Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  For the first time in Spewsome Newson’s school experience the hall looked wonderful. The tinsel-laden tree, the trestle table heavy with plates of sausage rolls and bowls brimming with prawn-cocktail crisps, KP Discos and Monster Munch. There were rumours that somebody had spiked the bowl of non-alcoholic punch with vodka. In retrospect Newson was quite certain that this had not been the case, but at the time everyone believed it and it had lent a certain frisson to the sticky mix of fruit juice, Tizer, lemonade and chopped apple which they all guzzled. This was in the days before the Ecstasy revolution, ever since which, according to the press, every child has spent their entire school days permanently high. Certainly, one or two of the wilder spirits had managed a swig of booze or a puff of dope before entering the party, but in the main that night Newson and his classmates were straight and sober. Youth and Christmas were all the stimulants they needed.

  Newson had arrived at the party with Helen Smart, a girl from one of the other forms in his year with whom he’d recently become friends. Helen was most certainly not one of the cool girls, the gang of which Christine Copperfield was the epicentre. Helen was one of the misfits, the post-punk goths whom the boys routinely accused of being lesbians. These girls wore baggy jumpers, steadfastly refusing to reveal the contours of their bodies, and knee-length skirts, and peered at the world from between split curtains of greasy hair. Newson had always got on better with this type of girl, and Helen was the prime example. She only listened to indie music, had recently read The Outsider by Camus, and hated Mrs Thatcher. Like Newson, she carried a certain status within her class for being a proper misfit. She and he were the radicals, being the only kids in the year to support the miners’ strike. Helen had even been sent home on one occasion for refusing to remove the Coal Not Dole sticker from her jumper. Newson and Helen had begun to talk to each other during school Miners’ Support Group meetings. They were the only fourth-year members and they had quickly become fervent co-conspirators against the world. They believed themselves to have a clear and uncorrupted overview of how crap everything was, unlike the idiots and fashion junkies who thought themselves cool. On the night of the Christmas disco Helen had surprised Newson by wearing a mini-skirt and some tinsel in her hair. The short skirt went well with her striped pink and black tights and monkey boots.

  They entered the hall, walking past the forbidding figure of Mr ‘Bastard’ Bathurst, the much-loathed headmaster. Though he’d died in 1997, right now in Newson’s wine-and-beer-soaked mind he was alive and well with a face like death, scowling grimly as he always did no matter what the occasion. ‘Aha. Marx and Engels,’ he said, and the lifeless smile indicated that Mr Bathurst was in humorous mode. ‘Isn’t a Christmas party against your principles, Helen? I thought the only party you approved of was the Communist Party.’

  ‘I’m not a Communist, I’m a Socialist Worker, sir,’ Helen replied, ‘and in line with our policy of entryism I’m going to corrupt this evening from within.’

  Beyond Bastard Bathurst, bathed in a golden festive glow, was Mrs Curtis. Curvy Curtis of cleavage fame!

  How all the boys had loved her kind smile, blond tresses and enormous tits. Newson could see her now as she had been on that special night, perched against the record table, long legs stretched out before her. No needle was ever jogged by a shapelier bottom than Mrs Curtis’s.

  Helen took one look at Mrs Curtis and growled that as far as Mrs Curtis was concerned feminism might just as well have not happened.

  ‘Yeah, that dress is really sexist,’ Newson agreed, taking another long look just to be sure.. Helen had stalked off to get some punch.

  The computer screen seemed to grow ever dimmer with inactivity, but still Newson did not take the plunge. He was drunk and in no hurry to tempt the present, content to linger for a little longer in the safety of the past. To listen once again as the school DJ, an arse called Dewhurst from the lower sixth whose entire personality was based on the fact that he owned a double record deck, cranked up ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ for the fifth time.

  How happy Newson had been. How happy they’d all been, those long-since-grown-up boys and girls filled, at fourteen, with the endless optimism of youth.

  Boy George, Simon Le Bon, Bananarama and all the stars of ‘84 sang plaintively about how hellish Christmas must be in an African famine zone. Boy George must have been happy too. He was the biggest pop star on the planet. Little did he know that his two lines on the Band Aid single would be the last time he’d ever see the Number One spot.

  Boy George’s were not the only dreams that would fade with the coming years. Many of the youngsters who smiled so broadly at that long-since-vanished Christmas party were destined to live lives filled with hurt and disappointment. Nobody could tell that night who would win and who would lose in life, but the years would reveal their secrets soon enough — sooner than any of those happy youngsters could ever have imagined. They thought they’d be young for ever but time was on the starting blocks, the long, lazy, sun-drenched childhood stroll from the pavilion was nearly over and soon the sprint that was adulthood would begin.

  The dance floor was slowly filling. One or two of the boys were even shaking leg, having prised themselves from the walls to which they had appeared to be glued. Many of the girls had been dancing from the beginning; of course, the golden ones, the confident ones. Christine Copperfield was such a girl. The team leader.

  In that skirt. That white ra-ra skirt with the crimson Christmas sash. And those legs. Christine Copperfield played tennis for the school. She also played hockey and netball and had won a disco-dancing competition at the local borough hall. In America she would have been named Homecoming Queen and the Girl Most Likely. She had sporty legs. Athletic. Balletic. Orgasmic. As a pubescent boy Newson had gone to sleep dreaming of those legs on so many nights. Legs that were a quantum leap out of his league. Legs that were most emphatically not for the likes of him.

  Until the night of the Christmas disco in 1984.

  On that night everything changed. All the rules were broken. The night the nerd got lucky. The night the princess stepped daintily and briefly from her pedestal and bestowed her favours on a member of the grubby underclass.

  It had taken Michael Jackson to fill the floor. That, no doubt, and the effect of the additives in the Monster Munch, not yet known to the world as E numbers. DJ Dewhurst had put Thriller on to his left-hand side, dropping the needle with a flourish which was almost cool, and suddenly the party was on fire.

  ‘Rock on, Tommy!’ the young people shouted in the argot of the time as they spilled on to the floor. Everybody whooped, squeaked ‘Ooh!’, everybody tried to moonwalk and failed. The ones who were the worst at it were those who thought they could do it. Kieran Beattie, the class tub in an age when class tubs were rarer and hence painfully obvious targets, was actually wearing a single glittering glove. An eleven-stone, white, freckly, English Michael Jackson.

  Michael Jackson was a hero then. Time would prove itself as cruel to the exalted as to the lowly.

  Christine Copperfield was dancing with her girlfriends because that very afternoon she’d split up with her boyfriend, a lad called Paul from the year above. Paul and Christine were the golden couple of their years and their separation was the talk of the party. Paul was big, hard and handsome, the leader of his own little pack. He was sixteen and had a moped; what’s more, he’d had the guts to remove the L-plate and carry a passenger as if he were already seventeen and had passed his test. He and Christine looked so cool as they swept up to school, he with that firm chin which clearly required regular shaving, her with those fabulous legs clamped round his muscular frame, her golden hair blowing from the edges of her helmet.

  Now, it seemed, this famous relationship was history. Christine had seen Paul shopping in HMV Records with his arm round a girl from his village who went to the local comprehensive, which was known to produce nothing but slags. The girl wore white stilettos and, despite the winter weather, an electric pi
nk boob-tube from which her frozen nipples protruded like bullets. Christine had watched Paul kissing her in front of the singles rack. She’d watched as Paul gripped her backside as they squeezed themselves into one of the listening booths. It was here that Christine confronted them as they shared a set of headphones.

  Now Christine and Paul stood in very different parts of the room. Two bright and separate stars in the firmament that — was the Shalford Grant-maintained Grammar School Combined Fourth and Fifth Form Christmas Disco. Two stars around which their respective posses revolved, Paul and his mates near the crisps, making plans to go to the pub, and Christine and her girlfriends bopping like wild things. A dozen cute, ra-ra-skirt-topped legs tripping, skipping and hopping about amongst their glittery little handbags, fancy party tights and clouds of Top Shop cotton, a whirl of colour and breathless delight. The lustful focus of so many male eyes, including Newson’s. Six lovely girls making it noisily and exuberantly clear to one another, to the party and indeed to the whole world that they were it. Wild, beautiful and oh so happy.

  What happened next surprised everybody. It surprised Newson most of all. Helen had just brought two cups of fruit punch back to where Newson was standing and had asked him if he wanted to step outside for a cigarette. He’d been about to go when Christine Copperfield broke away from her group of cavorting friends and walked over to them.

  ‘Hi, Helen,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, Christine,’ Helen replied.

  Then Christine turned her gorgeous violet eyes on Newson. ‘Hi, Ed. Cool jacket,’ she said.

  Newson had chosen his ensemble with care. When you’re only five foot two you have to make an effort, and he was wearing a tight-fitting grey leather bomber jacket, black button-down shirt and skinny piano-pattern tie.

  ‘Thanks, Christine. You look amazing. Wow. Fantastic,’ Newson spluttered.

  ‘That was great about Simon Bates,’ Christine continued. Newson had recently caused a huge stir by writing a spoof letter to the Simon Bates Radio One ‘Our Tune’ slot, in which listeners wrote in to tell the world of their heartache. Bates would read out these small sagas of tortured emotions to the accompaniment of lush backing music, ending with an appeal for true love to triumph: ‘So, Sandra, if you’re out there why not give Bob a call? Who knows, it could be the best five pence you ever spent.’

  He’d invented a love story using the names of Mr Bathurst and Mrs Curtis, had sent it in and to the delight of the whole school it had been read out on the radio as the real thing. Even the hard nuts had had to pat Newson on the back for that one and he was briefly and happily famous.

  ‘Yeah. I think Mrs Curtis heard about it, but she hasn’t said anything. Imagine her and Bastard Bathurst shagging.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They laughed together at the comically horrifying thought.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to dance, then?’ Christine said.

  Newson was stunned. It was so unexpected. Helen was surprised too, but Newson wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t thinking of her. Christine Copperfield wanted to dance! It could not have been any more surprising or indeed any more fabulous had Madonna herself walked into the party and asked him to treat her like a virgin.

  ‘Um…do you want to dance?’

  ‘ ‘Girls just want to have fun,’’ said Helen, using a phrase that was new at the time.

  Newson’s heart pounded, his senses on fire, but he was also cool, cool in his own quirky way. He put down the cup that Helen had brought him, bent his knees, went forward on to his toes, gripped his crotch, thrust his other arm skywards and went ‘Ooh!’ at exactly the point when Michael Jackson went ‘Ooh!’ over DJ Dewhurst’s speakers.

  Christine, with only the briefest of glances towards Paul, who was affecting not to notice, also punched the air and went ‘Ooh!’ And then they were together in the middle of the floor, leaping, jumping, punching the air and going ‘Ooh!’ The most surprising new couple in the school, Queen Christine’ and her court jester.

  How the hardnuts gaped in astonishment. How they snarled. Roland Marcella. Ollie Dane. Collingwood, Reed and Simmons, and above all Paul. The tough guys of the fifth year, the ones who saw the fit birds from the fourth year as theirs by right because their own lush girls were going out with sixth-formers or lads who’d left and had real jobs, albeit crap ones.

  They snarled, but there was respect there. Newson was funny, and he’d fooled Simon Bates and got something on the radio. Now he was dancing with the fittest bird in the fourth form, the fittest bird in the school, in fact. You had to respect that.

  Wham! played and Newson and Christine jitterbugged briefly into each other’s hearts. They shouted and let it all out to Tears for Fears, punching the air and stamping their feet. They agreed with Boy George that war was stupid and that people were stupid.

  Relax, said Frankie. And relax they did, Spewsome Newson and the Golden Girl of the school. Newson the envy of every boy in the room save Gary Whitfield and Nicholas Perkins, who it was firmly believed were gay. Relax, the whole room shouted together. And everyone in the room wondered if Mr Bathurst knew that the song was about blowjobs.

  Newson could hardly believe it when the time came to leave. The evening had passed in a thrilling blur and it was eleven o’clock. Outside Roger Jameson was puking in a flowerbed while his friend Pete Woolford finished off the half-bottle of Teacher’s they’d stolen from the Pakistani supermarket. And at the front of the school parents’ cars were beginning to block each other in as they arrived to collect their offspring.

  Inside the twinkling hall DJ Dewhurst spun up his left-hand deck and put on ‘Last Christmas’, Wham!’s anthem to lost love, the Number One that never was, having been kept off the top slot by Band Aid with the single that claimed to save lives.

  The final dance had arrived. And all the boys lucky enough to have secured themselves a girl to smooch with pulled their partners close and started to push the bone. Hands dropped down to close around bottoms and Fun-sized Mars bars were ground into the stomachs of those girls who would- accept them. Christine accepted Newson’s. He simply could not believe what was happening to him as the girl of his dreams allowed him to push his bulging Top Man trousers against her perfect tummy. Fortunately, he was wearing heels and Christine was only a few inches taller than him, so it was possible to work his quivering hips amongst the starchy folds of Christine’s skirt. She even allowed him to place his face amongst the brittle, lacquered curls of her big hair and brush his lips against her adorable ears. Across the room Paul put on his motorbike helmet. For one brief moment Christine stared back before placing her face before Newson’s and kissing him.

  In another part of the room someone else was staring. Helen had told Newson on the way to the disco that she considered such parties bourgeois crap, and he assumed she had left hours before. But she hadn’t. She’d watched all evening as Newson had danced with Christine.

  In the darkness of his study Newson pressed GO and went in search of Christine Copperfield.

  She was not there, of course. Why would she be? Christine Copperfield would have far better things to do at the age of thirty-five than sit alone in a dark room dreaming of kisses twenty years cold. Not Christine; she wouldn’t have time, not with her undoubtedly full and successful life. Christine Copperfield did not need to look back.

  But other ghosts had left their mark. Other voices from the class of ‘81 to ‘88 could be heard in the darkness.

  Newson pressed ‘Gary Whitfield’. Up came Gary’s profile, his email and voicemail details, and the little paragraph of information that he had elected to leave.

  I hated school and it turns my stomach to return even in this virtual sense. But I had to do this because I wanted to let you all know that, yes, you were right, congratulations. I AM a poof! I am queer! Gay! Yippee, well done, you were right And do you know what? I’m SO glad. I love my life. I love my partner, he’s kind and sweet and everything that you all were not You’re shits, all of you and I H
ATE you! All of you. I hate the ones who tormented me and I hate the ones who let it happen. But most of all I hate YOU Roger Jameson and I hope you rot in Hell for what you did to me. Does anyone remember but me? Does anyone remember what used to happen in the changing rooms? Let me jog your memory…

  Newson had not expected this. He’d been so swept up in post-adolescent fantasy that it had never occurred to him that the Friends site could be used as a medium for finally answering back. It was obvious, of course, when he thought about it.

  Poor Gary Whitfield. Newson did remember what had happened to him in the changing rooms because he’d been one of the ones to let it happen. This shameful truth had been lurking at the back of his conscience ever since and now as he read Gary Whitfield’s account of the torture he had suffered Newson felt his guilt keenly once more. Newson could still see a weedy little boy cowering in the corner of the changing rooms while Jameson and some of his toughs hemmed him in, whacking him with wet towels and chanting ‘Poof! Poof! Poof!’ One day they’d taken Mr Jenkins’ overhead projector pen and written ‘I am queer’ on Gary’s forehead. Newson could still remember Whitfield being held down while Jameson wrote the words. The ink had been indelible and it had stayed on his forehead for days, faded but legible. Newson remembered Gary’s red skin, sore from his mother’s frantic scrubbing.

  And he had let it happen. They had all let it happen. It was not good enough that he was small and Roger Jameson was big and tough. He could have done something. He should have done something.

  And here now was Roger Jameson, also returned to class after twenty years. Another policeman of all things, just like Newson himself. Two in a class. It must have been Bastard Bathurst going on so much about respecting authority.

  Maybe you guys remember I left at fourteen. My family went to the States and guess what? I ended up joining the NYPDI Yeah. Kind of a long way from Shalford huh?