Wordsworth, Wilde and Wizards (sample)
Your twenties are meant to be magic. I must be doing something wrong. This is somehow my first job interview at a cafˇ where I’m simply meeting a non-café employer there, I’m not rehearsing bullshit lines in my head, preparing to profess that customer service is my passion and I love wearing aprons. I task the nearby muffin scent with calming my nerves, then withdraw my pathetic CV and smooth it out upon a table whose surface is a map of the world from Victorian days. Now surely that’s a positive omen. I all but specialised in those days. She chose the spot—not Queen Victoria, this woman I’m meeting, Macready by name. A cosy nook on Bloomsbury St, mere steps from the British Museum. I sense that Macready’s an old-fashioned sort, and that’s lovely with me; I’m twenty-three and feel a thousand, except when I feel like a child, which never happened ‘til I graduated uni and the real world came rather crashing in. You live and learn… Precisely on time, Madame Elspeth Macready swoops in. I don’t use the word ‘swoops’ lightly (one tries not to use any word lightly); I’d swear her approach to the door is half vertical, and traces of wind bumble in alongside her, flicking at the base of her cloak. (She wears a cloak.) She seems about sixty. Her glasses are octagons. She sits across from me without confirming who I am, or even looking round to see if any other girl here might be me. I suppose I give off the most clueless expression. ‘Miss Tinker,’ she says, by way of a greeting. ‘Yes,’ I confess, in strangled, awkward fashion, putting out a hand. ‘Emily’s fine.’ ‘If engaged in this position “Miss Tinker” is what would be fine,’ she informs me. ‘I represent a school of some tradition. It would do you no harm to accustom yourself to the tone.’ ‘Riiight,’ I say. ‘You’re not—ordering?’ I’ve gestured at the counterman. ‘Thank you, no,’ she says. ‘We shan’t be here long. After this I’ve got to fly.’ ‘Riiight,’ I say, promptly wishing I’d said something more intelligent, perhaps built upon a different vowel. ‘Well. Thank you for seeing me. Although I’ve never taught before, I really have a love for—for language, for this literature. And since—’ (I can feel myself about to be brilliant—) ‘since your institution strikes a traditional tone, ah, or stance, well, I couldn’t agree more, and I’d love to give your students an exposure to the, well, traditions of English. The whole Western canon, really.’ I pause. ‘But mainly English bits.’ I think I detect a smile, a very thin one, in wait across her lips, however perpetually pursed. ‘We’ll see how that fortitude fits in,’ she murmurs, ‘when in twenty years we’ll all have to lead off preliminary divination coursework with the I Ching.’ I don’t think I’m meant to respond. She stretches out an arm with a dangling sleeve, and beckons, and I realise that she wants my CV. I hand it over hopefully. She scans. ‘You’re right as rain about tradition,’ she grunts. ‘Yet even at Merlinfirth we’ve had to modernise. I take it my apprentice has dealt with you by some absurd electronic method. He’s really quite bright with those things.’ ‘Um, yes. Yes, of course.’ ‘Miss Tinker, I admit that it’s due to Government intrusion that we, ah, expand our curriculum; they’d annex our whole institution if they could. Yet I do see some value in offering our pupils a horizon beyond the field for which we are… well, I shan’t say “known”, as we keep a low profile in your world.’ I don’t think to ask what that means. ‘I hardly fancy myself the director of a trade school; I got into education to open young minds, make them thinking, inquisitive adults. Of course my current staff can teach them skills. A flick of the wrist, rote memorisation. They’ll know what to do. But these are dangerous times. I’d like them to know why.’ I notice that she hasn’t looked down at my printout in a while. I take a deep breath. ‘Madame Macready,’ I begin. She appears relieved that I’ve properly addressed her. ‘I can’t speak to the rest of your programme,’ I say. ‘I don’t even know much about your school, and perhaps you prefer it that way. But I have been the fiercest of readers since I was old enough to hold a book. I believe in giving young adult readers something better and more challenging than what they’re often served. And I would count it an honour and a privilege to share this noblest passion with your students, to expose them to the genius of Shakespeare, Coleridge, Austen, Thomas Hardy and as many Brontës as time permits. I won’t let you down.’ I used a version of that speech on a manager at Waterstones last week. They promised they’d get back to me. Macready doesn’t blink. Actually, I haven’t seen her do so once all interview. ‘Splendid,’ she says. ‘Miss Tinker, welcome to Merlinfirth.’ I’m not sure I’ve heard correctly. ‘What?’ ‘My staff will be in touch. Across your machines, no doubt. Time was when people dreamed of their letter from Merlinfirth, but, progress, I suppose.’ ‘Are you telling me I’m…’ I can’t even say the word ‘hired’. Fourteen months since graduation and it’s slipped right out of my vocabulary. ‘We’ll expect you at noon the Monday before student move-in,’ she informs me. ‘You may find it takes some getting used to our ways at Merlinfirth Academy for Philosophers and Sorcerers.’ I stumble on the words. ‘The which?’ ‘Them too.’ She briskly stands. ‘Of course, that’s the modernised name,’ she sighs. ‘Most history recalls us as the Chartered Royal Academy for, et cetera, et cetera.’ She snorts. ‘You can guess why we were obliged to change that name.’ I only blink. ‘We lost the charter,’ she grunts, with a frown. ‘Religious differences. Truly, I don’t blame Victoria. But the Masons in her circle really were too much.’ And with that, she strides out and away, the waxing wind whipping at the base of her magnificent cloak.
My mum and dad take turns in having cardiac arrests as we sit down to supper, a traditional English family meal of boiled things and other boiled things. ‘A boarding school?!’ Mum squawks, dishing up the courgettes. ‘I can’t live here for ever, Mum!’ ‘But you hardly know a thing about this place,’ Dad stammers. ‘It all just seems terribly suspect.’ ‘Well, I suspect it’s the only place I’m finding paying work with my qualifications and/or shit degree, so that’s the end of it.’ I serve myself something that’s grey. ‘Look. I know you’re looking out for me. I know it’s very strange. But… all my friends are moving on. Right? Katie’s got the bank or the merchants or both, Nicola’s tearing it up at Google, Jack… no one knows what Jack does, which is how you know it’s terribly important. And all I’ve got’s my volunteer shift at the library and helping Dad out in the office. And that hasn’t gone so well. I really did a number on Carol’s collating Wednesday last.’ ‘One recalls it vividly,’ muses Dad. ‘I think this is my ticket to adulthood, all right?’ I finish. ‘I’ve just got to take it.’ To his credit, my father’s face has turned sympathetic, and Mum does try tempering her fury with a straightforward fret. ‘You’re sure about this, love?’ my father asks me. I shake my head. ‘Of course not. But I think that’s the way it’s got to be.’ ‘Maybe Nicola can Google this academy for you,’ Mum tosses in, brightly.
Across the spare splinters of summer I receive an impressive influx of information. I learn about the dress code (neckties, tartan, a faintly irritated series of concessions on piercings), the school traditions (many), songs (the now-omitted latter verses of which are mildly racist) and something to do with taxes that my father claims is several generations out of date. Whatever else, I’m beginning to grasp the Philosophers and Sorcerers tone. A room and full board is provided, as are bits and pieces of kit, except robes. I’m not to wear robes. That point is scrawled into my packet in a somewhat hasty hand. The nomenclature fascinates. I learn about the four houses (Gryllenbar, Rowlingstone, Hathaloath and Syliname), their colours (respectively: red and sable, blue and black, that weird yellow on 1970s appliances, green and a slightly different green) and the fantastic beasts that symbolise them (in order: phoenix, wyvern, manticore and an unusually feisty salamander). No one asks me much about curriculum; I’m rather left to fend for myself, which I find troubling. Indeed, I speak to Macready only once more before the great journey begins; she drops in at my library, strangely enough, despite my never having told these folk when I’m there. ‘I wanted to inform you,’ she says, ‘that you’ll be teaching an… exceptional student.’
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