The Professionals Circuit Archive - Teacher's Pets	   Teacher's Pets

 

by LH

  
 She knew she had to be dreaming. Even so it was a very nice dream and she
had no complaints about it. Normally getting two new pupils in her class
-- out of the blue, without a word from anyone, would've been aggravating
to say the least, but these two were very special new pupils. 

Right at the back of the class, side by side, but sitting up very straight
in their chairs, bright and alert, pens at the ready wide-spaced piercing
green and large, deep, intense blue eyes rooted on her face, presumably
waiting agog for pearls of wisdom to fall from her lips. 

Well if that was what they wanted they were in for a surprise. It was a
Monday morning three quarters of the way through the Autumn term and she
was flagging a bit in any case. It was always the same about mid-November
-- with half-term somewhere in the distant past and Christmas still five
weeks away. 

One top of that she had a particularly virulent dose of 'that Monday
morning feeling;, and after a very late night with some other hatstanders,
so she wasn't exactly in sparkling form. But in the way of dreams she
accepted their presence with only minimal surprise. Well, you had to be
prepared for all kinds of weird things happening in dreams, didn't you?
And nice as it was, there was no way it could possibly be real ... in
which case ... she tried to act normally and opened her register. 

But when she'd finished checking the attendance she took another look at
her two new charges, who were now deep in animated conversation at the
back of the room. She was just steeling herself to ask their names,
feeling she should at least go through the motions, when a hand in the
front row shot up. 

"Yes, Trudi?" The recipient of her question was normally a real little
troublemaker, so she waited with bated breath to hear what Trudi had in
store for her this morning. 

"Please, miss, Bodie and Doyle are sitting at the back of the class ...
and they're gorgeous ..." 

It was no less than she'd expected, but at least she had an ally, pleased
to have discovered another discerning Professionals fan in the room.
Probably the only one too because no one else seemed to be showing any
interest. 

"Yes, Trudi, I am aware of that fact," she replied as calmly as she could.


"What they doin' here then, Miss?" That was George -- the kind of
freckled, bespectacled know-all it seemed every classroom could boast. 

"I've no idea," she replied, almost angry at her two heroes for causing so
many problems to her normally peaceful slumbers. Monday mornings were bad
enough without this... 

"Why don't you ask them?" she added. 

"All right, I will," George said cockily, turning round in his seat. "Oi,
you two, what you doin' here?" 

"Where's Cowley?" Trudi chipped in excitedly for good measure, "is he
comin' later?" 

Bodie and Doyle, still deep in conversation, turned their heads
simultaneously, giving both speakers a withering look, obviously annoyed
at being interrupted. The effect was instantaneous. George lowered his
gaze submissively, all his cockiness gone, and turned to the front again
without another word, and Trudi ... well. Trudi was in a bit of a state,
flushing and looking awkwardly away as Doyle flashed her an appealing,
crooked grin and gave her a wink. 

By this time the rest of the class was sitting up and taking note of the
two 'strangers' too, and she had an enlightening view of the backs of 31
adolescent heads. 

She steeled herself yet again to take some positive action. Apart from
anything else she had to get the lesson started, and she'd already wasted
twenty minutes. 

"You two at the back," she said as commandingly as she could though she
knew her voice was trembling, "you're new to my class. Who sent you here?"


"Who? Us?" Bodie asked innocently, glancing round and then fixing her with
his best Bodie-like 'aren't I well-behaved' grin, making her insides feel
somewhat strange and jumpy. 

"Yes ... you," she said, role-playing the stern teacher for all she was
worth, just as they'd told her to on teaching practice. 

"Oh, the Headmaster sent us to you." Doyle went on brightly with an even
more appealing crooked grin than the one he'd given Trudi, "said he
couldn't think of a better class for us, all things considered." 

This time her insides felt extremely, not just slightly, strange, (well
she'd always preferred Doyle anyway), but she was worried too. Doyle's
words making her instantly suspicious as she wondered if it was at all
possible the Head had happened to see the hatstand she'd been working on
in her free period yesterday, and which she'd foolishly left behind in the
staffroom ... 

"And why did he do that?" she asked guardedly, trying not to flush at the
soft expression in those limped green eyes which were staring at her so
candidly, "you're much too old to still be at school." 

There were several random scattered giggles from various parts of the room
as she said that, and she overheard Janice on the front row, who'd always
been over-developed for her age, whisper to her nearest neighbour, "who
cares, when they're so gorgeous? Even better looking in real life than
they are on the telly. I could eat that Bodie up he's so beautiful." 

Trying to control her flush of embarrassed agreement, she was nevertheless
just working herself up to going on the offensive again when Bodie
suddenly said, "we're not as old as we look you know, and we're late
developers anyway. And I failed me Maths 'O' level three times, so we
thought you might be able to help us out a bit." 

It was rapidly dawning on her that this wasn't just a dream anymore, in
fact, gorgeous as they were and wonderful as it was to have them here, the
whole things was slowly turning into the worst kind of nightmare. And
things got even worse when a small voice from the back of the room asked
plaintively, "Please, Miss, can I ask them for their autographs..." and
the random giggles expanded into fullscale laughter. She realised she
could soon have a fullscale riot on her hands if she didn't handle the
situation carefully, and so nodded blankly, watching as, like lightning, a
long line immediately formed down the centre aisle between the desks, the
whole class standing there, waiting their turn, pens and paper in hand. 

That took about fifteen minutes, what with one thing and another,
including the assorted questions her two guests where asked about their
jobs and their cars and their weaponry ... 

They seemed to take it all in their stride though, not looking overly
perturbed, even when a couple of the bolder girls grabbed furtive kisses
from one or the other of them. 

When the first rush of excitement had died down she amazed herself by
somehow getting everyone to sit down again, and even more amazingly to
concentrate on the equations she put on the blackboard with a quavering
hand. 

Silence reigned at last, and she sat down at her desk, trying to
concentrate on the huge mound of making she simply had to get out of the
way before the end of the day. But it wasn't easy. Surprisingly, Bodie
seemed to be behaving remarkably well, concentrating on his work, brow
furrowed with effort, muttering to himself as he tried to work out the
answers to the questions. Pretty much a model pupil in fact, but Doyle,
well Doyle was a different matter altogether. Every time she looked up it
seemed he was staring right back at her, and each time he caught her eye
his face creased into that irresistible, appealing, crooked grin she knew
so well, making it impossible for her to concentrate on what she was
supposed to be doing. 

After a time she decided there was nothing for it but to take a leisurely
stroll round the room, on the pretext of seeing how the work was going,
anything to get away from that wonderful, jellifying green-eyed gaze. 

When she got to the back of the room she stayed behind Bodie and Doyle,
trying to collect herself, looking down at them both, mesmerised by the
shape and breadth of Bodie's beautiful shoulders, and by the clustering
auburn mass of Doyle's hair, curling riotously in his collar. 

She peeped furtively over their shoulders. Bodie, like the little treasure
she'd always suspected he was, was working fast and furious, wanting to
gain approval as ever, and had already completed two scrawled
indecipherable pages of work, which she could see, even at this distance,
made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and probably wouldn't even gain him a
single tick, but Doyle obviously hadn't done a stroke of work, and seemed
to have spent the whole of the lesson doodling. She leaned a little
closer, flushing as she saw that his paper was covered in dozens of
beautifully drawn little hearts with arrows through them saying "Bodie
loves Doyle", or, occasionally, "Doyle loves Bodie." It seemed the
hatstands they'd all been busy writing weren't so far off the mark after
all ... 

Mesmerised, she couldn't tear herself away, and so stayed right where she
was, peering over Doyle's shoulder, while he finished yet another loving
masterpiece, until he turned round and gave her another beatific, beaming,
knowing grin ... at which point she made her way back to the sanctuary of
her desk, finding his closeness, and his cheekiness, too much to take. 

All too soon the bell rang for the end of the lesson and there was the
usual noisy, mad dash for the door and freedom ... 

As she'd half suspected, though, Bodie and Doyle took their time coming up
to her desk first and proudly presenting her with his scrawled pages of
totally useless equations with a nervous, hopeful little smile. 

"Well done," she said, wanting to be hind, finding his behaviour touching
and very endearing, "you've worked very hard." 

"Yeah, well, I try, you know," he said, looking down and shuffling his
feet. 

But Doyle of course had nothing to offer in the way of work and hastily
shoved his scrunched up doodles into his jacket pocket as he sauntered
idly up to her desk. 

"Got somethin' for you," he said as he arrived, standing much closer than
he needed to, almost touching her, so close she could smell the sweet,
tangy scent of him, "here ..." digging in his other pocket and producing a
huge, luscious red apple, and holding it out to her. 

"You little crawler," Bodie said scornfully, "might have known. How corny
can you get? An apple, mate? Haven't you got more imagination than that?" 

"You're only jealous," Doyle retorted, "cos you didn't think to bring one
too." 

It was a particularly outrageous form of bribery of course, because Doyle
most definitely had no work to hand in, but she couldn't even begin to be
angry with him. Well, he was just too gorgeous to be angry with, wasn't
he? 

"Thank you," she said, accepting the apple gratefully from Doyle's hot,
rather sticky little hand. 

"See you then," he said with a wink, on his way to the door, "same time
tomorrow?" Bodie following in his wake. 

"Same time tomorrow," she confirmed, going strange inside all over again. 

She sighed deeply as the door closed behind them, sat down at her desk,
viewing the still huge mound of marking with a baleful eye. Oh well, the
sooner she got started, the sooner she'd finish it. 

The strange thing was though, that when she woke up in the morning and
reached out a hand to switch the alarm off, the dream immediately flooding
back into her mind, making her feel nice and warm and happy inside, her
hand brushed against a huge, luscious, red apple resting by the alarm
clock, which certainly hadn't been there when she'd fallen asleep the
night before. 

-- THE END --

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