Mr Turnball stabbed Kevin Threlfall in the neck with his biro. Mr Turnball taught maths. Or, at least, he handed out photocopied sheets at the beginning of each lesson and waited at the front should any questions arise, which they never did because the class was largely preoccupied dodging the missiles thrown by Kevin Threlfall.
Kevin wasn't a particularly nasty child. He was more of an irritation. He floated around somewhere between the rebellious and the pathetic. He was streamed into middle sets, never clever enough to be moved on, and not belligerent enough to be kept back. His attempts at bad behaviour were laughable by the standards of the real hard cases. He would sniff Tippex instead of glue, annoy cats rather than kill them-he couldn't even smoke because he had asthma. At the end of each day he would slink off having failed to attract any attention. At home, too, he inspired sufficient disdain from his mother for her to send him to school with more bruises around his head than anybody else. He was a bored and boring child.
Kevin lived close to the school and would often return in the evening determined to smash some windows. But he carried enough fear within him to be prevented from actually doing so. One night, after the shops had been shuttered and the streets had slipped into silence, Kevin managed to get himself into the car park of the lower school. He kicked a ball against a wall for a while, waiting for the caretaker to wake up and chase him out. After an hour or so he moved towards the darkest end of the carpark to write his name in permanent marker on the wall. As he moved closer he spotted an old Austin Maxi, dirty and rusted, with CND stickers and a tax disc peeling away from the windscreen. The boy who wanted to be bad probably stared for a good while before advancing. It was a teacher's car; he could kick it, maybe smash a headlight, or break in and joy-ride across country. That would get attention, surely. Whatever it was he decided to do, we'll never know, for through the quivering shadows on the dust-covered windscreen he saw the figure of a man slumped in the front seat. The man had an empty bottle of whisky in his hand and a thin trail of sick leaking from his mouth on to a corduroy jacket that had stood at the front of maths classes handing out photocopied sheets.
Mr Turnball came to our school in Liverpool in 1985. It was the year that the evening news showed Neil Kinnock attacking the city's Militant-led council in what was to be called his most triumphant and rousing speech. It was the year that pupils at my school were sent home for three hours a week, every week, because of staff shortages. It was the year that our flat in Everton was broken into twice by the smack-heads next door who were also sent home from school every week because of staff shortages. On the news, Liverpool's Eric Heffer stormed out of the conference as Kinnock accused the council of "hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers." Derek Hatton, the city's deputy leader, stood on the balcony shouting "lies," while others booed. It didn't matter. Whatever it was they were arguing about, we were still being broken into, there were still three hours a week missing from our school timetable, and we were still getting photocopied sheets handed out in maths lessons.
Mr Turnball was from Warrington, which had its own council, responsible for its own redundancies and the subsequent removal of Mr Turnball to a city he didn't know. As Hatton and Heffer shouted and stormed, and Kinnock pointed and accused, Mr Turnball drifted; away from his job and his home, away from his wife and children, and into a world where he had become an enemy both to those whom he had been trained to help and, ultimately, to himself. And now, with conference season over, Mr Turnball slept in his Austin Maxi, his life in pieces around him-and Kevin Threlfall watching.
He wasn't dead. Kevin could see his teacher's chest rise and fall, every draw of breath that kept him alive. As he stood there staring, Kevin saw an end to nights on his own in the school carpark, and a life of being asked to repeat his story over and over again; "Go on, Kev, tell us about the night you found Turnball pissed." And with that thought burning in his head, he moved towards the wall and wrote his name.
The following day, Kevin was unusually quiet during maths until, ten minutes before the end of the lesson, he raised his hand.
"Eh, sir, I've got a question."
"Er, yes, Kevin, what is it?"
"Does whisky help you sleep?"
"Pardon?"
He repeated the question, with Mr Turnball staring at him, blankly.
"I don't understand."
"I just wondered, sir, that's all." Kevin looked around the class, a smug little grin cracking his pimpled adolescent face.
"I don't think that's an appropriate question for this lesson, Kevin." Kevin laughed.
The next day he had another question: "What's the most comfortable car to sleep in, sir?" Each maths lesson after this would involve a new enquiry; "How often do you get your jacket cleaned, sir?" or "How's your back today, sir?" Day after day he would throw up questions with an eerie smile as he patiently worked his way towards his final document. Then, one day, Kevin stayed behind after the class left.
"Do you want something, Kevin?"
"No, sir."
"Then why are you here?"
"I know what you do."
"Excuse me?"
"I've seen you. I know what you do. At night. In the carpark. You get pissed."
We didn't see Mr Turnball for the rest of that week, but when he next came in it was clear that something had changed. He was white, more nervous than usual, gaunt and edgy. He began the lesson handing out the sheets, then quickly made his way to the front. "This is shit." It was Kevin Threlfall. "What did you say?" "I said, this is shit." Kevin, too, had changed. He had had these outbursts before, but only ever through the side of his mouth so as not to get caught. Now he spoke aloud, his eyes meeting those of the teacher with a new confidence. "This is shit. You're shit." Mr Turnball paused. He looked away then glanced up again, stuttering, "N-now Kevin, I don't think you should use that sort of..."
"Shut up. This is shit. You're shit. I'm not doing this." And with that Kevin walked out of class, to the genuine amazement of his fellow pupils. We waited for Mr Turnball to react but nothing happened. Instead, he sat down in his seat, removed his glasses, and stared hard at the ceiling until the end of the lesson.
So it continued. Kevin would come in to maths lessons just to storm out again, and we watched, lesson after lesson, for something to happen, but it never did. Over the following weeks Kevin would tell Mr Turnball to fuck off, he would call him "queer" and "piss-head," but nothing ever happened. Then, to his annoyance, everybody else found the confidence to do the same. Classes which began with 30 pupils would be reduced to five after just half an hour as they stood up, one by one, hurled abuse or pens, and left. Mr Turnball was a tall man, he must have been over six feet tall because I remember him towering above all the other teachers in the playground, and yet if you asked any of his pupils, they would describe him as a slight man, because that is how he appeared during his stay at Walton-always stooping, shoulders hunched. He answered very occasional questions about algebra and trigonometry from his uninterested class with all the hushed shame of a penitent child.
But things had not worked out for Kevin, either. The news in the playground wasn't reported the way he had hoped it would be: if a fart like Threlfall could walk out of class then anybody could. All too quickly Kevin found himself consigned to the loneliness of the school carpark once again. This time, though, he wasn't going to give up. His taunts became increasingly aggressive as his classmates grew bored. As Mr Turnball became increasingly absent from school, Kevin became more anxious to do something on the occasions when the teacher did take lessons until, one afternoon, Kevin pushed too far.
Mr Turnball had come to class after two weeks of being off sick. He had been absent for five weeks since the winter and was clearly only in on this particular day because warnings had been issued by the governors. He sweated a lot, his shirt was rank with body odour and whisky, and he slurred his speech. It was the rowdiest lesson any of us had ever taken part in. Twenty minutes into it, Mr Turnball pissed himself.
The class fell silent. The comedy had ended. There was nothing to laugh at. Although he stood before us, living and breathing, we were finally watching him die. Children fantasise about revenge with the same passion that they dream about being footballers or astronauts. But that afternoon, every child in the class who had ever held thoughts about getting one-up on the teacher who had given them lines or kept them in detention, finally learned the humiliation of true defeat.
Mr Turnball stood for a moment, caught in a dream, as if the day wasn't really happening, as if the past five years weren't real. He had been marking work, his pen was still in his hand, but somehow he was elsewhere. Then, as he looked down at the puddle around his shoes he heard Kevin's voice. "You dirty bastard. You dirty fucking bastard." That was the moment Mr Turnball realised what had happened. He had pissed himself. Jesus. He had actually pissed himself. You dirty fucking bastard.
"N-now, Kevin, stop. I-I. I don't know... Kevin, s-stop. O, dear. O, my Christ."
"You dirty bastard."
"Kevin, please..."
"You dirty bastard."
"K-Kevin..."
"YOU DIRTY FUCKING BASTARD!"
"KEVIN!"
And with that, Mr Turnball lunged forward to grab Kevin Threlfall's shirt collar. His pen was still in his hand, held outwards, caught in a moment of thought, a moment of indecision and confusion. As his hand reached the collar, the pen had already drawn blood from Kevin's neck. There was a yelp, a scream, and a crowd of other teachers piled into the room-five years after the redundancies hit, two years after our weekly lessons had been cut, more than half a year after Derek Hatton shouted and stormed at Neil Kinnock, three months after Kevin Threlfall had grown tired of kicking a ball around a school carpark-finally the teachers piled in to Mr Turnball's classroom.
The wound was nothing more than a scratch, leaving Kevin with a grazed line on his neck which ended with a round bruise, temporarily tattooed by the biro ink at its centre.
Mr Turnball went. He wasn't replaced. His pupils were divided up among the remaining maths classes and after that I had no more lessons with Kevin. The lower school is gone now, replaced by a Somerfield store with a pay-and-display carpark. Eric Heffer is dead, and Derek Hatton has moved into radio. Neil Kinnock went on to make more speeches after the triumph of 1985, but for the life of me I can't remember any of them.
