Read Online Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris - Free Book Online

sure she’ll settle down.”
    “Pearman thinks the world of her,” said Scoones with a sneer.
    “He would.”
    Pearman has a lively appreciation of feminine beauty. Rumor has it that Isabelle Tapi would never have been employed at St. Oswald’s but for the minidress she wore at interview.
    Kitty shook her head. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s full of ideas.”
    “I could tell you what she’s full of,” muttered Scoones. “But she’s cheap , isn’t she? Before we know it, they’ll be replacing all of us with spotty-faced upstarts with ten-a-penny degrees. Save a bloody fortune.”
    I could see that Keane was listening to this; he was grinning as he made his notes. More material for the Great British Novel, I supposed. McDonaugh studied his demons. Robbie Roach nodded with sour approval.
    Kitty was conciliating, as ever. “Well, we’re all having to cut back,” she said. “Even the textbook budget—”
    “Tell me about it!” interrupted Roach. “History’s lost forty percent, my form room’s a disgrace, there’s water coming in through the ceiling, I’m working all hours, and what do they do? Blow thirty grand on computers no one wants. What about fixing the roof? What about a paint job on the Middle Corridor? What about that DVD player I’ve been asking for since God knows when?”
    McDonaugh grunted. “Chapel needs work too,” he reminded us. “Have to put school fees up again, that’s all. No getting round it this time.”
    “The fees won’t go up,” said Scoones, forgetting his need for peace and quiet. “We’d lose half the pupils if we did that. There’s other grammar schools, you know. Better than this one, if truth be told.”
    “ There is a world elsewhere ,” I quoted softly.
    “I heard there’s been some pressure to sell off some of the school’s land,” said Roach, draining his coffee cup.
    “What, the playing fields?” Scoones, a staunch rugby man, was shocked.
    “Not the rugby pitch,” explained Roach soothingly. “Just the fields behind the tennis courts. No one uses them anymore, except when boys want to sneak off for a fag. They’re useless for sports anyway—always waterlogged. We’d be just as well selling them off for development, or something.”
    Development . That sounded ominous. A Tesco, perhaps, or a Superbowl where the Sunnybankers could go after school for their daily dose of beer and skittles.
    “H.M. won’t like that idea,” said McDonaugh drily. “He doesn’t want to go down in history as the man who sold St. Oswald’s.”
    “Perhaps we’ll go coed,” suggested Roach wistfully. “Think of it…all those girls in uniform.”
    Scoones shuddered. “Ugh! I’d rather not.”
    In the lull that followed, I suddenly became aware of a noise above my head; a stamping of feet, scraping of chairs, and raised voices. I looked up.
    “That your form?”
    I shook my head. “That’s the new beard from Computer Studies. Meek, his name is.”
    “Sounds like it,” said Scoones.
    The banging and stamping continued, rising to a sudden crescendo, within which I thought I could just make out the dim bleating of Their Master’s Voice.
    “Perhaps I’d better have a look.”

    It’s always a bit embarrassing to have to discipline another Master’s class. I wouldn’t do it normally—we tend to mind our own business at St. Oswald’s—but it was my room, and I felt obscurely responsible. I charged up the stairs to the Bell Tower—not, I suspected, for the last time.
    Halfway up, I met Dr. Devine. “Is that your class in there, making that frightful racket?”
    I was offended. “Of course not,” I huffed. “That’s the rabbit Meek. This is what happens when you try to bring Computer Studies to the masses. Anorak frenzy.”
    “Well, I hope you’re going to deal with it,” said Sourgrape. “I could hear the noise all the way from the Middle Corridor.”
    The nerve of the man. “Just getting my breath back,” I said with dignity. Those