by Neil Cross
Yvonne had typed two early versions for me during her lunch hours, but she knew I’d just keep starting again, and stopped doing it. She told me she’d type it again when I was absolutely sure I’d finished. I began to consider asking for a typewriter for Christmas.
After writing, I practised dance moves to songs by Madness, The Specials and The Beat. I taped the songs off Top of the Pops, onto a mono cassette recorder: the one Derek had used to tape the missionaries over Sunday lunch. We lived too far away for any of that now; nobody came to lunch any more. As I danced, I watched myself in the mirror to see if I got it right, and never did.
I spent hours attempting to transcribe lyrics: pausing the songs, rewinding, playing back verses. There was something in the songs, something underneath them, that I wanted to get to. And I thought, if I knew the words, I could get to it.
I made lunch, then took the dog for a walk. I spent Saturdays with Tam at his new house in Edinburgh. Sometimes I stayed overnight, sleeping top and tail, his feet jammed in my face and mine in his.
We went to see Madness. They were touring to promote an album.
Outside the concert, the National Front were handing out leaflets. Madness had denounced the National Front several times very publicly.
The National Front had stolen its uniform of jeans, Dr Martens, Fred Perry’s and shaved heads from the skinhead movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which had been a white, working-class celebration of Jamaican music. So the National Front was a parody of the class it claimed to glorify.
But sometimes it was difficult to tell the two kinds of skinhead apart. Sometimes, you could only tell by looking at the badges they wore on the lapels of their Crombie or tartan-lined Harrington.
Inside, the concert hall was crammed with thousands of skinheads. When Madness appeared on the stage, the venue bubbled into a single, violently tidal mass of them. But each time Tam or I stumbled, a sweating skinhead would stoop to pick us up. He’d make sure we were okay, then start dancing again, his braces round his waist.
We walked home that night, along Princess Street. We were too sweaty and exhilarated to wait for a late bus. There were sirens and drunks. It was dark. It was good.
Early in September 1981, I put on my new school uniform for the first time. Then I left the cottage and walked to the corner by the Post Office, opposite the village green. Three other kids were already waiting there. They were older than me, wearing the same uniform. I hadn’t met them, or even seen them hanging round Tarbrax. I supposed they had jobs during the summer.
I clutched my new Adidas bag. Everyone had an Adidas bag. Adidas bags were the bags to have.
The kids ignored me, except the gaunt and lanky girl. She looked down at me. She was tall and angular, with short, greasy hair. She said, ‘Nice laces,’ and laughed.
I had yellow laces in my Dr Martens. Everyone had yellow laces in their Dr Martens. Yellow laces were the laces to have. I grinned, because I didn’t know what was wrong with them.
When the school coach arrived, it was almost three-quarters full and very noisy. Older kids sat near the back. I took the wrong seat. I was told to move, and moved.
The coach stopped off at a number of villages. At each one, it picked up two or three children. Some of them were nervous first years, like me.
Eventually, we drove into Biggar. It was a small town in South Lanarkshire. The coach turned into the school car-park. It was already full of other coaches. The first day of school looked like a big event, like a concert.
The first years were herded into the sports hall, lined up and assigned to classes. I looked at the strange faces. Most of them had lived in local villages all their life. I lugged around a pain in my lower stomach, a peculiar nostalgia for Dalry Primary School.
After school, everyone gathered in the car-park again, waiting for the coaches. Next to me stood a tall prefect. He had highlights in his hair. You could tell he was a prefect because the lapels of his blazer were piped in light blue. I had already learned that this thin, blue piping acted like a policeman’s uniform. It invested the prefects with authority. It meant he was sixteen or seventeen.
He looked at me. He said, ‘The fuck do you think you’re looking at?’
I smiled. I said, ‘Nothing. Sorry.’
He grabbed my Adidas bag. He moved very quickly. He wrestled it from my grip and tried to throw it away. He wanted to strike like a mantis, but it turned into a clumsy scuffle. I intercepted the throw. I reached out and slapped the bag and it landed at my feet. I picked it up.
He shoved my shoulder. I ignored him. He shoved me again.
I said, ‘Fuck off.’
He punched me in the mouth. It was a full punch. It took him by surprise, because he expected me to duck. But I hadn’t expected him to punch me. The punch split the inside of my lower lip. But it hurt the prefect more. I could tell by the way he laughed and shook his hand, loose at the end of his wrist, like it didn’t hurt at all.
Everyone was looking. I felt clumsy and goofy and conspicuous.
The prefect said, ‘Spastic.’
I grinned at him, to show him I could.
The coach doors opened. The prefect shoved me between the shoulder blades. I stumbled a few steps, then got on the coach. But nobody was impressed by him. Everyone just wanted to get on the coach and go home.
I sat in the seat behind the driver because I thought it would be safe. And as the coach jerked and growled from village to village, it grew quieter. By the time we reached Tarbrax, it had become almost silent. Everyone was looking out of the windows.
By the time Mum and Yvonne got home, I’d changed my clothes and eaten a big peanut-butter sandwich. I’d watched TV and played with the dog. My lower lip was still swollen, but not much.
Mum said, ‘How was your day?’
I said, ‘Fine.’
But I was bored with it. I knew that tomorrow, there would be the same wait on the same corner. There would be the same coach trip and the same jeering from the same idiot prefect.
I traipsed from class to class, dragging my Adidas bag.
Physical education was taught by a stunted, crew-cut man called Mr Boyd. He squinted when he talked. Rumour had it, he’d been in the SAS. Even if it wasn’t true, you could see why everyone believed it. Mr Boyd leered and squinted when he warned of his happy facility with corporal punishment. He produced the familiar strap of leather and draped it over his forearm while he spoke to us. It hung there like a half-erect penis.
He stood there with his silver crew cut and his tight shorts, his rugby top stretched taut across his chest. He planted his feet heroically far apart. He was about five foot six. He let us know under what circumstances he would belt us. There were many such circumstances. Mr. Boyd thought it comical to call nervous, twelve-year-old boys ‘four eyes’ and ‘Dumbo’ and ‘fattie’. He thought it a fine idea to send them onto the sports field to play rugby, having first made them physically afraid of him. And, on the pitch, he mocked them for fumbling the ball or being hesitant into a tackle.
I was big for my age, I was an exceptionally fast runner, and I quickly discovered it was possible to play rugby while lacking any particular dexterity or skill with a ball. I had only to knock an opposing player off his feet, then pass the ball to someone who knew what to do with it.
Mr Boyd saw this. He sidled up to me on the field and sneered something through the corner of his mouth. It was supposed to be a confidence. I hated him. It was a strange feeling, almost sexual in its immediacy and its privacy.
That was in the morning. In the afternoon, we had music. The teacher was a tall man in a loose cardigan, bald too young: he wore a combover that aged him. He stood at the back of the class while we copied something from the board: notes on a stave. It was dull. I talked to the kid next to me. He was a very fat boy, with big square spectacles. On his bag, he had carefully painted the words: Ant Music for Sex People, because he liked Adam and the Ants. I thought it was cool that such a fat boy was happy t
o declare himself a sex person.
The teacher sneaked up behind me and slapped me hard across the back of the head. There was shock, and a loud, dull noise.
He roared. The words were: ‘Work in silence, boy.’
Although he’d slapped me so hard my forehead nearly struck the desk, there was almost no pain. I turned to the teacher.
I said, ‘Keep your hair on.’
The class laughed, although the joke was obvious and not that funny. The teacher locked eyes with me.
During afternoon break, I was discussing music with the fat boy. I didn’t like Adam and the Ants, but they were better than Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, which were the bands most of the other boys seemed to like.
The fat boy and I were outside.
I said, ‘So, what’s your favourite song?’
He said, ‘“Prince Charming”.’
I’d readied my next question: why? But now I knew, there was no need of it. ‘Prince Charming’ had been a number 1 for weeks and weeks. During the chorus, Adam Ant sang: ‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of’, and when Adam Ant sang it, you believed him.
I thought it was cool that Adam Ant thought ridicule was nothing to be scared of, but I thought it cooler that he’d made the fat boy believe it. I realized that ‘Prince Charming’ had been number 1 for so long because so many fat boys and fat girls, and spotty boys and spotty girls, and thin boys and thin girls, and short boys and tall girls, tens of thousands of strange children played that record in the sanctuary of their bedrooms, and whenever they heard it they felt brave and better.
And there were far more of them than there were prefects whose blue piping lent them temporary licence; more of them than there were people like Mr Boyd and his comical squint. I realized that pop music was a strong thing and a good thing. And that is what had been beneath the words of the songs I had worked so long and hard to transcribe.
On Friday, I didn’t take in my PE kit because I’d decided never to do PE again; at least as long as Mr Boyd was teaching it. Everyone hurried to get changed. I sat on the bench with my Adidas bag on my lap. Mr Boyd came to inspect us. He looked down the rank of boys, in their sports kit, and me in my uniform.
He squinted at me and said, ‘Have you got a note, boy?’
I said, ‘No.’
‘Then why aren’t you changed?’
I wanted to say, Because you are a prick.
I said, ‘I forgot my kit.’
‘You forgot your kit.’
‘Aye.’
He knew I was calling him a prick anyway.
He made me stand. I held out my hands, palm up. The boys watched, ranked on benches beneath coat hooks. They wore shorts and football boots and rugby tops.
Mr Boyd took a couple of practice swipes, then slammed the belt across my hand. He did it twice. It hurt, but not too much: not as much as I thought it would. And it was worth it, because it was all he could do. After it was done, Mr Boyd stared at me through his squint and I blew on my hands and that was it.
Most mornings, the prefect greeted me with a slap to the face or a knee to the testicles and in the afternoon we went through it all again. But it was just a ritual. He wasn’t even trying to hurt me. He was a prick. The school was full of pricks.
When the coach got back to Tarbrax in the afternoon, I was weary and grubby, needing a shower. The autumn light, the early-setting sun, made me feel closed-in.
I didn’t like Biggar High School, and it was easy to stop going. In the morning, Mum and Yvonne and Derek all left for work. I said goodbye to them. I even put on my school uniform. I put my bag in order; my sandwiches, my can of Coke, some Penguin biscuits. I laced my boots. Then I went and lay on the bed until the school bus had stopped, exhaled, opened its doors, closed them again and was gone.
Then everything drained away. I took off my tie and blazer and put on some jeans. I wore the shirt, to make it authentically smelly, and I stayed away from the windows. When Mrs Lamb came to pick up the dog, I hid in the bedroom. She always stood in the doorway without coming in. She whistled and the dog ran to her without a backward glance. I’d been right: Mrs Lamb did keep her all day, returning her ten minutes before the school coach came back. By then, the autumn light had grown yellow and treacly.
When it was dark, I lit the coal fire. When Mum and Yvonne came home, the fire was going well, crackling and popping. They bustled in, cold and wet, complaining about the weather.
Mum asked how my day had gone and I said, ‘Fine’, and that was it. We settled down to a normal evening. These days, normal evenings were just the three of us: me, Mum and Yvonne watching TV.
At the weekend, Derek came back from a trip with a present for me. It was a large poster of a Kirby vacuum cleaner. I didn’t really want a picture of a vacuum cleaner on my bedroom wall: it would cover my posters of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Madness and The Specials. But Derek seemed pleased when he gave me the poster, as if he’d been looking forward to this moment. I was embarrassed by my ingratitude. So I pinned it to the wall, in pride of place.
That term, although I usually went to school only twice a week, I was belted more often than any other pupil. Mrs Skelsie said I had probably broken some kind of record.
But the belt was a feeble sanction. Its use was attended by a kind of bewildered respect from my classmates. Even the prefect began to leave me alone. Everyone on the coach knew I wasn’t scared of the belt: so they knew I wasn’t scared of him either. He just looked silly, trying to kick me in the balls with his pointy knees and getting laughed at.
Mrs Skelsie was my English teacher. She liked the short stories I wrote. Most of them were violent–they involved decapitations and mutilations–but she read them to the class anyway. She peered over her spectacles during the gory bits, like someone reading a Hallowe’en story, and she seemed to relish her pupils’ cheery disgust as eyes popped and kneecaps shattered.
The girls in my class treated me with openly curious mystification and I liked it. They affected concern for my wellbeing, for my attendance, and I liked that too. They sat next to me and asked me why I wasn’t coming to school, why I was always in trouble, and I liked that even better.
I was a charlatan. I was the English boy who was dragged round the playground of Dalry school by his hair, the kid who didn’t swear and went to the weird church. But I was prepared to live with being a charlatan, because of the girls’ mystification. When I turned up to class, they said, ‘So, you decided to put in an appearance then,’ and rolled their eyes and smiled, and that made me feel good. I told a girl called Anne that I hated God and she put her hands over her mouth and slapped my arm, and that made me feel good too.
I got away with truanting for a couple of months–October and November–but eventually I was caught. One morning, I didn’t bother to put on my uniform. Mum found my clean shirt hanging where she’d left it, with the stripy tie draped over the hanger.
There was no point lying, but I did. I said that it was just so cold that morning. I got out of bed and looked outside and there was so much snow. I felt shivery. Too ill to go in.
Mum knew I was lying, even though the snow still lay deep outside, reflecting the light of the moon. It covered the bing. It made it look like a collapsed cake. But she seemed too tired to care. In those days, she always seemed tired.
In the morning, Yvonne arranged to go in late to work. She and Mum waited while I put on my uniform then went outside and got on the coach. Once you’d done that, you had no choice but to go to school. The town of Biggar was far too small to wander aimlessly round. And anyway, it was freezing outside.
Then Yvonne phoned the school and spoke to Mrs Skelsie about my attendance. That didn’t seem odd. I’d never have expected Mum to do it. Her nerves were too bad. And Derek was away a lot.
So I returned to school, full-time. I talked to Mrs Skelsie and promised not to truant again, which was a lie, and I went to class.
At lunchtime on Friday, I was outside. Kids milled a
round: the sensible girls and the boys with Iron Maiden written on their bags. A boy called McEndrick stepped through the crowd. He was a big, ruddy farmer’s boy with curly hair. He was older than me; fourteen. He had his head lowered.
He walked up to me.
He said, ‘Hey, cunt.’
He pushed me. I was scared of him.
I said, ‘Oh, McEndrick, just fuck off.’
He pushed me again.
He said, ‘Come on then, cunt.’
I said, ‘Just fuck off.’
He kicked me in the balls. I wasn’t prepared for it. I lay on the ground. I curled up. I gagged.
A crowd began to gather and, as it grew, it became hungry.
I stood up. I was inside the crowd. I was sweating. My balls hurt and so did my lower back. I felt sick. I began to shove my way through the kids. They were jammed, shoulder-to-shoulder, smiling. No eye-contact. McEndrick stomped behind me on big, flat feet. He was shoving my shoulder.
He said, ‘Come on then, cunt.’
I was used to it. You ignored it until it withered and fell away. You told yourself it was braver to walk away, even though it wasn’t. But now there was nowhere to walk. The crowd moved with us like a weather system. As it did, its eye narrowed and its body grew and condensed. It became impossible to move. McEndrick was shoving my shoulder. My balls hurt.
I turned around. The crowd made a noise. I jumped up. I grabbed McEndrick’s hair in both hands and pulled down on it. I bent him double. I kept my arms straight and backed away from his flailing arms. I stepped forward and kicked him in the face. I kicked him in the face for a long time. Then I pushed him over and kicked him in the head. I couldn’t get a proper kick because the spectators were packed so tight. I was still trying to kick him properly when a number of prefects ran, shoving, through the suddenly silent crowd.
I kicked McEndrick until the prefects grabbed my arms and my collar and my legs and yanked me away. They manhandled me, still kicking, through the doors and down the empty corridor. I called them cunts. It echoed off the walls and ceiling. I told them I was going to fucking kill them. McEndrick followed, wiping his nose, led by the elbow.
