Charity begins

28th November 2003, 12:00am

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Charity begins

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/charity-begins-51
Graham Love is on the way out.Will his union rep be far behind?

After nearly a term of raging through the corridors of St Brian’s, Hurricane Graham has finally blown itself out. The supply teacher from Planet Zog is about to come crashing to Earth.

Graham Love has been summoned to Room 101. I have already conducted my own trial. Charge: that you did wilfully and manipulatively abuse the already fragile emotions of one Charity Casement. Verdict: guilty. And the sentence? Well, it looks as though the senior management team might have beaten me to it.

Today’s hearing was called after Graham’s web of deceit got just a bit too tangled. Cherelle, a Year 8 girl whose mother Graham allegedly seduced at a parents’ evening, announced in class that Graham was “well fit” and she knew because she’d seen him coming out of her mum’s bedroom in his boxer shorts. Then Ramona Lynch told her tutor she was giving up on her AS-levels because Mr Love had got her a contract modelling for a website. The final pillar came clattering down when Graham turned up at school pissed and spent an entire PSHE lesson debating the relative merits of hash and skunk with a bunch of Year 11s.

Nigel Horsmel puts his head round the staffroom door. Graham and John Baller, the union rep, get to their feet but Horsmel waves them back. “We’d like to see Miss Casement first.” As I leave the room I notice that the tattered TTA ad on the noticeboard has been defaced. The words “good teacher” have been scratched out and it now reads: “No one forgets a psychopath.” It looks like Brenda Gache’s handwriting.

The conference room is dim, lit only by the tropical fish tank. Horsmel is sitting very still, like a viper - and I know whose breast he’d like to nibble. “We meet again, Miss Casement.” Ever since I made a joke about the piranhas and James Bond films he’s been doing terrible impressions of Roger Moore and Donald Pleasence, but his squeaky, nasal tone is all wrong. Then I hear a deep Eastern European voice coming from the shadows.

“Please Mr Horsmel, allow me.” Shit, Stoyan Radovich is back. I thought we’d seen the last of our PFI partner from Georgia after he flogged us those 30-year-old PCs that almost wrecked our bid for technology status.

Obviously his remit at St Brian’s is wider than I had realised.

“Graham Love. Tell us everything,” says Stoyan. “It’s Baller we want,” Horsmel adds. “The unions have had it here, Charity. Love is just the bait.

If we can stitch up Baller on this one, we can stop this nonsense about London weighting strikes. You’re not stupid, this could be the making of you. That application for the fast track programme is just waiting for my signatureI ” There is silence, apart from the tapping of Amy Studds’s stilettos against the table leg. Gucci, new season’s. “Interviewee refuses to answer,” the bursar snaps, as she pounds her laptop. I can’t do it. I get up and walk out.

Graham is waiting. “It’s all lies Charity,” he yells. Jesus, does this guy ever give up? “What about the photographs of you and Ramona? She’s a sixth-former, Graham!”

“But why would I want her when I’ve got you, Charity?” Oh my God, he really is mad.

John Baller grabs Graham and they disappear into Room 101. Tonight, Graham Love, you sleep with the fishes.

Next week: John Baller fights back

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