2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel Read online

  “Don’t tell tales, Colin,” says Clarke.

  “Miss, I’m not telling tales, he’s took my—”

  “Enough,” she says firmly, and turns to face the board. “Right, class,” she says, “we’re going to do some handwriting exercises…”

  Colin feels helpless, absolutely gutted. He looks across at Robbie, who stares back with complete indifference.

  James is disappointed but not surprised by Clarke giving Colin short shrift. Teachers are always going on about how you have to pay attention; Clarke has a real bee in her bonnet about it. She says it’s okay to make a mistake spelling a sentence you’ve made up yourself or doing a sum, but it’s unacceptable to make a mistake if you’re copying from the blackboard, because that’s ‘simply not paying attention’. But when you’re trying to tell them something, they don’t listen, they don’t pay attention; either that or they only hear what suits them. And that’s why they don’t have a clue what really goes on at school. Momo thinks James is one of the baddies; so does Lanegan. Ask anybody in class and they’d just laugh about that. But there’s Colin telling Clarke that Robbie stole his stuff and she’s acting like it’s just Joanne telling the usual tales about who called who a cow at playtime. Not only did Robbie steal from Colin, but he battered him as well, so Colin probably won’t get his trick back either. It’s not fair. The teachers tell you to do as you’re told and stick to the rules and you’ll do fine, but they can’t tell the difference between weans that try their best and pure bastards like Robbie.

  The truth is James’s card has been marked from day one—literally day one. Fucking Lanegan came into the Paki shop after school and saw him buying a Curlywurly for himself and a Fry’s Creme for his ma, because he knew that was her favourite. She saw him paying with that big ten-bob coin he had been given by Colin, though at the time he didn’t know the boy’s name. He’d expected his ma to be all happy, because not only was it his first day at school, but he’d managed to get her a present for a surprise. But she wasn’t happy. Well, she was and she wasn’t. She was surprised, but not in a good way, and asked him where he’d got the money; then she got a bit angry and said she’d have to give him money to give back to this boy, and that he must have given him it by mistake. Until this point it hadn’t even occurred to James that it was the boy’s money—he thought you got given it for handing back your jotter, and reckoned he now understood why his granda said you could make lots of money if you worked hard at school. After a while, though, his ma did calm down and told him it had been nice of him to buy her the Fry’s Creme. The next morning, they had both forgotten about it, so she never gave him a coin to bring back, and James hadn’t given it any thought until Lanegan came in and called him out of Mrs Murphy’s class. She said she’d had someone’s mummy on the phone reporting that a boy had stolen his money, including, she added pointedly, ‘a fifty-pence piece’. James was scared at first, then a little relieved when he realised it must have been a boy in a different class she was talking about. He could explain how he got his fifty-pence piece and how his mum was going to replace it, except they forgot this morning…But she didn’t listen. Didn’t listen? He barely got to speak. He got as far as saying a boy in his class had given him the money and she seized upon this like the maddies in the wigs his granny watched on Crown Court. Banging on about ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ from the Ten Commandments and the importance of honesty, she ordered him to bring the replacement fifty pence directly to her, then she would personally return it to the boy’s mum, calling this ‘a satisfying conclusion’, after which ‘the matter would rest’. Honesty? Well, that was two lies if ever he heard them. He was wrongly branded a thief and some other boy’s mum would be getting Colin’s replacement ten-bob bit. Hardly a satisfying conclusion. And, as for the matter resting, nobody told that to Momo—but that cow Lanegan certainly told him everything else.

  So now James is a vee-lan while Robbie gets away with everything, and poor Colin ends up losing out again, too. He starts to feel angry, the sensation similar to this morning after he’d been Momoed, something inside that was causing his cheeks to burn. He’s angry with Robbie but his greater frustration is with Clarke. Robbie’s a wee shite, and that’s all you can expect from him, but the teachers are the ones with power, so they should show they know, show they care when something’s not right.

  Then he sees fat Joanne with her hand up as usual and realises it’s not all Clarke’s fault. It’s like the story of the boy who cried wolf (though not the same as Peter and the Wolf, which Clarke sometimes plays to them).

  Clarke responds, saying, “Yes, Joanne,” like she’s about to fall asleep, and James can tell she isn’t going to listen to whatever tale Joanne tells her. But instead Joanne says she needs the toilet, and with a knackered-sounding sigh of relief, Clarke tells her to go ahead.

  That’s when James works it all out: what happened. Robbie went out to the toilet this morning, after playtime and just before the Daily Ten sums. He must have gone to the cloakroom on his way and dipped Colin’s jacket pocket.

  James knows what he must do, how he can put this right, but first of all he’ll have to be patient. Clarke can be hot and cold about letting you go to the bogs, and though letting one person go usually means she can’t say no to anyone else, it pays not to ask too soon. He has to wait for Joanne to come back anyway, because you’re never, ever, allowed out at the same time as somebody else. James then hangs fire until Clarke has set them to a task, in this case making up sentences including the words she’s writtten on the board. You’ve got no chance of getting the nod while she’s writing on the board or talking to the class unless you’re claiming you’re about to be sick, and that always prompts a follow-up investigation. He watches for her settling down to mark a pile of jotters and makes his pitch, putting on his best pained face to make out he’s been patiently holding it in but can’t take the pressure any more.

  “On you go,” she says, “but be quick about it.”

  James runs for the door, knowing this will get him a reminder to walk, but will allay any suspicion about what he’s up to.

  Clarke has got no reason to question his intentions, but it’s not the teacher’s suspicions that concern him. He makes his way quickly down the corridor to the cloakroom, which is not actually a room but an area next to the boys’ toilets accommodating a row of eight double-width wooden benches, each with metal grids supporting coat-hooks between. There are also blocks of coat-hooks along the walls, forming an L-shaped enclosure. When he realised this was how Robbie had done it, James’s first thought was merely to secretly replace the killertine in Colin’s pocket, but his anger told him that getting it back isn’t even half the battle. Showing up Robbie for what he did was important, but that wasn’t the whole of the game, either. It’s forcing the teachers to see what’s really going on that truly matters, and he’s going to do that by bringing Robbie’s jacket back to the class with him. When he walks in with that in his hands, he knows Clarke will demand to know why, and then he’ll be only too happy to show her.

  He doesn’t see Robbie’s jacket, but this is no surprise. Most of the hooks have more than one coat slung over them, the top one usually hung by the hood, the facility being overcrowded by today’s addition of two Primary Three classes’ garments and bags. Back in the Infant Building there were specific benches allocated to each class, whereas in here it’s a free-for-all. James thinks he remembers roughly which bench he saw Robbie at after playtime and begins at that end. He starts by pulling the top coats aside, and soon spots the scabby blue material of Robbie’s jacket. He is about to lift it off when he remembers he’d better check the killertine is still there, just in case the sneaky wee shite has planked the goods elsewhere. The outside pockets are zipper efforts, and quite hard to get into with a heavy orange Snorkel hanging on top and getting in the way, but he tugs one open and pulls out what he’s looking for.

  Then he hears someone clearing their throat. Someone big. An adult clearing her throat.r />
  James turns around and sees Harris standing with her arms folded at the far end of the bench. He has no idea how long she’s been watching, only what she’s seen.

  “James Doon. What are you doing rummaging about in there?” she asks.

  But he knows she isn’t going to listen to his answer.

  Primary Four

  61 Virginis

  The Most Amazing Thing Ever to Happen at St Elizabeth’s

  Okay, so there’s something seems not quite right as Scot approaches the lines. Just a feeling he gets as he walks up, something not ringing true in what he has glimpsed, so he looks more directly at the double doors and the steps in front. Aye, definitely something the matter. It doesn’t sound quite normal, either. There’s always a bit of a racket from so many voices blethering and shrieking, but just now it’s heightened, giddy even. Everybody’s standing back from the foot of the stairs; like, a yard or two back. Normally the folk at the front will be standing on the steps and giving it king-of-the-castle right until the second the teachers come. And even more normal would be for two of those playing king-of-the-castle to be either Joanne and Alison or Carol and Michelle.

  The four of them are there, of course. The bell’s gone, are you daft? But it looks as if…no, it definitely is the case that they’re each trying to get behind the other, trying to wrong-foot their opponents like players in the penalty box waiting on a corner.

  As he gets close he can hear them speak. Instead of the usual goading, gloating, accusation and recrimination, there’s a giggly, mischievous tone to it.

  “After you.”

  “No, we’re always first. About time we let you have a shot.”

  “Nonsense, we insist.”

  There’s much the same carry-on under way in the other lines, so it can’t be some new game just between that daft wee quartet.

  There’s not many boys arrived yet, most of them still squeezing out the last few drops of a game of Colditz, but he sees Colin, who had cried off early to go to the bogs. He looks kind of dazed, in a bit of a dwam, or like he might be about to spew.

  “Awright, Col?” Scot asks.

  “Hiya,” he says, not very sure.

  “Whit’s goin on?”

  Before Colin can answer, Joanne turns on her heel, her super-powered lugs pricked up to zero-in on a chance to break some news.

  “There’s a jobbie in the corridor,” she announces, with the kind of relish you normally only see on the face of Nicholas Parsons when he reveals that somebody’s won a motor.

  “Shite,” Scot says doubtfully.

  “Aye, exactly.” Joanne beams. “Just inside the double doors.”

  Scot looks ahead. He can’t see a jobbie, but the unprecedented gap between the forming lines and the steps is convincing enough.

  “Did you see it?” he asks.

  “Aye, it’s mingin,” says Joanne. “Aw skittery an everythin.”

  “You see it, Colin?”

  Colin gives him a white-faced look that fairly answers the question.

  “Is there a dug in the school, then?” Scot enquires. Jai Maloney’s mental red setter has rampaged through the playground on several terrifying occasions, and it only seems a matter of time before it gets indoors.

  But Joanne now looks like the lucky contestant has bagged the motorboat as well. “Naw. It was Harry Fenwick.”

  “What, he just dropped his troosers and did it?” Scot asks scornfully. The name she has given is the obvious guess if she didn’t really know the truth. It’s a school-wide assumption these days: if it smells, Honkin Harry must be to blame. It’s mince. Being generally a bit smelly didn’t necessarily mean you were the prime candidate to spectacularly shite yourself; after all, you often saw Janny Johnny cleaning up sick, and people didn’t automatically attribute that to Eleanor’s unfortunate brother.

  “You saw this?” Scot adds.

  “Naw. That Primary Six boy, Bomber, he saw it. Heard him tellin his mates. He said it all ran doon Harry’s legs, doon the inside of his troosers. Said it’s all along the corridor an all over the floor ay the boys’ toilets.”

  Scot looks across to one of the other lines. Robbie’s big brother Brian, or ‘Boma’ as he has scrawled it across several walls around Braeside, is holding court, a number of grimacing faces around him as he talks.

  The lines continue to form, word excitedly passing along them as each new group of arrivals joins the rear. A number of necks are craned, which Scot finds ridiculous.

  “Look at these eejits,” agrees the recently arrived Martin of the stretch-necks, all but bouncing to try and see the star attraction. “Have they never seen a jobbie before?”

  “Not in its wild state, I don’t think,” Scot replies.

  “Well, they’ll get a close-up soon enough. We’re all gaunny have to walk past it to get in.”

  “It’ll be like then deid punter they have on display in Russia,” Scot says. “We can all file past slowly and pay our respects. Here lies Honkin Harry’s jobbie.”

  “Where is Harry?” Martin asks.

  “Dunno. Aw fuck, he’s behind you!”

  “Whit?”

  “Made you look.”

  “Ya bandit.”

  With time ticking on, Scot’s thoughts turn to the cabaret in store when the teachers arrive. He hopes it’s O’Connor. She teaches the Primary Fives, God help them, and is the most torn-faced teacher in the whole school. He really hopes his class never gets her.

  But, in fact, they’ve hit the jackpot, for who comes loping along but Momo himself. He seldom takes in the lines, being too important for that kind of thing, and is most likely on his way from the staff room in the Annexe back to his office. He’s not always the quickest on the uptake, but even Momo’s radar is sensitive enough to detect something isn’t quite normal about the lines. He stops in the double doorway and has a look, immediately rendering the weans quiet, though on this occasion it’s as much from bated breath as obedient silence. He goggles the big gap and his big eyebrows rear up against each other like two rutting stags.

  Then his nose twitches, and a moment later he looks down.

  He can’t speak for a second, has a couple of breathless goes at it, then finally manages his immortal words, the most memorable he will ever speak to any wean who ever attended St Lizzie’s:

  “God in heh-van, loowk at thawt.” He’s pointing down at it, actually pointing down at it with one of his stumpy arms. It’s like thon picture Scot’s granny brought back from the Cistern Chapel, God giving it the big electric zap. Momo’s still thinking of the divine, too. “Mother of Chryyst, Jesus Go-hod.”

  He stands rooted to the spot for a few seconds, apparently oblivious to the fact that there’s now about a hundred weans in danger of peeing themselves laughing out here in the playground.

  It’s like he’s in a world of his own; or a world of just his and the jobbie’s, anyway. Then he suddenly shudders from head to foot and breaks the trance, before stomping off out of sight. “Good Go-hod, I ask you, what kind of animaaaa—”

  Whump.

  That’s what they hear. They don’t see, but they don’t have to. Momo has slipped on more of the jobbie and went his kite. It is a day sent from heaven.

  Maybe not so much for poor Harry, Scot reflects a wee bit later. He’s heard Harry was found all balled up in the cloakroom area, crying his eyes out, and was sent home shortly after. No, not a good day for him. Nor are there likely to be too many for, well, as far into the future as Scot can possibly envisage. The poor bastard is going to have to pilot a mission to Mars, cure all known diseases and score the winner in the World Cup Final before he’s got any chance of being remembered for anything else.

  Primary Five

  Chara

  Debts

  Martin can see Noodsy through the wee wire-meshed window into the interview room. Whenever he runs into someone from his childhood days, he’s normally struck by their appearing much smaller than he remembers. Teachers, in particular, seemed t
o have been put through a harsh shrinking mechanism during his university years. Noodsy, however, was someone in that exclusive schooldays echelon of being shorter than Martin, so his stature seems to be pretty much as Martin remembers it. He looks older, though; and not just twenty years older than back then, but like those twenty years aged him more than they aged his beholder. His eyes are glazed and heavy, missing that guile-free twinkle, that boundless, innocent energy. Poor bastard looks like he hasn’t slept in days, which is probably about right.

  Then the polisman unlocks the door, allowing Martin to walk in, and two decades briefly fall from Noodsy’s face. There’s a flash, a glimmer of the wee boy Martin once knew, before age and circumstance all but extinguish it again. All but, because there’s still something burning in there somewhere.

  “Marty!” he says, and, to Martin’s shame, tears form in Noodsy’s eyes as he speaks. He wipes them away with an embarrassed sniff and extends a hand to shake.

  Martin is a little relieved, as he thought for a moment Noodsy was going to hug him. He’s not shy of the physical contact; it’s the being a two-faced hypocritical cunt part that would have made him uncomfortable. He doesn’t deserve this welcome, and nor is there much he imagines being able to do subsequently to earn it.

  “You came, man. I don’t believe it. Thanks, man. Fuckin amazin. Thanks so much. Brilliant tae see ye.”

  “You too, Noodsy, though the circumstances aren’t exactly…”

  “Naw, I know. Near as bad as bein back in O’Connor’s class, eh?”

  Martin smiles, but it feels inappropriate to laugh, even politely. “You’re lookin at a bit more than two of the belt, Noodsy.”

  Noodsy nods solemnly. “I know. That’s how I’m so grateful you’ve came, man. I want—”

  “Noodsy, before we go any further, I’ve got to put you straight. I’m no a criminal lawyer. I mean, I was for a wee while, but that was ten years ago, so I—”