Chapter 2. THE INTRODUCTION

 

The interview was merely a couple of questions about whether or not I would find the hours difficult and could I read as there were a lot of instructions on some of the cleaning fluids I would be handing out.

These days one needs a criminal check and a variety of tests that just fall short of a blood sample, DNA and an ancestry check into your family four generations ago.

I was asked to go to the school at 10am the following Monday and there would be an introduction and a walk through with the caretaking staff.  It was all very convivial, not like a job interview that I had known or would carry out in the future that’s for sure.  I assumed the induction was going to be a process going over different chemicals and staff management but actually, it consisted of lots of tea and biscuits and pointing at brooms and offices.

 

It was a cold and windy day when I first climbed the entrance steps to the school.  The sky was leaden and it looked like the heavens would open at any moment.  The main entrance doors to the new school were in Deanery Road and the entire reception hall was visible from outside.  Metal framed doors opened into the entrance hall with the school hall directly behind it. Looking to the right there was a corridor that contained the offices for the Head and the Deputy Teachers.  Next to them was a reception office, a store room containing a safe and some staff toilets.  At the bottom of the corridor there was a large staff room. Just to the left of the entrance as you walk in was the Caretakers office and next to that was the Schools Library.  It all looked like a large maze of long corridors to me.

“Hello mate,” said a guy about the same age as me.  He was dressed completely in denim and was wearing trainers.  He put his hand out.

“My names Andy, and this is Jim the caretaker. Fancy a cuppa?”

“Thanks, I could do with it, cold out there!” I replied shaking his hand.

I stepped into the office and looked at the man he had motioned to. 

“Alright mate? Jim Price,” Said the older man, coughing like a 90 a day smoker. He rarely moved out of his chair. We shook hands and he motioned me to a chair in the corner which was surrounded by brooms, buckets and mops, next to a very large stained butler sink with a dripping tap..

Andy was busy making the tea and I looked at Jim.  He didn’t look healthy to me at all, making me wonder if he had been cold in the ground that morning.  He looked so ill it was as if he had died and no one had told him.  He was around five foot six and couldn’t have been more than eight stone.  He had gaunt, drawn features and piercing eyes.  His hair was straight, jet black and slicked back off his forehead. He reminded me of Dracula, if Dracula had been extremely ill for a year and on 2 packs of cigarettes a day since he was 12.  He carried a strange expression, as if he was only breathing in.  His cheekbones stood out further than any I had seen before.

Jim gave me the official talk about times and hours and I filled out a form listing all my contact details and signed it.  That was it, induction was over.

I drank my tea while Jim and Andy discussed some issue regarding a night cleaner which I didn’t understand and then the time came for the grand tour. Jim asked Andy to show me around.  I thought he was busy but it became apparent that Jim didn’t do much walking as his lungs were not functioning properly. Andy told me that Jim was suffering from breathing problems and that he had not been a well man for quite some time. Unknown to us then, Jim would be dead within two years and Andy would have left suddenly vowing never to return.

 

“The corridors and the stairs work the same as the roads.”  He told me, “Keep on the left, especially when the bell goes.  You will be killed in the crush. Press yourself against the left wall and hold onto the stair rail. Don’t look at them and don’t talk to the little fuckers.”

  Andy and I walked down the corridor directly in front of our office door which ran along the side of the school hall.  I was starting to think that I was in St Trinians. We got to the end of the corridor and a T-Junction.

“This corridor” Andy said, pointing vaguely to the left, “runs the width of the new school. If you turn right here and follow it down there it turns right at the bottom of those stairs  back down to the corridor with the admin offices on the left and the right is the front entrance. Down here on the left are the science labs and offices either side.  The lab technicians have offices and store rooms down there.”

“Where do these stairs lead to?” I asked, pointing to the staircase to our left.

“They lead up to the next floor which is where the English and foreign language classes are and…the computer rooms!”

Computers were very new in those days and mostly if not all were using DOS programs.  A few more years had to pass before colour graphics and Windows made an appearance.  Computers held no interest to me in those days.

“We have to walk through here to get to the old school.”

I followed Andy into a long corridor, modern and very bright with windows on the left side of us, as we walked to the Victorian old school, from halfway up the wall to the ceiling. There we two sets of double doors locked open into latches on the walls.

“This is the only way to get to the old school from here and back without going outside.”

Andy picked up pace a little and we reached the end of the corridor.

On the right at the end of the corridor as we stepped into the red floor of the old school was a door.  This I discovered was the Boiler room for the old school.  We walked down a flight of steps and along a 20ft corridor when the space opened out and there were two enormous iron boilers, each over 6 foot tall and 6 foot wide.  The heat and power they were generating was amazing.  I worked out in my head that these were under the playground outside the building and that the chimney next to the waste bins near the road was the one from the Boilers.

We went back up the stairs and locked the door behind us.  Next to this, on the left, was a flight of 8 steps with small square rubber blocks running the entire width of each step. 

There were 12 of these 8 step flights to the very top of the building in this corner and again at the other corner across the hall diagonally.  The only difference being there was no boiler room over that corner, just a cupboard.

That was the tour over with.

We walked back over to the office where we found a note from Jim saying he had gone home and would be back for the letting that evening.

“And a letting is?”

Andy explained that a letting was a booking from an outside source or from a member of teaching staff or council for a meeting to be held in the school after school time.  Sometimes the lettings would be a meeting of Governors or a Karate or Yoga club in the hall. Dance classes and Keep Fit were all the rage.  Aerobics was the buzz word. Sports lettings and Parties would take place in the old school on the ground floor.  Jim was staying late to oversee the local Women’s Institute holding their quarterly meeting to discuss fundraising.

It sounded to me like Jim was having a quite night of it tonight.  

If this was the level of excitement to be had in this place then working here was going to be very boring unless I kept myself occupied? I hoped that something would enliven the working days or evenings in the future, but this was what I needed, a lot of free time during the day and a regular wage.  What could go wrong? I could never have guessed.