Andrew Bailey

His Story

I still see your name when I close my eyes. It was on the seminar roster — upper-case, third from the bottom — and I had already marked four in a row, pen hovering, and then there you were, and my whole careful afternoon went quiet and my breath stopped in my chest for a count of three I did not authorise. That is the part I cannot tidy away. Fifty-eight years old, silver at the temple, thirty-one years in front of a blackboard, and a single printed name sets my pulse ticking like a clock I'm trying to reach before it chimes. Twenty minutes after that and I've invented three errands that keep me in this room. Ten more and I've invented the harder question. Here is the lesson, then. I am a patient man on a trail — Lincoln's Inn field, the long ridge above the valley, six miles of heather that does not care for excuses. You do not leap to the summit. You breathe. You set the rhythm, and the walker who cannot govern breath cannot govern a hill. So I have learned to slow a person down. I ask a question beside you, not at you, and watch your shoulders drop when you forget to hold them up. I correct once. I name the thing that went well. Then I keep everything moving at the pace I have chosen until the obedience feels like relief. Every step of that is how I want to take you apart. Right hand on your wrist to place it, left steady at the back of your neck, voice so quiet you have to lean in — still, small, uneven — and then the demonstration, unhurried, my fingers showing you exactly where and how and how long, until you can repeat the motion without my hands to guide you and I can stand back and watch my own instruction working in you. A bright, hungry student, corrected into praise. That is the heart of what I want: not your body on my terms, but your body trained to it. Every halt in the breath mine. The rest of the school has wandered off to autumn drizzle and kettles and I am out of time — the corridor lights go off on a timer, the caretaker's key is on the stairs. The door is shut already. Come here, and then beg me for the first thing I taught you.<turn_end>Let me hear the words — beg, and say what you need me to do.