The story of Hamlet sort of goes like this: There’s this prince (Hamlet) who lives in another country a long time ago. His dad dies and his mum marries Hamlet’s uncle, so Hamlet doesn’t get to become the king. He gets real mad about this, and reckons his mum’s a bit of a whore for marrying his uncle, especially when the ghost of his dad comes back and tells Hamlet that the pair of them were an item before he died, and that his brother even dripped poison into his ear and murdered him, just so he could get off with Hamlet’s mum and become King.
This was quite a spooky bit in the film, the ghost thing, and most of the class were watching, except Cheryl Bassington, who was still texting her boyfriend under the desk. He’s an apprentice plumber who lives down our road, and I often see him pick her up on his crappy little motorbike thing. She says they’ve done it lots of times, which I think is really lame at her age, as I reckon you should save yourself for someone who really loves you.
Hamlet has a woman who loves him. Her name’s Ophelia, and she sort of hangs around the palace, pining for him. It’s that Helena Bonham Carter in the film, and all the lads in the class were right crude about her in her nightie. Steve Norris made a sort of “joke” about boning-Bonham-Carter which even Sir sniggered at, but I just thought it was sick. I think Ophelia’s really sad, because she really does love Hamlet, and when he starts acting a bit mental, she gets really upset. He even tells her that he never loved her, and that she should go away and become a nun. Even Polonius (her own dad) uses Ophelia to test if Hamlet really is mad, which seems, well, odd — but then Polonius gets stabbed behind a curtain anyway, which serves him right for being such a bad dad in the first place.
My dad wouldn’t ever do such a thing to me, regardless of what the papers said about him at the time of the robbery.
It seems that in Hamlet, everyone’s only after power, and that they’re prepared to do anything to get it, even if it means killing their family, marrying incestuously, using their kids, or faking madness that really hurts people. I think that’s very bad of all of them. Ophelia is so cut up about Hamlet being horrible to her that she goes and drowns herself, and even Hamlet doesn’t seem that bothered. Neither did the boys in the class, who asked for that bit to be shown again, as they reckoned you could see Helena Bonham Carter’s tits through the wet nightie. Thank goodness that someone tells Ophelia’s brother what a schemer Hamlet is, so that he comes back really angry and tries to kill Hamlet in a duel.
We all thought that the ending was right crap, because nearly everyone dies, Hamlet, his uncle, his mum, Ophelia’s brother; they all end up dead in this big hall, either poisoned or stabbed with poison-tipped swords. Dave Coles reckoned that the Macbeth we did for SATS in Year 9 was better because there were real nude women to perv over, and hangings and beheadings and stuff. When I told him I’d hated that film, loads of people laughed at me, and I felt right stupid, especially as Sir didn’t tell them off for being so cruel.
Maybe that was when I decided to do what I’ve done to you, Sir. Maybe that was the moment that it all made a sort of sense. Like I’ve written, maybe some people simply want power, and don’t care about other people’s feelings. Like you, then. Just two terms in the school, obviously wanting to be the trendy young teacher, joining in with them, laughing at me, not stopping it like other teachers would have done. Perhaps it was just another tiny, all too quickly forgotten moment for you, but believe me, Sir, it went well deep with me. Well deep.
That night, I told my mum about what had happened in your class, how you’d let them laugh at me. She was cooking — well, I say cooking, putting a ready-meal in the microwave for Uncle Tony for his tea, more like. Because she has to have it on the table for him when he gets in, or there’s trouble. He rings on his mobile from The Wellington Arms, tells her to have it ready in five minutes, then suddenly she’s all action, heaves herself up from the sofa and sends me up to my room as she gets done.
Once, his meal wasn’t ready. I heard the result. Lots of shouting, then a scream. Mum’s scream. Then what sounded like moaning. I didn’t come down until the door slammed half an hour later, and I saw Uncle Tony walking away from the house from my bedroom window. Mum wouldn’t look at me, sort of flinched when I tried to put my arm round her. She was trying to stick a torn-up photograph of her and Dad back together, but her hands were shaking too much, and she was trying not to cry. I asked if I could help. It was a nice photo — her and Dad on honeymoon in Greece, both of them looking right young and happy on a beach in front of all these white hotels. She swore at me and told me to get back upstairs to my room.
Hamlet used to love his dad as well. Then he went away to some college somewhere, and when he came back his dad was dead, and his uncle had married his mum. The problem is that his dad is now a ghost, and tells him that he was murdered, so that makes Hamlet really angry. He also doesn’t know if it’s just his mind being tricky with him, so he decides to set a trap to see if his uncle is really guilty or not. Hamlet gets these actors to do a play which is sort of like his uncle killing his dad, and watches his uncle’s reaction. He wants to “prick his conscience”.
Dave Coles went “wheeey!” when Mel Gibson said the word “prick” — which everyone but me thought was real funny. I thought it was a good plan of Hamlet’s. He wasn’t saying “prick” like a penis; he was saying it like a needle, pricking his uncle’s brain to see if he was guilty. I think I’m cleverer than most of them in the class because I read more and understand these things, know that words can have more than just the obvious meaning. I think it’s because I’m not allowed to use the computer at home (Uncle Tony’s on it most of the time he’s in), so I don’t have any MSN or anything. Or a mobile phone. Just books, really. A bit of telly sometimes, downstairs, when Mum’s finished watching the soaps. But mostly I’m in my room, thinking and reading.
I write to Dad a lot. Tell him about school. Mum says I can’t talk about some of the stuff that goes on in the house, as it would only upset him. She says that even though Uncle Tony isn’t my real uncle, he’s doing us a massive favour by staying with us when Dad’s away. They used to be good mates, Dad and Uncle Tony, working at the warehouse together, going down to the pub, but when it all went wrong, and the police came for Dad, they sort of fell out.
What’s really great is that Dad’s letters are getting longer each time he writes back to me. Just a page in the beginning, now it’s often three or four. His spelling’s really coming on too, because of all the classes he’s been taking. He’s been well behaved, so they’ve allowed him more time to study. He says he’s taking his GCSEs too! Strange, isn’t it, Sir? There I am, in your class, studying Hamlet for my English GCSE Shakespeare coursework, and my dad’s doing exactly the same thing. At thirty-eight, too. He reckons once he’s done his English, Maths, and Science, he’ll do loads more subjects after that. He says one bloke further down the wing he knows has got nineteen GCSEs! See, Sir? They tell you all this stuff about people in prison being right thick and scummy, but there’s some of them really trying to improve themselves. Dad’s got another two years left, so I reckon he’ll have more qualifications than me when he gets out. How weird will that be?
In Dad’s last letter, he talked about Uncle Tony, and said that even though they weren’t best friends any more, it was good that he had agreed to lodge at our house, and help pay the rent and stuff. He said it was the least Uncle Tony could do, because really, he owed Dad big time. He also said that the years would fly by, and when he finally got released, he’d got a surprise that would keep me, Mum, and him happy for years. When I showed Mum the letter, she screwed it up and chucked it away, said my dad was talking nonsense, told me never to mention it again. I’m not sure, but I think it was to do with the robbery at the warehouse. Thing is, although the police had CCTV film of Dad loading stuff into a van when he shouldn’t have been, the actual stuff was never found. The local newspaper said it was worth over a £100,000 — though you can’t believe everything they say, can you, Sir?