‘I understand you’ve done a lot of great things here,’ I say, trying to get the conversation back on track.
‘I try. We all try. It’s sometimes a losing battle, though. That’smy only concern about your application. Your references are amazing. And I’ve had them all checked . . .’
I feel relieved. Not that she has checked the references, but that there had been someone who had picked up the phone, or emailed back.
‘. . . but this isn’t a rural comprehensive in Suffolk. This is London. This is Tower Hamlets.’
‘Kids are kids.’
‘And they’re great kids. But this is a different area. They don’t have the same privileges. My concern is that you’ve lived a rather sheltered life.’
‘You might be surprised.’
‘And many students here struggle hard enough with the present, let alone with history. They just care about the world around them. Getting them engaged is the key. How would you make history come alive?’
There was no easier question in the world. ‘History isn’t something you need to bring to life. History alreadyisalive. We are history. History isn’t politicians or kings and queens. History is everyone. It is everything. It’s that coffee. You could explain much of the whole history of capitalism and empire and slavery just by talking about coffee. The amount of blood and misery that has taken place for us to sit here and sip coffee out of paper cups is incredible.’
‘You’ve put me right off my drink.’
‘Oh, sorry. But the point is: history is everywhere. It’s about making people realise that. It makes you understand a place.’
‘Right.’
‘History is people. Everyone loves history.’
Daphne looks at me doubtfully, her face retreating into her neck as her eyebrows rise. ‘Are you sure about that?’
I offer a small nod. ‘It’s just making them realise that everything they say and do and see is only what they say and do and seebecause of what has gone before. Because of Shakespeare. Because of every human who ever lived.’
I look out of the window. We are on the third floor and have quite a view, even in the grey London drizzle. I see an old Georgian building I have walked past many times.
‘That place, that place over there. The one with all the chimneys? That used to be an asylum. And over there’ – I point to another, lower brick building – ‘was the old slaughterhouse. They used to take all the old bones and make porcelain from them. If we had walked past it two hundred years ago we’d have heard the wails coming from the people society had declared mad on one side and the cattle on the other . . .’
If, if, if.
I point to the slate terrace rooftops in the east.
‘And just over there, in a bakery, on Old Ford Road, that’s where Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London suffragettes used to meet. They used to have a big sign, painted in gold, saying “VOTES FOR WOMEN” that you couldn’t miss, not far from the old match factory.’
Daphne writes something down. ‘And you play music, I see. Guitar, pianoandviolin.’
And the lute, I don’t say.And the mandolin. And the cittern. And the tin pipe.
‘Yes.’
‘You put Martin to shame.’
‘Martin?’
‘Our music teacher. Hopeless. He’s hopeless. Can barely play the triangle. Thinks he’s a rock star, though. Poor Martin.’
‘Well, I love music. I love playing music. But I’d find it a hard thing to teach. I’ve always found it hard to talk about music.’
‘Unlike history?’
‘Unlike history.’
‘And you seem up to speed with the current curriculum.’
