‘There’s an odd number.’
‘One of you could go on your own.’
Of course, teenage girls don’t do anything on their own, so between them they decided that none of them were going on. Thomas had already sat down with Jenny in a car and paid for both of them, and had no choice but to see it through, even though Jenny’s wonderful idea for fun was now effectively ruined. By me.
I paid for Neil myself, so he couldn’t get out of it by kicking up a fuss about money, seeing as he never had any, and we sat in a car, waiting for the swarthy fairground man to take our money and lock us in the car. Naturally, I took the driver’s seat.
Neil looked nervous, but excited. Then he was calm. ‘What’s it going to be, then?’ he said, once we’d been clamped to the seat. ‘Are we in a bumper car, or is this just dodgems?’
I looked at Jenny, bad-mouthing me in Thomas’s car, while he stared sullenly forward in the driver’s seat. ‘Oh, bumper cars, definiteiy.’
The power came on. We were live. And I spent the next five minutes just ramming the fuck out of Thomas and Jenny’s car, hitting Jenny’s side as often as I could. I’ve never been happier. Thomas was holding on for dear life, but he was loving it too, I could tell. We were both laughing our tits off at the wildness of it all. And in that moment, I was really getting the whole thing about choice and freedom that Neil was always banging on about. Right then, I did not give a fuck about keeping Thomas and Jenny happy to maintain some stupid position in a teenage social structure; I just wanted to smash the fuck out of them because that’s what I wanted, and had chosen, to do. In that moment, just that one little moment, and not for nearly long enough, I was looking through the door inside me that Neil had shown me all that time ago at the talent show. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
I wasn’t really concentrating very hard on how Jenny and Thomas were taking it, but I doubt they were enjoying it that much, especially since Thomas never managed to recover sufficiently to bash me back. Team sports, you see. Improve reflexes and coordination. Teach him to spend every break for the past four years on the grass verge. And none of the funfair folk were stopping me. Tums out they really didn’t give a fuck, like Neil said.
Then, when the power was switched off, and I was stopped with my bumper five centimetres away from another successful ram of Jenny, everything collapsed. Jenny looked straight at me with a furious gaze, and I was back, trapped in that silly prison I’d built for myself where it actually mattered what a stupid cow like Jenny thought. But the memory of looking through that door stayed with me the rest of the evening, and that was what made it so magical.
Jenny sat there glaring at me while we waited for the cars to unlock, for what seemed like for ever, and when the collective click of the release was heard, it was no release at all, because now I had to face Hannah. Me and Neil got up out of the car, our knees weak, while Jenny and Thomas strode ahead the best they could to where her friends were waiting for her to verbally destroy me. Neil was still laughing to himself. ‘Have fun?’ I asked him, putting off the shit I was inevitably going to walk into for another few seconds.
‘Yes,’ he said, between chuckles.
‘I thought you didn’t like dodgems.’
‘Well, I’ve never had anybody to drive me before.’
Obviously. His dad. Not there.
We took the walk of death off the dodgem track. Except the execution never came. Because Jase and Kate had turned up, and Kate’s bouncy, horny excitability was now the light bulb that the girls were flittering around, entranced by her one extra year of life and evident knowledge of what spunk tasted like. Even Jenny had to take a back seat to that.
‘Hi, Chris! Hi, Neil,’ she called, waving.
‘Nice of you to make it,’ I said. Jenny gave me a sideways glance.
‘Yeah,’ said Thomas, ‘thought you’d be too busy taking it up the arse or something.’
‘Thomas!’ cried Jenny, slapping him in the chest. ‘Don’t be disgusting!’
Kate just laughed. She wasn’t a girl who minded people talking about her getting it up the arse. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not today. I didn’t have any jelly. No, just the front way today. With this big lovely cock!’ She grabbed Jase in a very inappropriate manner. He looked quite embarrassed, but somehow, quite smug too. The girls sniggered. Neil looked shocked, as if he hadn’t heard a girl talk that way before. Truth is, neither had I, none of us had. I mean, we’d been saying far worse things in the playground for years, but here was a real girl talking about a real dick she was really touching, through denim and boxer shorts. It was all getting more and more real. Yet I knew the best thing was to appear nonchalant about these things. I just hoped that Jenny didn’t pick up on Neil’s reaction. It’s the sort of thing her evil mind could use against him.
‘Look! Look!’ Kate cried out suddenly, still rubbing Jase’s manhood absent-mindedly through his jeans. ‘I want to go on that!’
It was a Cyclone. Now, a Cyclone is kind of like a waltzer, only it’s in the open air and the tattooed fairground man can’t spin you round to make you go faster. What essentially happens is that the whole thing goes round and round while your car is thrust forward as if you’re about to hit the barrier and die, until it pulls back at the last minute, and then you think you’re safe for about half a second until it shoves you forward again, and you think you’re going to die again, and it happens about a million times before they let you off. I didn’t want to go on the Cyclone.
But everybody else did because Kate did. Like a shoal of fish, everyone moved towards it. Somehow making a fuss about how I didn’t want to go on didn’t seem like a very cool thing to do right then. So, like everyone else, I stood at the barrier, waiting for the ride to stop and the previous victims to unload.
Just watching it made me shit-scared. The whole thing was held together by big iron bolts that seemed destined to ping out, sending the ears straight at us at a thousand miles an hour and decapitating everybody. But I couldn’t show my fear. No, I had to hold Hannah close, because she was pretending to be scared to show off. At least it stopped her making a fuss over the dodgems, I guess.
The ride slowed, and stopped. There was the click of the lock on the bar that pinned your legs in, and the dazed evacuation of whooping teenagers with wobbly legs. It was time.
I’ve never had a panic attack, but I think that was the nearest I’ve ever come. I was so close to just legging it, it wasn’t funny. But then, and this will sound soft, when I saw that there were three people to a car, and that Neil, who’d been excitedly leaning over the barrier like a dog sticking its head out of a car window, would have to go on with me and Hannah, it seemed all right. Right then, I trusted Neil to make it OK.
And you know what, it was. Hannah was screaming, all the girls were screaming, Neil was screaming, Thomas was looking bored and I was screaming inside, but it was OK. However violently we were thrown towards the barrier, at whatever speed, and despite the fact that we were hemmed in with no means of escape, I actually didn’t mind. I’m not saying I enjoyed it or anything, but I just felt that, having Neil there, I could see things through his eyes a bit. The idea of letting go, letting things happen, having an adventure, it was like him and the music. He wasn’t in control, but he let things happen, and occasionally it would sound … OK. Just for that brief few minutes – which seemed to last a very long time, by the way – I understood, I really understood it all. Choices, control, responsibility. Sometimes the choice you make is to jump off a cliff and see what happens. And maybe the fall isn’t always so bad as it looks. Maybe that’s why Neil could stand in front of the entire school screaming and not worry about what happened next. The fall doesn’t kill you. At least it shouldn’t do.
Eventually the ride was over, thank God, and we got off. Kate wanted Jase to win her something by shooting, so it suddenly wasn’t cool to want to go on any more rides, although Neil would have given his arm to. Not that he had any money left. No paper round, you see. An
d so the evening gradually wound down, and we all went our separate ways.
Once I’d walked Hannah home and got a bit of an ear-bashing about the dodgems, it was time to go home. I was on my way back, down the so very suburban streets of Quireley – Cresston Avenue, I think – when I saw ahead of me someone standing still, looking up at a street lamp. It was as if they were in deep concentration, no, more than that, rapture even. As I got closer I could see that it was Neil. In fact, apart from looking at the light, and the surrounding semi-detached houses, and up at the clear deep blue starry sky, the moon half-full, I could not for the life of me work out what he was doing.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Not gone home yet?’
‘No,’ said Neil, still staring at the light.
‘What are you up to then?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, softly.
‘What is?’
‘All of this,’ he said, a big happy smile on his face as if he’d just seen Jesus. ‘These houses, what’s inside them, the street, the light, the sky. It’s just so beautiful. Suburban beauty.’
‘Ah, I guess. Well, I’ll see you in school tomorrow, yeah?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Neil, not taking his eye off the light.
I walked off, but before I turned a corner I looked back at him and his light and his street and his sky. He was right. It was very, very beautiful.
21
It was the last day of school, ever. Well, not exactly, as half of us would be shipped off to the sixth-form college on the other side of the Fields after the summer holidays, and we still had to sit our exams, but you just came in specially for those, you didn’t have to stay all day or anything. And besides, we were all doing different options, so some of us finished about a week before others. Which was tough shit for the kids who were doing German, who had to wait ages for their very last exam, but pretty fucking funny for the rest of us.
But this was the last day of school proper, with lessons and stuff, and the last thing in the day was one final assembly for all the fifth-years. They had us all sat in the hall on stackable chairs, like they did at the talent show. There were chair monitors who laid them out and stacked them back up again at the end. All the chair monitors were mongers. Fuck knows what they got out of it. A badge or a different-patterned tie, I think.
So there we all were, in rows. Ben next to me, Thomas and Jase not far behind. Neil somewhere over the other side. Teachers standing like guards along the wall. We were all being as rowdy as we liked because it was the last day and we just didn’t care any more. Just a few exams and all those cunts would have their power over us taken away for ever. And this is what the assembly was about, of course. It was almost like we’d won.
The deputy head called for quiet as the headmaster looked on, too senior to have to ask for it himself. Five minutes later, once the repeated requests had turned into bad-tempered demands, he just about got it. The headmaster stepped up onto the stage to speak, the closed curtains behind him.
Can’t remember what he said. Probably some speech that was meant to prepare us for the world outside and our life ahead, our freedoms and opportunities, and naturally and far more importantly, our responsibilities. Some words of advice that we should always remember. But they can’t have been much use because I can’t remember any of them. What I do remember is this. After he’d made his silly speech, the headmaster paused. Then he said, ‘And now, gentlemen, we have a surprise for you.’
We all raised our heads like meerkats, trying to see what it might be.
‘Mr Evans has very kindly agreed for the brass band to play a few numbers for you. So without further ado, take it away, Mr Evans and the Quireley Boys’ Brass!’
There was a mass groan mixed in with the perfunctory applause as the curtain opened to reveal the mongers who made up the band already launching into the first piece, the theme to Van der Valk. Mr Evans stood in front of them, his back to us, the tails of his velvet jacket flailing behind and his silver hair exploding as he gesticulated wildly. Actually, not all the boys were mongers, some of them were OK, but they were the sons of hard-working blue-collar real-ale drinkers. We didn’t really mix in the same circles. Brass bands probably made more sense to them.
The sheer volume of the band pretty much blocked out the sound of any criticism. Even so, I could hear Thomas muttering behind me about the ‘queer’ and how he was ‘fucking them all up the arse’. Jase said something but I didn’t hear it. ‘I don’t care, he’s a fucking queer and they’re fucking shit,’ Thomas said in reply.
The music finished. We all applauded, not really thinking about it.
‘That was fucking rubbish,’ muttered Ben next to me. ‘Why can’t they play something decent, like “Overkill” by Motörhead?’
I didn’t say anything, but something clicked in my head when Ben said that. There, in his velvet jacket, with his crazy hair, bent as a thrupenny bit and not giving a fuck, Mr Evans was rock ’n’ roll. He was the real deal. He didn’t play rock ’n’ roll, but he was rock ’n’ roll. Different thing, and I didn’t get it before, but I got it then, for a few minutes. He knew we all hated it. He knew we all took the piss and called him a queer who bummed the band, but he didn’t care, he really didn’t care. He had what Lemmy had, and what Axl Rose and everyone else we liked had. He went out of his way to entertain, but if you didn’t like it, that was your tough shit. Because he knew he was doing things the way he felt they should be done. He had what we needed. Like the dodgems, this was a lesson I forgot immediately afterwards for years, but now after everything, it’s crystal clear in my mind. If only I had held on to it, maybe it would have worked out for us. If only, if only, if only.
They played a few more things from the nineteenth century, and stuff from the twenties with Mr Evans turning round and doing the Charleston. He just did not give a fuck. Then it was over. The curtains closed to a bit of applause, the deputy head pushing his hands up in an attempt to raise the volume.
‘Right, clear off, you lot,’ he said, as the chair monitors stacked their chairs for the very last time.
‘That was a load of total fucking wank,’ said Thomas as we left.
‘Yeah, fucking cock,’ said Ben.
Jase shrugged. ‘Well, it’s not really my thing, but at least they’re doing something, know what I mean?’
‘Fucking wish they weren’t,’ grumbled Ben.
‘Listen,’ said Jase, knowing a lost cause when he saw one, ‘there’s something going on down the Fields tonight. Do you lot fancy coming?’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Well, do you know about the bonfire?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a thing on the Fields, and basically it’s a clearing where the council sometimes have a bonfire to burn up all the dead wood. Now, all the dead wood’s kept there until they have enough for a big fuck-off bonfire. Some of the lads from college have been going down there the past couple of weekends and fighting it up, getting drunk, stoned, just hanging out really.’
Drunk. Stoned. Mystical words of power.
‘Yeah, I’ll be down there,’ said Ben.
‘Yeah, sounds good,’ I said.
‘Thomas?’
‘Yeah, s’pose.’
‘What about Neil? Do you think he’d be interested?’
‘Nah,’ I said, ‘he’ll just say he’s revising.’
Neil was taking his exams very seriously, despite being so ideologically opposed to the system that made him do them. I think he just liked proving to people he was clever. As we spoke we could see him walking across the playground with a load of textbooks heading for the school library. Someone had said they’d seen Miss Millachip giving him a goodbye hug earlier.
‘Right, I’ll see you down there, then,’ said Jase after we’d agreed to meet at the entrance to the Fields with our bikes and girlfriends. Well, not that Ben had a girlfriend, but the rest of us. Jase with Kate, me with Hannah, Thomas with Jenny. Ben on his own.
And so
there we were, half seven, that evening. We hung around at the entrance for a bit, talking crap, as if we weren’t that bothered about it, but really we were probably all a bit scared. Going to the bonfire was like going to meet our adolescence full on. It just seemed decadent, sitting round a bonfire like that. Dangerous. Anything could happen round a fire. In my mind I pictured everyone getting off with each other while wild crazy sixth-formers jumped through the flames. And besides all that, we weren’t entirely sure where it was. Then some guy called Jeff, one of the sixth-form metallers, rode up. He was cool, and everybody liked him, even though his name was Jeffrey.
‘Wotcha,’ he said. ‘You lot going down the bonnie?’
‘Yeah,’ said Thomas.
‘Yeah, so am I,’ said Jeff. ‘Do you mind if I ride down with you?’
‘No, s’pose not,’ said Thomas, his usual accommodating self.
And so Jeff led us like the Pied Piper to the bonfire. Only I suppose we weren’t going to drown like the rats in the story, because it was a fucking bonfire, obviously. Maybe we’d disappear like the children, though. And maybe we did disappear as children that night. Maybe our adult lives started there, purified of the last vestiges of our immature selves by the fire. Or maybe we never stopped being children at all.
You could smell the smoke and feel the heat as you made your way down the dirt track through the trees. But you had to clamber up a ridge before you could see it. And there it was. A huge fucking bonfire right in the middle of the Fields that none of us even knew existed until that day. To get to it, you went down the other side of the slope and over a pile of logs and branches at the bottom waiting to be burnt, but the view from that ridge was really what you needed to see. It was almost what I imagined it to be. Metallers and grungers and half-and-halfs, some gathering wood or stoking the fire, some running about like lunatics, including some nutter who actually was jumping right through the flames, and the rest who were just kind of hanging out, sitting on logs, smoking roll-ups. It wasn’t quite the mass orgy I’d pictured in my head, but there were a few couples snogging or holding hands. How many were there? In my mind now I see about a hundred, but I expect it was only twenty or thereabouts in reality. But this was it, our Promised Land. We’d been waiting for this all our lives, we just didn’t know until we saw it. We slid down the bank.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll Page 14
