My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall)

by Stuart David

  When we get out of the crowd, I’m still facing the wrong way. I keep trying to turn round, but he’s pulling me too quickly and it’s all I can do to make sure a foot touches the ground now and again while I continue to stare up at the sky. Eventually I feel myself being forced through a door and pushed down onto a seat, and I drop my head forward and try to catch my breath. I feel badly winded. My face is alive with pain, and blood drips down out of my nose.

  I hold my nose shut with my hand and then look up, look out a window. I can’t work out where I am at first, and then I have the most terrifying experience of my life. Everything outside the window suddenly starts rushing toward me, extremely fast, and I throw my free hand up in front of my face, expecting something to hit me. Expecting something to kill me. Nothing does, though. Nothing happens at all, and I slowly lower my hand again and realize I’m not in a classroom like I thought I was. In fact, I’m not in any kind of room at all. I’m in a car. I’m in a car being driven down the road outside the school, at a breakneck speed, and it suddenly becomes clear that it wasn’t Bailey who was dragging me about after all. It was my uncle Ray. The big fat crazy bastard. And it’s his car I’m in too. His opera-star taxi. And he’s sitting beside me crunching the gears and flooring the accelerator and laughing like a hyena who’s just heard the funniest joke in the world.

  27

  “Boy oh boy,” Uncle Ray shouts. “You’re the man, Jackie. You . . . are . . . the . . . man!”

  I don’t really feel like the man. I feel as if I’m about to burst into tears. My face is in agony, and my nose won’t stop bleeding.

  “What a punch!” Uncle Ray says. “What a crack! You really showed that ball sack. You were on fire, Jack.”

  “He’s not really a ball sack,” I say. “He’s my best pal. Usually.”

  Uncle Ray slaps his hands together. “Fantastic!” he shouts. “Even better. There’s nothing like a good punch-up to deepen a friendship. You’re a chip off the old block, Jackdaw.”

  He takes one hand off the wheel and pushes my chin up without looking at me. “Tip your head back,” he says. “That’s it. And pinch your nose. Now you’ve got it. Just stay like that till it stops bleeding. It won’t take long.”

  I hear him rummaging about in the glove compartment while I’m staring at the roof. There’s a screech of brakes and the blast of a horn, and then he drops a packet of hankies onto my lap and tells me to hold one up against my nose. He shouts out the window for a while, and when he’s finished I ask him if he knows whether Bailey caught Sandy or not.

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think he legged it. What’s with that headmaster, anyway? What’s his game? You’ve got to let a fight run its course in the playground. That’s why there’s so much disruption in the classrooms nowadays. Too much pent-up aggression. If I was running a school . . .”

  He carries on babbling while I fish out a hankie with one hand and take my phone out with the other. I manage to get the phone up in front of my face and send off a text to Sandy.

  “Did Bailey get you?” it says.

  If he did, it doesn’t make much difference that Uncle Ray got me out of there before Bailey reached us. As long as he got Sandy I’m in exactly the same position as Chris Yates, and my long and illustrious academic career is probably at an end.

  “Ten years I’ve been picking my boy up from school,” Uncle Ray continues. “Ten years, and not once has he done me the honor of being in a punch-up when I arrive. But you, Jack! Two days! It broke my heart to have to pull you out of there. What were you fighting about anyway—a girl?”

  “Probably,” I say. “I don’t really know.”

  He sounds delighted. “Fighting just for the joy of fighting!” he says. “That’s exactly the way it should be. Who needs a reason, Jack? Am I right?”

  I want to tell him he’s probably not, but it would be more trouble than it would be worth, so I just make a vague noise. He is right about one thing, though: he certainly knows what he’s talking about when it comes to fighting injuries. My nose stops bleeding in a matter of minutes, and I let my head fall forward slowly, keeping the tissue under my nose and waiting for it to start up again, but it doesn’t. I pull down the sunshade with the mirror on it to have a look at my face, and it doesn’t look as bad as I expected it to. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as it feels, and it certainly doesn’t look as bad as Uncle Ray’s. There’s no black eye, no swollen chin. Maybe all of that will come later, but at the moment it looks fine. I use the tissue to clean off the crusty blood round about my nostrils, and then I push the sunshade back up again while Uncle Ray carries on ranting about his pipsqueak son.

  “Where is Harry anyway?” I ask, and Uncle Ray tells me he’s walking home.

  “He always walks when we’ve had a blowout,” he says. “He’s a real huff merchant. Can’t take a bit of fun.”

  It’s only then that I remember about the ruin of my grand scheme. All the fight madness had cleared it out of my head for a little while, but thinking about Harry and the mess I’ve left him in brings it all rushing back. And now I’ve got all that unhappiness as well as the pain in my face to contend with. Plus, I’m pretty sure Sandy’s nonreply to my text means he’s sitting in Bailey’s office at this very moment, organizing my expulsion. I stare out at the road and again feel like bursting into tears.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do here,” Uncle Ray says. “I’m going to take you to the pub, Jack. We’ll have a few beers, have a few laughs. This calls for a celebration. You’re a man now. No landlord in the country can refuse you entry to their pub this afternoon. I’ll take you to Billy’s place.”

  Thankfully, he stops talking for a little while then. I don’t know if I could have taken much more of it. Unfortunately, though, the silence itself is short-lived. Almost immediately he puts some opera on the car stereo and starts warbling along with it, taking both hands off the wheel now and again to give full expression to whatever he thinks he’s singing. I try desperately to come up with a way out of this pub thing, but we’re already heading away from home, over in another part of town. He stops at a set of traffic lights, and I wonder if I could just open the door and run away. I could tell him later on I’d sustained a concussion in the fight and I went temporarily mad. Maybe he’s so engrossed in the opera that he won’t even notice I’m gone.

  I look around at the street and wonder where I would head for, where would be the best place to take shelter. Then I see Cyrus out there. He’s walking along the sidewalk with his dad, and he sees me sitting in the taxi and gives me the finger. I try to look at him in a friendly way and give him a friendly wave, aware that I want him back on my side to prevent him telling anyone about the ladder idea. He keeps looking at me, as if he’s trying to decide whether to return the friendly gesture or not. Then he comes to his decision and gives me the finger again.

  After that, all hell breaks loose. Uncle Ray starts blasting the horn and I totally jump out of my seat, wondering what’s going on. At first I think it’s got something to do with Cyrus giving me the finger, but it hasn’t. He’s blasting the horn at Cyrus’s dad and waving insanely at him, while Cyrus’s dad gives a strained little smile and then tries to get on with his life. Uncle Ray’s not having any of that, though. He rolls his window down and sticks the top half of his body outside. “What’s up, man?” he shouts. “How are things?”

  The lights change to green, and cars behind us start beeping their horns. I haul Uncle Ray back inside, and he’s got a big lunatic grin on his face.

  “That’s the guy I was telling you about,” he says, shouting over the opera that’s still blasting out of the stereo. “The mad bastard I told you about the other day.”

  “The one with the tinfoil hat?” I ask.

  Uncle Ray nods. “Not that one,” he says. “The other one. The one I told you about the other day.”

  He eases away from the lights and rolls his window back up again. Over the last couple of days, he’s told me about so
many mad passengers he’s had in his taxi, I don’t really know which one he’s talking about.

  “The one who collects old shoes and turns them into plant pots?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “The one that went fishing in the thunderstorm?”

  “Not that one,” he says impatiently. “The other one. The one I told you about the other day. Remember? The totally bampot one?”

  And then he tells me which one he’s talking about, and when he does . . . the whole world changes.

  28

  “Stop the car!” I shout. “Stop the car, Uncle Ray!”

  He looks at me as if I’ve gone mental, and asks me what I’m talking about.

  “Just pull over,” I say. “We’re getting too far away. Stop here. Anywhere.”

  There are some advantages to being “the man.” Uncle Ray keeps looking at me kind of funny, but he slows the car down and pulls over. Then he turns to me as if he wants an explanation. He doesn’t seem annoyed or anything, just curious, but I’ve already got my door open and I’m struggling to unfasten my seat belt.

  “Come on,” I tell him. “I’ll explain the plan on the way.”

  I hit the ground running, and it’s a good few seconds before I hear Uncle Ray’s door slamming shut behind me. I have to slow down for a minute to let him catch up, but then he’s huffing and puffing beside me and I pick up the pace again.

  “Remember my scheme?” I say. “The one where I’m trying to get my friend to the school dance?”

  Uncle Ray nods, but he’s already too out of breath to speak.

  “That’s him we just saw,” I explain. “The crazy man from your taxi is his dad.”

  I lay the whole plan out for him while we’re running, and he seems over the moon. Once he’s got it, I get back up to full speed, and he starts to fall behind again.

  “This is the life, Jackdaw,” he shouts, thumping along the pavement and breathing so hard, I can still hear him up where I am. “This is the life. What a day. What a day!”

  But when I get back to where Cyrus and his dad were earlier, I can’t see them anywhere. I look up and down the street, then from shop window to shop window, looking inside to see if they’re there. They’ve totally vanished. I stand and watch Uncle Ray struggling up the pavement, his face turning purple and his hair all wet and sweaty. Then I look across the road, and there they are. I point toward them for Uncle Ray’s benefit and start weaving in and out of the traffic, being careful not to lose sight of them again.

  “Cyrus!” I shout. “Cyrus! Hang on a minute! Wait there!”

  They’re just approaching a parked car, and Cyrus puts his hand on the door, getting ready to climb inside. I give him the extra-friendly wave again, in case he thinks this is anything to do with him giving me the finger, and I wish I could go back in time and not make up that thing about everybody hating him, in the dining hall. He stands looking at me, and I do the friendly wave again. He still doesn’t wave back, but he doesn’t give me the finger, either, and I take that as a good sign. Then I catch up with him. His dad is standing on the same side of the car as he is, just straightening up after throwing something onto the back seat, and I hunch over and grip the top of my knees for a few seconds, trying to get my breath back.

  “What is it?” Cyrus says in a nonplussed way. I get the feeling that he’d say something a bit stronger if his dad wasn’t there. “We’re in a rush. What do you want, Jack?”

  I pull myself into an upright position and put one hand on Cyrus’s shoulder to try and steady myself. His dad’s looking at me curiously, and Cyrus tries to brush my hand away.

  “Call me The Jackdaw,” I say, breathing heavily. “Remember? Call me The Jackdaw.”

  “What do you want?” he says again, having another go at removing my hand, but I’m holding on tight.

  “I’ve cracked it,” I tell him. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to the dance, Cyrus. I can get you there after all.”

  He frowns while he’s looking at me, then turns to look at his dad, as if he might know something about this.

  “I’m afraid not,” his dad says. “Cyrus has been grounded for two months. He won’t be attending the dance.”

  I give Cyrus a big smile and look across the road. Uncle Ray has just started crossing toward us, holding his hand up to stop the traffic as he comes. He looks like the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, with his big purple face and his black eye, the sweat dripping out of his hair and that big swollen gash on his chin. But he’s grinning like he’s never had so much fun in his life, and then he bursts into a few lines from one of his opera things, throwing his hands out in front of him like a maniac.

  “That’s my uncle Ray,” I say to Cyrus’s dad. “He wants to talk to you about Cyrus’s situation.”

  Cyrus’s dad suddenly looks as if the roof has caved in, and I can tell he’s realized his life has just taken a major turn for the worse. I pull Cyrus off to one side and leave Uncle Ray to do his thing.

  “See my uncle Ray’s black eye?” I say quietly to Cyrus while the adults are conducting their reunion over by the car.

  “Hard to miss,” Cyrus whispers. It’s like Uncle Ray is a magnet for Cyrus’s eyes, and he can’t look away from him.

  I pause to savor the moment, and then I hit him with it.

  “Your dad did that,” I say. “Your dad gave him that beauty.”

  And the spell is broken. All at once, Cyrus only has eyes for me, and he seems pretty angry.

  “No he didn’t,” he says. “My dad’s a pacifist.”

  I shake my head. “Your mum’s a pacifist,” I tell him. “Your dad’s a brawler. And that’s why you’re going to the dance.”

  The anger becomes confusion, and Cyrus looks over at his dad and Uncle Ray again with this expression on his face like I think I must get in French sometimes, when Mrs. Peterson is asking me a question. His dad and Uncle Ray are chatting away over there, Uncle Ray big and jolly, Cyrus’s dad all punctured and defeated. Cyrus is finding it impossible to comprehend what’s going on.

  “Your dad was in my uncle Ray’s taxi the other night,” I tell him. “They got into an argument about Uncle Ray’s opera singing, and your dad asked him outside for a fight. Your dad gave him that black eye and the big cut on his chin. Now my uncle Ray is telling your dad if he doesn’t make sure you get to the dance, he’ll come round and tell your mum all about the fight. How would she react to that?”

  The light starts to dawn in Cyrus’s eyes. He starts nodding, slowly at first, then faster. “She’d go through the roof,” he says. “She’d never forgive him.”

  “And we don’t even need Uncle Ray now,” I say. “You can tell your mum yourself if you need to. Uncle Ray just lends the whole thing a bit of authority.”

  He grabs my hand and starts shaking it, then does this strange little skipping thing. “I’m going to the dance,” he says. “I’m going. With Amy. I can’t believe it. You’re a legend, Jackdaw.”

  I struggle to get my hand back.

  “So we’re on?” I ask him. “You’ll back up Harry’s story? He can go to Bailey now?”

  “Definitely,” Cyrus says. “I’ll even go with him. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

  I step a bit closer to him and lower my voice. “Just don’t tell anyone about that ladder idea from earlier,” I say. “Keep that to yourself, Cyrus. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  “Understood,” he says, and I tell him not to say anything about the whole Bailey thing in front of Uncle Ray either.

  “He’s Harry’s dad,” I explain. “It’s him we’re scamming to get Harry into university.”

  He tells me his lips are sealed, and then he takes his phone out and makes a show of erasing the recording he made of me in the playground, the first time I spoke to him.

  “No need for that anymore,” he says, and I thank him. Then we stand together watching our dupes for a while. They’re doing some kind of weird bear-hug thing, mostly at Uncle Ray’s insistence by the lo
ok of it. Cyrus’s dad squirms and writhes, trying to get free of the thing, and when it’s finally over Uncle Ray gives him a big kiss on the cheek and slaps his bum.

  “You’re all set, son,” he shouts to Cyrus, and Cyrus gives me the thumbs-up and runs off.

  I watch Uncle Ray messing up Cyrus’s hair and generally abusing his human rights while Cyrus looks half terrified and half elated. Then I decide it’s time to finally bite the bullet and see if Sandy has replied to my text yet.

  He has.

  It takes me forever to work up the courage to open it. I stare at the little symbol for what seems like eons, hardly even remembering to breathe. When I finally pop it open, though, he’s only sent me one word. It takes me a good few seconds to realize it’s the only word that matters.

  “No.”

  I feel my whole body relaxing as the oxygen rushes back in, and then I hear Uncle Ray speaking to me. I’ve no idea how he came to be standing beside me without me noticing.

  “That’s the most fun I’ve had in years,” he says. “What a privilege to be part of one of your schemes, Jack. You’re something else altogether. You’re a one-off.”

  He puts an arm round my shoulder, and we watch as Cyrus and his dad drive away. Cyrus is giving us a big friendly wave, but his dad looks inconsolable.

  “Poor guy,” I say, and give Cyrus the finger, just for fun.

  “So how about that celebration?” Uncle Ray asks. “Next stop Billy’s public house?”