Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (16 page)

To his and his bank manager’s relief, the fluctuation proved seasonal, and business did start picking up again as the nights drew in, but much of the cash was swallowed by hardware upgrades as he struggled to keep pace with the latest fads. This was when he was forced to confront the flaw in his alcohol‐
tinted vision of hobby‐
as‐
business. There were dozens of new titles being released every month, and even though only a deserving few would snare the interest of the notoriously discerning multiplayer market, it was still a wider range than Ray could spread his enthusiasm across, never mind his money. If he was being honest, he had set up The Dark Zone as a digital coliseum for hardcore ‘first‐
person shooters’ – Quake, Unreal, Half‐
Life, Duke – and had accommodated the rest very much as a commercial necessity. As more and more customers came to the desk asking for an hour on games he’d never played, he began to fear he’d soon be in charge of a business he no longer entirely understood, like a metalhead record‐
store owner being asked for the latest ‘bangin’ Euro‐
trance’.

Nevertheless, it was still those FPS games that continued to bring in the bulk of the money, and it was his reliable understanding of that particular sub‐
culture that really made him fear for The Dark Zone’s future viability. Quite simply, the Internet was becoming a more stable environment for gaming. At The Dark Zone, people could turn up and play against whoever else happened to be there, which could be ten others or could be just Ray. Over the Net, they could scan for servers and play against thousands of opponents – known and unknown – from all over northern Europe, and they could do it without leaving the house on a wet January night. Ray knew this better than anyone: despite having his own dedicated network a few feet from his desk, he often passed the quieter business hours fragging mercilessly on Barrysworld servers, based hundreds of miles away.

The game was changing, and his passion for keeping up with it was already on the wane when the baby question began to dominate the domestic agenda. He found himself recoiling from the lengthening days and the lean months they were sure to bring, so it wasn’t that difficult a decision when the local council made their approach. They wanted to set up a community Internet centre, providing online access to people – particularly schoolchildren – who otherwise wouldn’t get near a PC. The Dark Zone was earmarked because not only did it have all the hardware and a functioning network, but it was already a popular haunt for the local kids they intended to reach. They bought him out down to the last mouse‐
mat, even retaining all the games software in the knowledge that it would be easier to get the weans surfing educational websites if they were promised a deathmatch gib‐
fest at the end.

Selling up wasn’t without regrets, but he was smart enough to know when he’d been jammy. He got out with a lump sum instead of a major debt, and regarded the cash as a fortuitous chance for a fresh start at something long‐
term, something grown‐
up. Something specific, in fact.

In an adult life that had been coloured by a vocational promiscuity bordering on the sluttish, the one notion that just kept coming back was teaching. During his university years, it had been a running joke among fellow arts students, regarding the credibility gap between their encouraged ambitions and their realistic future employment prospects. Whenever they got the beer‐
filled crystal ball out and waxed aspirational about where their degrees and desires might one day take them, it became traditional to end the discussion by saying ‘but we’ll probably all end up teachers’. For some, it had seemed like a superstition, a genuflection before providence in supplication that they be spared this unthinkable fate; and with that, no doubt, came the corresponding fear that it would be a self‐
fulfilling prophecy.

Ray had been less horrified by the prospect. In earlier student years, this was because the world of employment appeared too comfortably far off for him to worry about, and by the time the real world was months rather than years away, he was still able to exempt himself because he had his music‐
biz delusions to obscure the view. However, it didn’t stop him wondering, and when he wasn’t dreaming of a world where drummers were recognised as the true geniuses of rock, he could think of worse outcomes than being an English teacher. The pay would be dismal, sure, and he’d probably have to keep dipping into the vessel of unnecessary pain that was Othello, but something about it did appeal, other than just the long holidays.

Most likely it was the latent, unexorcised fantasy of a powerless schoolkid: oppressed, depressed or just plain bored, telling himself he’d do it differently, he’d do it better, given his own shot at the blackboard. School, at the time, had seemed an endless duration, and he doubted he was the only one there to dwell daily on the many ways in which it could be improved. In some people, this matured into formulating a vision – which they needed little invitation to share – of how they’d run the country were they Prime Minister (and what a happy‐
go‐
lucky state we’d be living in if any of those little dreams came true – ‘Live from Wembley Stadium tomorrow: this month’s mass execution of people who indicate wrongly at roundabouts!’). Ray, though, had merely zipped it into his ‘What if …?’ archive, from where it extracted itself again every few years.

Maybe the idea would have taken hold earlier, but the circumstances had never been right. Even before his graduation ceremony he was already in a patchwork of piecemeal employment, giving archery and crossbow lessons at the Castleglen Hotel & Country Club when he wasn’t waiting tables or pulling pints. Casual and part‐
time jobs overlapped and superseded one another throughout his early twenties, when he was working merely to fill his hours and his pockets, living for nights and weekends. In those days, he had nothing but time.

When he hit twenty‐
five, he started finding it harder to ignore that bloody question – What do you want to be when you grow up? – and equally hard to believe that each job he took was anything other than a salaried procrastination. Remembering those student dream‐
extinguishing salutes, teaching loomed before him as the grown‐
up path to take, what with the Guardian still not advertising vacancies for Rock Gods or Professional Computer‐
Gamers. The obstacle back then – or maybe it was the excuse – was that he didn’t think he could finance a post‐
grad year, not now that he and Kate were used to having some disposable income and a decent flat to live in. Maybe in a couple of years, he’d thought; after all, he was still young.

After The Dark Zone, he was out of time and out of excuses. He was also, to be honest, fed up with this consumer‐
age existentialism, fed up having to think of the answer at parties when someone asked him what he did for a living. Everybody was ‘a’ something. What did that make him?

The lump sum was a chance for a fresh start, a scarcely deserved second shot at adulthood. Maybe, he even thought, it was the ticket to somewhere he’d always been meant to go. Who knew? He’d find out when he got there, and he travelled hopefully in the meantime. Well, ‘travelled desperately’ might be a more accurate description of the journey’s latter stages, as he counted down the days to having a worthy excuse for being out of the house, far away from the family he would be supporting.

Travelled hopefully, travelled desperately.

Then he arrived.

‘What you meant to be havin’ next?’

‘Double English. Mr Ash.’

‘Mr Ash? Awww, he is a fuckin’ fanny, man. That’s who I’m meant to have right noo. We ripped the pish right oot him last time.’

They were dogging first double‐
period, going in late. Well, strictly speaking, only Wee Murph was dogging it, having slept in. Lexy had been to the dentist’s for a checkup, so he had a note as cover, but he wasn’t saying. He’d run into Wee Murph on the Hazelwood Road and they made their way up together from there, checking their pace against their watches to make sure they didn’t arrive before the first lesson was finished. No point in letting some swine poke about your gums with a jaggy stick if you still showed up in time to get homework, and in English it was guaranteed. New teachers always gave it out, partly so’s they didn’t look like soft touches, but mainly because they never got you to do anything during class.

Mr Ash’s had been a case in point: pure murder. He couldn’t get Lexy’s class to shut up, so he ended up losing the place and shouted at them at the top of his voice. It had gone tensely quiet for a second, until Johnny McGowan burst out laughing, and that set everybody off again. Mr Ash asked Johnny for his name, to which Johnny responded ‘Andrew Lafferty’, so after that everybody gave names of kids in other classes. The stupid bastard started checking the register, no clue what was going on.

‘By the time he’d given up tryin’ tae sort it oot,’ Lexy told Murph, ‘it was nearly time for the bell, so he just gave us the books an’ tell’t us we’d tae read up tae chapter three for the next class. Optimistic, is he no’?’

‘Aye,’ Murph agreed. ‘Specially wi’ Cammy in the class. Never mind read it, he’ll have sell’t it by noo. He’ll be doon the toon seein’ if he can get part‐
ex on hauf a Silk Cut.’

Wee Murph was a laugh. He hadn’t been at the same primary as Lexy, but he’d been one of those names you heard about as soon as they all started at the big school. He always had lots of patter. Not just whatever was the new cool phrase everybody was trying to force into conversations to show off they knew it, but real patter, words and expressions that just poured out. The things he said made Lexy laugh even when he wasn’t trying to make a joke. Wee Murph was in 2s3, Lexy in 2s6, which meant that although they weren’t in the same class, they got the same teachers for most subjects.

‘I heard one o’ the fourth‐
year classes gie’d him a right session as well.’

‘Aye,’ Wee Murph said, his eyes lighting up. Lexy knew what had happened, but he wanted to hear Murph telling it. ‘He opened wan o’ the windaes, so Jai McGinty’s big brer goes: “Get that shut” – an’ Ash done it!’

‘Jai McGinty’s big brer’s mental.’

‘Total bampot. That’s the fourth‐
year spam class as well. They shouldnae have handed that tae a new teacher. Like puttin’ a coo in charge o’ the lions’ cage.’

‘What did your mob dae tae him?’

‘He was talkin’ aboot images or somethin’, how the wummin in the poem was meant tae be like a sheep. He asked us tae say whit animal the person next tae us made us think of. Marky Innes is first, an’ he’s sittin’ beside Margaret Gebbie, so he says a dug.’

‘A hound.’

‘Aye. We aw pure pished oursel’s. Ash goes “you’ve got tae say how she’s like a dug”. Marky says ’cause she looks like wan. So then Gebbie says Marky’s like a pig, ’cause he smells like wan.’

‘Who were you beside?’

‘Charlie. But Linda Dixon’s on the other side o’ me.’

‘She’s a doll.’

‘I know. So I said she made us think ay a beaver.’

‘Aw man.’

‘I know. Ash says how? I says ’cause she’s always dead busy, a hard worker an’ that. He was aboot tae turn tae Charlie, an’ I goes “Plus, she builds dams oota trees.” Charlie pure decked himsel’. He’d snotters comin’ oot an’ everythin’. You know Charlie. He’d laugh at a door shuttin’.’

‘Aye.’

‘Aw, but wait tae I tell you what else. He asked us tae write a hingmy, a composition, aboot goin’ tae the swimmin’, which was a mistake considerin’ hauf o’ that class don’t know what a bath looks like, never mind a swimmin’ pool. Somebody passed the message roon, an’ when we aw handed in wur papers, every guy in the class had just drawn big knobs, no’ even written a word.’

‘Aw, man, that’s brilliant. Whit did Ash dae?’

‘It was gallus. You could tell he was pure squeezin’ his baws, tryin’ no’ tae laugh. He came on dead serious instead, makin’ oot he never takes shite. Learner driver, man. No’ got a clue.’

‘Did he go an’ get Doyle?’

‘Naw. Cannae blame him. Imagine goin’ tae Doyle’s office, or the staff room, an’ tellin’ everybody your class aw drew big wullies instead o’ writin’ their essays.’

‘It would be a pure beamer.’

‘He said we’d aw tae dae the essay for homework.’

‘Have you done it?’

‘Have I fuck. My big brer was oot last night.’

‘Aw, excellent.’

Wee Murph’s big brother, Big Murph, was doing some computer course at Paisley Uni, and Wee Murph got to play with his PC when he was out. Lexy had been round there once. The games on it were ancient, stuff you could get the Sega and PlayStation versions of for about two quid in the exchange shops. Some of them were still a good laugh, though, like that Grand Theft Auto, which had first come out when Lexy was about eight and still playing with Action Man. He remembered his big cousin Peter talking about it, but his mammy didn’t let him have it because she’d read in the paper that it would make kids want to steal cars and go joyriding. This was not a concern that Wee Murph considered very realistic.

‘As if. The weans roonaboot here that are intae stealin’ motors don’t need computer games tae spark the idea. It’s like sayin’ Tomb Raider would make you want to grow tits.’

They went the long way, round the new estate, planning to come in through the teachers’ car park instead of the path through the playing fields. The first years had PE at that time, and they just knew Miss Walsh would pull them up if she saw them sauntering past, even though it was nothing to do with her.

‘She’s a cow,’ Lexy ventured.

‘You’d think it was oor fault she’s ugly,’ Murph added.

There was a big grey lorry parked round the corner from the school gates, looked like a removal truck.

‘Check that,’ Murph said. ‘Belly Kelly’s packed lunch is gettin’ delivered.’

‘Naw, that’s just his play‐
piece.’

Wee Murph laughed, which pleased Lexy. There was no greater brass neck than a joke that died on its arse.

The rear of the lorry had its fold‐
down ramp extended, resting on the tarmac, and the roller‐
shutters were open a few inches at the bottom. Murph stopped and had a trial push at them. They were stiff, but they moved up a bit with perseverence.