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.
By David Selzer