As the light starts to fade, I cling to the guitar like a buoyancy aid and keep playing until, swoosh-swoosh-swoosh, I circle the drain and tumble into darkness, the tune echoing in my ears like falling water.
ELEANOR CAMPBELL HAS NEVER been this angry in her whole life. Her skirt has rucked up and her knees scrape the tarmac of the playground. Her tiny fists, balled so tight that the knuckles shine, are pounding the sides and stomach of Kevin MacAndrew, who is curled like a hedgehog in self-defence.
‘Give … her … it … back!’
Kevin makes a wordless cry but does not open. If there is any sense in his bellow, it is lost in the noise of the crowd which has swallowed them both. Ella and Kevin are just seven, but the older kids don’t step in – there are rules. The grey Glaswegian sky is starting to spit rain, so she has to finish this before a teacher calls them in. The thing that Ella wants from Kevin is tightly clamped in the folded stodge of him, like a shilling in a Christmas pudding. She punches him again, in the small of the back. Rene hovers somewhere over Ella’s shoulder, hands cupped over her mouth in an expression of suppressed horror, or laughter, or both.
‘Give … it … back, you wee … you wee …’ Ella summons the worst swear word she knows. ‘You wee bugger!’
She punches him hard in the ribs at the moment of the curse and, like an unvanquishable picture-book dragon whose weak spot has been pierced by an arrow, Kevin’s eyes go wide. He uncurls, lying flat on his back, gasping for breath, the object of Ella’s battle displayed on his heaving belly – Rene’s calf-leather pencil case, with the red ribbon tied on the zip.
‘Ha! I win,’ Ella pants, and has a moment to savour her victory before she is lifted off the ground, upwards and backwards, by her collar.
‘Hey! Geddoff me you bugger!’
The curse, used once, slips out with the intoxication of triumph. The crowd gasps.
‘Eleanor Campbell!’
Ella’s eyes go wide at the adult voice, fear quenching her anger. She sees Kevin being hauled to his feet by another teacher while the headmistress marches her in the direction of the school, parting the tide of children like Moses. She hears whispers as they pass.
‘Man, she’s crazy.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘She’s a gypsy – they’re all like that.’
‘She’s no a gypsy – gypsies don’t go tae school.’
‘She is too! She has dark eyes and hair.’
‘Ella Knorr?’
‘No, Eleanor. Eleanor Campbell.’
‘She fights like an animal.’
With a backward glance, Ella spots Rene. She has escaped punishment, picking her pencil case off the floor and holding it tight to her chest. Nobody comes close; Rene is protected. Ella smiles and does not fight as the headmistress steers her with one hand toward the office.
* * *
‘Thank you, Ella.’
Rene is skipping, blonde ringlets bobbing. By Ella’s count, she has already thanked her eleven times since they left school.
‘Stop thankin’ me,’ she mutters under her breath.
Ella has spent the last three hours in the headmistress’ office, writing lines on soft paper with a blunt pencil until her hand cramped. She was spanked first, of course – ten strokes on the bottom being the highest penalty at Peterhead Primary. She would have taken many more to avoid the lines.
Three hours seemed like an eternity packed with eternities, only divided up by the heavy tick of the office clock and a sharp word from the secretary if she stopped. Ella would write some more, then stop, and count by the clock how long it took for the telling-off to come. Her record was forty-seven seconds. Ella finds that the memory of a punishment fades fast after it is over, but this one is taking its time. Like the time she sucked the ink from her father’s fountain pen and had to have her tongue scrubbed with soap.
‘But you got it back!’ Rene chirps happily. ‘I would never have got it back!’
Ella enjoyed the praise at first, but since they got out of the school gates it’s giving her a funny feeling in her stomach. She’s trying to ignore the children in the crowd who are looking or pointing at her, the ones who are whispering to their parents, who turn to look. She hasn’t seen Kevin or his parents. Maybe he went home.
Ella feels heavy, like she can barely lift her feet off the ground. Perhaps it’s the folded paper sitting in her pocket like a girder. She can’t stop thinking of the note, awaiting her father’s signature like a pact with the devil. Two weeks of no playtime, eating her lunch in the headmistress’ office and reading quietly while the sounds of the playground ring at the window.
‘I don’t want to go home.’
She says it quietly, and she’s not sure if Rene has heard her. She whispers because she doesn’t want anyone to hear, but also because it’s an admission of weakness. Rene draws a little closer and puts her arm around Ella.
‘I’m sorry …’
Most kids in their year are met by parents, but she and Rene live so close to the school, in adjacent Bedlay Street, they’re allowed to walk home together. They go to one of their houses, and whichever mother it is will give them something to eat. They do this every weekday except Wednesday, when Rene goes for her guitar lesson with Mr Veitch and her mother picks her up later.
Rene comes to school in the morning with the guitar in its case, smaller than a full-sized one, but still huge compared to Rene, painted blue with an apple tree on one side, done by her dad. Of all Rene’s possessions, this is the one that Ella envies the most, and the one which first convinced her that the Mauchlen family must be wealthy.
Ella has seen the guitar only once, because Rene is under strict instruction not to open the case until her lesson after school. But Ella has a very good memory. Like a camera, says her dad. (Sometimes, when Eleanor wants to remember something, she makes a little click under her breath like she’s taking a picture with her eyes, though she’s never held a real camera.) Ella can close her eyes and see the guitar. The body is the colour of caramel, the tuning pegs shine like six pearls in the dark case, which is purple velvet. The guitar even smells expensive. She ran her fingers over the strings, just once, and listened to them purr before Rene shut the case nervously.
Ella speaks again, feeling the shape of her plan before she knows what it is.
‘If we didn’t go home, we could go to the park …’
Rene takes her hand silently and keeps walking.
‘And if we went to the park … we would be late … Mam would be worried …’
Rene looks around for her older brother, Robert. Ella can’t see him in the crowds.
Ella can’t remember a time when Robert wasn’t around, though it feels like they’ve said no more than a dozen words to each other in all that time. Robert is like Rene’s shadow. He usually walks near to them on the way to and from school,