by C. P. Wilson
“I just wanted to say thanks to you, Dougie. For everything you’ve done for me this last couple of years.”
Dougie regarded the young teacher for several beats. Deciding that she was on the right side of drunk, much as he himself was, he waved off her gratitude.
“Dinnae thank me for doing my job, Francesca,” he told her.
Frankie’s face grew serious. She placed her drink on the table nearby before wagging a finger at him in rebuke. Her voice raised in volume.
Teachers always know how to use their voice.
“No. Don’t wave it off like it was nothing. You were there when I needed you. You gave me confidence, reassurance and the belief that I could succeed at this job precisely when I knew for certain that I didn’t belong in a classroom.”
Frankie pointed a finger into his chest, not hard, but with enough force that he felt her anger.
“You didn’t have to do that, Dougie, you chose to.”
Frankie’s expression lost all of its anger. Softening, her eyes widened and glazed with tears. “I’m very grateful for what you’ve done for me, and for what you continue to do every day.”
Dougie shifted his feet uncomfortably. His eyes darted to each side, wondering who was watching their exchange. Dougie wanted to tell her, “Och it’s just the drink talking.”
He wanted to dismiss his input as something anyone would do. Noting the utterly honest, earnest expression on Frankie Malone’s face, Dougie’s desire to brush off her praise evaporated as he realised she needed to thank him.
Setting aside his discomfort and his own need to push ahead, to do, to remedy, to mend and to teach, Dougie simply nodded back at her.
“You’re most welcome,” he told her softly.
Frankie Malone pushed his capacity to accept praise to its absolute maximum by pulling him in for a tight cuddle.
Dougie bore it with grace, but was grateful when she released him.
Dabbing at her eyes with the back of her hand, Frankie grabbed her drink from the bar. “Right, ya miserable, anti-social old bastard. C’mon over here and join us. It’ll be time for the meal soon.”
Without waiting on his consent, Frankie dragged him by the hand back to the table, nudging and shoving with her hips to seat them in the centre.
Colleagues and friends enclosed Dougie and Frankie as they settled into their seats. Re-joining their conversations, pulling Dougie and Frankie into the ebb and flow of the mood and words, they told and retold tales of unruly pupils or arsehole teachers. They shared, each their own stories. They drank and they laughed.
Rigid discomfort eased from his bones. His muscles loosened and his brain cried out, Yes!
Acceptance washed over Dougie. The warmth of the people he spent so many hours with each day surrounded and embraced him. A child in a comfort blanket, Dougie Black relaxed for the first time in months and simply laughed along with the rest of them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Harry caught sight of his reflection in a wine shop window at the corner of Comely Bank. Regarding his image for a moment, he noted how unlike himself he looked. In the black and green tie, black pullover, white shirt and black skinny trousers of Cambuscraig High, he looked extremely unlike the polo-shirt wearing primary seven he had been several months before. He had taken a stretch over the holidays, losing some of the little fat around his waist that he’d had. His shoulders had broadened, but only a little. His adult stature, jawline and body were in the mail, and much more evident to his eyes dressed in his current attire. Every line of his own developing build reminded him of his late father’s. Harry took comfort in the recognition of those similarities, allowing himself a sad smile at the familiar blend of features before him.
Unsure whether he preferred this new version of himself that he wasn’t quite ready to be, Harry snorted his amusement. Deciding that he looked like a wee laddie in big laddie’s clothes, he moved off again.
As he reached the main junction, Harry paused. Something plucked at his subconscious. Looking up along towards Stockbridge, Harry spotted the source of the familiar prickle.
Jenna.
Walking along the thoroughfare, amongst a group of other freshly-attired S1s from their primary school, Jenna locked her eyes on his instantly. Abruptly he was pinned.
Harry hadn’t spoken to her in three months. They hadn’t seen each other, exchanged any messages, snapchats or tagged each other in any online activities. Jenna had, of course, battered at his digital walls for several weeks before deciding - either in sadness or in anger - that he wasn’t going to return her many calls or messages. Since that moment… nothing.
Harry felt immobilised by her eyes as she strode towards him, leaving her group behind. He had no desire to explain why he had cut himself off from his best friend. He didn’t wish to meet her eyes and see in person the hurt he had placed there, but he simply couldn’t move. Harry did, however, manage to tear his eyes from her. Picking a spot on the pavement, he stood statue-like as she approached.
He wanted nothing so much as to turn and flee, but Jenna was upon him before his legs would listen to his screaming brain.
Reaching for his forearm, Jenna gripped him tightly, as though she’d finally snagged an elusive creature.
“Well, well, Harry Jardine.” Her tone was a forced lightness. Her eyes demonstrated no humour at all. Shame flushed his cheeks.
He had imagined many scenarios of how they might encounter each other, now that school was returning. Alone in his room, hurting emotionally and physically, Harry had decided that the best he could hope for was that he had alienated and hurt his lifelong friend deeply enough by ignoring her for months, that she would have decided she was done with him. A sidelong glance as they passed in a corridor. An angry glare from afar. Complete indifference. Harry had imagined each of these reactions from her, knowing that he deserved little more.
Steeling his courage, Harry lifted his eyes to meet hers once again. The look she threw him was hard, angry and conveyed feelings bruised and bent, but not irrevocably broken. She was furious at him, but she wanted to forgive him. She wanted her friend back.
Despite having convinced himself he didn’t need her, that he wouldn’t be friends with her whilst she chose to spend time with James Beath and his arsehole friends, Harry’s heart melted instantly in her presence.
The moment he had dreaded was upon him. Instead of being an end to something precious, before him was an opportunity to mend, to reconcile. He knew her. She didn’t need an explanation, or an apology. She just needed her friend back, and so did he.
First day of school. We should be doing this together, he decided.
Jenna witnessed the change in him and accepted that he was once again beginning to come back to himself. She smiled playfully at him. We’ll talk later implicit in the gesture.
“You’ve got taller,” she informed him, thumping his arm.
Harry returned her grin.
“Or you’ve shrunk,” he said quietly. His voice felt rusted, unused.
Jenna looped her arm through his. Turning him, she pointed them both down East Fettes Avenue as her group of friends joined them.
“C’mon, Harry Jardine,” she said as she stepped off. “Now that you’ve decided to stop being a dick, let’s see what high school has to offer us.”
Allowing her to pull him along, Harry grinned broadly to himself… And then his eyes locked on James Beath.
Standing several metres from them, he had his usual boys with him. Wolf-like they gathered closer at the first sight of him. Harry wanted to cling to Jenna’s arm. He wanted to spin her around, explain to her what had happened, who these horrible bastard-boys really were.
“Hey, James,” she shouted, unlinking her arm from his.
Running towards the older boy in skip-steps, Jenna placed her arms around James Beath’s neck, locking him in a tight kiss. A bottomless hole opened up inside Harry’s soul, swallowing every shred of hope and joy and love he had possessed.
&
nbsp; Coming to a dead stop, he allowed a stream of people to buffet him aside. Stood, immovable, in the flow of high school pupils, Harry felt everything good in his world leave him as he watched her loop her arm though his, the way she’d done with Harry their whole lives.
Beath’s friends ginned shark-like at him. Harry, completely unaware of the gathering predators, stared after Jenna and Beath. Halting, James Beath whispered something to Jenna, who nodded and continued through the school gates with two of her girlfriends. Harry watched Beath’s gaze harden and then fix on him.
Harry Jardine, empty and without hope, kept his own eyes locked on Beath’s. In the kid’s face, Harry saw every sneer Drew had ever thrown his way. He experienced fully the intensity of hated this kid felt for him. Unaware and uncaring of its source or the reason for its fierceness, Harry simply accepted the malevolence as his due.
He’d been told often enough by his step-father.
Useless. Fat. Ugly. Stupid. No friends. Hang around with a girl. Unwanted. Unloved.
His mother had stood by and let Drew beat Harry for more years of his young life than he’d had good years with his natural father. Harry knew with great certainty that he deserved a vicious bastard like James Beath in his life. He deserved Drew and all his taunts and torments.
Despite this realisation, Harry did not feel the familiar surge of anger he had grown accustomed to. He found no reserves of courage, nor any will to fight back. Harry was unable even to summon simple fear. All he found inside was vacant space where those things formerly lived. This numb place was one Harry visited often. When his father died, leaving him half a person. When his mother began drinking with all the enthusiasm of a cheerleader and married an uncaring brute. When Drew beat and admonished and ridiculed him. Harry Jardine would take himself to this place, where he felt nothing, cared for nothing and no-one.
Now, the vacant place he had so often sought refuge in was coming to him.
Stood rigid, Harry felt more than saw James Beath drew close to him. Forcing his eyes to focus, he watched the pack of bastards assemble around their chief bastard. Beath closed the space between them. Slapping Harry’s cheek lightly he informed him, "You better stay away from Jenna from now on." His mates laughed, a faceless rabble. Match, Skinhead and 3-D to Beath’s Biff Tannen.
Non-descript and nameless, they simply were.
“Unless you want another kicking, Jardine?”
Harry’s eyes met Beath’s. Only mild interest showed in his expression.
“Fine,” he heard himself say.
Beath cocked his head to the side. “No fight this time, Jardine?” he asked, his voice was teasing, but disappointment lurked there also.
Harry shook his head. “What’s the point?” Something rose in his chest, a tiny fleck of dignity. “She’ll see you for what you are quickly enough, Beath.”
Beath beamed at him. “Oh, I’m a wee bit better than that, Jardine. She’ll see what I show her.”
Beath made a cupping gesture around his genitals.
Anger began to crest at last inside Harry. James Beath clocked it in an instant and fed on it.
Turning around, he made a show of speaking in the centre of his friends.
“I’m sure you two must have had a wee fumble, all these years palling about together?”
The pack of bastards laughed cruelly.
“Think of yourself as a trial for a real man, Jardine,” he announced.
“Jenna’s had her starter-dick.”
Beath’s face twisted into cold hate. A predatory glaze slid over his eyes.
“She’s gonnae be getting fucked by a real man from now on.”
Before he knew that he had moved, Harry brought his forehead crashing down onto the bridge of Beath’s nose. Snot and blood and tears creased his vicious face. Harry didn’t stop to see the effects of his blow. As James lowered his face to meet his hands, Harry took a two-handed grip on the back of his head. Using Beath’s own momentum, Harry drove down with his hands and up with his right knee, smashing knee into hands, into face.
Harry felt nothing, no satisfaction, not even any real anger. The vacant place had taken him.
Spinning around Harry drove a right jab at one of the pack. The bastards had overcome their shock quickly and began raining blows into and then down on him. Once again curled into a foetal ball, once again at the mercy of them, Harry took his mind elsewhere, to the vacant. Words sobbed by Beath reached his ears through the barrage.
Choking on blood, the third-year kid spat down at him.
“Stay the fuck away from her, or we’ll fucking kill you next time.”
Harry Jardine curled in tighter against the blows.
Welcome to high school, he thought bitterly to himself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Laid on his side, the warmth of Mary’s back a comfort against him, Dougie’s eyes opened a crack, enough to peer at his bedside clock.
Confirming that it was almost time to rise for work, Dougie reached over to turn his alarm off. No sense in letting it wake Mary if she managed to sleep on. Feeling her stir at his back, Dougie shoved away the disappointment that his wife wouldn’t manage a longer sleep. With the stresses of the last few months, the bad dreams, the confusion during the day and the utter lack of joy present at all in her life, she needed all the rest she could get.
Since her friend, Marion, had taken her out a few months previously, Mary’s condition had worsened exponentially, to the point where Dougie was considering hiring full-time help for her.
Forcing a cheer into his voice that he felt none of, Dougie turned over to greet her.
“Good morning, Mary.”
Catlike, Mary sprang from the bed, knocking over her bedside lamp as she moved to push her back against the wall. White-faced, angry and scared she roared at him, "What the hell are you doing in my bed, Tom?"
Dougie blinked dumbly several times as he tried to process what was happening. Sitting up in their bed, he held his hands wide, pleading with her.
“Mary, it’s me, calm down.”
Anger and fear continued to war on her face. Mary pulled her nightclothes closer around herself, straightened her back and jabbed a finger at Dougie.
“These practical jokes of yours have never been funny, Tom. Bugger off out of my room or I’ll tell Mum and Dad.”
Dougie’s heart lurched. He knew, knew for absolute certain, that this was it: Mary had slipped past that point that he had always known would come. They’d both feared its arrival for so long, and then Mary, blessedly, had ceased worrying about it. For the last two years, the fear of when his wife would vanish completely had stalked Dougie alone.
Dougie shook his head, as though the action would succeed in clearing whatever haze had fallen between them. Dougie Black knew deep in his soul that the woman looking at him with such outrage was no longer his Mary. Knew it like he knew his own heart, but his head refused to accept it.
He should have left the room, humoured her, given her time to process how she was feeling, but instead he rushed to take her roughly by the upper arms.
“No, Mary. It’s me, it’s Dougie. I’m not Tom, I’m Dougie.”
Caustic tears snaked freely down his cheeks. Mary’s face was a mask of perfect indignation. She shoved hard at Dougie with both hands, sending him reeling back to land on his backside. Dougie winced as a nerve in his back shot vindictive pain down his sciatic nerve.
“Serves you right, arsehole,” Mary shot at him. Jabbing a thumb at the door, she instructed him coldly, “Out!”
A hundred thousand emotions and moments and words surged through Dougie Black’s mind. Golden-tinged times they’d shared, blazing rows they had survived, painful decisions they had endured. So many shared moments together, any of which he might plunder and use in desperation to try to bring her a notion of who he really was to her. Who she was to him. Who she was to herself, even.
Considering the stranger’s eyes - the woman who wore his wife’s skin but displayed nothin
g of her in her eyes, her mannerisms or her bearing - Dougie Black deflated, lifted himself to his feet and left their bedroom.
“You’re a wee arsehole, Tom,” she yelled after him.
With haste, Dougie escaped to the bathroom. His hands to his face, he seated himself on the toilet and finally allowed the carefully-constructed walls of the façade to collapse.
Tears flowed freely. Uncaring whether Mary heard him or not, he wailed unreservedly and noisily, an infant parted from its mother, such was the intensity of emotion and anguish. Grief rolled off him in angry, threatening dark clouds which promised to choke the world with the pain he had held behind his many masks for so very long.
Dougie felt abandoned; he felt foolish and angry and utterly desolate and alone. Long-buried pain, packed down deep inside his soul for so many years, at last found a fissure in his endurance and resilience and tore a scream from his throat.
Somewhere off elsewhere, Dougie heard Mary close her door against the storm he had become. Finding no part of himself that could care that he was frightening her so completely, Dougie stood, whirling around to face himself in the bathroom mirror. Tear-streaked and bloated, trembling and purple-red, his face greeted him with venomous contempt.
Dougie grabbed for the lid of the cistern and smashed the porcelain into his reflection’s malicious countenance, shattering it.
The coarse mirror fragments bit his arms like so many hungry teeth. Several sprang from the wall, darting to embed themselves in his forearms and in his cheek. Dougie roared another bottomless cry of anguish and threw the cistern lid through the window.
Whilst Mary cowered in their… in her room, Dougie Black released all of his pain and anger and hatred for his life within the confines of their freshly-decorated bathroom.
A violent tempest replaced the attentive husband who had endured and supported through so very much. A snarling, drooling creature replaced the kind, gentle man. Hate filled his every cell. Hate for his existence, hate for Mary and Karen, and hate for school and for everyone in it.
