2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Karen is rehearsing her answers in her head when Joanne suddenly appears at her side, taps her on the shoulder and declares: “Eeeew! That’s Karen got Eleanor’s smelly bugs and her own. Double bugsy touch! Eeeew!”

  Karen goes to her desk, trying to shrug it off, but some of the girls filing past are holding their noses or doing wafting gestures in front of their faces. She glances at Joanne as she sits down two rows along, and sees her grimace like she’s about to be sick, though all the while her eyes are indicating how much she’s loving it.

  Karen feels this exasperated rage thrill through her. It’s not a hurt, not a recoil from being singled out, but an offended certainty that she just shouldn’t have to be putting up with this. She can hear Helen once again advise that she ‘just ignore her’, but while she finds Joanne’s antics pathetic, she really grudges her the pleasure she’s taking, and wants very much to stop it. She looks to the open door and listens carefully above the low-level chatter of the class taking their seats, searching for the sound of Miss O’Connor’s approach. You can always hear her coming because she wears these high heels that go clack-clack against the stairs as she comes up them. Karen hears no such sound, so there is time to act. She doesn’t want to lower herself to the level of the bugsy touch game, but equally she doesn’t want Joanne to have the satisfaction of sitting there mugging at her all afternoon.

  Karen gets up and runs not to Joanne, but to Geraldine, who has just squeezed herself into the otherwise ample space between her desk and the connected bench. She brushes the top of Geraldine’s head and then makes her way quickly to Joanne.

  “Well, if I’ve got the double bugsy touch,” she says, “you can have the double tubby touch,” and slaps her on the upper arm.

  Joanne grabs where Karen has just hit her and cowers her head into her chest, shrieking and moaning in a manner massively disproportionate to the force Karen used. It seems a ridiculous—even potentially embarrassing—reaction, until a voice sounds shrilly behind Karen and turns her insides to ice: “Karen Gillespie! Get away from there and go to my desk, at oncel”

  Karen turns to see Miss O’Connor standing just outside in the corridor, next to the other Primary Five teacher Mrs Robertson, from whose class she has apparently just emerged.

  Karen barely breathes as she makes her way to the desk. Miss O’Connor closes the door with a room-silencing slam and then redundantly calls the class to order. Then she walks slowly to her desk and sits down, waiting a few seconds before looking at Karen, who can feel herself physically trembling.

  “I won’t tolerate violence in my classroom,” she says. “Go directly to Mrs Harris and tell her I need to borrow her belt.”

  §

  It takes ages for Karen to return. Feels like ages to Martin, anyway, and must feel much longer for Karen. They’re doing the Catechism Inquisition, as Scotty calls it. O’Connor makes out she picks folk in random order, but Martin knows that’s pish. He never gets picked until near the end because he never forgets to learn the answers, and the more folk who come out with the right responses early on, the easier it is for those who are called later to pick them up. This just proves she’s more interested in catching folk out than in them learning the Catechism, because otherwise what would it matter if a few kids picked up the answers from hearing their classmates? The end result would still be that they knew their stuff.

  Everybody hates O’Connor. Folk think you must like the teacher if you’re clever or if you never get into trouble, but they’re wrong. Martin thinks it’s the other way round: that he hates her more than most because he’s giving his best and still gets met with a sour-faced scowl from a woman who seems to be in an eternal bad mood. It’s not because she’s strict; Clarke was strict, and he didn’t hate her. Teachers ought to be strict if they’re doing their job properly (Mrs Ford is known as a push-over, and any time Martin’s seen her class when on an errand, it has looked pure murder). But O’Connor’s nasty streak belongs more among the weans than the staff.

  Sending Karen to fetch the belt herself, for instance. That’s just sick. And she always does it, too, though it wouldn’t surprise him if she had her own belt and sent folk anyway. Scotty got it a few weeks back. He said going to Harris’s office and bringing it back was far worse than the belting itself. This was something she was undoubtedly aware of, seeing as she went on enough about the Romans’ cruelty in making Jesus carry his own cross.

  Well seeing O’Connor never asked Joanne if she was all right. She knew fine Joanne was acting it, but O’Connor’s been in a horrible mood—even by her standards—all day, and was just looking for someone to take it out on.

  It’s a disgrace. If anybody deserves the belt, never mind a wee slap on the arm, it’s that cow Joanne, and he’s not just saying that because she’s nasty to him and calls him Professor Brainbox. Martin knows you’re not supposed to be cruel about people’s appearances, but he can’t help thinking Fat Joanne has never looked so ugly as she does right then when Karen finally walks back in carrying the belt. Her face is a truly unflattering mixture of delight, satisfaction and cruelly eager anticipation.

  Poor Karen. You can tell she’s suffering and has spent all of her gloomy errand trying with all her might not to cry. She’s not blubbing, but her eyes are moist and Martin can see streaks on her cheeks. He hasn’t really paid her any particular attention before. The boys don’t talk much to the girls, so you usually notice only the ones that for whatever reason stand out or make themselves the centre of attention. Karen isn’t super-brainy, like Helen, or thick like Margaret-Mary. Nor is she dead pretty, like Michelle, or pure horrible like Eleanor. But standing there, helpless as she hands over the instrument of her imminent punishment, she’s suddenly got Martin feeling all funny inside and wishing he could come to her rescue. He’s daydreaming there’s some way he could lie to take the blame, and all that would come with it. Wouldn’t that be amazing? And then she’d want to kiss him.

  §

  There is a reverent hush as Karen is directed to a spot in front of the blackboard and reluctantly puts up her hands, but Colin suspects he’s not the only one who is secretly delighted, as he is any time O’Connor decides somebody is for the belt. You feel a bit guilty when it’s one of your pals, but it’s still an exciting spectacle. The teachers like it, too. Otherwise they would do it out in the corridor, wouldn’t they, like he’s heard one teacher does at Braeside Primary. Like it? Love it. That’s why they make the whole thing into an exhibition, with O’Connor even giving it the maximum build-up by sending the victim to Harris for the hardware.

  This is the first time it’s ever been a girl, though, and it’s making him feel a little weird. Good weird, though. O’Connor is the worst teacher they’ve ever had, and everybody hates her, but there’s something about those long black boots she wears that makes him think of the ladies in pantomimes. She’s got long black hair, too, like the Wicked Queen in Snow White.

  Seeing O’Connor—or any of the women teachers—using the belt gives him a feeling he never gets when it’s Momo (even though he is the scariest and hits the hardest), and now the prospect of O’Connor giving it to a girl seems to be multiplying whatever it is.

  He feels a tightening between his legs and realises he has a stauner.

  Robbie hopes she greets. He loves seeing folk get the belt; loves it more when it’s someone who’s never had it before. He’d fucking love to see a fucking snob like Helen get it. She’d greet, definitely. Or Martin. He’d greet as well. Or Colin. Robbie battered him in Primary Three. Poof. Fucking snobs.

  O’Connor brings it down. Hear the swish, hear the crack. Robbie’s been told it used to be fours and sixes, and sometimes they’d insist it was the same hand. That would be fuckin yes. Just when they’re in pure agony, they’ve got to stick their mitt back up for some more, until it’s red-fucking raw. But the most you ever see now is two, and usually on different hands. Karen’s getting two. Clarke only ever gave one, but O’Connor always gives two. She hasn�
�t cried at the first one, but O’Connor’s making her wait a wee minute between strokes, giving her time to think about the next one coming, and that might set her off. He really hopes she greets. Come on, greet.

  Crack, it comes down again.

  Karen doesn’t greet, though. Her eyes are all filled up and her throat’s pure swollen, but she keeps her face straight as she walks back to her seat.

  Then she greets.

  Fuckin yes.

  §

  Martin turns over in the bed and sees his clothes scattered on the floor, the jacket and trousers he worries so much about getting crushed when he pulls on a seatbelt just lying abandoned on the carpet. He instinctively puts a hand to his head, but there’s no hangover, and thus no inebriation to mitigate what has happened.

  Christ.

  He hung up that same jacket, that shirt too, in his wardrobe, the first time he went to bed with Becky Soleno, whose rocketing public profile occasioned that inescapable bloody photo in Heat. Two nights ago, he’d at least taken the time to drape his clothes delicately over a chair as he and Kara undressed one another. Last night, however, there had been no room in his thoughts for anything beyond the extremely immediate.

  Jesus Christ.

  He’s had grudge fucks before. Or rather, he thought he had. That floor manager Maria at Carlton, with whom he had all those run-ins; that acid-tongued harpy Emelia on the Sky News legal team. Rechannelled tension, a physical catharsis of selfish, angry sex. There was something almost healthy about that.

  Last night, though: that was a grudge fuck, thirty years in the making.

  How was it possible to have such a good time with someone you hated so much? How was it possible that the mutual dislike and resentment itself should be what made it incomparable?

  God almighty. It had been animal. It had been ugly. It had been the absolute antithesis of ‘making love’. Jesus, even the way they talked to each other was still full of spite and mistrust.

  He remembers pulling her bra off, her kneeling back from him for a second as he looked at her tits.

  “Droopy enough?” she asked accusingly. “Aye, I bet Becky Soleno’s don’t look like this, though they might do a dozen years and two weans doon the line.”

  Martin’s response had, in fact, been anything but disdain. They weren’t gravity-defying pneumatics, which was definitely no bad thing, but it was needlessly harsh to invite him to agree with the term ‘droopy’. If anything, he preferred how they looked—and certainly how they felt—to most of the girls he’d slept with of late. For a start, it was a relief that there was some give when you squeezed them. It even half-occurred to him to say as much, to tell her she would look better than Becky Soleno if there were thirty people working on the photo-shoot for her, too. He didn’t, though. When it came to it, he didn’t want to sound solicitous or anxious to please. He felt like it would come across as weakness, and that she would in that same moment silently declare victory for herself.

  He hears the shower being turned off. Seconds out, next round, the really tough one: facing each other in the daylight. He sits up and gets his bearings. They’re at her place, above the pub, a surprisingly sprawling maisonette, testament to the days when the inn offered accommodation to travellers.

  He looks at the clock as Jojo emerges, wrapped in a towelling dressing-gown. It’s eight-fifteen. “You’re up early,” he says, compelled to say something.

  “Aye. Need to be sharper if you want to sneak oot before I get up. Kids could be back any time. Well, Alison could. Jason’s half-man, half-mattress these days since he hit his teens. But still.”

  The details come flooding back. The kids are fourteen and twelve. They stay at their dad’s most Fridays, Tam McBride. Martin didn’t know him. He was a couple of years older and went to the High. They’ve been apart for six years. Jojo got the weans and the pub in the divorce.

  “It’s okay,” he says, swinging his legs out of the bed. “I know ‘get out’ when I hear it. I don’t want to put you in an awkward spot. I’ll get my stuff and you can skip to the part where you pretend this didn’t happen.”

  Jojo shakes her head. “You really don’t think much of me at all, do you? But that’s nothin compared to how little you imagine I must think of you. Well, you’re wrong. I wasnae very nice to you once upon a time, boo-hoo. A lot of people werenae very nice to me, either. Do we write them off for good? Who the hell wants to be judged for life on how they behaved as kids?”

  “Well, Noodsy’s putting a lot of store by it,” he replies, buttoning his shirt. “But otherwise, point taken.”

  “We’re not the people we were, and we didnae know those people very well, either. Look at Eleanor. All we saw was the wee, smelly, angry lassie. We’d no idea what was behind that. Even Robbie. He was horrible to everybody, but nothin like as horrible as his father and his brothers were tae him. Bad weans don’t necessarily turn intae bad adults. And the same goes for the good yins.”

  No kidding, he reflects.

  On his way out, he passes an open door into Jojo’s son’s bedroom, catches an eyeful of an image-bedecked teenage wall. There’s a St Mirren crest, some yellowing sports-page clippings, posters of Blink 182, The Offspring, Bowling for Soup, Green Day, and a few FHM girly pull-outs. Yup, Kara’s up there. Jason’s wanking off to her when the door’s shut.

  Martin’s had the real thing and Jason’s mammy on consecutive nights.

  It’s appropriate he’s at the Railway Inn. His life right now is a fucking train-wreck.

  Trespasses Unforgiven

  Afternoon playtime lasts only ten minutes, officially, though it can be anything between twelve and fifteen depending on when the teachers decide to bail out of the staff room. It’s still not a lot, especially for a game of fitba down on the pitch, where it can sometimes take ages for the ball to make it from one end of the park to the other, and Jamesy is keeping an anxious eye on his watch. He’s scored two goals today, both during lunchtime, and is confident he’s considered to be having a good game overall, especially that jinky wee run where he got the cross in and Matt Cannon scored with a header. It looked pure gemmie, and Matt didn’t forget Jamesy’s due, saying, “Some baw, wee man.” But he’d love to score three, to be able to say he’d got a hat-trick. He’d done it a few times up on the concrete, but the space was smaller and there was always hunners of goals in those games: forry-eight-each affairs. Goals were harder to come by down on the pitch, and it felt more exciting when there were proper lines on the grass, not to mention posts and a crossbar instead of jackets or drainpipes. They were playing with an old brown tube today, too, which made a pleasing ‘whump’ when you booted it, and was easier to control because it didn’t ping around like a plastic ball or even a new leather one. Plus, it never hurt when it got stoated off you, because it was old and all the enamel had come away, leaving only soft leather underneath.

  They’ve been doing a lot of defending because Matt Cannon got kept behind by his teacher. Not only has this weakened their team, but the other lot have had that wee bit of extra purpose as they try to get back from now only two goals down. It’s funny how that happens. You can be getting pure scopped and you just play on, not bothered about the score, but then you get a couple back and suddenly everybody’s trying harder because there seems something to play for. It’s at times like this you need somebody on the park to rally your team, but with Matt absent, nobody really carries enough respect.

  Time is leaching away. Worse, they’ve swapped ends since lunchtime, so the opposition are kicking into the end away from the buildings, which seriously adds to retrieval time after a goal or if it goes behind. The other end is close to the Annexe, the modern one-storey bit joined on to the Main Building, which houses the Primary Sevens and the staff room.

  He really wants that third goal. Nobody’s scored for his team this playtime, with the other team clawing back their lead, so not only would it complete his hat-trick, but it could be the goal that stops the fightback and ensures victory
. The ball has been booted clear a few times, but right over his head, bypassing the midfield and going right to the other end, and that’s no use because the only player they’ve got up there is Robbie. Moochers only mooch because they’re shite and they’ve got no chance of scoring otherwise, so they always get robbed of the ball; either that or they try for goal themselves. Same difference: the ball ends up back in the keeper’s hands.

  Then, for once, Mick Garvie manages a decent drop-kick and Jamesy picks it up out wide, where he likes it. He goes past a couple of players and heads for the box. Folk are shouting, “wee baw, wee baw,” for the pass inside, but there are too many players around them for there to be any point. They’re just shouting like they do any time their own teammate has it. A few call him a ball-greedy bastard but he knows he’s right to keep it and make for the byline—then it’ll be worth a pass. Besides, if he passed it now, one of the eejits would probably try for glory, despite everybody knowing you seldom beat Colin with a long shot. Colin always milks it like fuck, and dives around making it look spectacular when he could as easily stop a shot with his feet, but he’s still a good goalie, no denying it.

  Jamesy sees Martin coming out to meet him as he nears the byline. Martin beat him to a ball at lunchtime when he blootered it into the Wasteland, but that one had been much nearer Marty, and this time Jamesy has the ball under control. He jinks past him and looks up, sees loads of folk pouring forward into the box. He takes a swing and makes sure he gets his foot under it, sending it in high and hoping somebody sticks the noggin on it. Most of them shite out of it, and of those who jump, all but one get their timing wrong and it goes over their heads. Gary Hawkins is the exception, clearing the danger with a glancing header to send it out for a corner. It’s hard to tell if he meant it, but it looks good anyway.