That made me smile; but there was some unease in it too. I suppose I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Kitty Teague. All aboveboard, of course, you know—I just never realized it was so damned obvious. I wondered too whether Kitty had seen it.
Damn the man; I thought to myself. Hadn’t I known from the first that he was an upstart? And yet I’d liked him. Like him still, if truth be told.
R. Straitley: Latin. Devoted Old Boy of St. Oswald’s. Sixties; smoker; overweight; cuts his own hair. Wears the same brown tweed jacket with the elbow patches every day (well, that‘s a lie, smarty-pants; I wear a blue suit to Speech Days and funerals); hobbies include baiting the management and flirting with the French teacher. Boys hold him in unexpected affection (you’re forgetting Colin Knight); albatross around B. Strange’s neck. Harmless.
Well, I like that. Harmless, forsooth!
Still, it could be worse; under Penny Nation’s entry I read Poisonous do-gooder, and under Isabelle Tapi, French tart. You can’t deny the man has a turn of phrase. I would have read on; but at that moment the bell for registration went, and I put it in my desk drawer, with some reluctance, hoping to finish it at leisure.
I never did. Returning to my desk at the end of school I found the drawer empty and the notebook gone; at the time I assumed that Keane, who, like Dianne, occasionally shares my room, had found it and taken it back. I never asked him, for obvious reasons; and it was only later, when the scandals began to erupt one after the other, that I thought to make the connection between that little red notebook and the ubiquitous Mole, who knew the school so well, and who seemed to have so many insights into our harmless little ways.
9
Friday, 15th October
Another successful week, I think. Not least was my retrieval of that notebook, with its incriminating contents. I believe Straitley may have read some of it, though probably not all. The handwriting is too spindly for his old eyes, and besides, if he had drawn any suspicious conclusions, I would have seen it in his manner before now. Still, it would have been unwise to keep the book. I see that; and I burnt the offending item—not without a pang—before it could fall under hostile scrutiny. I may yet have to revisit the problem—but not today. Today I have other concerns to attend to.
The October half-term is upon us already, and I mean to be very busy (I’m not just talking about marking books). No, this week I shall be in school almost every day. I have cleared it with Pat Bishop, who also finds it hard to keep away, and with Mr. Beard, the Head of IT, with whom I have an unofficial arrangement.
All perfectly innocent and aboveboard—after all, my interest in technology is nothing new, and I know from experience that I am best hidden when I am in the open. Bishop approves, of course; he doesn’t really know much about computers but supervises me in his avuncular way, popping out of his office every once in a while to see if I need help.
I am not a brilliant student. A couple of elementary faux pas have established me as willing, if not especially able, which allows Bishop to feel superior whilst giving me extra cover, should I ever need it. I doubt I shall; if my presence is ever questioned at a later date, I know I can rely on Pat to say that I simply didn’t have the expertise.
Every member of St. Oswald’s staff has an e-mail address. This consists of their first two or three initials followed by the address of the school Web site. In theory, every member of staff should check his e-mail twice a day, in case of an urgent memo from Bob Strange, but in practice, some never do. Roy Straitley and Eric Scoones are among these; many more use the system but have neglected to personalize their mailboxes and have kept the default password (PASSWORD) to access their mail. Even the ones, like Bishop, who imagine themselves to be more computer literate are predictable enough: Bishop himself uses the name of his favorite sportsman, and even Strange, who should know better, has a series of easy-to-guess codes (his wife’s maiden name, his date of birth, and so on).
Not that I ever had to do much guessing. Fallow, who used the facilities every night, kept a list of user codes in a notebook in the Porter’s Lodge, along with a box of disks (material downloaded from the Internet) that no one had bothered to investigate. By retracing his steps (under a different user identity), I managed to lay quite a convincing trail. Better still, by disabling the firewall on the school’s computer network for a few minutes, and then sending a carefully prepared file attachment to admin@saintoswalds.com, from one of my Hotmail addresses, I was able to introduce a simple virus designed to lie dormant in the system before awakening into dramatic action a couple of weeks later.
Not the most exciting kind of spadework, I know. All the same, I enjoyed it. This evening I thought I might allow myself a little celebration; a night off, a couple of drinks at the Thirsty Scholar. That turned out to be a mistake; I hadn’t realized how many colleagues—and pupils—frequented the place. I was only halfway through my first drink when I saw a little group of them come in—I recognized Jeff Light, Gerry Grachvogel, and Robbie Roach, the long-haired geographer, with a couple of seventeen-or eighteen-year-olds who might have been St. Oswald’s sixth-formers.
I shouldn’t have been surprised—it’s no secret that Roach likes to hang out with the boys. Light too. Grachvogel, on the other hand, looked slightly furtive, but then he always does, and he at least has the sense to know (as Straitley puts it) that no good ever comes of getting overfriendly with the troops.
I was tempted to stay. There was no reason to be shy; but the thought of socializing with them, of letting my hair down, as the ghastly Light would have put it, and having a couple of bevvies, was distinctly unpleasant. Thankfully, I was sitting by the door and was able to make my exit, quick and unobserved, as they made their way toward the bar.
I recognized Light’s car, a black Probe, in the alley beside the pub, and toyed with the idea of putting its side window through; but there might be security cameras in the street, I thought, and it would be pointless to risk exposure on a stupid whim. Instead I walked the long way home—the night was mild, and besides, I’d promised myself another look at Roy Straitley’s fence.
He had already removed the graffiti. I wasn’t surprised; even though he couldn’t actually see it from his house, its simple presence must have irked him, just as it irked him that the boys who had invaded his garden might return. Perhaps I’ll arrange it—just to see his face—but not tonight. Tonight I deserve better.
And so I went home to my chintz-hung room, opened my second bottle of champagne (I have a case of six, and I mean to see them all empty by Christmas), caught up with a little essential correspondence, then went down to the pay phone outside and made a quick call to the local police, reporting a black Probe (registration LIT 3) driving erratically in the vicinity of the Thirsty Scholar.
It’s the sort of behavior my therapist tends to discourage nowadays. I’m too impulsive, or so she says; too judgmental. I don’t always consider the feelings of others as I should. But there was no risk to me; I did not give my name, and in any case—you know he deserved it. Like Mr. Bray, Light is a braggart; a bully; a natural rule-breaker; a man who genuinely believes that a few pints under his belt make him a better driver. Predictable. They’re all so predictable.
That’s their weakness. The Oswaldians. Light, of course, is a complacent fool; but even Straitley, who is not, shares the same foolish complacency. Who would dare to attack me? To attack St. Oswald’s?