three

Mrs Winters was the other music teacher in the school besides Mr Mammoth. She was a cello player who had trained at the Royal College of Music (a fact she never failed to mention to pupils, staff or parents whenever a pertinent opportunity arose).

Mrs Winters always reminded me of a female teddy bear. She had a round face (like a hamster with its cheeks full of sunflower seeds), huge brown eyes framed by enormous red glasses and frizzy brown hair which sprouted out from her head like wire wool. I think it was the hair that made her most look like a bear, although a plump figure, all bosom and bottom, certainly added to the effect, as did her hands. They were like half a pound of sausages and were adorned with long, sharply manicured nails that uncannily resembled claws.

As if to compensate for her chubby looks, Mrs Winters always used to wear the floweriest of dresses and a delicate lace doily round her neck, similar to the kind that posh people stand cakes on. But somehow that girlish attire always seemed far to dainty for her. It made her look like she had just stepped out of one of those tacky posters you see in Woolworth's of a kitten and a puppy dressed up in Edwardian dolls clothes for a tea party, all frills, fondant icing and furry paws.

Mrs Winters was quite nice really, although quite often she lost her temper. The music department, like the rest of the school was comprised of prefabricated buildings, that were supposed to have been a temporary solution to the post war child boom. However despite recurrent protests and fund raising appeals the school had never been able to afford to replace them. Occasionally a class room ceiling would collapse or a storm would blow a wall away and then the building would be demolished. The deputy head would scrub a couple of subject options off the school timetable, combine a couple of the smaller teaching groups and endeavour to squeeze a few more pupils into the remaining classrooms.

The music department, although boasting a surprisingly good orchestra, was, structurally, the most unsound part of the school. Music teaching groups were particularly large and the partitions between the classrooms particularly flimsy. And as there was a very strong emphasis on practical work during music lessons, they tended to be very, very noisy and chaotic.

Mr Mammoth's lessons consisted of simmering chaos which never really boiled over because he was generally well liked and gave his classes lots of interesting things to do. However Mr's Winters lessons were more like a kettle boiling. They started off cool and quiet, gradually built up steam and ended up with Mrs Winters screaming her head off (her screams, rather like the whistle of a kettle, indicating that boiling point had been reached). It was always about ten minutes before the end of the lesson that you would start to hear her voice through the partition between the classrooms.

"Matthew, for the last time, stop hitting Gary with that tambourine. Melissa go back to your seat please. Everyone please can we have some hush now. Please can you all go back to your seats and settle down. Now come on this has gone far enough, come on settle down. I said settle down now class! Will you bloody well shut the fuck up now"......thank you. No Matthew I did not say that. I said flip up. I think you better give me that tambourine and come up here and collect a detention slip. Tell your mother what you like Matthew. Perhaps you could ask her to book you in for a hearing test whilst you're at it."

I felt quite sorry for Mrs Winters. All the kids hated her and she did so desperately wanted to be liked. The trouble was she always tried too hard. She used to talk to her classes in this sickly sweet voice and get them to listen to classical music for hours. Of course there's nothing wrong with the classics. I'm not adverse to a bit of Vivaldi or Elgar on a Sunday morning myself. But it's no good simply trying to sweet talk forty-five bored thirteen year-olds into falling in love with Rimskykorsikoff and then getting angry when they don't respond. You've got to be a bit more subtle than that.

Teachers that go from cool to hot and back again, as Mrs Winters invariably did, just freak kids out. Sometimes when you saw her outside the classroom after she'd just lost her temper those big red glasses were all steamed up. You could tell she was pretty upset that she'd shouted at the kids. And she'd try and compensate for her anger by talking in an even sicklier voice to the next class about some rousing piece of music like the Great Gate of Kiev with which she was even more emotionally involved.

However, because she talked to the class in such a sugary way they very soon lost interest in what she had to say. Then she would get even more frustrated at their lack of enthusiasm and lose her temper worse than she had the previous time. It was a terrible shame really. She was obviously a sensual and passionate woman who loved listening to and playing music. However the only time she could ever really communicate to anyone was when she had her ample thighs spread round her beloved cello.

To be fair to Mrs Winters, although she was a crap teacher, she did a bloody good job with the school orchestra, which perhaps explains why the headmaster put up with her occasional verbal eccentricities (i.e. her telling annoying kids to shut the fuck up and stuff like that).

Now, Mrs Winters was very proud of all the instruments she had acquired for the school through her contacts with various musical ensembles. Sadly, one night, some vandals broke into a locked storeroom and dented a French horn and broke the mouthpiece off an antique bassoon. She was therefore extremely sensitive about anyone being anywhere near any musical instruments when they shouldn't be and that included all the recorders and glockenspiels and, of course, guitars that were kept in that cupboard in Mr Mammoths music room.

Me and Tony often used to practice our guitars on a Tuesday and a Thursday lunchtime because on those days there was a big orchestra practice in the main hall. The music room was left open for a bit so that kids could go and collect their violins and clarinets and what have you, but after that there was really no one very much about. So, it was ideal for us.

One Tuesday lunchtime we were sat there in the music cupboard strumming away when suddenly Mrs Winters came in. The orchestra were practising a piece for the Christmas concert, and she had come to find some chime bars. She was in a bit of a mood because the opening was meant to sound like sleigh bells and on the xylophone it had sounded more like a tone-deaf woodpecker.

Unfortunately the kettle drums had been taken out of the cupboard for the orchestra practice. So when she opened the door there was no where for us to hide. She stared at us for a moment, the colour draining from her face (I guess she presumed we were the vandals who had damaged the bassoon and French horn that time). Then she screamed, "What the bloody hell are you doing in here?"

"We're just practising guitars," I said feebly.

"And I suppose Mr Mansworth has given you permission to be in my cupboard?" We both silently shook our heads. "In that case you better both accompany me to the head master's office right now".

I had this ominous vision then of my mum being informed by my brother (who delighted in finding out about every piece of mischief I ever got into at school) that I had been sent to see the headmaster. It was fear of the maternal rage that would surely follow my brother's blabbing that made me plead for mercy.

"Please miss," I whined. "We were only just practising guitars. We weren't doing nothing wrong."

But it was no good. Mrs Winters grabbed me and Tony by the scruff of our sweaters and propelled us to the headmasters office. And as we waited outside the office, we were filled with dread and disbelief, as we heard her telling him that she had caught us 'deliberately vandalising guitars in the music room.'

When I heard this, driven by the fear of some unwarranted punishment, I burst into the headmaster's room and said, "Please sir. We weren't vandalising nothing. We was just playing."

In hindsight my intrusion was probably a bit of a mistake as it seemed to incense both Mrs Winters and the headmaster.

"How dare you come barging in here like that," hollered the head, who had been educated at some military-style private school somewhere and was, therefore, unused to a mere boy having the gall to 'speak without being spoken to.'

"I'm sorry," I said. "But we're not vandals."

In hindsight, I guess I wasn't really being brave and standing up for myself, but merely acted out of fear and because I had nothing to lose. After all, nothing I said or did could possibly have made the situation any worse.

"Are you calling Mrs Winters a liar boy?" said the headmaster glaring at me.

"No," I said. "Not exactly."

Mrs Winters looked suitably indignant. But she had calmed down a little and, to be fair, she did have the decency to blush slightly as she saw me tremble. I suppose she was essentially an honest person and she knew she had no evidence to corroborate her exaggerated accusations of vandalism (not that the headmaster would have needed any evidence to give me a good whacking.)

"Don't worry," said the headmaster. "I shall deal with this here and now."

He reached for his cane which leaned up against the wall. And I felt as if all my insides had turned to lead.

"Is that really necessary?" Mrs Winters started to say, her reticence to witness me being beaten due in part, probably, to a general feminine squeamishness regarding physical violence, and perhaps also because, as I stood there all hopeless and sorry for being so outspoken, she recognised in me shades of her own temperament.

As it happened I was saved from a whacking, not by Mrs Winters' objections, but by the sudden ringing of the fire bell.

"What the bloody hell..." exclaimed the headmaster. Then he kind of coughed and said, "Right. Don't panic. Follow me," and strode out of the room. In our haste to get out, me and Mrs Winters practically crashed into the back of the headmaster as he suddenly stopped in the doorway. We peered round him, and there was Tony standing next to the fire alarm, surrounded by shattered glass.

"Who did this Tony?" asked the head (Tony evidently looked so meek and angelic standing there that it never occurred to the headmaster that it could be he who was responsible for setting off the alarm).

"I don't know sir," said Tony innocently. "A load of fifth formers just pushed past me and then suddenly the alarm went off. I think one of them must have accidentally hit it with his bag sir."

As luck would have it, at that moment one of the sixth form girls came running down the corridor clutching a viola. She was close to tears and said in an agitated way, "Mrs Winters I don't know what to do. The Hetherington twins are refusing to leave their trombones behind in the hall. I told them they'd get burned to death if they didn't go. But they're still just sitting there."

So, then Mrs Winters went rushing off with the girl to the hall and the headmaster returned to his study to turn the alarm off. He came out with a clipboard and a biro.

"Well don't just stand there you boys," he said. "You know the drill. Go to the side car park and join the rest of your tutor group. And don't run."

And we both hurried off filled with relief; Tony because he'd got away with setting the fire alarm off, and me because Tony had saved me from what had seemed a certain caning.

Funnily enough it turned out that the headmaster's wife worked for Tony's uncle who also belonged to the same golf club as the headmaster who had in fact recommended the school to him. And I think Tony must have said something to his uncle, who must have said something to the headmaster, because I never did get that whacking. So, in the end (albeit by a rather inequitable route) the episode did reach a just conclusion.