Read A Week in December for Free Online

pay you decently.'
    Tranter smiled. 'People'd be really surprised, wouldn't they, that you of all schools ... I mean--'
    'I know, I know,' said the Head hurriedly. 'Top ten of the league table and all that. But I also know for a fact that other illustrious schools do the same thing. No names, no pack drill. And obviously this must remain entirely between ourselves. It would be most damaging if it were to leak out into any ... In any way.'
    Tranter thought of The Toad , and smiled again. 'Well,' he said in the higher, slightly reedy tone his voice took on when he was intrigued, 'we could certainly give it a go and see how it works out.'
    The business part of the deal was quickly done. Drafts of all the reports were to be sent to Tranter on CD. He was not to change them or rewrite in any way, merely to correct the worst errors of grammar and syntax and all those of spelling. The school had 620 pupils, each of whom had roughly ten reports, most of them only a few lines. Tranter calculated that at the rate of three reports per minute, the whole task would take about thirty-five hours - or a working week. Based on annual earnings, his average pay per week was roughly PS600, but this work would be more intensive. He had planned to ask for double, say PS1,200 a term, or even PS4,000 a year, but the headmaster's opening offer was PS5,000 plus expenses and any secretarial help he wanted, so no bargaining was necessary.
    Tranter's own writing style had long ago been sold over to journalism, with its 'iconic images' and 'cur's cojones ', but he was just old enough to have been taught how to spell at school, had read thousands of good books and had once had the principle of hanging participles unforgettably explained to him by Patrick Warrender. He was up to the task. Five terms into the new regime, the headmaster was thrilled by the results. The complaining parent wrote a conciliatory letter, admitting the improvements, and the Head granted Tranter a PS1,000 bonus. His nickname in the common room was Harry Patch, after the last surviving Tommy of the Great War. 'I've been Patched up,' said the head of Geography, reading his corrected comments on-screen. 'Me too,' said History.
    This success as rewrite man made Tranter see that there was still money in literacy. In fact, it was a simple demonstration of supply and demand. While graduates with first-class degrees from the best universities couldn't spell or compose an e-mail that made sense, the companies that employed them still had to write letters, put out documents and deal with law firms, banks and public companies. The counterparty didn't expect elegance, but needed at least to be able to understand what was on offer.
    As someone educated at a grammar school before the towel was thrown in, Tranter had an asset: literacy. He could sell it. Then, a year after he began work with the school, he received an invitation to 'moderate' the book-club discussions of a group of posh housewives in North Park. He could hardly believe his luck. Most of the women had university degrees in arts subjects, but they had no basic understanding of how a book worked. Even the vocabulary that Tranter had been taught at the age of sixteen was mysterious to them; they didn't know the difference between 'style' and 'tone', for instance. He was able to make PS100 a time without exerting himself, as well as putting away a very good dinner and a bottle of wine. All the women were on diets, so Tranter was able to tuck in at will to a variety of dishes purchased at astonishing expense from local delicatessens and traiteurs . They also paid his Tube fares. After he had made a few observations about the book in question, they generally cut him out of the loop. What they wanted to talk about was whether the incidents in the book were 'based on' events in the author's own life and to what extent his version of them tallied with their own experience of such things. Tranter tried to suggest that there were more fruitful