His name was Mr Keitel, he was the general science teacher, one of the stock teachers who could be found in every school staffroom throughout the United Kingdom; solid and dependable, dressed in his tweed jacket with the leather elbows, chalk in one pocket and a pipe and a pouch of tobacco in the other.
Because of his unusual name the school legend told that he was German; and he could have passed for the archetypal German although in our uninformed state just the name was enough for us to build a web of intrigue and stories around him. He was tall and fair, a high angular face with a pale moustache and pale blue piercing eyes; reminiscent of an old Teutonic knight from the colour plates in our history books, he had the caste of the duelling Junker about him.
He was a good teacher, disciplined and respected. He would take the time out for us kids and he knew how to make us laugh in class. He treated us with respect and in the main it was appreciated and returned. I don't think he turned out any rocket scientists, not from my year at least, but he did give us a reasonable grounding in the intricacies of things scientific from biology to chemistry and back through a little physics.
We learned how to master the small Bunsen burners connected through little rubber hoses to gas taps on our desks; and the workings of the human eye from a rough mock up of a 'camera obscura' made with a hole pierced through the science lab blackout curtains; we also got stiff necks from spending many a lesson looking up at the ceiling and the rough and ready images he projected there. But he got his message across, often battering it into even the roughest set of kids, bound for a life of manual work hewing coal or pouring molten steel. Kids who could see no connection between the science that Mr. Keitel had promulgated and the fossils that they often found buried deep in the layers of coal and picked up, briefly wondered about, before tossing them back onto the conveyor belt and turning back to the job in hand.
He wasn't old, although to us kids he was already as ancient as all teachers are and he had been married; it was common knowledge that his wife had died some years before. He was always active in the school, not a 'nine to five' teacher. He ran the science club, the photography club and the chess club; all afterschool or lunchtime activities. He was one of the more popular teachers.
Gwen had joined the photographic club a year or so earlier. She was averagely talented as photographer but it was the developing and printing where she excelled. She had real feel for the darkroom work and quickly became the club's technical wiz. She and Mr Keitel would work together side by side in the darkroom; consulting on problems but often working together in comfortable silence. They developed a mutual respect for each other's expertise, Mr Keitel for his experience and Gwen for her talent. It was a partnership that worked well.
It was the height of summer and the school had already broken up for the holidays but the school summer activities continued as they did every summer; summer fayres to raise money, school trips, open days, etc. And all these events created a huge amount of work for the photographic club and in particular for Gwen and Mr Keitel. The club would take hundreds of photos at these events and it was Gwen and Mr Keitel who developed and printed them. Once printed the photos were then sold to raise additional funds for the school and the club.
Like all darkrooms the school darkroom was small and hot and the while the small extractor fan struggled to take away the smell of the chemicals it did nothing to dispel the heat; and the summer was a hot one. By agreement and by necessity Mr Keital took to working in shorts and T shirt while Gwen wore her gym skirt and either her polo or an old school shirt; and they still sweated.
They had a routine, she handled the printing and he developed and washed the exposed papers. A simple routine in a confined space and they worked shoulder to shoulder, close, arms and shoulders touching. They worked quickly and efficiently, often without speaking, a good team and the prints quickly rolled off the production line to be hung up to dry.
For some time now Mr Keitel had slowly become increasingly aware of Gwen as a young woman. The proximity of working together, the young girl smell of her, the casual contact, arm against arm, hip against hip, had, on a growing number of occasions, left him excited and semi erect. He was not particularly worried by this, in his years of teaching he had never been particularly troubled by the presence of young girls and if he had he had controlled it without too much difficulty. Being surrounded by growing, nubile young girls was part of the job and as part of the job he had always refused to let it affect him.
Part of him recognised that since his wife had died in an accident three years ago he had not had a sexual partner and still being a relatively young man he was feeling the loss of sex more keenly as time went by; but finding a suitable willing girl as a schoolmaster in a small village in Yorkshire was not easy. He was well known and respected in the surrounding areas and was expected to retain a staid and demur lifestyle. The growing cult of free love and the swinging sixties had not yet reached this small and isolated part of Yorkshire; and so he learned to button down his libido and simply got on with the job of teaching.
