Stuff

by Jeremy Strong

  I shut the book and showed Delfine the cover. ‘Salvador Dali, artist,’ I read out.

  ‘Perv, more like,’ said Delfine.

  ‘Me or him?’

  ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t see pictures of naked men like that, do you?’

  ‘So, what are you saying? If it’s a naked man, it’s OK; if it’s a naked woman, it’s not?’

  ‘Well, if it was a naked man I wouldn’t stare like you two.’

  ‘We weren’t staring. We were looking. And we were looking at the other pictures too, like this one.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Delfine. ‘Trains don’t come out of fireplaces.’

  I never thought I’d be pleased to reach an RE class. I made sure I sat next to Pete, even if he was a perv. I felt rotten. My relationship with Delfine was crumbling. I wanted it to happen and I didn’t want it to happen. I liked her. We’d been going out for ages – at least a month.

  I slumped back in my seat and got ready to switch off. RE. I hated it. It was actually RE and philosophy. We had Mrs Tightsparrow – yes, I know but, believe me, it really was her name – and she was one of the dreariest teachers in the school. I don’t think she would have come alive if we’d plugged her into the mains. So you can guess how excited we were to be sitting there.

  Then the door opens and in comes, not Mrs Tightsparrow, but a legend. I’d seen Mr Hanson before, but I’d never been taught by him. He taught sixth formers mostly – philosophy, RE, all the stuff that makes you shudder, and exactly the same as Mrs Tightsparrow.

  But that is why he’s a legend. It was amazing how many people liked his lessons. Everyone thinks he’s awesome, which is weird, because he wears corduroy trousers and bright-yellow socks. And he’s got a beard, a big one. A really big one. Like a dead badger. In the looks department he must rank as the uncoolest person on the planet. So what’s the big deal? I was about to find out. He put a battered brown briefcase on the desk and eyed us for a moment.

  ‘Mrs Tightsparrow is indisposed today. She will be indisposed tomorrow,’ he rumbled. ‘She may be indisposed beyond then. We are at the mercy of the gods. This morning, ladies, gentlemen, we must make do without her as best we can. I am going to show you a video. I don’t suppose you’ll understand it, but I’m going to show it to you anyway.’

  A ripple of laughter ran through the room. This was Hanson’s catchphrase. He was famous for introducing almost every lesson by saying: ‘I don’t suppose you’ll understand, but I’m going to tell you anyway.’ Hanson ignored our laughter and slipped the video into the VCR.

  It was a documentary drama about creating the first English dictionary.

  Yes! I know! Exciting! I almost plunged straight into a deep coma.

  Glad I didn’t.

  So, we watch this documentary about how this guy, Dr Johnson, took years and years to write the first English dictionary. This is about 250 years ago. And I’m watching this but it’s getting a bit boring. I’m starting to switch off and then it starts telling you other things about Dr Johnson’s life, like he had a mistress. The film showed them together but they had all their clothes on and I thought, what a bummer! All that lace and layers of clothing! It’d take you half an hour just to find something interesting. Johnson and his mistress certainly couldn’t find anything – not that they’d have showed us, anyway. They always leave out the really educational bits. There was just a lot of grunting and hunting. We had to use our imagination. (So I did.)

  And then the film says the Doc was a bit of a wise guy, always ready with a snappy answer: A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.’ That gave me a giggle. I heard Pete snort too. I’d chuck out the broccoli too.

  Another time, Johnson was being told about some smart-brain philosopher who was suggesting that most of the things we see in the world are just an illusion. Johnson thought that was totally stupid. He went up to a big stone boulder and started shouting, ‘I refute it, thus!’ And he kicked the boulder.

  ‘I refute it, thus!’ he shouted again, and he went on kicking and kicking the boulder to show that it couldn’t possibly be an illusion because it was hurting his foot. Then he went hopping off. Mad! (Quite possibly hopping mad, ha ha.) It was really funny. Pete and I were in hysterics.

  Afterwards, when we were leaving, I told Pete that maybe school was just an illusion. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not really here at all,’ I said.

  He went to the side of the corridor and began kicking the wall. ‘I refute it, thus!’ he shouted. ‘Ow!’

  At that moment old Hanson went past. His eyes slid sideways towards Pete. ‘There is hope for the future,’ he murmured.

  God knows what he was on about.

  Anyhow, it was brilliant. Pete and I spent the rest of the day refuting everything. At lunchtime one of the dinner ladies offered Pete some globulous goo she claimed was mashed potato.

  ‘I refute it, thus!’ said Pete, looking outraged, horrified and disgusted all in one go. And he plunged a fork right into the middle.

  We were like that all afternoon. Nobody else had a clue what we were on about. Hilarious!

  8

  Running Away – First Attempt

  Anyway, all this time I had been hatching my cunning plan for the Great Escape. The ‘plan’ bit of the Great Escape went like this: go and live with Pete and his Aunt Polly. The ‘cunning’ bit of the Great Escape was: do it when Dad isn’t looking.

  If you’re going to run off somewhere, there’s a lot to think about, even if you’re only going as far as Pete’s. For a start, you have to pack your bag. That was hard. Couldn’t make up my mind about what I should put in and what I should leave out.

  I’d run away once before, when I was five. Even then Mum and Dad were quarrelling with each other and it seemed like I was getting in the way, so I thought I’d remove myself from the scene and everything would be all right again. Tra la la.

  My Running-away Story

  I knew I couldn’t just go. I would need something to eat, so I made a cheese sandwich. I’d never made one before but I’d seen Mum do it. The bread was already sliced, but cutting the cheese was difficult. I had to use two hands on the knife handle and every time I pressed down the slab of cheese shot off sideways somewhere. That cheese must have paid flying visits to every corner of the kitchen except the ceiling. It landed in the washing-up bowl at one point.

  Anyhow, I eventually managed to produce three or four tiny nicks of cheddar. I made the sandwich, stuck it in my jacket pocket and set off. I knew exactly where I was going and headed down the road. By the time I reached the corner I reckoned it was lunchtime, so I ate the sandwich. It didn’t taste very cheesy but it did taste of washing-up liquid. Then I went round the corner and down to where my aunt and uncle lived.

  I rang the doorbell and my aunt answered and she asked me what I was doing there.

  ‘I’m running away from home,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’d better come in, then. Does your mum know?’

  ‘No. You’re not supposed to tell your mum if you’re running away,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh,’ she said again.

  My aunt gave me a drink and some chocolate biscuits. ‘You eat those while I make a quick phone call,’ she told me, and went out of the room.

  When she came back we both sat there for a bit and she asked me what I wanted for my birthday and then there was a knock at the door and it was my mum.

  ‘Hello, Simon,’ she said with a big smile, giving me a hug. Those look like nice biscuits. Can I have one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ve been talking about Simon’s birthday,’ said my aunt, and we talked about it a bit more. Apparently I was going to have a party. I’d never had a party before. I’d been to two or three, but I’d never had one of my own and we sat there and talked about all the different kinds of food I’d have and who I’d invite and, even more importan
t, who I wouldn’t invite.

  ‘Not Roger Matthews,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘His dad’s a librarian.’

  My mum and aunt burst out laughing.

  ‘Why is that so bad?’ my mum asked.

  I didn’t like the way they laughed at me. I was serious, but I couldn’t tell them why. The thing was, I’d been in the library a few weeks earlier and I’d been looking at a book and I was turning a page and there were two stuck together, so I tried to peel them apart and they both tore and pulled bits of the page surface off each other The book was ruined. I looked around and nobody had seen, so I quickly shut the book and put it back in the box. The librarians must have found it by now and I reckoned they’d be furious. If they knew it was me, I’d be in dead trouble, so I had to keep away from anything to do with the library for as long as possible.

  Listen, I was five at the time; bet you were stupid when you were five.

  We sat there for half an hour or so talking about birthdays and parties and then Mum got up and said, ‘Oh look, it’s lunchtime. We’d better get back home, Simon.’

  She took my hand and we walked home and we had lunch. Cheese sandwiches. With real cheese and no washing-up liquid. Mum never said anything about my running away. I’ve always wondered if she knew. Oh yeah, I needn’t have worried about Roger Matthews anyhow, because he got chickenpox and couldn’t come. The party was brilliant. I got loads of prezzies, but all Roger got was spots.

  The End

  However, this time it was going to be the real thing and it would need meticulous planning, like a military operation.

  • PHASE ONE: Pack two shirts, two pairs trousers, two pairs underpants, two pairs socks, two Ts, two pairs trainers, all my minidiscs and stuff to go with it, Buffy poster, copy of Men Only mag I’d ‘borrowed’ from Dad’s collection that he thought I knew nothing about, money, toothbrush, toothpaste.

  • PHASE TWO: Leave note for Dad, saying I was OK and not to worry.

  • PHASE THREE: Leave home when nobody else was around and make way to Pete’s.

  • PHASE FOUR: Freedom at Pete’s. Hurrah! (With wild parties and stuff …!

  I couldn’t wait.

  9

  Refuting Mr Teddy

  I was halfway through Phase One when Natasha burst into my bedroom, just as I was peeling Buffy off the wall. It so happens that there is a notice on the front of my door that says:

  DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING.

  And beneath that I had added:

  Natasha – don’t even bother!

  ‘Can’t you read?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yeah – it says don’t bother knocking, just come right in.’

  ‘As if. You don’t know what I might have been doing.’

  ‘You’ll go blind,’ she said.

  ‘You are so disgusting.’

  ‘I’m disgusting?!’ Tasha’s face puckered. ‘Anyhow, have you got a bin liner?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That spot’s bigger than your nose. If it gets any worse, we’ll have to call in the Hazardous Chemical Unit. I could lance it for you, if you like. I’ll get a skewer. And a bucket. Or the vacuum cleaner – that could suck it dry.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ How I hated her! I hated her for coming into my room despite the warning. I hated her for making blood rush to my face in the way it was right then. And I hated her because she knew it was all because of her and she thought she’d won. That was a lot of hate. ‘What do you want, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just that Mum says to remind you it’s your week to do the washing-up.’

  ‘Thank you for the reminder,’ I said icily. ‘That was just so important.’

  Tasha smiled and went to the door. She turned back for a moment. ‘Nice teddy’ she said, and then she was gone.

  Damn and blast and double triple quadruple damn squared with knobs on and sharp things that fly off and stick into lousy horrible stinking clever-arse girls!

  I could hear her laughing outside my door, stuffing a hand over her mouth to stifle it. I could have kicked myself. Mr Teddy was right there, on my window sill. I’d forgotten all about him, never bothered to throw him away because …

  … because …

  … well …

  … because … I couldn’t.

  All right? I couldn’t do it. Mr Teddy had been with me forever. When I was a teething toddler I’d chewed his left ear until it was a ragged stump. We’d been through a lot together. I had taught him how to swim in the frog pond. He didn’t like it very much and seemed to prefer getting waterlogged and sinking to the bottom. I even taught him to fly. I got an inner tube from my bike, nailed it to the window frame and catapulted him out. He went as far as next door’s garden. I think if he’d flapped he’d have gone even further. And I buried him once. I wanted to know what it felt like to stand beside a grave, crying, like they showed on telly sometimes. So I buried Mr Teddy and stood there and I didn’t feel like crying at all, so I dug him up and went indoors, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  So, it was Mr Teddy’s furry ears (or rather his one remaining furry ear) that held most of my secrets. (Some secrets can’t be told to anyone, not even teddies.) And then, when I had almost decided that I was too grown-up to keep him any longer, Mum and Dad said they were splitting. I couldn’t lose Mr Teddy as well. I pushed him to the far corner of the window sill and that was where he was when Tasha spotted him, sitting in wise silence.

  I yanked the door open. Tasha was already at the corner of the stairs. I hurled Mr Teddy after her.

  ‘I refute him, thus!’ I yelled.

  Mr Teddy went cartwheeling through the air, like one of those steel karate triple-prongy things. Fwwitt-fwwitt-fwwitt-fwwitt. Tasha turned the corner without even bothering to look back. At the same moment, La Trifle turned the corner coming up the stairs. Mr Teddy hurtled towards his target. Fwwitt-fwwitt-fwwitt – SPLAMMM! Just like a computer game. I almost expected to see La Trifle dissolve in a series of dots and vanish entirely. Unfortunately she didn’t. She did the other thing that computer monsters do and grew to twice her size, powered up by anger.

  ‘How dare you!’ bellowed Roaring Sherry Trifle Monster.

  What could I do? I was defenceless. She picked up Mr Teddy and threw him back at me. What a crap throw! Pathetic. Still, she had more dangerous weapons in her armoury. We faced each other on the landing, Trifle Monster’s bosom heaving. Holy juggabumps! I thought there’d be a spillage. More work for the Hazardous Chemical Unit.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I was refuting him,’ I said meekly.

  YOU’LL BACK ME UP, WON’T YOU? THIS WAS THE HONEST TRUTH!

  At least she was stunned into silence for a moment. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I was refuting him.’

  ‘I have no idea what you are going on about. You threw that thing at me.’

  Actually, I threw it at Tasha.’

  ‘That’s just as bad! I’m telling your father about this.’

  Nothing new there, then. How my life goes.

  10

  Running Away – Second Attempt

  As you can imagine, I was in trouble. I tried to explain, but Dad waved a hand at me and said he was fed up with my protests: ‘Nobody knows what you’re talking about, Simon. Refuting teddies? It’s gibberish. Tracey and Natasha and I are starting a new life together. You can’t change that by throwing your teddy at us. It’s time you grew up.’

  La Trifle and her witch-daughter were standing behind him, smirking at me. It was three against one. Well, that’s not fair, is it? Didn’t seem to be much point in hanging around. I thought longingly of Pete’s place. It was definitely time to go. I waited until things had settled down a bit, grabbed my bag, crept downstairs, went out the back door and I was off.

  I can tell you, my heart was beating at some rate. I tried to stay calm and walk at normal speed, but with every step I took away from home my spirits lifted. It wasn’t just the Great Escape, it was the movie The
Great Escape, and by the time I reached Pete’s place I was walking on air. I felt like every one of those prisoners in the film. (All the ones that didn’t get shot, that is.) I sauntered up the path and rang the bell.

  Pete answered. ‘Hi, Stuff. How’s tricks?’

  ‘I’ve done it.’ I gave him a proud grin.

  ‘What? You sly gink!’

  All I could do was nod. I thought that if I grinned much more my mouth would split my face in half. Pete was gobwalloped. ‘How did you do it? What did you say to her?’

  The grin turned to puzzlement. ‘How do you mean? What did I say to who?’

  ‘Sky’ answered Pete. ‘What did you say? How did you pull her?’

  ‘I’m not talking about Sky,’ I explained.

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No.’ Why was I disappointed at that look of relief on Pete’s face?

  ‘What are you talking about, then?’

  A woman appeared from behind Pete and peered over his shoulder. It was Aunt Polly. We’d met before, once or twice, but only briefly. She was one of those glamorous aunts – the sort that your friends have, but you never do – you know, the kind of woman that just looks … young, sexy, attractive, adventurous. She was the sort of woman you dreamed about meeting on the Orient Express at night and the train goes round a sharp bend and you stumble against the door to her compartment and it opens by mistake and you crash inside and go sprawling across her and she’s in bed and it all gets interesting. Then you wake up and change your shorts. Crashed the Citroën again.

  Sorry got a bit carried away but you know what I mean. It happens. Maybe I should explain about the Citroën. Maybe I shouldn’t. But I’m going to. We had a sex-ed lesson a few months back and our biology teacher explained the mechanics of a stiffy. ‘It’s basically the same principle that Citroëns use for hydropneumatic suspension,’ he told us. You can work the rest out yourself. Pete and I can’t see a Citroën without laughing now.