“You mean, he was nosing around again. Sucking up to the Crisis Team in the name of Health and Safety.” Devine and Eric have never been friends. Eric holds Devine responsible for his own lack of promotion, and Devine considers Eric to be moody and inefficient.

“Not this time,” I told him. “I got the feeling that somehow Devine wasn’t too impressed with the New Head.”

Eric looked skeptical. “Oxbridge man; education guru; charity worker; Superman. What else does he want?”

What else, indeed?

“Of course,” said Eric mournfully, “some might think that a Head should have spent at least a few years in the classroom. Some might question the wisdom of letting a state-school Yes-man into a place like St. Oswald’s.”

I could see his point, of course. A Head starts out at the chalk-face not in some PR hothouse. And yes, St. Oswald’s traditions are not those of the state sector. But crisis measures (and their Heads) are usually short-term investments. St. Oswald’s has stood for five hundred years. State-school man or not, I thought, how much damage could he do?

By now it was time for the meeting to start, and yet the famous Super Head still hadn’t made his appearance. What was the fellow waiting for? I suspected a showman, and pouring myself another cup of tea, I settled into my armchair and prepared to watch the show.

Five minutes later it began. The door opened; silence fell; a phalanx of Suits entered the room in arrow formation. Bob Strange was among them, his face oddly expressionless, flanked by Devine and the Bursar; but no one paid them much attention. Instead, all eyes were on the newcomers. Two men and one woman—all three smart and so well pressed you could have cut yourself on the creases. The New Head was at the tip of the arrow (I assumed the two Suits were his Crisis Team), and I had time to take in the cut of his suit, the shine on his shoes, and a smile that would have made a piano keyboard look narrow before recognition surprised me into a muffled oath and the contents of my teacup soaked my trouser leg and began to trickle inexorably toward my shoes.

A Master never forgets a face, though boys’ names often come and go. I’d put down the name to coincidence—in over forty years of teaching, one tends to encounter most names more than once. But as soon as I saw his face, I knew that my instinct had been right.

Because I knew the man, you see. Dr. Harrington, MBE—Johnny Harrington of 3S—returned after twenty years’ absence to inflict fresh misery. There was no chance he wouldn’t recognize me; as he scanned the little crowd our eyes met and his smile broadened still further. He gave me a nod, as if greeting an old friend, and my heart sank like a doomed frigate.