by Im Griffin
“Yes Miranda?” Mrs Langley enquired, in her favourite slightly sarcastic voice.
“Oh! Well!” Miranda then decided to go all coy and guilty, peering sideways at me and squirming about more than ever. “Well, it’s not me Miss, but Janet writes things. She’s doing a great story about peace for a competition.”
“Really?” Mrs Langley moved from slightly sarcastic to genuinely interested. “What competition is it, Janet?”
I stared sullenly at my desk. If it had been Mrs Langley and me on my own I’d have liked to talk about it, but not with Trisha and company sniggering in the background.
“It’s for World Peace Day,” I muttered.
“And have you decided what you’re going to write about?” Mrs Langley glared at the unruly masses on the back two rows. “For goodness sake, be quiet you lot!”
There was no way I was attempting to explain the subtleties of my theme in front of this crowd of idiots. Instead I settled for “It’s about someone who’s fought in the war,” and I said this so quietly that I had to repeat myself twice before Mrs Langley understood me, by which point she was sufficiently irritated not to pursue it any further.
Trisha, on the other hand, was delighted with her new material. She hit upon the amusing idea of calling me Shakespeare, and kept it up for the rest of the day.
“How’s the novel going, Shakespeare? Found a publisher yet?”
I tried to ignore her but in the end I snapped. “Do you have to keep going on about it?” This provided extra mileage for her stupid comments.
“Ooh! Showing your artistic temperament. You haven’t got writers’ block have you?”
I stomped out of school at the end of the day without waiting for Miranda, but she came running after me. “Hang on Janet!”
I ignored her and broke into a jog. Miranda bounced along beside me, spitting her words out between wheezes.
“Really sorry...told about your story...didn’t mean to...honest.”
I grudgingly slowed down a bit and faced her accusingly. “You promised Miranda!”
She was still struggling for breath. “I know...didn’t mean to...just forgot when Mrs Langley started asking...”
We had reached the bus stop and she propped herself up against the side of the shelter.
“It was only because I was excited about it!” she wailed. “I thought it was really good, that bit about him on his ship.”
I softened slightly. “Well, ok. But next time I tell you a secret, keep it that way!”
“Oh, I will! Cross my heart, hope to die, eat a piece of dogshit pie.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “We always used to say ‘stick a needle in my eye’. It must be different in Salford.”
To celebrate being friends again Miranda and I decided to do something together on Saturday. I was struck when I met her how tired she looked.
“Are you ok Mim?” I asked, as kindly as I could given that I was still a bit cross with her for blabbing in English. “Is your asthma playing up?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
I remembered seeing Vikki and Trisha sidling over to her on Friday, when Sinead and I were heading off to give the maths books in. “It’s not Vikki and Trisha again is it?”
Again Miranda shook her head, but this time with considerably less conviction.
“What have they done now, Mim?”
There was a pause while I waited for her to say something. “Mim...” I prompted. I thought maybe she was going to cry, but instead she turned and snapped at me.
“Nothing, ok? Do we have to talk about schoolall the time?”
I didn’t mention Vikki and Trisha again, and Miranda seemed to forget all about her sudden outburst. As was often the case, we ended up mooching around Salford precinct, leafing through the racks of cheap clothes and trying out the Constance Carroll lipsticks in Kay’s Cosmetics on the backs of our hands. Strawberry Ice was our favourite, a pale frosted pink that looked almost white in the tube, and was sophisticated without being too obvious. However, once again we delayed actually buying any; at 49p it was a toss-up between Strawberry Ice and three packets of out-of-date Wagon Wheels, and the Wagon Wheels won every time.
Once we had eaten our Wagon Wheels and sat on a bench for a while, there didn’t seem much else to do. We could go back to Miranda’s, but it was a sunny day when it seemed a shame to be indoors, and in any case, Ben and his toady little friend Christopher were there playing Action Man and giggling a lot the way that little boys do. Then Miranda was struck by inspiration.
“I know, we’ll do the River Irwell walk. From here to Radcliffe. I did it with my church a couple of years ago.”
“All the way to Radcliffe?” I exclaimed. “That’s miles.”
“Yeah, well, it took us a whole day last time. But it’s only twelve o’clock now, so we’ve still got plenty of time.”
I pondered the idea. There was certainly something appealing about the idea of Miranda and myself trekking alongside the River Irwell, gradually leaving the inner-city behind for the leafiness of the North Manchester suburbs, and stopping on the way to dangle our toes in the cool water and consume whatever refreshments our remaining funds could afford us. And at least it would be impossible for us to get lost.
I held up my hand for Miranda to slap in a wild Western kind of way.
“Ok partner, you’re on. Just so long as you can get us to the river to start with.”
It was actually pretty straightforward. We turned right out of the precinct onto the main road and walked to Broughton Bridge, where we hoisted ourselves over the railings and scrambled down to join the path running alongside the mighty Irwell. It had rained quite a lot recently and the river was high and fast-flowing, a deep chocolate colour dotted with the occasional plastic bag or crisp packet trapped by the overhanging branches.
Miranda turned right to head north and began a rousing version of ‘I love to go a wandering, along the mountain track’. She sang the ‘Valderee, Valderaa’ bit of the chorus and I did the ‘tra-laa-laa’ bits in a falsetto voice.
The first section of the walk took us through parkland, and near to the university and Salford Museum and Art Gallery. Miranda pointed it out to me.
“They have a real old-fashioned street in there, with shops and everything.”
“We’ll have to go sometime,” I said. The world seemed full of endless possibilities.
At the end of the park we hurried past boarded-up maisonettes where little kids hung around on their bikes and stared at us suspiciously.
“Don’t worry,” Miranda reassured me. “We get to The Cliff in a minute.”
The Cliff was an area of steep ground sloping down to the river. Despite being strewn with single trainers and bits of bicycle, it had a certain picturesque quality.
“There used to be a rope on one of these trees,” Miranda recalled wistfully. “For swinging across the river.”
I looked at the gurgling brown water and shivered. “Rather you than me.”
The next landmark was the Pope John Paul II High School, where Miranda had almost been sent. She claimed that they flushed the first years’ heads down the toilets and took drugs round the back of Salford precinct. We pelted the gates with gravel to show our disdain and marched on past the cemetery and Agecroft power station. By now it was late afternoon and I was hungry again.
“Do we go near any shops Miranda? I’m starving.” She looked doubtful.
“I think it’s all industrial round here. But I’m sure there’ll be something.”
We were walking through what was basically wasteland, with occasional clusters of corrugated iron sheds. I spotted some houses over to our left and we reached them by climbing through a hole in the barbed wire and scurrying across an expanse of broken tarmac.
“Where there’s houses there must be a shop,” Miranda asserted.
However, the reality was no shop and no people either. The streets were completely deserted. Eventually we found a man standing f
orlornly at an unhopeful-looking bus stop, and he told us there was a burger van ‘down near the works’. We followed his pointing finger and our noses and arrived at Bill’s Burgers.
There was a delicious smell of frying bacon and onions. We counted our money and found we had 76p between us: 1p over the price of a jumbo bacon roll. Bill gave us onions for free and let us do our own tomato ketchup.
“You girls want a can of pop an’ all?” he asked.
Miranda shook her head. “Thank you, but we’ve no more money.”
“Ah, go on.” He pushed a can of Vimto across the counter towards us and we thanked him profusely and set off back to the river, alternating swigs of Vimto with mouthfuls of bacon roll. Miranda had overdone the tomato ketchup and it squirted out and down her jumper.
“It’ll wash out,” she said cheerfully.
The grease and sugar had fortified us and we continued in high spirits, competing to see who could throw a stone right across the river to land on the opposite bank (neither of us managed it) and with Miranda doing her funny if wholly implausible Billy Connolly impression. We went past Clifton Marina and the sewage works and on towards Ringley.
“We’ll get to Radcliffe eventually,” Miranda reminded me.
I nodded but I was beginning to feel a little anxious. The air had a definite nip to it and within the last few minutes the light had begun to fade. Eventually I had to say it. “Mim, how are we going to get home?”
She looked relieved. “Oh! I’ve been wondering about that too, but I’m not sure really. We don’t have any money left.”
“Perhaps we should phone one of our dads,” I suggested reluctantly.
My dad would not be overjoyed to be summoned to Ringley half-way through his tea because I’d spent all my money on a jumbo bacon roll. Miranda clearly felt the same because she was pulling her not-on-your-life face.
“Not unless we have to. There must be some other way...”
Her eyes lit up. “I know! We’ll go to Kearsley station and get the train back to Salford Crescent. We can easily walk to my house from there.”
I pointed out that we had no money and she waved her hand airily.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. They never check for tickets anyway.”
Given that I had no better suggestions I kept quiet. At what Miranda considered an appropriate point we left the path and set off through a maze of cul-de-sacs and streets all looking exactly the same as the one before until we eventually found Kearsley station. By now it was half past six and close to dark, but as luck would have it a train was due in twelve minutes.
“See!” Miranda said triumphantly. “We’ll be home in no time.”
When the train arrived we climbed on behind a gang of track-suited teenage boys and sank down into a corner seat. We hummed the words toLast Train to Glasgow Central, one of Mrs Donaldson’s favourites, until we couldn’t remember anymore, and Miranda found a discarded newspaper to read our horoscopes instead. I was just salivating over the recipe for sticky marmalade sponge when Miranda clutched my arm.
“Don’t look now but there’s an inspector coming,” she whispered, in the kind of voice normally reserved for low-budget spy films.
My head shot up and I found myself staring straight into the eyes of the British Rail grim reaper as he made his way down the carriage. I swivelled my gaze away and pretended to read the paper. Perhaps we would reach the next station before he got to us... My hopes were pinned on the teenage boys but they let me down badly: they had weekly passes to flash nonchalantly at the inspector, and he was past them and level with Miranda and me within seconds.
“Pretend to be French!” Miranda hissed urgently.
The inspector leant over us. “Tickets please!”
“Pardon?” Miranda warbled. “Parlez-vous français?”
He looked at me. “Got a ticket have you?”
Miranda was poking me hard in the ribs but I couldn’t do it. I felt my face grow red and hot. “We forgot to buy tickets,” I said very quietly.
“Aha! No money I suppose.” I shook my head. The inspector was writing something in his notebook.
“Where are you going?”
“Salford Crescent.”
“Well, I’ll have them ready to meet you on the platform. And don’t even think about doing a runner.”
He moved off down the aisle and everyone stared at us; one little girl even stood on her chair to get a better look.
“You idiot,” Miranda chastised me. “Why didn’t you speak French?”
I shrugged miserably. “It wouldn’t have worked.”
We were silent for a moment while Miranda pondered the situation. “Do you think it’s the police coming?”
I shrugged again and squeezed my eyes shut to stop myself from crying.
As we approached Salford Crescent the inspector came back and escorted us to the train door. He pointed to the uniform-clad figures on the platform with smug satisfaction. “They’ll teach you.”
We dismounted and I glanced back to see a row of curious faces pressed against the glass. The little girl was watching from the open doorway. With some relief I noted that the men were British Rail officials rather than policemen.
“You two then is it?” the podgy one said, and they gestured for us to follow them into a pokey office that smelt of cigarettes and cheese and onion crisps. There were calendars on the wall showing girls with huge breasts leaning on car bonnets and cavorting on tropical beaches.
“Make a habit of this, do you?” Podge asked. We shook our heads emphatically, and Miranda started rambling on about how we’d lost all our money and didn’t know how to get home and were really, really sorry.
“Ok, ok.” Podge held his hands up as if in protest. The other one didn’t say anything; he just stared sadly at the woman next to the palm tree and fingered the ends of his moustache. Podge announced that he’d have to phone our parents.
“Oh please don’t,” Miranda begged. “We’ll get into loads of trouble.”
She was probably planning to tell them about how her dad beat her every night and kept her locked up in the coal cellar but it was no use, Podge already had his biro poised to take down our phone numbers. He bustled off with the numbers written on the back of his hand and we left in the room with Moustache, who stared forlornly at his dirty fingernails.
When Podge came back he was shaking his head incredulously. “Out of their minds with worry they were, out of their minds. They’ll be here ASAP.”
Miranda and I exchanged anxious looks; we were really for it. And what did ASAP mean anyway?
Our dads arrived within ten minutes. I was actually quite pleased to see them: it was getting rather oppressive in the office, what with Podge munching his crisps and eyeing us as if we were the scum of the earth, and Moustache ready to burst into tears.
They stood awkwardly in the doorway, as there wasn’t room for them to come any further. Podge wiped his cheese and onion scented hand on the seat of his trousers and offered it to them.
“Mr Ramsey, station manager. And this is my colleague, Mr Arniston.”
Moustache nodded absent-mindedly, hand-shaking obviously wasn’t his style.
Podge cleared his throat. “Now, what we have here is obviously a very serious incident. These two girls...” and he went on to describe the shocking nature of our crime. Fortunately during the course of his speech he gave himself away as a pompous crisp-guzzler with not enough excitement in his life, and I could tell that by the end of it both dads were rather irritated by him and very keen to get away. They grovelled frantically and made Miranda and me repeat all the stuff about how sorry we were, and finally we were free to go.
The atmosphere as we walked towards the car park was rather strained, and I judged it best to stay silent. As we parted I gave Miranda’s hand a little squeeze and she pulled her best eye-rolling grimace, returning her features to meek repentance before her dad could notice. I was expecting a major telling-off in the car on the way home, but my
dad seemed more cross about my having disappeared for hours without phoning than anything else. I told him how we’d lost all our money (I’d been so long in Miranda’s company that embroidery of the truth came quite naturally), and he calmed down but made me promise to reverse the charges in future.
On Monday Miranda reported that her parents’ reaction had been much the same. “Although if theyhad tried to lecture me about fare-dodging I’d have told them where to go. My dad used to ride on the platform of the bus and jump off when the conductor came, so he could spend his fare on sweets.”
With the nightmare of being escorted off the train and then trapped in the office with Podge and Moustache safely behind us, the story of the River Irwell walk became a legend, to be fantasized about during long double maths lessons, and fondly recalled every time we rode over Broughton Bridge
Chapter 15
Despite Miranda’s refusal to talk about Vikki and Trisha, it didn’t take a genius to realise that their behaviour towards her was becoming increasingly unpleasant. For a long time they had made Emily Tate the object of their attentions but this had proved too risky, since Emily had no compunctions whatsoever about reporting any slights, whether real or imaginary, directly to the teachers. Not only had she got Vikki and Trisha into quite serious trouble with Mrs Mackintosh, she had grassed up just about everyone in her time. She had even told on me for gloating about beating her in science, when all I did was stick my tongue out at her. Consequently, although she was sorely disliked, people tended to steer well clear of her. She just wasn’t worth the trouble.
With Emily out of the picture Vikki and Trisha were in need of fresh blood. Their other standard victims were Honey and Louise, and they kept up a half-hearted ‘fatty’ campaign against Honey, but her slow smile and refusal to be riled limited the fun to be had. Louise might have provided more mileage except that she was never to be seen outside lessons, having had the good sense to form a strong friendship with a girl from another class. Basically that left Miranda.