My Temporary Life Read online

  MY TEMPORARY LIFE

  A novel by

  Martin Crosbie

  Copyright 2012 by Martin Crosbie

  All rights reserved.

  www.martincrosbie.com

  Dedicated to Bill and Bob, for without them none of this happens.

  CHAPTER 1

  I think I first smelled booze on Gerald when we were eleven, and as far as I know he’s been drinking ever since. We’re thirteen now, almost fourteen, and he still carries a mickey to school a couple of times a week. I know how he does it. He told me once. He raids his parent’s liquor cabinet and takes a little from every bottle, making up a toxic mixture of alcohol. He’s small, and wiry, almost invisible really, so it’s probably quite easy for him to sneak around his house, stealing things, unnoticed.

  Once, he flashed me a rare sinister-looking grin and offered me a sip. “Try it, Malcolm. Try it. I cannae gie ye much, but try a wee bit of it.” The taste was harsh and strong and had no flavour. It burned my throat and reminded me of the oil that we use in the big old heater that sits at home on our hearth. I politely gave him his little bottle back, hoping that he’d never offer it to me again.

  He drinks his booze after we eat our twelve o’clock dinner. We always sit across from each other in the dinner hall, and when he’s finished eating his lukewarm potatoes and dried-up meat, that Kilmarnock Secondary School provides us with every day, he sneaks away to the boy’s toilets to drink his concoction. When I meet up with him later, on the school grounds, his face is red and his breath is foul. He says it makes him numb. It’s what he likes, what he needs.

  Although we’re all students in Second Form and we’re all twelve or thirteen years old, the Masters separate us into two different sections. Form 2A has the regular children, the children that are easy to categorize. Gordon McGregor is in 2A, the tall, red-headed son of the local butcher, and so is Stuart Douglas, with his holier than thou smirk, and chin covered in pimples and peach fuzz. They run the school. Everyone is afraid of them, even some of the masters. McGregor is in charge, but Douglas is the dangerous one. He’s the one who does the dirty work, and he’s always talking, always stating something. He’ll widen his fingers and raise his hands after one of his statements, challenging anyone to contradict him. Then he’ll seal it off with a look over at his friend, Gordon McGregor, gesturing for his approval. McGregor always does the same thing. He smiles back at the frozen, waiting look on Douglas’ face and says, “Aye, you’re right. It’s us against them Stuart. Always has been, always will be.”

  Sometimes he’s alluding to the English and the tenuous relationship that the Scots have with them, or sometimes it’s the Masters, and sometimes it seems to be directed at me, or those like me. I never have felt as though I’m a part of the “us” and I certainly never feel that I’ll ever be one of “them,” or at least not in their eyes.

  Form 2B is my class, mine and Gerald’s. We’re the segregated children, the ones that the masters, and the school I suppose, don’t quite know what to do with. In our class we have children whose mothers look young enough to be their older sisters, or fathers who are away, just away, whatever that means. And we have criminals, young criminals anyway. These are the boys who are already legends in the school because of the violence and criminality their last names are associated with, boys who carry knives to school, and use the stories of what their big brothers and fathers did the night before to intimidate the rest of us.

  The rest of us are from broken homes. That’s how I ended up here. My mother left my father and returned to Canada four years ago. That’s where she’s from. She met my father while on holiday in Scotland, then shortly afterwards, I came along. Then, when she tired of Scotland, or my Dad, or me, I’m not sure which, she went home. So now I spend the summers with her in Vancouver, Canada, and my school year here in Kilmarnock, in Scotland, with my Dad.

  I’ve never really been sure why Gerald is in 2B. He has a mother and father and although he’s poor and his clothes often look to be in the same, unwashed state week after week, he’s still no poorer than the rest of us. He’s small though, very small, so perhaps the Masters thought that he wouldn’t fit in with the regular kids. Perhaps they thought he needed to be segregated too.

  Science class is packed. We always have Master Hextall’s Science class right after dinner, and today it’s crowded. It’s never this crowded. The other Master must be busy or absent because Form 2A has joined us, and there are two class loads of students packed into my one little classroom. Usually they’re good at keeping us divided, keeping us apart, but not today. Students are sitting on the floor, and doubled up at desks. Gordon McGregor and Stuart Douglas are even leaning against the walls. Master Hextall is scared of them. I can tell. He keeps looking out at the rest of us, ignoring the two of them, pretending that they’re not there.

  Hextall is always nervous, but today he’s especially flustered. I can see it in his face. There are just too many wound-up, twitchy children in the classroom, and I’m sure half of us look as though we want to take a bite out of him. He’s scanning the class, his greasy skin glowing from the classroom lights, as he tries to find a way to silence the murmurs, the restlessness. I know what he’s looking for. He needs the same thing that all of us want. He needs to fit in, and the only way he knows how to do that is to offer up a sacrifice. He needs a victim.

  Standing at the front, he’s surveying us, deciding. He won’t pick McGregor or Douglas or even one of the hard boys from my class. He doesn’t want a confrontation, a fight. I know that. I know it by the way his beady little eyes are darting around, and the way he’s furiously tapping his cane against the side of his leg, over and over again. My desk is behind Gerald’s and there’s no point in trying to hide behind his small frame. I’m too tall and gangly. Hextall can see me. I stick out too much.

  I always do the homework, and usually, Gerald does too, but not today. I just know that he hasn’t. I can tell by the way his body is slumped forward with his head leaning over his schoolbooks. He may as well have a target printed clearly on the front of his school shirt. Hextall sees it too, and makes his decision. He doesn’t pick on me or Angie Craven, one half of the Craven twins, who sits in front of Gerald. He picks the weakest person in the room.

  “Mr Taylor, Gerald, tell me that you’ve read the assignment. Please tell me that you now understand that in all equations there is a problem, an observation, and a conclusion. Tell me your interpretation of the problem on page 74 please, and say it loud enough for all of us to hear, Mr Taylor.” Hextall has a nasally irritating voice that runs its fingers through your hair and slaps you on the back of the head at the same time. He keeps staring at Gerald while nervously adjusting his glasses, just before they slide off the end of his nose.

  It’s worked for him too, because now there’s only silence in the classroom. The nervous murmuring and noises from a moment ago have changed to a class full of children holding their breath, waiting anxiously for the blood to spill. From my vantage point behind Gerald, I can see my friend’s face looking down, staring at his desk, at his jotter. There’s a murmur of laughter, half of it at his expense I suppose, and the other half just relief that he’s today’s scapegoat. We’re all watching him, waiting.

  Hextall doesn’t wait long; he too can smell the blood. “Can’t you look up at me Mr Taylor? Have I said something that you find offensive, or amusing? Or are you deef? Are you hard of hearing today?” The old bastard is enjoying it. He’s actually grinning and does nothing to silence the laughter that’s coming from the rest of the class.

  I can see the back of my friend’s neck turning red as he raises his head to answer the teacher. I can hear the buzzing of the overhead lights in the classroom. I perch forward and crane
my neck to the side, just a bit, trying to see what he’s doing. He’s opened his mouth. I can see that much. His mouth is open but no words are coming out. I don’t understand what’s happening right away, but then I get it. Then, I know.

  His mouth is wide open, and he’s probably trying to speak, but he can’t. So the odour, that harsh, pungent odour of liquor is blowing all over the back of Angie Craven, and probably over anybody else who’s sitting in the first couple of rows of the classroom.

  Hextall must see the squeamish look on the girls face, or perhaps her eyes are darting around in anger as she’s reacting to the smell of my friend’s breath on the back of her neck. Either way, he isn’t waiting. Seizing the moment, he leaps forward from the front of the class, and stations himself right in front of Gerald.

  “Have you been drinking, boy? Is that alcohol that I smell on your breath?”

  This time there is an answer. He pushes himself straight up in his chair and addresses the teacher, his mouth surely no farther than a few inches from Hextall’s thick glasses. “Hardly,” he mumbles.

  Hardly. That’s all he says, and that’s all that he has to say. The classroom’s laughter is now without restraint. I can hear Douglas and McGregor, and even the kids from our own class, repeating it over and over again. “Hardly. Hardly. Hardly’s been hardly drinking.”

  And of course Hextall, the sadistic old bastard, has no trouble finishing him off. Not even bothering to hide his own delight, he pulls the newly christened, “Hardly,” by the shoulders, and with very little struggle, lifts him out of his seat. “Very well Hardly, if that’s the way you want it. Let’s get you to the headmaster’s office, and you can let him know what it’s like to be hardly drinking.”

  He doesn’t even try to subdue the class’s laughter. He just pulls my friend towards the hallway and smiles back at the class, thinking I suppose, that he’s one of them now and, that somehow, he’s managed to fit in. When the door closes behind them, the taunts became crueller, clearer. The laughter is still there, but it’s different now. It’s the words that are important. The words pierce me every time I hear them. The crowd of two classes, who would normally ignore or taunt each other, are now banded together, chanting the word over and over again. Their victim is gone of course, so they have to settle for the next best thing.

  I’m his friend. We walk to school together and spend dinnertimes walking around the school grounds, trying to find ways to be unseen, to be less of a target. So, it’s me that McGregor and Douglas chant their “Hardly” taunts at. They’re still leaning against the wall, but somehow it feels as though they’re closer to me, pushing their faces into mine, their breath and spit spraying all over me, much the same way the teacher just did to my friend.

  “Wilson. Malcolm. Look at me. Look ower here. Are you hardly drinking too? Is that what you two get up tae at dinner time? Are ye hardly drinking?” It’s Douglas talking. I know that it’s him, and I know that McGregor will be standing back, looking smug, waiting to join in.

  I look around, wondering where Nan McHendry, my 13 year-old angel from 2A is sitting. Is she flicking her long dark hair back, chattering to her friend? Does she condone this? Or, is she looking down somewhere, her shy smile ignoring it all?

  I’m used to being alone. I live with a father, who didn’t intend to have a son with no wife, or I spend my summers in Canada, with a mother who forgets that I’m there. This is a different type of alone though. This is an alone where there’s no relief, no escape. I have a decision to make, but in reality, I probably made it as soon as the door slammed shut and McGregor and Douglas turned their attention to me. It’s self preservation and I have no choice. I have no escape. So, I join in. I chant back. I laugh and ridicule and make jokes about Hardly drinking and Hardly being hardly there at all.

  There’s a meeting that night with Hardly’s parents, and the principal, and of course Hextall. They suspend him for a week, so it’s not until the following week that he’s back standing by the lamppost at the end of his street, waiting for me, so that we can walk to school together. He’s standing sideways, his face half-turned, smirking, trying to look brave I suppose.

  “I’ve stopped, no more booze. It’s just not worth it.” His voice has its usual shakiness, and as he walks, his short, thin frame doesn’t seem to know how to control putting one foot in front of the other without stumbling. “I mean it. I don’t want to go through that shite ever again.” He pauses, and almost as an afterthought says, “ Fucking Hextall.”

  We walk in silence for a few minutes and I don’t know what to say. Just before we reach the main road that takes us straight to school, I realize that he’s stopping every so often not out of clumsiness, but because he’s limping, and favouring one side over the other.

  I want him to stop. I want him to stop his nervous walking and tell me what happened to him but I can’t, and I don’t. I’m thirteen and my only priority is getting through as many days as I can without being mocked or beaten because of my wrong clothes or wrong haircut.

  “Math was cancelled while you were gone. Fire alarm had us outside for almost an hour.”

  He stops and turns to me, and then I see it. The left side of his face is red under his cheek, and scraped, and his eye is bruised and has turned a sickly, grey colour. As he sees me staring, he turns away and we do what frightened, poor, thirteen year old kids do. We ignore it.

  “That’s brilliant. I wish I’d been there just for that. No Math, that’s almost as tempting as no Science. Fuck.” Then he seems to remember something and says it again, “Fucking Hextall.” He speaks as though he’s in a hurry, and his laugh is forced. He seems to be begging me to not ask. So, I don’t. We just keep moving towards the school, him limping every few steps, and me trying to walk slow, waiting for him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gerald’s bruises heal and with the absence of booze he starts to look almost healthy. His skin still has a greasy unwashed look, but his eyes seem different somehow. Instead of their usual dull lifeless appearance they seem more alive now, always nervously searching around as though they’re looking for something. His manner of speaking has changed too. He cocks his head up when he talks to me, and his eyes dart around, looking at me, and then immediately looking everywhere else. He’s like a little soldier in a foxhole, alert and aware, waiting for the next bomb to fall. That’s how we find the tree. We always knew that it was there, of course, but he notices it. It’s his idea.

  “We should take it, claim it as ours.”

  I know that he’s talking to me, because there are only the two of us sitting on the grass by the entrance to the dinner hall. It’s impossible though, to know what he’s talking about, because his gaze doesn’t settle on any one thing long enough for me to follow.

  “The tree, Malcolm, the stand-alone tree. Nobody else even kens that it’s there. I can climb it and I know that you can, so why not. Let’s take it.”

  He’s right. Nobody else ever seems to notice it. The tree stands by itself on a small green patch of land that sits adjacent to our school. It’s almost as though the busy roads and the school itself have been built around the tree and nobody felt that they had the right to cut it down. So there it stands, tall and alone, a short distance from the back of the school.

  “I don’t know if you can just take a tree, but if you’re talking about climbing it we can certainly try and climb it, Hardly...” The name is out of my mouth before I realize that I’ve said it, and, without looking back, he’s off and running towards the stand-alone tree.

  I know that I can catch him, or pass him even, but I don’t. I run behind, letting him lead, wondering if I should be the only one in the school that still calls him “Gerald”.

  He’s running so quickly that his short, frail body slams into the bottom part of the trunk, and he bounces backwards. I catch him, and putting his foot on my hand, leverage him upwards, trying to make it appear as though the plan was to work in conjunction all along. With one hoist, I have him up to th
e first branch, and then, groaning, he pulls himself upwards.

  I’m taller than him, and certainly more agile, but it still takes all of my strength to grab the bottom limb, and swing myself up. By the time I reach one of the lower branches, he’s scampered upwards and is sitting above me, peering through the leaves.

  “It’s perfect,” he laughs. “Absolutely perfect.”

  I have to agree with him. From our vantage point, we can see the boys running around, chasing the ball on the school field. We can see the girls, pretending not to watch them, and we can even see the Masters pacing back and forth, as they distractedly watch the comings and goings of thedifferent students. And, they can’t see us. The leafy old tree is a perfect camouflage. I don’t think anyone saw us running towards it, and certainly no one is looking up at it now. He’s right. It is perfect.

  I lean back on my lower branch, and watch him as he cautiously moves from limb to limb, trying to find the perfect vantage point. His face is different now, more relaxed, mischievous even, and his eyes aren’t darting around as much anymore, waiting for those bombs to land. Hardly and I have found a safe place.