Enter Warrior Watkins, scourge of the squaddies, specially selected to take the top juniors and lick them into shape for going up to high school. He’s collecting in our weekend work.
He lingers at Sharon Fraser’s desk. She sits in the front row, right under his eye. All teeth and lipstick and legs.
‘I hope I’ve done enough.’ She gives him the thousand-candle-power mega-smile.
It’s a ten-page exercise in perfect copy. He grunts as he looks at it. Disappointed, he takes the folder from her and moves on to find a victim. It’s cool. I’m OK. I’ve copied my homework in the cloakroom from my pal, Peter.
‘Make some mistakes for God’s sake,’ said Peter, eating an apple and leaning over my shoulder. ‘He’s not totally thick.’
Peter’s tall and broad and good-looking and smart. I don’t know why he decided to be friends with me. One day in Primary Five he stopped in the middle of bashing me to bits and said, ‘You know, you’re hardly worth the effort. Pathetic.’ He watched as I silently cleaned my bleeding nose and fixed my clothes. Then he said, ‘Right enough, maybe it’s me that’s pathetic.’ He picked up my school bag and carried it home. And that was it. From then on he was an ally. Best buddy. My mate. Peter.
And do I need him now? Do I ever. It’s do-your-diary time. My left hand crooked around my book, the page at right angles to the desk, I scrawl out my best effort.
‘Bloody baboon,’ hisses Watkins as he goes past.
My face burns and my fingers tighten on the pencil. The words start to blur. I stop and look at the squiggles I’ve made. Has it come out right this time? Peter’ll check this sentence.
Good old Peter. Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my . . .
I shove it across and Peter gives it a quick look-see. He rolls his eyes, shakes his head and marks an X in sign language on the desk.
It’s a bad one.
I stare at the page in a desperate panic. What’s wrong with it? Sometimes I get bs and ds mixed up, or words back to front.
Watkins is prowling back, metre stick swishing, searching for an outlet for that little fire he’s banked up. Sharon Fraser has a lot to answer for.
He brings it down with a crash beside me.
‘Let’s have a look, Solly boy, shall we? What is it this morning? Egyptian hieroglyphics? Martian?’
‘Ignore him,’ mutters Peter.
And I try. Really I do.
My jotter is dangling from Watkins’ fingers. He sneers as he reads it out. ‘No saturbay I was a footdall maSh . . .’ His face is pushed up against mine, cheese and oniony breath smells in my face. Crêpey skin sags around his eyes, little red broken veins make crazed lines on the whites.
Don’t stand so stand so stand so close to me
‘You are a lazy stupid boy.’ Thump, thump, on the desk. Fingers whorled and nicotined clench the ruler. ‘Nobody in my class turns in work like this.’ Thump, thump. ‘Nobody.’
I wonder what would happen if I actually told Watkins about my weekend? This time Dad’s bender lasted all Saturday and Sunday. I eventually got him to bed at four o’clock this morning. I looked in on him before I left for school. He had peed on the sheets. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t have the time and he’s too big for me to move anyway.
Where he’d got the stuff from I don’t know. No matter how broke we are he always manages to get his hands on some more booze. Charm, that’s what he’s got. By the bucket. Neighbours lend him money. Shops give him tick. Pubs, where he’s been barred only weeks before, will end up serving him. ‘Just the one, mind.’
Once he was missing for hours and I found him at our town’s big hotel in among a wedding party. Everybody thought he was someone else’s uncle. He’d been getting free drink all afternoon and evening. When I arrived he was cracking jokes and telling them wild stories about his life in the Far East. The Far East! The furthest east he’s ever been is Edinburgh.
He’s good with the stories though. Maybe that’s why I stayed with him. Telling them, reading them, making them up. The sounds of the words spilling out of his mouth and into my heart. Playing all the parts. Gollum and Gandalf the Grey. Capering around my bedroom at two in the morning, pulling the quilt from the bed to make a hobbit hole on the floor.
I suppose I fell in love with him then, and hated her, my mother, shrieking from the door. ‘You’ve woken that child again. You drunken fool!’
Well, who’s a fool now? Tom fool. April fool. Play the fool.
‘OUT!’ Watkins is yelling.
He takes my exercise book and chucks it across the classroom. Suits me. I shrug and shoulder the ruckie. Peter grimaces. The rest stay low. With me gone he’ll be looking for another target. One of the girls probably.
Melanie Wilson. She gives me a tiny sympathetic wave as I pass her. Poor Mousy Melly. She’ll be in tears before morning break.
Now I’m in the school yard. Its emptiness accuses me. I’m supposed to stand out until first bell, but I’m not stopping here this morning. I look back as I slouch away through the gate and down the road. Take your time. Don’t hurry. Make with the real slow insolence, just in case Watkins is watching. The school windows stare back at me. Stupid, blank and vacant.
Like my dad’s eyes when he’s totally crashed.
God, I hate that place.
I count the money in my anorak pocket. Enough for a burger.
I’ll need to get off the street quick. Can’t hang about. The local Miami Vice know me as a school dogger. They’ll round me up and take me back, which would probably involve three officers and two cars. Meanwhile the Post Office might be getting turned over.
Yes, your lordship, I was being questioned as to the rightful ownership of the aforesaid Crunchie bar, submitted by the procurator as evidence, Exhibit A, when the getaway car accelerated away from the Post Office and screeched past us doing ninety in a built-up area.
Did the constable say anything at the time?
Yes, your lordship,
