It was a surprise to see an ex-pupil on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. I suppose I had assumed that life at a fairly decent sort of school in a fairly decent sort of place would cocoon me from the worst of the criminal element, but here he was, admittedly a little more worn than when I had taught him, but definitively him. I sometimes think that posh schools (by which I mean any school that appears on the Daily Mail hit list) should reserve a special section in their Old Pupil news for the lags, the drop-outs, the rascals, rather than always extolling the virtues of the good and great. Don’t get me wrong; the good and great are, well great, and we need the wannabe professors of neurosurgery, the high flyers of industry, the uber sports folk, but it is always the rapscallions who one wonders, what happened to them? Where are they now? What lessons did they learn from their expensive education?
I blame Jane Austen for his demise. Gathering in the essays on how Austen’s acerbic wit shapes the reader’s response to such glorious characters as Lady Catherine de Bourgh or fraudsters like George Wickham, I came finally to the lad. No essay. Hmm. Why not? Well, sir, it’s been rather a busy week on the markets. Sniggers from the class. Explain. Well, things are moving fast and with a volatile… No. I cut him off. Why haven’t you done the work? At this point I’d like to imagine his phone goes off. A phone so large and brick-like that it needed a suitcase to carry the battery. Remember them? Sorry, sir, I have to take this – New York calling.
He carried a roll of cash, 50s done up in the time-honoured tradition with a grubby elastic band, and when in the mood would peel off a note to offer in exchange for a missing prep
He wore an Armani suit when everyone else in the 6th form was in their Marks and Spencer’s special; he had a Merc coupe hidden in one of the town’s back streets so he could whisk his girlfriends off at the weekends after sport and he had a knack of getting people to part with their money. His classic sting was to claim some insider knowledge (along with the jargon gleaned over the summer holidays when, as a 16-year-old, he was temping at a City firm) which would double your money, overnight if things were good. The kids were sucked in, money flowed, the word went round: £100 became £200 in the blink of an eye. Clearly he had the golden touch. All was fairly lowkey until someone gave him 10,000 to ‘invest’ and lo and behold…it disappeared. Not so good if the investor also happens to be a member of staff! He carried a roll of cash, 50s done up in the time-honoured tradition with a grubby elastic band, and when in the mood would peel off a note to offer in exchange for a missing prep. Your author declined this generous offer (one which would have doubled his monthly salary) but the lad had been bitten by the bug and the need to flash the cash became an obsession, I suspect.
Approaching the very Grand Hotel (with cash) he hired a suite of rooms to celebrate his 17th birthday and arranged for his ‘guests’ to attend. One Friday evening the school library suddenly became a very popular venue to sign out to during prep; troops of girls looking unexpectedly glam for an evening with the books would appear, register and then rapidly exit. A quick scamper down the seafront saw them at the party, just in time for Champagne cocktails and smoked salmon. It was a suspicious housemaster, wondering why his teenage charges were returning from a study session looking slightly worse for wear, who twigged not all was right. Cue the heavies heading out for the hotel front door while the current partygoers, alerted by the first generation mobile phone, were piling down the fire escape and away into the safety of the night!
The Head solemnly informed him that the phone must go. that it was very disruptive, that he needed to settle down and do his school studies. The lad agreed, the phone went, there would be no more lessons interrupted while he nipped outside to deal in millions. It was a surprise therefore, one evening in his room when his tutor heard a very distinctive ringing. Could the boy have been so foolish as to blatantly ignore the warning? The lad denied, even as the ringing went on, that there was a phone. The tutor approached the drawer where the noise emanated from just as the sound shifted to a curious high-pitched screech. What then is this? Oh, sir, that’s not a phone. It’s called a portable fax machine!
He left shortly afterwards to continue his career in deception, defrauding a building society of hundreds of thousands, later an Asian businessman of several million euros and closer to home an unfortunate widow of her entire pension. As I gazed at his image on the Interpol website under one of his many aliases (I think he had four by the time the law called time on him) I wondered what Jane Austen would have made of him. Her novels are full of plausible rogues, scoundrels like George Wickham, out to make off with a heroine’s money and heart. It doesn’t end well in fiction; nor it would seem, in real life.
