Read Online Teacher's Dead by Benjamin Zephaniah - Free Book Online Page B

summer dress, but I was still fully suited. After five minutes in the midday sun it dawned on me. I wasn’t in court any more, my mother was not with me, and I probably looked stupid. I took the jacket off, it was the least I could do.
    We talked about the morning’s events, both of us still completely confused by the woman claiming to be Ramzi’s mother. Although she had no proof of her claim, in her own way she sounded very convincing. On the other hand it was believed that Ramzi was probably abandoned on the other side of the country. How would she have managed to track him down? After so many foster parents how would she have kept up with his movements?
    I was very surprised by the boys’ guilty pleas. They did the crime of course, there were so many witnesseswho saw it, but I was surprised that their solicitors didn’t convince them to enter some other plea. Something like manslaughter, or guilty due to diminished responsibility, but like Mrs Joseph said, that would mean admitting they were mad. The speed of the proceedings suited Mrs Joseph fine. In keeping with her ideas of celebrating life, she didn’t want to sit through lots of stories describing the death of her husband from different angles; she wanted to be filled with positive memories. We had a small lunch that took for ever to eat due to her telling me the life and times of Edgar Arnold Joseph. Now I know everything about him.
    She told me that he was born in a small city in the north of England and was an only child. His body was covered with scars that he gained from living dangerously on bombsites as a small kid. At the age of eight he listed his hobbies as climbing up difficult trees, crashing home-made go-karts, jumping off speeding roundabouts and swinging on swings, rolling down hills in dustbins, and getting lost. His ambition was to climb Mount Everest, or the Post Office Tower. When he was eleven years old he began to take his schoolwork very seriously and his parents and his teachers began to see how intelligent he was. He had a great head for figures and was fascinated with science and the way that things work. His parents thought that he would do even better in a differentenvironment. They weren’t rich but they worked hard and sent him to a boarding school. He hated it. He said it wasn’t so much about the school and the way they taught, or the other pupils, it was about home. He just loved coming home at the end of the day. Which apparently was the way he was as a teacher. He loved going to school, but he also loved going home, and at a boarding school he couldn’t come home at the end of the day. After one term he was taken out of boarding school and admitted back into his comprehensive school.
    He left school with lots of qualifications in all the right places and went to study philosophy at a university in the south of England. He didn’t like it there either. Nothing wrong with the south of England, nothing wrong with the university, it was just too far away from home again. One cold day, just before he left university, he was on campus when he met Mrs Joseph, or Mary Dowling as she was then. She was trespassing. Twice a week she would casually walk on to the campus and use the university gym. Just like a student. But she was never a student. Her education had ended after sixth form college and she had become a successful classical concert organiser. She made a lot of money and now considers herself semi-retired. In other words she said, ‘I’ll do a job if my heart’s in it, or if the money’s great.’
    They got married just after Mr Joseph leftuniversity, but soon after, tragedy struck. Mr Joseph’s mother was killed in a car crash. His father lived for another eight years but then he died after suffering a stroke. At the time of his father’s death Mr Joseph was working for a large management group. He had a fancy title but basically his job was to spy on other workers in the company. After the death of his father he