Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

‘No, no, no. Nothing of the kind. I suppose I just wanted to meet with you to reassure you that we’re doing all we can from our side. My door’s always open, and if there’s any way in which we can partner with you with regard to young Laurie then let’s explore it.’

Annabelle picks her bag up from the floor. ‘Is that it, then?’

Mr Hughes smiles directly at her. ‘Certain lifestyles are more attractive to juveniles, and there’s no denying the cultural cachet of the ethnic way of life. It’s just that I don’t want Laurie to lose his focus any more than you do.’

‘You don’t want what?’ He feels Annabelle’s hand on his arm.

‘We have to go now.’ Annabelle stands up and gestures that he should also stand.

‘We must work together if we’re going to arrest this issue of Laurie’s academic free-fall.’ Mr Hughes continues to smile. ‘Laurie’s an intelligent boy, but like so many of today’s youngsters he’s confused about the options that are open to him. He needs to be nudged gently down the right path. They all do.’

Annabelle loops her arm through his and guides him towards the door. She looks over her shoulder.

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Hughes.’

Before he has a chance to say anything further, he finds himself outside the headmaster’s office and Annabelle is pulling the door closed behind them.

‘He’s not worth it, Keith. Pick your battles, okay?’

He sits in the pub around the corner from the office and waits for him to arrive. A large flat screen TV hangs on the wall, but for some reason it appears to be tuned into a German sports channel and is presently showing table tennis. The place is full of the type of suited men who think that it is acceptable to parade up and down airports or train corridors bellowing business details and dinner arrangements into their Bluetooth attachments for everybody to hear. Mercifully, it is the end of the working day so these buffoons are now clutching their expensive glasses of plonk and braying directly at each other with their champagne-coarsened voices, but it makes them no less offensive to his eyes and ears. He made sure that he had first ordered a pint, and found a seat, before taking out his mobile phone and dialling the number. Clive Wilson seemed somewhat taken aback to be receiving a call, and he could hear him trying his best to appear calm and friendly as he agreed to pop around to the pub in about twenty minutes. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to play things with his boss, but it was clear that after their last encounter there needed to be some kind of resolution. Clive Wilson had not indicated that he would call, but he was disappointed that, in spite of the way in which their last meeting had concluded, his boss had not seen fit to seize the initiative and mend bridges with a senior executive. He takes another mouthful of beer, and then looks at his watch, and then suddenly Clive Wilson is standing before him and apologising for having turned up a few minutes late. His boss offers his hand, which he shakes. He moves to get to his feet.

‘No, no. Sit down, Keith. I’ll get myself a drink. You take it easy. I won’t be a second.’ He watches as Clive Wilson fiddles around in his pocket for money, and then his boss turns and begins to jostle his way to the bar.

After the encounter with Mr Hughes, Annabelle had suggested that the two of them grab a quick coffee at a French pâtisserie around the corner from the school. He agreed with her that he needed to calm down, and once they reached Le Fumoir he secured them both a table while she went to the counter to order their lattes. As he waited, he looked around and found himself formulating a short spiel for Annabelle about how the place appeared to be full of media types who looked like they were discussing whether this year they should go white-water rafting in Tanzania or off-piste skiing in Chile, but he decided that given the present circumstances it was probably best to bite his tongue and keep his cynicism to himself.

‘Well?’ said Annabelle, placing the coffees down on the table and then looking directly at him. ‘That was pleasant.’

The lattes were served in what appeared to be skinny fluted vases and he stared at them and tried to work out whether to overlook this nonsense or demand a proper cup.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, no problem.’ He decided that there were bigger issues at stake than the coffee cups, but he made a mental note that he wouldn’t be coming back here. ‘I was just thinking, maybe we should take him out of that bloody school.’

‘And do what? He’s only got six months to go and you want to move him to prove what exactly? That you won’t be spoken down to?’

‘You really think Laurie is being helped by that kind of atmosphere? That guy’s a jerk.’

‘Keith, we’re not moving him, okay. We need to do something, but not that.’

‘Well then you’re right, he should spend some time with me. But a few days isn’t going to do anything. I should start looking for a bigger flat, and if he’s serious about not going to Barcelona then I will take him to the West Indies. Maybe over Christmas?’

‘You don’t have to do all of this, you know.’

‘I’d like to.’ He pauses. ‘Maybe this will give you time to get back together with Bruce.’

‘I beg your pardon? Is that meant to be funny? Because if it is, I have some news for you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘I just don’t know how you could have been with a guy who seriously thinks that we need a set of citizenship rules, or whatever it was that he said. All that bullshit about reclaiming patriotism for the left. He comes over like a member of the BNP.’

‘You only met him once.’

‘And that was enough.’

‘Have you finished your rant?’ She stares at him. ‘Well?’

‘It’s not a rant.’

‘Good, then I’ll assume that you’ve finished. Do you think that we might talk about our son?’

‘That complete arse of a headmaster was trying to shift responsibility from his lazy, ignorant teachers and put it on to us, the parents.’

‘Well not all the parents are paragons of virtue. Hitting their children right outside the school gates, or not bothering to dress them properly for school, or not even caring if they go to school at all. And that time when I tried to say something at the PTA meeting they practically lynched me.’

‘You mean the black parents practically lynched you.’

‘I didn’t say anything about black or white.’

‘Well it didn’t help that you stood up and started talking about kids kissing their teeth and how you couldn’t understand their accents, or have you forgotten what you said? Maybe you’d prefer if the kids were all called Fergus or Becky, and their mothers spent all their time chasing between Sainsbury’s and the gym?’

She stares at him. ‘Why are you doing this? Turning it into something that it isn’t. All I’m trying to say is that some of the parents are pretty damn useless, and almost all of them are time-poor.’

‘“Time-poor”? What does that mean?’

‘It means they’re too busy to put their kids first. They’re not our type of people.’

‘There you go again! “Our type of people?” Are you deliberately trying to wind me up?’

‘I can’t put it any simpler than that, so if you don’t like it you’ll just have to take it on the chin. I don’t mean anything offensive, and I’m certainly not defending that idiot Mr Hughes, but it’s unfair to suggest that there are not a few good teachers who are trying. All kids need some kind of help at home, but some of the kids in that school have no bloody supervision, and no wonder Laurie finds himself having to mix with delinquents.’