2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (22 page)

Mu Cassiopeiae 2, and Vega

T
hey’re in a gym hall, except it’s got a carpet, which must be a bastard for burns if you’re playing football. Robbie knows it’s a gym hall because there are wall-bars all round the joint, and a big foldy-out affair at one side that looks like it would be pure gallus to be swinging from.
He’d
be gallus at it, anyway. There’s plenty of them would shite it from being up so high; no chance of getting them dangling from a rope. Total shite-bags. His big brothers told him there are three gym halls at St Grace’s, but he thought they were talking pish until he clocked this place. It’s about the size of the gym⁄dinner hall at St Lizzie’s, so there’s no way it can be the only one for a big place like St Grace’s.

The place is mobbed, every cunt checking out every cunt else. The whole of First Year’s in the hall. There’s bits of paper taped up on the wall-bars with the names of each class—1S1, 1S2 and all that—but they’re all still clustered with the folk they know from their own primary. Robbie knows a lot of the boys from St Gregory’s, but it’s all new faces from St Margaret’s, because they get bussed in from Carnock on the other side of the Brae. Cunts like Martin and Dominic and Colin will be shiting themselves just now, checking out the hard bastards that might be in their class. Aye, no place to run, poofs. It’s not primary any more. Serious fighting at St Grace’s, proper fighting. None of this first-to-greet-is-the-loser-and-that’s-it-finished shite. Cunt goes down on the deck up at St Grace’s and it’s into his nut, fuckin boot, boot, boot. Fuckin yes. Or like that gallus fight he saw down the Garages during the summer holidays: Johnny Maxwell getting into Ally Catherwood. Got his head down with one hand and started booting into his face, fuckin yes. Fuckin tons of blood, all over Johnny’s boot. There was a big puddle on the concrete, left a stain when it dried in. That’s what Robbie’s going to dish out when he gets into a fight with some cunt. Get hold of the hair, fuckin head down and boot, boot, boot. His Docs will do some damage, fuckin yes.

There’s plenty of them round this hall he could take. No danger. And not just the obvious ones like Martin, or Colin, who he’s battered before. Or that wee fanny Paul who thinks he battered Robbie that time just because Robbie didn’t fight back. Just didn’t feel like it. Wasn’t worth his while. No, forget about the poofs and fannies, because you don’t get noted for battering them. You have to take some cunt that’s already battered some cunt else, and that puts you above whoever they’ve battered before.

You can tell the good fighters in this room from the way they’re standing. Taking no shite, not nervous about who’s going to be in their class or nothing. Richie’s laughing and cracking jokes, looking like he’s been at St Grace’s for years, as opposed to nearly pishing his pants because he’s afraid to go to the bogs in case he gets his head flushed, like half the other cunts in here. Paddy Beattie as well. Paddy’s grown a bit since the end of Primary Seven. He’s taller than Richie now; might be able to take him, in fact. Aye, maybe just. Robbie would love to see them fight. It’s never been on the cards before because they’ve never fallen out much, plus Paddy’s always kind of accepted Richie was the best fighter, but maybe now he’s not so sure. Paddy looks more edgy than Richie today: Richie’s all relaxed, but Paddy’s eyes are really serious. He’s checking out the other big men, you can tell, and he’s giving out signals: come ahead if you want it. Aye, Robbie’s money is on Paddy to be the one to burst a few faces and let folk know the score early days. The competition could be interesting, though. There’s a few game-looking bastards staring back from the St Margaret’s mob, plus some reputations to be reckoned with from St Gregory’s. He can see Jai Burns and Gerry Lafferty who he knows because they live on the far side of Braeview. Jai is some fighter. Robbie’d love to see him take on Paddy or Richie. Richie’s got stocky arms and a stoater of a hook on him, but Jai’s meant to be really vicious, meant to have bitten Billy Fraser that time when it looked like he was getting the better of him. After that, Jai fuckin leathered him.

But what’s more interesting is the St Gregory’s lot Robbie
doesn’t
know, because most of them come from the Bottom scheme, and it’s mental as fuck down there. Robbie’s big brothers have got pals from that end of the town—and enemies. And to give you an idea, folk from Braeview call you a snob for living in a bought house; but folk from the Bottom scheme call you a snob for living in Braeview.

Check that one there: big, tall bastard. Robbie thinks he’s seen him about the town, all dressed in punk stuff: chains hanging off the trousers, ripped T-shirt and leather jacket. Looks hard as fuck. Robbie’s not sure, but he thinks that might be Kenny Langton, who he’s heard mentioned as the best fighter at St Gregory’s. Jai Burns might have something to say about that, but the one time they did get into it, Robbie heard it was stopped by the teachers. Jai tells folk he was winning, but that’s not what everybody says. Whoever he is, he’s definitely the scariest-looking guy in the place, even in his uniform: Docs up to his chin and big long legs for swinging them. Aye, there’ll be cunts looking at their class name-lists and fuckin praying his isn’t one of them.

Robbie’s never liked school before, but St Grace’s is going to be fuckin yes.

I
t’s Wednesday, double period between interval and lunchtime. You call it interval at St Grace’s, or the break,
not
playtime. Jesus Christ, not playtime. Can you imagine it? They’ll find plenty to nail you for; don’t go tossing them freebies.

They’re in the changing room, which is why Martin is feeling that wee bit more tense. Actually, the tension level has been at a pretty high minimum since he started at St Grace’s on Monday, spiking wee peaks throughout each day: class allocation, first interval, first lunchtime, first venture into the bogs and first period with each new teacher. This is the second PE session, and it’s causing as much of a spike as the first, though for different reasons.

Martin was really pleased when he looked at the timetable and saw that you get PE twice a week, two whole double periods, guaranteed. You were meant to get it once a week at primary, but you were lucky if it was once a month because the teachers could seldom be bothered, with O’Connor particularly remiss. She’d use any excuse to ditch it: ‘You were all talking too much, so PE’s cancelled as punishment’; ‘There’s a virus going around and exercise tires you out and makes you vulnerable to infection.’ Utter shite like that. At St Grace’s, it’s down there in black and white, and it’s real, structured sports with proper kit, not rubbishy ‘music and movement’ tapes or a shambolic game of rounders. The first module is hockey, with even all the proper leg-pads and face-masks for the keepers. But this also means proper sweat and proper showers, requiring a full change of clothes, including socks and underwear.

He knows some boys are very uncomfortable about the idea of the showers, because you have to go in there in the buff along with everybody else. The closest they had come to that before was the occasional St
Lizzie
’s trip to the baths, where you keep your trunks on in the showers, and there are cubicles to get dried and changed in. Martin doesn’t feel particularly awkward about being naked in front of the other boys, though he is a little more self-conscious having seen that some of them have got pubes and far more developed tackle. The showers held only one terror for him yesterday during his first bout of post-PE group-scuddiness, and that was the fear of getting a stauner. This fear wasn’t born of likelihood or precedent, but simply through contemplating the sheer enormity of its consequences should it happen. In the event, as he should have anticipated, fear itself made sure it was a physiological impossibility, having roughly the same shrivelling effect as had the water been ice cold.

That accounted for some of the first PE spike, along with the rumours that the male PE teachers were super-strict bad bastards and ninth-dan experts at giving the belt. (Or ‘the lash’, as it is officially known in St Grace’s Secondary argot. Further to be noted is that ‘gut laugh’ is now as square and thoroughly poofy as flares and cords. Anything funny is now a ‘deck laugh’, or merely ‘a pure deck’; and, verb-wise, you now deck yourself laughing. ‘Gemmie’ would also appear to be on the road out among means of expressing approval, with ‘gallus’ the new preferred term of the cognoscenti. They should give out Roneo bulletin sheets, appoint an editor.)

Their teacher is actually all right. Better than all right, though nobody would be in a hurry to mess with him. Mr Blake, his name is. When he came into the changing room yesterday, he did this sergeant-major act, getting them all to their feet, chins up, hands behind their backs, told them they would be starting off with a five-mile ‘yomp’ through the nearby farm and woodland, and anyone who didn’t manage it in less than an hour was getting six of the belt before being made to do it again. “Or we could have a wee game of hockey.” He’d then made a few jokes and taken the piss out of people, which made everybody relax.

Martin—in common with most of his classmates—has never had a male teacher before this week, apart from Momo, and he’s not sure that counts as he was just the heidie, and taught nobody much beyond Advanced Pensioner Carriageway Perambulation. He’d thus feared that they would be a truly intimidating breed, but had, he realises, reckoned without the long-term effects of three years under O’Connor. After her, every male teacher he’s encountered so far has been like a favourite uncle. There’s another male PE teacher, Mr Cook, who looks like a gorilla: all hair and muscles and a glowering demeanour, but 1S1 and 1S2 got him yesterday and Gary said he was a good laugh, too.

However, Gary said something else that was a match for Martin’s PE experience, and that is the source of his current unease. Yesterday, it took Martin less than a couple of minutes to change into his shorts, T-shirt and trainers, but as Gary also reported from his class, it was close to fifteen minutes before the teacher showed up to lead them outside.

Further confirmation comes from Tam Mclntosh, sitting three places down the bench. “The PE teachers have a cuppa tea thegither while we’re gettin changed. It’s ayeways the same, ma big brer tellt us. They know fine it takes us two minutes tae get ready, but they sit oan their erses for a good quarter ay an hour. They only come up if it gets dead noisy, an that’s just because it makes it harder tae concentrate on readin the fuckin paper.”

“That’s what I heard as well,” agrees someone else.

Yesterday there was an uncertainty about it, the inhibiting effect of thinking that the teacher could walk into the changing room at any moment. But today Martin—and everybody else—can be sure that adult supervision is, at this moment, finitely but effectively suspended. The PE teachers’ ‘base’ is at the far end of the corridor, thirty or forty yards away, with one boys’ and two girls’ changing rooms between there and here.

Since Monday, few to none of the fears surrounding the move to the big school have proven to have foundation. In the final few weeks of primary, you’d have got the impression it was going to be heid-flushing by rota throughout every break. Consequently, there were a lot of full bladders on Monday, with most people finally breaking at some point over lunch, but their visits to the boys’ bogs proved incident-free. Predictions of small-scale civil war between factions hailing from different primary schools have proven to be complete mince, or in the case of some, mere wishful thinking. However, it’s fair to say that so far, on the whole, people have tended to stick with who they know during the intervals.

Here, in this dressing room, is a crucible, a melting pot like nothing his childhood has known. Stripped literally naked, they are all thrown together, ungoverned, without the playground’s scope for keeping your distance or flat-out running away. Here, in this dressing room, a different law will prevail: mob rule, the law of the jungle, the devil take the hindmost, Martin can’t say which yet. All he knows for certain is that none of them tend to work out too well for the wee timid guy. He also knows that mobs don’t rule themselves, that every jungle has its king, and that the devil needs an advocate.

It was a mere matter of arithmetic probability, in combining the pupils from three primary schools and dividing by six, that each first-year class would have a proven hard-case in its number. Therefore, you would have thought it fifty-fifty that any particular class would find itself with just one of those schools’ acknowledged Best Fighters. But not 1S5. Not Martin’s class. No. Despite those odds, they had ended up with Kenny Langton
and
Chick Dunlop: the respective heavyweight title-holders of St Gregory’s and St Margaret’s—and, outside of Momo, the two biggest, scariest guys Martin had ever shared a classroom with. In fact, they were probably bigger than Momo; certainly taller than a few of the teachers Martin had encountered so far.

He has heard it speculated that it is inevitable the pair of them will fight, most probably sooner rather than later, in order to stake their claim for the currently vacant First Year overall combined Best Fighter title and all that it will bring. This
definitely
sounds like wishful thinking, Martin reckons, as he is sure it would take something a lot more important than bragging rights to make either of these monsters decide to take their chances with the other. So far, they are showing every sign of becoming big buddies and thus forming a formidable alliance. Martin would have to admit to being among those wishing they would fight, if only because if they did have a battle, there’d at least be scope to keep in with one in order to get protection from the other. His other wish would be that the fight happen on a day when Robbie is off sick, as to that wee shite it would be like missing the World Cup Final. Martin’s been split up from his pals Scot and Coco, which was a big disappointment, but getting rid of Robbie is a brammer of a silver lining.

§

Aldo Dawson, the guy three pegs down from Colin, has his cock out and is having a wank in full view of everyone in the changing room.