Out: A Schoolboy's Tale Read online

  2: Can't Get You Out of My Head

  THE evening passed in a blur. After Hong Kong Phooey (Number One Super Guy) and a shower, I shared a spinach quiche with the folks and told them about the tennis with Sonning and Rose, although I omitted the bit about the Foster's. Then I played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, like all these limpid rising arpeggios in the first movement, a lilting middle movement and this like manic, thunderous finale, whilst Dad organised his stamp albums and Mum did some ironing and asked every polar bear in like Greenland why I never put my clothes away.

  ''I don't spend hours washing your clothes so you can just chuck them on the carpet again.'' Technically, of course, she didn't spend hours washing the clothes. The washing machine did that but I decided it'd be imprudent to mention it. ''And please put your socks in the laundry basket. Who else do you think's going to do it? The Sock Fairy?''

  Yes, Mum.

  ''I've told you like a billion times.''

  Yes, Mum.

  ''And was it you who put the empty milk-carton back in the fridge?''

  ''No, Mum, I don't drink milk, remember? I like hate milk, you know? Makes me sick?''

  ''Roy! Honestly, it's like having two bloody kids in the house. Roy! Milk-carton?''

  Later we watched David Attenborough take a Red River Safari from Mount Kenya to the Indian Ocean on Wildlife on One and something about child seatbelts on Top Gear but when I went to bed I couldn't sleep. The bamboo wind-chimes hanging from the curtain-rail chinked in the breeze which stole through the window, open behind the yellow curtains. I felt kind of high, you know? Sort of light-headed, and a little confused by the intensity of the feelings I'd experienced that afternoon, the electric shocks, the lurching heart, the wanting to cry, the sheer, utterly overwhelming joy I'd felt in his company. I also kept thinking about him. I couldn't even focus on Deathchase. Somewhere in Level Four I swerved through the forest, fired a missile to blow up the yellow motorbike to earn $1000, fired another to bring down a helicopter, then smashed my own motorbike into a bloody great tree. GAME like sooo OVER, yeah? I wondered if Rosie liked Deathchase. It was such a cool game. Of course he did.

  He absolutely fascinated me, this talented, confident young man with the world at his feet. His charisma had bewitched me during The Dream but I'd been so skittish and he'd been so cool, effortlessly chatting up girls, riffing off Simon Dell, who'd played Bottom, and annoying Big Willie Western, the director, whilst delivering mesmeric performances over four nights. I'd just scampered round the stage like some demented squirrel. Halfway through the run, I'd realised I wanted to be him. I'd wanted to be Alistair Rose, to like inhabit his body, to live in his mind, just for a day, to find out what it was like to be this awesome, incredible boy. Then the play was over, the term was over, and I immersed myself in music and cricket, but now he was back in my thoughts and I had, like, a zillion questions. What did he read? Did he play a musical instrument? What A Levels was he doing? Where was he born? What was his favourite food? What was he doing now? Was he sleeping? Was he watching TV? Did he like the same programmes as me? What was his room like? What did he wear in bed? Did he wear pyjamas? Or pyjama-shorts like me? Or maybe he slept in his boxers. Did he even wear boxers? Maybe he wore slips, like me. I hoped so. Boxers are sooo unsexy. They don't, like, show off your boy's bulge as well as slips, you know?

  I fetched the school magazine with the photo of us in A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were 'on the bank where the wild thyme grows'. I was kind of crouching, hair spiky and legs bare, 'cos I was wearing shorts. Rosie, standing, had his hand on my shoulder and I was like gazing up at him saying I'd 'put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,' you know? It was such a cool picture, though my legs looked like twigs and my bare chest was so narrow my ribs stuck out like carvings in marble. God Almighty.

  I hated my body. I was 15, short and really like scrawny, about five foot four and six-stone nothing. I had this mole about the size of a 5p coin on my left shoulder, another splashed on the left of my neck and two very close together on my left thigh. My arms were dead straight, thin and very weedy. I seemed to have absolutely no muscle-bumps of any kind and it was said my hips could fit through a coat-hanger, though I had pelvic-bones you could rest a cup on. I had this fine, wispy hair in my armpits and some tufty strands round my willy, this slender three-and-a-half-inch water-spout, four-and-a half when hard (of course I'd measured it. Hasn't every boy?). I mean, compared to my classmates I was this like total weed, you know? Thank Christ my voice had just about broken.

  I liked my face though. I thought I had a kind, open face, mostly zit-free, thank fuck. It was quite round, had a few freckles, like I'd been literally spattered with creosote, this nice, small rosebud mouth, and my cheeks kind of dimpled when I smiled, which some people thought cute. My eyes were the colour of conkers, my hair, cut round my ears and in a short fringe across my forehead, was the black-brown colour of Bovril. When I was going out, I'd spike it up with a handful of gel, something Mum really hated, but at least it wasn't greasy, like Maxton's, dappled with dandruff, like Gray's, or massively curly like Burridge's, or, fucking hell, GINGER, like Crooks'. I mean, imagine the teasing.

  So that was me, Jonathan David Peters. I didn't look queer.

  Well, I wouldn't, would I?

  'Cos I wasn't.

  I re-read Bob Hoare's account, in the second chapter of Great Escapes of World War Two, of Charles McCormac's escape from the bestial Japs who, on page 33, bayoneted twelve men to death to like teach the others a lesson, savage bastards. Then to chapter five, 'The Great Escape' and Tom, Dick and Harry, Dad's third favourite film, after El Cid and Zulu, and one of mine too. I put the light out again at about two, and still couldn't sleep. Tomorrow was school and I was gonna see Alistair Rose again, you know? Excitement literally bubbled through my body. How would he greet me? What would I ask him? I would see him in Assembly getting his golden prefect's tie and black gown. I felt so proud of him.

  'Hey, Ali,' I would go, all casual and, like, sooo relaxed.

  'Jonny!' I imagined that dazzling grin breaking out on his face. 'How was Day One?'

  'Great. Yours?'

  'Fantastic, even better for seeing you. By the way, I really enjoyed playing tennis with you. We should play again.'

  'Well, I'm free this Saturday…'

  Did he sleep on his stomach with his hand pushed up under the pillow like me, or on his side? And which side? Did he curl his knees up? Did he snore? I bet he did! Hell, I'd tease him about that all right!

  'Morning, Ali,' I imagined myself saying, propped up on an elbow and, like, gazing down at his beautiful face. 'Didn't get a wink, thanks to your snoring. Like a pig after a truffle.'

  'Ho,' said Fantasy Ali, 'What the hell are those weird snuffling noises you make, Badger-Face? Your Dad says they drive him crazy.' And I'd slap his chest with my hand.

  I wondered how he got on with his brother Bobby, a year below me and a total pain in the arse. Pushy and mouthy, I hated his lame comments and lamer jokes, most of which were aimed at 'Poorly' Paulus for seemingly dodging rugby like forever.

  What did his parents do? What were they called? I wondered where his grandparents lived. Maybe I'd meet them. I'd love it if his grandfather'd been in the war and had some stories for the school magazine. Mine had, but he didn't. As a gunner a gazillion miles behind the front-line pounding the Monte Cassino monastery into dusty rubble, he'd seen nothing. Still, he'd won a couple of medals for like just being there.

  'Hi, Granddad,' Fantasy Ali said, leading me by the hand through the day-room of a nursing home where a dozen scary crones were like colouring sketches of Mickey Mouse, doing needlepoint and poring over jigsaws of beribboned kittens unravelling balls of wool.

  Old people's homes were utterly, totally terrifying. No way would I ever put Ali in one. Ever! You know? Ever. I'd never let him leave our Cotswolds cottage. Amadeus, our cat, would never forgive me if I sent Ali away. I could never do it, never… I'd rather like fry and eat my ow
n liver? With fava beans and a nice Chianti, fffff, ffff, fff.

  'This is Jonathan,' said Fantasy Ali, 'He's writing an article for the school magazine about war-time experiences.'

  Rosie had like written loads for the school magazine? God, he was so clever. He was a brilliant actor, a brilliant speaker, a brilliant writer and a brilliant tennis player and he was my friend. Hugging the magazine to my chest, I rolled onto my front, shoved my right hand under my pillow and smiled. In six hours I was gonna see him again and I couldn't wait.

  The alarm literally exploded in my eardrums like this nuclear fucking bomb. 6.45 already. September 10th already. First day back already. I scrambled out of bed, washed my face with Imperial Leather and Clearasil, spiked my hair with a little gel then peeled off these purple pyjama-shorts I wore in bed, dressed in my favourite lemon-coloured slip and the school uniform of ribbed grey socks, grey flannel trousers, white shirt and green-and-navy house-tie I'd been awarded last year. I tended to save the gold-and-navy school-tie for school occasions like Speech Day or concerts and, on a day-to-day basis, usually wore a grey shirt instead of white (these were our choices) because it lasted the whole week whereas the collar of the white was normally filthy by Wednesday. But I wanted to look really good today. For Alistair.

  I scampered down to the kitchen where Dad was preparing my favourite breakfast, this massive orange bowl of oats, blueberries, bananas and walnuts in yogurt followed by buttered toast and scrambled eggs with tons of black pepper and this large dash of bright red chilli-powder. Mum was banging on about this yoga-class she was giving somewhere and Terry Wogan was telling us about something recently banjaxing him.

  I really liked our kitchen. It was always warm, with brown cork floor-tiles and these units that looked like wood but weren't. By the window was this chunky wooden four-seater table where, back in second-form Geography, I'd spent hours tracing this map of New Zealand's mega-crinkly coastline for Frank Gallagher? I'd often done my homework there, especially like in the winter, 'cos it was warmer than my bedroom? And I'd used it for wargames with Tim, building Airfix models and various birthday parties. This table was part of my schoolboy's tale.

  A selection of herbs grew in plastic pots along the window-sill, suffusing the kitchen with the heady aromas of thyme, basil, mint and rosemary. As well as making her own jam and chutneys, Mum also baked bread, so on Saturdays the most tantalising smell in all the world drifted round the house, drawing me from my bedroom to beg a slice, warm from the oven and soaked in melting honey or slathered in home-made strawberry jam. Metal wind-chimes hung from a paper lantern in the centre of a moulded ceiling-rose. They showed the Zodiac signs in browns and reds. The walls were painted this dusky peach, giving the place this soft warm glow. The cork pin-board had a collection of postcards from friends' holidays, a mini-whiteboard for urgent messages and my RNLI lighthouse calendar, a Christmas gift from the Grunters. I particularly liked February's red-and-white pepperpot at Orford Ness and the weird hexagonal North Foreland in Kent on my birth-month of May, though they might've listed a few Top Trumps stats. September's was this black-and-yellow hooped job from St John's Point, Northern Ireland. This Wednesday was marked in massive black letters, SKOOL, misspelled 'cos I really wanted to go to, like, Grange Hill, you know? 'Cos unlike us, they had girls, you know? Girls. I hadn't been in a class with girls for like five years.

  Spooning up my home-made cereal, I wondered what Rosie had for breakfast. Did he have fruit and oats like me or did he just have Weetabix? Was he even up? Maybe he was still sleeping. I wondered what shampoo he used, what colour his towel was. What was their bathroom like? He said he had a blue toothbrush. Man, I had to get one too. Yellow was sooo like for kids? Blue was for… Rosies. Or Roses.

  ''You OK, son?'' Dad dished out the scrambled eggs. ''You're a million miles away.''

  I said I was just thinking about school. Wogan was playing Randy Crawford: ''One day I'll fly away, leave your love to yesterday, what more can your love do for me? When will love be through with me? Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day that dreaming ends?'' Yikes. I literally buried my blushing face in the scrambled eggs and listened to the folks outlining their days.

  Dad, 41, was this shambling, shapeless bear with fading floppy brown hair and brown Labrador eyes. He had experimented unsuccessfully with this beard a couple of times but had looked 'sinister'. He favoured slacks, checked shirts and these like baggy cardigans, so going out was a trial. Whatever he selected from his admittedly limited wardrobe was always wrong. The three-times-outfit-exchange had become such a ritual I'd joked we should put a catwalk down the hall, you know? Unfortunately it meant we were always late leaving for things. ''Honestly,'' Mum'd huff, ''It's like having two bloody kids in the house.''

  Dad had been a bus driver, which was why, according to family legend, I was like conceived on the upstairs back-seat of the number 52 to town. Apparently. Which was like totally bollocks anyway. I think. Anyway, he'd hated it, especially the school-runs. I sympathised. School-kids are generally total bastards, especially to bus-drivers. After some kind of break-down, he was like on the dole for ages before getting this Council job painting white lines on footie pitches in parks. Now he worked as like this gardener, you know? Selecting, cultivating and planting flowers, installing water-features and tending the hanging-baskets that brightened the city centre. He was like really into ponds and knew everything about grasses you never wished to know, though our garden, obviously, was like this total tip? It wouldn't do for me. I get hay-fever. Mind you, Mum had something homeopathic for hay-fever. She was a yoga teacher and aromatherapist, whatever the hell that is. She made flowers, herbs and spices into oils and potions. 'Like a witch-doctor,' Tim Wilson had once helpfully told everyone at school. Anyway, as far as I could tell, it involved switching pills for smells. If I had a headache, I didn't get Panadols, I got this smear of lavender dabbed on my forehead. If I had indigestion, I didn't get Rennies, I got camomile tea. Even though I thought it a load of old bollocks, there must've been something in it. She'd got certificates, for God's sake, and a super-long client-list.

  Mum, 39, was dreading the Big 4-0. She thought it was gonna be like literally the end of life itself. I mean, everyone knows 20 is the end of life, eh? Anyway, she was desperate to stay slim, to get into my 26-inch jeans, as it were. Why I didn't know. I wanted to be bigger. Anyway, her copper-coloured hair was cut in this kind of bob with a lightly feathered fringe. She favoured these long, cable-knit sweaters, cardigans in pale pastel shades like peach, apricot and mango, floaty scarves, blue skinny jeans, brown calf-hugging leather boots, and had this neat brown-gold handbag. She didn't do jewellery, just the wedding-band, the occasional bead necklace, maybe a bracelet, and make-up was generally the subtlest touch of blusher. She'd been a hairdresser. That was how she'd met Dad, cutting his hair once a month on his way to the depot. I found it hard to imagine romance blossoming among the hair-clippings, disinfected combs and cracked lino of Kurl up and Dye but hey, romance, I guess, can blossom anywhere. Just look at me. Who'd ever imagine romance in a school?

  I liked my school. I liked the buildings, I liked my classmates, I liked my teachers, most of them anyway, I liked the study and I liked the atmosphere. There was this constant buzz of activity, whether it was music or drama, sport or hobby clubs, there was something for everyone, from chess-players to fairground-organ builders, electronics enthusiasts to film-buffs, gliders to cavers, stamp-collectors to war-gamers like me. See? Something for everyone, and even though we inevitably coalesced into like-minded groups, I somehow managed to straddle all of them numbering as I did rugby-playing hearties like Collins, swots like Huxley, skivers like Stewart and keenos like Paulus among my friends. I wasn't really sure where I fitted, to be honest. Although I was like fucking brilliant at playing the piano and a brilliant actor, I wasn't really a keeno. I didn't hang around the music rooms, or with Austen and the other Ac-tors, and I certainly wasn't a hearty, 'cos I wasn't in any sports team
but I liked PE and Games and played break-time footie like everyone else. I definitely wasn't a skiver, 'cos I didn't like getting yelled at, but neither was I a lick, 'cos I occasionally got lines or detention, nor a swot. I mean, when it came to Maths I had the memory of a fucking goldfish. Most of my friends didn't really fit into these groups either. Like Fosbrook. Or Gray. Where the hell did they fit? Our school was weird like that. We had our groups (not 'jocks and nerds', because, as Collins frequently reminded us, we were not Americans and didn't need to borrow their vocabulary) but few seemed to belong to just one. Chris Morreson and Jamie Arnold, for instance, hearty rugger-buggers both, also belonged to the editorial committee of the school magazine and the Choral Society respectively. It was all about cross-over, making Renaissance Men, excelling at everything.

  At half-seven I swallowed a cod liver oil capsule, brushed my teeth and slipped into the navy blue blazer with its gold and blue badge on the breast pocket. The badge showed a golden sheaf of corn under a golden crown and the school motto 'invenire et intelligite', ('to discover and understand'). I shoved a couple of tissues, my front-door key and two £1 coins into my trouser pocket, checked my new bus-pass and black comb were in my inside blazer pocket, scooped up my black Adidas backpack and raced downstairs again. Calling ''See you,'' I headed to the bus-stop. It was only when I was on the number 21 to town with my earbuds plugged into Sibelius' melancholic Seventh Symphony, the one where the trombones seem to swell mournfully through the rest of the orchestra at three climactic moments before dying to nothing, that I remembered I'd forgotten my pack-up and would have to get a bloody school lunch, lumpy mashed potato, over-boiled, lifeless cabbage and indescribably leathery meat. It also meant borrowing someone's lunch ticket, queuing up with a load of gimps, finding somewhere to sit and someone to sit with on one of the long wooden benches in the gloomy, wood-panelled refectory, standing whilst a master recited 'Benedictus Benedicat per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum' from the High Table, the reply to which, 'benedicto benedicatur', I was just supposed to know, 'you bloody slumdog gimp.' Fucking hell. I'd rather like bake and eat my own heart, you know? With carrots and a nice Shiraz. Someone just shoot me.

  My school was this ancient, blackened sandstone pile squatting on a hill near the uni. You could see it for miles 'cos this gold-brown steeple, our supposedly haunted bell-tower, poked up like some finger warning off the town below. Although the school was founded in 1507 by King Henry VII, no Tudor buildings remained. Most of it, St Aidan's Chapel, the Dawnay Library and the Refectory was Victorian Gothic and clustered round this like totally out-of-bounds cricket pitch The thousand-seater Beckwith Hall, the art room, the Britten Music Centre and the language labs were housed in some brutalist 1960s concrete construction imaginatively named the New Building whilst the science labs were in the Jessop Wing, this swish new extension to the three-storey Victorian school that housed the form-rooms. English was in this really cool yellow Edwardian townhouse, romantically named Heathcliffe Lodge, with stained-glass windows and creaky floorboards. History was up in that haunted bell-tower, which Bush-head and Hellfire called Eagles' Nest. Our 25-metre swimming pool and Sports Centre dated from the 1970s whilst the Sixth Form Common Room, Staff Room and Admin were in this powder-blue Georgian house called The Lupton Building. There was a kind of wood by the Sports Centre where gimps played hide-and-seek and sword-fights with sticks.

  I loved feeling part of this history, like there was some amazing magic connection between me and the thousands of boys who'd like studied here over the last half-millennium, so, once in the Room 31 base of Upper Five H, I was like totally and quickly immersed in the first-day chaos of shouted greetings, handshakes and back-slaps, finally slumping down by Philip Maxton, my gangly, mop-headed, Maths-genius, zit-spattered, horse-faced friend.

  ''What's up?'' he grunted.

  ''All right?'' I grunted back. ''Good holiday?''

  ''So-so. Brittany with the folks. Pretty boring actually. You?''

  ''Norfolk. Same. Like sooo tedious, you know?'' But at least he'd been abroad.

  Setting his Sizes 12s up on the table, he started picking England's team for tonight's opening World Cup qualifier against Norway at Wembley and on the radio at 8.00 whilst twisting this Rubik's Cube round in his hands. Rubik's Cubes were the latest craze. Everybody had one except me. I couldn't see the point of trying to get a load of coloured squares to conform to a pattern. Life wasn't like that. I preferred the faces mixed up. Diversity was so much more interesting than conformity, you know? As Ian Dury (from The Blockheads) said, there's more to life than just 'fitting in', eh? Like, 'Hit Me with your Rhythm-Stick', ha ha.

  ''Seen Claire lately?'' Andy Collins, the coolest guy in the class 'cos he lived on a farm, drove Landrovers through muddy fields, bottle-fed new-born lambs in his bedroom and had screwed literally millions of girls, had been at that party. ''She's so into you she'd like fuck you in a heart-beat? Did you call her?'' Shit. ''Jonny, you total twat. She fancies the arse off you, man, and she's bloody gorgeous an' all, too gorgeous for a gimpy twat like you.''

  Sparky, elfin Claire Ashton was the headmaster's daughter. She wasn't my girlfriend although everyone kind of wanted her to be? Including her father? I mean, yikes. He's the headmaster, man! Anyway, during the summer term 'cos I helped her with her Grade 6 oboe exam and we just kind of like started hanging out together, you know? We went to the cinema once and held hands through some fuckwitted American teenage 'romcom' which she'd like totally loved and I'd like totally loathed, you know? We'd kind of kissed a bit after but I wasn't really that interested back then? There was like plenty of time for the slushy stuff when I got to uni. Anyhow, in early August, I'd taken her to Michael Crooks' 15th birthday party. Which ended in total, absolute, humiliating disaster. Literally the end of my life, you know?

  Gray, who'd also been at the party, filled in the details. ''She's like puckering up for this lovely, romantic kiss and you puke pizza up all over her brand-new, sixty-quid Kickers. Ends your chance of being head boy. I heard Ash-tray himself had to hose 'em down.''

  Everyone in earshot laughed and started alternating vomiting noises with loud kisses.

  Yikes. I went like Spiderman-red, you know? Someone just shoot me.

  Thank fuck for Ian Hutchinson, our 30-something form-master, who arrived with timetables, handbooks, calendars and lectionaries with the Michaelmas Bible readings and I could hide myself in something other than my own embarrassment, except he caught Gray's remark as we all stood up and snapped ''Peters? Head boy? Over my dead body! Fasten your collar, you scruffy little tramp. You're at school now, not some wild party. Siddown.''

  Yikes, even he knew. From Dr Ashton, no doubt. God Almighty. Who else had he told? Man, life was sooo unfair. One little mistake and I was gonna get literally crucified round the fucking school. Fortunately, everyone fell to swapping holiday stories, tales of Provençe, the Dordogne and the Italian lakes. It seemed the whole bloody form had decamped to the continent and every one of them had been bored totally stupid except by the foreign girls they'd fancied and totally failed to fuck, ha ha. Better stay in England like me, eh? You're not even gonna get your hopes up at home, let alone anything else, ha ha.

  Scouring the Calendar for the dates of concerts, music competitions, house drama evenings and the other stuff I did and pretty much ignoring the rugby, squash and cross-country fixtures on the back, I like snorted with total dismay. The bloody music competition did clash with my clarinet exam. Thursday November 20th. For fuck's sake. Would you believe it? I circled it bitterly, along with the house play dates of November 6th and 7th, Murray house swimming, October 23rd, and the Christmas charity concert, December 12th. Seemed a long way off, as did the end of term on Wednesday December 17th.

  Anyway, back to Hutchinson. Teaching Mathematics, he'd like dismissed me years ago as some total turnip-head. I consistently finished bottom of the class and my best exam ever was a triumphant 33% way back in third form. The brilliant mathematicians like Ma
xton and Stewart thought he was awesome and, despite his opinion of me, so did I. Easily the best Maths teacher in the school, he'd taught me in 2W, where we did like trigonometry, all that sine and cosine shit, and bases and negative numbers, you know? I mean, what the fuck is a negative number? It either is a number or it isn't, you know? Anyway, seeing me struggling, he gave me this one-to-one lunchtime coaching like twice a week throughout the summer term and I kind of scraped through the exam, though he still thought me this mince-for-brains dunce.

  ''Have you learned nothing since 2W?'' he said when he got me back in L5C.

  ''No, sir,'' I answered miserably. Algebra had gone like totally over my head, 'cos I'd had some bloody useless twat called Jennings (our Lower School house tutor) and this guy called Robinson who wasn't even a Maths teacher, and returned, as it were, to Base One. Thank God my education was free, otherwise we'd have sued. Thank God too for the timetabling god (Rev Crawford) who returned me to Mr Hutchinson in my GCSE year. Now I might stand a chance of like passing the bloody thing, you know?

  Hutchinson's nickname was Bunny, from Hutchinson to Hutch to Rabbit to… you following? I didn't know who'd originally coined it. Some said Mr Yates (aka Cedric), a noted fashioner of sobriquets. Some said Bunny himself 'cos he had this blond hair like Hutch out of Starsky and Hutch. Some said his tutor at Oxford 'cos he had like these Bugs Bunny teeth yeah? No-one actually knew. Like most stuff, it was lost in the mists of school history.

  Some nicknames were imaginative, like Harry Langdon was Hellfire 'cos his initials were HEL, others just a connection with someone else, like Mr Perry was Fred, like the tennis player, Mr Gallagher was Frank, like the guy from Shameless, Mr McDonald was Ronald the burger king, and others just boringly alliterative adaptations – Jacko Jackson, Millie Milton, Willie Western etc. Some were just rude – Bush-head Bleakley, Leper Leeson, who had this scaly red skin, Wingnut Knight, whose ears stuck out from his head at right angles... we were inducted into this culture pretty much from Day One and gleefully passed on our knowledge to the next lot of gimps, as Lower School newbies were called.

  The school, about 800 boys and 50 masters, was divided in two, Lower being the first, second, third and fourth forms, boys aged ten to fourteen (so Years 6 to 9, in your language, I think) - I'd joined the second form (Year 7) - and Upper (Years 10 to 13, maybe?) comprising the GCSE-focused Fifth Form, Lower and Upper, and A-Level focused Sixth Form, Lower and Upper. There were five forms of about 20 in each year, except the Sixth Form which broke down smaller, like groups of 8 to 12, and the First Form which was 40 boys from the prep school. It meant year-groups of 100 and 8 houses of about the same, so you like got to know pretty much everyone eventually.

  The houses were named after these local heroes, like the guy who invented stainless steel (Brearley), a deaf-and-dumb astronomer (Goodricke), a lighthouse-builder (Smeaton), a chocolate-making Quaker (Rowntree) etc., and each had its own history, traditions and colours, like, respectively, yellow, purple, dark blue and light blue. Our house, the one me, Paulus and Burridge were in, was named after Matthew Murray who'd invented a steam-engine and our colour was green. We were pretty rubbish. We never won anything. People said we were green with envy, ha ha. But houses were great 'cos you got to work with kids you might not otherwise, like Trent and Sutcliffe (younger) and Rose and Sonning (older).

  ''I guess,'' Bunny, who was in Leeman House (lawyer, railwayman, MP, red) with Lamp-post Lewis and Gutbucket Gardiner, drawled as he dished out our locker keys, ''That you did absolutely nothing whatsoever during the last seven weeks. Well, that stops now. You're in the top 1% of the country's sixteen year olds, God help us, and you know that a C is as good as a fail.'' So no pressure then. ''This is the most important year of your sad little lives.''

  Since every year had been the 'most important year of our sad little lives', we coughed sceptically, although ten GCSEs awaited us in May. Happy fucking birthday, Jonny.

  Because I was number 17 on the register, I got locker 17, on the bottom row below Paulus's and next to Maxton's. I hated having a bottom-row locker. I'd have to grub around on the floor every time I opened it. I also hated having a locker next to Maxton 'cos he'd like stick these pictures of Debbie Harry and Kate Bush inside the door and leer at them with sly elbow-digs into my ribs. I preferred sports stars like Geoffrey Boycott and Kevin Keegan.

  ''Bollocks.'' Maxton was inspecting his timetable. ''We got Fred for Music, not Wilfo.''

  Rarely in class, Fred (Perry) was dull whilst Wilfo Reid, rabbit-toothed and violently bearded, wore spectacularly flowery shirts and crazy bow-ties and did funky stuff like tying Coke tins into the piano and filling drums with dried peas to 'see what happened'. His real name was Geoff. Why he was nicknamed Wilfo I had no idea. I guessed I could ask Cedric. But Music would be okay. The composition stuff was easy. I'd done Grade Eight theory like a billion years ago. The practical exam would also be easy. It was only Grade Five after all. I'd chosen the course partly 'cos my mates were doing it but mainly for the music history part, for Mussorgsky's 'Night on the Bare Mountain', Vivaldi's 'Gloria in D' and a Haydn string quartet 'cos I wanted to be a music journo when I left school, like writing reviews and CD sleeve-notes and stuff. Like Maxton and Gray, I preferred Wilfo to Fred 'cos Fred was stuck in the Dark Ages – he once chucked Jamie Arnold out for just mentioning jazz, which was like fair enough, especially since Arnie looked like Zippy off Rainbow (a wide-mouthed rugby-ball) - but Wilf had conducted Oliver and accompanied me in all my clarinet exams whilst Fred seemed to hate me. I didn't know why, and he never said. It was just this impression I got, you know?

  ''It's even worser,'' groaned Gray, ''We got Herbidacious for Bio.''

  Herbidacious (like those magic words in The Herbs), Derek Herbert, was a total cunt. He hated everyone, his colleagues, his students, maybe even his wife and kids. Strict, pedantic, icily sarcastic, blisteringly tempered, he'd taught us Chemistry in 3Y and Biology in 4M. He hated us and the feeling was most definitely mutual. So Herbie-fucking-dacious, eh?

  Scouring the timetable for more information, it was already clear that Tuesdays and Fridays would be like my best days, you know? Registration at 8.45, break from 11.20 to 11.40, lunch from 1.00 to 2.10 and school finishing at 3.40, with the buses ten minutes later. That was our day.

  Everyone wanted Cedric for French. He was a brilliant teacher and fabulous form-master who'd taken us on this like totally awesome trip walking the cliff from Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby. He'd shown us these really cool, super-romantic abbey ruins and dragged us round the Dracula Experience, leaping from shadows yelling 'Boo' and totally failing to scare us. It was on that trip I discovered this mega-awesome second-hand bookshop in Whitby and bought five James Bond novels for a quid, including Octopussy, Diamonds are Forever and Doctor No, my all-time favourite because of Honey Rider like emerging from the sea wearing, like, nothing but a belt (man, I had some absolutely EPIC dreams then, I can tell you!), Bond's escape through heated pipes and a cage of red-eyed spiders and [SPOILER ALERT – if you haven't read it, look away now] Doctor No getting literally buried in this massive pile of bird-shit. But we didn't get Cedric. We got Boring Ben Goddard instead.

  I loved Hand-Out Hellfire, Head of History, Head of Cricket and barkingly mad, combining demonstrations of forward-defensives and cover-drives with explanations of Bismarck's foreign policy. Like two lessons for the price of one, you know? Though obviously how to hook a short-pitched delivery for a boundary-four would probably not come up on the GCSE, worse luck, 'cos that was easy. Anyway, although Hellfire taught by gap-fill worksheet, I was really looking forward to World War One, the Russian Revolution, Nazism and World War Two, all my favourite stuff. We'd done the French Revolution last year with Bush-head and I'd produced this awesome project on the Napoleonic Wars. I thought History might be my 'thing.' I'd loved it since primary and had like tons of history books, you know?

  I also liked 'Big Willie' Western, the Head of English, whose classroom on the top floo
r of Heathcliffe Lodge, had the original 1903 stained glass windows and was plastered with massive posters of Shakespeare and plays from the National Theatre. He had directed The Dream and instilled my love of Dickens, Ted Hughes, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Animal Farm back in 4M. Although Sarah May, twenty-something, long dark hair, 'come-to-bed' eyes, short skirts and leggings and known as Spam (her initials were SPM), was said to be brilliant, especially with Shakespeare, and half the school like totally lusted after her, I was happy with Willie, and looking forward to Twelfth Night, D. H. Lawrence and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

  Best of all, we had 'Beaky' Phillips for German again. Beaky was my absolute favourite teacher by like a mile. Tall, pencil-thin, scanty hair, beaky nose (still following?), eccentric to the point of like 'somebody take him away', he was one of those old-school teachers who just seemed to understand teenagers and pitch stuff right, you know? He'd helped me during a dreadful first week when I was utterly overwhelmed by 800 massive boy-mountains stomping up and down the stairs. Getting lost several times and late for Assembly, I was yelled at in front of the whole school by Ash-tray (Dr Ashton) himself.

  Burning up and squeezing in beside Mark Gray, I'd muttered a 'Hi' which, overheard by my new form-master, Frosty Winters, earned me another public bollocking and a hundred lines for talking in Assembly. Then, haring round a corner 'cos I was late for a house meeting I couldn't find, I had literally collided with Bunny, knocking an armful of exercise-books to the lino and winning a lunchtime detention for running in the corridor, you stupid gimp. All this in my first hour. I'd withdrawn to the window-sill corner with my Walkman and Hornblower Goes to Sea from my primary school Puffin Club. I really loved sea stories then, especially Hornblower, 'cos from that book I learned how to walk along a pitching yard-arm in a storm, how to heat red-hot shot, how to besiege a Caribbean fort and how to get a ship off a mudflat by firing a broadside to break the suction, all useful skills for a growing boy. In addition, my historical hero back then was Horatio Nelson, shot down by a sniper and dying in battle for his people on the quarterdeck of his ironically-named Victory. Despite his dodgy private-life, he seemed the most admirable admiral to me. Anyway, so I was reading about Hornblower losing his prize-ship 'cos its cargo of waterlogged rice swelled to burst the seams when Frosty asked me what I was listening to.

  ''Wagner, sir,'' I said. ''Die Walküre. The first-act finale, you know? Siegmund and Sieglinde's Love Duet.'' It was like my all-time favourite piece of music back then. He didn't say anything, just looked a bit surprised, you know? It was only later, when I realised none of the other 11 year olds were listening to Wagner that I understood why. He must've bowled back to the Staff Room to tell his colleagues about this weird freak in his form 'cos during our first German lesson, Beaky, grinning cheerfully, said ''Oh, Mr Peters. The lad who likes Wagner.'' I thought he was mocking me, but he wasn't. He asked if I knew The Ring Cycle, and which recording I had, and I said Boulez's, and he pulled a face and said it was a little modern for him, but I'd seen it on BBC2 and absolutely loved it.

  ''Well,'' he'd said, ''Each to his own. I prefer my Brünnhildes with horny hats and flaxen pigtails. They remind me of Mrs Phillips.''

  Water had like literally snorted out of my nose. From that day on, I had a bond with him and consistently came top of the set, I guess because he enthused me so much, especially when he taught us about culture and literature. He played Beethoven and Weill, read us Brecht and Goethe and offered chunks of Yorkie as quiz prizes. He was the kind of utterly inspirational, tuned-in teacher you really wished you had.

  Settling in had been difficult for me. I mean, my dad was a bus driver. Everyone else's were doctors, lawyers or academics. My first term seemed to consist entirely of fights, lines and detentions. Kevin Seymour and Graham Brudenall were my biggest tormentors. Both were physically much bigger than me, and much, much richer. It was Seymour who coined the early nickname Rubber, like Rubber-Jonny. I didn't know what it meant, 'cept everyone like pissed themselves when he said it. I thought he meant I was an Eraser, like Arnie in that film. Gray finally told me it meant 'condom'. I didn't know what one of those was either so Gray gave me the old birds-and-bees talk on the bus home. So I punched Seymour out, although he was twice my size and had a face like a baked potato. He kind of respected me after I'd smashed his lip. Then Brudenall like wound me up by asking if I was a virgin. I was 11, let me remind you, and the only virgin I'd ever heard of was called Mary so, assuming 'virgin' was another word for 'girl' said ''Of course not. Do I look like a virgin?'' Brudenall and the hearties howled with laughter. When I got home, I looked it up in the dictionary and was like totally mortified to learn that I'd told him I'd had sexual intercourse. Aged eleven. Even though I didn't know what it was. Until Gray explained again. Anyway, back I went, said ''Met her on holiday and it was fucking brilliant, you tosser,'' and kicked his leg and ankle so hard that he cried. Like Gray's soppy sister Melissa.

  Up to then Gray had seemed really embarrassed to be seen with me. He'd even asked why I kept hanging around him like a lost puppy but afterwards he'd crowed that I would 'keep the bullies at bay.' He was like the first to call me JP and he introduced me to Philip Maxton. All living near each other, we caught the same bus at 3.50 every afternoon. Tim was too busy making friends with the sons of his father's medical friends to be bothered with me but Gray had been friendly. I liked him. He was a good pianist and sang in the Choral Society with me. He had crinkly brown hair, large black-rimmed specs that cut his square face in half, traces of adolescent acne on his forehead and a blazer two sizes too big, the sleeves covering his hands. We played Top Trumps every break with Maxton and David Fosbrook. I had these really cool sets, 'Dinosaurs', 'Tanks', 'Space Phenomena' and 'Classic British Cars', with Ford Escorts, Mini Coopers, Triumph Spitfires, Ford Cortinas and super-cool Aston Martin V8. We were like really into Star Trek and Doctor Who. We particularly loved the Master (in Chapel, 'He who would valiant be/Follow the Master', always made us laugh), and kept saying 'Make it so' like Captain Picard, although we really wanted to be Zaphod Beeblebrox, the coolest cat in the Galaxy. Sadly we were more Marvin the Paranoid Android, always like 'so depressed.'

  I looked round the class now, at Collins, tall and broad-shouldered, wheat-coloured hair swept sideways from a flat, rectangular face, at Paulus, with his upside-down-triangle features and soft mid-blond curls glowing in the sunlight, at Crooks, the elfin cross-country runner with green eyes and copper-coloured hair... I did belong here. I had earned my place in this tribe. They were my friends and I like totally loved them, you know? Like sooo TOTALLY.

  So when, at break, I ran out to play football, swapping black Clarks for silver-grey Reeboks, and Arnold yelled at me to play up with the others against U5B, and that mop-headed lamp-post Lewis passed me the ball, I felt I was back where I belonged. I slid the ball through Coleman's feet and raced round to chip it to Collins who headed back to my left foot (I'm like really and totally left-footed). Ten yards out, with only Robbins, their lardy-arsed, curly-haired keeper to beat, I drew him off his line then lobbed the ball delicately over his head and through the piled-blazer posts making it 3-2 to us. Lewis ruffled my hair. Maxton slapped my back. Even Spud-Face Seymour clapped appreciatively. JP was back, and already scoring.

  During the first Assembly, I sat in front of Austen in U5S and behind Robbins in U5B and between Gray and Maxton on the dusty Rises in the aircraft-hangar named after Thomas Beckwith, an eighteenth century artist from York. The 400 Lower Schoolers sat cross-legged on the floor below us. The 200 Sixth Formers sat in chairs behind us. Down on the platform stood the gleaming black Steinway I loved playing so much. Fred was teasing out this Bach prelude in F sharp minor. The twenty new prefects were chattering excitedly in a row along one of the walls. Their names were listed in the Handbook. D.S. Rose, U6L, was sitting beside S.J. Leverett, U6MS. Under his black prefect's gown, he was wearing this dark grey suit, white shirt and this gold prefect's tie with the school's crown-and-sheaf
crest. He looked really happy.

  The Headmaster, Senior Master, Chaplain and Head Boy, Tom Redmond, a rugby-playing tree in a stripy blue-and-gold Colours blazer, filed in. The masters were in like full academic dress, not just gowns but also hoods in their different university colours. Standing, I opened Hymns Ancient and Modern at number 184, 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, forgive our foolish ways'. The hymn-book was battered now and ink-stained from the same accident that had done for my French dictionary and stopped me carrying actual bottles of Quink in my backpack. All my forms (3Y, 4M, L5C, now U5H) were listed on the inside front-cover where I'd once, long, long ago, written J.D. Peters 2W in this blue-black ink. Because I knew the words, I could sing and watch Ali helping some teary-eyed gimp find the right page. That's my Ali, I thought, showing kindness to others.

  My Ali. Yikes.

  Blushing, I returned to breathing through the earthquake, wind and fire.

  After we'd mumbled ''Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name'' and Redmond had dully intoned Proverbs Chapter 1, that ''The simple will be endowed with shrewdness and the young with knowledge and prudence,'' Ash-tray gave this like motivational address which went along the lines of 'work hard, play hard and always do your best to discover and understand.' Finally Gallagher called up the prefects two-by-two for a handshake and to sign this book. I felt this surge of excited pride when 'Alistair Rose' was announced. He was my friend, after all. As he left the platform, he kind of glanced up into the hall and, across eight hundred heads, our eyes like locked, you know? and my stomach flipped over like a pancake in a frying pan and Leatherface Leatherbridge, our IT-teaching Year Head, bawled that the boys on the Rises should remain where we were to stop U5S shoving us into U5B below, something Leatherface loathed almost as much as he loathed the boys on the Rises. I reckoned it was 'cos he didn't teach like a proper subject, you know?

  ''Leverett's a right bastard,'' said Gray as we filed out. ''Mr Rule-Book or what.''

  ''Rosie's all right though,'' I ventured.

  ''Pah,'' said Gray, ''Broody reckons he's a proper poofter, bit of a Paulus, you know?''

  ''Paulus isn't gay,'' I said. ''Nor's Rosie.''

  ''That's all you know,'' Gray answered darkly.

  On the bus home, while Maxton was fiddling with his bloody Rubik's Cube and describing this Space Invaders game he and Stewart had played at lunchtime in Sweaty Betty's, Rosie appeared behind me and said ''Hi, Jonny.''

  My reply was so girly it made me blush. I kind of like sighed 'hiiiii.' Gray frowned.

  ''You still wanna be in the play, don't you?'' he said.

  ''Yeah,'' I blurted enthusiastically. ''I can't wait. But I might not be able to do all the rehearsals. I got Choral Society, Chamber Orchestra, clarinet lesson on Thursdays...''

  ''It'll be fine,'' he said. ''Will you also join the debating team?''

  ''Mass-debating team,'' Maxton sniggered coarsely as nine squares clicked blue.

  ''Yes, but I've never done it before.'' I sounded breathlessly excited. God. To be on the same team with him. To sit beside him in the lecture theatre. Me and him together…

  ''Bet you have,'' sniggered Maxton. ''Mass-debated… ha ha, like every fucking night, eh, Jonny? Over some sizzling hot bird in Razzle, eh?'' I coloured like a clown's nose.

  Babbling thanks, I sounded like some over-eager, rather needy puppy and could feel Gray's eyes literally drilling into the back of my neck like some bloody Black and Decker.

  ''Yikes,'' said Rosie, peering over my shoulder. ''You got Herbidacious for Biology.''

  ''Yeah,'' I said. ''Already ruing the thyme I'll have to dill with him, ha ha.''

  ''You're sooo not funny, Peters,'' Maxton remarked through Rosie's groaned grin as Gray slapped my hand. ''Why do you suppose he hates everyone so much?''

  ''Miserable childhood,'' said Rosie, ''But you got Hellfire. European history 1789-1914. You'll be in Hand-out Heaven. Hellfire's my form-master this year. Upper Six L.''

  No way! I'd be in his class-room. I could sit where he sat, maybe in the same chair…

  ''And you got Beaky,'' he continued enthusiastically. ''I'm doing A-Level Literature with him. Man, it's awesome. I love Brecht, and Thomas Mann. We're doing Death in Venice. You have to read it, J. It's about this old man who falls in love with a beautiful young boy…''

  Gray snorted. As Rosie reddened like a, well, like a rose, I rescued him by asking him to test my French vocab.

  ''I hate testing people,'' he groaned, taking my blue vocab book. ''Mum makes me test Bobby. It's so boring. Sheep.''

  ''Un mouton.''

  ''Cow.''

  ''Une vache.''

  ''Rabbit.''

  ''Un lapin.''

  ''Squirrel.''

  ''Un écureuil.''

  ''I never knew that. I never saw that before.''

  ''Get on with it.''

  Tapping my nose gently with my book, he said teasingly ''This time I want you to act them out, so I know you really understand what they mean.''

  ''You're kidding, right?''

  ''Duck.''

  ''You've got to be joking.''

  Sitting back with this evil grin, he ordered me to be a French duck so I ended up going 'quack quack' on the bus, then 'oink oink' for 'un cochon', and everyone was pissing themselves and Nick Shelton, this hottie from 4D and Firth with a silver brace and smouldering eyes, shouts it sounded like Old Macdonald's Farm and Rosie goes ''That's genius, Shelters. Sing it in French, JP! With the actions and the sound-effects,'' so me, Rosie, Shelton and Trent, also 4D, are like singing it at the tops of our voices while Gray and Maxton are kind of literally shrinking into the seats pretending they don't know us, you know? Then Warburton from the Upper Sixth yells ''You missed out cock!'' We all pissed ourselves and Shelton and Trent did these insane rooster impressions and we pissed ourselves again. It was such a laugh, you know? Like the most totally AWESOME first day back ever!

  As I got off the bus, Rosie grinned and my heart kind of somersaulted like a gymnast on a trampoline? I leap-frogged this concrete bollard outside Ladbroke's then leapt like a salmon to slap this STOP sign at the top of our street. Utterly elated, I raced down the road like I had yesterday, singing at the top of my lungs, ''The Heavens are telling the glory of God'' from Haydn's Creation. Man, I felt so alive, you know?