Mean Streak

England, August 1928

"Ready for the faculty meeting?" French professor and choirmaster Ian Gillan asked, poking his head into his partner Roger Glover's small office at St. Oswald's School, where they both taught.

"Is it that time already? Bugger," Roger said, setting down his pen with a sigh and stretching as he stood up. "Headmaster Lord is supposed to introduce the new history professor, isn't he?"

"Yes, so we don't want to be late," Ian said. John Lord was a fair man and a good headmaster, but the man was punctual to a fault and they'd learnt in the three years they'd taught there that he refused to stand for tardiness in his subordinates. "Have you got your syllabus planned out yet?" Roger taught English literature and tried to keep the students from buying older students' notes and essays by changing the required reading each year.

"Mostly," Roger said, falling in beside Ian as they walked towards the headmaster's office. "I'm still debating which order in which to teach Shakespeare's comedies, but I'm finished otherwise. How about you?"

"I'm finished, although I understand the headmaster wants to review my idea of using music as a tool to help the boys learn French," Ian said. "I suspect he wants to satisfy himself that I'm not teaching them any bawdy songs," he added with a chuckle.

Roger laughed at that. "Yes, the difficulties of being young and unmarried, people always assume the worst of you, as you've not got a wife to keep you on the straight and narrow."

"You would know," Ian joked back.

The two men considered themselves fortunate that St. Oswald's didn't require the teaching staff to also live in and chaperone the dormitories, the school had separate house parents for that, permitting the teachers to live off-grounds if they wished. Roger had inherited a small cottage just outside of the school grounds, and as far as the general public knew, Ian simply rented a room from him and had done ever since they both started teaching there three years previously. They'd been in correspondence with each other during their final years in university, with Ian attending Durham and Roger, Cambridge, so when they both found positions at St. Oswald's, Roger felt comfortable in renting a room to his old pen friend. And then they became a couple perhaps three months after Ian moved in. As several other teachers rented rooms from the locals, no one appeared to think twice about their arrangement.

Still chatting about the upcoming term, starting in less than two weeks, they joined several of their fellow teachers in the office, others trickling in behind them. The staff mostly consisted of younger men; the older generation of teachers had stuck it out through the Great War and for several years after, to give the young men who'd been just too young to be recruited the chance to get through uni and begin teaching, then they retired in droves, leaving as soon as the headmaster was able to find someone to replace them.

"Have you heard anything about the new history teacher?" Ian Paice, who taught Latin, asked as he dropped into the chair on Roger's free side.

"I can't say I have, Paicey," Ian replied. "Why, have you?"

"I have, actually," Paice grinned. One of the few teachers who lived on school grounds - mostly due to there not being any more rooms to let close enough to the school to be worthwhile - he nearly always heard tidbits about new teachers before anyone else. "He supposedly specialised in medieval history whilst at university, and actually intended to become a don, but had a falling out with the department head and lost his position there altogether. With old Professor Watkins being desperate to retire due to his health failing, Headmaster Lord decided to take a chance and hire him despite the blemish on his record. You might know him, Ian - I didn't catch his name, but he attended Durham as you did. I believe he might have obtained his degree a year before you, though."