in camera Part 3 of ?
Sorry this has been sat on my to do list for an age. Life just has an irritating habit of getting in the way. Had to dig out a copy of Wheelock's Grammar for this -kudos to all those tortured by the same textbook. Thanks to Becky for Beta duties.
"What part of 'felicitas sapientia et integritas' do you people not understand?"
Most of the pupils looked up in consternation at the formidable voice of their headmistress. Only the table in the far left hand corner did not respond. Caroline saw Martin (Mav) Clayburn smirking while his mate, Tom Harper, whispered something almost definitely disgusting into his friend's ear. Clayburn continued to look down under the lip of their shared table, eyes hooded.
The rabble subsided into a woeful silence that lasted for more than a minute. As Caroline opened her mouth to unleash a tirade, Mav cleared his throat interrupting her,
"We understand it fine, Miss."
Caroline bridled. She was used to be addressed as "Dr Elliot" as Sulgrave's custom of using titles and surnames for teaching staff imposed a minimum level of courtesy. But, typically Mav opted for the more generic form of address of 'Sir' or 'Miss' delivered with a subtle but perceptible undercurrent of disdain.
"It means, 'happiness, wisdom and integrity.'"
Her angry rhetorical opening question was losing its impact as the class began to fidget.
"We were just working on the happiness part, Miss." Mav added. He looked around the room to his open-mouthed counterparts before delivering his punch line with deliberate slowness. "Doing exactly what we felt like on a Monday morning."
Caroline felt a ripple of tense excitement in the classroom as the pupils fixed their eyes on her, wondering with some relish how she might react to his insubordination.
"Since you are so willing to give us a Latin lesson, Mr Clayburn, you had better come to the front." The headmistress responded carefully.
Mav ambled up to the front with practised insouciance. His early career at Sulgrave had been noted for his industry without giftedness, but since September the reverse seemed to be the marker of his latter teenage years. His GP father had the necessary connections at the golf club and elsewhere amongst Harrogate's great and good to insure his son against future unemployment, his haphazard academic results notwithstanding. Winding up the teachers was his particular specialty. A role that he pursued with a keen enthusiasm, almost equal to his habit of avoiding hard work when a easy shortcut presented itself.
"Spell it on the board, please." Caroline asked him with studied politeness.
Hitching up his low slung trousers Mav, wrote out the school motto with a flourish on the whiteboard, followed by a doodle of a smiley face, which sent a nervous titter through his more impressionable classmates.
Caroline's face remained impassive. She raced through a few sarcastic rejoinders in her head, before opting to set a more pedagogically useful ambush.
"Perfectly spelt, Mr Clayburn. Congratulations." she acknowledged curtly. She had expected nothing less from the intelligent, if bone-idle, boy.
"Now parse it."
Mav frowned.
"Come on Mr Clayburn. It is not difficult. Parse it for the class's erudition." She enunciated her following instructions, as though addressing a slower pupil, "Break down the sentence into its component parts of speech, describing the form, function and syntactic relationship of each word. We are all waiting."
He remained silent.
"I'll give you the first word for free to help you out. 'Felicitas'-the one word with which you are so familiar. From felicitas, felicitatis-third declension, gender feminine. Singular, nominative case indicating it is the subject of the sentence. Meaning-happiness."
The boy bluffed his way though the remaining part of the motto, requiring only a small correction of the appropriate declension for integritas. Sensing from the attentiveness of his captivated audience that he was succeeding in the headmistress's challenge, he spoke with increasing fluency and confidence.
Caroline picked up a marker pen. Adding the word, "per" to the beginning of the motto and an additional "m" on the end of "sapientia." She turned to him.
"Lovely, Mr Clayburn. You are doing so well. 'Per felicitas sapientiam et integritas- translate as amended please."
He stared at the whiteboard blankly. He had blustered his way through the headmistress's first task. This was beyond him. There was a longer silence. "It is only three small letters, Mr Clayburn."
More time passed. The mood shifted away from supporting his gambit, and his arrogant demeanour began to slip into scarlet-faced embarrassment.
"Empty your back trouser pockets please, Clayburn." He scowled at her, hands to clamped to his sides. "Now," she thundered. He took out his iphone and sulkily held it out, still maintaining truculent eye contact with a clearly irritated headmistress.
Taking the phone proffered to her, Caroline lowered her voice. It was time to take the matter down a notch or two to the level the minor skirmish deserved.
"Anyone else?" Caroline raised an eyebrow at the rest of the class, who all studiously avoided eye contact."
"Come on" She pointed up at her face, mugging a deliberately exaggerated frown, "See this 9F, this is my disappointed face and you are wearing it out."
She turned to Kate, her tone more conciliatory.
"Ms McKenzie, would you care to enlighten the class of the meaning of the motto as I have amended it?"
"Certainly, Dr Elliot." Kate injected, her mellifluous way of speaking smoothing over the belligerent atmosphere.
"Per is a preposition. It is used before a noun to modify it. It means "through". Since latin is a highly inflected language it uses word endings rather than word order to indicate meaning. The order of words in Latin aren't important in making sense of a sentence, unlike the English language. It is like a pair matching game. You have to then look at the sentence again and try to spot the noun that relates to it from its word ending."
Kate paused waiting for the less bright class members to catch up. The more conscientious pupils at the front tables had already opened their exercise books and started making notes.
In this case, the preposition 'per' is modifying the noun, "sapientia". When using this specific preposition the accompanying noun takes the accusative case."
Picking up the highlighter, she circled the word "per" and drew an arrow towards the word for wisdom, underlining its ending.
"Hence the ending for 'sapientia' changes to 'sapientiam'. So if we look at our motto again thus amended, 'Per felicitas sapientiam et integritas' now translates as, "Through wisdom, happiness and integrity."
Caroline nodded her approval at Kate's concise summary.
"Thank you, Ms McKenzie. We are all a little more informed. Clayburn, you will now surmise that integrity is recognising that the subterfuge use of google is not an adequate substitute for application."
She held the phone out just above his nose.
"And I am choosing to importune your happiness a little further this afternoon. You can collect your iphone from me at my office after school and detention." She waved her hand in Mav's direction to dismiss him, but still addressing his retreating form.
"Perhaps you will apply the common wisdom of this school by remembering that phones are kept in lockers during class. I would hate to have to come in here again to conduct another impromptu Classics lesson."
The class groaned in agreement, while Mav who had returned to his seat slumped into his chair a little further, pondering how he was going to explain his late return home to his dad.
"Now Ms McKenzie will demonstrate to you all that her German class is a much more attractive option at the beginning of the week. Good morning 9F."
"Good morning, Dr Elliott", intoned the class monotonously.
As Caroline swept out of the class, she felt spritely, quite invigorated after the tussle.
Kate called into Caroline's room soon after the bell rang for the end of the school day.
"Kate, is Mav Clayburn signed into detention?"
"He is sitting in front of Michael Dobson as we speak. I think he is having him work through the use of the German term, werden with the passive tense for his pains, poor thing". Kate flopped into the chair opposite Caroline's desk, sighing in relief as her heels throbbed a little less.
"He is an arrogant little shit, Kate, impervious to any attempt to inspire him to learn some humility," muttered Caroline as she searched through a stack of papers.
"Bit harsh!"
"I wasn't talking about Mav." Caroline peered mischievously over her rimless spectacles and Kate was disarmed.
"Really, you are going to have to get over it."
"My rival for your attentions. I'll meet him on the rugby pitch at dawn, if necessary. I'm a crack shot, well that's what Lawrence's xbox tells me."
"You'd fall over, if you pivoted on those heels."
"For you, I'd go down in my best Blahniks"
At that, Kate lent over the desk, placing her hand over the papers Caroline was reading. Acting on the image that sprang from Caroline's last comment, Kate whispered into her ear,
"Is that a threat or an offer?"