Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal is a novel by Zoë Heller first published in 2003 about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who starts an affair with one of her underage pupils and who is found out in the end. Some U.S. editions of the novel have used the title What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal.

The novel is presented to the reader in the form of a manuscript written by Barbara Covett, a history teacher in her early sixties who has set herself the task of minutely recording all the details of the case. Spanning a period of almost two years, her manuscript starts in the autumn of 1996, when she encounters for the first time Bathsheba Hart, the new pottery teacher at St George's, where Covett herself has been teaching for more than two decades. The report ends some time in June 1998.

It soon turns out that Barbara is neither a reliable nor a disinterested first person narrator. An old spinster, she is a very lonely woman who, willy-nilly, has learned "to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters". Although she is eager to make friends with work colleagues she has not been able to make those friendships last as she seems to be too possessive, domineering and generally in the habit of looking down on people who, for some reason or other, do not live up to her arbitrary bourgeois standards.

When Sheba Hart joins the staff of St George's Barbara immediately senses that they might become friends. However, she soon finds out that Sheba, who is in her early forties, is married with two children—her eleven year old son, Ben, has Down's Syndrome—and leading a fulfilled, busy life. What is more, Sheba seems to be associating with some of the teachers Barbara considers beneath her. Eventually, however, Barbara and Sheba do become acquainted when, on the spur of the moment, Barbara invites Sheba for Sunday dinner with her family. ("I wondered if I ought to make some nod to the notion of having to consult my diary. But I thought better of it. I didn't want to risk her glimpsing the white wastelands of my appointmentless weeks.")

In her very first term at St George's, Sheba gets to know, and falls in love with, a 15 year old student with literacy problems called Steven Connolly. Although they frequently have sex right from the start of their relationship, and although they make love in various unlikely places—behind the kiln in Sheba's studio at school; on the floor of Steve's bedroom while his parents are away; in the basement of the Harts' house in Highgate; and, mostly, in the open on Hampstead Heath—no one ever seems to notice anything. At one point Sheba tells Barbara a highly expurgated version of what has happened between her and Connolly, only claiming that he has tried to kiss her.

When Barbara eventually finds out about the affair on Guy Fawkes Night 1997, the feeling that overrides even her sympathy for her friend Sheba is one of betrayal, of not having been made Sheba's confidante in the early stages of their friendship. When, some weeks after Sheba's confession to Barbara, Brian Bangs, a maths teacher, asks Barbara to have Saturday lunch with him in a restaurant in Camden Town, she accepts although she has always considered him a "cretin". But when she finds out that he has a crush on Sheba and is only trying to use her to get some information on Sheba's private life out of her, her hatred of Bangs, Sheba and her life in general gets the better of her and she gives away Sheba's secret. ("'Sheba likes younger men, you know. Much younger men.' I paused a moment. 'I mean, you are aware of her unusually close relationship with one of the Year Eleven boys? '") She cannot summon up the courage to tell Sheba about the mistake she has made though. Rather, she hopes Bangs will not report what she has told him.

In early January 1998, however, the headmaster is informed about the illicit affair. Sheba is suspended from her job and charged with indecent assault on a pupil. Her husband demands that she leave the family home and prevents her from seeing her own children, especially Ben, except on rare occasions and only if supervised by a chaperone. While Sheba's life is quickly disintegrating, Barbara thrives on the new situation, which she considers as her big chance to prove her qualities as a friend, even when the headmaster, glad to be able to get rid of one of his severest critics once and for all, forces her into early retirement.

Notes on a Scandal

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