2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Thinking about it, he couldn’t remember anyone ever getting caught, what with it being well out of sight of the staff room, but the chances of being spotted by a teacher were massively increased as soon as that bell went, which it duly did before Martin had even got a leg-up.

  Sometimes folk play on for a wee while after the bell, banking on the teachers taking a few minutes before calling in the lines, but this risks Harris having one of her periodic crackdowns. The Primary Sevens thus keep playing; but, with their ball out of bounds, most of the Fives and Sixes cut their losses and head for the lines. Only Colin, out of solidarity, and Graham Wilson, whose ball it is, hang around to wait for Martin.

  Colin looks back and forth from the wall to the playground at the other side of the pitch. The lines are forming, steadily fewer Sevens still playing their game of brinkmanship with the teachers. Every second raises the stakes. Being missing from the lines is big trouble, to say nothing of the clearer line of sight to the wall afforded from the top of the steps where the teachers stand to take in the classes. Suddenly Colin hears a thump, and with an accuracy sadly lacking from his earlier attempted clearance, Martin hoofs the ball back over on to the grass. The waiting Graham catches it cleanly and immediately starts haring towards the lines. There’s another agonising wait before Martin finally reappears, his eyes fixed on the Main Building doors as he clambers over the wall. He jumps rather than drapes back down, visibility being a far greater concern than physical safety, landing on all fours. Colin offers a hand to help him up the slope, then they both sprint towards the playground.

  Their pace slackens as they near the concrete, the sense of urgency suddenly diminished as soon as they can see that there are no teachers there yet, and far fewer folk already in the lines than it looked to panicked eyes. They even start to catch up with some stragglers from their own game, confident about their comparative safety even from Harris as long as there are still Primary Sevens playing on the grass. One of them is Paul, who seems to have the attention of four or five other boys. News travels fast, Colin thinks. It’s probably less than half an hour since the incident, but he’s already got folk who missed it gathering round to hear about him giving Robbie a doing for stealing his goal.

  Colin hurries again, wanting to hear a bit of this—and the reaction to it—before the lines get called and they all have to be quiet. Everybody knows Robbie is a sneaky wee shite, so they’re bound to be lapping it up. But as he nears the group he can tell something is wrong. Paul is trying to walk away, but they keep moving to surround him. Then he hears what’s being said.

  “Come on, Space Boy,” says one. “Tell us whit planet you’re fae again.”

  “Naw, better no annoy him,” cautions another. “He might use his special powers on us.”

  “Have you got a ray gun in the hoose, Space Boy.”

  “Does your mammy run ye tae school in a starship?” Paul finally breaks through their circle and escapes to the relative obscurity of the class lines, but the reprieve will only be temporary. Colin knows that this is merely the beginning. He looks along the line and sees Robbie, the boys next to him glancing conspiratorially at Paul. That’s what he had run off to tell the new arrivals, what he was busy telling everybody. Down on the pitch, he didn’t appear to be paying attention, but the sly wee bastard must have heard every word, and had put it to devastatingly effective use. His doing from Paul was all but forgotten, and certainly relegated down the gossip agenda. It was now just a daft dispute over who scored a goal, whereas this, this was serious slagging material. Just as he had on the pitch, Robbie had nicked in at the last moment and stolen from Paul with a decisive final touch. And this time, there would be no adjudication from a senior figure to put it straight.

  The Laws of the Game (Part Two)

  §

  Martin comes around to the sound of water running, somebody having a shower in an adjacent room, to which the door is ajar. He opens his eyes, takes in his unfamiliar surroundings, remembers where he is. Remembers what he’s doing here. What he did here. Aw, Christ.

  §

  Karen is playing Chinese ropes with Helen, Alison and Michelle, just outside the shed in the girls’ area of the playground. Joanne is hanging about between the poles, just out the way of where Zoe and her pals are playing balls against the inside shed wall. Joanne’s face is tripping her because she’s just got back from lunch and found Alison already joined in someone else’s game. Joanne is, of course, welcome to play Chinese ropes too, but she doesn’t want to because she’s pure rubbish at it. She’s all right at normal ropes, as long as you do it shoo-shaggy, which is just back and forth, or if you’re doing it fullsy-roundsies not too fast, but Chinese ropes is different. It’s not really a rope at all, but a long chain of interlinked and different-coloured elastic bands, and you don’t swing it: two of you hold it up, higher each time, and the other girl has to get her leg over it and pull it down so she can step across. Karen is good at it because she has long legs, but Michelle is even better despite being shorter, because she’s double-jointed. She does gymnastics on Saturday mornings at the sports centre and can stretch her leg dead high. Alison isn’t as good at it as Karen or Michelle, but she’s got this twisting jump technique that looks amazing, like a ballet dancer or something. Karen sometimes pulls the chain that bit lower if it looks like Alison’s leg isn’t going to make it over, because she likes to see the wee bow Alison does when she succeeds. Helen is the weest and can’t do above shoulder height, but she loves playing it anyway. It’s her ropes, in fact, so it’s not that she’s just joining in because she can’t get a game at anything else.

  Joanne stands nearby, kidding on she’s not bothered, like she just happens to be passing, maybe on her way to joining in the hopscotch game down at the far end, but inside she’s fizzing. She will join in eventually, Karen knows, though only after she’s made a few failed attempts to get everyone—and especially Alison—away to play something else. But this isn’t just because Joanne doesn’t like Chinese ropes. She’d be fine about playing it if it had been her and Alison’s game and she could then say who was allowed to join in. This, however, is Helen’s game, and with Alison already a part of it—to say nothing of Karen being involved, too—Joanne’s nose is well out of joint.

  Joanne and Alison have always been friends, going right back to Primary One, but of late Joanne seems to have become very defensive about her playing with anyone else. Joanne always wants to be playing with Alison alone, though she’ll settle for a game with a select few others as long as she and Alison are in charge. Well, you hear her saying she and Alison are in charge, when really it’s only Joanne who is, but she likes to stress her and Alison’s togetherness. Alison isn’t bossy and she doesn’t share Joanne’s enthusiasm for cliping on people; nor does she seem so bothered these days about claiming first place in the lines. It tends to be the case that Joanne drags her along to the steps as soon as—and sometimes well before—the bell goes, just as it tends to be the case that Joanne will immediately seek out Alison wherever she is in the playground, but Alison will never make a point of seeking out Joanne. This is something Karen has started to notice since she and Alison started playing together more, and it doesn’t appear to have slipped Joanne’s attention either.

  It’s weird and annoying. Michelle and Carol are best friends but neither of them gets all pushy if one of them starts playing with somebody else. Nor have they got anything against Alison playing with them even though they have this long-standing rivalry about the class lines. Helen and Karen have been special friends since that time they played round at her house on the day of the fire. They play at each other’s house now on some weekends and quite a lot over the holidays, but sometimes they can go for days without joining in the same stuff in the playground, and that doesn’t mean they’ve fallen out.

  Joanne, however, seems to think that if you’re friends with one person, you can’t be friends with someone else. Or at least that Alison shouldn’t be. Joanne has never look
ed favourably on Michelle, given their epic battles to front the lines, so Alison being involved in a game of Chinese ropes with her is betrayal enough, but it’s Karen’s presence that has really got her chubby cheeks aglowing.

  “You’re trying to take Alison away from me.” That’s what she said to Karen last week when Joanne tracked the pair of them down to the grass banking at the far side of the football field. The banking slopes down quite steeply to the high wall at the bottom, and it’s a quiet place to go if you just want to sit and talk. You get to sit on grass instead of concrete, plus, unlike the flat grass at the other side of the pitch, you are in little danger of getting hit by a ball, because if you sit well down the banking, it usually goes over your head. Alison had suggested they go there ‘for a picnic’ because she had an apple and a poke of crisps left over from her packed lunch and it was unusually mild and sunny for the time of year.

  “You want Alison tae be your friend? Well, she’s my friend, right?”

  Karen had been baffled by this outburst, and from the look on Alison’s face, it was clear she didn’t entirely follow the logic, either.

  “I’m not trying to take her away. We’re just having a picnic.”

  “Aye, well, you’d better not, right? C’mon, Alison. The bell’s gaunny go any minute.”

  “I want to finish my apple,” Alison argued, while Joanne stood over her, glowering.

  “That Carol and Michelle will be on their way to the steps already,” Joanne warned.

  “Well, we’ll end up second anyway, then, won’t we?” countered Alison.

  Whether she would have stayed and defied Joanne, Karen never discovered, because the bell did ring at that point. For Joanne, though, this sacrilegious sentiment was enough to set off her alarms and to confirm Karen as an undesirable influence and her new worst enemy.

  And now Alison is playing Chinese ropes with her!

  Joanne stands and watches for a while longer, then inevitably makes her bid. “Alison, I’m finished my lunch now. Comin to play houses?” she suggests. It’s a confident and cunning gambit, subliminally suggesting to Alison that she was, whether she knew it or not, only doing this to kill time until her true friend was ready. It also contains a less subliminal insult to her competitors and how they choose to fill their precious playing time. It almost deserves to succeed for its sheer audacity, but alas, Joanne has concentrated too much on strategy and not enough on timing. It’s Alison’s turn to jump, and she’s on a roll. If she was standing holding one end, she might be tempted, but not while she’s feeling confident of breaking that chin-height threshold for a new personal best.

  “I’m playing Chinese ropes,” she responds, betraying just a little impatience at having to state the obvious.

  “Okay,” Joanne accepts. She plays it poker-faced, only a tightening of her folded arms indicating an increased determination after this rebuff.

  Joanne gives it another wee while, waiting until Alison tries—and fails—in her next attempt, before informing her that “There’s a brilliant game of hopscotch goin on over there, really, really good. Come we’ll join in?”

  “It’s my turn to hold,” Alison explains, an obligation towards her fellow players offered by way of letting Joanne down gently. “Why don’t you have a game? Can Joanne have a game?” she asks Helen, whose game it officially is due to rope ownership.

  “Yeah, come and join in, Joanne,” says Helen, who is always far nicer to everybody than a lot of them deserve.

  Joanne has a look on her face that suggests she’d rather go and lick the railings, but she knows she can’t walk away now without losing face. “Aye, okay. But don’t make it too high.”

  Joanne waits until Helen has had a shot and then takes her turn, with Karen and Alison holding. They start the chain at kneesies, which even Joanne can manage, then move up to hipsies (or bumsies, as they call it when they’re feeling giggly). Joanne’s cheeks seem to expand with effort and determination as she takes a wee runny-up and hurls an ankle on top of the chain. Her foot gets over but her trailing leg is slow, and the elastic snaps upwards again between her thighs. It tugs her pleated skirt and shows her knickers for a few moments before she grabs the rope with both hands and untangles herself.

  Alison says, “Woooo!” at the sight of her exposed underwear. Folk always say, “Woooo!” or do that wheet-whee whistle if you accidentally show your pants. Sometimes you get a beamer, but it depends who else is around; you usually just laugh if it’s only girls. They all laugh on this occasion, including some of the girls playing balls in the shed. All, that is, except Joanne, who looks furious. She takes a short couple of steps nearer the shed and jabs an angry finger at Zoe, who is still bouncing balls off the wall and, as far as Karen can tell, may not even have been paying attention.

  “It’s just lassies that saw it,” Joanne says indignantly. “An it was just pants. At least I never showed aff ma fanny tae Kevin Duffy.”

  Oh, God, this one again, Karen thinks. And Zoe wasn’t even among those laughing.

  The story had gone round in whispers a couple of weeks back and nobody was much inclined to believe anything Kevin Duffy said, but Joanne had seized upon it like it was a ten-bob bit in the gravel. She was always looking for something that was ‘a pure slaggin’ for some poor soul, and which could be used to encourage others to say they weren’t friends with whoever it was, as being friends with certain people was a pure slaggin, too. Poor Eleanor was the ultimate example. She might be tolerated to join in games, but nobody wanted to be officially friends with her because she was smelly. Karen always felt guilty about how Eleanor was treated, and tried to be nice to her whenever the occasion arose, but the sad truth was that Eleanor wasn’t very easy to be nice to. She was always sour and suspicious, and Karen knew that no matter how hard she tried or how much she felt it might be the right thing to do, they weren’t going to be friends. However, nor would she ever join in when people were being horrible to her, such as calling her Smeleanor, or when they played bugsy touch, about which Eleanor (it was perhaps wrongly assumed) was oblivious.

  As well as Eleanor, there was, of course, Geraldine, who physically couldn’t even join in most of the games, at least not with enough effectiveness as to make it worthwhile. Lots of the girls were friends with Geraldine, but she was still on the end of a lot of slagging and therefore relegated to this social subset that Joanne was always looking to add to. It didn’t take much. Helen was an attempted target, her pure slagging being that she once called the teacher Mummy back in Primary Four. In Karen’s case, as well as mistakenly identifying herself as Helen on her first day, she had, of course, peed herself when she got overexcited at Zoe bursting her milk. Fortunately, as the years passed, fewer and fewer children saw any profit in raking it up again. Karen got the impression Joanne was disappointed that the incident hadn’t had a permanently blemishing effect, as though she believed it should have been widely regarded as forever putting her on a par with Eleanor, wet pants for life.

  Now it was Zoe she thought could be eternally disgraced by the shame of a boy claiming to have seen her private parts.

  “I never showed him anything,” Zoe protests.

  “That’s no what we heard. You were stayin at his hoose and you pulled up your nightie an every thin.”

  “Get tae France.”

  “Come on,” appeals Alison, everyone having already seen this picture a few times. “It’s your turn to hold, Joanne.”

  Zoe turns around to resume bouncing her balls, advised by her friends to ‘just ignore her’. Joanne, still visibly fuming, takes hold of the chain from Michelle.

  Michelle starts from hipsies and makes it as far as nosies before failing at head height. This is an unusual setback, but may have something to do with Joanne holding her end almost at full stretch above—rather than on top of—her head. Michelle rolls her eyes at Karen as she steps aside, aware of what happened, but she doesn’t say anything. She knows she’ll get another turn when Joanne’s not holding, so it’
s not worth making a fuss. It pays off, too, as Joanne simply gets on with it for a while and restricts her remarks to complimenting Alison on having the best technique.

  Karen expects Joanne to repeat her antics when she is making her own bid at head height, but she keeps the rope where it’s supposed to be. Karen hitches her skirt up a wee bit to allow her legs the maximum stretch, but she doesn’t make the jump. Joanne’s eyes are bulging and she looks like she’s bursting to contain her glee as she observes Karen’s failed attempt. However, to Karen’s surprise, she says, “Hard luck,” and even offers to stay holding and give up her own shot so that Karen can try again. She can be nice when she tries, though it probably helps that right now she sees it as the best way of keeping in with Alison.

  Karen gives it another go. She can sometimes do head height, sometimes not, but she was really close with that last attempt. She bounces on the spot instead of a runny and swings her right leg up as high as she can. She can tell she’s made it because she feels the elastic tug on the right side of her ankle. But just as she’s twisting her hips to complete the jump, she feels the chain shoot up between her legs and sees Joanne yanking it as high and as hard as she can. It’s not sore and it doesn’t trip her over or anything, but it pulls her skirt up like happened to Joanne, and exposes her knickers. Knickers that Joanne must have caught a glimpse of before, hence her eye-popping, hence her generous offer, and hence her wheeching the rope up her skirt.