The bell rang, and the class quickly settled. The teacher cleared his throat. “The other day, in the corridor,” he began, “outside our classroom, I heard a student say, ‘There goes that dick, Cavalier.’ I did not recognize his voice, but I’m pretty sure I know who it was,” announced Mr. Cavalier himself. “Don’t worry: I know it was not one of you.” It was obvious that he had the full attention of his Grade 9 English class. By now they knew his unorthodox way of opening a class discussion, so they were all ears.

“ I tell you this not because I want you to tell me whether you agree or disagree with the speaker’s judgment of my character, but because…?” They now had to guess. Some liked this ploy; others did not.

Jacob Ianucci loved it. “Because you want us to tell you who it was?”

“No; no-one here was present in the corridor.”

“ Gary Carter is away today,” announced a lad at the back.

“ Very perceptive, Jack, but Gary was also absent yesterday, too…” Jack’s face fell.

Suzie Bright suggested “Is it because …” and then faltered. Suzie often advanced only to retreat.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Frank Costello waved his arm triumphantly. “I know! It was because your first name is Richard: ‘Dick’ is short for Richard!” He’d got it, he was sure.

“Ingenious, Frank, but that’s not my first name.” A pause. “It’s Hypotenuse.” Shrieks of merriment followed. This was obviously not true.

There were several other suggestions, but all were incorrect. Alison Adams, who loved English but disliked these games, as she wanted to get on with the serious business of reading and writing, put her hand up hesitantly.

“This is an English class, right? Well, Mr. Cavalier, you want us to examine the meaning of the word.”

“Bingo, Alison! And what does it mean? What is a dick?”

The class was suddenly still. He didn’t know? Was that possible? Who would dare to answer this question? No-one, it seemed, not even Alison…

The oldest student in the class, Stuart Surridge, was intrigued. Mr. Cavalier had come highly recommended by his department head, and had himself promised Stuart a “fireworks show” in first period, and Stuart was keen to see the result. This was Stuart’s first placement in a high school since his own graduation eight years before. He had enrolled in teachers’ college after two degrees in English, and Mr. Cavalier was his first mentor, his first “associate teacher,” from whom he was to learn how to put the theory of teaching taught at the Faculty of Education into the practice of daily classroom teaching. How would his mentor handle the students’ reluctance to explain what a ‘dick’ was?

“Mr. Surridge, would you help Alison and me hand out the dictionaries to everyone?” Soon every student had a copy on his or her desk. “No peeking yet! When I give the word…”

All eyes were on Mr. Cavalier as he theatrically raised both arms, appeared to move them downwards, but stopped just as some opened their books. “WAIT for it! Emily, Jake, Ryan and Ramon: I HAVEN’T GIVEN THE WORD YET!” There was a nervous titter from those who had not waited, and then, “NOW!” An enthusiastic scramble ensued. A short red-headed lad was first to read out, “dick: (sl.) A detective.” He seemed surprised. “What’s ‘sl’?”

“Slang,” said Alison.

“Thank you, Gregory. And thank you, Alison. Slang words can appear in dictionaries. Yes: a detective! Keen-eyed, vigilant, observant, someone who wants to find out the truth, to get to the bottom of things, to help to bring justice for victims of crime, to punish malefactors, and use the judicial system to right the wrongs of criminals! So, you see, the student who called me a dick is PAYING ME A COMPLIMENT! How d’you like them apples, folks?” Mr. Cavalier bowed. The class laughed heartily.

Enrico Diaz had his hand up. “Sir, it should be THOSE apples! “

“Mr. Surridge, Enrico is from Ecuador. English is not his first language. Please help him with that allusion. Now, everyone else, look up the words I have just used- they’re all up on the board behind you. Write them out, record what each means, and expect a spelling and vocab quiz on them tomorrow!” The students turned to see ‘vigilant, observant, malefactors, justice, judicial, compliment’ and got to work with alacrity. They had enjoyed the diversion.

But it had not really been mere entertainment, Stuart was forced to admit to himself. Yes, it was theatre, but pedagogically valid nevertheless. He went to help Enrico.

Second period was a session on writing job applications for a class of ‘general-level’ boys, but one with an imaginative twist. They each had to apply to work as sewer inspector or dog-catcher, bar bouncer, wrestling coach, or exotic dancer, and had to take the task moderately seriously. Both Stuart and Mr. Cavalier made the rounds of each class row, offering encouragement. Stuart was pleased. He and they joked as he read applications over the students’ shoulders. He had been given a chance to see pupils’ work up close for the first time, and made a good impression with his comments on a couple of the roughest pupils’ efforts.

At lunch, Stuart thanked Mr. Cavalier, but raised a nagging concern with a smile: “You didn’t really think the student you overheard was complimenting you, did you?” Mr. Cavalier stiffened. “Why do you always have to lower the tone of discourse, Mr. Surridge?” He turned on his heel and stalked away, apparently mightily offended. Taken aback, Stuart avoided him until lunch was over. “Always”? The man had only met him that morning. What gives?

The afternoon involved a trip to the school library, where an earnest librarian shared her appreciation of her ten favourite classic books with a bored and inattentive audience, followed by a serious talk to a Grade 12 academic class on satire in Orwell’s Animal Farm. Mr. Cavalier was well-informed, and the class responded well to him. As he was busy with students after school, Stuart slipped discreetly away to catch his bus.

“Why did you sneak away at the end of school yesterday, Mr. Surridge?” Once again, Stuart was caught unaware. He protested. “I didn’t sneak away. You were conferring with students, sir, and I had not expected I would be needed. There is only one bus to the subway, at 4 o’clock, and the subway ride is half an hour in length. That is before I walk–”

“ I was under the mistaken impression that you came here to learn how to teach. I had much to impart to you, but if you think you know it all, then you’d better show me. Prove it to me. You now have left a mere twenty minutes to prepare for a class on Macbeth. Act II, scene i: ‘How goes the night, boy?’ I will be in watchful attendance…” And he was gone. No help there, then.

Only minutes before he met the Grade 11 academic class for the first time with Macbeth, Stuart smiled. Thank God it was a play he knew well and loved. He felt, as his brother Eric, also a teacher, had told him he would, until he overcame his self-consciousness, feel like “a nerd in a fishbowl.” Mr. Cavalier, his pen at the ready, sat at the back as the class filed in, surprised to see him there. “Mr. Surridge,” he told them, “will be your teacher today.”

Stuart, never having observed this class before, without knowing who read aloud well, decided to take on all the parts himself, with different voices for each of the four characters. It was a short scene. His treatment of it was bound to be different from Cavalier’s, and lacking a context, he could not know how it tallied with what they had learned so far. He knew he had to fly by the seat of his pants. Sometimes, Eric had told him, improvisation worked better than hours of preparation. He’d put it to the test. The class dutifully opened their copies to Act II.

“How goes the night, boy?” Banquo’s question to his son Fleance was deeper in tone than his son’s answer: “The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.” As he continued reading, Stuart could detect a quickening of interest in his audience; a couple exchanged smiles of appreciation, and one girl, clearly delighted, gave him a quick thumbs-up. This was promising. He then came to his piece de resistance: Upon Macbeth’s entrance, he had mysteriously acquired a convincing Scots accent, and imagined he saw a dagger floating in the air before him, urging him on to commit the murder of King Duncan:

Come, let me clutch thee

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation…

He put the book down, raised his hand to grasp the imaginary dagger, recalling the soliloquy from memory,

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;

And such an instrument I was to use…

He came to the end of the speech. In a tone of bitter resignation, he sobbed Macbeth’s last lines:

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven– or to hell.

The class applauded. Evidently two could play at acting. He quickly restored order, and devoted the rest of the period to a rapid-fire examination of the soliloquy, inviting and receiving engaged and thoughtful analysis of its vivid imagery and even its allusions to Hecate and Tarquin. It was clear he knew his Shakespeare. When the bell rang, the girl who had given him the thumbs-up signal said, “I hope we have you again, sir…” It was gratifying, but Mr. Cavalier was nowhere to be seen when the bell rang once more. Had he even stayed until the end?

The afternoon was quite a contrast. Mr. Cavalier took charge of his classes, but he seemed erratic. He abandoned a grammar activity with one class, distributed foolscap, and told them to listen carefully to a piece of music he was going to play. Stuart recognized it immediately as Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, a favourite of his room-mate, a violinist in training. When he stopped the recording, Mr. Cavalier wanted them to “write what you hear; what the music conjures up in your minds. It might be a picture, or a feeling, or something else that has struck you.” It sounded vague. Could he show the class an example? Apparently not. While they wrote, he stared out of the window. Stuart thought this would have been a chance for the two of them to confer, but such was not to be the case. In the last class, he showed a film that had no obvious connection with the curriculum, and then, without a word to Stuart, left the room, presumably in the confident if unwise belief that his apprentice could handle all eventualities.

After school, Stuart looked for his mentor, but could not find him. A pleasantly maternal teacher, a Mrs. Blakemore, who taught some English and had responsibility for the school’s Special Education unit, came into the classroom to borrow a book and asked Stuart how things were going. She listened with sympathy to his discontent. Stuart told her more than he expected to, but it seemed to resonate with her. She patted his arm. “I’ll have a word with Jim. Be true to yourself, as Polonius said.” She winked. He felt as if had been to Confession.

On the next day, Stuart approached Mr. Cavalier with a question about the Sea Symphony responses he had assigned. “Have you read them?” His mentor seemed distracted. “No, I haven’t,” was his short answer. “I asked,” added Stuart, “because Tim Harrison was curious to see if I liked his.” The response was abrupt and completely unexpected. “He can go to hell.”

Abashed, Stuart retreated. The sour note was there all day, the man’s playful sense of humour missing in action. Stuart’s performance with Macbeth was left unmentioned. He was mystified. He wandered down an empty corridor until a voice hailed him from a doorway. It was Jim McLeod, the Head of the English Department.

“I am sorry I did not come to hear you read Macbeth the other day. I heard it was well-received, but I had no idea you would be thrown into the deep end so soon.”

“Neither did I,” admitted Stuart. “I had but twenty minutes to prepare for it.”

“Yes, I know. Beth Blakemore told me. That should never have happened, but you acquitted yourself well. I was on my way to talk to Wesley Cavalier about it when I saw you pass by. How would you like to have her as your associate? She is wonderfully supportive, and is eager to take you on.”

“I– well, yes, very much so. I would. I’m sorry about–”

“Don’t mention it. Wesley is undergoing some… personal difficulties. A classroom is such a fishbowl. There is no hiding place, nor should there be. The transfer would do you both good.”

“Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I am grateful.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s Jim, by the way.” He extended his hand. They parted in amity.

Beth was a splendid teacher. She was helpful, solicitous, and friendly. She told Stuart he was “a natural.” She taught him by example how to “teach the students, not the text.” She had a genuine love for learning, and a desire to share it with anyone who would listen. Her knowledge of language and literature was exceptional. Her care for her “mites,” as she called her ‘SpecEd’ pupils was, Stuart thought, impossibly self-sacrificial. She arrived at seven in the morning, was on-call on her ‘spare ’period and at lunch, trying desperately to make up for the deficiencies in the personal lives of her charges, and returning, exhausted, to her family after six. Jim had warned her that she could not keep up such a pace, and she had promised to do less, but less for her always seemed to mean more. Stuart was sorry to leave Martindale Collegiate at the end of his three-week stint, but they promised each other to correspond by letter. “At least,” she told him, “you are no longer a nerd, if you ever were, and your classroom is a stage, not a fishbowl. ‘All the world’s a stage.’ Remind Eric of that!”

As is often the case with such temporary meetings of minds, no matter how significant at the time, Beth and Stuart lost touch after a brief exchange. One night, while cleaning his shoes with yellowing newspaper rescued from the basement and now spread before him on the floor, Stuart happened to come across a posting in the Globe and Mail for a Special Education teacher needed at Martindale. The date specified for responses from interested candidates had elapsed several years ago. He knew he would be unable to find out more about Beth either from the school or from the school board itself, which always cited “privacy” as a justification for non-disclosure. Jim had retired to Nova Scotia, and he would not ask about Mr. Cavalier. He knew no-one else at the school. He sighed. Was she even still alive? Perhaps the advertised vacancy had not even been hers, but that of a successor. Time passes quickly when you are young, and faster as you age encumbered with responsibility, as he now knew. He could find no obituary of her anywhere on the internet. Such a vital person gone and untraceable. It seemed unthinkable. Perhaps she, too, had moved away. She would probably not remember him anyway. It was long ago now. He screwed up the old newspaper, looked in at the sleeping children, and tiptoed to bed. The marking, he told his wife, would have to wait until tomorrow.

–

Peter A. Scotchmer, Ottawa, August 11, 2024