Will got the ball near his own try line after a line-out that more resembled a monkey’s tea party and looked for a pass. Seeing three players bearing down on him and Darren for once under a pile of players, he panicked, and forgetting the teacher’s warning kicked the ball as hard as he could. Misjudging the shape, instead of firing it long, it raced up in the air and went sideways to the wing.
Will looked to the ball’s probable trajectory and saw Carl, who was stood as though out for a light stroll, was at ground zero and for a moment time stood still. Carl had excelled in his own way, managing to stay at least ten metres away from any of the action. His shorts and shirt were still ghost white as was now his face as the ball tumbled down to him, as if pulled by a string. His hands went up as though to catch a beach ball five times the size of the incoming missile and Will flinched at the inevitable. The swirling ball smacked Carl directly on the forehead with a wet splat.
Carl hit the deck like a hung man when the rope is cut. The ball bounced straight into Aiden’s hands who had almost reached Carl, as Will had just stood there gawping. Aiden froze there for a few seconds as though he had just caught an expensive vase that had been knocked off a shelf, before Darren screamed in his ear, ‘Run!’
Aiden had about thirty metres of clear ground in front of him and it was the first time he had got some impetus without having three or four kids hanging around his feet.
He knew it wasn’t, but Will almost felt like the ground was shaking as Aiden pounded away at the wrong angle straight towards the bulk of the opposition. He suddenly realised that despite his size, and given enough time, Aiden could run. It was a sight to behold. If he had looked around he would have seen the teacher grinning like the proverbial cat, at odds with the bladder-loosened faces of those in the line of fire.
Will realised a second inevitable collision within the same minute was about to occur. As Aiden’s momentum hit full ramming speed, the first two boys at point of impact simply stepped out of the way. The two behind, possibly unsighted, were not so lucky. They were bounced out of the way as though they were inflatable dolls battered by a runaway horse.
The next three boys were trampled like the victims of a buffalo stampede and Aiden was clear. Unfortunately he ran through the try line and possibly only stopped due to the rapidly approaching hedge. Wheeler slapped Will and Darren on the backs simultaneously and winked, Will’s kicking indiscretion forgotten.
‘You three are going to be the Clint Eastwood of my attack, the Good, the Bad and the Beefy.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Straight to the showers everyone,’ he hollered. He frowned at one of the boys who was sobbing and holding his arm as if to keep it attached to his body. Ingram’s face was now grass green on both sides and Carl was still prone. His forehead was sprouting a lump the size of a golf ball, sitting proudly above his right eye. Will heard Wheeler mutter under his breath, ‘I suspect I better make my way to casualty.’
7
Will, Aiden and Darren all cheered and waved as Carl and two others were driven past them in the teacher’s car after they had showered and were walking back to school. Will and Darren had spent all their dinner money on sweets before school and Will was regretting that fact, so they jumped at Aiden’s offer to come round his for lunch as he lived near the school.
‘Are you sure your mum won’t mind?’ Will asked. His mum would have blown a gasket if he had rocked up at the house unannounced with two unexpected lunch guests.
‘No, she loves it. My dad works on the rigs off Aberdeen, he does six weeks on and then he is back for six weeks.’ Aiden’s eyes lit up at the thought of food, almost like a mist had cleared. ‘My mum as you may have guessed is a bit of a feeder,’ he continued. ‘She throws herself into her cooking, especially like now when he is away, as she likes to keep busy. She also bakes wedding cakes and such from home. My sister is paranoid about her weight, so there’s always extra for yours truly.’
Will was expecting a huge house in part as a reflection of Aiden’s large stature. The house however was an average three bed Victorian terrace. They walked through a narrow dark alley between the houses and came out into a back garden which was bursting with flowers and plants. It reminded Will of the local florist, but with a pleasant sun bringing the best out of everything.
They entered the kitchen at the rear of the house which Will was expecting to be baking hot and chaotic, with the waft of home cooking tantalising their taste buds. Instead it was white, sparse and bright. Dust motes hung in the air, caught by the sunlight coming through the windows and gave his mother a saintly glow as she looked at them from the kitchen sink.
What was large and warm was the greeting. His mum kissed them all on the cheek which left Darren looking particularly bashful. She ushered them in to the next room, a thousand questions being fired off in a strange lilting accent that Will could not place.
She was blonde, buxom and her sunny infectious manner soon had the boys laughing and shouting across the table, calling her Ingrid as she insisted. The dining room was empty except for the huge oak table and the matching high backed chairs they were sitting on and a large comfy looking armchair in one corner next to the window. A radio cassette player was quietly playing on the window sill in the corner, as it always would be over the years ahead.
As Ingrid left to prepare a little lunch, Will asked about the armchair. Aiden laughed affectionately and said, ‘It’s for Grandpa, for when he comes over from Sweden. He has a bad back but likes to be involved, so he sits there. My mum leaves it there after he has gone back as she says she then feels he is with us all the time.’
As they chatted Will marvelled at the change in Aiden’s demeanour. He had come alive, leading the jokes and pouring the orange squash which his mum had brought in. He even got them all to cheer at his toast to ‘Moffa’ which apparently meant Grandpa in Swedish. It was when his sister arrived that he became the most animated though.
As she arrived, Aiden leapt up and swung her around in a hug-type dance, before plonking her in the seat he had saved for her next to him. Will had never really noticed a girl like her before.
Her hair was white blonde but her skin was a healthy pale brown as though she spent all her time outside playing tennis and riding horses. She had curves in all the right places as his dad would say, but was slim and willowy. It was her eyes though, they were the crowning glory. Light blue with heavy lashes, that made him stare even though he tried not to, as though he was being hypnotised.
Will wasn’t the only one captivated by her beauty. Will dragged his eyes away and first looked at Darren. He had an almost shocked look on his face, which was gradually being replaced by one of desire or possession, like a cat who had just seen a pretty bird land in the back garden. Will looked at Aiden to see if he had noticed, but he was chatting animatedly with her, a look of fondness and pride on his face.
As Aiden got up to his mum’s call, the girl asked who they were.
‘Darren and Will,’ they both replied in unison and she wrinkled her nose and giggled out loud, healthy white teeth showing, which seemed to dispel the tension that Will inexplicably was sensing. He just sat back and watched as Darren and her chatted, although it was more of an interrogation than a conversation.
‘So, what’s your name?’
‘Freja, said with y, but spelt with a j.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Do you like sport?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
At that one she laughed, although she had a small smile on her face as she answered the question. ‘Interested are we?’ she teased, as she reached over and squeezed Darren’s cheek. Will wasn’t sure if it was the patronising gesture to a cheeky child or just the touch of her hand to his face that caused Darren to redden visibly, but she was now the cat, toying with a piece of string.
‘I heard about your fight.’ She leant forward as she said this, eyes wide.
Darren’s
eyes narrowed. ‘Oh yes, from Aiden?’
‘It was all round the school,’ she replied. She paused and then said, ‘Bad boy, are we?’ Although she said it in a way that it was not a negative thing.
This time it was Darren who leant back in his seat. ‘That’s for you to find out, Freja with a j.’
Will felt he didn’t understand the dynamics before him and it would be many years before he understood that some girls were just drawn to danger. Much to his chagrin, it would often seem to be the attractive ones.
All of a sudden Will’s attention was distracted by the plate of food which was presented in front of him, the like of which he had never seen before. His plate was crammed with eggs, bacon, beans and fried tomatoes. In the centre of the plate were three sausages. They were massive. They sat there like enormous spent artillery shells, smoke pouring off them in waves.
He looked up at Aiden’s smiling mother wondering if she had made an error and mistaken him for a thirty year old farmer, just in from the fields. She patted his shoulder and smiling at Darren said, ‘Would you like to say grace?’ She let him stew and fluster for a few seconds, before laughing and saying, ‘Just kidding’ and left them to it. Aiden was already ploughing through his with some efficient conveyor belt technique, making choking sounds as his mother’s comments amused him.
Aiden sniggered as he saw Darren’s fork battling with one of the behemoth bangers, one escaping his jab and scampering across the table towards Freja. She burst into a fit of chuckles at his phallic offering, handing it back to him between two delicate fingers and raising an eyebrow, causing him to furiously blush again.
Will settled into the task at hand, ravenous after the morning exercise. Soon though he began to flag and his mother’s words seeped into his mind, oozing slowly to his conscience as he quickly realised he would never eat all this. ‘It’s rude not to finish your plate when you are a guest’ was one of her many odd mantras. He persisted, finding his breath becoming shallower as his stomach expanded.
Noticing that the others were all pre-occupied with their herculean tasks, he slipped two of his sausages into his trouser pocket and asked Aiden to use the toilet. He cursed out loud as he closed the door, feeling the warm grease leak through to his leg. He wondered briefly who he could blame for it; his mum for her crazy rules or Aiden’s for torture by food.
He slipped them into the cistern, a trick for disposing of unwanted vegetables he had picked up from his brother and returned to his seat. Darren stared at him through suspicious eyes. He had put his cutlery down and looked bloated despite half his plate being full. Freja had left a larger amount. Aiden’s plate however was clean as a whistle as though a starving dog had been given five seconds at the remains and he was eyeing up any possible seconds.
Before he could bring himself to look at his own plate, Ingrid returned and whisked their plates away. Will almost passed out when she said, ‘Don’t worry about eating everything, not everyone is quite the hungry little one, like our boy here. Now who’s for ice cream?’
* * *
As they staggered back into the sunlight, Will realised why Aiden looked so sleepy at school, he was probably stuffed to the gills. They waved to Ingrid, who threatened them with a spatula if they didn’t return soon. Darren and Freja grinned at each other as they left, knowing it wouldn’t be long before they would be seeing each other again.
As they trundled back to school, Will couldn’t help looking at every flat, sun-baked surface and wishing he could pass out on one, like some gigantic snake with a whole cow in its stomach. He could hear the other two chatting about going to see the film ‘The Goonies’ at the cinema that weekend, but was too full to offer any opinion.
Suddenly Darren stopped, and halting Aiden with a tug on his arm, he looked into his friend’s face.
‘I’m going to marry your sister,’ he declared, as though it was as inconsequential as saying ‘I’ll have toast for breakfast’.
‘Is that OK?’ he added, almost as an afterthought but only to be polite as Will could see he believed it was now a mere formality.
Aiden cocked his head to one side and seemed to ponder the statement.
‘Sure,’ he replied. He then laughed and said, ‘I will be able to have her bedroom then.’
8
29th August 1988
Will gave his brother the finger as he rode past him on the way to the school. He had grown over the last six months and his dad had finally relented and bought him a full size racer but Nathan refused to compete with him. He clearly did not want to give him the satisfaction of beating him.
To be fair to Nathan he had been right about the other school spitting on them as they went past. It had become a habit to cycle as fast as you could as you ran the gauntlet. There was possibly nothing more disgusting than having someone else’s warm phlegm land on your forehead. Darren had put an end to that for the most part last year by getting off his bike and demanding to know who was the hardest. Despite there being about six of them, it appeared no-one was.
Nathan hadn’t been quite right about the sodomizing in the toilets although it was rumoured that Ingram got his head flushed in one. Kostas as usual was the guilty party. Ingram denied it after saying he had been wetting his hair down from the tap but he never used that particular toilet again. Carl had also taken a sound beating from a bully called Rudd in the same toilets a couple of days before the end of the previous term and even though he hadn’t said anything, Will knew that Darren had taken it as an affront to his own reputation.
As Edwalton Avenue came into sight, Will could see Darren was there as usual. Three years they had been cycling to school and come rain or shine Darren was always waiting for him. He had never actually been to Darren’s house, in fact he didn’t even know which one it was, only that it was at the bottom.
Darren hopped onto his bike and gave him a toothy grin. They had spent nearly all the holidays together. The four of them had been to the ABC cinema to see Tom Hanks in ‘Big’ and even managed somehow to get Carl in to ‘Die Hard’. Darren had asked loads of questions to distract the teller and Aiden had stood up close to the window, his bulk blocking a clear view of a clearly not fifteen Carl. The teller had given them all a long look but the queue was huge and snaked round the block and in the end he had just waved them through.
The film struck a chord with Darren. He had been back twice on his own to see it and even took Freja the last week before term started as she finally relented to Darren’s continuous requests for a date. They had all shot up in height that year and Darren was now level with her so maybe that was why she had agreed, but there had always been an inevitability about it. There was a strange connection between them that Will could always feel when the two of them were in the same room together.
Darren had never shown any interest in any other girls to his credit and that date was the first for all four of the friends with any girl. Will suspected he was missing something as he couldn’t see the point of spending time with the female of the species when he was having so much fun with his mates, even though despite his obvious indifference he still seemed to receive valentine’s cards and confusing love letters.
The four of them had settled into a rhythm of doing virtually the same things all of the time. They went to Aiden’s after school, loving the atmosphere and refreshments. They had tried Will’s house for a change but it just wasn’t the same. Carl’s lounge had been their location for about twenty minutes once, but as they watched television his dad came in and turned it off stating in no uncertain terms ‘You don’t want to watch that rubbish’.
Carl always had to leave early as his accountant dad generally got home at six and expected him to have been doing his homework for a good hour under the watchful eye of his teacher mother. They were friendly enough to the boys, but you could tell they were not over enamoured with their son’s choice of friends. Carl however was as happy as Larry, revelling in the relative security and safety of being part of what he called ‘
the gang’.
The weekends were generally spent with the four of them tearing around on their bikes or going out in the countryside. Will suspected the oil rig job paid well as Aiden’s dad had a large shiny new Range Rover. When he was back he had all the time in the world for the boys and would take them fishing and on long walks.
Will had expected a giant sized individual, but Aiden’s dad was just really tall. Freja was the apple of his eye, but he surprisingly tolerated Darren’s single-mindedness. Maybe he just recognised his own devotion in Darren’s eyes.
As they approached the bike sheds at the back of the school where they always parked, Will’s heart sank as he saw Daniel Rudd waiting for them. He had his mate Flanagan with him and they both wore an intent look. Darren dropped his bike on the grass and went over to them and Will did likewise, feeling he had little choice.
In his mind he could hear his mother shouting at him at breakfast that morning over the din of the radio. ‘You’ve had a good holiday, but it’s the start of a new year now and you’ve got to work. Buckle down Will, it will be worth it.’ His mum’s face had been all keen. He still felt sad when he thought back to his mother’s crumpled face after he had come home last Christmas and told her he had been put on report for letting a teacher’s tyres down. He hadn’t done it either, Darren had, but he wouldn’t rat on a mate.
She had signed his report card each day sniffing as she handed it back. She hadn’t told his dad though, saying that he had enough on his plate. The next time though he was put on report he forged her signature. She didn’t need to know about the cigarettes which Darren had brought in and they had been caught smoking in the park. He hadn’t enjoyed it, Aiden had refused and Carl had been sick but the seed had been sown.
As Will looked at Rudd’s mean squinting eyes, he suspected his mother didn’t have this in mind when she said get stuck in. Rudd was in the same year as Kostas and was a pea from the same pod. Both of the lads waiting were taller and wider than them but the years had narrowed the gap. Rudd and three of his mates had picked on Darren before after finding him alone in a classroom. Darren had told him about it immediately afterwards.
Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller Page 5
