Read Online Meltwater (Fire and Ice) by Michael Ridpath - Free Book Online Page B

serious. The Principal is waiting to talk to you in his office now. Unless you want to change your mind? If you could be persuaded to teach what you are supposed to teach, you could
be a very good educator.’
    ‘Educator! What kind of a word is that?’ Jóhannes demanded.
    ‘Just because your father was a novelist—’
    ‘A great novelist!’
    ‘A novelist. It doesn’t mean that your position is untouchable.’
    ‘What about the younger members of staff? Why get rid of your most experienced person?’
    ‘You mean someone like Elísabet? She’s young, she’s hardworking, she’s enthusiastic, she teaches what she’s supposed to teach and does it well.’
    Jóhannes’s indignation subsided a touch. ‘I know. I taught her when she was a pupil here.’ Elísabet had been teaching at the school a year and a half, and she was
popular with staff and pupils. She had a genuine love of Icelandic.
    ‘And she will no doubt go on to teach many fine educators herself. Unless I fire her today, of course.’
    ‘It’s all the illiterate bankers’ fault,’ Jóhannes grumbled. ‘If they hadn’t got the country into this mess there wouldn’t be these
cuts.’
    ‘You mean if someone had just taught them about a couple of berserkers raging around a lava field a thousand years ago, everything would be different?’
    ‘It may have been,’ said Jóhannes defensively.
    ‘Well, it’s a bit late now. You and I have an appointment with the Principal.’
    Jóhannes left the Principal’s office and headed straight for the car park. The Principal had been more polite than Snaer, more respectful, but his message was
clear.
    Jóhannes’s career as a teacher at that school was over.
    He had offered to give Jóhannes the rest of the day off, and Jóhannes had accepted. He needed to get out of the school right away.
    As he drove the couple of kilometres from the school to his home in Vesturbaer, Jóhannes’s brain was in turmoil. His bluff had been called as he should always have known one day it
would be. Why should he be the only teacher in Iceland who got away with ignoring the National Curriculum? Sure, there were famous people in the Icelandic literary world whom he had taught as
schoolchildren, but would they really care about what happened to him? ‘I thought old Jóhannes had already retired,’ would be their response.
    Jóhannes was only fifty-five, but people thought he was older. He was physically fit, big, lean and erect with a shock of thick white hair and a craggy face, but he behaved like someone
ten years older. He wore tweed jackets and a tie, he smoked a pipe; he was from another era.
    He pulled up in front of his house in Bárugata. It was a big house for a teacher, on a street that had been popular in the old days with sea captains, since from the upper storeys of its
buildings you could look down the hill to the Old Harbour. He had grown up there; his parents had lived and died there, and after his father’s death he had inherited it. The house was built
for families and for a few years Jóhannes had brought his own family to live there, until his wife had left him, taking their children with her. Why, Jóhannes had never quite
understood.
    A big house for a lone teacher. A very big house for a lone unemployed teacher.
    It had been worth a fortune before the crash. He could probably still sell it for a reasonable price even in the current depressed market. Maybe one day he would have to, but not yet.
    He pulled out his pipe and sat in his favourite armchair. It felt strange to be at home during the day in school term-time. Very strange.
    He felt a wave of depression sweep over him. If Jóhannes wasn’t a teacher, what was he?
    His father, who was indeed a great novelist, superior to Halldór Laxness in Jóhannes’s opinion, was at the height of his powers at Jóhannes’s age. He did a quick
calculation. At fifty-five, Benedikt had had four more years to live, four years until Jóhannes found him