It had only been minutes since our mothers had walked away from the school gates and leaving us in the charge of Miss Fielding. She bundled us quickly together - some in tears, others stunned into a confused silence - before leading us all into a squarish room, chaotic with wooden desks sat at angles on a red tiled floor strewn with a rubble of damaged toys, lettered bricks and ragged books. The walls were stark, creamily bricked like the inside of a prison, but colour-splashed with impressions of blazing flowers, disjointed animals and mini-sized hands: scumbled onto beige, peeling paper - patty-caking at odd angles; the ghostly residue of a previous term's pupils. The windows were opened wide with the skinny bunched curtains ruffling at the edges. It looked as if something or someone had been trapped in the room and had with panic and relief bolted outside into the swarming heat, amid the exploding bushes and the emerald expanse of tightly cut grass.
As it was so hot once our bags were dropped we were taken outside to sit under a willow tree to cool off, and in some cases, dry our tears. We were placed in a concentric semi-circle with Miss Fielding sat in the middle to our front - all of us surrounded by the drooping fronds of the buzzing willow tree. After asking all of us our names and ticking them off, she suggested that today as it was so warm and sunny we would sit right there and listen to stories until it was time for lunch. Those who were still inconsolable after the still recent parent child separation episode, sat slightly apart, their moans quietly irregular - tucked inside the hushed breeze and the faint birdsong. The rest of sat with mute acceptance, waiting for Miss Fielding to open the book and read to us.
I had not been overly upset at the wrenching some had felt when their mothers walked away, but was contently confused to go along with what was happening. I sat quietly under the tree, my naked legs feeling the pin pricks of the nipping ants and the grit-sting of the small stones, and my bottom going steadily numb. I could feel the cold tickle of the grass blades on my wrists and smell the wet hum of the tree as I listened to Miss Fielding, her unbroken voice creating an invisible wall, trapping me to the spot, gradually rendering all of us silent.
After a while, new feelings of discomfort caused me to fidget. Unable to break the spell of Miss Fielding's voice a sense of panic throbbed through me. I knew what was going on, but I was powerless to do anything about it. It started as an itchy fidget, which I knew I could handle. Then, it changed to something more pressing, more urgent than usual - painful almost. In no time at all I knew that something had to give, and I knew I had the means to make things better, to let go, to turn pain away. My eyes closed and a warm, moist, oozing filled my pants, a damply sublime, guilt-filled relief.
Gradually a terrible smell wafted through the half circle of children, who started
to fuss and whine and pinch their noses. I wished it wasn't me. I wanted the cause to be something, anything else but me. My heart punched my chest and my eyes
tightened as I visualised the vapour trail snaking towards Miss Fielding’s
nostrils, who seconds later after a moments exploratory pause, closed the book with a thud.
I was extracted from the group by the
headmistress who marched me to the place considered the sole domain of Mr
Dickson the caretaker. I remember seeing his brown coat draped over one of the
chairs and noted the frayed collar and the little row of screw drivers and pens
sticking out of the top pocket, and a copy of the Racing Post rolled up and
poking through a lower one. His glasses were sat on his chair as if placed
there to reserve the seat. There was a smell of disinfectant from a tin bucket
with a mop planted in it like a stake, the head looking like a dead sea
creature, lifeless tentacles partly concealed in a scummy fizz of poisonous water. On the drainer there were
two tins of Ajax, a slab of soap, a nail brush, a yellow glove that looked like
a dismembered hand, a bunched up cloth and a silvery bloom of wire-wool all
placed out like a janitor-themed Kim’s Game.
A nurse in a blue coverall and
plimsolls silently appeared. She nodded
at the headmistress who then clacked quickly away along the corridor. The nurse
then blasted steamy water into a large ceramic Belfast sink which bubbled and
foamed. My punishment was to be publicly washed in a sink normally used by Mr
Dickson for only the dirtiest jobs. I was stripped and dunked roughly into the wet boiling heat by the nurse who
proceeded to wash me as if I was muddy pet, continually sluicing me as if trialing a new torture technique. Each sloshing leaving me momentarily breathless, my secret tears melting into the brown froth. The air was
full of steamy soap-scented excrement and the distant shrill sound of
children’s voices. I felt sad, confused and worried.
The nurse said, ‘Stop moving,
there’s no one around who can see you.’ I was turning my head like an owl,
checking desperately. No one was around.
But it didn’t help.
‘Right, you’re done,’ she said, and lifted me
from the sink. ‘Dry yourself and put these on.’ She showed me a set of clothes
that looked like they’d been retrieved from a nearby orphanage, like the ones
I’d seen my father wearing in the creased black and white photograph he kept in
old musty cabinet drawer in the shed. Dressed, I looked like one of those evacuees
you see clambering on and off trains in those wartime news reels.
As I tidied myself I saw a lone girl peeping
from behind the bag pegging area. She’d watched the whole thing in complete
silence. She had ginger hair shaped like a wasp’s nest, and I liked her. But
she’d seen me undressed, scrubbed and sluiced like a dog so I hated her
instead. I never wanted to see her
again, but a bond was already quietly forming.
Later, sports day brought us back together again.
Sports Day.
On the day the boys wore
capacious shorts. Those tight-squeezers that made footballers in the Eighties
look like they were wearing swimming trunks hadn't yet caught on. The girls were even more unfortunate, forced
to strip down into what appeared to be heavy-duty, navy- blue
knickers which made even the slim girls look horrid. I suppose this was intended to thwart the
stirrings we boys tended to get and the old navy blues were a good defence
against any surprise twitches or unscheduled bulges appearing on sports day.
Looking at the group of girls mustering I
noticed the ginger frizzy- haired girl sat with a teacher. She
was fully dressed, quite plump.
I was also going through an
unpopular phase as that toilet business hadn’t been forgotten, and I’d started
to wear glasses to correct a squint recently spotted at the clinic. But at least
I would be involved as soon as the pairs were settled.
Once the ramshackle of minor
events involving sacks, buckets and plastic objects were over, the wheelbarrow
race was announced. Girls must choose boys to push. Boy’s legs to be tucked under girl’s arms and
pushed along, wheelbarrow style.
Boys with
their strong taut little arms would crawl, whilst their bitty legs were tucked
under the arms of the girls who would then push them along like a barrow, as
fast as possible towards the winning line.
As the pairing off neared completion, feelings
of dejection began to come over. The
final girl made her move and selected the boy next to me. The balance was wrong,
and I was left out. There was to be no
wheelbarrow race for me. No more pushers were left.
Suddenly there was a commotion, a
swirl of mums and teachers, all permanent waves and flouncy dresses, fussing
over someone reluctantly being pulled into the open. It was the ginger girl
sprung from the safety and anonymity of the spectator’s seating. She was
ordered to strip down to her knickers and fill the gap. I was going to be
barrowed after all, by this little ginger tank. My secret ginger girl.
The starting whistle was blown
shrilly and, before its pea stopped rattling, the navy blues and their hand
crawlers began. Pretty soon boy's legs were being dropped by slim pig tailed
girls, their ribbons flicking in the wind. Tears and pouting accusations soon followed. But I was still going, pushed by a pile
driver, my bony legs clamped tight by pudgy arms and the pent up emotions of
this strong girl.
My twiggy arms and hands were a blur of
desperate skittering. They had to be. If I hadn't kept them going I’d have
fallen face first into a wreck of bloody nose, grass-stained teeth and
comically twisted specs. She kept pushing. My weedy chest heaved; fear of worse
pain drove me on and on. My lungs felt hot and sore and I could taste sweet
acidy fluid in my mouth. But then, other feelings deeper inside me changed: I
felt angry and proud and I wanted to win. I could tell that she wanted it too,
the frizzy ginger girl, as determined, intent and as full of desire to win as I
was.
The Little Fishes
I made a massive chore of learning to swim
on account of being a bit of a coward. Actually,
as a baby, I could always swim. My body understood the rudiments of breath
holding and doggy-splash, even though I couldn't know it did. No one told me it
was one of the purposes of survival, and that God was smart enough to give us
this basic survival tool - our lungs being well attuned to watery breathing due
to the whole getting born thing. And I
guess there always existed the possibility that when you clambered out from your
warm soaking prison, you’d slip into a cold river and live long enough to break
the water’s surface like a pearl diver.
It’s a bit like the giraffe thing, they’re all
born as walkers: shaky and uncertain, but solid enough to wobble into a safe
area once they've slid into the world, instead of lying down and glistening
with animal sweet-stickiness waiting to be gnawed alive by any lions lounging
in the neigbourhood. But having unlearnt to swim over the next 6 years or so, I
had to find my fins all over again if I was ever to swim properly in the junior
school swimming pool and receive the coveted width distance certificate.
As time progressed, and certificates and praises
were received, I was one of the last ones still flapping about unable to swim
without the aid of enough buoyancy assistance to keep a blacksmith's anvil
afloat. Water wings pumped up so tight you could almost hear them squealing in
agony, and floats shaped like little tombstones made of polystyrene that
squeaked in your hands as you squeezed them between your meagre thighs to keep
your bum upright in the water. These
floats had minds of their own and lines of them could be seen making little
bids for freedom all-round the pool, leaping out of the swimmers thigh-grips
and jumping into the air like shoals of passing river salmon on their way to
safer waters for breeding. As time progressed the last little group, which
included me, were told to dispense with the floats and make do with the arm
bands. Reluctantly we did, which left us swimming about with crazy arm
movements, scrunched eyes and legs that felt as if medicine balls were tied to
our feet. But a momentum had been established and today the Z group were going
from concrete lumps to slick mermaids.
It was time for the great con called the
'graduated confidence process' (though they never told us it was called that).
Each time we managed to shimmy-splash our way clumsily to one end of the width,
Mrs Spangler would release a little air from our taut arm bands. Even with the
smell of chlorine rinsing through my nostrils I could smell that rubbery wind
as it hissed out of the valves that bubbled, and I heard them blow mini
raspberries at Mrs Spangler as she fumbled the caps back on. How I envied them
their brazen impudence. Then more widths, then more air releases before being
told to give up the floats. Gradually as
all kids emerged shaking slightly, glistening like frogs, each of them dropped
their float before reluctantly clambering back in. A jumbled white heap emerged by the benches
looking like a cluster of discarded teeth pulled from a giant's mouth. A pile
of white flotsam.
Up and down we swam, splashily; eyes tight and
sore. Mouths, chemically dried, throats raw, noses numbed, lungs on fire;
hearts flicking through our skinny chests like little gasping fish.
By this stage I was happy, I'd made enough
bragging progress to get out. One arm band looking sad and deflated, the other
no longer in full bloom; the old pumped up look now consigned to the shrieking
dwarves in the shallow end. I had achieved enough; the certificate would wait
another week. I looked forward to getting out and enjoying the sublime comfort
of dryness. But no, I wasn't allowed out. Miss Spangler was on a roll and
no-one was getting out yet; no drownings to report - the great Health and
Safety push was a long way away in the future, germinating in the back of
someone’s mind - perhaps one of these little would-be eels struggling along
with me. It would have taken a drowning to call the session to an end. Even Stuart
Stickler’s tears weren’t helping:
‘Stop being a baby!’ I heard Mrs Spangler shout
as Stuart wiped a bubble of snot from one of his nostrils. I made a mental
note: tears aren’t working today.
More deflation visits to the side of the pool. I
couldn't work out why they bothered as by now it didn’t make any difference.
I'd rest my elbows on the cold slippery surface, shaking and making spluttering
comments that made no sense, listening to the trebling echoes and shouts of
encouragement all around me and the stuttering snuffling and mad splashing
coming from Stuart who was going the opposite way with a face that was part terror,
part grim determination. Then with
another gurgled hiss from one of my arm bands I was tapped on the head and
ordered back across again. I was swimming. I was a winner in everyone’s eyes,
except my own as nobody had told me I’d been swimming for 10 minutes and attributing
my success to two flat pieces of plastic and rubber that hung limp and
breathlessly from my arms.
The Lockable Diary
When I was about
8 and 10, always at bedtime, and providing she left her door open, I’d watch my
older sister sitting on the side of her bed with her legs crossed, hunched like
a crab, writing something into a red leatherette covered book. I'd watch her
peering through her little Gandhi spectacles, writing in that round curly
lettered handwriting of hers as her plaits dangled in front of her. Then she’d
dart the page before locking the book with a little in-built padlock and attach
the key to her constantly worn charm bracelet. My interest in this item grew
from bored curiosity to a maddening need for answers. It was the lock that did
it.
She had a money box too; like a miniature bank
cashbox – an ugly black square thing that looked like it had been made from
left over armoured plating from a tank factory, totally immune to the hairgrips
and paper clips I’d used to try to get it open. But I knew the contents of the
box amounted to little more than three apple snail shells, a folded picture of
Cliff, and a couple of defunct farthings. Compared to the book, this was only
of passing interest, fuelled mainly by brotherly menace.
After several attempts at stealing this
mysterious book thing from her desk and prising open the pages, nearly breaking
my finger nails; and a failed attempt to obtain the key once by slipping her
charm bracelet into my pocket after she’d left it lying around outside the
bathroom, she informed me that it was her 'secret diary.’ After allowing for
this exotic fact to sink in, I dug out my ongoing Christmas list and looked at
the items listed, staring at it with new eyes. I then scratched out the number
one entry: ‘Magnetic Robot ‘and inserted the words ‘lockable diary’ in its
place.
That Christmas,
I got one. It wasn't lockable. Instead it was a ‘Scout’s Diary,’ full of kids
doing stuff I didn’t do like tying knots and earning merit badges for good
deeds. But it was a diary. My initial disappointment that it wasn't lockable
waned when I found a loose floorboard in my lair and a secret cavity in which
to stow it. I could now record my life in complete secrecy; I’d write in it
every day and one day show it to an astonished world.
Not Feeling Well.
Thursday 18 October 1968.’ Dear diary, I felt
poorly at school today and had to sit in the assembly hall with my sister. She
was made to sit with me until I told the truth. Spangles is always suspicious
if we say we feel ill in class.’ (Age 12)
My sister sat and glowered at me. Her hair now
brushed moodily forward, tumbling over her suspicious face where her girlish
plaits once hung sweetly. I was her brother; therefore I was a liar as well as
a thief. And here I was, lying my way out of lessons. She was relieved and
skipped off to her friends when Mrs Spangler, who made no pretense of her
dislike of boys, her patience exhausted, sent me home. The hobble home wasn't a
tough, sports injury limp, it was one of those clutching belly, ‘I feel fragile’
hobbles. I felt sick and depressed. One light however shone my tortured route
home: it was a Thursday, and my new Tiger comic would be waiting for me.
Very little interrupted my comic obsession,
whether sadness, illness or pain. I’d stuck with my Tiger through crippling
migraines, breaking off only to stumble to the bathroom to release the headache
demon by inducing warm, sour, throat-scoring vomit that filled my nose with the
sore-stink of acid. But, eyes still fizzing, my mouth sluiced and sweetened with toothpaste, I’d
be back to the comic. Even when the words wavered, and the superheroes looked
like smudges, I’d carry on. Comics were my solace and my comfort, a sublime
private entertainment no matter how I felt. On new comic delivery day I’d be
almost paralysed with delight.
Home at last, stumbling through the door, I
looked across the hall and saw my Tiger, sleeping on the worn mat in the porch;
pristine, lit by a dusty ray of late autumn sunshine, shimmering with seductive
newness. I took it to my private lair, slinked away with my prize as a real
tiger might, then sat on my bed to inhale the inky flavours of its print, its
pictures and its promise. Wrestler Johnny Cougar would face another terrible
adversary, Skid Solo would be racing against cads with superior technology, and
the opposing football team would be out to knobble Roy of the Rover. It didn’t
matter that I knew this. It was the familiarity I craved the most.
And then the unthinkable happened. My
interest waned. I was page flipping, not getting to the end of the stories.
Suddenly Roy of the Rovers didn't seem quite as captivating. I closed the comic
and lay down. Put on my pyjamas and sat in bed clutching my belly. I looked at
the comic. The strength of my feelings for the comic now locked in battle with
my pain. I picked it up again and read the cover. Then I was flipping again,
backwards and forwards. Finally, I
dropped the comic to the floor and it flapped lifelessly to the carpet like a
flattened hero. My eyes felt full. Fluid
rattled in my nose. I didn’t feel like being brave. Further down, my appendix
grumbled, preparing itself to explode and fire poison into my blood.
‘Monday
11th August 1972. ‘Dear diary, the
reason I stood today in a carpenter’s workshop wearing my new blue bib and
braces overalls with four corned beef sandwiches and a flask of tea with sugar,
stowed in a tartan duffle bag slung over my shoulder, was because this was my
first day as a proper adult.’ (Age 16)
‘Am I in the right place?’ I said to a fat man
wearing a brown overall as I wandered into the yard. This turned out to be the
foreman, a notorious hater of new apprentices, due to, as I later learned,
their callowness and youth being disruptive to the old guard of grizzled ex
national servicemen who preferred to work grumpily alone. The scrappy remains
of his hair were tar black but greying bits were fighting through and looked as
stiff as wire wool. Filaments of hair poked from his collar showing despite his
bald head, hair was thriving everywhere else. Spiders legs crawled from his
eyebrows and his heavy-lidded eyes were as brown as the bundles of teak stacked
by the door. I noticed a stumpy pencil behind his ear, conveniently placed,
like a cigarette stub.
‘Depends who’s asking,’ he said.
‘I’m
Mike,’ I said, putting out my hand as my dad had said I should. ‘I’m the new
apprentice.’
He ignored my hand as if handshakes were
the preserve of men who’d done something to earn one. ‘Stick that thing in the
grub room,’ he said. ‘And meet me by the mitre saws.’
I nodded. The 'thing' was my duffle bag. I was
never that keen on it myself but never thought of it as a 'thing'. I looked at
it now in a new light, my old PE duffle bag, a saggy, toggled-up blob of a
reminder of this most recent cross-over from childhood. School was all the
duffle bag and I knew. We’d both once taken a beating from Billy Murray, one of
the feared school bullies who God had, perhaps rather perversely, made twice the size of the
rest of us. A stomach punch for me and a
kick for the duffle which rolled down the school corridor before juddering to
halt at Mrs. Hardcastle’s, frozen-to-the-spot, brown brogues and twilled
tights. Now that same bag was moving
into adulthood with me, now it was full of manly things like flasks, newspapers
and sandwiches - both of us now prepared for the land of working men. I didn't know what a grub room or a mitre saw
was, but didn't want to ask too many questions so early on
I guessed the ‘grub room’ was the place I
first went into where two old guys were sat slurping muddy looking fluid from
dirty looking flask cups and reading red topped newspapers. What the hell a
mitre was, was anyone's guess. The only one I could think of was the tall hat I
wore in drama when I stole the role of Archbishop of Rheims from Melvin
Foreacre after auditions, due to being slightly taller, and impressing Miss
Strummer with my high, flat toned diction when reading aloud. It felt a long
time ago then now that I was 16 with no school kids anywhere, just old guys
slurping coffee and talking about mitre saws and grub rooms and pursing their
lips at pictures of semi-naked women.
On my way home I’d mused about my strange
first day in the timber yard. ‘It’s not wood,’ I was told, ‘It’s timber, it’s
always timber’. A strange day of
standing in a daze watching men work and hearing them swear with an easier
familiarity than I ever thought possible in an adult. I’d heard my dad swear
once when he accidentally dropped a hammer on his toe whilst attempting to nail
to the wall one of my mother’s plaster of paris plate impressions. The word that sat in
the air like a demon’s call put my sister and I into a shocked and fearful
silence. My God fearing mother however went into the kind of hysterics I’d only
ever seen her perform once before, when a black bird flew through our sitting
room open window sending everyone, including the bird, dizzy with madness. Like the bird, we were ushered out, slightly
traumatized, but also relieved.
As I neared home
I thought about those workmen and their odd insularity, particularly their Page
3 obsessions. If I’d wanted to see a naked female body, I thought, I only had
to ask Samantha to take her top off, which she would, if her dad wasn’t home,
and if she was in the right mood. Sometimes I was even allowed to take her bra
off, a devilish task of finger trembling complexity that reminded me of those
obsessive travails with my sister’s lockable diary and money box about eight
years earlier. I’d thought about my diaries as well. At 16 I was an adult now
and thought perhaps I should end them.
Today…
I’m
sitting on the floor of my lounge reading through a box of really old diaries.
There are boxes everywhere decades worth.
I’m reflecting on my obsessive nature and my need to write. If I can put find some plots amid these
memories, I’ll make a start on my autobiography. I’m sure everything I need is
right here.
