In a Class of His Own (20 page)

“I can’t do this any
more,” he ground out through gritted teeth as his hands tightened
painfully on my face. “How you love to taunt me. Why do you persist
in pushing me to my limit?”

He launched himself at me
and our mouths meshed with a frantic clash of teeth, tongues and
lips. From somewhere a long way off, I thought I heard him murmuring
all the while: “Nicky, oh my Nicky. How can I bear it?”

His trembling hand found
my breast and I felt the nipple harden with his touch. He groaned
urgently and pushed me against the bookcase and I slammed up against
the files it contained. I didn’t care. This was intoxicating. His
lips met the tender and sensitive part of my neck and, as he pulled
me closer, I could feel the male hardness of him. My knees buckled
and it was only he who held me up. My hands fought their way into his
hair and I knotted my fingers through it, pulling him into me. It was
madness.

“This is madness,” he
echoed the thought. He gasped as he broke away and turned from me. He
strode over to the other side of the small room and put up his hands
against the wall, almost as if needing its support. His back was to
me but I could see his chest heaving with the effort of controlling
his breath and his temper.

And his passion.

This time I had certainly
seen beyond the controlled man. The emotions which I now knew were
simmering beneath his relentless calm had finally exploded. And it
seemed they had exploded for me. The passion hinted at in the cottage
had surged into full power.

My legs were trembling;
every part of me was shaking. I clutched the files behind me and they
cut into my fingers. I held onto the pain as a contact with reality.
My lips felt bruised and swollen with the ferocity of his kisses. I
should have felt violated, appalled but I felt triumphant in my
female power over this incredible man. It was as if I had been
waiting for this very moment for eternity.

The moment freeze-framed.

“This is madness,” he
repeated, hoarsely. “Anybody could have walked in.”

Then he turned back to me
with a sudden realisation. “Oh God Nicky, I’m sorry. I’m so
sorry. Did I hurt you? Please say I didn’t hurt you?” He came
back to me and held my face, softly this time, between his still
trembling hands. “I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you.”

His long fingers roamed
over my face, delicately outlining my lips. I closed my eyes in
rapture. Ferocity had, in an instant, transformed itself into
tenderness and it was far more devastating. I waited again for his
lips to touch mine, for the furnace to blaze anew. This was the Jack
I knew, the man I loved. His hands dropped away to my arms. I felt
momentarily bereft.

“Tell me you feel the
same.” He shook me. “Tell me. I can feel it. I can feel it when
you kiss me. Tell me you love me as I love you.”

“I love you.” I
uttered it as a wild cry. “Of course I love you!”

This brought him back to
me. He kissed me again, a kiss so full of love that it tore at me.

“Nicky. What the Hell
are we going to do about it?”

As he had at the cottage,
he rested his forehead on mine and groaned.

I thought rapidly,
forcing myself to concentrate. I put my hand up to his face and
forced him to look me in the eye. “Jack, it really doesn’t have
to be so difficult. We can be discreet while you’re still working
here. We’ll sort something out when you have to go away.” I said
the words harshly. I needed him to believe me. As far as I could see
his fear was the only thing stopping us. I vowed to myself that I
would make him understand that he could do this. That his lack of
trust in anything intimate was stopping right now. Right here. With
me. “Why are you so scared of this?” I asked, on a long, drawn
out sigh.

“Because I never
thought it would happen to me,” he breathed. He caressed my hair, a
look of immense concentration in his eyes. “I never thought I
deserved someone like you.” He looked deep into my eyes and my love
flowered in the intensity I saw blazing there. It was going to be all
right.

“We’re going to do
this. I’ll make it happen.” I said in a steely voice.

He managed a smile and
ran a trembling hand though my hair. “My practical Nicky,” he
said on a shaky laugh. “You think anything’s possible don’t
you?”

“Yes,” I replied in a
determined voice. “You know me, I like a good problem to get my
teeth into.” I gave a tremulous laugh of my own and then kissed
him, hard.

Jack’s teeth gleamed in
a shadow of a smile. “I’m a beginner in all of this. You’ll
have to teach me,” he murmured, as he grazed his mouth over mine.

“That’s what I’m
good at. Teaching.” I kissed him once again, aching to return to
his lips. It was threatening to get out of control. It was as if, now
we had begun to touch one another, we couldn't stop. Every time we
broke apart our hands and mouths found one another again, touching,
exploring, wondering. Then eventually, we remembered where we were
and sanity began to restore itself. We stood holding one another,
laughing a little, still shaken by the emotions storming our hearts
and bodies.

A sharp knock on the
office door brought us back to reality. As we sprang apart guiltily,
we heard Mona coughing outside.

“Mr. Thorpe. Jack?”

I had a pretty good idea
she knew exactly what had been going on inside the room and was
attempting to be discreet. Jack and I smiled at one another, making a
secret promise to see this through to its natural conclusion later.

“Jack, there's a ‘phone
call for you. It's your sister on the line.” Mona’s voice began
to get tight with anxiety. “Jack, I'm afraid it's your father.”

And so, just as we had
begun to find one another, we were torn apart. With just one ‘phone
call.

I sat in the office,
wrapped in a little glow of selfish love and lust, too stunned to
think and too stupid to realise what a ‘phone call from Jenny might
mean.

Jack returned a few
minutes later. I'd had time to restore some equilibrium. Jack looked
ashen.

“That was Jenny. I have
to go to Manchester. My father, they think they’ve found him. He's
dead, Nicky. My father's dead.”

He sat down abruptly at
his desk, looking down into his shaking hands. I went to him and put
my arms around him, willing comfort into his unresponsive body.

“Jack, it’s all
right. Of course you must go to your family.”

“I couldn’t do
anything to stop this.”

“Of course you
couldn’t,” I cried, shocked that he should think like this.

“All my life I’ve
hated him. And now he’s dead and I hate myself for not preventing
it.” The note of cold despair was in his voice again.

“Jack, there was
nothing you could do. You said yourself, he wouldn’t accept any
help. What could you have done to change anything?” I gave him a
little shake. “You couldn’t do anything about this. What you can
do now is go to your family.” I kept my voice and words matter of
fact.

He clutched at me. “But
I can’t leave you. Not now.” He gazed into my eyes again, with
that same burning look of love and desire. “I can’t bear to leave
you now.” He pulled me onto his lap and kissed me long and hard and
left me breathless.

After some time more
practical matters took hold. “I can’t leave the school. Nicky, I
don’t know how long I’m going to be away.”

I laughed shakily. Only
Jack would think of school at a time like this. “You’ve got to
go. I’ll be fine, the school will be fine,” I said it with far
more confidence than I felt. “I can run this school, Jack. I’ve
learned from the master.” I smiled thinly. “And if Ofsted come,
then so be it!”

“I love you. Never
forget that. I love you.” He said it fiercely.

“I know. And I’ll be
here when you return. I’ll wait. It doesn’t matter how long it’ll
take. I’ll wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.”

In the end I drove Jack
to the station. I was reluctant to let him drive all that way in such
an emotional state. There was no point bothering with the local
station, it was too late for any trains from there and anyway, he
would have to change at Birmingham. So I drove him to New Street.

We sat on the diesel fume
filled platform talking in fits and starts, holding hands in a futile
effort to delay the moment we knew we would have to part. As a place
for a romantic tryst it was far from ideal. Putting a railway station
underneath a shopping centre might have solved a planning problem but
it robbed every vestige of romance from even the little that modern
high-speed trains have.

I felt such a mixture of
emotions: exhilaration at my declaration of love; my final and
irrevocable acceptance of the nature of the man, of his innate
reserve with the passion hidden beneath; of the difficulties that I
now knew I was willing to take on. And underneath all this,
shamefully, lay base lust for the man sitting beside me and
frustration at not being able to act upon it.

“I don’t know how
long I’m going to be away,” Jack said. He appeared quite calm
now. But I was finally getting to know him. I knew his controlled
exterior was the shield he used to protect himself. “Jenny said Mum
has fallen apart. Not surprising really. Jenny’s no good in a
crisis either. They always relied on me. I’ve always had to pick up
the pieces.” Then a thought obviously occurred to him because he
said in a quiet voice: “Nicky, do you think I’ll have to identify
the body? I don’t know if I can. I just don’t know if I can do
that.”

I shuddered, I didn’t
think I could do that either. But I knew the man beside me was made
of sterner stuff than I. “You’ll do it Jack. You’re strong and
brave and good. You’ve never run away from your responsibilities.”

“I ran away from you,”
he said ruefully, bleak humour reasserting itself.

“Never again though,”
I managed to laugh.

“No, never again,” he
replied and his fingers tightened their grip on mine.

“I’m sticking to you
like glue and you know I don’t give up easily.”

“I’ve never known you
to give up on anything or anyone.” Jack laughed shortly. Then he
added in a different voice, “Don’t give up on me, Nicky. You
won’t, will you?”

“Never,” I said
through sudden tears and held him close. I clung to him trying to be
brave and feeling desolate.

“I love you,” I said
through the announcement of the train to Manchester. Now I’d said
it once, it seemed I couldn’t stop. It was my mantra. He kissed me
one last time and then boarded the train.

I followed him along the
outside of the train and, once he found a seat, put my hand up to the
window. Cruel technology denied us the ability to open it and we had
to content ourselves with pressing our hands to either side of the
cold glass, oblivious to the stares of the other passengers. Weakly,
I gave in to the threatening tears. It was too hard to let go of him
now.

“I love you,” I
mouthed to him, once more. He nodded curtly and looked down, unable
to meet my eyes. The train gave a violent shunt and moved and then he
was gone.

Over
the next few weeks I learned some valuable lessons. I learned that I
was so much stronger than I had ever thought. I learned how to
deal with a crushing workload. I was still teaching in the mornings
and had, somewhat uneasily, recruited Tony to cover the afternoons. I
learned I had supportive colleagues in school and loving friends and
family to see me through. But I didn’t have the one person I truly
wanted. So I learned to be alone.

Jack ‘phoned when he
could, which wasn’t nearly often enough. The calls were stilted and
rather dreadful. Our fear of saying something upsetting, that we
could not explain adequately over the line, made us overcautious and
reserved. It was all curiously unsatisfying. It all felt unfinished,
with something hanging in the air, unsettled.

Jack
told me he had to stay in Manchester for some time.
His mother and sister were not coping well and there were legalities
to sort out. He’d given me a brief outline of the excruciating day
he’d had to identify his father’s body and I longed to be with
him, to offer him something as comfort. During one painful call he
had explained that he had found out he couldn’t be released from
his contract with the government and so would be working in London
for the Autumn term at least. I’d been tired that night, worn out
from an angry exchange with a parent and had reacted bitterly and
resentfully. I’d rung back immediately, full of remorse and teary
apologies. I’d wanted to drive straight up to Manchester that night
but I had school the following day. I had responsibilities now.

Enormous ones.

Huw had given me the
tip-off that school would probably be given an Ofsted inspection in
June.

When there’s a gaping
hole in one part of your life you can attempt to cope by filling it
with something else. Once again work came to my aid. I lived,
breathed and ate school and it went some way to ease the pain of my
longing for Jack and my loneliness.

The
staff reacted predictably to the news that we were to be inspected
again, and this time by Ofsted. Ann worked as many hours as I, Rupert
grew thin and pale, Mona became even more frighteningly efficient and
Helen ran around fuelled by nervous energy and constantly shrieked at
us all.

One
afternoon, too exhausted to face even the short drive home to an
empty flat, I dropped in to see my parents. As I walked up the
driveway I could hear Mum and Joyce chatting in the back garden. Mum
had continued to improve after her visit to Andy. She and Joyce
ganged up on Dad at every eventuality and made his life hell. He was
enjoying every minute of it. The three of them were even talking
about going back to Spain for a return visit when the weather became
cooler in the Autumn.
I felt a pang of true sympathy for my brother when I heard the news.