An author writes to a teacher who took considerable pleasure in beating him
Dear Mr Cairney
Tonight I read in the paper that you had been appointed headmaster of Kaimara Intermediate School. When I read your name and saw your photograph I was surprised, not at your becoming a headmaster, but at how clearly I still remembered you, even though it’s now over twenty years since you taught me. Your face hasn’t changed much at all, really; your hair’s longer at the sides, but I notice it’s receded quite a bit at the temples. I remember that some of the girls in our class in Standard Six thought you were handsome and asked you to sign their autograph books when you left at the end of that term, but I don’t suppose you remember that. But that’s not surprising because I’ve been working it out and I realise now that you must have been only about twenty-one when you came to our school for a term to relieve for Mrs Hunter when she had her operation. It was the winter term, I remember, and the class wrote to Mrs Hunter and told her how much they enjoyed having you for a teacher.
But I never enjoyed having you, Mr Cairney, because I could tell that you didn’t like me almost from the first day that you arrived. You weren’t like Mrs Hunter, who let us talk and walk around while we worked. But the first morning you came in you told me to stand up even though there were several of us talking. You asked me what my name was and after I told you, you called me by my surname and told me to keep on standing up for a quarter of an hour and I went very red and the others in the class laughed and for the first time since I started school I wished I wasn’t there. After that, I noticed that you hardly ever asked me to answer a question, so I gave up putting my hand up after a while, even though I would have got the answer right some times. And I also noticed that you would look at me in a funny way. I suppose that was why I never forgot your face, because quite often I would look up from what I was doing and you would be staring at me. Then one day I knocked a chair over and it made a loud noise and you kept me in after school to write out lines. I MUST NOT ACT THE FOOL, WHEN I AM SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING, one hundred times. When I’d finished it was after four o’clock and my wrist was sore and I’d never stayed at school by myself that late before and afterwards my footsteps sounded scary when I walked along the corridor to the vestibule.
It's strange that things like that should come back to me now, and until I started writing this letter I had completely forgotten about the lines. But what I never forgot was the wondering why you were, as we used to put it, picking on me. Though I never said anything to anybody else about it. You made me feel sort of ashamed, but I didn’t know why.
But what I really wanted to remind you of was the day when you set us some sums and then went out of the room for a while to see another teacher and came back and found me out of my seat talking to another boy on the other side of the room and shouted, "What are you doing getting up before you’ve finished?" and then after I said, "I have finished Mr Cairney," you stared at me and said "Stay behind after school today." During the rest of the day I was worried about getting kept in again to write out more lines and I remember looking at you and wondering again why it was that it was always me that was getting into trouble when with Mrs Hunter I had never been kept in.
Then at three o’clock when the bell went and the others put their chairs up and went home I went up to your desk and stood there and the way you looked at me made me feel frightened. Your mouth was just a thin line, and you didn’t blink at all. I stood there and felt very alone, but it wasn’t until you said, "I’m going to teach you not to fool in my class," that I realised that I was going to get the cuts. When you reached into your satchel and pulled your strap out I saw that it was light brown, with neat white stiches around the edges. When I saw that I felt sick right down in my stomach.
You stood me in the space between the desk and the door and pointed the strap towards my right hand, then you took a deep breath and flicked the strap back over your shoulder. I brought my hand up and held it out but even then I couldn’t take me eyes off your face and when you hit me the first time your head came forward and you made a little gasping noise.
The pain started straight away. It wasn’t like falling off my bike or tripping onto concrete; then there was always a little pause between the fall and the pain. But now, for one second my hand was a normal, useful part of me, and the next it had disappeared and in its place was just a huge, numbing pain. There was no burning on the skin, just the shock of the ache and the thudding numbness as the muscles of my palm were bruised through to the bones.
The second cut came so quickly that I hardly had time to straighten my arm out again before a second shock of pain went up my arm. Then you paused before the third and I could see how hard you were working because you were breathing heavily and your blue tie had slipped sideways. You steadied yourself and nodded again, and I brought my hand up and your strap came down again.
Now I was sure that my hand had grown to an enormous size, yet when I glanced down it wasn’t any bigger, although the skin was bright pink and my fingers were curled up like the claws of a dead bird. They just went like that, I couldn’t stop them. When I looked up at you again you had folded your strap in half and were staring down at me. You were staring down at me and your face had gone shiny and suddenly I knew why you were staring. Because I was so small you thought I ought to be crying. And I was. But only inside. Through the dizziness and the sick feeling and the pain I knew I must not show that I was. I stood there staring up at you with my huge right hand dangling, waiting for you to speak. Now that the thump of the strap had stopped the room was very still.
But you didn’t say anything. Instead, you suddenly put the strap on the desk, grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me over to the door, the one that led out onto the playground. You opened the door and pushed me out. At the bottom of the steps there was a downpipe that went from the building’s spouting to a drain. The grate of the drain was blocked by leaves and bits of paper and fruit peel, mixed with soft sludge. You pointed at the drain. "Clean it out," you said. "With your right hand." And you stood on the top step and watched me do it.
The muck was very cold – that’s how I remembered it was the winter term – but when I scooped out a handful it felt as if I was holding a red-hot coal in my palm. I scratched out the muck, carried it over to the rubbish bin at the bottom of the steps. My hand felt as though it had been plunged into a furnace and my arm was throbbing so much that my body felt lopsided and inside I felt sicker and sicker. By I knew that my eyes were still dry and I could see the corners of your mouth tighten and I knew that in a way I was winning. You turned away and said, "Right. Inside."
I followed you back into the room, then started to walk over to my desk to put my chair up and get my lunchbox. I had to force myself to walk slowly because more than anything else in the world I wanted to run from that place. Then from behind me I heard your voice again. "No you don’t son, I haven’t finished with you yet." And when I turned around you were holding the strap again and making little pointing movements with it. In the direction of my right hand.
Your last three weren’t very well directed, only the middle one got me fair and square on the palm. The first cut across the ends of my wet fingers, and the third landed high up on my wrist, because later when the bruise came out, it reached quite a long way up my arm. But you still didn’t see me cry, because I didn’t start until after I had wheeled my bike through the school gates and was riding home. One-handed.
Well, as I said at the beginning, this happened over twenty years ago. Have you been successful? Oh yes, you’re a headmaster now, so I suppose you have been. Will you remember me? I don’t think so, in over twenty years you must have taught a thousand children. But I’d like you to know that after I left secondary school I went to university and studied English literature. After I graduated I got married and travelled around a bit and now I’m a writer – short stories and novels, mainly. I always first write in longhand, so my hands are very important to me. As they are to every person. Hands are sacred in a way, one could say.
I’m still married, with two children, a girl and a boy. We live not very far from your new school, that’s why I was especially interested when I read of your appointment in the local paper. Our boy’s a lively little chap, small for his age, like I was, but he’s keen to learn and he loves life. He’s the reason why I haven’t signed this letter. It was hard for me as a professional person to use a pen-name, but you see on the one hand I don’t want our son to be victimised, and on the other I do want you to know that he’ll be one of your pupils. And that if you as much as touch a hair on his head, Mr Cairney, I will come along to your school and break every bone in your face.
Yours faithfully,
A Past Pupil
"Dear Mr Cairney" (names have been changed) is part of a memoir in progress by Graeme Lay, entitled Fun but can be Dangerous.
