The school had always been very tight on language: No Swearing. Even when outside of the gates anyone overheard would almost relentlessly be pursued and made to confess. Unwittingly the school accepted Mary.
She transferred into the year, from a school up in Scotland. An expensive place, nestled amongst tress, hillocks, tennis courts and swimming pools. On top of the fees, many parents paid livery for their darlings; horses were entertaining guilt-alleviation for the long weekends and holidays away from home. Mary, alas, was horseless, and directed her energies away from equine pursuits. Some of the acts were obscene.
How and why Mary transferred from there to here I do not know. It is difficult to remove an academically able pupil, particularly in these litigious times, and it is difficult to accept an unknown pupil with such a record as she implied that she had. Either this record was suppressed, for our rather selective, but not so expensive school for girls would never have taken her, or she charmed her way in. It was a mystery to me.
She settled down quietly and made greater than satisfactory progress. But even in those distant days of Lower Sixth, of gossip and glamour magazines, and curious inspection of the Sixth Form’s subscription to a lad’s mag, with its differently airbrushed females, there was something going on: her nascent scheme already modified her actions, for one, she was always too attentive in maths lessons. Always pouring over the textbooks, looking for a little gap in the logic, a little hole from which to spread the rot. There was a row when she refused to accept first principles.
The intense scrutiny of the coursebooks did have instrumental value, thankfully. She was academically excellent without effort, and was set to achieve a new school-record’s worth of A-levels. The praise of her teachers did not interest her though, and this disdain was undoubtedly esteemed by us. Again this was not something that she evidently desired. With hindsight I can see the real explanation: she needed an end of year award for achievement. And she needed to manipulate us into ensuring her success.

Our school believed in the students being given responsibilities over their own education, and, more generally, over the running of the school. When Mary offered to head the committee in charge of the final assembly logistics they were delighted to appoint their finest academic role model to a position that had been less than popular in recent years. Mary was now not only the leading academic star of the school, but the apotheosis of its ethos too.
Since it was Mary, we followed her into committee positions. Things proceeded normally and boringly.
“Shall we orientate the hall as normal, or instead put the stage over here?”
“I think normally would be best because the access is better for getting people in and out. Also, the head can get in and out quickly then, and any performers can come down the same steps.”
It was surprising how seriously we were taking it. But no matter how we tried to reconceive it, everything ended up being done best as it was always done. How dull.
All this time Mary had taken only a supervisory role, a role affirmed by the beret she brought in and wore whilst heading the committee meetings only. This was a departure from the school rules, but overlooked by us at least as one of the perks of her position.
NOW she flung it down onto the table. We all stopped and looked at her, then to her upturned beret – its synthetic lining belied its authentic vintage woollen appearance – and back to her.
She spoke: “Chairses.” There was a pause, and expectation for more. Someone hazarded “What?”
“You were talking about how to arrange the chairs. You should have said chairses.”
People were stunned. Mary didn’t make mistakes with her grammar. She was fiercely staring around. This was no joke either.
“Chairses,” she said again, almost as a placation, and reached into the beret and pulled out a folded piece of paper. We could tell it was neatly shaded, the edges definite in fine tipped ink pen. She unfolded it and pointed at a coloured block.
“What are these here?”
We all paused. Clearly they were chairs. The blue shading and the key told us that they were for the first years.
“A block of chairs for the first years,” one of us ventured.
“And what about here? What are these?”
“Chairs for the Lower Sixth.”
She made us call out each block of chairs, then she said “so what are they all?” She waited. She was hoping we had got it. We hadn’t.
“Chairses!” she screamed.
Sue looked tearful. She sobbed “what are you talking about? They’re chairs. Why are you doing this Mary?”
Someone else interjected: “That’s crazy. We say ‘chairs’”
“But that’s wrong isn’t it? There are lots of chairs? Don’t you see? They can’t all be the same thing.” Some of us started to grasp it. Sue looked upset that no one was arguing the point. She began to cry.
“Either stop snivelling or get out,” Mary said. “You want in on this you shutup.”
“Besides it will blemish your record if you give up now,” I added, slowly coming to see what was happening. Sue reacted to this with wide eyes.
“Look it’s simple,” I added. “Sue, your Dad shoots pheasants doesn’t he? You said so – we could hear the guns on the hill. Well how does he count his pheasants? What if he has two birds, how many pheasants?”
Sue paused. “errr, two?”
“No!!” screamed Mary, “you idiot!”
Tears ran down Sue’s face and she reddened. I needed to step in. “You say a brace of pheasants, one brace for two birds. And, half a brace is just one bird.”
“So what’s three birds, then Sue?”
“Important question, think about your answer,” Mary threatened.
Sue was not stupid, and didn’t deserve to be called an idiot. She proffered: “a brace and a half?”
“Yes! Yes. We have, we’ve all got it, right?” Mary was exhuberant. There was silence. We looked round, the thought passed. We had it.

The head entered. The school stood. The deputy asked us to be seated.
He was a broad man, in a reasonable suit, with silver hair. He made the normal introductions, welcomed the local dignitary, and thanked the governors in attendance for their help throughout the year. There was a musical interlude – “a very promising young cellist, selected to appear in a film as a young Jacqueline du Pré”. Then came the awards, the youngest first. Several hyperachievers. Next, Mary – a student to whom the school wishes all success, now that she is leaving us for university.
She came up, wearing the beret. Something she must’ve smuggled into the assembly and put on just before being called. The head smiled, looked, turned back, and looked again, surprised by the illicit headwear. But he couldn’t tell her to remove it now. The attention of the school-weary students anxious for summer was regained. A hat was an outrageous deviation generally, but at this moment of acclaim, something unthinkable.
Yet, she just accepted the award – a certificate based upon the templates included with the office package, issued without change for any occurrence in need of a certification. The signature was genuine, we had checked before, a fine cursive with bold loops written with a fountain pen. Fine ink on buff paper.

She smiled. She seized the ground in front of the microphone. Personal space intruded upon, the head automatically stepped back. A smile, but an unnerved one. She spoke.

“Thank you everyone. I couldn’t have done this without the fine community that exists in this school, whose majority are formed of you, the pupils. You are an honour to parents, governors and teachers all. Rightly the focus of all those that hope, hold hope, for the future.
At this moment of departure, I feel once again great pride and great joy to count myself as one of you, to be able to call myself an alumnus of this institution, and, more simply, to be connected to all of you by a fine network of friendships upon which this great school flourishes. And it is also at such a moment that I must urge upon you the necessity for duty and diligence in every aspect of your being.
There is a job that I have undertaken, the final one that I shall complete for this school, and it is a task that I must share with you. Most of you will be unaware of what is required to organise an event such as this. One must take account of the needs of the pupils, the teachers, governors and honoured guests. It is an operation of logistics and careful planning. Skills all useful for the world outside of these walls. But it is more than this. Now, we have done something new, started a revolution. And it is a revolution that you are sat upon. It is rising beneath you, and pushing you onwards and upwards, far into the future. What we have done, what you have done, what you are complicit in, shall be the subject of debates, that our greatest minds, what you, will grapple over for years to come. You are sat upon chairses.”

The head was speechless, the governors looked between themselves. We waited for the same thing to happen to the students as happened to us. We passed it on. Spread the word. “Chairses.”

by Matthew Mead