Our narrator gets a bit of part time work:

The ugly boy sitting opposite me chewed wetly on his pencil as he thought about what

I had said. He removed it from his mouth, pulling out a thin string of spit.

          

  “I’m not entirely sure I agree with you,” he said.

            “Well, we all have our own opinions.”

            “Hmmmn. Bit of a truism.”

            A ginger-haired girl, thickly freckled, with pale sad eyes, snapped in my defence.

“Greg. Why don’t you shut up?”

            “Okay, let’s just trade clichés then.”

            “I think this aggression is somewhat inappropriate,” I said, dreading having to get

angry.

            The ginger girl spoke up again. “Maybe he’s saying that you seem not to like the

book, sir. But our other teacher, she had a lot to say in favour of it, you see, and, well, we

mostly ended up agreeing with her.” The girl was shy. It cost her a lot of effort to say this,

and there was a tell-tale tremor in her voice.

            “It’s more than that,” said Greg, staring resolutely at his desk. “You don’t seem to be

able to separate yourself from the times you live in, sir. You’re probably jaded from teaching

this book too often. We can understand that. But with literature it’s imperative that you put

yourself into the correct historical context, wouldn’t you agree? It would be criminal not to

celebrate the book as a triumph of moral courage. That’s the point I want to make.”

            “Well stated,” I said, and hoped we might move on.

            There were just ten pupil in the class, and for the first half an hour they had sat

watching me in an atmosphere of quiet tension. I was relieved to see that none of them were

pretty- I would be able to go through the rather tedious motions without forming any

emotional attachments. Chilly indifference I could cope with. This need to challenge and

claim territory now being displayed, on the other hand, presented a far more troublesome

issue.

            A girl piped up from the back of the room. A sickly thing- pallid, hair lank and

colourless, a delicate sprinkling of pimples, small glasses. There was a jarring American

twang to her vowels and some of her consonants refused to leave her tongue without a bit of a

struggle. A near approximation of a native English speaker.

            “We talked a lot about moral courage and the strength that Jane shows. It’s easy to be

cynical but I think it’s a very beautiful book.”

            There were a few mumbles of what sounded like agreement, although most of the

pupils were keeping themselves distant from proceedings, pretending not to see or hear what

was happening, much like those gatherings of bystanders when a mugging takes place-

turning their heads away, frightened of the consequences of involvement.

            I should have left the subject alone, only I was becoming incensed by the pious look

the girl was wearing on her pimpled face. I asked her where she thought Jane got her strength

from- “Is it actually her own?”

            The girl blushed in ugly mottles: “From God,” she said. “She gets it from God.”

            Did I raise an eyebrow? Did I make a sound? I thought I was exercising great control

in repressing my reactions, yet still the poisonous Greg was able to divine them. Perhaps he

had developed extra-sensory perception to compensate for his lack of chin, for the unsightly

fuzz, for the yellow-tipped spots?

            “It is still possible to believe, you know. You can be clever and have faith. They’re

not mutually exclusive at all. It’s happened throughout history. There’s nothing ridiculous in

taking strength from God. And sir, you do remember where we are, don’t you? You know

what percentage of the population here is Catholic?”

            I stared at him blankly. Was this what Sylvia Reid had meant when she used the

expression ‘exacting?’ Some little oik trying to show off? I refused to answer him. People

who wield opinions like weapons and can call on a vast array of knowledge to aid their

belligerent cause have always intimidated me. When I was younger I had attempted to

develop some opinions, but I had long since stopped bothering. To have opinions, one needs

to believe in something a little bit. It wasn’t for me.

            “Well, you all seem very familiar with this book. Perhaps we should move on.”

            “So that’s it then?” continued Greg. “You’re not going to justify what you said? A

cosy novel you called it.”

            I had no memory of saying such a thing but, there again, from the moment I entered

the room I had been operating through a sickly film of panic, trying my best to sound

authoritative, trying not to bolt out the door. I was not used to pupils listening to what I had to

say.

            A deep breath: “I’m not interested in arguing about these things. Perhaps someone

else might have something to say. I assume your last teacher discussed feminist takes on the

novel?”

            “She brushed over them as quickly as she could.” A new voice, somewhere to my left.

A girl with a bowl haircut that hid her eyes. Next to her sat a scrawny chap with round

glasses and a big smirk on his mouth. “Gosia,” he said in a whiney voice, the sarcasm badly

hidden, “surely you’re not going to be nasty about our lovely Miss Sledzic?”

            “Well,” she said, “being in a serious car crash doesn’t make you any more clued up

about feminist theory. Nor does it make any less conventional and quaint, for that matter.”

            The pimpled Christians coughed and muttered and an eerie silence stole across the

room, a quickly thickening freeze. I shuffled the pile of papers given to me by the head of

department.

            “Okay then. Maybe we should take a look at some possible essay titles.”