Spud (3 page)

18:00   Gecko’s left arm is broken. Mad Dog returned to the dormitory after a series of ‘meetings’ with Sparerib, looking depressed. In the morning he has to see the headmaster, Glockenshpeel – he’s worried he’ll be expelled. Boggo reckons that Mad Dog could set a record for the fastest expulsion ever – after only three days at the school.

Couldn’t sleep because Mad Dog kept whining and groaning.

08:00   Mad Dog is still with us. Glockenshpeel has given him a severe warning and he has been ordered to write a letter of apology to Gecko’s parents.

08:45   Had our first history lesson with Mr Crispo. He is wickedly old – Simon reckons he may be ninety. He told us he fought in North Africa during the Second World War. This term we are studying the Anglo-Zulu wars of 1878-9 but instead Crispo showed us an old
Second World War video on Dunkirk. Halfway through he blew his nose like a foghorn and then shook his head and muttered something to himself. At the end of the video he switched off the television and let us go five minutes early. From where I was sitting I could see his eyes were full of tears.

14:30   Cricket Trials. Although I was the best cricketer at my primary school (not that difficult considering most of the school was girls), I felt very nervous about my first go at high school cricket. The under 14 cricket coach is The Guv (much to my delight). He stalked around with his pipe and a shooting stick, making crazy comments like, ‘Greenstein, that forward defensive is about as porous as a whore’s drawers!’ Simon is an excellent cricketer and he smashed my first legspin delivery out of the nets and onto a nearby field. To my horror I realised that the ball had come to rest in the middle of the first team practice session. The cricket gods all stopped and glared at me as I picked up my ball. I just about managed to squeak out an apology and then tore back to the nets.

Mad Dog is a fearsome bowler (fast and wild). He nearly killed Vern with a vicious bouncing delivery that reared up at my terrified cubicle mate. Rambo charges in to bowl with real aggression and savagery but lets the ball go rather slowly. The Guv told him he should take the fridge off his back, which made us all laugh. Rambo glared at me and my laughter fizzled out instantly. (This school is turning me into a coward.) At the end of the practice The Guv told us we were the crappest bunch of cricketers he’d seen in years. The first match is at the weekend and the side will be announced on Friday. Holding thumbs.

18:30   Prep (two-hour nightly homework session) was interrupted by Fatty’s farting, which led to a complete
classroom evacuation. Fatty pleaded that the beef stroganoff was off, and the terrible smell was not his fault. Bert was so livid that he ordered Fatty to shut up and then beat him savagely on the fingers with a blackboard duster. This form of torture is called ‘finger-tongs’.

Mad Dog handed me a first draft of his apology letter to Gecko’s parents. He reckons that because I won the scholarship I was the ideal person to check his effort. Here follows the original:

21:15   I rejected Mad Dog’s first draft and we composed a new draft together. (Mad Dog held the torch, I did the composing.)

Mad Dog was wickedly impressed with the new version. He especially liked the pool bit and how it sounded like he’d saved Gecko’s life. He wasn’t sure about the PS because it’s common knowledge that Gecko’s in the sanatorium and not at home. I told Mad Dog that this was a perfect example of emotional blackmail. He seemed blown away with this and has vowed to call me ‘Brains’ from now on. To repay the debt, he invited me on a pigeon hunt at 05:00. When I declined he looked dangerous, so I told him that I loved eating pigeons but that I’m getting a sore throat.

On his way to bed Mad Dog poured a glass of water over Vern’s sheet and then woke up the dormitory who all sneered and mocked poor Vern while he changed his bedding again. I remained silent and then felt guilty for hours for being a coward and not standing up for my cubicle mate.

Vern tripped over somebody’s foot at breakfast, which sent him and his mince on toast flying across the floor. There was riotous laughing and chanting until a grumpy old biology teacher called Mr Cartwright banged the gavel and announced that there would be no condiments for two days. Fatty was distraught at the thought of no butter on his bread, no jam, honey, salt, vinegar and tomato sauce. He has vowed deadly revenge on poor old Vern.

11:00   Checked out John Milton in the library. Actually, I first walked into the staff room by mistake thinking it was the library – only to see a big bearded teacher tossing peanuts into his mouth. He glared at me, so
I closed the door and sprinted away. Turns out that Milton is an old 17th century poet and Paradise Lost isn’t a novel but a long and boring poem that doesn’t seem to make much sense.

11:30   I’m in! I’ve made the under 14A cricket team! It looks like I’m down to bat at ten. Simon is captain. Also in the side is Mad Dog, and Rambo was chosen for the B side. I phoned my parents to tell them the good news. Mom told me that Dad spent the night in prison and that she was on her way to bail him out! She gave no explanation for his arrest. My dad could be a murderer!

12:00   Our first drama lesson was with Sparerib’s wife, Mrs Wilson, who’s nicknamed Eve. (Eve is said to come from the spare rib of Adam.) She has six rings in her ears and one in her nose. Her hair is braided and today she wore a long earth coloured dress with dangling beads and thick silver bracelets. Eve looks at least ten years younger than Sparerib. (I can’t believe this beautiful woman who looks like a forest fairy could have married Sparerib.) Boggo rates her breasts as incredible. I must admit they are impressive. I couldn’t help notice that Boggo was staring at them with glazed eyes and at the same time sneakily adjusting his trousers.

Drama was awesome. We did all sorts of funny things like pretend we were animals, thunderstorms and drawing pins. Once everybody had stopped being shy we had an absolute blast. Even Vern did a fair impression of a snake giving birth to a seagull.

Unfortunately, the lesson was ruined when Eve made us hold hands and tell each person that they were valuable and that we loved them. The sight of Boggo and Simon holding hands was too much for Rambo who stormed out of the class in disgust. Eve burst into tears and told us that our class had bad karma (which also explained why Gecko had a broken arm). She then caught up with
Rambo and called him into her office after the class where she tried to teach him how to meditate.

19:30   Fatty’s on the brink of suicide. Hamburgers and chips for dinner tonight (no salt, vinegar and tomato sauce). He spent the meal glaring at Vern and muttering curses under his bad breath. Eventually he stormed out of the dining hall without so much as touching his chips. It may just have been the light, but I could have sworn that I saw the hint of a smirk curling around the corner of Vern’s lips.

22:45   Bert woke me up and said that somebody was shouting from downstairs that I had an urgent telephone call. My heart sank as I remembered my father. (Was this his final phone call before his imprisonment?) I stumbled down to the phone room and discovered a note pasted above the telephone: Meat me in the storeroom under the stares. Mad Dog. (With spelling like that he needn’t have signed his name.)

I crept past the room occupied by Gavin, the weird prefect who lives under the stairs, and opened the creaky door to the storeroom, which looked a bit like a dungeon. A flame burned in the far corner of the room, and standing over it was Mad Dog surrounded by feathers and holding the charred corpse of an impaled bird over a gas cooker.

‘Said you liked pigeon,’ he muttered and held the crispy bird out to me. I took a small bite. Mad Dog nodded and I nodded back and there we sat, nodding, grunting and chomping rock pigeons under the stairs in the middle of the night.

Woke up feeling nauseous – not sure if it was the rock pigeons or nerves about my first cricket match.

10:00   After hours of agonising terror our under 14A cricket team finally took to the field in our cricket whites and blue caps. Our opposition was Westwood College, who seem to have a rather dodgy age restriction. (The captain of their under 14 team arrived in his own car shortly before the match.)

Mad Dog’s fiery opening spell sent a player to the sanatorium with a cracked rib. Unfortunately, that player wasn’t one of their batsmen, but our silly mid-on fielder, Steven George, who was flattened by a wild delivery that landed two metres off the pitch and crashed into his side as he was looking in the opposite direction. We managed to bowl Westwood out for 126, with me picking up my first wicket for the school.

Condiments were returned for lunch. Fatty was beside himself with joy and gorged himself on five servings of lasagne and then stole Vern’s bread and butter pudding for good measure.

I’m batting at ten, which is fine by me. Batting terrifies me, especially when facing fast bowlers. The Guv, after a morning of umpiring (and a few dodgy decisions), retired to a bench under a huge oak tree to smoke his pipe and watch the rest of the match. He gave us an impassioned team talk after lunch and even quoted an entire Shakespearian speech, which he reckons was said by King Henry the Fifth before the battle of Asiancaw. He also threatened to castrate us if we lost.

The opposition captain (the one with the car) is the fastest bowler I’ve ever seen. He clean bowled our opener, Stubbs, with his second ball and removed Adam Leslie with the next. Simon righted the ship but unfortunately wickets were tumbling at the other end. Further bad news was that Steven George was declared unfit to bat so I was now batting at number nine.

With our total on 100 and only 27 needed for victory, Simon seemed unstoppable; he had reached 76 and
was in sight of a brilliant century when disaster struck. A humongous explosion distracted our master player at the precise moment that the bowler released his delivery, causing Simon instinctively to look up. In that split second of hesitation the bails were dislodged and his stumps were shattered. I held my head in my hands. We had lost our star and it was my turn to bat. But worse than that, I knew that an explosion of such magnitude could only have been created by a pea green 1973 Renault station wagon. My parents had arrived.

The Guv glared at my folks as they got out the car (no doubt wishing that he had brought his shotgun with him). My mother, dressed in a bright orange sundress many sizes too small, immediately waved and shouted out to me. I pretended not to notice them and busied myself with my batting gloves.

I couldn’t help but notice the raucous shouts of ‘Go, Johnny!’ as I stumbled out to bat. I was mortified. The crazy people sitting in deckchairs and uncorking bottles of wine had just identified themselves as my parents. I felt miserable and ashamed and, even worse, ashamed of being ashamed.

After missing the first four balls (which I never saw) I miraculously succeeded in snicking the next ball through the slips for four runs. The big Westwood fast bowler ran down the pitch and glared at me, allowing me a closer look at his receding hairline. His next delivery was a scorching bouncer that whistled past my nose and flew over the wicketkeeper’s head for another boundary. A hundred and ten, with seventeen runs needed and only Mad Dog left to bat. The small crowd of boys on the grass bank had grown in number and each run was whistled and cheered. I noticed The Guv hiding behind a tree, sucking away at his pipe, and peeping out like a terrified squirrel.

Slowly but surely our target came closer, with a nudge here and a snick there, my batting partner, Shaun Grey,
and I crept our way to 123. The crowd cheered with every run and all the terror of the last week slipped away as I sampled the delicious taste of heroic success! That is until my middle stump was uprooted by the oldest fourteen-year-old ever. My heart sank and the crowd groaned as I trudged back to the changeroom. As I looked up at my parents I noticed the third deckchair was occupied by The Guv who was pointing vigorously with one hand and holding a large plastic goblet of red wine with the other. Suddenly everyone was waving and pointing at me, shouting ‘Go back, go back, Spud!’ I turned to see Mr Moodley (biology teacher and part-time umpire) standing with his arm extended. ‘No ball.’

I wasn’t out. By the grace of God I had been given a lifeline by the shady figure of Mr Moodley. I galloped back to the crease only to be met by a crowd of sulky Westwood players muttering the word ‘cheat’ under their breaths. I gratefully accepted my second chance and casually stroked a single between my legs and scampered to the other side. Unfortunately, Grey was caught behind off the next ball and the groan from the crowd signalled the arrival of Mad Dog. (It was already common knowledge that Mad Dog had little coordination and no brains whatsoever.)

The Guv downed his goblet of wine and shook his head sadly at the demise of our cricket team. The scoreboard read three runs to get, one wicket in hand. Mad Dog looked nervous and swung wildly at the first ball, which narrowly missed the wickets. Suddenly I was running and shouting ‘Run, Mad Dog, run!’ The wicketkeeper hurled the ball at the stumps and missed. I was safe. Another roar echoed around the ground. The Guv was now pacing, smoking and drinking and the team was huddled together in their blazers on the grass bank as a thin misty drizzle slid through the trees. In came the speed merchant and delivered a ball that was terrifyingly quick. I swung my bat, made contact
and ran. The ball sailed high into the air but straight to the man on the midwicket boundary, who positioned himself perfectly underneath it. I kept running and running and suddenly The Guv, followed by the team, was running towards me with his arms outstretched and screaming wildly.