Matthew Hammett Knott - A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich

For my parents, and real teachers everywhere

CONTENTS

To respect the privacy of the families I worked with, I have altered various personal details. Despite these changes, the wealth and behaviour on display in these pages is an entirely authentic representation of the world I encountered during my career as a private tutor. Im only sorry I couldnt use their real names. Seriously, you wouldnt believe what some of these people call their children.

A naked Russian oligarch is spanking me in his basement. His weapon is a birch branch, the setting his luxurious home sauna. Above us is 30,000 square feet of one of Moscows most obscene private homes, an original Damien Hirst above the fireplace, a vacuum cleaning system built into the skirting boards. Risking great cultural offence, I have declined to remove my trunks on account of my twelve-year-old pupil Nikita the oligarchs son who sits beside me on a cedar bench, watching his father spank me. We are wearing pointy felt caps to keep our heads cool, causing the oligarch to resemble a kinky elf. Invisible speakers serenade us with a desolate pan pipe cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water. A light display rotates kaleidoscopically, illuminating the oligarchs genitals in a variety of unexpected hues. Everyone is silent, but I cant think of anything to say that wouldnt make things worse. Then Nikita looks at me with a mysterious smile.

Now my mother will bring us honey.

Honey? Russian saunas are strictly gender segregated, but I should have known Nikitas mother Maria would find a way in. I cant claim I hadnt encouraged her, having only days earlier serenaded her with a series of melodramatic love ballads at famed Moscow karaoke joint Who Is Who. On our chauffeured car ride home, she had fallen drunkenly asleep with her head in my lap and proceeded to have an intense dream while murmuring and licking her lips.

Do you like it? asks the oligarch, landing another strike on my thighs with his branch. Im not sure if he means the honey or the spanking.

Mmm, I say non-committally.

While I have no desire to offend my host, I am equally keen for the experience to end. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering: how the hell did I end up here?

Monday, 15 September, Dorset

It isnt every day the world falls apart before breakfast. As I got back from taking the dog for her morning walk, my parents were in the kitchen listening to Radio 4. Lehman Brothers had declared bankruptcy overnight. My mum looked up with a grave expression.

Did Beanie do a poo on her walk?

Yes, I said. But then she ate it.

My mum rolled her eyes at my dad. Walking the dog had been my main responsibility since moving home a few weeks earlier. I had graduated from university in June, then starred in an original musical which debuted to half-full audiences and lukewarm reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe. Thanks to a four year course and a September birthday, I had somehow reached the practically geriatric age of twenty-three. My parents had made it clear that while I was forever welcome in the family home, it was time to become an adult and get a job.

Theyre saying this could crash the world economy, said my dad.

What a time to be looking for a job, said my mum pointedly.

Gone with the Wind came out of the Great Depression, I offered.

My parents exchanged another glance. It was no secret that I wanted to become a writer. I had dreamed of it since childhood, and had perfected an Oscar acceptance speech with the potential to reduce a global audience of millions to tears.

Its not going to be handed to you on a plate, said my mum.

She was right. In an ideal scenario, it would be handed to me by Jane Fonda.

I was all too aware that many of my contemporaries had stepped straight into well-paid careers in finance and management consultancy. But my own masterplan could not be said to be at an advanced stage. Earlier that week Id had an idea for a script a heartwarming comedy set in the fictional town of Piddle Newton. Now all I had to do was write it and let the acclaim roll in. My parents had always been very supportive of this plan, but they were eager for me to think about how I was going to support myself while I did it. Edinburgh had cleaned me out, and my NatWest savings account had been thin on good news ever since luring me with a free Young Persons Railcard.

Why dont you see if the kitchens have any work? said my dad for what felt like the sixth time that week.

He was referring to the catering company at the boarding school where he and my mum both taught, and where I had worked as a waiter every holiday throughout sixth form and university. Thanks to a generous staff bursary, I had also attended the school as a pupil. Aside from the obvious issues of being a student at the school where your parents taught, it also meant I had spent my teenage years surrounded by people with more money than me. When they jetted off to Barbados or Chamonix each Christmas and Easter, I clipped on a cheap bow tie and poured champagne at weddings for 4 an hour. When my swimming team turned up at a state school for a match and a teammate wondered if we were going to get stabbed, I cringed until I turned twelve, I had attended my local primary school, where the worst thing Id witnessed was my classmates on free school meals forced to line up in a separate lunch queue and get teased for wearing second-hand shoes. At that school, going camping in France or Cornwall had meant I was posh. But moving to private school, I was suddenly embarrassed to tell my French class what I did on my holidays when they had all stayed in villas or chalets and I had been slumming it in a tent.

Teenagers arent known for their sense of perspective. I might have spent my days reciting Latin verbs while wearing a tweed jacket at a school which had its own golf course, but throughout my adolescence I thought the fact that I had a holiday job meant I was basically Cinderella. Once I got to university in Cambridge and learned the phrase town versus gown, I realised that the supermarket checkout lady probably didnt care that I had gone to private school on a scholarship . But the damage had been done a minor victim complex, and a lifelong insecurity around rich people. This wouldnt have been a problem if I had managed to steer well clear of them. I certainly had no intention of following my parents into what amounted to the family profession. My dad, a keen genealogist, had traced the ancestral line of teachers back eleven generations to a schoolmaster in Woking in 1672. Teaching was in my blood. But it had never been part of my life plan until later that day, when I texted my friend Zoe.

Tuesday, 23 September, Hammersmith

Tell me about teaching in Guatemala, Philippa said.

She peered at me with suspicion. Philippa was a stern woman in her forties who looked delighted to be back in a structured blazer after a summer of blouses. I had been surprised by how fast she had taken up Zoes recommendation and invited me to an interview in her West London office. Now I was regretting putting the words TEACHER and GUATEMALA on my CV in quite such large font. On my year abroad for my Spanish degree, I had done a few weeks volunteering at a school run by an alcoholic American man whose claim to fame was having once broken both his arms playing squash against himself. He had ended up in charge of a primary school in Guatemala, though it wasnt clear if he remembered how. My so-called drama classes had largely consisted of a few chaotic and occasionally violent rounds of Duck, Duck, Goose. I was suddenly aware that Philippa had been looking at me for quite a long time.