Men From the Boys
Tony Parsons
For my son.And for my daughter, too.
‘I remember everything!’ cried Pinocchio. ‘Tell me quickly, dear snail, where did you leave my good fairy? What is she doing? Has she pardoned me? Does she still remember me? Does she love me still?’
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
Table of Contents
Part one: autumn term – the secret language of girls
Part two: spring term – if i were a boy
Part three: summer term – what are you waiting for?
September. The first day of school. New blue blazers everywhere, leaves and conkers underfoot, but an untouched sky and summer clinging on. And now I thought I understood why my son had been so quiet and preoccupied all through the long holiday. I should have guessed, shouldn’t I? Sooner or later, there was going to be a girl.
I had wanted to believe it was just because he was almost fifteen.
I watched my son watching the girl. His face got red just looking at her.
‘You could talk to her,’ I said. ‘You could just walk right up to her and – you know. Talk to her.’
Pat laughed. He watched the girl dawdling by the school gates. Black haired, brown eyed. Laughing, swinging a rucksack stuffed with books. Tall for her age. Radiant in the blue blazer of Ramsay MacDonald Comprehensive School. Surrounded by admirers.
‘Talk to her?’ he muttered, all polite disbelief, as though I had said, Levitate, why don’t you? The ladies love a bit of levitation. The chicks go crazy when they see a lad who can levitate. ‘Probably not,’ he said.
‘Is she in your year?’ I said.
He shook his head, and a matted veil of blond hair fell over his eyes. He pushed it away with a sigh, the love-sick Hamlet of the local comp.
‘No, she’s in the year above me.’
So she was fifteen. Or maybe already sixteen. An older woman. I should have guessed he would fall for an older woman.
I watched him fumbling nervously with the Predator football boots that were resting on his lap.
‘Do you know her name?’ I asked. He took a breath. He swallowed. He brushed some flakes of dried mud from his Ramsay Mac blazer. He did not look at me. He kept looking at her. He was afraid he might miss something.
‘Elizabeth Montgomery,’ he said.
The eight syllables tripped off his tongue. The way he said them, it was infinitely more than a name. It was a sigh, a prayer, a kiss, a love song. He slumped back in the passenger seat, weak with exhaustion. It had taken a lot out of him, saying Elizabeth Montgomery’s name.
‘Just talk to her,’ I said, and his face burned again at the very thought of it.
He looked at me. ‘But what would I say?’
‘What do you want to say?’
‘I want to tell