The Nearly Man
There is no glory whatsoever in being the Depute Head of a secondary school. (The word is pronounced ‘deh-pyoot’ incidentally, as opposed to the word ‘deputy’, as in ‘Deputy Dawg’.) In essence, Depute Heads are failures, all of them, poor sad cases who aspired to the stardom of a headship of their own, but fell short of the mark. Don’t believe any of them who try to tell you they are “happy where they are, thank you”, they’d all jump at the chance to give the orders themselves rather than be the dogsbodies beneath them. In Scotland, you can go on a course to become a headteacher, no matter how little talent you might have, wasting large amounts of local authority money that would be better spent on teaching five-year-olds how to tie their shoelaces or whatever. Local authorities decide who should go on the course, which in reality means your school’s head; if your face fits, you’re on. My face didn’t fit, and perhaps I was lucky, not because I would have made a good head - I wouldn’t have, by the way - but rather because I’ve seen what happens to the people who do get chosen: Stepford Wives, the lot of them, even the men. Perhaps especially the men. The women turn into Stepford Husbands who have created male robots to fulfil their needs, so the Ira Levin novel operates in reverse.
It’s not even as if the money’s that good. Don’t get me wrong - teachers generally are not on the breadline, although that’s often because there’s two of them in the one household, and the hourly wage-rate isn’t so attractive once you take the real length of the working week into account. No, the point I’m making is that Depute Heads aren’t paid that much more than heads of department in a secondary school, and they get to do something I haven’t done for years: teach the kind interesting classes. They get the fun classes, the ‘sexy’ classes if you like, the ones with the fancy certificates. Depute Heads get the leftovers, the second year classes full of malcontents, the bottom sets and the troublemakers. Depute Heads are treated like dogsbodies when it comes to teaching, too - do you detect a pattern here? Actually, department heads might well work longer hours, but they’re doing stuff they want to do. Depute Heads have to do what they’re told, by irate headteachers, by irate parents, by irate social workers, by irate community police - even by irate visiting speakers sometimes.
Sooner or later, most Depute Heads waken up to the fact that life has passed them by. No-one pays the slightest attention to them, and turning up to work has become a purgatory to be endured until the merciful release of retirement comes. Unless…
Unless you get really lucky. Once in a generation, some fool in an office somewhere decides that the solution to all of life’s ills is to flush out all the dead wood - they mean people like me - and replace us with something younger, more dynamic, and - above all - cheaper. They think they can do without you, so they offer you a package to leave, which is sometimes attractive enough (very rarely these days, actually) to make it just about possible to up sticks and do something else. When I was fifty-six, a number of Depute Heads of my age were made an offer to leave. I couldn’t get out quick enough. I’d been in the job too long and I knew it.
The difficulty was that what I received from my former employers was never going to be quite enough to keep me in the manner to which I’d become accustomed, and with which I wanted to remain on speaking terms. I needed something to top up a smallish pension, and something to keep me occupied and out of mischief, away from bookshops and music stores. I tried sending articles to magazines and newspapers. The first paid very little and the second paid nothing at all, simply ignoring everything I fired at them. If the truth be told, I wasn’t any better at writing than I was at teaching.
Then I did land a small job to keep me going. My local Costa coffee shop was looking for a part-time barista, and so on Tuesdays and Thursdays - they had students working at the weekend - I find myself standing with a black apron trying to construct the best espressos and lattes the cut-price coffee would produce. I’m not too bad at making coffee, I reckon. I like talking to customers, passing the time of day, discussing the weather, some item of news, or even a football match, and they like talking to me. I’ve even served own my daughter Becky once, when she came in to see how I was getting on and give me moral support. I gave her a latte with vanilla syrup on the house in return. Jane has never come in, though, even although she’s knows I work there, which is maybe just as well; the cups would hurt too much if they hit me. Funny thing, though: I called her Brunhilde, sometimes even to her face, when we were married, but now she’s gone, she’s ‘Jane’.
Late one November Thursday afternoon, I’m clearing up some tables and getting ready to load up another dishwasher when a voice from the past whispers in my ear.
“Aye, aye, Captain, fancy finding you in here of all places!” Did I say the voice whispers? It’s a cross between heavy breathing and a bellow. A moment or so ago I was all alone.
Even before I look round I know who it is.
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This is, of course, just a small sample of Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie by Gordon Lawrie - I hope you've enjoyed what you read.
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