Would You Believe Him?

by Jack Hollinson

  The boys obeyed the teacher and put all the furniture back in place. As they walked through the doorway Davies’ group was waiting outside.

  “You were lucky, Connors. The teacher came in just in time to save you,’ said Pete. ‘Why don’t you finish it on the school field? Eh, Sam, you want to finish it, don’t you?’

  Again, Davies was in the position of proving himself to his mates so he went forward to push Barry.

  ‘Yeah, come on and finish it Connors, you worm.’

  Barry knew that he had had the edge in the classroom and wanted to show Davies’ group what he was made of.

  ‘All right, I’m not scared of you. Come on, Nigel, let’s go up to the field.’ And, with that, the whole crowd went up to the end of the field to the long jump pit.

  There were more people around than in the classroom, so Davies felt that he had to win but he faced a big drawback. There were no weapons! Ben and Mark had appeared but Barry gave his jacket to Nigel to look after as he had been Barry’s support in the classroom.

  ‘I’m gonna have yer,’ blurted out Davies and the fight started again. Davies held up his arms but it was an effort to reach Barry’s head so they acted as barriers to the punches that came raining down.

  Smack! A beautiful blow landed on Davies’ eye. Thump! The lip was the next target that started thickening immediately. Davies was being beaten black and blue and Barry lifted his fist to land a final punch on Davies’ nose when his arm was caught from behind in a vice - like grip.

  ‘Stop that, you two!’

  A prefect had seen the commotion and had bounded up the field to stop the tussle. Barry’s arm went limp, straight-away, and he backed away from his bruised opponent.

  ‘Right, I’m taking you to see the headmaster. That will teach you not to fight.’ The boys were then marched to the headmaster’s office and were both given a sound telling-off with threats to inform their parents if it happened again.

  They came away, with their ears ringing but Barry had proved the point that he was no softie. Davies learnt his lesson and never bothered Barry again and even Pete seemed more respectful, now that he knew that Barry had a tough side to his character.

  The first week of the new term went by with astonishing rapidity. Barry had always been used to yawning his way through lessons and skipping off or going behind the school for a smoke when he had free periods and this practice had made the time drag somewhat in the first year of his sixth form. Now, in this second year, he was discovering how time flashed by if he worked hard.

  It did require a lot of effort because Barry had never been much of a reader and found it very difficult to get stuck into all those awful textbooks. He was trying, now though and he found quiet corners to read, which really perplexed his mates.

  He was also trying in the lessons and he took an active part, questioning the teachers about the reasons behind the facts. He was studying German, economics and religious education at A level and his RE master seemed most surprised at this new eagerness but satisfied himself by giving Barry a few enquiring looks for his new, outspoken behaviour.

  The week passed and Barry had to get through his Saturday job before he could look forward to the walk on Sunday. He had worked at the same shop for more than two years and had grown to enjoy trying to sell superior, Japanese hi-fi equipment rather than inferior models. The pay was good at the time and he had to keep the job to pay for his lifestyle.

  He had started working when he had decided that he wanted a sports-moped and was lucky to just breeze into the shop, ask for the job and get it. He had calculated that he needed to save for twenty-four weeks continuously, or forty weeks at a more relaxed pace. He managed this with some ease but now the bigger bike took more financing.

  ‘Good morning, Bill,’ said Barry as he entered the shop.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Barry. Have you had a good week?’

  ‘Yep. Back at school, again, but it’s okay.’

  Bill was a full-time employee at the shop who had worked there for several years but had a curious, withdrawn nature which Barry could never figure out. He was always dressed in the same suit which was too big for him and had gone out of fashion in the Fifties. Barry had learned that he still lived with his parents, and got the impression that he was dominated by his father. He would become very quiet when being admonished by the manager and remained subdued for a long while afterwards.

  The rest of the staff were pretty normal but changed rapidly, as is the nature of shop staff. There was Sandy, who was always a good laugh, Terry, a bit of a creep, and Tom, the manager, who was strict, but could see the funny side of things. The shop was not in the ideal position, being on the top floor of a shopping arcade near an entrance that was the least used by the public, but business was still fairly brisk.

  Barry had a reasonably busy day, taking the usual ten minutes to throw his lunch down his throat, and then was off home to prepare for the walk the next day.

  Chapter Two

  Sunday dawned and Barry was up nice and early. He had planned to have a big breakfast as he knew that he would not be eating again until a lot later. A big bowl of cornflakes, followed by a cooked breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon and fried bread was followed by a mug of tea. This filled Barry up nicely and then he went out to give his bike a clean.

  He opened the garage and his bike’s orange tank gleamed invitingly up at him, he knelt down beside it and put chrome cleaner on the exhaust pipe and mudguards to make the metal shine. He rubbed the tank and brought it up to a brighter shine and it seemed just right to ride and show off to all the walkers.

  ‘Isn’t it clean enough already?’

  Don had come over from the opposite house and walked down the drive.

  ‘I’m going on a walk to raise funds for charity,’ said Barry.

  ‘Get away! Any money you collect will go straight into the landlord’s pockets,’ said Don, disapprovingly.

  ‘No, I’ve got a sponsor form which must be handed in at school - complete with all the money,’ stated Barry, trying to cast away the mock suspicion with a confident air. ‘It’s for a charity and its providing me with a good excuse to go boozing at the same time.’

  ‘Now that sounds like a good idea, the boozing not the walking,’ said Don, ‘Do you mind if I tag along on my bike? I’ll meet you at the pub and cheer you on.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t mind,’ said Barry. ‘You can get a round in and have the drinks waiting for us when we get to the pub.’

  ‘Ah, well, I don’t know about that so much, but I’ll be there,’ said Don. What time will you be starting and where from?’

  ‘We’re starting from the school at 11am and we’ll be at The Tavern at about 11.30 am.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Don, as he left, ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Don was a year older than Barry and had lived opposite him for eleven years. He had been friends with Barry’s brother, as they were the same age, but only on a part-time basis really. Don also had a motorbike but it was a smaller Honda 100. It still had quite a lot of zip, but nowhere near the power of the 200.

  Ten-thirty came and Barry donned his waxed motorcycling jacket and his helmet. The helmet was of the open-faced variety and had all the knocks and scratches of rough handling. Barry was thinking of buying a helmet with the chin bar running across the front but, at present, this was way beyond his means.

  Barry climbed aboard his machine and it started with its customary ease. He took off up the open road and, within a jiffy, had covered the two and a half miles to Peter’s home. He stopped the bike and went to call for Pete.

  ‘Are you ready then?’ said Barry, with a smile on his face.

  ‘Yeah, I’m ready. Now, remember who you’ve got on the back of your bike,’ said Pete. He was well aware of the speed at which Barry usually travelled.

  ‘Don’t
worry, I have passed my driving test,’ said Barry.

  This was somewhat of an overstatement for Barry. True, a driving test proved that you could drive a bike around a rectangular court and Barry remembered his emergency stop with pride, when he had stopped about twenty yards short of the examiner. It didn’t stop a young man from driving very fast once he’d got the certificate and in fact, it was another confidence boost for Barry and he now thought that he couldn’t go wrong,

  The two lads climbed aboard the bike and set off around the back roads to the school. Barry parked the bike in the staff car park as it was empty and went to meet Mark and Ben at the starting point.

  ‘Right, are you ready to go then?’ said Barry.

  ‘Yes, we’ve been here for ten minutes waiting for you. Ten minutes valuable drinking time’, said Ben.

  ‘Let’s be off then,’ said Barry, as they walked up the road.

  They reached The Duke, which was just past the school grounds and they looked to see if any teacher was hanging around.

  ‘There’s no sign of Old Roby or anyone,’ said Mark.

  ‘We’ll all pay for our own drinks,’ said Ben. ‘And then we can drink what we can afford,’

  They entered the pub nervously but the landlord did not seem worried - he had enough trouble on weekdays preventing youngsters from using his pub and so he was not too worried about weekends as he wanted to relax more.

  Pints of beer were swallowed with uncustomary haste and the group was off to The Tavern. Up the hill, past the estate where you could only live if you had a spare million pounds or so, down along the side of the dual carriageway and they soon had The Tavern within their sights. Don was a bit early so he made their walk a little harder by buzzing alongside them, riding his motorbike.

  ‘I never realised quite how countrified it is around here,’ said Barry, as they walked past the golf club. ‘I am always concentrating on the road and never worry about the surroundings.’

  ‘Always knew you had tunnel vision,’ quipped Mark, sarcastically

  ‘And you will get another big shock as we walk along the mad-mile,’ said Ben. ‘It’s got fields one side and football pitches on the other.’

  ‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Barry. ‘It’s just that I’ve discovered how walking is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.’

  They arrived at The Tavern and Don was there, parking the bike.

  ‘You go and get the drinks Barry, and I’ll wait outside with Ben,’ said Mark.

  Although he was older than Barry and Ben, Mark was smaller both in height and stature and as they were both six-footers, it made sense for one of them to get the drinks. Don was eighteen and so he went in to help carry the drinks.

  ‘This is the life,’ said Ben, as they supped their Special Brew.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark. We’ll have to be careful on the bikes on the way home or we’ll get done for drinking and driving.’

  ‘I’m alright.’ said Barry. ‘I’m taking Pete home so I can go around the back roads to his place and then I’ve got one-mile travel home, and besides, it’s Sunday and all the pigs will be snoozing at the police stations. Can you see a large pig presence at the moment?’

  They all looked out onto the empty dual carriageway and then back to the approach road. Hardly a car was passing the pub and so they all felt a bit more secure.

  Don offered everyone a cigarette.

  ‘Wow! What happened? Did you win the pools?’ said Barry.

  ‘Shall I have it back then,’ said Don.

  ‘Ah well, no, no - I’ll be pleased to sample it for you,’ said Barry.

  This was a rare occasion to smoke OP’S (other people’s) cigarettes. Barry had to limit himself to ten Carlton Long Size a day so that his budget worked. He had originally borrowed money to buy the RD 200 and had to get an evening job to meet his repayment conditions. His grandfather, who lent him the money, was not a rich man and had owned a grocery shop all his life. He had bought a beautiful detached house in upmarket suburb and probably still had to watch his spending carefully. As Barry’s father was no longer at home, maybe the Grandfather was trying to instil monetary discipline into the lad.

  Barry, however, had found the drinking, smoking and riding all too expensive. The bike had cost quite a lot for a schoolboy and the Saturday and garage jobs were not meeting the expenses adequately. At the garage the manager calculated all the part-time accounts and always deducted a few pounds for the ‘losses’ and this, sometimes, left Barry with only a couple of pounds for eight hours’ work. Barry, and his mate John, suspected that the manager was pocketing the deducted money, so John went to the extent of jotting down all his figures and working out his own accounts. He calculated that he made a small profit, one week, and when the manager tried to tell him that he had made another loss, John confronted him with the figures and forced him to admit that a mistake had been made.

  Barry tried to do this, too, but his mathematical brain was not as good as John’s and so he couldn’t have the evidence ready to catch the manager. He didn’t need to, though because from then on, the manager knew that they both went to the same school and gave Barry his full wages, just in case he got caught again.

  Barry had tried to ask his grandfather to suspend repayment temporarily, before the summer, as he was stony broke and would make a large repayment after working throughout the summer. His grandfather wouldn’t listen, however, so Barry had to look for another source of finance to make the repayments easier. He was able to find another source through his father who had an old friend who was willing to lend Barry the money with no set repayment conditions. This took the weight off Barry’s shoulders and avoided disturbing the harmony with his grandfather whom he paid back fully and then repaid the other loan when he could. Barry was never quite sure why his father didn’t lend him the money but it made that relationship slightly firmer because of the source.

  Barry had now decided to finish his evening work as he now had the money from the summer work in order to concentrate on studying for an hour or two at night. This meant that his income diminished but he could manage it - just about.

  Barry relaxed, enjoying the John Player Special king-sized cigarette.

  ‘This is my favourite ciggy,’ said Barry. ‘They taste the best and look very good in the black and gold packets.’

  ‘Don’t have an orgasm,’ said Don. ‘They’re only fags and I’ll take two of yours in return.’

  ‘Sorry mate,’ said Barry. ‘I’m down to my last four which should last the journey home nicely.’

  The beers were downed, hurriedly, and they set off for The Kings Head.

  ‘Hey, how about a game of soccer?’ said Mark, as they passed several games on their walk.

  ‘You’d fall arse over tit if you chased a ball,’ said Ben. ‘And besides, it would waste valuable drinking time.’

  ‘Okay, I’m convinced,’ said Mark.

  They walked more sedately along the mad-mile which was in a valley between two casually rising slopes. They turned left up the hill which had a very nasty series of bends at the top, which were each ninety degrees angles forming tight curves and needed to be taken with care because of a hazardous camber that sloped towards the kerb - treacherous for motorbikes.

  ‘It’s tough actually walking up this steep bit,’ said Ben.

  ‘You should do a bit more exercise to keep in trim,’ scolded Beverley.

  ‘I thought we did enough exercise last night,’ said Ben with an evil grin on his face.

  There were the customary wolf whistles and shouts from the crowd which made Beverley’s round face glow a brilliant shade of red and she chased after Ben who dashed away, proud of his comment. The walking grew faster down the road towards The Kings Head on the corner.

  ‘Last one in is a cissy!’ screamed Mark, as they were just on the oppo
site side of the road from the pub. Paying scant attention to the traffic, the group ran over and charged into the pub. It was their favourite drinking hole and the darkness of the interior made them more confident that they wouldn’t be seen or recognised.

  Another round of drinks was bought and disposed of, quickly.

  ‘Hey, look guys and guyesses,’ said Ben, seeming slightly more inebriated now. ‘There are three pubs down the road before we get back and it’s only one o’clock. What do you say to trying to get a pint in at each?’

  ‘That’s six pints in total,’ said Barry. ‘I want to drive home - not crawl.’

  ‘We’ll have half a pint in each,’ said Ben, his tongue almost touching the floor. ‘That will be four and a half in total and you should have almost walked it off by the time you get back.’

  ‘We’ll see, shall we,’ said Barry. ‘C’mon Mark, finish that and we’ll be off.’

  ‘Oh, you go on,’ said Mark, cradling his beer lovingly. ‘I’ll just finish this and catch you up at The Arms.’

  Mark was rather keen on The Kings Head for two reasons. One was the beer - good strong bitter - and the other was the barmaid, Jackie who was on duty that day. He had been keeping his eye on her for some time; not that he was a chat-up freak with all the girls, it was just that he liked to be there to watch her and maybe get a chance to say a few words. She wasn’t all that attractive but then she could have been a good match for Mark as, often, the less handsome man prefers the less attractive female

  So it was off again and the group quickly covered the half mile to The Arms.

  ‘Say, I’ve got an idea,’ said Beverly, her eyes twinkling naughtily. ‘Let’s hide out at the back of the pub and when Mark comes in he’ll think that we have gone on to The Rose.’

  They all bought their drinks and hid, but they couldn’t suppress the laughter as Mark came into the pub and, after searching all around the bar, went outside to peer down the road. He still couldn’t see them so he actually went towards The Rose. Beverley was delighted that her plan had worked and the group finished their drinks and sauntered off to follow Mark. Mark had disappeared which suited the group as they thought that they would see him down the long straight road.