Plot

A British high-school girl becomes infatuated with her English teacher, but after he rejects her amorous advances, she goes to the police and accuses him of indecent assault.

Graham Weir is an alcoholic schoolteacher whose criminal record for refusing to fight during World War II has prevented him from progressing further in his teaching career. He is looked upon with disdain by his headmaster, his pupils, and even his wife. The one person who appreciates his shyness and warmth is one of his pupils, Shirley Taylor. After Weir offers to give her free private tuition, the pupil slowly falls in love with her teacher. She treats this as an obsession that can never be fulfilled, but in her frustration and naivete, she reveals her true feelings for Weir and offers to sleep with him. Weir gently refuses and intends to forget about the incident, but then Taylor accuses him of indecent assault.—David Claydon <dc6212@bristol.ac.uk>

In a working class British town north of London, middle-age Graham Weir teaches English at the private East Secondary Modern School. Like many schoolmasters, he has some trouble students, most notably Mitchell, who leads a gang of thugs, and some who look to him for guidance in their admiration. His wife, ethnic French Anna Weir, laments the sorry state of their lives, their marriage ending up being nothing like she imagined. She knows that their lives getting any better is hindered somewhat by he having refused to fight in the war as a conscientious objector. She, lashing out in anger, sometimes states he was and is truly a coward and not a pacifist, although he generally lives by those pacifist ideals. That lack of upward mobility may change as Mr. Sylvan-Jones, the school's current deputy headmaster, favors Graham as his replacement as Sylvan-Jones moves on to another position at the end of this term. The Weirs' troubles are exacerbated by his alcoholism only known to Anna, he slipping away to the pub whenever he can, even between classes. Doing it in wanting to help her, a favored student, out, and in his rather passive approach to life, Graham begins tutoring fifteen year old student Shirley Taylor for free in she potentially getting a secretarial job. While both Graham and Anna can see that Shirley has a crush on him, Anna is certain that Shirley will eventually make a pass at him. Their lives have the potential to be seriously altered in the aftermath of that pass.—Huggo