Peter Robinson - Children of the Revolution

‘Do pardon the mess,’ said Lomax. ‘I’ve been fighting for a larger office for some years now, but it never seems to materialise. Sometimes I feel they’d like to get rid of the arts faculty altogether.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Annie, sitting on a chair Lomax had cleared of books for her. ‘Perhaps we should just give up and hand the country over to the bankers?’

‘I thought they already owned it? Anyway, you mustn’t talk like that. Never give up. That way lies philistinism and totalitarianism. Rage against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas put it. He was talking about death, of course, not revolution or protest, but perhaps the loss of all we value most could be seen as death of a kind, too, don’t you think? Kierkegaard said the loss of the self can occur very quietly, unnoticed, as it were. Anyway, just listen to me prattling on. You’d think I hadn’t talked to anyone in months. Would you like some tea or coffee? I can ring down for some. It won’t take a minute.’

‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Coffee, just black, please, no sugar.’

‘Not at all.’ Lomax picked up the phone and asked for two black coffees, then smiled sheepishly. ‘It makes me seem more important than I am,’ he said. ‘Maria will only bring coffee when I have a guest in my office. When there’s just me, I have to go down and fetch it myself.’

Annie laughed. A few moments later, there was a soft tap at the door, followed by the appearance of a pale, plump woman in a peasant skirt, her mousy hair tied in a ponytail. She balanced her tray on one hand and handed Annie and Lomax cups of coffee without cracking a smile or saying a word. Then she was gone. ‘You must excuse Maria,’ Lomax said. ‘She’s from Lithuania. Her English isn’t very good. She’s got two young children to bring up alone. She takes evening classes, and she also does a bit of office cleaning. She’s a very hard worker, and she probably doesn’t have a lot to smile about.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Annie. She thought of Krystyna, the Polish girl she had helped out of a jam earlier in the year. She still received letters or postcards from her every now and then. Krystyna’s English was improving, and she seemed to be finding her feet in the restaurant business back home in Krakow. Her last letter had talked of trying to get into chef’s school. Annie wished her well; Krystyna knew how hard life could be when you started out with so little.

‘Was Gavin Miller a particularly good teacher?’ she asked.

‘No, not really. I’m not saying he didn’t know his subjects, or that he wasn’t passionate about them. Don’t get me wrong. He knew his stuff, all right. But Gavin didn’t suffer fools gladly, and as you can imagine, he often had quite a lot of fools in his classes, especially the film classes. He tended to be very sarcastic, and irony’s not a good teaching tool. It tends to go over the students’ heads and rub them up the wrong way. They just feel as if they’re being insulted.’

‘But you say he had a passion for his subject. Is that essential for a good teacher?’

‘You need some sort of engagement, commitment, some sense of vocation, as with anything in life. Besides, why would you do it, otherwise? The pay’s not very good, and you don’t get much in the way of thanks.’

‘Sort of like my job,’ said Annie, pausing a moment before asking, ‘Why did he leave? It all seemed rather sudden. He’d only been here three years and he was, what, only about fifty-five?’

Lomax avoided her eyes. ‘Well, you know. It was time to part company. Move on. He... you know. These things happen.’

‘Actually, I don’t know what you mean, Mr Lomax. Was he fired? Made redundant?’

‘I suppose you could say that, yes.’

‘Which is it? There’s a difference, you know. Did you fire him for being a sarcastic teacher?’

‘Look, this is all very awkward, I must say.’

‘Awkward? Why?’

‘It was a most delicate situation.’

‘What did he do? Shag one of his students?’ Lomax blushed, and Annie wasn’t certain that it was entirely due to her language. ‘He did, didn’t he? That’s why you’re so unwilling to talk about it.’

‘I’m not unwilling. It’s just... well, the college would rather avoid any adverse publicity. It was an internal matter. We’ve put it behind us.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m the soul of discretion. This could be a murder inquiry, Mr Lomax. I think you’d better consider that seriously and weigh it against your concerns for the reputation of the college.’

Lomax seemed to shrink in his chair. ‘Yes, all right then. His dismissal was due to a sexual indiscretion.’ He shot her a glance. ‘But it wasn’t what you think. He didn’t have sex with the girl, well, not with either of them, really.’

Annie sighed and leaned back, notebook on her lap. ‘I think it would be best if you just told me about it, don’t you? You’re saying that Gavin Miller’s passion got him into trouble, not his sarcasm?’

Lomax sipped some coffee and eyed Annie sadly over his mug. ‘I don’t think there was a great deal of passion in what happened to Gavin,’ he said. ‘Not on his part, at least. That’s what was so unfair about it all, I suppose.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Gavin had no interest in young girls, especially girls like Kayleigh Vernon and Beth Gallagher, his accusers. They were just gum-chewing airheads to him.’

‘Gum-chewing airheads with big tits?’

‘Believe it or not, I doubt that really made a difference to Gavin,’ he said.

‘Why not? It does to most men.’

‘I think in some ways he was more interested in ideas than in life, in the dream rather than the reality. That was probably at the root of his problems.’

‘What problems?’

Lomax paused. ‘Before I go on, you have to understand that I wasn’t a member of the committee, or disciplinary board, that held the hearing and finally dismissed him. I was a mere outsider. As his friend and head of department, I was regarded as biased in his favour. If anything, I tried to defend him.’

‘What was his defence?’

Lomax slapped his desk. ‘That’s the problem. Right there. With this sort of thing, there really is no defence. It’s a “when did you stop beating your wife” situation.’

‘You’re saying that any lecturer who gets accused of sexual misconduct loses his job?’

‘Basically, yes. Pretty much. Sexual misconduct with a student, at any rate. That’s how it works. You could probably get away with murder and keep...’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Bad taste. That was stupid of me.’

‘That’s all right. Go on.’

‘Well, what I was meaning to say was that, in today’s climate, it’s the most heinous crime there is in the teaching environment. Next to plagiarism, perhaps. It not only has overtones of rape, but it also touches upon abuse of power and betrayal of trust. Put those things together and they can be a powerful combination. Very hard to forgive or forget.’

‘Or disprove?’

‘Practically impossible. Yes. I’m not saying that Gavin was a complete innocent, and he was certainly foolhardy, but in all the time I knew him, which admittedly was only two or three years, I had never known him behave in any other way than as a gentleman towards the opposite sex. He was, in fact, rather shy.’

‘So what actually happened? What was his “sexual indiscretion”?’

Lomax shrugged. ‘That’s just the problem. Nobody knows. They haven’t installed CCTV in all our offices. Not yet. Gavin said he put his arm around the Vernon girl to comfort her when she cried after failing an important test. She said he made a pass at her and indicated that if she slept with him, he would make sure her test result was modified accordingly.’