by C. J. Tudor
I had never been loved in such a way before. Not even by Mum and Dad. They loved me, of course. But they didn’t look at me with the same unabashed adoration as my little sister did. No one did. I was more used to being looked at with pity or scorn.
I wasn’t a little boy with many friends. I wasn’t shy, exactly. One teacher at my junior school told my parents I was ‘stand-offish’. I guess I just found other little boys, with their dull pursuits like climbing trees and fighting, a bit boring and stupid. Besides, I was perfectly happy being on my own. Until Annie came along.
For my sister’s third birthday I saved up my pocket money and bought her a doll. It wasn’t one of the expensive ones you could buy in the toy shop, the ones that made noises and peed themselves. It was what my dad would call a ‘knock-off’ from the market. It was actually a bit ugly and creepy with its hard, blue-eyed stare and odd pursed lips. But Annie loved that doll. She took it everywhere with her and cuddled it to sleep every night. For some reason (probably a name misheard) she called it ‘Abbie-Eyes’.
By the time Annie was five Abbie-Eyes had become consigned to a shelf in Annie’s room, replaced in favour by Barbie and My Little Pony. But if Mum ever suggested taking her to the jumble sale, Annie would snatch her back with a cry of horror and hold her so tight I was surprised those blue plastic eyes didn’t pop right out of their sockets.
Annie and I remained close as we grew older. We read together, played cards or computer games on my second-hand Sega Megadrive. On rainy Sunday afternoons when Dad was down the pub and Mum was busy ironing, the air full of static warmth and the smell of fabric softener, we’d curl up on a beanbag and watch old videos together – ET, Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark; sometimes a few newer, more grown-up ones Annie probably shouldn’t have been watching, like Terminator 2 and Total Recall.
Dad had a mate who pirated them and sold them for 50p. The picture was a bit fuzzy and sometimes you couldn’t always make out the actors’ words, but as Dad was fond of saying, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’ and ‘You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
I knew Mum and Dad didn’t have a lot of money. Dad used to work down the pit but, after the strike, even though they didn’t close our pit straightaway, he left.
He’d been one of the miners who didn’t walk out. He never spoke about it, but I knew the bad feeling, the tension and fights – co-worker against co-worker, neighbour against neighbour – had been too much. I was pretty young when it all happened but I remember Mum scrubbing the word ‘SCAB’ off our front door. Once, someone threw a brick through our window when we were inside watching telly. The next night Dad went out with some of his mates. When he came back he had a cut on his lip and looked all messed up. ‘It’s taken care of,’ he said to Mum in a hard, grim voice I’d never heard before.
Dad changed after the strike. He had always been, in my eyes, a giant of a man, burly and tall, with a shock of thick, curly dark hair. Afterwards, he seemed to shrink, become thinner, more stooped. When he smiled, which he did less and less often, the lines at the corners of his eyes sliced deeper into his skin. Grey started to shoot through his hair at the temples.
He decided to leave the pit and retrain as a bus driver. I don’t think he really liked his new job. It paid a decent enough wage, but not as much as he had earned down the pit. He and Mum argued more, usually about how much she was spending or how he didn’t realize what a growing family cost to feed and clothe. That was when he’d go off down the pub. He only drank at one in the village. The same one the other miners who’d gone into work drank in. The Arnhill Arms. The miners who’d downed tools drank in the Bull. The Running Fox was the only place that was kind of neutral ground. None of the miners drank in there. But I knew some of the older kids did, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t run into their dad or their grandad.
My parents weren’t bad parents. They loved us as much as they could. If they argued and didn’t always have much time for us, it wasn’t because they didn’t care but simply because they worked hard, had little spare cash and were often tired.
Of course, we had a TV and a cassette player and a computer, but still, without wanting to sound like a Hovis ad, a lot of the time we made our own entertainment: I’d play tag and footie with Annie in the street, we’d draw chalk pictures on the pavement or play cards to while away rainy afternoons. I never resented entertaining my little sister. I enjoyed spending time with her.
If the weather was good (or at least, not chucking it down), Mum would think nothing of shooing me and Annie out of the house on a Saturday morning with a bit of money in our pockets to buy some tuck, and not expect to see us back till teatime. Mostly, it was a good thing. We had freedom. We had our imagination. And we had each other.
As I hit my late teens things changed. I found myself with a new group of ‘mates’. Stephen Hurst and his gang. A rough group of kids that an awkward misfit like me had no place being friends with.
Perhaps Hurst mistook my outsider status for being tough. Perhaps he just saw a kid he could easily manipulate. Whatever the reason, I was stupidly grateful to be part of his gang. I’d never had a problem with being a loner before. But a taste of social acceptance can be intoxicating for a teenager who was never invited to the party.
We hung around and did the usual things gangs of teenage boys do: we swore, smoked and drank. We graffitied the playground and tangled the swings over the top of the bars. We egged the houses of teachers we didn’t like and slashed the tyres of those we really hated. And we bullied. We tormented kids feebler than us. Kids who were, I tried not to admit, just like me.
Suddenly, hanging out with my eight-year-old sister was not cool. It was mortally embarrassing. When Annie asked to come down the shop with me I’d make excuses, or leave before she saw me go. If I was out with my new gang, I’d turn away when she waved.
I tried not to notice the hurt in her eyes or the way her face fell. At home, I worked doubly hard to make it up to her. She knew I was overcompensating. Kids aren’t stupid. But she let me. And that made me feel worse.
The stupid thing is, looking back, I was always happier hanging out with Annie than with anyone else. Trying to act hard isn’t the same as being hard. I wish I could tell my fifteen-year-old self that, along with a shitload of other things: girls don’t actually go for the quiet ones, numbing your ear with an ice cube to pierce it doesn’t work, and Thunderbird is not a wine, nor a suitable drink to consume before a wedding reception.
Mostly, I wish I could tell my sister that I loved her. More than anything. She was my best friend, the person I could truly be myself with and the only one who could make me laugh until I cried.
But I can’t. Because when my sister was eight years old she disappeared. At the time I thought it was the worst thing in the world that could ever happen.
And then she came back.
4
I prepare for my first day at Arnhill Academy in my usual way: I drink too much the night before, wake late, curse at the alarm and then, reluctantly and resentfully, limp across the landing into the bathroom.
I turn the shower over the bath to max – which elicits a half-hearted trickle of water – then clamber in and catch a few spurts of warmth before struggling out again, towelling myself dry and pulling on some clean clothes.
I choose a black shirt, dark-blue jeans and my tattered old Converse. There’s first-day smart and there’s being in your boogie shoes. Stupid phrase, I know. I picked it up from Brendan, my old flatmate. Brendan is Irish. That means he has any number of sayings for any given situation. Most make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that one I always understood. Everyone has a pair of boogie shoes. The ones they sling on when they want to feel comfortable and at ease. Some days you need them more than others.
I drag a comb through my hair and leave it to dry as I head downstairs for a black coffee and a cigarette. I smoke it lurking just outside the open back door. It’s only marginally colder outside than in. The sky is a h
ard slab of grey concrete and a faint, mean drizzle spits in my face. If the sun has got his hat on, it’s definitely a rain hat.
I reach the school gates just before eight-thirty, along with the first dribble of pupils: a trio of girls, tapping away on smartphones and flicking their rigorously straightened hair; a group of boys, pushing and shoving in the jokey way that can turn into a genuine fight in the blink of an eye. A couple of emo kids with heavy fringes from under which to glower at figures of authority.
And then there are the solitary arrivals. The ones who walk with their heads down and their shoulders hunched. The slow, ragged walk of the condemned: the bullied.
I pick out one girl: short, with frizzy red hair, bad skin and an ill-fitting uniform. She reminds me of a pupil from my own schooldays: Ruth Moore. She always smelled a little of BO and no one ever wanted to sit next to her in class. The other kids used to make up rhymes about her: ‘Ruth Moore, she’s so poor, gets free meals and begs for more.’ ‘Ruth Moore, ugly and poor, licks up shit from the toilet floor.’
Funny how creative kids can be when they’re being cruel.
Not far behind I spot victim number two – tall and skinny with a shock of dark hair standing up almost vertically from his head. He wears glasses and walks with a stoop, partly because of his height, partly because of the heavy rucksack slung over his back. I bet he’s rubbish at football and all the sports but on his PlayStation he’s a king among geeks. I feel a personal stab of recognition.
‘Hey, Marcus, you fucking pussy!’
The cry comes from a group of boys sauntering up the street behind him. Five of them. Year 11, I would guess. They walk towards the skinny boy with the fluid swagger of a gang. Passive-aggressive. The leader – tall, good-looking, dark hair – slings an arm around Skinny Boy’s shoulders and says something to him. Skinny Boy tries to look relaxed, but everything about his posture screams tension and nerves. The rest of the gang forms a loose circle. Preventing escape. Sealing off his route into the school or away from them.
I hang back a little. They haven’t seen me yet. I’m on the opposite side of the road. And of course they don’t know I’m a teacher. I’m just a scruffy bloke in a duffel coat and Converse. I could continue to be that bloke. It’s not officially school hours. We’re not even inside the school gates. And it’s my first day. There will be other days, other times, to sort out issues like this.
I reach into my pocket for my Marlboro Lights and watch as the gang force Skinny Boy against a wall. The nervy smile has fled. He opens his mouth to protest. Leader Boy presses an arm against his throat as one of the gang slips the rucksack from his shoulder, and the rest fall upon it like a pack of feral dogs, pulling out books and textbooks, ripping out pages, stamping on his cling-filmed sandwiches.
One of them gleefully extracts what looks like a new iPhone. Why? I think. Why do parents send them off to school with this crap? At least in my day the worst thing a bully could steal would be your lunch money or your favourite comic.
I look longingly at my cigarettes. Then, with a sigh, I slip them back in my pocket and walk across the road, towards the altercation.
Skinny Boy tries to grab his phone back. Leader Boy knees him in the groin and takes it from his associate.
‘Ooooh, new. Nice.’
‘Please,’ Skinny Boy gasps. ‘It was a present … for my birthday.’
‘I don’t think we got an invite to your party.’ Leader Boy looks around at his cronies. ‘Did we?’
‘Nah. Must have got lost in the post.’
‘Not a text, nothing.’
Leader Boy raises the phone high above his head. Skinny Boy reaches for it, but it’s half-hearted. He’s got several inches on his tormenter but he’s already defeated. It’s a look I recognize.
Leader Boy smirks: ‘I really hope I don’t drop –’
I grab his raised wrist. ‘You won’t.’
Leader Boy twists his head around. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Mr Thorne, your new English teacher. But you can call me sir.’
A collective murmur runs through the group. Leader Boy’s face falters, just a little. Then he smiles, in a way I’m sure he thinks is charming. It makes me dislike him even more.
‘We were just having a laugh, sir. It was only a joke.’
‘Really?’ I look at Skinny Boy. ‘Were you having a laugh?’
He glances at Leader Boy and gives a small, slight nod. ‘Just joking around.’
I release Leader Boy’s wrist – reluctantly – and hand Skinny Boy back his phone.
‘If I were you, Marcus, I’d leave this at home tomorrow.’
He nods again, doubly chastised now. I turn to Leader Boy. ‘Name?’
‘Jeremy Hurst.’
Hurst. I feel a small tic flutter by my eye. Of course. I should have realized. The dark hair threw me but now I can see the family resemblance. The hereditary glint of cruelty in his blue eyes.
‘Is that all, sir?’
The ‘sir’ is stressed. Sarcastic. He wants me to bite. But that would be too easy. Other days, I remind myself. Other days.
‘For now.’ I turn back to the others. ‘The lot of you, get out of here. But if I see you so much as drop a bit of chewing gum in future, I’ll be on you like a bad case of chlamydia.’
A couple almost let slip a smile, despite themselves. I jerk my head towards the school gates and they start to saunter away. Hurst stands his ground longest, before finally turning and loping casually after them. Marcus lingers uncertainly.
‘You too,’ I tell him.
He still doesn’t move.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘You’d rather I let him get away with smashing up your new phone?’
He shakes his head wearily and turns away. ‘You’ll see.’
5
I don’t have to wait long.
Lunch break. I’m at my desk, writing up some lesson notes and congratulating myself on having got through the morning without boring my classes to death or throwing a pupil – or myself – out of a window.
As Harry quite rightly pointed out, it has been a while since I last taught. I admit I felt a little rusty. Then I remembered something an old colleague told me: Teaching is like riding a bike. You never really forget. And if you feel like you’re about to wobble or fall off, always remember that there are thirty kids waiting to laugh at you and nick the bike. So keep pedalling, even if you have no idea where you’re going.
I kept pedalling. By the end of the morning I was feeling pretty smug with my own success.
Obviously, this can’t last.
There’s a knock at the classroom door and Harry pokes his head in.
‘Ah, Mr Thorne? I’m glad I caught you. Everything okay?’
‘Well, no one’s fallen asleep in my lessons yet, so I’d have to say yes.’
He nods. ‘Good. Very good.’
But he doesn’t look like it’s very good. He looks like a man who has lost a tenner and found a wasps’ nest. He walks into the room and stands awkwardly in front of me.
‘I’m sorry to have to bring this up on your first day, but something has come to my attention that I can’t ignore.’
Crap, I think. This is it. He’s followed up on my references and I’ve been rumbled.
It was always a gamble. Debbie, the school secretary from my previous school, had a bit of a crush on me, and a bigger crush on expensive handbags. For old time’s sake (and a small clutch), she intercepted Harry’s request for a reference and forwarded it to me, along with some official headed paper. Hence my glowing credentials. All well and good, unless Harry dug a little deeper.
I brace myself. But that’s not it.
‘Apparently, there was an incident with one of our pupils outside the school gates this morning?’
‘If, by “incident”, you mean bullying, then yes.’
‘So you didn’t assault a pupil?’
‘What?’
The little shit. I feel a pulse begin to beat at the side of my head.
‘He’s lying.’
‘He said you violently grabbed his arm.’
‘I caught Jeremy Hurst and his little gang bullying another pupil. I intervened.’
‘But you didn’t use unreasonable force?’
I look him in the eye. ‘Of course not.’
‘Okay.’ Harry sighs. ‘I’m sorry, but I had to ask.’
‘I understand.’
‘You should have come to me about this incident. I could have nipped it in the bud.’
‘I didn’t see any need. I thought the matter was dealt with.’
‘I’m sure, but the fact is the Jeremy Hurst situation is a little sensitive.’
‘He didn’t look very sensitive when he was tormenting another kid and threatening to smash his phone.’
‘This is your first day, so obviously you’re still new to the school dynamics, and I appreciate your stance on bullying, but sometimes things aren’t so clear cut.’
‘I know what I saw.’
He takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. I sense that he’s not a bad man, just a tired, overworked one trying to do his best under difficult circumstances and generally failing.
‘The thing is, Jeremy Hurst is one of our top students. He’s the captain of the school football team …’
On the other hand, he could just be a prick.
‘That doesn’t excuse bullying, lying –’
‘His mother has cancer.’
I screech to a halt in my tracks.
‘Cancer?’
‘Bowel cancer.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Shit,’ which would, under the circumstances, be wildly inappropriate.
‘I see.’
‘Look, I know Hurst has some social-cohesion and anger-management issues –’
‘So, that’s what we’re calling it these days.’
Harry smiles ruefully. ‘But with his situation, we have to tread carefully.’