An ex-colleague, about whom I have heard nothing

for thirty or forty years, has died

quite recently from prostate cancer

I have learned from a chance encounter

with Miranda, a mutual acquaintance.

Paul had been an able linguist, fluent

in French and German, a charismatic

teacher – and a very heavy drinker.

The last I had heard of him he had gone

to teach English in Isfahan, Iran –

presumably a cold turkey cure

in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

When he died he was living in Alvor,

in the Algarve, under a pseudonym –

Sebastien Melmotte – Miranda told me,

though she could or would not tell me why

but, chuckling, reminisced about Paul’s

extensive repertoire of bad impressions.

 

Later, a search on the internet told me

that in the 1990s Paul had taught

at a prestigious private girls’ school

in Lagos, and had a large apartment

in the city centre. At his trial

it was alleged he lured street boys there

and prostituted them – which he denied

then, and subsequently. He was sentenced

to twelve years hard labour, and served two

in Kirikiri Prison near Lagos

before being pardoned by the President

and deported to the UK. For a time

he lived in his late mother’s house in Widnes,

which was opposite a primary school.

The local press and the BBC found out.

He was shouted at in the street, went out

only after dark – then disappeared one day.

 

I recalled Miranda’s parting remark.

‘I think, and so do others, that he was

unjustly treated’. Did she mean he was

innocent of the charges and/or

should not have been accosted in Widnes?

From memory, in the staffroom, the only

environment in which I knew him,

he seemed stolidly heterosexual,

and was rumoured to be pursuing

the mother of one of the pupils.

But perhaps that was a front – and a high risk

one at that. Maybe the risk was what

really mattered – in Isfahan, Lagos?

Do some of us deliberately chose

a life of hard labour? I think he got

irony. If so, ending his days

in Alvor – a thirty-minute drive

from the port of Lagos that gave its name

to the Nigerian capital, and was

the centre of the European slave trade,

still preserving the purpose-built market

where African slaves had been sold – might have

made him a tad rueful.