Look to Your Wife. Paula Byrne

its warm, friendly people, but with Lisa. She was a textiles teacher at the school. He noticed her at once, at his first assembly, because she was the only one not listening. She was whispering to a colleague. She was also the most beautiful woman in the room. Arguably the only beautiful one. She had shoulder-length dark hair, which flicked up at the bottom, huge grey eyes with sooty lashes, and a friendly dimpled smile. But it was her bone structure that mesmerized him most. She’d give Kate Moss a run for her money in that department, he thought. You could slice cheese with those cheekbones.

      She annoyed him, though. He felt that he was being teased for something he hadn’t yet done. Later, when they were formally introduced, she thrust out her hand and gave his a firm, confident shake. But he couldn’t help noticing (with his devotion to Shakespeare) that her palm was slightly moist. So not that confident, he thought to himself. What did Iago have to say about sweaty palms and sexual desire? She could be trouble, he thought. Just as well he was happily married.

      ‘You’ve always liked your Donnas and your Lisas,’ his wife Moira joked.

      ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Edward.

      ‘Well, you know. All those Felicities and Sophies in your previous school didn’t really do it for you. I mean from a teaching perspective, not a dating one. You love the idea of educating those working-class girls, but you’d never fancy them. I know I’m safe on that score. What did Oswald Mosley once say, “Vote Labour, sleep Tory”? That’s you through and through, Ed.’

      ‘Well, look what happened to Mosley. Are you trying to tell me that I married up?’ He laughed. ‘Well, I did. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. But I do agree that I love being around these feisty girls, rather than teaching dull, posh Lucindas, always flicking their long, glossy hair and cultivating a look of studied indifference. I’ve seen enough of them to last me a lifetime. Yes, I like the St Joseph’s girls, even though I only see them when they’re naughty. I miss the teaching sometimes. That’s the only downside of a leadership role. You don’t see enough of the children. And they make me laugh. They really do. And I miss you too, Moira. And the bloody cat. You’d love the city, if you gave it a chance.’

      Moira had not come north. She worked in publishing in London, and didn’t want to give up her job. They had agreed to commute, meeting every other weekend in term time. Edward would return home during the school holidays.

      ‘Well, I’ll think about it, darling. Do you know what my mother had the cheek to say to me the other day? “You should live in Liverpool, Moira. Men have their needs.” What a dinosaur! Well, I’m sorry that you raised a feminist, Mummy, I told her. Why should I pack up my great job, and leave our lovely little house in Surrey with its easy commute to London, when you probably won’t stay five minutes in ghastly Toxteth. I tried to explain to her that this job was just a stepping stone. You could never live permanently there, and nor could I.’

      ‘No, I think you’re right, I don’t think I could, much as I love the flat they found for me. But the commute is killing me. My hair is going grey. You’ve got to come north more often, Moira.’

      Edward had gone straight in with a plan for St Joseph’s, and it was working. On his first morning, an Inset day, he had walked slowly around the school grounds, taking in everything. He carried a small orange Post Office notebook. There were no markings in the playground for football or netball. The canteen stank of cabbage. The staffroom was painted corporation cream, with paper-thin brown carpet tiles, sticky underneath his handmade Italian shoes. The buildings were as tired as the staff. There was no sense of dignity or care, for either the teachers or the children.

      He called the governor who was in PR and arranged for painters and decorators to come in overnight. The Scousers loved a challenge, especially on double overtime. When the children arrived for the first day of term, a five-a-side AstroTurf football pitch had been laid down, and a basketball court was marked out on the playground. The staffroom was freshly painted with a Dulux imitation of Farrow and Ball Cornford White, and there was even a new carpet. On the classroom walls there were large framed posters of aspirational heroes: Shakespeare, Einstein, Emmeline Pankhurst, Nelson Mandela (this was a detail he had arranged in advance). God knows how they had performed the makeover in one night or how much it had cost, thought Edward – but he had charmed the governor into picking up the bill.

      He had been told that on the last day of term, the children smashed the fire alarm. It was a ritual. This interested him. He thought long and hard about why they did this. And then he got his answer. They wanted to make a mark. To end their schooldays with a statement and go out with a bang. So he came up with an idea. They would end their schooldays with a prom. There would be a survivors’ breakfast. Suits for the boys, and prom gowns for the girls.

      He instigated other rules too. Report cards. If you failed, you would be sent down a year. A strict dress code. The girls now wore below-the-knee checked kilts, with long socks. Black or brown shoes, or you were sent home. Boys’ hair had to be no more than a number four cut. Ties were not to be tucked into shirts. Everyone must walk down the central aisle in silence into assembly. Students (no longer ‘pupils’) would stand when a teacher entered the room.

      To create a sense of belonging, he instigated houses: Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. The school was rebranded as SJA (St Joseph’s Academy). The initials appeared everywhere.

      ‘They deserve the same standards’, was Edward’s mantra. He brooked no dissent. ‘You are free to enrol your child elsewhere,’ he would tell the odd disaffected parent. But they never did. They all wanted their children to be part of a success story. He insisted that if ever he had children of his own, they would attend the school. He had no intention of having children, but this was a good way of putting pressure on the staff to set an example and do likewise with their own offspring.

      One of Edward’s best interventions was securing funding for a Literacy Support Dog called Waffles. The kids from Starr house were a bit dim, and he figured it would be a novel way of improving their reading skills. The students would take it in turns to read to Waffles, who lay patiently in his basket. When they had finished reading their two pages loudly and clearly to Waffles, he would raise his head in expectation of his doggy treat (his favourites were Arden Grange crunchy bites). It was another huge success of Edward’s.

      The GCSE results soared, as if by magic. When SJA won an award for Most Improved Academy in the North West, he organized cupcakes for the entire school and gave permission for lessons to be abandoned for the day. Again and again he emphasized that grades mattered.

      The children, also, proved a doddle. From that first week when they returned to school after the summer holidays to find the playground marked out with football and basketball lines, they knew he was all right.

      The staff were the problem. They were lazy, disaffected, gossipy, complacent. They loathed Oxbridge, and they probably loathed him, even though they were nice to his face. Januses. Except for Lisa. It was not so much that she disliked him; she just didn’t notice him. Towards the end of his first year, he decided to throw a party for the staff. He tried to pretend that it was to improve staff morale, to show that he was, after all, one of the guys: that he cared about his staff as much as he cared about his students. But he knew none of this was true. He wanted to see Lisa. He wanted to take her in his arms.

      * * *

      ‘Will you come to the party?’

      ‘Yes, of course darling. May I bring Tabitha?’

      ‘Well as long as she doesn’t pee all over the flat. Or sleep on the bed.’

      ‘Fantastic. I’ll take the train. Tabitha prefers it that way. Can’t wait to see you, Ed. Guildford feels cold without you.’

      * * *

      ‘Will you come to the party?’

      ‘Is it OK to bring my husband?’

      ‘Oh – do you know, I wasn’t aware that you were married. You’ve kept that quiet! But yes, of course it is. I’d love to meet him.’

      ‘Then