Читать книгу Zero Per Cent - Mark Swallow - Страница 9

My first break at Chevy Oak School had broken painfully. The second had to be much, much better. These twenty minutes, I could see, were the day’s key jostle time – preen-time, be-seen-time – even more important than the end of school at the front gate.

It poured with rain lesson three. Bumcheeks came on the loudspeaker to say we could spend break in our classrooms. I was relieved. But the sun mocked me, coming out brilliantly just before the buzzer, and I was soon being urged towards the sopping tarmac by hundreds of kids.

The airport was as busy as usual, executive jets from the side runway taking off directly across the playground. Would Dad actually be able to look down on my antics? The sudden sun warmed me a bit through the reinforced seams of my blazer. Lots of juniors were enjoying the new football rule, and even Michael and Razza were mincing about with tennis balls. Nothing there for me of course. I remained on the step, alone with the voices.

“This is where we live,” I could hear Mum say. “It may not be particularly peaceful or lovely, Martin, but…” I traced her sing-song tone with my finger on the pitted brickwork.

Two of our classmates were taking the opportunity to play mini-tennis with a couple of old racquets. I saw my pony-tailed attacker from yesterday casually interrupt the mini-tennis (“Can I be ball boy, children?”) and walk off with their ball to laugh coldly with his mates.

“He’ll be dragged down…” Dad’s insistence was loud inside my head.

“It’s a perfectly good school with a nice mix of all sorts. There aren’t that many difficult kids. Besides, what do you think he is going to be dragged down into? This is where he lives – he’s in it already. Difficult kids are part of the experience. They lead difficult, realistic lives.”

“And they tend to become very difficult adolescents. Difficult men.”

“All schools produce difficult men – all schools. Jack will learn to cope. He’s got so much going on here. He doesn’t need to go whizzing off. He can learn to whiz here.”

“He’s sensitive. He’ll be bullied.”

“And he won’t be bullied somewhere else?”

“Bullied in the wrong way.”

Suddenly I was standing, with what Razza was to describe later as “summat shining in your eye”. My legs were no longer lamb-like. It was coiled-spring time.

I grabbed a racquet and fired myself towards the older boys. Half a mile away a Lear jet was accelerating at us, forcing its noise towards the playground.

“Where you going?” Michael barked.

Ducking into the group of older boys, I snatched back the tennis ball from the bully and barged out through the other side. The roar of the plane did little to drown out “You little fuck!” and “Shit, back here now!” but I was running, running towards the fence and everyone in the playground was looking at me. I had just seconds before the plane took off and before I would be brought down, pulled off the chicken wire like a convict.

When I fancied I could see the olive in Dad’s Martini, I slid to a stop, swung the racquet and, with champagne timing, crashed the balding sphere into space. As we all watched it go I caught the look of amazement, crinkling into fury, on the pilot’s speeding face. The whites of his eyes lit up for an astonished moment as the ball hit his shiny jet.

“Right between the wheels,” yelled Michael, skidding to my side with a bunch of new admirers. “Wot a shot!”

They grabbed their groins and danced in mock agony, pretending to be nutted jets.

“Aim high!” I shouted. “Forget your fucking football and aim high!”

The sphere returned to planet Earth to be caught by a laughing senior. More and more kids were doing the groin dance now and pecking their heads up into the air. I began to laugh. If I had really, really caught the Lear between the legs, Dad might have felt the tremor too. Had I made him sit up and take note of me already?

Anything seemed possible during this Lucky Break when the kids of Chevy Oak first looked up from their dribbling. Everyone was congratulating me and cussing pony-tail.

“You was shown!”

“Little kid told you, man,” said another. “That was bad!”

He staggered off and I was swamped.

As they hammered my back I smiled. I couldn’t help hearing Dad’s warning.

“In two years’ time Jack will be a basket case, bullied to a jelly.”

“Shut up, Martin.”

Shut up the pair of you! Just let me enjoy it!

“I will shut up – in a minute. Because if my prediction is true – when it becomes true – I as his father demand the right to send Jack, our by now gelatinous and quivering son, to a fee-paying school.”

“After two years he will be even more a part of this area than he is already. He will be two years stronger, Martin. He will have confidence which cannot be bought and no ‘rights’ of yours are going to mess that up…”

No-one was in at home but Ronaldson rang to confirm that I would have an enormous detention on Friday. I accepted.

“It’s not an invitation, Jack.”

“Then you can expect me, sir.”

Next day I felt I should go back into the playground. But what more could I add to my mantra of yesterday, “Aim high”? Of course every cupboard under every stair had been done over, everyone was brandishing a racquet, squash, badminton, anything – and everyone was scouring the airways. Eventually a jet approached. I was going to give the order – the least I could do – but they all fired far too early. Birds were winded but the plane escaped and hundreds of tennis balls landed in airport territory. Security’s Alsatians were soon happily collecting them from the lush grass. More teachers appeared from the school building and they shouted out punishments. I was about the only kid without a racquet.

My jet strike has passed into legend. The day they looked up from their football at the big, wide sky and saw me hit something huge. I was established at Chevy Oak before most of my year group knew the way to the toilets. Jumbo Curling before I had a single pube.

Razza also earned himself a seat at that fashionable first detention. Keen on calling up the emergency services at Primary, he had rung the airport to ask if we could have our balls back – and given his name.