I learn that Mr B, my form master and mathematics teacher when I was a first former, is no more. When I was twelve I was terrified of this man. What do I remember of him?
On my first day at school, talking to some other boys - who I had been at primary school with, but who had left to go to Grundwich a year earlier, when our classes were being allocated. "You don't want to get Mr B - he's a bastard." And a sense of confirmed fatalism when my name came up for his class.
Our
classroom still had wooden desks all facing the teacher's desk. How did
he address us? The one recurring phrase that I do remember was,
instructing a boy to come up to his desk, "Slither hither, wretched
toad", said for his own amusement. He had a heavy physical presence.
Most men - and particularly teachers - show flashes of a certain
residual boyishness at some moments, but I never saw that in him.
You
never felt that he was speaking to a boy as an equal, having an
ordinary conversation without a side to it. I recall one algebra lesson
when a boy asked (not cheeking him - Mr B wasn't a teacher who
you'd treat in that way), What's the point of this? I mean, how will it
ever apply to our lives? With most of what we do I can see how it will
go on to help us with money or measuring things. He refused to
answer and we were disappointed in him. Disappointed for his not
recognising the genuine spirit of enquiry and for his failure to covey
an enthusiasm in maths, something that he was clearly very good at. I suppose that his best side
would probably have been seen if you were a gifted mathematician at
A-Level.
Apart
from mathematics, the other thing that he was interested in was sport.
During the weekly class free period, he would put a little transistor on
his desk and listen to test match commentaries. His valedictory speech
to the class on the last day of summer term told us that we should spend
our summer going to events like athletics meetings with our friends
("and you should have made plenty of those over this year") rather than
wasting our time watching television. I didn't follow this advice.
Mr
B had a temper on him. College gossip recounted that he had been
suspended a few years ago for brawling with an Art master. A curious
thing about my memory of that year is that I remember his reputation for
hitting boys, perhaps throwing things at us, but I can't clearly
recollect his actually doing it, although I do recall the
atmosphere of severity when he had been displeased with a boy. I don't
know whether I've blanked out the memory. Maybe as a sensitive boy I wasn't capable of processing it at the time, or perhaps it didn't actually happen at all.
One thing that I do remember. Because I was a boy who was brought to tears on most days at school, other boys would scathingly ask
me, well, why didn't you cry when Mr B hit you, then? The object
of the question was to prove some shamming or hypocrisy on my part,
because if I didn't cry if the teacher hit me then it would in some way
invalidate the authenticity of the many other occasions when I was
brought to tears. But I don't think that he ever did hit me. Its the sort of thing that you ought to remember. Plus I don't think that I was the sort of insubordinate boy who would have brought out that kind of rage in him.
The
lasting impression that he left on me is that I don't think that I've
ever come across a man with less femininity in his nature. I had the
strong sense that he was the type of man with no interest in or
understanding of women's things. Obviously this doesn't come up very much
in a boy's school but I do recall all the other masters in his
position referring to wives or families on occasion, or just conveying a
fluent interest in the wider world beyond school. For the type of boy
that I was, having spent the previous seven years at a co-ed primary
school around the corner, growing up alongside girls and boys with
mostly women teachers, Mr B was exactly the sort of schoolmaster
that I shouldn't have had, at that age and in that institution.
Reading
his obituary, thirty years after I last saw the man, is a sobering
experience. I'm surprised to learn that he was only thirty-nine when he
taught me. Twelve year-old boys aren't very good readers of the age of
grown-ups but he exuded the sense of someone older. The obituary doesn't
reveal any surprising details or aspects of his nature. He doesn't
appear to have had any personal attachments. Mathematics, school and
sport really were his life, even to the extent of regularly
attending College matches and tournaments after he had left the school, a
participation that is presented as admirably committed rather than
illustrative of a sadly empty retirement.
But my lasting impression is of the sense of something
suppressed, that something being what are our best qualities - warmth,
openness, kindliness. I'm struck by the lack of warmth in the obituary, with the best
that can be found by way of colourful character detail provided by
recollections of his "unsparingly critical observations". Mr B was a
sarcastic schoolmaster, I think. One of the few things I've learned in
life is that there's nothing as freezing as sarcasm. It shrivels
people up, which is what its designed to do. Its invariably a bad thing
to deploy, always reflecting badly on the person who uses it. I'd
definitely rather be forgotten than be remembered for my unsparingly
critical observations.
