The history master was a gruff man, brow ridged with incredulity, chip-lipped and sardonic. His hair, clipped to a tuft, rode his head like a wave. His words were bare, crisp, and to the point.
- Educate thyself,
he wrote on the board, and turned his thin neck towards the class and looked at us sourly, silently, over the tops of his spectacles, not expecting a response, but demanding one anyway.

- That's what they used to write on the union banners,
he said, pausing for effect before he moved wearily to his chair and sat down, twirling the stick that he carried between his fingers, tapping the desk.
- I'm not here to teach you,
he said,
- My job is to keep you off the streets. And your job...
He removed his spectacles and rubbed the back of his hand across his right eye.
- is to teach yourselves.
It was a haunting performance, and we believed him. He was a piece of living history, grey skin rough at the edges, molluscs on his chin, fossilised in stone, thin lips and hard eyes that had seen everything and knew it, spectacles balanced on the rim of his nose, reflecting squares of thin light from the windows, and hidden at the corner of his mouth a hint of warmth and a smile, though he wouldn't want us to know it. He was supposed to be indifferent. He was supposed to be disdainful. He was supposed to dislike us though none of us believed him. It wasn't difficult to see a sensitivity behind his scorn, a bruised romanticism that surfaced in sudden bitterness or nostalgia in his voice when he talked about the people he believed in, those who had fought for our right to dignity. We had things on a plate, not because it was our right, not through the kindness of others, but because people had fought for it. And we should never forget it.
- You won't know how lucky you are until it's gone,
he would tell us.
On friday afternoons we had him for two hours. Every week he would pick two kids at random to read out their essays, and we would discuss what they had written. Every week I sat at the back of the class, hidden from view by the kid in front, and copied my essay from the exercise book of a kid in the year above us, who had done the same course the year before. I copied them word for word and was always given lesser marks, which I never understood. But I always had an essay to put on his desk at the end of the afternoon, and he would raise his eyebrow and look at me oddly. Sometimes he almost smiled, and I would feel nervous, thinking that he had found me out, but he never did, because he seldom moved from the front of the class.
And then, one friday, as was bound to happen, he called me out to read my essay and I didn't have one to read.
- I don't have it.
- Why not?
- I forgot to pick it up when I left this morning,
was all I could think of to say.
- I left it at home.
I told him as he peered at me over the tops of his spectacles.
- You left it at home, sir,
- Aye sir.
- Where do you live?
- Sir?
- Where do you live?
- Mortimer Road...
- You can run home and fetch it then.
- Aye sir.
He had found me out, and I could feel the smiles of the other kids on my back as I picked up my haversack that had the names of popstars and models written on it in coloured ink, and walked out of the class. Beaten, they thought, and how could I know that I wasn't? I ran down the stairs, flying past a teacher who thought about pulling me up, but didn't, along the highwalled corridor between the sporting plaques and the faded print of Degas's Absinthe Drinkers that lined the walls, and into the school library.
I sat scewiff at a study table under the high windows with the slanting light falling across my books, my pen copying the words of last year's essay, the causes of the first world war, the ritual litany of alliances and assassinations, desperation and stupidity, a world that had become comfortable with its madness, where millions died so that schoolboys could write essays about it. And the sky outside filled with rain, and the room shook with thunder, and lightning flashed between the clouds, washing flying between the house-ends, puddles forming in the schoolyard, a gardener running towards the bicycle sheds with his jacket pulled over his head. And I had an excuse for taking my time, the storm blowing noisily down Mortimer Road, the rain falling through the dark urban sky, as I scribbled carelessly down the margins of my exercise book.
I stuffed my things into my haversack, pen and ink and books, pushed past the librarian in her clumsy gown, carrying a thick pile of books, mould and dust, under her crooked arm, and half-walked, half-ran, along the echoing corridor past kids moving between lessons to the big door that led into the school yard. I pushed the door open and shivered in the disturbing shock of cold air, the rush of water from the roof-gutters gurgling in the drains. The startling rain hit me in the face and stung my eyes, and I stood, shrivelled and flapping like a drowned pigeon until the water had washed though my hair and down the back of my neck, and I knew that the history master would know that I had suffered in the cause of his essay. A teacher saw me, stood in the doorway and shouted,
- What are you doing?
and I said,
- Nothing sir,
pretending an innocence that I did not have.
- Get inside,
he said, and I coughed, and ran through the corridors and up the stairs to the class. I didn't knock as I was supposed to, but threw open the door and stood in the doorway, panting and wet, rain dripping from my hair and blazer. Atkinson stood at the front of the class with his book in his hand, reading aloud, mumbling and uncomfortable. The history master tugged at his elbow, and looked at me, with his eyebrows raised over the rims of his spectacles.
- And did you find your essay?
he said.
- Aye sir,
I said, pulling the rucksack off my back, rummaging for my essay, the dim words that meant nothing to me, the history that was somehow detached from my everyday problems but at their root. Death wrapped around with flags. Over the top and into the fire like the infantry. I didn't have a chance. I didn't have an excuse. But I did have my essay, and I said,
- Its here, sir.
And I knew that he knew that I had pulled it out of the fire, and that he didn't know how I had done it. From now on he would watch what I was doing, so I wrote my essays on thursday nights so that I had them for his lessons, but I copied them, every one, from the previous year's exercise book. And still he gave me lesser marks than the year before. So I might as well have written them myself.

That was the winter that I began to see Hannah. We used to nick off school on Tuesday afternoons and go to her sister's place and kiss and fumble with our hands over each other's bodies. I met her at Ann Franklin's house just after christmas. Our first date we went to see a film at the Tyneside Film Theatre. We were seventeen and shy, walked a knowing distance apart, sat on the train too close, shoulder and thigh touching with an anxious warmth, talked abstractly, our breath forming small clouds of steam, names etched into the condensation running down the window. It was cold, and we shivered as we touched. I had the beginnings of a cold, a mild soreness at the back of my throat and an itch in the tonsils that I noticed as we walked past the worn stone of St. John's where the starlings swirled around the bare trees in a rush of sound. She turned to me and caught my eye soothingly, and I reached out and offered her my hand as we walked up Grainger Street, and she took it, and squeezed.
We went to a pub to get warm before the film began. I walked in behind her, proud to be with her, noticing the looks she pulled and the glances she gave to me as we walked across the room, conscious of the smell of her hair and the whoosh of her dress. We stood at the bar, trying to catch the attention of the barman, my hand on her shoulder, looking around the room when I caught sight of the history master, sitting in a corner with his wife, looking the other way.
- Ah na. I cannit bear it.
- What's the matter?
Hannah asked.
- Nothing,
I said.
But I curled my legs around behind her and out of his sight, and pulled her to the opposite end of the pub, and we left in a hurry. I was sure that he had seen me. He had stood up, pulling on his coat just as I had gone through the door. But Hannah smiled and pushed me and said,
- Don't be soft,
and I followed her down the street and threw my arms around her from behind, and lifted her off her feet.
- Get off,
she said.
And that might have been that, except that when we sat down to watch the film, I saw the shadowed outline of the history master and his wife being ushered into the seats along the row from us. I buried myself deep in my seat and tried to hide, but he saw me, and shook his head as if I had no right to be there. I said a mute hello across the seats, but he didn't answer. The lights dimmed. The coughing and talking died down, and the titles came up on the screen, a soft film about a blonde-haired acrobat who had run off with an army deserter, ending in a field with a gun, shot up with butterflies, a tracking shot over the landscape and Mozart filling the air.
I don't know why. Maybe it was the dust in the cinema, a hundred damp coats come in from the cold, the used air or the silence and the stiff backs in front of me, but my nose and throat began to itch and I couldn't move, a trickle at first wettening my upper lip and the back of my hand. I used my sleeve, and sniffed slowly and silently, but it didn't work. I tried watching the girl in the film, not breathing, thinking of sex and of Hannah's fingers when she reached to touch my hand. I felt in my pocket but my handkerchief wasn't there. And the film was soft and quiet. The girl was shot up with lace and butterflies, and whenever it mattered they walked through a silent landscape to the sound of trees in the wind and the singing birds and my nose. My hand was wet, my lip was wet, and the flood kept on coming. I decided to move but sat rigid between Hannah and a man in a wideboy suit, who looked at me sideways every time I sniffed. And beyond him was the history master, eyes fixed sternly on the screen. It was a hard decision but I nudged the man in the wideboy suit and said,
- Sorry,
though it wasn't enough. He raised his eyes to the roof, and stood up reluctantly, and I edged my way along the row to the history master who looked at me hard, shaking his head.
- Couldn't you wait?
he said.
- Sorry sir,
I said, and pushed past his wife, who wouldn't even stand up.
- Sorry,
I said.
- Sorry.
- Scuse me.
- Sorry.
Each person I passed sighed and was unwilling to rise. And the heads craned around me and through me. The film had reached a crucial moment and I had missed it, saying sorry and ducking and weaving through the bent bodies and the shoes and the handbags and the half-raised seats, the faces upturned to the light, I held my nose in my hand, scared that I might spoil their evening, scared that I might cough in their faces. My score was Mozart, the music rising with each footstep that I took, each toe that I trod on, the piano and the violins soaring as I ran up the aisle, through the curtains and into the light, breaking into the silence. The surprised usher at the door tried to hide the cigarette in her hand, and looked startled, and then indifferent.
I ignored her, my face in my hands, and ran up the stairs to the toilets, stood under the bare lightbulbs, leaning over the trough with my nose between my fingers, and blew, and the light rushed in, and I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo crawling out of the dark after so many years, my nose and throat like an opened sluice, the cistern pouring through my gills, disinfectant washing through my consciousness, the music ebbing through the walls. I stood and blew, and I blew again. I filled my hands, and washed them in the sink, and went into the cubicle to grab some toiletroll, but all they had was medicated Jeyes paper, hard and sharp, like blowing your nose into a bowl of cornflakes. I thought of Hannah, on her first date with me, and went back because of her, past the usher who looked at me stiffly, down the dark aisle, my eyes unadjusted to the light, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, bumping and pushing myself back along the row of half-lit faces.
- Sorry,
I said.
- Sorry.
- Mind.
- Sorry.
And the man in the wideboy suit said,
- Oh sit down, will you.
And I sat down, and Hannah took my hand in hers, and I didn't feel so bad. But my nose kept on running, allergic to the film, to the cinema, and to the man in the wideboy suit, his aftershave and his hair. And each time I blew my nose the Jeyes paper cracked in my hand, and his face creased like an overcoat in the wind, and I couldn't help feeling pleased by the look of disgust that he gave me after the lights came up at the end of the film and I pushed past him to go the toilets for another handful of paper.
The history master was in the foyer waiting for his wife while I was waiting for Hannah. He spoke to me, and I coughed involuntarily, into his face.
- Sorry, sir,
I said.
- I couldn't help it.
- No,
he said.
- You couldn't.
My throat hurt a lot, and my lungs felt like bags of wet coal that the black dust was seeping through.

One morning, two or three weeks later, when I was half-awake, my arms folded across my desk, staring out of the window while the history master read the register, he stopped at my name.
- You're with us?
- Who, me?
- Yes, you... sir!
- Yes sir,
I said,
- I am, sir.
He thumbed through the register in silence, stopped to remove his spectacles and polish them, revealing the rings around his naked eyes and a ridge on his nose, replaced them slowly and carefully, and fixed a long and icy stare on me.
- Two days last week, one the week before, three the week before that. Why?
- I was ill,
I mumbled, because I didn't have a reason, and he stood up and walked towards the window, shaking his head. He stared from the window at the cold world outside, watching a groundsman walking across the yard with a barrow to fill in a hole on the football pitch.
- If you don't pick up your ideas you are going to be left behind, lad. This is the only chance you will get,
he said.
- Are you listening to me?
- Aye sir.
- Where were you last week?
I coughed.
- Stand up.
I pushed my desk forward, straightening my legs and my body, and pressed my fingers into the lid.
- I was ill, sir,
I lied.
- And the week before?
- I went for tests, sir...
I stared at my shoes and felt the skin tighten across my face.
... The doctor's sir. I had to go to the hospital...
Atkinson, sitting at his desk behind me, laughed and pushed his ruler into the back of my legs.
... for an X-ray, sir.
His face creased slightly.
- You had to go for an X-ray?
I looked behind him at the wall.
- He thinks I have TB, sir, and I shouldn't come to school,
I lied, and coughed, embarrassed, into my hands. He stared into the air in front of him, but didn't speak for a moment.
- Wait behind afterwards,
he said.
His face was changed, his grey skin pulled tight over the bones of his face, and I was worried. He put his hand on my shoulder and said,
- It will be alright son,
and I said,
- Aye sir.
I knew that I had touched a sore spot and I felt stupid and guilty. I lay in bed that night and listened to my breathing, and each breath burst from my lungs like a frog burping over the trenches.

And it was worse than that, for every time he saw me in the corridors of the school he came towards me, put his hand on my shoulder and asked how I was. And I would suck in my cheeks and try to look sallow and thin like there was a bird in my lungs, clutching at the bars of my ribcage, trying to get out. I didn't know how to behave. I would say,
- Thank you, sir. I'm alright,
and try to leave. And he would grab me and say,
- Don't worry, boy,
and I would say.
- I won't, sir. Really sir, I'm alright.
And felt his eyes follow me down the corridor, for I had seeped into his mind, like the flicker of a memory of the distant past, dust on the lungs and the pitman's cough. In assembly I would see him every morning scanning the faces until his eyes alighted on me, trying to hide from him, or coughing in the back row with hollow cheeks and a concave chest. His eyes always found me, wherever I was, and when assembly was over and the singing was done, I would dart from the hall into the yellowsmelling toilets to avoid his gaze, and wait for the bell to ring, though one day he caught me unawares as I was coming out.
- Have you heard yet?
he asked, and I looked away, shakily.
- No sir,
and he put his hand on my shoulder, and said,
- You'll be alright,
and all I could say was,
- I've got to go, sir. Mr. Grey's waiting,
and limped off, feeling guilty that he believed me, and glad that he hadn't seen through me, though his concern scared me, and his presence followed me out of the school, casting a shadow across my life. In the backstreets, in the youth club, walking down Saint Peter's Lane, I would hear his voice and see him, saying to me in a calm but worried voice,
- It will be alright son,
and I would feel terrible.

One day I whipped off school with Hannah. We left just after the bell went, walking down the lane past the damp unfriendly playing fields towards the maingate with the cold wind in our hair, when one of the teachers came out of the building behind us and blew his whistle.
We turned and saw him against the sky, his belly and his whistle protruding, and we kept on walking, worrying our shoes on the wet tar, for all the world as if we had every reason to be walking out of school, scared to turn back and scared to run until we reached the gate, running to leap behind a garden hedge, though we could hear him shouting. We knew he hadn't seen our faces, and we knew that he didn't know who we were.
An old man stood in the doorway of a shed facing us. He chewed his lip and watched us in silence.
- Poor old bugga,
I thought. He had one of those wooden faces that looked like it had been carved by a child, the right bits in the wrong places, and a startled expression whatever it was he was thinking or felt.
He knew why we were there, and gestured with his hand for us to stay where we were, on our knees in the mud, indicating that the teacher was watching for us. And we did as he bid, and waited, and he lit a cigarette and disappeared into the shed. Hannah, not believing him, followed him, crawling on all fours. She went into the shed and I saw her face appear through the dust of the window. She looked towards the playing field and the school, jerked out of sight, and was pushed out of the door by the old man, with the scrawny strength of an old man, his muscles made of string and wire.
- He's lying,
said Hannah,
- There's no-one there.
- Bastards. You'll catch it.
said the old man. And I laughed, which only set him off.
- Aa'll report youse,
he shouted,
- Aa'll report youse to the school,
and his hand came down after us as we ran up the street, laughing. We caught a bus to Saint Aidan's church, run with ancient soot, stripped trees bent over the gravestones. It was a windy day, and we bought saveloy dips and ate them as we walked, dipping our fingers in the onions and the gravy. She said,
- How's your chest?
- Ah.
- Well?
- Leave it be.
- It's not that serious.
- I'm not in the mood.
- Hey.
- He believes it.
- So?
- I know. I lied.
- So?
- How do I get out of it?
- You cannot.
- Leave it.
- Tell him. Say the results are good.
We walked past the bridges at Westoe. The air was filled with the odour of wet leaves and coaldust. A man in a flying coat cycled past. The sky clashed above us, a swirling mass of blowing clouds, slanting sunlight and shivering smoke. We walked slowly, arguing. She stopped on the corner and asked me for a ciggie. I fumbled in the pocket of my coat, which I carried over my shoulder, pulled out my packet and handed her one. I took one for myself, and lit it, cupping my hands against the wind. A car stopped beside us as I blew out the smoke, and the driver jumped out and came round behind my back. A hand reached out and grabbed the cigarette from my mouth.
- Hey.
I spun around and found myself face to face with the history master, my cigarette in his hand, his face a glaring eruption of rage, his eyes filled with something close to hate. His hand gripped my arm, so tight it was painful, and his mouth was clenched.
- Get in the car,
he said. Hannah said,
- No.
- Get in the car.
I think she thought that he would hit her, and she climbed in too. We sat in the back, caught each other's eye as he stormed around the car to the driver's seat, and were unsure whether to laugh or cry at this strange madness. This was not like him. I would expect to be paraded at assembly, made to stand on the stage while he threw sarcasms across the hall. But this was outrageous.
- You little shit,
he shouted, half turning to look at me, as the car swerved onto the wrong side of the road.
- Tuberculosis, my god,
he shouted.
- You little shit. Do you know what tuberculosis is? Does it mean anything to you? Have you ever met anybody with TB?
His face that never showed emotion now smouldered with anger, his eyes spat fire, flames and hot splinters. And we cowered, silent on the back seat, avoiding his eyes in the mirror.
- I will show you, my boy. By the time I have finished with you, you will understand what it means to have your lungs collapse through no fault of your own.
- Aye sir.
- Don't give me your Aye sirs.
The car screeched to a halt and he came round the bonnet in one movement and flung open the door.
- Get out,
and Hannah looked to me for the re-assurance that I could not give her.
- Out. Both of you. Out.
We were beside the old church. He led us up the path to the graveyard. Hannah grabbed my hand and we followed at a distance. He had stopped in front of a simple grave. It was unmarked except for an unnamed cross.
- Tuberculosis,
he said.
We stood in embarrassed silence. The wind seemed to blow messages around the stark spire and the killed trees, with their bare branches flying over the graveyard, the leaves stacked in the corners. I pulled on my coat, to keep out the sudden chill and the cold in the atmosphere. He stared at the soil in front of him, and I realised that he was as embarrassed as I was. He turned and shook his head.
- What do you think you are doing?
- Putting on me coat, sir,
I said, and he almost smiled.
- With your life, boy.
- Nothing, sir.
- That just about sums it up.
He left us shamefaced between the gravestones. A falling gull spun over the roofs, and his footsteps on the gravel path echoed through the silent wind.

Richard Hillesley