Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

So he was vulnerable. Extraordinarily so. And he was having a difficult time, as you probably know. But though the gun worried me, I’m not sure that even then, at the time I saw it, he had decided he was going to use it. You’re going to ask me why he was carrying it then, aren’t you? Before the shooting I would have repeated to you his story. I believed him, mainly because I wanted to. Obviously, though, he was lying about it not working. Maybe the safety catch was on when he squeezed the trigger or something and that’s why it didn’t depress. I mean, is that how guns work? I’m not an expert on these things. He didn’t show the gun to his sixth-formers either. I know he didn’t because I asked – subtly of course – Alex Mills, one of the pupils that Samuel and I shared, when he was helping me clear away after class. At the time I was relieved. I assumed Samuel had seen sense and that the matter was at an end. It didn’t occur to me that he’d never had any intention of showing the gun in class.

So why did he have it? I’ll tell you what I think. You heard about TJ’s behaviour, am I right? You heard about the children and how they treated him. Most important, I think, you heard about the football match. They broke his leg, Inspector. Deliberately. Oh I know, I know, they claimed it was an accident and the headmaster believed them but he must have been the only one in the school who did. If indeed he really did. But can you imagine? These thugs had been hounding him for months and for a while Samuel might have been able to convince himself that it was all harmless – traumatic but physically harmless – but then they snap his fibula.

Have you ever broken your leg, Inspector?

A bone then? An arm perhaps?

Well, I have and let me tell you that it hurts. It’s agony. I don’t handle pain very well – I’d not make a very good woman, I’m afraid! – and Samuel didn’t strike me as the stoical type either. So he was scared, Inspector. That’s what I’m trying to say. Maybe the gun… I mean, he said it was his grandfather’s. So just having it, carrying it with him, maybe it made him feel better. Safer. Less vulnerable. For all I know, he’d been carrying it since the football match. But like I say, that doesn’t mean he intended to use it.

Something changed though. I was watching him, like I said, and at the beginning of the next week, the week of the shooting, something most definitely changed. I told you that I thought he was scared but I also think he kept it fairly well hidden. Like it was simmering. You know, like a pan on a gentle heat. But then, come Monday. Well. All of a sudden it was bubbling over. There was no hiding it any more. You only had to talk to him. You only had to watch him for a moment. Although, saying that, no one did. No one spoke to him. No one paid him any attention. He was Samuel, after all. The only person the teachers of this school go further out of their way to avoid is Mr Travis, and in the headmaster’s case it is for entirely different reasons.

I spoke to him though. I was watching him. I noticed that the clothes he was wearing on the Monday were the ones he’d gone home in on the Friday. He had two suits, from what I could tell, one beige, one brown, and he never wore the same suit two days in a row. He changed his shirt every day too. And his tie. You wouldn’t notice unless, well, unless you’d noticed but he had a strict rotation. Mondays it was one combination, Tuesdays it was another. There was no great diversity of style. I suspect the shirts had come five in a pack. The ties likewise. Not that I’m snobbish about such things. The clothes maketh the man, that’s what they say, isn’t it? Well Al Capone wore spats and Jesus Christ dressed in rags, which pretty much settles that argument in my mind. But I know how important such things are to other people, to the younger generation in particular. Just look at TJ, for instance. If he’s not in a track-suit, he’s wearing an Italian-made sports jacket and a tie with a knot the size of my fist. Like the footballers do when they’re giving interviews after a game. So that’s why I noticed it with Samuel. He was particular about such things, it seemed to me, but not for aesthetic reasons. It was as though he had established a system in order that he would no longer have to think about that system. On Mondays he wore suit A with shirt B and tie C. He just did.

So I realised immediately on the Monday. He was wearing Friday’s outfit and Friday’s wrinkles. Saturday’s and Sunday’s too, by the look of things. There were rings around his eyes, like a cartoonist would draw on a character who’s just been beaten in a fight, and a web of red lines stretching across the white. What with the state of his clothes, I’d say he’d slept – if he’d slept at all – slouched in a chair or on the sofa or in the seat of his car.

It’s the end of first break and he’s drifting out of the staffroom when I put my hand on his shoulder. As he turns, he spins and steps backwards. He stumbles on a chair leg and almost falls. TJ sees it happen and gives a snort. He makes some comment, some crack about having a good trip, and then he’s gone and Samuel and I are the only ones left in the room.

Is everything okay? I ask him. Samuel, I say. He’s watching the doorway, you see. Samuel, I say again. Is everything okay? You seem… well… I don’t finish the sentence.

What? he says. Oh. Yes fine. Excuse me. And he tries to slip by but I take his arm. Again he flinches. Again he pulls away. What? he says. What is it?

Nothing, I say. I’m startled by his tone. It’s aggressive. Defensive. Not like Samuel at all. I mean, usually when he spoke he was never anything but polite. To a fault really. He was courteous but courteous like a waiter in a fancy restaurant, one who doesn’t necessarily own the place but certainly wouldn’t offer you a table if he did.

Nothing, I say again. I just wondered, that’s all. Whether everything was all right.

He laughs. A snort, really, like TJ’s. Oh yes, he says. Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful. And he tries to get past me again.

I don’t let him. I don’t know why but it seems incredibly important all of a sudden that I talk to him, that I find out what’s bothering him. So I reach and place an arm across the doorway.

Samuel looks at me. He glares at me. He says excuse me again but in a way that means you better had.

Samuel, please, I say. If there’s something the matter you should talk about it.

And he laughs again, that same derisive grunt. He says, that’s reasonable. I mean, you’d think that talking would help, wouldn’t you?

I say, sorry?

But he doesn’t elaborate. He just says excuse me again and this time I let him go. There doesn’t seem to be any other choice.

It was only afterwards that I remembered about the gun. I’m walking to my classroom and my innards give a sudden lurch, like it’s just occurred to me I’ve left something burning in the oven back home. I stop and I think and I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about. He was upset about something, that was all. Something personal that wasn’t any of my business. I had no right to pry and he had every right to be angry with me. And he’d explained about the gun. He’d demonstrated to me that it didn’t even work. But when I thought about that, I thought about the expression I’d caught on his face after he had pointed the gun at TJ, that little flash of jubilation, and I grew anxious in spite of myself.

I asked around. Other teachers, even one or two of the pupils I trusted not to make a fuss. But no one had noticed anything strange. Like I said before, most of them barely noticed Samuel at all as a rule. No, nothing odd, they told me if they had seen him. No odder than usual. And they would laugh and I would smile and that would be the end of that.