Out: A Schoolboy's Tale

by David Brining

  26: Beautiful Ones

  OVER the next few tedious, frustrating and miserable days my cuts and scrapes slowly healed. I got bored with Pebble Mill, Fingerbobs and seemingly endless snooker. I continued writing 'Depression', tried my hand at a poem, listened to Wagner over and over, the Prelude to Parsifal where a naïve simpleton rejects the world of sex and women to stay pure and win the Grail to save a kingdom, finished Dead Ned and re-read Gillian Avery's Greatest Gresham, about three Victorian children with a fiercely strict father and how their friends next door tried to get them to 'broaden their horizons.' The initiation ceremony in the cellar [SPOILER ALERT – if you haven't read it, blah blah blah] which made Henry scream always made me shiver a little – ghostly, faceless monks in cowls and so forth – but I always enjoyed the chapter where Aunt B the dressmaker tells this nosy old bag to bugger off and mind her own business. I wished I had an aunt or even a parent like that. Anyway, I lived off banana smoothies, cheese on toast, Battle of the Planets and Crackerjack. Unfortunately, neither G-Force slamming Styron nor 'Double or Drop' could raise a smile, even though I knew the holy book of Islam was The Qur'an, the capital of Turkey was Istanbul and picadors were found in the sport of bull-fighting and therefore would have won a damn sight more than a cabbage. Even firing rockets at America, blasting motorbikes with missiles or splatting frogs with lorries bored me.

  The weekend was horrid. The folks saw my misery. They could hardly not. Living in my blue trackies and cobalt sweater, I spent most of the time staring out of the kitchen window into the foggy garden or sitting on the swing gently kicking my trainers through neat piles of fallen leaves, wavy-edged oak leaves the colour of brass, oval beech leaves like golden toffee, wet, tar-spotted sycamore leaves, pale yellow heart-shaped lime leaves, crunchy like crisp packets and all rotting together in a heap.

  Mum, skipping yoga, tried to lift me by asking me to choose some cards from the Traidcraft Christmas catalogue. I picked a set of cartoons called 'Village Christmas' which included a dog sitting in the snow outside a warm yellow and orange brick house and looking up at a ginger cat perched on a red telephone-box. I also selected a nice hand-painted wooden Noah's Ark from Sri Lanka, with blue elephants, green crocodiles, and a curiously pink, blonde Mrs Noah. We also went through the Christian Aid present catalogue deciding whether to spend my Christmas money on a goat for a Kenyan family or mosquito nets for a Bangladeshi orphanage. I wanted to give it to The Terence Higgins Trust for AIDS research, but settled for the goat. It was a nice picture, and I liked goats. Goats were cool. Anyway, Mum made some red lentil soup with this special home-baked cheese and sun-dried tomato bread while I filled in the order forms. Dad, coming in from the compost, had heartbreak all over his face.

  ''Jonny,'' he began carefully, glancing anxiously at Mum, ''We've been talking and we think you should leave the grammar school. After all this trouble, you might be better somewhere else. I know it's your GCSE year and that, but… well, we can get you in at Thornbury High after Christmas. We can go look round next week if you like.''

  Most of the kids from Primary had gone to Thornbury. It was OK. No uniform, just these bottle-green sweatshirts, you could wear trainers and it was only a ten-minute walk away. But the buildings were falling down and they didn't do German. Or rugby. But they did cooking and had girls. Some of them went to our church. I could ask them what it was like. I knew nothing about state schools, except what I'd seen on Grange Hill, and that simply confirmed my parents' wisdom in taking me out of the state sector when they did.

  ''Whatever you think, Dad.'' I was just so tired I no longer cared. ''I'll go to Thornbury. I can leave in June anyway, get a job.''

  ''What job?'' Mum's shoulders tensed.

  ''Dunno,'' I said. ''Stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s. Or work at the Halifax.'' I shredded bread into the lentil soup. ''I might join the army.'' I knew that would set her off.

  On Sunday, Mum spent the afternoon mixing the Christmas pudding to the radio broadcast of an Advent Carol Service - 'Disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee...' The Collect for the last Sunday before Advent exhorted God to 'Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.'

  Mum exhorted us to stir the pudding. It was a family tradition. We each took a turn with the wooden spoon whilst making a wish. Looking at Mum's closed eyes and tense expression, I guessed she was wishing I'd wake on Christmas Day heterosexual. I guessed Dad, sloping in from the greenhouse in his wellies and overalls and hoping to sample the freshly baked sausage-rolls, was wishing for peace, at least in his home if not in the wider world. Muttering that she'd've stirred it clockwise, Mum handed the wooden spoon to me as the organist on the radio started Bach's 'Wachet auf' (Sleepers Awake).

  What to wish for. In the old days, I wished that, like the Famous Five, we lived in Kirrin Cottage overlooking a sandy bay, a shining blue sea and a rocky island with a ruined castle rather than a scruffy inner-city street marred by dog-turds and chip-papers. Escapism was everything. Back then I often wished for brothers like Julian and Dick and a dog like Timmy to chase rabbits and scoff sandwiches with. Five on Kirrin Island Again had an oafish, ill-mannered villain called Peters, which I found quite exciting. Those days were over.

  I stared into the batter, the red glacé cherries, the fat black raisins and soft brown sultanas, swollen now with brandy, and thought peace would be nice. I was fed up with fighting. It felt that was all I'd done since September. I wished people would stop being mean to me, stop insulting me, stop hitting me, stop spitting at me. That'd be good. I wished people would be nice to me again, smile at me, say hello, include me in their football teams, basically treat me like they wanted me to treat them, you know? That would also be good.

  Sleepers Awake. Please.

  I closed my eyes and dug the spoon deeply into the batter. ''I wish,'' I said silently, ''For my mother to love me again, not wish I was somebody else, and love me as I am.'' Mentally crossing my fingers for extra luck, I turned the spoon over and drifted back to Go with Noakes and the Mastermind semi-final (two teachers, an architect and a taxi-driver on Wellington, Nabokov and John Clare, and Westminster Abbey). Then it was Monday. My RNLI calendar showed Longships Lighthouse off Land's End, the most isolated structure in the UK, poking straight up from a rock little wider than its own base and accessible only by helicopter. Maybe I could be a lighthouse-keeper. It was certainly no lonelier than this.

  Mrs Locke had called to say I could return to school if I wanted. I didn't. Mum did. After porridge, beetroot juice and bacon and beans, and the ceremonial opening of the first square (a yellow teddy-bear with a red bow-tie) on this year's Advent calendar, a silver glitter-daubed red-and-white Santa house, she drove me in the Sierra whilst Dad phoned Thornbury High School. Wogan welcomed December with 'Manley Barrilow' singing 'Lonely Together', 'your eyes are sad eyes, mine are too, it doesn't take too much to see what we've been through…'

  ''It's a positive sign,'' said Mum brightly. ''They asked you back. If anyone picks on you, go to Dr Crawford. Dad'll collect you at quarter-to-four.'' She kissed my cheek, brushed my parting back into a fringe and, struggling not to cry, wished me luck. Man, it was like my first day again, 'cept I'd gone on the bus by myself 'cos they were like working? Seemed like I'd always had to face the difficult stuff on my own.

  As the Sierra vanished round the bend, I tightened the belt of my trench-coat, hoisted up my backpack and dived onto the university campus. I didn't even try to avoid the pavement cracks 'cos a broken back was the least of my worries. There was no way I was going into school. The giggling, the whispering, the insults – and that was just the teachers. Also I didn't fancy getting like kicked about again, you know? I knew it was cowardly. I knew Leo and the others were having a bad time. Fuck it. I'd done my bit. Self-preservation now.r />
  I walked through the soft mist into the city. The black sandstone was oppressive. Crossing the main square outside the cathedral, I passed these two massive statues, the Black Prince on a horse, sword aloft, and the squat, porky figure of Queen Victoria glaring from a throne, and wandered through these lovely Victorian shopping-arcades, potted ferns, gently splashing fountains, stained-glass ceilings, fashionable boutiques and shoe-shops then went into the Castlegate Shopping Centre, HMV, Marks and Spencer, Top Man, even the Early Learning Centre. I went to the art gallery for an hour then into Westgate Market for hot Bovril. I was cold, my feet ached, and it was only half-eleven. I hadn't realised playing truant would be so boring. Later I sat on a bench outside City Hall with a Greggs' steak-bake then went to the library to warm up and read The Greatest Gresham, till this nosey-parker librarian asked why I wasn't in school. I said I was doing a project. He said he'd ring and check so I cleared out, though first I went to the toilet and pissed all over the mardy bastard's floor.

  I found myself drifting towards the canal. God, I was living my own story, though there was no way I was going to like kill myself, not for these pig-ignorant fuckwits. I watched like this thick black treacle ooze past a redbrick warehouse towards an angled weir then scrounged a ciggie from some guy who was fishing and, while I smoked it, saw a wet, bedraggled rat scurry along the pavement. I hated smoking, but I had nothing else to do. God, I was so bored. Eventually I just went home and watched the Blue Peter presenters make an Advent crown out of two coat-hangers, some gold tinsel, four red candles and some baubles. It looked pretty but I figured Mum would see naked flame next to flammable tinsel as a massive fire-risk. Then Mark Sonning phoned to ask me to speak in Wednesday's debating final against Firth. As I sank to the stairs, shocked, nervous, flattered, surprised, he said Mrs May had changed the motion from something on nuclear disarmament to 'This House believes that prejudice is a result of ignorance'.

  ''She's giving you both a chance to speak about your experiences, to confront these bigots,'' Sonning said. ''I want you to replace Burridge. Ali will open, I will close, you speak second. You get three minutes. We are opposing.''

  Now I'd done a lot of acting and an awful lot of music but I'd never ever spoken to an audience, not as myself. I knew from the semi how many people crammed into the lecture theatre. There could, for the final, be as many as five hundred. But Sonning was right, you know? It was an opportunity to tackle the school head-on and a chance to be with Ali, perhaps for the very last time. Once I moved to Thornbury, I'd probably never see him again, especially since he'd be off to uni. Dammit, I didn't wanna go to Thornbury, but I didn't fancy my own school right now either. Then, in the night, I had the most horrible dream.

  I was sitting on a wall with Bob Stewart, for God's sake, when a bunch of gimps from our school came by in full uniform. Stewart and I were sharing a cigarette. Then one of the smallest gimps stopped right in front of us and asked for a light. He was about twelve and skinny as a skeleton. His black hair was really greasy and his face so filthy you could write your name on his skin with your fingertip. His blazer was so knackered it was almost in pieces. He had no shirt, so the navy blue blazer was buttoned across a bare chest. In the V I noticed a puckered, pink burn. He was wearing grey flannel shorts and long grey woollen socks. His shoes were falling apart. His left knee was stitched with white wool stitches. They looked like maggots. I stared into the boy's eyes. They were flecked pink. He was clearly desperately unwell and extremely poor. As Stewart handed him a cigarette, I noticed, with a jolt of alarm, that the twelve year old beggar was me! Me. I cried.

  Was it really how I saw myself, really, deep down, as this poor beggar-boy? Maybe I was better off at Thornbury. Shit. The boy in my dream had looked so poorly.

  Skipping school again on Tuesday, I sat in the park, hung around the university then went to the cinema for Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless and all that shit. It was shit, with a bland, blond Flash, dodgy special effects and an overbearing, overshouty Vultan in wings and leather hot-pants. However, I enjoyed the colour and the visualisation (all reds, golds and pastels), the gold-masked Klytus (ripped off from C3PO?) and the bit where Ming's daughter got tied to a table and whipped was surprisingly erotic. Dale Arden's immortal line, though, 'Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth', was as good an argument for returning to school as the sleet and boredom.

  Grange Hill depressed the hell out of me too. They'd been running this story-line about kids daring each other to do stuff and it culminated in this hilarious scene where Bullet Baxter followed some lads into the shopping-centre toilets and was peeping under the cubicle doors when this traffic warden comes in and Baxter goes 'It's OK, I'm just looking for some boys.' Bloody funny, thought I'd puke, though these days it'd be all over The Scum about paedophile teachers and all that shit, but then this boy, Anthony, walked around the parapet of a multi-storey car park, lost his footing and fell to his death. Fuck's sake. It made me cry. What if one of my friends died? What if Leo, or Paulus, or Gray died? What if…? No no no. That would kill me. I had to go back to school. It was where the people I loved were.

  On Wednesday, when Dad dropped me at 8.15, and Mr Wogan had played ELO's 'Confusion' (ho ho Mr Wogan), I swallowed some Rescue Remedy, tightened my belt and this time stepped onto the zebra-crossing that led to the school gate. A few boys glanced at me curiously. Others actually smiled. One or two even like spoke to me? Something seemed to have changed. Collins, Arnold and Lewis welcomed me warmly. Brudenall, visibly upset, shook my hand. Gray even hugged me. I stood awkwardly in front of my locker. The word 'GAY' had been erased. Roy Walton had burned it off with a cigarette lighter.

  ''You may be a queer, Jonny,'' Collins said, ''But you're our queer, we love you and we're gonna look after you.'' He, Arnold and Lewis had apparently decided the others were bastards, or sheep, and threatened to grass them up if they hurt me again.

  And, quite simply, it felt so much better than nuking the bastards. Forgiveness really was the best revenge. One could be a martyr or one could be a Mandela. I had chosen to be a Mandela, and that was why I was now in control.

  I noticed Stewart was missing, which disappointed me 'cos I wanted to see what his fucking fat nose looked like plastered across his stupid melon face. But then Seymour was absent too, withdrawn by his father till 'the queers' were expelled. Said he didn't want to expose his sons to the danger of molestation. Everyone, he said, knew that 'queers' couldn't keep their hands to themselves, and that they were on a mission to corrupt the world. For fuck's sake, eh? I mean, what a twat, and the man was the chair of the PTA. Brudenall said his parents had taken the same line until Pip had screamed that he'd never abandon his friends, like Leo and Shelters and Jonny Peters, especially when they were in trouble. Broody then said his super-cool kid-brother had confessed to having a massive crush on me.

  ''He begged me not to hurt him like we'd hurt you.'' Brudenall said awkwardly. ''He was like on his knees with his hands clasped and kind of crying, for fuck's sake. He kept asking how I could hurt you for being in love and would I hurt him if he was in love?'' He sniffed. ''I don't know if Pip is like you, and he said he doesn't know yet anyway, but if he is, I'd want him to be like you. If you see what I mean.'' He brushed a sleeve across his face.

  I did, and was flattered. That the gorgeous Pip held me as a role-model. Like, wow!

  Facing Michael Crooks was more difficult. I asked why he'd told everyone.

  ''I don't know.'' He avoided my eyes. ''I was really pissed off. They were all going on about you and Ali, and saying shit, and it just sort of came out. I didn't know they'd go so mental about it. I thought they'd be cool, not arseholes.''

  I forgave him.

  Of course.

  I loved him.

  In Chapel, now decorated with a purple altar-cloth and a warmly winking Advent candle, I sat between Lewis and Collins, my head hunched into my shoulders, trying to ignore the whispers and sniggers. Arnold slapped some k
id in the Lower Fifth. Bunny, who'd welcomed me back with this weird half-smile, lashed out a couple of detentions. Tim Wilson, face still bruised, just shook his head as we started Hymn 51, 'Lo, he comes with clouds descending, once for favoured sinners slain.' I wondered what he'd told his mother. Nothing about me, I guessed. First, she'd have been round our house with the pigs like a ferret up a trouser-leg. Secondly, he would never admit to his mum that I, little weedy thicko Jon-Jon, had beaten him at anything, let alone in a fight.

  Leatherface read Romans, chapter 13, verse 8: ''Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly summed up in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.''

  Wonderful sentiments, but did he believe it? Did they believe it? I'd heard Archbishop Tutu say God wasn't homophobic but Tim's Christian Union posters proclaiming 'Gays go to Hell' and 'Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve' suggested the Bible-bashers thought otherwise. God made me, I'd tell them, and He made me gay.

  Too jittery for dry Ryvitas, apples and carrots, and lunching instead on Rescue Remedy and my asthma inhaler, I went to meet Sonning and Ali in the prefects' common room. I hadn't seen Ali since Thursday. Sonning thoughtfully left us for a few minutes.

  ''I missed you, J,'' he murmured, stroking my hair.

  ''Not as much as I missed you,'' I said, kissing his lips. ''Let's go win this cup.''

  As we walked downstairs hand-in hand, one or two twats did double-takes. One or two twats made stupid kissy noises. I merely flicked two fingers at them. Something had changed inside me. I'd reached a moment of destiny which I could either embrace or deny. Whatever I chose, my life would change forever 'cos I was ready now to fight the world, for him, for me and for every gay teen.

  The lecture theatre was packed and very noisy, every seat taken, every window-sill and most of the steps too. I guessed about 400, so around half the school? The front benches were occupied by masters, Perry and Reid, Langdon and Western, Yates and Donovan, Jones and Goddard, Phillips, Milton, Herbert and Hutchinson. U5H was squeezed into the middle. Most of the house was clustered on the right. Sooty and Leo unfurled a banner with MURRAY painted in green across a white background and started chanting 'Mu-rray, Mu-rray'. The house tutors, Wingnut Knight, Gorton-Smith and Jacko, sat among their boys. On the left, Firth House, including Finch, Shelton, Morreson and Bainbridge sat with Wadey and Chappers. In the middle sat the neutrals, Philip Brudenall, Niall Hill, Rix, Rubenstein, Driver, Train, and, praise God, Timothy Wilson. Please, I prayed, let me touch my friend's heart today. I missed him. I missed him a lot.

  Mrs May, fiddling with her glasses, was sitting at the centre of the long work-bench, long dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. To her right, Leverett, Willoughby and Shelton Major were conferring in whispers. As we took the three stools on her left, she smiled encouragingly, especially when someone yelled ''Go, Ali, go!''

  Perched between the two prefects, I regarded the excited, rowdy audience and felt my nervousness melt into calm self-confidence as Ashton, Gallagher and Crawford arrived, Mrs May called the house to order and invited Mr Leverett to move the motion.

  Leverett was a clear, logical speaker who defined both 'prejudice' and 'ignorance' with dictionarily forensic focus then explained that people disliked what they didn't understand giving examples from history, but he was very dry and academic, and received polite applause.

  ''There's a famous poem,'' Ali began, ''By Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran priest who was imprisoned by the very Nazis the honourable gentleman mentioned. It goes like this:

  'First they came for the communists, but I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Next they came for the Jews, but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Finally they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak for me.'

  ''My honourable friend talked about Nazis, about their hatred for what they didn't understand but, Madam Chair, I disagree. I believe the Nazis understood everything. These people were not stupid, nor were they ignorant. They were motivated by the need for a scapegoat. They wanted someone to blame for their economic decline and they chose their minorities, the weak, the vulnerable and the isolated, and created a climate of fear, fear of the outsider, fear of the other, fear of those who are different. And what happened in Nazi Germany, where those who were different, the Jews, the communists, the gypsies, the homosexuals, were gassed in the concentration camps, was not a result of ignorance but of evil and cowardice. Homosexuals. Gay people. Gassed for being gay. People like me. People like Jonathan.'' He fixed his eyes on Mr Gallagher then on Dr Ashton. ''There are people in this room who would gas the pair of us right now and all those in the audience who are like us.'' He looked at Leo. ''Not because they are ignorant, because they aren't. They are people with degrees and doctorates. They may be wilfully ignorant because they choose not to understand. They may also be evil but I doubt it. I have always found them kind, courteous and caring. Perhaps they are afraid of us, because we are different from them, and that makes them uneasy. Maybe they can tell us. But what happened in Nazi Germany happened mainly because good people, thinking people, kind people like you stood back and did nothing. They closed their eyes, they closed their ears and they pretended it wasn't happening. They marched, they sang, they saluted their leader, they betrayed their neighbours and millions died. Prejudice there was a deliberate choice. Prejudice there was a result of cowardice. Prejudice there was because no-one stood up and said 'this is wrong.' 'When good people do nothing, evil triumphs.' Edmund Burke. We have seen, recently, in this community what happens when good people do nothing. Prejudice reigns and evil triumphs. Metaphorically, the gassing started again. Metaphorically, Auschwitz was reopened. You may think I am being melodramatic, but I ask you to put yourselves in our positions, just for a minute, and consider how it felt to be us.''

  He paused. You could hear four hundred people holding their breaths, the hum of the strip-light glowing from the ceiling, the light patter of rain on the window-pane.

  ''Was this persecution a result of ignorance?'' he asked, ''Or was it simply an opportunity to even a score or two? Perhaps it was boredom. Perhaps it was all just a bit of a laugh. But did you see Jonathan laughing when you kicked his face in?''

  The guilt and shame were palpable now.

  ''Where did your prejudice come from? Your parents? Your friends? The media? Or maybe you just followed the crowd, followed the sheep, baa baa. But you know where the sheep go. They go into the slaughterhouse to be made into chops.''

  Someone laughed, breaking the tension, which is what he'd wanted. Waving a sheet of newspaper cuttings, he read them aloud.

  ''These are genuine headlines from The Sun, the Mail, the Express, and others. 'Pulpit poofs can stay', 'Lesbian teacher horror', 'I'd shoot my son if he had AIDS, says vicar', 'Secret of newsboy killer's gay pal', 'Poll verdict on gay vicars: kick 'em out', 'AIDS menace: he carries killer virus yet works with sick kids', 'AIDS blood in M & S pies plot', 'AIDS kills innocent man', meaning the others who died weren't innocent? Innocent of what? Of being gay? So if you aren't innocent, you're guilty… what is this language the papers use? What are they trying to do? What are they trying to make people feel?

  ''The language is emotive, the stories centre on vicars and teachers, child-molesters lurking in bushes, AIDS, conspiracies, plots. This isn't news, it's scare-mongering, designed to stoke prejudice and fuel fear. They want you to believe that we're looking to corrupt you, molest your children and give you all AIDS. And when we complain, we are being intolerant and hysterical and getting things out of proportion. This is not ignorance. This is just hatred.

  ''Tackling prejudice, confronting hatred, protecting your friends rather than betraying them, stan
ding up to your friends when they are persecuting others, takes courage. It takes a lot of courage but actually it's pretty easy. All you have to do is say 'this is wrong'. All you have to do is say 'stop'. You can close down the gas-chambers. This time could be different. I urge you to reject this motion, as I urge you to reject intolerance and hatred. Those paths lead only to destruction. Choose life. Choose love.''

  He sat down and, in front of four hundred boys and teachers, kissed my lips. I put my hand on his shoulder and for a moment, as I gazed into the deep pools of his eyes, the universe melted away like we'd been sucked into a timeless black-hole.

  There was an absolute and profound silence then someone started clapping, and someone else and someone else, and the audience surged to its feet, roaring and stamping.

  ''Thank you, Mr Rose,'' said Mrs May, her voice oddly muffled. ''Now Mr Willoughby will second the motion.''

  Willoughby was a nervy kid who struggled. Anyone would struggle to follow that. Sonning destroyed him by interrupting every few words with points of order and points of information. He never got going and slumped back into his seat, exhausted and defeated. Under the bench, Ali squeezed my hand. I was on.

  ''Look at my face,'' I said, throwing away my notes. ''Look at my body.'' I unbuttoned my shirt. ''Look at these bruises. Look at these marks. These, Madam Chair, are the results of prejudice.'' I could see the shocked faces as I displayed my injuries, now fading but still, after a week, visible. ''This is what happens when evil triumphs. This is not ignorance. They are not ill-informed. They may not understand, but that is not ignorance. It is a choice. Prejudice, Madam Chair, is a choice. Homophobia is a choice. Racism is a choice. Sexism is a choice. Any form of discrimination is a choice. The words you use to describe me are a choice. You can call me Jonathan, or you can call me Queer. You can call me Jonny, or you can call me Faggot. You can call me JP, or you can call me Fairy. It's up to you. The choice is yours. But know this. If I were black, would you call me a nigger? If I were Jewish, would you call me a Yid? If I were a Muslim, would you call me a Pakkie? Of course you wouldn't. And yet you casually use 'gay' as an insult.'' I shook my head sadly. ''Know that I am Jonathan Peters, I am gay and I am not ashamed of who I am, or of who I love. You accept me, or you reject me. The choice is yours. Prejudice is not a result of ignorance. You are no longer ignorant about me. So if you are still prejudiced against me, it must be for some other reason, mustn't it? I mean, look at me. I'm not exactly scary, am I?''

  I was emotionally exhausted as I sat down. Everyone in that room felt the same. We had come on an incredible journey in those forty minutes. Adrian Shelton didn't have anything to say really. He just kind of looked at his younger brother and shrugged. Even as Mrs May conferred with the other two judges and declared the motion lost, handed Sonning the Debating Cup to a wild eruption of cheering from our house and awarded Ali the prize for best speaker, and Leverett, grinning like a baboon, stood to applaud us with the others, I could hardly raise a smile. Everything inside was just churning around. We'd never won the Debating Cup, not in a hundred years. Bunny smiled warmly, clapped my shoulder and said I wasn't such an airhead after all while Fred shook my hand saying ''At last, Jonathan, you've impressed me.'' Christ. He'd never used my first name before. And yet these moments were bettered by one further remarkable twist when Dr Ashton called an assembly for Period 7.

  ''From today,'' he announced, ''This school is adopting a zero-tolerance policy on bullying of all kinds, physical, verbal and emotional. Anyone abusing or harassing others, making offensive remarks or using abusive language, will be expelled immediately. This policy applies to staff as well as students and it includes homophobic bullying. A school must be a place of safety for all its members, straight and gay. No-one should come here scared, anxious or afraid. Homophobia is an unacceptable choice in a civilised community.''

  I laughed aloud. I felt as though a crushing weight had finally lifted from my chest.

  ''After close consultation between the Governors, the Parent-Teacher Association and the staff,'' he added, ''We have agreed that, just as we welcome boys of any race or religion, so we welcome boys who are homosexual. This is a school for everyone.''

  Andrew Paulus, sitting next to me, squeezed my hand. Although I smiled, I felt sad that our society was so primitive that tolerance and acceptance had to be written into law. Anyway, afterwards, with Leatherface bawling ''Boys on the Rises, stay where you are,'' Bush-head yelling ''Peters, do your collar up,'' and Fosbrook, scratching the rash on his wrist, trying to shove me off the step into U5B below, everything seemed to be normal again. But when we emerged from the hall, we realised it wasn't. Things had changed. The rain had turned to snow. Together, Ali and I, hand in hand, watched these large, white flakes fluttering against the darkness, swirling in a crazily-spinning dance and covering our bare heads like giant dandruff. I stuck out my tongue to catch some.

  ''I love snow,'' I said. ''Reminds of that Laurel and Hardy film, Below Zero, you know? From 1930? Where they're busking in the snow outside a deaf institute and then some old woman gives them a dollar to move down a couple of streets and then this street-sweeper chucks a snowball at them 'cos they're singing this song, 'In the Good Ole Summertime,' in a snowstorm, ha ha - 'Hold her hand and she'll hold yours and that's a very good sign…' ha ha.''

  ''Shush,'' he said, gently kissing the back of my hand. ''For once, my darling, just stop. Stop talking.'' Through the softly falling snow, I noticed Niall Hill approaching.

  ''Evening, girls,'' Hill grinned lazily. ''Mind if I join you?''

  Others. There were others, from all over the school, coming out to stand with us, side by side, all out together under the canopy of Heaven and the pinpricks of early-evening stars emerging through the swirling snow. In that moment, I knew, as Doctor Who remarked at the end of Genesis of the Daleks, that ''from great evil great good must come.''

  The snow inscribed eerie swirls on the inky black sheet of the sky. I shoved in my Walkman earbuds, nestled into Ali's chest and let Siegfried and Brünnhilde's 'resplendent, radiant love' and 'victorious light', the 'siegendes Licht und strahlendes Leben' from the ecstatic finale of the Götterdämmerung prologue soar us both to heaven.