Читать книгу The Last Day of January - Greer Decker - Страница 8

5

James was not at school on Wednesday. Later I realised some other teachers were absent too. In the staffroom at the end of the day, the head came over to me. She wanted to observe my history lesson with Year 9 on Friday. At least she’d given me some warning.

In history the next day we were finishing the current topic: the Industrial Revolution and British society in pre-World War 1. I found it difficult to teach the class system in Britain to kids of thirteen, many of whom had little awareness of it up to now. The Industrial Revolution was more tangible. The kids in both classes worked well and showed considerable empathy for the poor children working in the factories and mines back then.

By Thursday evening, I was considering ringing James to find out how he was. I could also ask him for advice on how to prepare for my lesson with the head. Then I realised I didn’t have his number. Damn. I didn’t know where he lived either. I started marking.

It went okay on Friday. The children were a little quiet, but that was normal with the head at the back, and she would have been used to that. Feedback on Monday.

At the weekend, mum and I managed to spend some time in the garden as the weather was warm and some radical pruning was overdue. We picked the last of the apples and made a crumble.

Sunday to Monday I slept badly again, awaking far too early again and tossing for several hours. Mum was in a deep sleep; I could hear her snoring gently. I should have grabbed a book, but instead I lay there going over niggles I’d had with mum and Rachel, then the last massive row I’d had with Nick years ago. I moved on to thoughts about various friends of mine in London who’d had some kind of traumatic or sad experience. Why did I do that?

At school that morning I chatted to Mary in the staffroom and pretended not to notice when James walked in. I was glad he was back. The head came in with a few announcements, during which I caught James looking at me and we smiled. After the meeting, the head walked over and suggested we had our meeting over lunch.

Thirty minutes into my lesson, as the children were working on their own, I started getting nervous about my meeting with the head. When the time came, it turned out to be a very relaxed conversation.

In the evening, I wondered about inviting Mary and Sally, perhaps even James too, for a meal some time at home, but mum looked so startled when I suggested it that I put the idea on hold. Mum asked me again how I liked being in Suffolk. Very much, I always answered.

On Tuesday morning in the staffroom, I noticed funny looks again in James’s direction, mainly from the maths lot, Frank, Dudley and Iris. What was going on? Mary slipped me a piece of paper with the name of Crazy Cate’s care home on it and the telephone number.

Zofia was not at school on Tuesday. Perhaps she was ill too. A bug was going round. I asked Mary in the break if she knew why Zofia was absent. She said she’d had an email from the dad early Monday morning, saying that Zofia was sick.

I called in to Crazy Cate’s care home, the Maples, unannounced, on my way home. It was a slight detour, but I wanted to feel I was making some progress. It was a modern building at the end of a new housing estate. I made an appointment for a proper visit a week on Saturday and decided I’d take mum along this time.

That evening, watching the news on telly, I was wickedly thrilled by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the five-week prolongation of Parliament was unlawful. The craziest things had become the norm recently and it was quite a job keeping up with it all, but this decision was significant. The highest court in the land had unanimously ruled that the PM had tried to obstruct the workings of a parliamentary democracy. Now an apology to the Queen was due. Wow. I couldn’t help feeling schadenfreude.

I also couldn’t resist commenting to mum that a Tory Prime Minister had ‘lied’ to her Queen. Mum had always been an avid Tory. I ranted on for a minute or two about Johnson undermining parliamentary democracy and making the Queen look foolish. She didn’t argue back and seemed confused about the situation. I decided it was best to leave political discussions with her in future.

I left mum in front of the telly that she wasn’t watching and went and had a bath. Could this mean a parliamentary defeat for Johnson? It felt like our last chance. My thoughts wandered away from politics to Nick – no I wasn’t wasting any thoughts on Nick. I didn’t give a toss about him.

I sat up, applied the conditioner to my hair, sunk back into the lukewarm water and returned to politics. In London, lots of people had been stunned by what had happened on 23 June 2016. The hope of open political debate had soon faded. People were talking less than ever.

I understood their inhibitions. Many Remainers in the public eye did not reveal their views as they didn’t want to give the impression of not wanting to respect the will of the people. In the private sphere, it could easily have damaged friendships and family relationships. Hence the craving among many to get it sorted now once and for all. The ongoing absurdities and twists in British politics had just got too much at some point.

Rinsing my hair, I thought of the man I’d run into at Berlin Tegel airport in the summer. I was sure I’d finally found a typical Brexiteer behind me in the enormous queue that had formed in front of the passport control.

The queue hadn’t moved for over ten minutes. This German efficiency was a complete myth sometimes. The man behind me was probably thinking that too. The airport had the charm of the seventies and a very limited range of cafes and shops. Of course, that was because the hexagon shaped airport building wasn’t ideal for expansion and the decision to close the airport had been made long ago. At least you didn’t have to walk far. Apparently sensing my restlessness, the man pointed out that nothing was happening because the passport control was unmanned as the gate was closed. I was slightly embarrassed, but he thought nothing of it.

He was short and slightly stocky. He spoke on his mobile with a northern English accent. His coat was a bit long, his trousers a bit short and his shoes needed a clean. Confident but not cocky, he casually advised the Polish couple in flip flops in front of us that they first needed to queue to drop their two oversized suitcases at the check-in desks before joining this queue for passport control, advice for which they were most grateful, especially when he offered to keep their place for them.

At this point we started to chat, and it turned out he worked for a multinational company with its headquarters in Germany, had lived in Bavaria for five years and now travelled within Europe frequently. He asked me if I spoke German and whether this was a Schlange or a Stau. He said he always confused the two words. Despite his long stay in Germany, he’d never found the time to learn the language properly. His kids had loved Bavaria, especially the skiing and the swimming in the lakes in the summer months. Just as the Schlange or Stau started to move, we moved on to the controversial subject of Brexit.

‘It’s bonkers from a business point of view, It makes no sense at all. And the saddest part of it is, each side is demonising the other. The Remainers are stereotyping Leavers as uneducated and racist, and the Leavers are branding Remainers as self-opinionated and privileged and ignorant of real social hardship. Brexit is leaving its mark on everything. It’s mad.’

‘True.’

Once through security, our ways parted. And once again I’d failed to extend my list of personally acquainted Brexiteers.

The water was now cool. I got out of the bath and dried myself, thinking back to the People’s Vote march in the spring, when I’d walked alongside a charismatic lecturer in law from Bath who lived in Germany with his French wife. He’d argued that a second vote was legally justified and had encouraged me not to give up hope. I’d been easy to convince.

It was an amazing atmosphere that day, with over a million protesters, even if it barely got any news coverage in the UK. There had still been so much hope on that bitterly cold day in March.