“He would never talk about the offence.” She spoke suddenly, unexpectedly. “ He pleaded guilty at the court case. Some magistrates take a dim view of drug cases now, but it was a first offence and he got probation. But, ever since, he denied that he had ever taken drugs at all. He refused to discuss it. He didn’t say that he was framed or anything like that. Just that the cannabis wasn’t his.”

George watched her hurry off towards the office. She stopped once to speak briefly to a very young girl with a dirty toddler in a pushchair. He walked back to his car. Instead of taking the main road south to Norwich and London he drove west along the coast road, along the low cliffs to Rushy.

All day Bernard Cranshaw could feel his blood pressure rising. When he walked into the staff room first thing in the morning there was a sudden silence and he knew that they had been talking about him. He hated them, hated all of them, even those who pretended to be friendly. They thought that he was inferior because he did not talk about books and plays. But he taught woodwork and metal work, not English literature, and he never heard them talking about his interests. He hardly talked to them now. He had nothing in common with them, these young graduates, with their strange hair styles and fancy ideas. He had gone to teacher training college in the fifties when they would take just about anybody. There had been more like him in the school then, ordinary men who would answer you straight, who could keep a class quiet.

His classroom was one of two in a terrapin hut. It was meticulously, obsessively tidy. He shut the door behind him with a feeling of relief and safety. He was teaching a second-form class for the first period and they worked well. They were still young enough to be excited by the tools and the wood, and to be frightened by him. There was a soft hum of whispered voices and the pleasant, gentle noise of scraping and drilling. He walked around slowly, giving advice, tackling problems, then sat at his desk to prepare a fifth-form exam paper. Occasionally a child would come to him for help, but generally there was an air of peace, of studied application. He looked up sharply at a loud explosive sound which suddenly shattered the peace of the classroom. The children were still working quietly. The noise seemed to have come from outside. Then there was a frenzy of sound from the classroom next door. It seemed that all the activity of the playground had been trapped in that room. He waited for the noise to abate. It did so, only to reach another nerve-jangling climax. Cranshaw strode to the adjoining door, threw it open and yelled:

“What the hell is going on in here?”

The room was in uproar. Desks and chairs had been piled on one side and a group of fourth formers, barefooted, dishevelled, were smiling aggressively in the space in the middle. Then, with embarrassment, he saw a teacher who had apparently been a part of the chaos. At least it was not a teacher, but a student teacher in her final year attached to the school. She seemed unmoved by the interruption.