When he thought the coast was clear, Jimmy slipped the bolt and tiptoed into the corridor.
‘To be continued, lardy arse,’ hissed Victor in his ear, smacking Jimmy across the top of the head as he swaggered ahead of him.
Chapter 14
Refugees and chocolate éclairs
‘Why have I got you in my class this period?’ Busty Bacon asked, blocking the doorway to her room. The formidable bosoms which had given rise to her nickname were trained on Jimmy like two giant Toblerones.
It was the first lesson after the toilet incident. Should have been music, which Jimmy loved. Would have cheered him up after all that grief from Victor. Hamblin, however, had hijacked this period to run end of term team games for anyone who was interested. Jimmy wasn’t and, fortunately, as he discovered when he turned up at the PE block, neither was Hamblin.
‘Wheeze your way back to the office, Kelly, and find someone with room for one more this period.’
The school secretary sent him to Busty’s room. She didn’t want him either: ‘Is this a joke, James Kelly? Physical education offloading you to domestic science?’
Busty rolled the words ‘domestic science’ around her mouth as though they tasted far too fancy for the likes of Jimmy, and sniffed up one nostril.
‘No, miss, I’m here,’ Jimmy mumbled at the floor.
Busty, clicking her tongue in vexation, ushered Jimmy into the classroom as her pal, Mrs Dunlop – The Tyre – St Jude’s other domestic science teacher, passed with her knitting.
‘Get the coffee on, Gina,’ Busty called lightly making a drinking gesture with her pinkie crooked as though she was a toff. ‘Give me five minutes to get my refugees sorted. I’ve two now,’ she sighed, as though the class size was too much for her, ‘and one of them,’ she went on, her voice swelling to a boom as she closed the door on The Tyre, ‘thinks she can waltz into my classroom with her manky, dirty hair down! Here. You. Eleanor McPherson.’
Quickly waving Jimmy – whose ability to breath, let alone move, had deserted him at the mere mention of Ellie’s name – to a worktable, Busty plucked an elastic band from her wrist and flicked it dismissively across the classroom towards Ellie. Jimmy watched Ellie reach out to snatch it and miss. She had turned to watch Jimmy’s entrance instead. At the smile Ellie gave him, his legs buckled slightly as he edged into the same row where the elastic band had landed.
‘I can see why PE can spare you, dear,’ Busty snapped impatiently.
‘Ellie.’ Jimmy’s cheeks burned as he said her name for the first time, stretching across his cookery table. He was holding out the elastic band in his fingers, but Ellie couldn’t see what he was doing. She was too busy looking for the band on her own table, her hair pooling the surface.
‘Filthy! Hair!’ said Busty, marching up behind Ellie, seizing a spatula on the way. Keeping Ellie at arms length, mouth pursed, Busty reached for her hair and raised as much of it as she could gather on her spatula. Jimmy thought she’d have been happier lifting a dog turd by the look on her face.
‘Quick, you,’ Busty’s fingers clicked at Jimmy for the band, but he didn’t move. How could he, when he was watching warm chocolate ripple over the spatula?
Wow.
Ellie had amazing hair. Good enough to eat. Thick. Dark. Brown. Naturally kinky. And heavy. Jimmy noticed how Busty’s arm drooped under the weight of the hank she held out on the spatula.
Best of all were the cloudy coils that sat on the surface of Ellie’s hair. They glowed in the sun. Caramel golden. Transparent.
Only once could Jimmy remember seeing a colour like that. Aunt Pol had taken him to see a celebrity chef make magic with molten sugar, spinning it into brittle spirals that glistened like the finest golden thread.
‘Gee yourself, Kelly. Pass that band.’ Busty’s voice and fingers snapped Jimmy from his daydream.
He felt his own eyes water as Busty snatched the elastic, yanking Ellie’s head back at the same time. Ellie winced as Busty stuffed her hair into an unruly ponytail.
‘Much better.’
Busty scoured her hands with pink carbolic, smiling over her shoulder.
‘If that hair’s not tied back next time, dear, I’ll cut it off. Got it?’
‘Yes, miss.’
Ellie’s voice sounded as tiny as her face looked with her hair drawn back, thought Jimmy. Her exposed cheeks blazed as hot as Jimmy’s felt in her presence. Without realising it, he had moved from his own worktable to stand next to her.
‘Would you look at the pair of you lined up like rotten eggs. There’s a recipe on the board. Éclairs. Cream in the fridge. Don’t lick the chocolate when you melt it – you listening, Kelly? Bring a plate of your best ones along to the base for Mrs Dunlop and I to mark. And –’ she was halfway out of the door, ‘– no malarky. Clear?’
‘Yes, miss.’ Ellie’s voice was barely a whisper.
‘Sorry?’ More of the bosom appeared in the doorway.
‘Yes, miss,’ Ellie spoke up.
‘Better, dear. Next time, try to look at me when I speak to you.’
There was silence in the huge cookery room. Jimmy could hear Busty stump off on her ridiculous stilettos to the domestic science base.
Wait for me, miss, a terrified voice bleated inside him. This was, after all, the best and the worst moment of his entire life so far. He was alone with Ellie, but he didn’t have a clue what to do next.
Luckily, Ellie broke the silence.
‘She should have said “Mrs Dunlop and me”.’
‘What?’
‘Busty said “Mrs Dunlop and I”. Bad grammar. Silly cow.’
Ellie, half-standing, slid herself and her stool along the worktable and plonked right next to Jimmy. A coil of her hair tumbled loose from her elastic band and bungeed up and down beside her ear like a mischevious spring.
‘I can’t cook,’ Ellie groaned, breaking the silence again.
And again.
‘Can you?’
Jeez. She’d asked Jimmy a direct question. He would have to answer. Rude not to. Jimmy felt himself blush. Ellie was so close. She wasn’t looking at him, however.
Ellie’s eyes went all funny if she didn’t wear her glasses. And she tended not to wear her glasses. Her pupils drifted about, each doing their own thing. They never actually crossed, just bobbed gently and wouldn’t focus. Jimmy liked that. It gave her a faraway, kooky look.
Maybe that was another reason why Ellie made Jimmy feel funny. He could look at her and she wouldn’t know he was watching.
Skellie Ellie everyone called her. Then Speccy Malecky when she put her glasses on. A lose-lose situation.
‘Busty gave you a hard time.’
Where did that come from? That was twice today Jimmy had spoken around Ellie before he could swallow the words back.
‘Y’all right? And after this morning with Senga?’
Ellie nodded vaguely in Jimmy’s direction with a dreamy smile. She was trying to blow away another spring of hair that had loosened from her ponytail.
‘Did she hurt you when she pulled your hair?’
Jimmy thought there was something different about his voice – although it was still his own voice. It sounded deeper, older.
Not only that, his legs seemed to have their own agenda. They were side-slipping closer to Ellie while he spoke.
Move any nearer and he’d be able to brush that curl away from her forehead.
He gulped.
Too close. What did he think he was doing?
Back off, you big balloon, before she pushes you off, he warned himself. No one likes your fat in their face.
‘Hurt me?’
Jimmy couldn’t believe it. Ellie stood up and stepped towards him. And then she smiled. At him. Big, full-on friendly smile.
‘Nah!’
Ellie was standing up proudly. She stepped even closer to Jimmy and screwed up her eyes so she could see him better.
She was still smiling as she tugged her hair free and let it
tumble over her shoulders. Still smiling while she nibbled at the elastic band until it broke, her eyes dancing with mischief.
‘Ooops. Silly me.’
She dropped the band daintily on the floor, where it lay, twisted like an anaemic worm.
That’s when Jimmy had the brainwave.
‘Chocolate éclairs,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ll give Busty chocolate éclairs.’ For being so mean to the tastiest girl in the world, he thought, setting out flour, butter, bowl.
‘I can’t cook, I told you.’
Ellie moved closer. She tried to see round Jimmy’s bulk and her hair touched his shoulder. A jolt from a friendly cattle-prod.
Crikey!
Jimmy had to turn away and get a box of eggs from the fridge. He knew his face was scarlet. Not that Ellie could see – although she must have heard the eggs rattling against each other in his love-shaky hand.
‘You dead short-sighted then?’
Jimmy had to say something. Any closer and Ellie would land on top of him.
‘Mmmmm,’ Ellie said dismissively as though it didn’t matter. ‘I see bright things. Like the colour of your hair.’
It wasn’t an insult. Jimmy looked Ellie in one dancing eye at a time just to make sure. No spite there. No malice.
Ellie groaned again. ‘I’ve never followed a recipe.’
‘Me neither.’
Jimmy sifted flour into a bowl, raising his sieve really high so that flour particles fell like the lightest snowflakes.
‘Busty’s got the amounts wrong anyway. If I use all the butter she says these’ll never puff up right.’
‘You’ve done this before?’
Ellie was so close she practically bumped the sieve from Jimmy’s hand. The length of her arm touched his own, but she didn’t pull it away like anyone else would do. Her touch made Jimmy shivery then hot inside, like he’d gulped from a mug of cocoa on a cold, cold day.
‘I’m no help here,’ Ellie groaned again, watching Jimmy cut butter into tiny squares and drop them into boiling water. ‘I was looking forward to music, not domestic science.’
‘Me too,’ said Jimmy, swallowing the urge to ask her if she liked the same singers and bands as he did. That would have been pushing his luck way further than it had gone already. Just keep her by your side like this a wee bit longer, he cautioned himself. ‘Whip this cream,’ he told Ellie, ‘I’ll do the rest.’
They were perfect.
Twelve ginormous oblongs straining the sides of the baking tray.
‘Wow! They’re twice as big as when you put them in.’
Ellie had put her glasses on to whip the cream, so at least she could see something despite the white flecks spattering her lenses and the great dollop of chocolate sauce that Jimmy’s finger itched to wipe off her nose.
‘I mean they’re all exactly the same size. And none of them are burnt. They’re golden. And the smell – buttery, and floury, and oooh!’
Ellie sniffed the tray like a dog exploring new territory. She was going on the same way about Jimmy’s baking as Aunt Pol, he realised, although similar praise from Aunt Pol never gave him jelly-baby legs like this.
Jimmy told Ellie to pick out the four best éclairs, holding out a plate so that he could watch her profile while she concentrated.
She had millions of freckles, not great big chocolate button ones like he did. Ellie’s were dots like cinnamon dust on cappucino.
He sighed inwardly.
‘So these are for Busty?’
The éclairs Ellie had chosen crammed the plate.
‘No! These are.’ Deliberately, Jimmy tipped what remained on the baking tray to the floor.
Then, with a bit of a grunt, Jimmy plonked to his knees. He took an éclair in each hand, and ever so gently, careful not to damage the pastry, rolled them across the floor, back and forth, making sure they touched Ellie’s elastic band.
Next, he ran the éclairs under the lip of the cooker just far enough in to collect any gunge that may be lurking there. He trailed them along the bottom of the cookery bench until he came to a corner. There lurked a dustball, studded with crumbs and hairs and what might have been a leaf but could have been anything from someone’s shoe.
‘Your turn,’ said Jimmy to Ellie. ‘You finish the others the same way, and I’ll do the cream and chocolate.’
‘Then we’ll take them along –’
‘– to the base,’ giggled Ellie, attempting a Busty teeter.
She hunkered down facing Jimmy, her face so close that he could have flicked out his tongue like a lizard and licked the chocolate off her nose.
‘You’re brilliant,’ she whispered, looking straight at him, her one good eye magnified behind its thick lens. There were green bits among the hazel. The colour of mint cracknel.
So’re you. Desire nudged Jimmy’s larnx. Say something, you big wumman’s blouse.
‘Got chocolate on your nose,’ said Jimmy, flicking it off with his finger. Irresistible.
The first, the lightest touch.
He scrambled to his feet, praying Ellie couldn’t hear the thumping din from the depths of his ribcage. Baboom. Baboom. Baboom.
‘Come on,’ he said to drown the noise. ‘Can’t keep Busty waiting.’
* * *
‘AB-SO-loot-ely DEE-licious, James Kelly. Beginner’s luck,’ said Busty, calling from the window of The Tyre’s car as it drove out the playground. ‘Tell that wee McPherson girl she’s a born cook.’
‘Fabulous!’ The Tyre chipped in. ‘Mrs Bacon ate three!’ She pointed at her passenger who, to Jimmy’s delight, was looking a bit green around the gills.
Result! thought Jimmy, marrying the teachers’ compliments to the portrait of Ellie hanging in the gallery of his heart.
There was actually a spring in Jimmy’s lumber as he passed the pitch on his way out of school. He imagined himself walking over lightly-toasted marshmallows; just firm on the surface yet squashy underneath. It was such a pleasant sensation that Jimmy almost delayed dropping his head when he realised that the figure doing star jumps, while GI Joe prowled a circle around him growling, ‘Faster, faster if you wanna be a pro,’ was Victor.
Jimmy definitely didn’t want Victor to see him. Slag him. Spoil a perfect day. Well, perfect in the end.
Nothing should stop the cream of this day floating to the surface of his mind.
Not only had he managed to bake undercover in school. Instead of doing gym.
But he’d made a friend.
And she was gorgeous.
‘AB-SO-loot-ely DEE-licious!’ Jimmy couldn’t help whispering to himself once he was home. He was making Ellie a mini-disc, because it turned out she liked nearly all the same music as he did, wondering if the Ronettes ‘Be My Baby’ (Aunt Pol’s all-time favourite song) was a bit too obvious. He had settled instead on Aretha doing ‘Respect’ when the phone rang.
‘Ree-ah-ree-ah-ree-ah-ree-ah-ree. Just a little bit . . .’ Jimmy hollered into the receiver, expecting Aunt Pol to sing back to him, but there was silence when he stopped holding the receiver like a mike and put it to his ear.
‘Jim?’
It wasn’t Aunt Pol. It was GI Joe. Deadpan.
‘Poolside. Seven. No armbands.’
Jimmy had completely forgotten.
Chapter 15
‘To be continued’, continued
Heat smacked Jimmy like a wall in the face as the swing doors opened into wet changing. Every noise was amplified. Music throbbing so loudly over the PA system that the tune was unrecognisable. Its beat made the floor vibrate under Jimmy’s feet. Babies cried in relay behind cubicle doors and from the pool itself, frenzied shrieking rose and echoed to the rafters over the splash splash splash of water.
Chlorine and shampoo and sweat and nappies assailed Jimmy’s nostrils as he plodded across the scummy floor to the changing cubicles.
A woman stared, nudging her daughter as Jimmy, unable to fit sideways into a single cubicle, reversed out again.
She was
still staring when Jimmy took a vacant family cubicle. As he locked the door both woman and daughter exploded with laughter outside.
If there had been a mirror in the cubicle Jimmy would never, ever have ventured outside in the luminous orange, lotus-patterned XXX-large shorts Mum’s pal Treesa had brought Jimmy back from Hawaii two years ago. The label was still on them. They were too long and at least one size too tight, the waistband bisecting the swell of Jimmy’s stomach.
‘Cheery,’ Treesa had described them.
Criminal, more like, Jimmy had thought as he thanked her enthusiastically at the time. I’ll never be seen dead in these.
Steeling himself, Jimmy bundled up his clothes and crept from the cubicle to the lockers. With the rubber band that held his locker key disappearing into a cushion of flesh at his wrist, Jimmy looked nervously towards the pool.
He hesitated, resting his damp forehead against the cool metal of the locker door. Could always say he turned up and GI Joe wasn’t there.
Could say the heat of the place bothered his asthma. Could say –
‘Well whaddya know. It’s the pig in curtains.’
Jimmy froze. Squeezing his eyes shut. Pressing his forehead harder against the locker door in the hope that he might pass through it by osmosis.
‘What you doin’ here, lardy boy?’ Maddo snarled, slapping Jimmy round to face him. Victor, behind Maddo, said nothing. Flushed, breathless, his sleek racing trunks already wet, he peeled his squad swimming cap from his head, sucking greedily from a sipping bottle. Opening a locker in the same row as Jimmy’s he threw in his cap, float, leg brick. All the time looking Jimmy up and down, up and down, from head to toe, assimilating every square millimetre of what he saw. His eyes lingered particularly long on the shorts; a thin, mean smile on his face.
‘You’re late, fat boy. Squad training’s over.’
‘Gunna empty the pool, are you?’ grunted Dog Breath Doig, face so close to Jimmy that there was no escaping his horrendous halitosis.
Fat Boy Swim Page 6
