GI Joe, in his Bruce Willis get-up, bounded from nowhere like a supercharged pit-bull. Gave Jimmy’s shoulder the old paw clamp, steered him away from the stop, as a bus – Jimmy’s bus – hurtled past.
‘Guess what, Jim?’
‘What?’ Jimmy’s voice was as heavy as his heart. That was my bus he wanted to say. Instead, he found himself lurching alongside GI Joe: Frankenstein’s monster without the neck bolts.
‘It’s brilliant! I’ve got the Leisure Centre for a whole day and night the month after next. Gonna run that swimathon right enough and have a big party after. Music, dancing. What d’you think, Jim? Fancy running the catering side for me?’
Jimmy just about managed a grunt of agreement, although he didn’t see how he could look ahead to next month on this, the longest walk. He didn’t think he’d even make it to the next block! Deep within the flesh of his thighs, which chaffed, sweaty-raw against each other, untried muscles quivered in spasm. Every few steps, one or other of his legs jerked a warning: I can’t go on. If both legs jerked simultaneously, Jimmy would drop like a very large boulder on the pavement.
His nostrils, possibly the fittest part of his anatomy after his jaw, worked overtime to suck oxygen into his lungs. A pointless exercise. The more Jimmy inhaled, the more exhausted he became. His fingertips tingled and his head buzzed as though it was going to burst from the strain of matching GI Joe’s walking pace.
He was dizzy.
Felt sick.
Had a stitch.
Was knackered.
But still they walked, and GI Joe talked. Yak, yak, yak. All the way home.
Only when Jimmy sank on the steps of his close did GI Joe zip it. Arms folded across his chest, legs astride, he stared, watching the sweat run from Jimmy’s pores. Down his arms, over his heaving chest, through his hair.
‘Look at you, man,’ GI Joe said at last.
He hunkered down, bringing himself eye-level with Jimmy. Grabbed the back of his neck. Shook him like a dog.
‘What you doing to yourself, man?’
Those words were déjà vu, thought Jimmy. Dream words.
‘That was only a couple of miles we walked, Jim. What a state you’re in. I’ll help you.’
Hadn’t he said those very words in the dream? The swimming pool dream where the Shadow Shape lay forever out of reach . . .
‘C’mon, Jim. Tell me how I can help you.’
Of his own accord, Jimmy met GI Joe’s gaze. What if . . .? he was thinking as he blinked sweat from his eyes. And aloud he whispered the rest of what he was thinking.
‘. . . you could teach me to swim?’
‘Where were you, Jimmy?’
Two worried faces peered through the steam of the bathroom watching Jimmy emerge wrapped in an enormous bath sheet; a corpulent Roman emperor.
‘Pauline said Father Joseph brought you home.’ Mum took Jimmy’s elbow in her hand, cradled it as if he might break. ‘I went out looking everywhere, son. Are you all right?’
Over Mum’s shoulder, Aunt Pol was frowning deeply at Jimmy.
‘Why were you with that priest again?’ Aunt Pol said ‘priest’ as though it tasted foul.
Jimmy took his time answering, looking from one face to another. Mum’s cheeks were tight, and pale. She was just glad that Jimmy was back and safe. No more questions. But Aunt Pol, she was acting well weird, looking at Jimmy through narrowed eyes as though he’d done something wrong.
‘Went for a walk,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m going to have some of that soup now.’
‘And you just bumped into St Action Man by chance.’
‘Pauline!’ whispered Mum.
‘Something like that,’ said Jimmy.
The women crowded him at the cooker.
‘Something like what? What’s he been saying?’ Aunt Pol practically spat the words out. It wasn’t like Jimmy to play games, even mind games.
‘He’s gonna teach me to swim. Says I’ve got swimmer’s shoulders.’
‘What?’ Aunt Pol’s tone made Jimmy glance up from the soup he was stirring. He frowned.
She had turned whiter than a slab of buffalo mozzarella.
MAIN COURSES
Chapter 12
I don’t like Mondays
Two minutes to nine.
He was going to be late.
Jimmy stumbled from the bus – already pulling off while one leg was still on – and groaned.
He should have taken a chance. Alighted with the other kids from St Jude’s. Who knows? Monday morning. Folk might not have been in slagging mode yet.
Now Jimmy would join the Latecomer’s Line outside the Heedie’s office. The Usual Suspects in the line up would tease him as per:
Jumbo Jimmy Fifty Bellies.
Piggy in a blazer.
Everyone passing the Heedie’s door would gawp as though Jimmy was on temporary loan from the Museum of the Revolting. Cheeky wee first years doing impressions to amuse their mates, puffing out their cheeks and chests, holding their breath until they turned beetroot, waddling from side to side, belly-bumping anyone coming the other way up the corridor.
Why was he late today? Not today. All the classes in third year were having an assessment first period to sort out English sets for next term. If Jimmy made the top set he’d have Mrs Hughes again next term, a fantastic teacher. To give himself a fighting chance he’d had an early night to make sure he didn’t sleep in. And he’d actually had a great sleep. No bad dream last night. No Hungry Hole this morning. But now the day was going downhill even though it was uphill all the way to St Jude’s. A steep, steady rise. Jimmy’s legs felt stiff, jerky. He pecked. Heard the bell ring.
How tempting, how very tempting for him to about turn and retreat into the peace and comfort of his own bedroom.
Mum wouldn’t mind. Quite right to come home, son. Shouldn’t overexert yourself.
No!
The hand of responsibility settled in the small of Jimmy’s back and pushed him onwards.
‘No!’ Jimmy swore he heard a real-life female voice echo. Jimmy froze.
Up ahead, in the bin alley by the school gates, several girls formed a tight huddle.
Jimmy’s blood ran cold as he homed in on the scorpion ankle tattoo and platinum perm of Senga McGuiness.
‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ he implored.
Last time this coven had pressed him up against a wall, Senga had made Chantal unbutton Jimmy’s trousers to see if he wore a corset. Too late. He’d been clocked. Chantal McGrory already nudging Senga.
Jimmy shuffled onwards, bracing his shoulders against the first attack.
‘Ith it twinth ow twiplets?’ Chantal lisped. Senga, the ringleader, seemed otherwise engaged. She had someone trapped in the middle of the huddle.
‘I said no! Leave me alone,’ cried the same voice Jimmy had heard a moment ago. This time he recognised it.
‘Leave me alone,’ Senga repeated in a wheedling voice. ‘Posh, in’t she? Gonny make me?’ she added with a snarl.
With a flick of her wrist, Senga sent Ellie McPherson’s spectacles skiting along the ground. They landed near Jimmy’s feet.
‘Stop it. I need them.’
‘I need them,’ voices cackled back, as Senga lunged for the spectacles, one foot raised to smash them.
And at that moment, two remarkable things happened.
First, Jimmy beat Senga to the quarry, bending with a grunt to snatch Ellie’s specs before Senga’s trainer squished them. Second, from the deepest recesses of Jimmy’s chest, a voice yelled:
‘Leave her alone.’
Jimmy launched himself at the two henchgirls who held the struggling Ellie in their grip. They were so taken aback when Jimmy butted in that they let Ellie’s arms go and she plunged like a missile from a catapult head first into Jimmy’s chest.
‘Would you look at the state of they two,’ Senga cawed as she and the coven linked arms and moved away.
‘She’s blind and he’s desperate. They were made for each other.
’
‘Y’awright?’
Jimmy couldn’t see where Ellie was because he didn’t dare look up, and she couldn’t see because she just couldn’t see, so they both stabbed blindly in mid-air until their fingers jabbed into each other and Ellie took her glasses. At her touch even Jimmy’s fingers blushed.
‘Thanks.’
Speechless, Jimmy waved Ellie and her thanks away.
But he stayed put in the bin alley. Needed a few moments. To collect himself. Things were happening in his body. Started happening when Ellie McPherson headbutted him in the chest; intensified when she touched his fingers. Made him feel well weird, but didn’t hurt. Made him want to punch the air, sing out the first line of all his favourite songs, and at the same time stick his head down a hole so no one could see how luminously he was blushing.
How Jimmy made it from the bin shelter to the Latecomer’s Line, he couldn’t tell. Maybe angels pushed him there on castors. He certainly felt as if he was floating, even when the Heedie wheeched him out the line by the tie and tugged him all the way up the English corridor to Mrs Hughes’ room, waving a detention slip in his face like a matador baiting a bull: ‘Move it, for once in your life, Kelly!’
For the first time in a long time, Jimmy didn’t care. Didn’t care what he looked like lumbering after the Heedie. Didn’t give a toss that the sight of him had reduced the Usual Suspects to a hysterical heap outside the Heedie’s door.
Ellie McPherson. The sooner he reached his English class, the sooner he’d see her again. That was all that mattered.
Chapter 13
Ten years on
Ten Years On
Mrs Hughes wrote on the blackboard.
‘Think about it,’ she said, in that quiet voice of hers, her eyes scanning everyone in the room. Even Jimmy looked up. You had to, if you wanted to hear what Mrs Hughes was saying, because she wouldn’t repeat herself, and she wouldn’t shout.
‘You’ll all be ancient. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Some of you parents. Yes, maybe even you, Alistair, God help us.’ She smiled, leaning close – but not too close – to Dog Breath Doig.
‘Some of you’ll know what they want to do with their lives already, but others’ll have given their future no thought. That’s fine.’
Mrs Hughes spoke even more quietly. Jimmy’s ears strained to catch her words.
‘So before you begin this assignment, I want you to shut your eyes. Come on, Victor, I’m the only one who’ll know if you don’t look cool. Imagine you’re wearing virtual reality helmets and they pitch you forward ten years. What do you see in your future? What are you doing? Matthew, since you haven’t bothered closing your eyes, maybe you can tell us what you’ll be doing ten years on.’
Maddo, creasing double at his own wit, announced, ‘Ten years, Miss. Geddit? Ah’ll be dain’ ten years.’
‘Fiona?’ Mrs Hughes cut into the wave of admiring sniggers before Maddo threw in one of his prison stories.
‘I’ll be modellin’, getting’ intae a bit of actin’. Oh, aye, an’ livin’ in London. Away from this dump of a city.’
‘Ambitious, Fiona,’ said Mrs Hughes, diplomatically. ‘You’re muttering something, Victor. Spit it out.’ Mrs Hughes plucked the rubber that Victor was about to fire at the back of Fiona’s head from the top of his drawn-back ruler.
Victor had a few tough choices to make. Would he swim butterfly for Scotland or would he be a premier league footballer? ‘Lot of people are interested in me,’ he said leaning back in his chair, and giving himself a couple of congratulatory pats on the chest. Then he winked at Mrs Hughes. ‘And I think I’ve got the looks to get into the music business, an’ all. A kinda Pop Idol, but no’ gay.’
‘Just like that,’ said Mrs Hughes, her mouth twitching. She moved on to Dog Breath Doig.
‘Dental hygienist, Miss. Yon lassie who scrapes m’ teeth every month gets to listen to Clyde One all day. That’ll do me. Oh, and ah’m gonny be married wi’ at least four weans.’
‘Any takers?’ asked a deadpan Mrs Hughes. She moved on.
‘What about you, Jimmy?’ she asked.
‘Kelly?’ snorted Victor.
‘He’ll have burst, Miss.’
‘Cardiac arrest.’
‘Look at the stupit smile oan him.’
‘Dreamin’ he’s working in a cake shop.’
‘Want me to wake him up, Miss?’
* * *
Ten years on I will have my own restaurant.
My name will be up in black and gold.
People will see it from a distance and say, ‘There it is. We’ve found it.’
It won’t be in Glasgow. Or in any city.
It will be by the sea. People will have to make a special journey just to find it.
I might have a couple of rooms upstairs so people can stay if they’ve travelled a long way.
I’ll do lunch and dinner five nights a week.
Nothing too fancy.
Not too many choices.
People will know about me. Television folk will come to eat at and they’ll try to persuade me to do a series or write a cookbook.
‘Maybe,’ I’ll tell them.
I’ll bake, too. Bread, scones, pastries. The things people like best.
And tablet, of course.
Everyone gets a bit of that. Even if they come in for a coffee.
At Christmas, I’ll make loads and put it in fancy boxes.
Ten years on, I’ll have my own restaurant.
And I won’t be this size any more.
‘Ten years on, Jimmy, where will we find you?’
‘In the Guiness Book of Records.’
‘Stuck inside his house wi’ his maw running after him because he’s too big to get oot.’
‘Doing nuthin’, fat loser,’ concluded Victor, as Maddo banged his desk-lid to jerk Jimmy out of his reverie.
Mrs Hughes silenced the growing ripple of insults with a frosty finger.
‘Jimmy?’
No way was he going to curdle his dream in front of this lot. Especially when Ellie McPherson was turning, trying to focus on where he was sitting. He wasn’t daft.
He dropped his head so that the faces jeering at him disappeared.
‘Probably working in an office,’ he shrugged. The first, the least controversial, thing he could think of.
‘Ellie?’ Mrs Hughes smiled at Jimmy: Well done for saying something.
Ellie’s voice rang clear.
‘Travelling,’ she said. ‘Finding lots of out-of-the-way places.’
Hope you find, wished Jimmy, slatting his eyes open just enough to see the back of Ellie’s chocolate brown hair through his lashes.
‘Finished at last?’
Mrs Hughes smiled at Jimmy when he handed over his essay, and bumped his way out the classroom, thighs knocking against all the desks.
‘Must be some office job, Mr Kelly.’
Ellie was now the only pupil still writing, her face practically touching her paper, hair tumbling over the sides of her desk. Jimmy hovered inside the classroom door, willing Ellie to hand in her essay and join him. He had to content himself with a half-smile from her as Mrs Hughes shooed him outside. It was halfway through morning interval and the corridors were thronged.
Jimmy, head full of Ellie sitting at a table in , stepped out of the classroom without planning ahead, and was immediately swept along towards the one place he did not want to go: the lower-school bogs.
‘Well, well. Look who’s no’ got his catheter in the day?’
Maddo, on sentry duty at the bog door, denied two wee first years entry with a knee to their bladders, but caught Jimmy by the arm and wheeched him inside before he could escape to the playground. ‘Stand back everyone, Pavarotti needs a wiss.’
Wedging the toilet door shut with one boot, so no one else could come in, Maddo shoved the other against Jimmy’s buttocks. The force knocked Jimmy off balance. He stumbled, falling hard on his hands and knees. At Victor’s feet.
; ‘Fag?’
Victor held the soggy end of his cigarette to Jimmy’s mouth, pushing it roughly against his clenched lips.
‘Why you down beggin’ if you don’t want it, you fat toad,’ he said as Jimmy jerked his face away.
The toe of Victor’s boot caught Jimmy under the chin. Forced his head back until he could see Maddo’s face grinning upside down behind him. Then with a flick kick Victor sent Jimmy sprawling backwards on to the dirty toilet floor.
Through cigarette fug Jimmy looked up at the sneering faces of Victor, Maddo and Dog Breath. Beached and helpless, he was surrounded. He prayed that Victor had forgotten what he did the last time he had Jimmy in the toilets, sticking his head down the pan just after Maddo had been in. But before he’d flushed.
‘New blazer, Jimmy?’
Victor’s tone was deceptively friendly as he knelt down beside Jimmy’s head and flicked ash on to Jimmy’s face and collar.
‘That was daft, leaving the other one in the shower, you plonker. Oops.’ Victor wet his finger with spit and rubbed ash into Jimmy’s lapel.
‘Kelly’s blazer looks smart the day, eh? No’ a mark on it.’
As if on cue, a shower of ash rained from three cigarettes while Jimmy struggled to raise himself to his elbows.
‘Goin’ somewhere?’ Dog Breath pinned Jimmy back to the ground with his foot. Then he cleared his throat and let a thick, green grog slither through his lips. It landed – splat – on the edge of Jimmy’s sleeve, and dribbled on his hand.
Even Victor groaned.
‘Ye manky prat.’
‘Well, what we gonny dae wi’ him now?’ asked Dog Breath impatiently, aiming a slow-motion practice kick at Jimmy’s head. ‘Let’s gie’m a doin’. This is borin’.’
As Maddo lunged forwards, Jimmy was saved by the interval bell.
Dozens of boys, clutching their genitals, stormed the bog entrance and dived for the urinals. In the mêlée, Jimmy picked himself up. He locked himself in a cubicle dusting ash and muck from his blazer as he waited for the place to empty. His hands were shaking. What would Ellie think of her rescuer now, if she saw the jelly state of him? She’d surely be as disgusted with him as he was with himself. A miserable sod. With a lurch Jimmy recalled the priest’s words. GI Joe was right. He should never have wasted his time getting the blazer dry-cleaned in the first place. Nothing was ever going to change for Jimmy.
Fat Boy Swim Page 5
