Free The History Boys by Alan Bennett

propose to say nothing about this, but fortunately it is not long before you are due to retire. In the circumstances I propose we bring that forward. I think we should be looking at the end of term.
    Have you nothing to say?
    Hector
    â€˜The tree of man was never quiet.
    Then ’twas the Roman; now ’tis I.’
    Headmaster This is no time for poetry.
    Hector I would have thought it was just the time.
    Headmaster Did I say I was angry?
    Hector I believe you did, yes.
    Headmaster Did you not think ?
    Hector Ah, think.
    â€˜To think that two and two are four
    And never five nor three
    The heart of man has long been sore
    And long ’tis like to be.’
    Headmaster You are incorrigible.
    I am assuming your wife doesn’t know?
    Hector I have no idea. What women know or don’t know has always been a mystery to me.
    Incidentally, she helps out at the charity shop, too.
    They all seem to do nowadays.
    Philanthropy and its forms.
    Headmaster And are you going to tell her?
    Hector I don’t know.
    I’m not sure she’d be interested.
    Headmaster Well, there’s another thing.
    Strange how even the most tragic turns of events generally resolve themselves into questions about the timetable. Irwin has been badgering me for more lessons. In the circumstances a concession might be in order. In the future, I think you and he might share.
    Hector Share?
    Headmaster Share.
    Your teaching, however effective it may or may not have been, has always seemed to me to be selfish, less to do with the interests of the boys than some cockeyed notion you have about culture.
    Sharing may correct that. In the meantime you must consider your position. I do not want to sack you. It’s so untidy. It would be easier for all concerned if you retired early.
    Hector is going .
    Hector Nothing happened.
    Headmaster A hand on a boy’s genitals at fifty miles an hour, and you call it nothing?
    Hector The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the Renaissance …
    Headmaster Fuck the Renaissance. And fuck literature and Plato and Michaelangelo and Oscar Wilde and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school and it isn’t normal.

    Hector has just seen the Headmaster and, having got into his motorcycle gear, is sitting alone in the classroom .
    Posner comes in .
    Hector Ah, Posner.
    No Dakin?
    Posner With Mr Irwin, sir.
    Hector Of course.
    Posner They’re going through old exam papers. Picking out questions.
    Hector Ah.
    Pornography.
    No matter. We must carry on the fight without him.
    What have we learned this week?
    Posner ‘Drummer Hodge’, sir.
    Hardy.
    Hector Oh. Nice.
    Posner says the poem off by heart
    â€˜They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
    Uncoffined – just as found:
    His landmark is the kopje-crest
    That breaks the veldt around;
    And foreign constellations west
    Each night above his mound.
    â€˜Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
    Fresh from his Wessex home –
    The meaning of the broad Karoo,
    The Bush, the dusty loam,
    And why uprose to nightly view
    Strange stars amid the gloam.
    â€˜Yet portion of that unknown plain
    Will Hodge for ever be;
    His homely Northern breast and brain
    Grow to some Southern tree,
    And strange-eyed constellations reign
    His stars eternally.’
    Hector Good. Very good. Any thoughts?
    Posner sits next to him .
    Posner I wondered, sir, if this ‘Portion of that unknown plain / Will Hodge forever be’ is like Rupert Brooke, sir. ‘There’s some corner of a foreign field …’ ‘In that rich earth a richer dust concealed …’
    Hector It is. It is. It’s the same thought … though Hardy’s is better, I think … more … more, well, down to earth. Quite literally, yes, down to earth.
    Anything about his name?
    Posner Hodge?
    Hector Mmm – the important thing is that he has a name. Say Hardy is writing about the Zulu Wars or later the Boer War