A Very Private School by Charles Spencer

Author:Charles Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2024-02-12T20:02:27+00:00

Adult anger seemed to burn like an eternal flame at Maidwell. Its source could be found in the elegantly proportioned masters’ common room, a handsome panelled cube that had been the smoking room when Maidwell was a private mansion. Pupils were never welcome in this sanctuary for the teaching staff. If you had to see a master there on an urgent matter, you knocked at its door with trepidation. A voice – it always seemed to be Maude’s – would bark, ‘Come in!’ in a tone that was more challenge than welcome.

One summer term, I took to borrowing a piece of cricket kit that was kept in the common room. On perhaps my tenth consecutive day of coming to ask for the equipment, Maude drawled to his colleagues, in my full hearing, ‘How very dull it is to see Spencer in here yet again.’

His was the dominant personality in the common room. Colleagues were frequently reminded of his private, family wealth, as he liked to phone his London stockbroker in front of them to discuss his investments. Among a staff that drank a lot, he led the charge to the village pub. He’d head to the Stag’s Head during weekday mornings, if he had a lesson-free hour to fill, encouraging colleagues to join him.

It was noticeable how differently the masters behaved when in their common room haven. They smiled, and they talked to one another in lighter, warmer voices than those they deployed with us. Theirs was the camaraderie of officers in a mess, thankfully removed from the tedious, distasteful presence of other ranks.

Another of Jack’s common room henchmen was Thomas Goffe. Like Maude, he was a seething human cauldron; but Goffe’s temperature was kept dangerously high by a different flame: his visceral loathing of social superiority. Since many of Maidwell’s pupils were the offspring of aristocrats, landowners, and of England’s great banking, brewing and manufacturing dynasties, his normal setting was boiling point.

It’s a mystery why ‘Goffie’ chose to work in such a bastion of privilege. Perhaps it was an act of self-flagellation. Or maybe he wanted to hold sway over the defenceless sons of those absurdly rich adults who turned his stomach. It could be that his reason was more run-of-the-mill, and he simply needed a job that was reasonably well paid, with plenty of holiday time, while living in a beautiful part of England. But whether masochism, opportunism or realism brought Goffie to the school, it was unfortunate for the pupils.

Jack must have known that Goffie’s class hatred made him a dangerous pick as an educator of well-to-do boys, far removed from the protection of their parents. I suspect that the headmaster accepted this fiery radical into his ranks because he hoped that such an obviously angry man would subscribe to the harshness that he had set as Maidwell’s perpetual refrain. And, in this, Jack proved correct.

In the classroom, Goffie looked at us with brooding contempt, his jaw jutting forward, daring us to upset him. He would move

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