The Zoo by Jamie Mollart Page A

‘I watched them leave me and go into the main school. Watched these beautiful, innocent little children turn into something else entirely and it hurt me much more than it should have, to be honest. I struggled to deal with it.’
    â€˜Do you mind talking about this?’
    â€˜No. It helps.’
    She closes her eyes.
    â€˜Each year I felt they needed me more and more. And each year without fail I could help them less. I don’t want to sound like a cliché, but I spent less and less time teaching.’
    â€˜My wife. My ex-wife is a teacher.’
    â€˜You know then. You know what it’s like. There’s this machine behind us all. A big, clumsy juggernaut of a machine. Don’t get me wrong; education has always been something of a production line. But the end product is less important now. It’s as if it’s the actual production that matters now. It doesn’t matter now what comes out the other end as long as we tick all the right boxes on the way through.’
    Her eyes are still pressed shut, but tears are rolling down her cheeks, dragging mascara with them. I let her cry, dabbing at her swollen cheeks with the sleeve of my jumper. Still she doesn’t make a sound. When she eventually begins to talk again her voice is staccato with concealed sobs. As she talks I become aware that she’s never spoken about this at length before. I get the impression this is a long rehearsed internal monologue, which has never been shared. I can see it in her body, the way it unfurls, her shoulders becoming looser. I realise I am doing something good by listening, by letting her simply speak. I don’t interrupt her or interject at all. I put my arm around her shoulder and she buries her face in my neck so I have to strain to catch the words. Her tears are hot against my skin.
    â€˜The irony is,’ she says, ‘as the council take more and demand more, there is less opportunity to give to the people you actually want to be giving to. I always knew who I was and what I was doing, or at least what I wanted to do, but this was steadily being eroded and I became little more than a bureaucrat. I was worried the kids could sense it in me. They’re like animals in that respect, children. They sense weakness. You must have experienced it as a child, a supply teacher coming in and being totally destroyed by the class. As soon as I acknowledged the change I think it became inevitable that I would fail. I thought of nothing else. I lost all my faith in myself, and what I was doing. Of course when it happened it was in front of a class. It’s my own fault. I tried to fight it. You can never beat the system. I should have realised my hands were tied and tried to make the best of it, but I couldn’t because I cared too much.’
    She pauses. Pulls herself from my grip, fingers fumbling for another cigarette. I light it for her.
    â€˜If you try and fight anything of that size, with that much momentum, you are bound to lose. And I became more and more depressed. Found it harder and harder to get up, to go to work. It’s pretty standard from there on in. Everything just collapsed and here I am.’
    We stay outside for another half an hour or so. The air gets noticeably colder. Beth is shivering. As we get up to go in she whispers ‘thanks’, and I tell her she is welcome and mean it.

25.
    The first day of filming. Ben Jones is there from the bank. Baxter, myself, Hilary and Jessica are seated on uncomfortable plastic folding chairs behind the camera crew, talking in hushed voices. I wonder why Hilary is there, showing off, clinging on, trying to be involved. It irritates me. Jessica is wearing a grey skirt suit, dark tights on impossibly shapely legs. I keep looking at them as her skirt rides up. I’m sure she sees and makes no attempt to pull it down.
    In front of the camera is a mock-up of a family kitchen. From where I’m sitting I can see the plywood