she does though is look at herself and
say internally, this is me on the day of my retirement.
She
has not had many significant days in her life. Most have had
weddings, children born, will remember fondly a love affair from
their youth.
Envy
dies with age too, so it was an epoch ago already when she last
wondered about her only remaining schoolfriend’s success and
family bliss (still friends through Christmas cards and birthday
emails).
Her
one remaining friend from work—Elfreda—was pushed out for
her rebellious spirit and her reluctance to follow the increasingly
inadequate syllabus. Elfreda was the best teacher she ever worked
with. A good friend too, she helped her out personally as well as
professionally. She enjoyed their chatting and gossiping in the staff
room, the banter they shared with a male colleague and others.
After
Elfreda it wasn’t the same. A condescending new head of
department came in, he turned it all competitive and lectured
colleagues with decades’ more experience than him how to do
their job. Attitudes were changing—it was exam preparation and
not education. Still, she stood firm: until a few things eroded her
determination. A nasty parent intimidating her at parents’
evening: my boy doesn’t need you poking your fat nose in,
giving him grief all the time! … It’s people like you
who— This man wrote long vitriolic letters, made a formal
complaint against her to the head of department.
It
was falling apart. The vulnerable kids she saw. She didn’t
understand their language anymore; there was their lack of respect;
their parents’ views that they came out with. One little boy’s
family was relying on the local food bank. And yet a new colleague of
hers (recently risen to head of house) implied once that laziness was
the problem and the parents should just get a better-paid job.
A
new headteacher came. Within months of his reforms, staff were off
sick left right and centre. Her workload doubled and the syllabus
changed and she didn’t believe in it and all her colleagues
were either leaving or were starting to climb up the new hierarchy.
She never climbed herself because, a) she knew she wouldn’t
have the time for new responsibilities because of her mum, and b) she
didn’t particularly have the ambition and didn’t see the
point in it. Her mum was not yet in terribly bad health, and all she
needed was to take things at a calm pace. Get through each year and
then retire.
A
few years ago she had a crisis thinking about how her career could
have been different. Her first job at her first school was pleasant,
so it was too at this school in the early days. Then, why did
she
decide to become a teacher in the first place?
For
a long time they were trying to force her out. She decided to jump
before she was definitively pushed. If she is careful, she will have
just enough money for her and her mum to live on.
It
is not the stuff of normal retirements, surely. Spouses with their
dreams and their adventures planned. If she didn’t have to look
after her mum, she would take her savings and travel somewhere
interesting like India—the first time she would be free, and
the unpredictability would be good. She hasn’t had a holiday in
years. The last time, she went walking one half term in Scotland and
she fell and sprained her knee.
After
the bathroom she remembers to check the phone. One new message. She
plays it. It is Elfreda. She is pleasantly shocked.
Elfreda
knows—somehow—that it is her last day. She deserves to
treat herself now. In fact, in about a month’s time, Elfreda
and her husband are planning on coming down to the area—they
have some other people from their past to see, and naturally they
would love to pop in to catch up with her and her mum. Elfreda and
her husband live in the Midlands somewhere: they had to move away
after she quit. Their girls have moved out by now, apparently—one
of them doing very well in London.
It
must be two years ago already the last time Elfreda and her husband
came down and came round for dinner. They cheered her up, regaled her
mum too, but the evening was overcast by her prevailing melancholy.
Later,
after tea and the news and the programme her mum wanted to watch, she
sits outside in the garden, reclined in her chair, with a cold
lemonade and a good book. It is newly dark, warm, and calm—typically
so, really, for the first night of the summer holidays. She tries to
read a little by the light of the lounge that spills out through the
patio doors. Inside, her mum is doing a crossword or something. Every
now and then she’ll shout out a question.
“Ancient
city on the Sea of Marmara! Nine letters!”
“Uhmm…
Try Byzantium.”
“By-zan-tium.
How d’you spell it?”
“B
– Y – Z …”
After
a while, her drink finished, her book forgotten about, she falls to
contemplating the sky—dark whisps and clouds and only a handful
of stars visible—and she listens to the sounds of the family
next door: some kids shouting, the father frustrated, the mother
talking loudly on the phone to a friend or her sister perhaps—she
must be just on the other side of the fence—and they are making
arrangements, and talking about work, and Beavers. From the other
direction comes the smell of food from the Italian couple, who always
eat late at night—how she would love to taste their homemade
dishes! But she hasn’t quite managed to become friendly with
all the neighbours.
About
a week ago she passed a former pupil of hers outside the shop. He was
in her A Level group one year; he was an outstanding student and a
pleasure to have in the class. He didn’t acknowledge her
though—maybe he didn’t recognise her.
Before
then she had spotted in town a young former colleague. She had
assisted her classes for a year, all the bubbles and vigour of youth;
a few months later she was engaged and pregnant.
How
many colleagues she had seen pass through the rites of a normal life!
*****
In
a search for more friends she started going along to a couple of
clubs run at the village hall, such as the Not-Quite-the-WI Club
(“Not-Quite” because it admitted men). She met some nice
people, though nobody she could call on, and besides, she had enough
old people to talk to at home.
The
winters could be cosy: her work done, her emails answered, with the
heating on and the telly, chatting with her mum about all things over
a microwave meal, then the promise of a hot bath, a film, a book. The
summers didn’t have to be any less cosy: the patio doors open
letting a cool breeze inside; sometimes, on the weekends, she would
drive her mum to the seaside, or a nice National Trust property
nearby which had a viewpoint that opened out onto the landscape. It
was all pleasant enough, but this, her senescence, couldn’t be
the success of all her efforts.
*****
It’s
the last time she’ll do this. Emptying her work bags—not
the first thing to be done upon returning home as would be logical,
but the last thing before going to bed. The last time she’ll
automatically check her inbox—she can’t not do it for it
has long become a reflex. After tens of thousands of emails—more
than that—ever since email came in about, gosh,
twenty-five years ago now, she will not answer one again. Her account
will expire in a few days.
Her
work like a dead creature there before her on the table.
She
puts on a film to try and distract herself. But as she lies in bed
she can’t ignore the feeling that she won’t be
remembered. From the effort she put in every day of her life there
won’t be any discernible benefit for herself.
The
vast majority that have passed through her classes over the years
(all but a handful of those names lost to her, though she’s
confident that some of those faces if seen in public would be
recognisable immediately)—and there are thousands of them, all
with their own futures, their professions and interests, their
families—they have not really been affected by her, have not
been influenced in any significant way, would not really remember her
amongst all the teachers they would remember, would not recall a
single lesson or a single piece of concrete information she had given
them.
A
few days later, her inbox expired, plans made with Elfreda: there
were one or two she has influenced, touched with everything she had
learnt in her career. She has to hope that; even assume it is the
case. Even if it is just a line from a book she has taught, some
Shelley or Shakespeare, or her words of encouragement in a school
report; or the time she discovered a year seven’s dyslexia and
organised special provision for him.
