Act 2, Scene 2
Mrs. Farthley
Wednesday, March 31st, 2:40 pm
The teacher, Mrs. Farthley, who has taught forever, administers the
daily spelling lesson. The children, nearly bored to desperation,
labourously spell the words. The class is filled with the sound of
scratching pencils. Nigel, seated at the back in a desk too large for
him, becomes fidgety and distracted.
Nigel unconsciously put down his pencil and agilely undid his collar
button. Loosening his tie (boys and girls both wore ties at Wickham),
he took the pencil back in hand to scribble out Mrs. Farthley's next
example of an f sound word-words such as 'Ralph' or 'telephone' and
'pheromone' and 'phosphates' and such nonsense. The more creative
students added words that are best unrepeated.
Each time she dictated a word, Nigel popped another shirt button. He'd
just reached the waist of his trousers when he heard the teacher's
voice.
"Are you uncomfortable, Nigel?" Mrs. Farthley peered at him from the
front of the class. "Too hot?"
"Perhaps a bit, Ma'am." And he smiled the smile that teachers
especially liked. "I'm alright."
But, as if with a will of its own, Nigel's left hand slipped one side
of his braces off a shoulder while the right scrawled the last
spelling word.
Having finished dictation, Mrs. Farthley turned towards the board and
began writing the corrections. She'd got half way down the list of
twenty when she perceived a growing undercurrent of muffled sniggering
insidiously rising to undisguised laughter. She swung back around in
response to the disruption, her stick of chalk still poised to write.
She quickly looked about the room, then directly at Nigel. From her
expression, one would think she'd seen a Minotaur.
The boy was sitting in his seat. Pencil in hand? Yes. Good posture?
Perfect as usual. Studious and attentive expression? Absolutely.
Correcting his lesson? Yes. Bare? Completely. Shirt, tie,
and underpants, too, and on top of that, a small wristwatch in a brown
leather band, all lay in a neat pile on the floor beside him.
"Nigel!"
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"Stand up!" Mrs. Farthley demanded. "What in heaven's name do you
think you're doing?"
Nigel slid to the edge of his seat, dangled his now bare feet to find
the floor, eased out of the desk and stood up.
"Spelling the f word, ma'am."
The class absolutely exploded. Mrs. Farthley, completely beside
herself now (having never faced such a threat to her control, for
which she had purportedly been competently trained), slapped her
pointer against the board to regain control of her students. For the
first time in her career, the method failed. Her face began to go
scarlet.
"Do you fancy yourself some naked Greek God, such as Hermes?" she
said, raising her voice over the din.
Nigel glanced at his best chum Evan, seated beside him, who was
recovering from a convulsion of giggles.
the entire scene. Quite unconsciously, he began to nervously fidget
with his penis. All the children roared. Mrs. Farthley was by then
approximating apoplexy. The students had for the most part been
laughing at the growing comedy of Mrs. Farthley's situation and her
imminent defeat, something that Mrs. Farthley appreciated all too
well.
"Well, then. I am Zeus," the exasperated teacher announced, "And I
command you get up on the chair and stand there, as you might stand on
Mount Olympus, until I tell you to come down."
Nigel obediently climbed into his seat and stood up, his bare
whiteness almost luminescent in the muted classroom light, and the
laughter changed from mirth to derision. They were all laughing at
would cry. In an instant, a horrified Mrs. Farthley realised what
back, not in front of the students.
So there Nigel stood.
HMSVV2010
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