Free Memoirs of a Dance Hall Romeo by Jack Higgins Page B

rooted me to the spot. As it happened, matters were taken out of my hands.
    ‘What on earth is going on here?’ someone demanded sharply, and I turned and set eyes on Imogene for the first time.
    I had heard of her, of course, in the men’s staffroom. The glamorous Imogene, who took girls for Games, P.T. and Cookery, a mixture not quite as bizarre as it sounded. She had been on some course or other at the local teaching college for a couple of weeks, which explained why I’d never met her.
    But no description could possibly have done justice to the reality of her. She was every man’s fantasy, a creature out of the pages of some film magazine. Masses of red-gold hair, slanting green eyes, a mouth half-a-smile wide and her body. What could one possibly say about it except that the lesser gods had been more than generous with her?
    She wore tennis shoes and short White socks, green shorts and an aertex sports shirt. A whistle, suspended from a ribbon around her neck, nestled between the most magnificent breasts I’ve ever seen in my life.
    What on earth’s going on?’ she demanded.
    Every boy in the room gazed at her, the expressions varying from frank admiration to naked lust.
    ‘Mr Shaw knocked down the door, Miss,’ Varley said. ‘Didn’t he, lads?’
    Here he appealed to the class, who responded dutifully. He turned, grinning, his fingers hooked into his belt of badges.
    ‘Don’t play the fool with me,’ Imogene said cheerfully, and held out her hand. ‘Where are they?’
    ‘Where’s what, Miss?’
    ‘The screws. The screwdriver.’
    Varley looked around the room in apparent bewilderment, then shrugged helplessly. ‘It were ’im, Miss. Mr Shaw…’
    He got no further, for she slapped him across the face, a solid, open-handed punch with all her weight behind it, that sent him staggering back against a cupboard. As he rebounded, she gave him a dose of the same across the left cheek.
    The silence in the room was absolute. Varley glared wildly about him. ‘Don’t try my patience,’ she said in a bored voice and hit him again. ‘Now, where are they?’
    He lurched to one of the book cupboards, rumbled about in the bottom and produced a handful of screws and a screwdriver. He put them down on the desk with shaking hands.
    ‘That’s a good boy,’ she said in the same cool, bored voice. ‘Now you and your little friends can get that door back where it was, can’t you?’
    Varley stared at the floor sullenly. She took a short step towards him and he jumped out of the way. ‘All right, Miss.’
    She turned to me. ‘I see your hand is bleeding, Mr Shaw. There’s a first aid kit in the hall. If you’d like to come through I’ll fix it for you. I’m taking a class in there.’
    She walked out, poetry in motion. I turned to the class and saw that every lad there was gazing after her in a kind of blissful adoration. But then if ever a woman was the great earth mother of all men, it was Imogene.
    ‘Right, get on with it,’ I said gruffly and followed her out.
    A class of twelve-year-old girls played netball in vests and knickers as they waited for her. She turned from the first aid box as I joined her, a bandage in one hand.
    ‘This will have to do for the time being,’ she said. ‘If you come down to my room at break I’ll put a plaster on it for you.’
    It wasn’t much of a cut but there was a fair amount of blood. When her fingers touched me lightly, my stomach went hollow.
    I thanked her and went back to the classroom in some confusion. Varley, Hatch and a couple of other boys were busy at the door. The rest of the class were strangely silent, aware, I suppose, of Imogene out in the hall within hearing distance.
    I told them to get out their Geography books and copy the map on page seventy-three, aware of Varley’s bright malevolent eyes switching constantly my way. He muttered something to Hatch, I couldn’t hear what, and there was a general snigger amongst the group at the door.
    Hatch