The Good Teacher Read online

  His students did well and they liked him, as did the rest of the staff, but he didn’t progress up the ladder any faster than the natural rate of reward for time in the job.

  He and Emily got together one evening after too many Friday-night drinks. It happened at her house in flurry of clothes, bumping doors and walls. In retrospect he was shocked, and presumed she wouldn’t talk to him ever again. But she more than talked to him. In fact, she pursued him with the kind of single-mindedness that made him think she’d got her information wrong. Had someone told her he was the heir to a mountainous fortune? Did she think he was related to the principal and could speed her career trajectory? His sexual performance had been unusually good on that drunken night and at times when he was alone on the bus or the train he wondered if he had unwittingly hit on some sort of physiological button that meant she couldn’t get enough of him. Whatever her reasons, they got together as a couple, a serious couple, much to the amazement of the staff. Then amazement turned to respect from the men and the women. He could hear them whispering ‘He must be awesome in the sack.’ Terrifying, really. He had to ignore it all and focus on something he’d never really considered: his career.

  He put his hand up for extra training and more sports coaching (because the principal liked sport) but all it did was take him away from the teaching that he loved. He went back to concentrating on the classroom and, looking back, that’s probably when he’d sown the seeds (the bloody great pods) for their eventual division. They’d had fights about it, which mostly involved Emily yelling at him and saying pretty unpleasant things about his character, but they got over it. Little did he know she was well over him. The sex stopped. The discussions about his work stopped. Emily was promoted in a number of areas. She began looking at real estate in suburbs that were well out of their bracket. Eventually, inevitably, he arrived home one evening to find his bags packed for him and Emily in the kitchen, telling him she couldn’t take it anymore, she needed a break, she needed more from a partner, and it was time they both moved on.

  With his bags packed, it was actually Brock who physically moved on: to friends’ places, ‘couch surfing’, which was an appropriate term because the couches owned by his friends were particularly uneven with something like a point break in the middle. He avoided Emily at school as much as possible, hiding in classrooms and toilets when she was nearby, staying at his desk during the lunch hour if he wasn’t on duty and spending his spare time looking for a job. And, of course, he was completely insane. Seeing her across the school courtyard made him want to cry out and beg to be taken back. He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, couldn’t focus. Something had to be done.

  He’d seen the ad for Stony Creek in the department newsletter, and in his daydream it seemed the sort of place he could disappear to temporarily and then re-emerge as a cashed-up headmaster, promoted well beyond Emily and suddenly a good prospect. She would want him back. Everyone would want him. The fact that she had since left teaching and gone into lucrative professional training kind of put the kibosh on the whole thing, but there was nothing to be done about that.

  So he’d applied for the position and then forgotten about it. When he was told he’d got an interview he was surprised and a little disappointed, because he knew he would have to attend. His intention, then, was to take a road trip, see the countryside, stuff up the interview, head back to the city and find a new job—in a bar if he had to.

  He didn’t know that anybody who applied got an interview at Stony Creek Primary, and anyone who got an interview usually got the job. The selection panel system didn’t really allow anyone to check up on the history of the candidates and the parent body didn’t care to look. They just wanted a teacher.

  Stony Creek was broadacre farming country: no hobby farms or tree changers, no tourism, no gourmet trails, no bespoke foods, no handmade furniture. Brock was told if over-endowed hedge-fund managers bought places in the area, they put managers on them and stayed away. Even though the community was always nice and fair-minded, they often made city owners look and feel silly. If, on one of their ‘weekends on the farm’, absentee farmers ever broke a piece of expensive machinery or their livestock got into the wrong paddock, everyone knew and always offered to help. But their help was a reminder that no self-respecting farmer would have made that kind of mistake and you, as a blow-in, were out of your depth.

  There were lots of hectares, big machines and not many people. And those people knew Brock had the job before he even got into his aged Corolla to make the long drive to get there. The student teacher was only in with a chance if Brock clearly and forcefully said no.

  So here he was, a bona fide principal, well paid and with a nice little school to work at, living in the principal’s house (the department charged him rent even though no one else wanted to rent it), in the village of Stony Creek, as far from anything interesting as you could imagine. There was a handful of streets, a pub, a church with a single-figure congregation, a mechanical business of sorts, a hall and a mob of houses. If you wanted to do a grocery shop, go to the club, track down the police, buy something other than a 6024 bearing, stay in a boxy motel, attend high school or see anyone you weren’t related to, you had to go to Fresh Well, some fifty kilometres away. And fifty kilometres of driving didn’t exactly take you to the centre of the known universe. Fresh Well was sparse and lonely, waiting for something: a mining boom, a housing boom or death—it was hard to tell.

  The principal’s house sat right next to the school: a simple brick building with nothing to recommend it except that it was shelter and cheap. It was part furnished: a bed, a couch and a few cupboards. All Brock added to the sum total was food: unhealthy, re-heatable, vegetable-free, single-man food. It was a significant inconvenience to him that there was no form of takeaway in Stony Creek. He was learning to cook steak and salad; he couldn’t eat cereal every night for dinner.

  He and Jennifer had had an earnest and functional introduction; she explaining meeting times and attendances and some of the projects the P&C held dear. She was also keen to know if there was anything he needed or anything he was dissatisfied with. He was already getting the impression that if he could handle a times table and a Level 3 reader he was over-qualified for the job. So the lie of the land was set out for him in the most polite manner: she was the boss and as long as he accepted that fact she and her committee would do whatever it took to keep him at the school.

  It was a relatively quick and cordial first meeting and he was pleased with the person he had pretended to be. But as Jennifer was stepping lightly down the stairs to leave, she said: ‘See you later.’ For some unknown reason he had stupidly, jokingly said: ‘Not if I see you first.’ It wasn’t something he normally said and he wasn’t sure where it came from. She turned and looked at him quizzically, and for a terrible moment he thought she’d taken it as an insult. He hadn’t even made it to the end of his first meeting with the head of the P&C before putting her offside. Perhaps his stay would be short after all. But then she smiled, a small coquettish smile that nearly set him on his backside, and walked off, fluttering a little flirty wave behind her.

  That waving hand stayed with him for hours, recurring in the image bank of his brain every spare moment—and there were plenty of spare moments. His body knew exactly what it meant even if his brain was still trying to decipher it.

  But it wasn’t until weeks later, when Jennifer had asked to see him just before the P&C meeting to ‘go over some of the proposals for the meeting’, that a possibility began to form in the hard-to-access part of his mind. He hadn’t meant it to. He’d tried not to think about her, concentrating instead on the new job and realising he was actually enjoying it, he was good at it and he had a group of nice kids who were keen to learn. It should have been more than enough to occupy him.

  He had been at his desk when she arrived, doing his best impression of efficiency and officiousness, all folders and pens and coloured tabs. He stood for her when she entered, already talking a
bout the meeting and pointing out some of the paperwork. She was in a plain skirt, a shirt and flat shoes, hardly alluring, but something about her—a smell, her forceful nervous energy—powerfully aroused him. Her hair shone as, still talking, she bent over the desk in front of him to lay out some diagrams for the proposed learning area. He was nodding and ‘hmm hmming’ and then with career-threatening bravado, as if he was the sort of man who gambled his career every other day, he reached out for her buttock. The distance his hand had to travel seemed almost endless, but not once did a voice in his head suggest constraint or retreat. It wasn’t a half-hearted pat; it was a grab with attendant squeeze. And the second he’d done it he was suddenly breathless with the realisation of his madness. But what a buttock it was.

  She didn’t smack his hand away or leap back screaming. She actually tried to keep talking; her strategy, in keeping with the unspoken deal they’d struck, was obviously to ignore his mistake and move on. He released his grip and she stopped talking and stood frozen, still bent over the desk. Then she turned and looked at him, her pretty face flushed and a little panicked. ‘Brock.’ It was not a question or a reprimand, but a simple statement, as if she had been present at the spelling bee he’d conducted that afternoon. The choice was clear: sink to his knees and beg forgiveness, or go for broke. He ran his trembling hand down her back and she was up and grappling with him, their mouths locked. Very soon she was hiking that skirt up and he was fighting with his fly and they were at it, testing the very fortitude of his pine veneer desk and making a good case as to why he should keep a cleaner work area.

  When it was rather speedily over, she burrowed in her handbag and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Evil pleasures,’ she giggled, embarrassed, and lit one up. She blew smoke like it was more exhilarating than sex, pulling her shirt around her like an unselfconscious teenager and smiling at him. The sight of her smoking was almost more incongruous and more arousing than his recent vision of her. What else was this woman capable of?

  And then headlights appeared in the parking area. The lights swung round, briefly spotlighting the principal’s office, sending Brock and Jennifer scurrying for their clothes, stubbing the cigarette in the bin and waving wildly while opening a back window to force the smoke out. Brock found a can of air freshener and sprayed too much around the room, gambling that it would be better for them to be suspicious of air freshener than suspicious of smoke.

  And then the Green woman, mother of Isaac, was walking across the playground with Angela Crown, always early, short on any real things to do. Jennifer emerged from the tiny bathroom, morphed back into the president of the P&C.

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  She rolled her eyes a little and gathered up her folders.

  ‘Give us a kiss.’

  She looked at him like she’d never been near him. ‘No. No. No. Brock. That is over and done with.’ More headlights began arriving and she left the room without looking back.

  In a minute, they were bustling and clucking and laughing their way into the room. Jennifer was long gone from him and all he could do was sit with them and savour the excitement of the first grab of her behind and the punted-on acquiescence.

  SARAH

  Sarah drove at pace, muttering to herself. There were no other cars on the road and it was moonless and very dark. All she could see were a few faint stars not shielded by cloud and the distant lights of tractors working on the plain. Even the hares, foxes and kangaroos were reluctant to be near her, staying hidden in the long grass alongside the road.

  Apart from the shock and the unease, there was another facet to this incident that was troubling her. By some freakish chance they had attracted a teacher, a male teacher at that, who was actually good at his job. The children liked him, enjoyed their time at school and genuinely seemed to be learning things. Unheard of at Stony Creek Primary. In the past, apparently, they’d sometimes liked the teacher and sometimes enjoyed school and occasionally learned things, but never the holy triumvirate, all at the same time. Brock was that mythical thing: a good teacher.

  But what if Jennifer tired of Brock? Or Andy found out about them? If Brock was made to move on it could destroy the children’s education. They’d never get someone as good again. They’d never get someone half as good. The scenarios got worse and worse.

  And then she remembered that Jennifer and Andy’s daughter, Madison, was babysitting. How could she explain coming home early? How could she look into her face and trot out some terrible and transparent falsehood?

  They hadn’t used Madison before, but Ian was working and her meeting usually went for at least a couple of hours, including chat, and it was always nice to give young people in the area the chance to earn some money away from their own farm. Madison was a pretty little thing who’d got into some trouble and Sarah felt she was being supportive and showing she wasn’t judgmental by employing her.

  The best plan she could come up with was to sneak into the house and go straight to bed. Then she could get Ian, who should be home by now, to ask Madison to stay on, telling her that Sarah was unwell. That way she wouldn’t have to explain herself (which she would not be able to), wouldn’t have to pretend to be sick (which she was very bad at) and Madison would still get a night’s work.

  She switched her lights to parkers, crossed the front ramp, wound her way in through the front paddock and glided into the garage. She sat listening for a moment in case Madison came out to greet her, then got out of the car and, without turning on the lights, felt her way along the wall and tiptoed up to the back door. Through a window she could see a mirror that reflected the lounge room, where Damien and Julia were quietly watching TV. They should have been in bed but perhaps Madison was spoiling them because it was her first time. She went to the side door, opened the flyscreen and then the timber door, wary of creaks and squeaks. Then she padded, like a burglar, down the hall to the bedroom, trying not to breath too loudly, confident that at least one thing had gone right tonight.

  She pushed open her bedroom door soundlessly but there were muffled noises coming from within the room. Unmistakeable noises. For an instant, Sarah’s brain was confused. How had Jennifer and Brock got to her house, and bed, before her? She turned on the light and there was Ian and a woman, caught in that moment when the light exposed them but before their motion ceased. Even then, Sarah couldn’t understand how Jennifer had managed to get back to Sarah’s house and into bed with her husband before she even got home. And why Ian? Wasn’t she satisfied with Brock? What more did that woman want? And then as Ian rolled away, grabbing for clothes, Sarah saw the surprised face of Madison and the reality hit.

  Ian was now half-dressed and squeaking in desperation, but Sarah was already in the wardrobe retrieving a large suitcase. She didn’t have any words. Her only action was to pack a bag, get the kids and get out.

  JENNIFER

  It was time to close the meeting for more than one reason. Elise Taylor, who liked to yell at every opportunity, was pointing behind Jennifer and screaming that there was smoke coming from the principal’s office, just as the alarms went off. She felt Brock grab her thigh under the table (not in a good way) and they both spun round to see a dense doona of smoke pushing out from under the door. Brock was up, running towards the door. By the time someone yelled ‘Don’t open that door’, he had turned the handle and yanked it, causing the office to combust, fireballing in love with the added oxygen, sending him reeling backwards and the women running to protect him.

  ‘Everyone out,’ Jennifer said. ‘Someone ring the fire service.’

  But no one was listening. They were already out, herding Brock to safety. Jennifer hadn’t been listening to herself either. She’d said the words on impulse, her mind overcome with the sight of the fire, Brock being blown back, and the multiple thoughts of how it had happened, how it might be explained and who could be blamed. Jennifer wondered if she should try to save something, but what was m
ost precious? Books, computers, school projects, the fish?

  And then Angela Crown was urgently tapping her on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Jennifer. It’s just a building and a few kids’ paintings.’ Jennifer wanted to say: ‘And a fabulous moment in my memory.’ But she didn’t, she just followed quickly and dutifully.

  Outside, they stood and watched as the building went up far quicker than their imaginations had ever forecast while every woman took turns to check on Brock’s wellbeing. He was singed—moustache, eyebrows, eyelashes and hair—and had gained a look of surprise, but was otherwise unaffected. He tried to catch her eye but she turned away and did her best to be busy.

  The schoolroom had been nearing its fiftieth birthday, which meant it was made up of more than enough dry, aged timber for the best bonfire. It took minutes to go from functional building to a pile of searing red ash. Betty was trying to work one of the fire extinguishers and Elise’s husband, Owen, had arrived from across the road with his water tank and pump unit. Elise was bawling at him that he needed to put the fire out, as if this was a piece of information he’d missed. But it didn’t change anything. Nothing could be saved.

  Jennifer was suddenly clear-headed and embarrassed at her inaction. She checked that the phone call to the fire captain had been made and then walked around ensuring that everyone else was safe and calm.

  And they were surprisingly calm. There was much chatter about what could have caused the fire and how come they hadn’t smelled smoke earlier and what it would have been like if it happened during a school day, but there were no tears or any real signs of distress. Jennifer smiled at them and put her hand reassuringly on their backs, then realised the only one stressed about the whole incident was her and they could see it. She felt pathetic and vulnerable, two things she never felt. There were just too many new sensations today.