‘Bloody baboon,’ hisses Watkins as he goes past.
My face burns and my fingers tighten on the pencil. The words start to blur. I stop and look at the squiggles I’ve made. Has it come out right this time? Peter’ll check this sentence.
Good old Peter. Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my . . .
I shove it across and Peter gives it a quick look-see. He rolls his eyes, shakes his head and marks an X in sign language on the desk.
It’s a bad one.
I stare at the page in a desperate panic. What’s wrong with it? Sometimes I get bs and ds mixed up, or words back to front.
Watkins is prowling back, metre stick swishing, searching for an outlet for that little fire he’s banked up. Sharon Fraser has a lot to answer for.
He brings it down with a crash beside me.
‘Let’s have a look, Solly boy, shall we? What is it this morning? Egyptian hieroglyphics? Martian?’
‘Ignore him,’ mutters Peter.
And I try. Really I do.
My jotter is dangling from Watkins’ fingers. He sneers as he reads it out. ‘No saturbay I was a footdall maSh . . .’ His face is pushed up against mine, cheese and oniony breath smells in my face. Crêpey skin sags around his eyes, little red broken veins make crazed lines on the whites.
Don’t stand so stand so stand so close to me
‘You are a lazy stupid boy.’ Thump, thump, on the desk. Fingers whorled and nicotined clench the ruler. ‘Nobody in my class turns in work like this.’ Thump, thump. ‘Nobody.’
I wonder what would happen if I actually told Watkins about my weekend? This time Dad’s bender lasted all Saturday and Sunday. I eventually got him to bed at four o’clock this morning. I looked in on him before I left for school. He had peed on the sheets. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t have the time and he’s too big for me to move anyway.
Where he’d got the stuff from I don’t know. No matter how broke we are he always manages to get his hands on some more booze. Charm, that’s what he’s got. By the bucket. Neighbours lend him money. Shops give him tick. Pubs, where he’s been barred only weeks before, will end up serving him. ‘Just the one, mind.’
Once he was missing for hours and I found him at our town’s big hotel in among a wedding party. Everybody thought he was someone else’s uncle. He’d been getting free drink all afternoon and evening. When I arrived he was cracking jokes and telling them wild stories about his life in the Far East. The Far East! The furthest east he’s ever been is Edinburgh.
He’s good with the stories though. Maybe that’s why I stayed with him. Telling them, reading them, making them up. The sounds of the words spilling out of his mouth and into my heart. Playing all the parts. Gollum and Gandalf the Grey. Capering around my bedroom at two in the morning, pulling the quilt from the bed to make a hobbit hole on the floor.
I suppose I fell in love with him then, and hated her, my mother, shrieking from the door. ‘You’ve woken that child again. You drunken fool!’
Well, who’s a fool now? Tom fool. April fool. Play the fool.
‘OUT!’ Watkins is yelling.
He takes my exercise book and chucks it across the classroom. Suits me. I shrug and shoulder the ruckie. Peter grimaces. The rest stay low. With me gone he’ll be looking for another target. One of the girls probably.
Melanie Wilson. She gives me a tiny sympathetic wave as I pass her. Poor Mousy Melly. She’ll be in tears before morning break.
Now I’m in the school yard. Its emptiness accuses me. I’m supposed to stand out until first bell, but I’m not stopping here this morning. I look back as I slouch away through the gate and down the road. Take your time. Don’t hurry. Make with the real slow insolence, just in case Watkins is watching. The school windows stare back at me. Stupid, blank and vacant.
Like my dad’s eyes when he’s totally crashed.
God, I hate that place.
I count the money in my anorak pocket. Enough for a burger.
I’ll need to get off the street quick. Can’t hang about. The local Miami Vice know me as a school dogger. They’ll round me up and take me back, which would probably involve three officers and two cars. Meanwhile the Post Office might be getting turned over.
Yes, your lordship, I was being questioned as to the rightful ownership of the aforesaid Crunchie bar, submitted by the procurator as evidence, Exhibit A, when the getaway car accelerated away from the Post Office and screeched past us doing ninety in a built-up area.
Did the constable say anything at the time?
Yes, your lordship, he said, Some of those old-age pensioners are in a real hurry to get their allowance, aren’t they?
I climb over the graveyard wall and drop down on the other side.
Something is wrong.
The soil beneath the wall has been disturbed.
Someone has been here.
They have left equipment close by. Tarpaulins and scaffolding. Heavy boot prints stamped in the earth, gouge marks on the grass. I don’t like this. Further down the path there are notices pinned up. I pull one down and stuff it in my pocket to look at later.
What’s going on?
I wander about, restless and agitated. There is a great disquiet all around me. Why?
I lean against the tombstones. The familiar carvings of winged souls and hourglasses are old friends. These markings I can read and understand. I run my fingers over them. The crumbling old stone, mellow and marmalade-coloured, is warm beneath my fingers. The contours are soft and welcome my touch. The later grey slabs stand firm, their faces dark and strong. I reach up to the old carved urn. The cloth draped over it is smooth and reassuring, soft folds falling, falling . . .
There is a flowering cherry right beside it. I gaze high through its branches. Its full frothy head is a spring song in the sky.
I go back to the wall and get myself comfortable on my ledge, with my burger and comic. The sun is on my face. I close my eyes.
Then I hear the sound of a heavy engine. I peer out through the stones. There’s a district council van driving through the bottom gate. Workies start piling out with picks and shovels. A larger car following them bumps up on the grass verge. Two official-looking plonkers get out and stride up the path towards me.
I cower down lower in my hiding place. They can’t possibly see me, can they? They stop a few metres short of my wall.
‘Drainage,’ says the smaller man. He’s wrapped up in a tan raincoat, hands stuck in his pockets. He rocks back and forth on his heels and then stamps his feet a couple of times. ‘Drainage, Professor Miller. That’s going to be a big problem.’
‘Mmmm?’ The one called Professor Miller seems more interested in the gravestones. He has stopped to examine one. He traces the line of the pattern with his fingers, his hands gliding lightly along the surface like a doctor’s, searching, probing. ‘This is extremely interesting.’ He has the trace of an Irish accent in his voice. ‘What is the history of this place?’
‘It