The wooden desks were gnarled with age. They were made of an oak that had been scratched and stained over so many years that it now resembled the black charcoal of a long dead fire. Each one was pock-marked with adolescent scars of graffiti; names and places cluttering the once-smooth emptiness of their surfaces. Bolted to the desks, at a uniform distance of one yard, were what might be loosely described as chairs. Made of the same sooty oak, they offered all the comfort and generosity of space afforded by most window ledges. This was a contributory factor in the nervous poise of the assembled pupils who ‘sat’ hunched over their lecterns, buttocks rammed hard into seat-backs, muscles tensed to prevent a dangerous shift in weight.

The arrangement of these desks within the room, in five long parallel rows, led one to think of corridors, begging the impudent to walk their forbidden length. At the end of each row, facing the students on a raised wooden platform, was an enormous scrolling blackboard at which the teacher wrote formulae in chalk.

In the tradition of classrooms throughout history members of the form avoided - some successfully, others less so - paying attention to the events unfolding before their narrow, averted eyes. As the teacher finished each line and pushed what he had written further up the board, some boys took what pleasure they could from the tedious way the previous lines of complicated symbols disappeared over the top of the blackboard to then continue their travels down the other side. Several boys timed and placed bets on how long it would take for particular lines to re-merge at the bottom of the board. But the real satisfaction came from seeing those same lines being obliterated forever by the chalk-heavy duster, wielded by the teacher, as he made room for more of his scribbling. 

One boy in particular exhibited the tell-tale signs of an extended brown study, his eyes were glazed and he appeared to stare through the walls. Here, the distractions of the class weren’t so much food for thought, but rather they were the carcass of a long-dead idea that should be picked over with caution.

It seemed to this boy that little of account was occurring in the room. Having joined his form late in the term he had not adjusted to the practices of his classmates: he missed the signals which notified his compatriots of the latest target for their discriminating missile launches which periodically erupted out of each loitering silence; he was still less aware of the tense pauses immediately before the small waves of mirth which washed around the room, lapping against the tolerance of the man who shaded black to white on his wooden dais. The hissed whispers and the folded strips of torn paper which passed for communication among the pupils merely seemed ignorant and prehistoric to his young mind; their speechless grunts reminded him of cavemen.

Looking up, he turned his attention towards Stevens. A short, muscled child with hair the colour of mustard, Stevens was often smirking to himself. For this reason alone the boy did not like him. The grin was a multi-purpose thing to be brought out to the demands of any occasion. It meant mocking friendship, mocking contrition, mocking pleasure, mocking mockery even. The smile curled a little at the edges, almost a crease, sardonic in its knowing confidence. If the boy had been older he would have recognised cruelty in that mouth. Instead, he saw only the charismatic face and he felt the attraction which captivated the other boys. But, because he felt excluded, he felt jealous and this revolted him.

The other boys looked upon Stevens with an unsteady fraternity of jealousy and respect. Each wanted to have his popularity, but because Stevens possessed it they could not have it too, and they therefore settled into the roles of sycophants; this at least allowed them to be near to that which they so dearly wanted. Even the awkward, clumsy boys, such as Yates, who were so frequently the butt of Stevens’ humour, yearned for his recognition.

Even at this moment Stevens was directing the attention of his cohorts towards the front of the class where the broad and rounded back of Yates arched egg-like over his desk. Yates was diligently copying the inscriptions on the blackboard into his exercise book and therefore had not noticed that the room’s focus had shifted from the platform to his own plump outline. Stevens, as usual, through a complicated series of gestures and exaggerated facial contortions, was preparing his workers for action at a prearranged interval.

The boy’s gaze shifted away from Stevens and his accomplices. It strayed across the mottled walls, following the line where the wooden panelling, painted a sickly pea green, met the white plaster walls which were in need of a fresh coating. His expressionless eyes eventually settled on the figure of the teacher. The man’s greased grey hair shone in the dusty light which fell from two lamps that hung from the high ceiling above his head. As he wrote, in big flowing movements of his arm, the teacher’s head seemed inclined to an irregular journey of its own, almost as if detached from the neck which secured it to the body. With the arm describing symbols and shapes, letters and patterns, so the head bobbed and rotated, forward and backward in the air, dragging the body with it, defying its apparent inertia. It seemed as if the head and arm were alive and struggling to escape from the rigid corpse which tottered in front of the blackboard.

Fascinated by this haggard dance it was some time before the boy appreciated that the teacher was talking. Words barked from his mouth as the chalk sheared across the board. The boy wished he could close his ears to these sharp percussions which had all the monotony and meaning of a twenty-one gun salute. 

A clatter interrupted the man’s flow of words and he turned in irritation to see a metal pencil case, which Stevens had deliberately pushed off his own desk, lying on the wooden floor with its contents scattered like tools from a toolbox.

‘Stevens, are you incapable of keeping quiet for more than a minute?’

‘No, sir. It was an accident.’

‘Of course it was,’ said the teacher witheringly. Some of the class tittered.

‘It was. It’s not fair! You always blame me.’ Stevens almost couldn’t keep the smile from breaking out across his face; he hoped the teacher couldn’t see it hovering in the wings.

‘Just pick it up.’ 

They stared at each other, neither moving but both feeling the bridge between them lengthening, stretching. There was a limit to its elasticity, a point where it would snap and someone would fall. That person would lose the class forever; at the moment it wasn’t clear which of them it would be.

Stevens lazily got down on his hands and knees and picked up his equipment. When he had finished, still on his knees, he looked up at the teacher, but the man had returned to the blackboard. He stared at his tweedy jacket, counting the slights that would have to be repaid and tasting bitterness in his mouth.

The new boy watched all this, feeling only the dislocated impressions of an observer. He found himself looking at Yates and he noticed with irritation that Yates’ hand feverishly aped the teacher’s own work. He did not despise Yates along with Stevens and his crew, who merely hated him because he was recognised as a good pupil, conscientious in his work and seeking approval from his masters. Instead the boy felt pity; when he thought of Yates he was reminded of the sticky glue on fly paper. But if Yates had any knowledge of the feelings of his classmates towards him then he gave no outward sign. Day in and day out he continued his ponderous ascent, looking out for whatever carrot his instructors should choose to dangle before him. This was probably the reason why Yates rarely looked down to wonder who was tying his shoelaces together.

Yates hugged his fountain pen tightly in his fist. He scrunched his eyes, not to see better, but to squeeze out the room. He concentrated on the blackboard, his exercise book, his hand, the pen and its tracings, everything outside of this cabal became blurred and dark. He whispered the words his mother had taught him. He felt the comforting rhythm made by the clucking of her tongue imitated by his own; it was solipsistic.

A silence swollen with anticipation filled the room. Only Yates and the teacher seemed unaware of it, both still scribbling furiously. All the other writing implements, held between sweaty fingers, hung suspended over blank pages. Thirty pairs of eyes flitted between Yates’ back and the pair of metal bolts which now lay redundant on the floor near the base of his desk. The removal of these two items, having taken the best part of five minutes’ industrious pencil dropping and retrieval by his fellows, allowed Stevens the luxury of leaning, somewhat precariously, back in his seat. A smile touched his face: mocking satisfaction. 

He waited.

When it came, the movement was swifter then he had anticipated. In fact no one was later able to recall the event itself, only the sound and then the aftermath. It started with the groan of wood sliding against wood, low and sonorous, and then Yates, his desk and unbolted chair disappeared from view. The impact of aged wood and young flesh and bone striking the floor demolished the fragile silence Stevens had cultivated. Yates lay sprawled, half crushed under the remains of his desk and chair, which had separated and then collapsed onto his fallen bulk. A red trickle of blood ran from his bruised nose.

Yet no one uttered a sound. 

The teacher, in anger at this interruption, turned to discover he had lost his audience. All eyes strained to see what had become of Yates. The sound of the fall still echoed from the walls; a worshipful mantra to the ears of Stevens. He giggled.

As if this were a signal, the rest of the class erupted in laughter. Released from the almost painful efforts of restraint which they had endured for several minutes they fell about in exaggerated paroxysms of mirth. 

The boy, however, was unmoved. He noted with distaste the relief which infected the laughter, giving it a forced tenor. He wanted to distance himself from Stevens’ habitual activities. Stevens every action resembled a small animal caught in a trap, uselessly pulling at the already-triggered mechanism. There was only one escape, and that had been forfeited before any of them could remember. Bitterness welled up inside him at this thought and it made him angry. He was angry at Yates for being a victim, angry at Stevens’ predictability, angry too, at his classmates for not seeing the shadows cast by their own aspirations.

Yates’ enclosed world had exploded around him. He was dazed and unable to comprehend his failure; he knew it was failure, but he did not know from what quarter it had come. The sound of the laughter was unforgiving and loomed over him like the future. He whimpered.

The teacher struggled to comprehend the situation. One of his prime pupils lay bleeding under the ruins of his desk whilst the rest of Form 1A hysterically rolled about making an ungodly noise. He made some feeble attempts to placate them, but the class displayed the same level of interest in this as they had done in the rest of his lesson. He shouted at them. He called them vermin. He said they were unfit to roam the hallowed halls of his institution, let alone inherit its wealth of knowledge. He wanted to say more, he needed to tell them why they were offending him, but his mouth stopped working. It gaped, hollow and dark. He stared towards the back of the class as yet more insolence approached him.

The laughter died, replaced only by the nervous tick of the clock above the door. A boy; a new boy, whose name the teacher could not recall, was walking steadily up the aisle towards him. A thought was lodged in the teacher’s mind, like a thorn it snagged on everything that tried to pass it: why has this boy left his seat when the lesson still has twenty minutes to go?

The boy passed, but did not look at Yates who battled silently with his fear.

The teacher felt petrified. He looked to his pupils for assistance, but they seemed as stunned as he was. He watched helplessly as the boy stepped up onto the platform and retrieved a piece of chalk from the yellowed-Tupperware box on the radiator. The boy ignored the teacher and the class; he acted with the assurance of one who is alone. He started to draw lines on the blackboard, overwriting what had gone before in thick, confident strokes. The train of connecting thoughts and actions ready to follow ‘the lesson still has twenty minutes to go’ were caught in the obstruction caused by the teacher’s uncomprehending outrage. He stood frozen.

The boy drew a circle. The rim was thick and the chalk rasped harshly as it swept against the surface of the board. Next, a carefully placed small dot in the centre of the circle. It looked like a wheel. Slowly he began to draw many spokes going from the rim to the hub of this wheel. Each time he completed a spoke he would lift the chalk from the surface and place it at another point on the wheel’s rim, then drag the chalk into the centre; sometimes it squealed. The hub of the wheel became cluttered as each spoke arrived from the edge. Soon the spokes were indistinguishable at the centre, forming an expanding blob. 

The boy has stopped, has dropped his chalk.

He turns, facing but not looking at the class. He walks to the door, opens it and leaves. No one breathes.

The piece of chalk lay in the dust on the classroom floor.

 (C) Colin Brush. First published in Territories issue 1