I’ll admit it: I disliked him on sight. There was something cold about Harrington; the same coldness, perhaps, that defines our own Bob Strange. He was polite; he was handsome; he was correct; he always said sir. But he had a way of saying it, and a way of looking at you that made you want to check whether your fly was zipped up, and made you aware of the sweat stains under your armpits and the chalk marks on your jacket and the mistake you made in Latin translation that you thought you could pass off as a joke—

His Latin, I found, was excellent. He’d been homeschooled until he was nine, after which time he had been placed in one of our local Middle Schools, and by the time he reached St. Oswald’s, he was already more than up to standard. This pleased me at first; one of the problems of seventh-­term entrants was that barely half of them had studied Latin at all, and it was my job, as the most junior Classicist, to catch them up over lunchtimes and Breaks, while Dr. Shakeshafte, my Head of Department (who also happened to be the Headmaster), sat in his office, listening to the cricket and eating cheese against his doctor’s advice.

Harrington, however, needed no help from me. He did his work quickly and accurately and with a look of polite boredom on his face, never volunteering answers, but never making a mistake either. He was easy to ignore in favor of those boys who genuinely found the subject taxing; my group numbered thirty-five, and although I didn’t exactly neglect Harrington, I’ll admit he was easy to overlook. So easy, in fact, that when the first complaint came, it took me altogether by surprise.

Remember, times were different then. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister; the Yorkshire Ripper had just been condemned; Charles had just married Diana. Classics still had an empire then, consisting of three Masters; an office; a section in the School Library; and various classrooms, annexes, and stock cupboards. At forty-one, I was at my peak; sprightly of step and speedy of brain. I was no novice, however. I’d been at St. Oswald’s for a decade, having taught at a couple of inferior schools before then, and I was reaping the rewards of experience. The boys knew and respected me—after all, I’d taught most of them at one time or another.