Ah, yes. There she blows. St. Oswald’s, a metaphor for eternity if ever I saw one, heaving into view like something from a boys’ adventure book—a Jules Verne, perhaps, as the mysterious island peers over the horizon. Or a Rider Haggard, in which sinister natives cower and lurk at the gates of the Forbidden City. You can see the Bell Tower from the road, the peaked turret that has never housed a bell a haunt for pigeons—and lately, mice. And behind it, the long spine of the Middle Corridor, mullioned with light, and the illuminated front of the Chapel, the rose window casting its fugitive gleam across the walk of lindens.

Home at last, I tell myself, and the thought is at the same time a benediction and a curse.

Silly old fool, comes my silent retort, in a voice eerily like that of my colleague and longtime adversary, Dr. “Sourgrape” Devine. I’ll be sixty-six on Bonfire Night, with a hundred and two terms under my fast-expanding belt—what will it take to keep me away?

Good question. It’s a drug, of course. Like the occasional Gauloise, taken in secret behind the door of my office, it helps to keep me going. And my ticker pills, of course, prescribed for me by my doctor after last year’s little incident—along with a good deal of unwanted advice on smoking, stress, and pastry.

My doctor is an ex-pupil of mine (the Village is full of them nowadays), which makes him hard to take seriously. He means well, for all that, and I do try my best to humor him. But stress is a part of the job, and besides, what would the old place become without me? Thirty-four years I’ve served on this ship. I know it from every angle. Master and boy; teacher trainee; form tutor; Head of Classics; and now, Old Centurion. Might as well try to knock the gargoyles off the Chapel roof as dislodge old Straitley, and if the management doesn’t like it, at least they have the sense to keep quiet on the subject. I did the School a service last year—the year that, after a promising start, became our annus horribilis—besides which my Latin results were the best we’ve had since ’89. At the time, I’ll admit it, I was close to giving in. But murder, scandal, deception, and fraud have driven the old ship onto the rocks. How could I leave St. Oswald’s to the scavengers and the wrecking crew?