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Bunfight in Blue by Martin Badger
Oh Lord! It’s Trudy’s annual bunfight next week and I suppose I’ll
have to go.
Nobody seems to remember exactly when it started but I suppose
this will be number sixteen or seventeen. Something like that. I’ve been
going since I started at Vermont Comp ( or Vomit Comp as it’s more usually
known ) and that was six years ago. It’s held in her garden, weather
permitting, but of course the weather often doesn’t permit and we all
squeeze into her living-room, gripping our sad little plates and plastic cups
of orange squash and making pitiful small talk. By tradition there is no
alcohol save for the dreadful wine Trudy herself makes by the bucket full.
By five o’ clock I’m gagging for a slug of something and when I finally get
away I usually head off for The Highwayman and sozzle myself.
Missing in action this year will be Gerard. Poor Gerard. Dropped dead
at the chalk face just before Christmas. Right there in the middle of the
Geography class. Heart attack, of course. Bit of a clam was Gerard. Really
kept himself to himself and I felt I was just getting to know him a bit when
the poor bugger collapsed. Just fifty-four. I’ve heard endless playground
jokes about Gerard making geography dead boring.
Also missing will be Henry, who’s still recovering from major surgery.
But poor Penny will be back , of course. She took even longer than we
expected to get over a pretty major nervous crisis brought on by that
bloody stanley knife incident in the library. Unless, of course, she was
swinging the lead a bit to get a few extra weeks. Nobody would blame her if
she was. Well, I certainly wouldn’t. It’s Us against Them and we are pretty
hugely outnumbered. If, in addition, if you are like Penny – anorexically thin,
pallid of complexion and with a lisp and very few classroom survival skills –
you can be excused for grasping at the chance to sit quietly in the garden
for a few extra weeks before you go back and get called a frigid bitch or
something worse to your face.
Part of the fun – one of Trudy’s favourite words, but now increasingly
used ironically – is that she nominates a theme each year. A sort of motif.
Last year it was, if you can believe it, “Farmyard”. Reg, whom stress drove
mental years ago, spent all afternoon quacking like a bloody duck and got
right up everyone’s nose. Liza risked incurring the wrath of the very serious
and very Christian Deputy Head Tom Underman by dressing up as a tart,
fishnet tights and all. When asked by Trudy what the farmyard connection
was, she replied she was going to wear the same clothes when she got laid
in the summer. It might have been erotic if it hadn’t been Liza. Poor devil.
This year the theme is “Blue.” I certainly won’t be wracking my brains
over it. I’ll put on a blue shirt and blue jeans and that’s it. It’s enough that
I turn up without having to think about the bloody thing in advance. Some
people will probably mull it over, though.
. . . . .
Miraculously it hasn’t rained. Actually, it’s a pretty decent day by
English standards. Bit chilly, but sky nice and blue and forecast promising.
I’m there looking like the Marlboro Man in a denim ensemble and, in fact, I
do light up almost right away. I’m still nervous – as is everyone, I imagine –
over the incidents on the last day of term. The leavers, the lads and lasses
who are saying goodbye to Vomit for the rest of their lives and settling
down to some fairly serious drug related crime, went on an absolute
rampage and trashed everything they could find. Anyone crazy enough to
leave their vehicle in the staff car-park on the last day of term deserves
what’s coming, of course, but it went way beyond that this time. I was in
the library with Penny and John Statton and we thought we’d had it. We
locked the doors and phoned the police but we really thought our number
was up. They were hammering away and screaming about ramming a chair leg
up Statton ( they reckon he’s gay ) and cutting my willie off ( don’t ask ). At
one point a brick smashed through the window and Penny became completely
hysterical. All over the building there were similar survival stories. Except
not everyone survived. Roy Fuller stopped half a brick with his nose and had
to go to A and E, and ,most despicable of all, they killed the caretaker’s
dog, Benji. The police took twenty-five minutes to arrive and they were
twenty- five of the longest minutes of my life.
Grace, who teaches English and Drama, has made herself a blue-wave
costume. It’s a sort of maritime collar and it looks like her head is floating.
She is well-named is Grace, for she does have a certain grace and style
which most of us lack. That’s what enables her to survive, I imagine. Oh,
she has her bad days, of course, but for the most part she floats above
things with a smile on her face and a certain detachment which nearly
everyone envies. I suspect she must be smoking something calming, but I
have no evidence of this. In fact, very little is known about her private life.
Like most teachers, she must be a hopeless loser, one imagines, but she
certainly doesn’t give the impression that she sees herself in that light.
She’s certainly whipped herself up a neat little blue number there.
Paradoxically, she must be the one amongst us least likely to drown. I
wonder what she was doing during those mad minutes on the last day?
Nobody seems to know. Maybe she rapidly made herself an invisibility
costume.
P.E. Dan has predictably come as a porn mag. He’s got page three
girls stuck on him and just in case anyone has missed the essential blueness
of his ‘costume’ he’s written I AM BLUE! in felt tip on the pictures. Of
course, he is from the P.E. Department so one can’t expect miracles.
Of the rest of us, Josh is the only one to have made an effort. He’s
wearing a lugubrious mask with the mouth turned down, indicating his deep
misery. A speech bubble proclaims ‘I’m so blue without you, baby’. This is
presumably Josh’s weird sense of humour in action. He and his ex-wife were
deeply unhappy and she finally walked out on him, taking a huge amount
from the house with her. One day Josh set off for Vomit and when he got
back about five in the evening he found the house denuded. She’d had a
truck call round just after he left and fitted in sofa, chairs, kitchen table,
the lot…As he was standing there contemplating the nearly empty
structure, his mobile rang and when he answered it his wife’s voice said
“Serves you right, you bastard!” Anyway, he’s definitely a good deal
chirpier with Veronica off the scene and I gather a reconciliation is not on
his horizon.
Oh dear, Trudy is heading my way bearing the dreaded bottle of
wine. And my squash glass is empty so I’m fresh out of excuses.
“Dan, you naughty boy! Smoking again. Hope it won’t spoil your
appreciation of my wine. It’s called Je t’aime, you know.” I had known, of
course, since she had told us already. Very proud of her wine is Trudy. Lord
knows why, it is truly awful stuff. Even San Asensio or the roughest of
retsinas puts it to shame. I am not one of those stupid wine snobs like Roy
Fuller but Trudy’s stuff really is the pits. Last year I saw Sean O’ Grady
spitting his out onto the grass. That’s the advantage of being outdoors, of
course. That and the fact you can have a sly puff, since Trudy very
definitely does not permit smoking indoors. Experimentally I sip Je-t’aime.
To my amazement, it’s pretty good. Trudy has really outshone herself this
year.
Trudy is still a year or two off retirement. She used to be Deputy
Headmistress in the old school but when the amalgamation came she was
sort of kicked upstairs and given the title Head of Wing. This is completely
meaningless and there is bugger-all for her to do except sit in her office
reading the papers and making minor adjustments to the timetable. She has
a remarkable nose for trouble and can see it coming a mile off, heading in
the opposite direction as fast as her little legs can carry her. If Trudy had
been in Phuket she’d have survived that tidal wave, all right. One thing I will
say for her: she’s not a bad old stick at all. She’ll listen if you’ve got a
problem and help if she can. I think the way the profession has gone in the
last twenty years or so really saddens her. She really feels for us, as if we
were family. Every death seems to take something out of her.
Nicola is here, of course. Worse luck. She’s at the bottom of the
garden, where last year I emptied a glass over the fence. Still looks good,
which is what pisses me off most of all. She’s still too young for the strain
of the job to have etched pain-lines into her face. Nicola has always
reminded me of the actress Hillary Swank ( a personal favourite ). I really
thought she fancied me during her first term and when I thought there
was very little risk of getting shot down – when I thought ‘For Christ’s sake
Dan, what are you waiting for? – I made my move.
Boy did she shoot me down! She really Sir Douglas Badered me.
There followed the Cold War period when we hardly spoke and then she
started again. But I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself twice. She might
get her jollies that way, but no way was I going to fall for it a second time.
Wise old Trudy obviously knew what had been going on because one day she
took me aside and said “Good for you, Dan. That Nicola is nothing but
trouble.” It’s amazing what Trudy notices really. Of course, it’s not as if
she’s distracted by having any work to do or anything, so there’s plenty of
time for observation.
“Such a pity old Howard can’t be here to enjoy this.”
It’s Roger Meldrew, smiling his deprecating little smile. Nice chap.
Goes through hell in the classroom, of course. He was a great friend of
Howard Mathewson, who died in a car accident a few years back. They had
a lot in common including, bizarrely, a liking for Wolverhampton Wanderers
Football Club and an interest in steam engines.
“I suppose he would,” I say, wondering why anyone might actually
enjoy one of Trudy’s dos.
“I often wonder about him, you know.” Easy to tell Rog is getting
maudlin. He surely isn’t going to advance once more his theory that Howard
killed himself, is he?
“I reckon that was no accident, you know.” It seems he is. Doesn’t he
remember that we have been all through this before?
“You think he topped himself?” I play along because I know it helps
him to get it off his chest.
“I do. I mean, O.K. it was a vile winter night but Howard was a bloody
good driver. And he crashed into a tree when he was absolutely pelting
along. Why would Howard be doing a speed like that with black ice on the
road?”
“Why indeed?” I ask. “Then there’s the business about his affairs.”
“Exactly, all his affairs in order. Everything absolutely apple-pie. Oh,
he accelerated into that tree, all right. Couldn’t take the farting any more,
you see.”
Yes, you heard that right. Flatulence is part and parcel of teaching.
Many kids seem to be able to just unload whenever they want and do it
because they find it endlessly amusing. It is particularly embarrassing for
the female teachers, often making them blush scarlet. But plenty of the
men don’t like it either. Howard’s lessons were virtual fartfests it seems,
with thugs like Mulligan, Browning, Flynn and Brewster vying with each
other to pass the gas. They knew that there was no sanction of any kind
and Howard knew it too. It had got to the point where he only had to say
“Let’s open our books…” and the first ones would echo through the class. I
was right next door and the sound would set my lot off too.
“Is she all right?” I ask suddenly, just before Roger can tell me
about his last chat with Howard.
“Who?” he turns round and notices, as I do, P.E. Dan helping Nicola to
a seat. “Oh, Nicola had a bad turn?”
“It looks like it.” Two or three are crowding around now.
“Let’s see what the problem is, shall we?” I say. I pick up a sandwich
on my way. They are much better this year, too. This one is smoked salmon
and cucumber. Penny told me earlier there had even been some caviar but
they’d gone before I arrived.
“Feel so dizzy,” I hear Nicola murmur. She’s sitting with her head
lowered and P..E. Dan is saying “Just take it easy, you’ll soon be all right.” I
think how absurd he looks with his stick-on page three girls, but I couldn’t
help admiring the way he copped a feel of Nicola as he got her to the chair.
She must be feeling bad or she’d have beaten him off.
“God, her lips are a bit blue,” I hear Penny mutter at my elbow. I turn
and notice she’s even greyer than last week. That last day riot just about
did for her.
“Blue?”
“Yes, can’t you see?”
“Well, yes, I suppose they are a bit.”
“I must admit I’m not feeling all that wonderful myself,” Roger
Meldew says.
“Really? What’s the problem?”
“My heart has started going a bit.”
“Tachycardia?”
“Aye, stress I suppose.”
Almost certainly. He’ll be all right in a couple of days. Oddly though,
there is a slight bluish tinge to his face too. I see that Penny has noticed
it too. Roger sees her look of concern and says “What’s the matter?” I
shake my head slightly unconvincingly.
“Would you like us to phone an ambulance, Nicky?” suggests Trudy.
Bit hypocritical calling her Nicky because I know Trudy doesn’t like her one
little bit.
“God no, I’ll be all right. Just… a bit dizzy. I’ll go and get some…I’ll
just pop inside and splash some…water…” She was probably going to say
“Splash some water on my face” as it was more likely than, say, “on my arse”
but we never find out because she stands up, takes a couple of hesitant
steps and then just collapses on the grass.
People are slow to react, which should have told me something. We
stand around looking confused and then Trudy says “I’ll ring 999” and grabs
her mobile from her bag. She moves away from us as people always do for
some reason when they use their mobiles. Moments later we hear her giving
the address and explaining one of the party has been taken ill very
suddenly.
P.E. Dan is on his knees by Nicola’s side, doubtless wishing no-one else
was around. He’d be going for a breast massage all right. Except Nicola
really isn’t looking well at all. This impression is confirmed when he yells
“She’s hardly got any pulse!”
Josh is on the scene now. He takes off that stupid mask and says “I
know a bit about first aid” and drops down beside P.E. Dan on the grass. It
is only when I see Josh’s black face looking normal that I realise that
almost nobody else’s face is.
“What’s going on?” I say. “Everybody’s gone blue!” Not bright blue,
certainly, but definitely a bluish tinge. Doesn’t that mean cyanosis or
something? Oxygen not reaching where it should? Isn’t it very serious?
Suddenly Roger starts having serious breathing problems. He’s
gasping and clutching his chest. I remember he has to be careful with
bronchitis and is probably vulnerable to whatever is causing this. He looks
bad and I take his elbow and say “Rog, don’t worry, the ambulance is on its
way.”
Penny is quite hysterical now, though whether from illness or just the
situation I don’t know. Grace is holding up, but she’s taken off her wave
costume and is trying to fan herself with a newspaper. She’s sweating. I
manage to say “What’s going on, Grace?” in sort of choking voice.
“We’ve been poisoned, obviously.”
“Poisoned? That’s….”on the point of saying “ridiculous” I take a look
around and change to …”you’re right. Where’s that bloody ambulance?” I’m
feeling it now. Heart hammering like it’s going to burst.
“It’s not coming. I don’t believe Trudy rang. She was just…talking into
the phone…” Grace looks ready to check out now. If ever there was a time
for her to disappear this is it. She tries to get her mobile out but drops it.
Then she herself drops and starts to scrabble with the bloody thing.
Manages to punch in the vital numbers. The sweat blinds me as I hear her
voice coming from a mile away.
“It’s much better this way, Dan, believe me. Better for all of us.”
“Trudy! Christ, what have you done?”
Trudy looks down at Grace, who has miraculously managed to phone
before passing out.
“I couldn’t bear it any longer, Dan. Watching us all suffer with each
passing year. Watching my friends get more haggard and careworn.
Wondering who wouldn’t survive till the next do. I decided this was the
kindest way. A few minutes of discomfort and that would be that. It was in
the sandwiches and the wine. Everybody’s had plenty. I think.”
Many people have gone down now. I suppose it depends on how much
they’ve eaten and drunk. But we’re all for it. I realise that walking holiday in
France is off as I drop to the floor, Trudy’s face and voice just a blur now.
I remember chemistry was Trudy’s subject just as the ambulance siren
blares. My face in the grass, I think “She’s probably right…kindest way” and
then I slip away into the long break. No more worrying about those Back to
School signs in department store windows.
ENDS
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