The serious business of foolery….10
Continuing the story….
Kids! Always seek to be nice to your schoolteachers and at least try to treat them with respect.
If only because they're older than you, far nastier than you, study advanced classes in sarcasm and evil comebacks, and in some cases are far better armed than you.
By general consent, the new school term didn't officially begin till September. But even in August, the Assassins' and Thieves' Guild schools were still busy.
There were summer classes and schools, for instance, in subjects thought of as being interesting and having worth, but which simply could not be fitted into an already over-full curriculum.
There were the inevitable remedial and resit classes, for slow learners and those being given a second chance to resit a failed end-of-term exam.
In the case of the Assassins' School, there were those students who came from so far overseas that it wasn't really worth their while going home, even for the six-week summer break. This covered, as a rule, the former Ankh-Morporkian colonies of Fourecks, the Foggy Islands, and Rimwards Howondaland. (it took four and a half weeks sailing just to get to Rimwards Howondaland, and the same back again. And Fourecks was further away still.) A fourth, related, category covered those whose parents worked away in occupations where a family could not follow, such as the military or the Diplomatic Service. And the fifth and saddest category was those who, while at the school, learnt of the death of one or both parents.(1)
School policy was to act in loco parentis for these summer and holiday boarders (for an additional fee, negotiable according to circumstances, or prearranged on first admission, for instance with Howondalandian parents who knew in advance they were not going to see their child again for up to seven years – in this case the summer supplement was built in.)
It was always ideal if an aunt and uncle, or family friend, could take the pupil in at their home for the summer. But the Guild accepted that there would always be a residue of pupils who would be living in over the holidays. Being a caring organisation, it attempted to make things bearable by offering those pupils a chance to benefit from additional or supplementary tuition, or providing other avenues to keep them occupied and productive. The various Embassies and High Commissions, recognising a problem where they could assist, were also helpful in looking after the stranded pupils during the hols. The Fourecksian High Commission, for instance, did what it could in matching its pupils up with locally based Fourecksian families who were prepared to act as foster-parents for a few weeks.
And this explained why, the day after the circus, Johanna Smith-Rhodes found herself in a classroom in the early morning just after breakfast, at the Guild with a dozen or so pupils of all ages and both sexes from her native Rimwards Howondaland. Acting as a sympathetic ear to homesick or disaffected pupils from Home was a recognised part of her job: it was understood that a teacher of the appropriate nationality was best for anchoring a worried or unsettled overseas pupil.
"Right! Settle down!" she announced. "You all know why you're here. If you were at school at Home, you would need to do these lessons in citizenship, civics, and national heritage as a compulsory part of the syllabus."
She paused, and added
"These are mandatory parts of the national school curriculum at home, and the Government insists that pupils educated overseas should not be exempt. The Guild School has very kindly made classroom space available for you to study and learn these things, so that you will not be disadvantaged when you return Home.
"I have been entrusted by the Bureau of Education to teach you these things, and I will tell you that there will be no deviation from the official syllabus. Especially when we come to policies such as apartheid, I will be telling you the official reasons for its existence and why it is a right and proper policy for our nation at this stage in its development. You will then know what you are expected to believe, and you will be aware of the correct things to say and do, especially in public and in the presence of people you do not personally know, who may be listening to you. In short, I will be instructing you into how to blend in as good white citizens, whose thoughts have been appropriately guided and steered."
Are they getting the subtext and the very careful sarcasm? she wondered. I hope some of them notice that sometimes I do not personally practice what I am forced to preach. And draw the correct conclusion. I'm fairly sure none of them have talked to BOSS about me, but I do not know that for sure. You have to be so careful! This is a lion I do not want to put my head in the jaws of.
"There will be an exam, a short one, and it will be administered at the Embassy, where I expect best behaviour! For those few of you in this room who are Kaarpies(2), I'm very sorry, but these lessons will be delivered in the Vondalaans language as most of us here speak it as our mother tongue, and anyway it is the official language of our nation!"
"If the blecks can learn how to speak Vondalaans, miss, so can Kaarpies!"
"Indeed." Johanna said, marking young Michel Malan down as a candidate for subtle re-education. "I stress there is nothing wrong with Kaarpies, I'm part Kaarpie myself, else I would not carry the name Smith-Rhodes. But the biggest part of me is Boor, and she speaks Vondalaans! Now let us begin. Our nation was first established five hundred years ago when…"
Meanwhile, in the staffroom at the Thieves' Guild School on Lower Broadway, Betty Richardson drew her long coat around her, attracting curious looks from other staff members. She'd seen the Times that morning – the photos were as revealing as she'd feared – and had a tactic in place to deal with the fourth year remedial class she was taking that morning.
"I do not envy you this morning." said Law teacher Jack diMarcchio. Law was a popular class among student Thieves: it covered areas such as Prove It, Copper; Good and Bad Alibis; What To Say And What Not To Say to the Watch; How To Get A Good Bent Brief (Jack was also a member of the Guild of Lawyers) and How To Present Youself In Court.
Betty smiled.
"I've been teaching them for long enough to know what to expect, Jack. I've got something planned to defuse anything they might throw at me!"
Steffi Gibbett breezed in with a copy of the Times under her arm. She was dressed for edificeering, in loose top and trousers, and as a younger and more popular member of teaching staff, was there to take the School edificeering team through its paces in preparation for the Boggis-Downey Cup. It was a mark of her popularity that the whole team turned up for regular training sessions even during the holidays. This gave her an advantage over Alice Band, the greater part of whose team were away at home during the long hols.
The Thieves' Guild School was almost entirely a day school: the handful of boarders, from other countries and cities, were lodged around town in Guild-approved digs. Steffi's climbers only needed cross the city. Alice's were currently scattered all over the Central Continent. This disrupted Assassin squad training and was perhaps part of the reason why the Thieves had won the annual challenge cup four times out of six. (3)
"I just heard Mr Boggis isn't coming in today" she said, a wicked little grin forming at the corners of her mouth.
"Would you let me guess!" explained Sister Brigid(4), a nun who had spent a profitable life diverting Church funds into several non-traceable bank accounts. In recognition of her talents as an embezzler, the Guild school had asked her to be its Chaplain.
"Mrs Boggis saw the pictures in the newspaper this morning…"
Steffi opened the paper to Page Three. There was a full-length photo of Alice Band and herself in leotards and full glam. Next to it, the compositor had carefully angled a photo of Mr Boggis looking through his opera glasses, so that he appeared to be fixated on Alice's breasts.(5)
"Mr Boggis is indisposed." Steffi said, looking innocent and earnest. "But according to their housemaid, he was taken to the Lady Sybil, wearing his wife's cornflakes bowl in place of his bowler. Apparently, the cruet set is posing an even greater problem for Doctor Lawn."
"Ouch!" said Jack and Betty and Brigid together.
The ladies' circus and its associated stories had made pages one to seven inclusive plus the editorial and an opinion column.
It was also noted in passing that Brother Japester, once tipped as a likely successor to Doctor Whiteface, had disappeared without trace and was thought to have gone into hiding in the City waiting for the hunt to die down. The Watch remained on alert, and given the nature of the alleged offence which had offended Thieves and Assassins alike, he has also incurred the wrath of two of the biggest and most powerful Guilds in the city.
On other pages!
Our investigative reporter Sacharissa Cripslock took advantage of her day at the circus yesterday to see for herself the shocking conditions in which boys as young as seven are expected to live while studying at the Fools' Guild and College of Clowns. She clandestinely interviewed several about the chilling conditions in which they live and are educated. How long can this mediaeval disgrace persist in the modern world? Would you entrust a son – and very soon a daughter – this level of "care"? Is the Patrician acting to remedy the worst abuses? Full story with pictures on pp 6-7.
Betty took a look at the picture of herself as Ringmistress – full-length and every bit as bad as she feared (although she had to admit that for nearly forty, she'd kept her shape in clothing that hid nothing.)
Then she went to take her lesson, in Remedial Economics for Thieves. (What's it worth? What might it be worth if I sat on it for a while? What are the best things to nick in the first place and how do I calculate that? If I nick it in Quirm and sell it in Brindisi will I be better off, allowing for exchanging the cash from lira back into dollars?)
The fourth year pupils were fifteen, unruly, and hard to handle.
She walked into the class.
Yes, how predictable: the pictures of herself in a leotard were everywhere. Somebody had even been to the trouble and expense of going to the Times' office and buying a blown-up copy, re-iconographed to life size, "as a present to Miss just to remind her".
"Alright! Settle down!" she shouted, as she walked in to a tirade of wolf-whistles and grinning adolescent mainly male faces.
"Today. We will study. The supply and demand curves and their implication for the practice of thiefcraft!"
She chalked busily on the board. Then she turned, smiled at the class, and said
"I nearly forgot. I'd better take my coat off, hadn't I?"
She knew that with Boggis away she'd get away with this. Her heels clicked as she walked across the room in a sudden stunned silence to hang her coat up.
For she was wearing the leotard, tights, and boots she had worn the previous day as Ringmistress. She was also carrying a whip which Johanna Smith-Rhodes had loaned her for the occasion. And had, at odd moments in the last six months, taught her how to use.
She turned and regarded a class full of wide eyes and dropping jaws. A silent class.
She nodded, and chalked up a classic curving graph on the blackboard.
"The law of supply and demand. Dictates what? Miss Mackeson!"
A mean trick. But she knew from experience with male pupils, and from her own awareness she could still cut the mustard with a figure honed by regular edificeering, Escape and Evasion, and Running Away From The Watch, that any male pupil required to stand up and answer her question ran the risk of tipping the desk over. Getting one of the girls in the class to stand up and answer first was an explicit warning.
"That as…. Supply fails, demand remains the same or actually increases"
"And the implication?"
"Errr… as goods grow scarcer due to failing supply, the price of those goods still in circulation rises."
"Good! Well done. Sit down. And for the corollary…."
Her eyes swept the class. Twenty boys squirming at their desks with erections they were trying to hide all tried not to catch her eye, praying it wouldn't be them.
Good, she thought. They're feeling the embarrassment, not me. I'll stay with the girls for a while, and in maybe half an hour it'll have worn off for some of them.
She remembered a late-night conversation she and Steffi had had with Alice Band, and Emmanuelle les Deux-Épées, another female teacher at the Assassins' School. They'd exchanged their thoughts about how it felt to be a sex object for adolescent boys.
"Ma Foi!" Emmanuelle had said. "The kind way is to pretend to be unaware it happens, but to privately take it as a compliment. Boys will be boys, after all, and a boy of fourteen who does not relieve his physical need is an un-natural boy. If he thinks of me while he is doing it, it is a compliment!"
Alice had agreed, relating what the Guild laundress had said to her about "it's true young boys are the focus for poltergeist activity, as the wizards say, miss. There's always a lot of bumping in the night, by all accounts, and lots of ectoplasm on their bedsheets the next morning!"
They had all laughed, and Emmanuelle had wistfully added:
"But some of the boys of seventeen and eighteen. Ah, they tempt me, my fingers itch, but the rules of this game say I cannot touch them. Alice also feels this way about seventeen and eighteen year old pupils, I think!"
Keeping an absolutely straight face, Alice had agreed, privately noting that her friend had not specified gender of pupil.
Betty had gone away feeling relieved that other women teachers had hit the same extra-curricular stumbling blocks, and she and Steffi had been quietly pleased.
And now it was paying off…
"And if goods are over-supplied to the markets, the unit price drops! she said, cracking the whip for emphasis, understanding why Johanna found it an indispensable classroom tool, and wondering if she was giving any of her pupils either a phobia or a sexual fetish for life.
Well, in this particular classroom battle, they started it…
"Now. We will move onto the other set of laws of supply and demand!" she said.
Good. This has stumped them.
"There is a class of trade commodities called Giffen Goods." She chalked it on the board, feeling twenty pairs of eyes on her bottom. She felt oddly bucked up by the attention.
"What is so important about Giffen Goods? What distinguishes them from other commodities? We're looking for exceptions to the normal rule of supply and demand, remember."
"Er….." it was Darren Snape, the first male pupil to risk putting his hand up. She nodded.
"No need to stand up, by the way." she said, kindly.
"Thanks, miss… er, gold, precious metals, jewels like diamonds?"
"Good. Explain why and what happens".
"er… in normal circumstances, the price of gold bullion remains pretty constant regardless of how much there is in the market. But in circumstances that aren't normal, like a war or a famine…"
Betty nodded at him, encouragingly.
"That's when the price rises, miss. Everyone wants some."
"Excellent! In normal circumstances, the supply and demand law does not apply to gold because only a very few people can afford to buy it as individuals. Therefore there is almost always more supply than demand, but because gold is perceived as having intrinsic value independent of other factors, it holds its price. It is subject to a higher order law of economics. Other examples of Giffen Goods? Anyone? Henderson?"
She lifted her leg and planted her booted foot down on a nearby chair. Twenty boys gulped and ten girls tried not to giggle at the boys' discomfort.
And so the lesson passed. As the bell rang at the end, Betty said
"And this is the one and only time you will ever see me in a classroom dressed like this. I hope we've all got it out of our systems by now and we can revert to a normal teacher-pupil interaction, where, by the way, I will be dressed more conventionally. That is all. Thank you for your contributions, see you tomorrow!"
Several of the boys grinned sheepishly on the way out, holding books or bags coyly in front of them. Most of the girls were grinning openly and several said
"Cool, miss!"
"You're great, miss!"
and similar variations on a theme on the way out.
Betty felt good: another classroom victory won. She felt good. And maybe a bit of economic theory had slipped in while they were distracted.
There was a room in the Undercity, several floors beneath a house owned by a sympathetic and old-time retired Clown. The walls dripped with condensation and it was cold and damp: but Brother Japester felt it was no worse and in some cases better than some of the rooms he'd lived in at the Guild as he climbed the ladder.
He sat, read the Times that his saviour had sent down to him, and seethed inwardly.
How dare Whiteface sully the office and do that to his Guild!
When the news got to conservative Müning, there would be argument and indignation there and disbelief that the parent Guild would dare do such a thing. He would let it ferment for a few days, then come bearing news from the City , of his exile, his martyrdom under false charges, demanding the forces of true Clowndom rise up and regain control before these foul experiments took root…
He smiled.
And prepared, in his mind, for civil war.
(1) These sad circumstances required careful and delicate handling, for as often as not, the actions of a Guild graduate might have actually precipitated the bereavement. A rich or prudent parent might have paid several years school fees up front. A trust fund or a rich relative might take over the fees. In the case of a gifted student, the Guild might even continue their education for free.
(2) A Kaarpie – a slightly derogatory shorthand for a Rimwards Howondalandian of Morporkian ancestry who prefers to speak Morporkian. On Roundworld it would be a Kaapie – an English-speaking South African.
(3) In British educational terms, the Thieves' Guild School could be likened to the underfunded rather shabby secondary modern, a spit and a stones' throw away from the classy fee-paying Assassin's Guild school.
(4) Her personal text for reverend contemplation was "Gods help those who help themselves"
(5) In accordance with laws of universal resonance, the picture of Alice and Steffi could go nowhere else but page three. It was accompanied by a caption that read "Phwoor, boys! Wouldn't you like to be inhumed by an assassin dressed in this sort of black? Gorgeous killer Miss Alice Band (late twenties?) knocks 'em dead as she trials a new uniform style for the Guild of Assassins that we hope will catch on! And not far behind, Thieves' Guild lovely Stephanie Gibbett (21) provides the sort of distraction you or I wouldn't mind seeing while somebody else sneaks up behind and picks our pocket…" meanwhile "Stephanie's boss, Mr Boggis, steals a long close-up look at these lovelies, and who apart possibly from Mrs Boggis can blame him?" "