Chapter 1.
It's the rain that gets you here, it's always the rain. The cold, wet rain lashes your face and whips your ankles, there's no respite and no escape. The rain is angry, spiteful, it hates the morning as well, and the rain is grey. The job - any job - would be so much easier, so much more possible, without the rain. Eight thirty on a gloomy September morning, when the winter wind is already beginning to bite and the leaves are already dying, rustling in protest as they are dragged along the gutters, through the cold streets, would seem so much more bearable without the rain. This rain will outlive you, will outlive me, it will outlive this town. The rain will never stop, it will never die.
Chapelton High Street is like any other small town high street in Britain (except with more rain). The buildings may once have been elegant but are now a tacky tawdry mess of shabby grey stone; everything is grey. They tell of years of continued disrepair, they are run-down and largely unoccupied. The shops have mostly shut down, only the ubiquitous charity shops can afford the rates. "Britain isn't working!" and "Thatcherism isn't working!" proclaim the hoardings from high up on the facades of the empty shop fronts. These dismal grey shop facades bear witness that Chapelton High Street isn't working, either. They are the legacy of neglect, Thatcher's unwanted children, as are their dull-eyed, weary owners, sent upstairs to their rooms when their presence might embarrass a visitor.
Years ago this was a small mining town. The last pit was shut in 1984, after a year-long battle against Thatcher's private army. If you look carefully, you can still see the scars - the redundant pit heaps, the disfigured landscape, the rusting pit shafts and chimneys scattered about these forlorn hills. The rows of pit cottages, too, stand empty, their windows and doors boarded up. The men I pass huddle stooped to protect themselves from the rain, but it is an uneven battle; the grey women and the children are old before their time. I am new to this town but I have seen their expressions before. These joyless eyes are known to me, and they are resigned to the fact that there is no hope.
The school gates are green and rusty, their imposing height and sharp spikes suggest that this is not a place designed for easy escape. A gang of brutish looking youths flank the steps of the nearby leisure centre, smoking with an urgency that is at odds with their otherwise apathetic stance. Music blares from a radio, girls huddle around a boy-racer in his car, and two boys indifferently kick a football at each other. The inscription "Chapelton Community College - visitors please report to reception" is my official welcome to the place where, as from today, I shall be working.
I am nervous as I pick my way through throngs of adolescents, boys braying with laughter, girls studied in their lethargy. My palms sweat as I ring the bell at reception, my ears are hot and I can hear my own blood.
"Nigel Charon," I announce to a heavily made-up middle-aged lady, who appears to be paying no attention. I am struck by how strange and, well, foreign my own name sounds when I say it.
"Oh, yes," she appears to say to her computer keyboard. "I'll tell Dr. White you've arrived."
Dr. White is the head of the school. He is tall, thin and unhealthy looking, a little like an undertaker. His face is curiously misshapen, as if a mild earthquake fault has caused the left and the right side to be mismatched, causing his left eye to be fractionally higher than the other and his watery smile to be twisted. His lugubrious countenance betrays no warmth as he shakes my hand.
"Welcome, Mr. Charon," he intones, rather in the manner of a chief villain in a film. "We trust you'll be very... happy with us. I'll show you to the staffroom."
I feel uneasy at this prospect, yet relieved at the thought of no longer being in his company. We walk past still more gangs of youths - how many of them are there? - who have a combined smell of wet hair, chewing gum, fizzy drinks, sweat and tobacco. The building is dark and dusty and like a maliciously designed maze - I have no idea where we are.
