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Master
John Eppel
April 2005

When we found Roland Clarke dead in his armchair, one of the great mysteries of maNyoni’s life was solved. She had been Roland’s maid – I believe "domestic worker" is the more politically correct term – for nearly forty years, first in Gwanda, then in Plumtree, now in Bulawayo. She called him "Master", not because schoolmastering was his profession but as a synonym of "Duce" or "Fuehrer" or "Shogun"…. Roland had been a History teacher. He had done time as Principal of a primary school in Gwanda, Head of Department at a secondary school in Plumtree, and, until his death, Deputy Headmaster of a secondary school in Bulawayo.

Roland Clarke MA had been a confirmed bachelor, terrified of the female sex, starting with his mother, Thalestris Q. Clarke PhD, one of whose less hyperbolic nicknames was The Harridan of Hillside. Apparently she had forced her son to wear a bib at mealtimes well into his twenties. Miss Tweet, Head of English, had called him a misogynist and compared him with the eighteenth century British satirist, Alexander Pope, who once remarked: "Men, some to business, some to pleasure take, / But every woman is at heart a rake". The fact that Miss Tweet exemplified Pope’s sentiments was neither here nor there. No one in the staff room allowed her to forget the time she was caught in her stock room with Metalwork; nor the time she was caught in the cricket pavilion with Management of Business; nor the time she was caught, precariously on the roof of the Music room with Design and Technology.

Roland was the epitome of neatness. The one thing he could not abide in a pupil was a shirt untucked. A boy caught bullying would be warned; a boy caught cheating would be threatened; but a boy caught with his shirt tail hanging out of his trousers would be beaten with a metre length of reinforced hosepipe. The Master’s sartorial trim has been well documented in any number of school magazines, Speech Night eulogies, and PTA meetings. I recall a Newsletter, which went into rhapsodies over his footwear: strong outdoor shoes with wingtips and perforated toecaps, known to the initiated as Oxford brogues. He had worn them from the moment his feet had stopped growing at the age of sixteen – the number of times they had been re-soled over the years.

His jacket and trousers were tailor-made – no zips, damn you! – of a grey flannel material, famous for outlasting its wearer. His shirts, invariably white (off-white if the truth be told), with long sleeves and and stiff (fraying if the truth be told) collars. His favourite tie sported the logo of his Alma Mater, the University of Rhodes, Grahamstown, South Africa, or "The Union", as Roland persisted in calling our southern neighbour. Nobody except, perhaps, maNyoni, could describe his underwear, but I imagined it to be loose and cottony.

The one thing maNyoni could never understand about her obsessively neat and tidy employer was that he always left his wardrobe door open. It was almost the only work she had to do somedays – close the wardrobe door. The dishes would be washed and put away, the floors would be swept, the furniture would be dusted, the garbage bin would be emptied, the pets would be fed. Roland Clarke, to the disgust of maNyoni, loved pets, and he kept many of them: dogs, cats, birds, fish, and a miniature goat called Randolph who wreaked havoc in the home and the garden. He ate, banged, ate banged, from morn to dewy eve. He ate things that stood still like plants, clothes, and newspapers; and banged things that moved like dogs, cats, chickens, and maNyoni’s legs. Once, in an act that can only be described as rape, he mounted the moving back wheel of the Master’s 1956 Austin Westminster.

The boys loved gruff old Mr Clarke. Once when he had to beat a junior for not pulling up his stockings on school premisses, the blubbing child, after receiving two of the best, turned around and hugged him. Older boys invariably thanked him after receiving – not cuts, not with a piece of reinforced hosepipe, thwocks, rather – after receiving thwocks from the Deputy Headmaster. They liked him for his predictabilty, for his caricaturabilty; above all, for the fact that he genuinely liked them. He was even more popular than the recently graduated Physical Education teacher who allowed them to smoke during his lessons, and went drinking with them over the weekends. I too, was fond of the old fart, with all his old-fashioned ways. His presence made me feel unaccountably nostalgic. There was something of the ubi sunt about him – a vanished past.

When maNyoni found him dead in his chair, she phoned the school. I happened to be free at the time, so I offered to go to his house and make the necessary arrangements. I found maNyoni wringing her hands and muttering "Maye, bakithi!" over and over. She took me to his bedroom. He was slumped in his armchair, a barely sipped gin and tonic on a coaster on the side table. And there he was again, reflected in the full length mirror on the inside of his wardrobe door – slumped in his armchair, a barely sipped gin and tonic on a coaster, on the side table. "You see, maNyoni," I said as I gently closed the wardrobe door, "we all need company, even the loneliest of us."

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