Teacher

She was beautiful, but you had to look carefully to see it. Disguised in plain tweed skirts, sensible mid-heels, a soft white blouse with cravat, or baby blue twin sets, there was nothing immediately sexy about Ms Brown.

Her constant pearls, communicated restraint, conservatism, and order.

But there was something about the perfect symmetry of her face, those fuller lips traced with russet lipstick and the unmissable curls of her dark, red hair that made her remarkable.

In a husky, somewhat deadpan voice, she intoned the lessons of the classics.

A teacher of ancient history, one imagined Ms Brown never expected to live anything but a stoic existence, dry lessons delivered to indolent students with little passion for the mythology of the past.

It was all she could do to keep order sometimes. When the ancient Egyptians or Phoenicians, had nothing to excite the Kardashian-moulded minds of the 21st century, she struggled on, rebuttoning her cardigan, twiddling with her whiteboard marker, eliciting discrete coughs, before continuing the lesson.

I forget so many of the dates and places of ancient battles and invasions – but I will never forget her.

We gossiped about her at lunchtime. Why was she Ms Brown? Was she married, gay, divorced, celibate, polyamorous…it was all fodder for our teenage imaginings.

We saw the way some fathers gave her the eye on parent teacher nights, they appreciated her disguise. In many ways she was every man’s smouldering librarian, just waiting to have that hairclip undone so that her locks could flow free.

There was no doubting, she could have had whomever she wanted, if indeed she wanted anyone.

But Ms Brown sighed a lot – both in and out of class. She seemed resigned to her fate – casting pearls of wisdom and learning before a trough of boorish adolescents.

She was all alabaster goddess - perfect, intriguing, aloof - definitely not the teacher you went to with a problem

We all longed to know her back story – the something beyond those eyes, beyond the enormous mind, and the body she denied.

I remember watching her as the squad of young builders worked on the construction of a new hall at the school.

A chorus of lusty girls, pretending to munch on sandwiches on the balcony, stared down at every rippling muscle on the arms and torsos of the men below, it was a vicarious everyday encounter with their awakening sexuality.

Ms Brown, casting her eyes over the scene sighed and said, “wouldn’t it be wonderful, to have such physical work, something you could leave behind at the end of each day and feel satisfied.”

I wasn’t sure I understood. High school teaching, it seemed to me, hardly posed a great burden to be carted home each night and fretted and stressed about. And Ancient History, seemed the least likely to pose any great transitions. It was not like teaching biology or science, where innovation and re-examination brought up new theories and discoveries all the time.

But it appeared, Ms Brown felt a great divide between an ascetic and a carnal life and this was her daily challenge.

The more I considered it, I thought the stealthily beautiful Ms Brown, was simply bored with her life.

But it was in term three, as we were making our foray into Minoan history that we noticed a change in her.

As her heels clicked across the timber stage that offered all teachers an appropriate elevation from their students, there was a new rhythm, a lively syncopation in her gait.

Entranced, I listened closer.

And between the beat of her heels, there was the history. The history of a great and powerful civilisation, one that fostered some little measure of power for women, one where art, travel, trade, sports, and leisure were all valued.

Holding forth dramatically, as though reciting one of those enormous Greek poems, she described the daily lives of the Minoans, surmised from the ruins of Knossos.

Their trading ships laden with potted olive oil, copper and ceramics, a written language still not completely decoded today; hairdressers weaving intricate beads through elaborate plaits and ringlets, farmers producing wheat and vegetables and harvesting honey, and a tradition of acrobatic sports as remarkable as anything ever known.

Ms Brown’s video images of Minoan frescoes and pottery were full of colour and movement.

And what captivated us the most were the bull vaulters. Young girls and boys alike, leaping from the clutched horns of a charging bull to somersault through the air and land, one hoped, on the other side.

She followed up these presentations with videos from modern day Spain of Recortes and explored the links with the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and the festival of Jallikattu in southern India.

And as every one of us engaged in the substance of what they were learning, Ms Brown was increasingly satisfied with her day’s work.

Our final assessment that term was to take on the role of a Minoan citizen. We had to choose our sex, our station in life, our occupation and write a week-long diary of our lives as one of the ancients.

On the last day of term, the Ms Brown who entered our classroom was transformed.

In a wraparound full flowing dress of turquoise, she had loosed her red curls.

And for a moment she really did look like a goddess come to life.

We were effusive with our end of year farewells, and she received our compliments with gracious subtle smiles.

As I took my turn to say thanks and discuss what we would be studying next year, I noticed her open handbag and two Aegean Airlines tickets.

“Going away, Ms Brown?” I asked.

“Yes,” she mused.

And that was all she said.

There were two tickets in her handbag, and I liked to think of her all through that summer, strolling through Knossos, hand in hand with someone as beautiful as she was, as though they had returned to where they belonged.