There was no point in trying to argue with him that the stench of dead mice inside the walls is far worse than the presence of living ones. Dr. Devine was adamant: the mice must go. I resigned myself. When Devine gets the bit between his teeth, nothing short of physical violence will wrest it from him. I furtively transferred the bag of licorice allsorts from my desk to the pocket of my tweed jacket. That’s where it will have to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

I finished the afternoon’s classes with a renewed sense of Weltschmerz (it’s no coincidence, I feel, that Devine’s adopted language throws up so many of these melancholy concepts, unknown to the more civilized Romans). My fourth form was listless and uninspired; even my Brodie Boys did not display much of their usual joie de vivre. Allen-Jones had a torn shirt and looked even more unkempt than usual; Tayler had a hacking cough. Thanks to Dr. Blakely, Anderton-Pullitt’s “special needs” have evolved to include a dispensation from Latin altogether, while he concentrates on what he prefers—generally Maths and Science. I do not miss him, precisely, but when a disinclination to learn becomes a reason to stop doing so, the floodgates of Chaos are opened. I’ve tried to explain this to Dr. Blakely, but Dr. Blakely is adamant. Anderton-­Pullitt’s condition, he says, needs a specialist approach. Apparently a forty-­odd-year career of dealing with boys does not meet this requirement.

And so, during the last lesson of the day, feeling less than lustrous, I gave the boys a translation from Vergil to do in test conditions, while I rested my eyes behind a copy of the Telegraph. I was still resting them at five o’clock, when a sound of clanking buckets roused me from my somnolence, and I opened my eyes to discover that the fourth-formers were all gone, and that it was getting dark.

Winter was at the classroom door, carrying his bucket and mop. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“It’s all right. I was just—resting my eyes.” I sat up, adjusted my waistcoat, and tried to look alert.

Winter gave me a curious look. “Long day?”

“Long? Only about thirty years.”

I stood up too quickly. The room began to spin, and I had to steady myself by putting a hand on my desk. The air smelled of disinfectant and boys, and there was chalk on the desk top. Which is just as it should be, I thought: How can a man call himself a schoolmaster if he doesn’t have chalk under his fingernails, fire in his belly, and a pounding head at the end of the day?

“Homines, dum docent, discunt.”

“A man—learns—as he teaches?” ventured Winter cautiously.

“That’s right,” I told him. “Seneca.”