his eyes were watching Pete Redmarley. Pete Redmarley never’s set foot in the Old Gym since. Not once.
So anyway, our form and 3GL were waiting in the Quad. I’d sort of attached myself to Christopher Twyford, Neal Brose and David Ockeridge, talking about Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry was on TV on Saturday. There’s this scene where Clint Eastwood doesn’t know if he has a bullet left in his gun to shoot the baddie.
‘Yeah,’ I chipped in, ‘that bit was epic.’
Christopher Twyford and David Ockeridge’s stare said, Who gives a toss what you think?
Mr Nixon, Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch walked across the Quad. A major bollocking was coming. Inside, seats’d been arranged in exam rows. 3KM sat on the left, 3GL on the right. ‘Does anyone,’ Mr Nixon began, ‘believe he shouldn’t be here?’ Our headmaster may as well’ve said, ‘Does anyone wish to shoot their own knee-caps?’ Nobody fell for it. Miss Glynch spoke mainly to 3GL. ‘You’ve let your teachers down, you’ve let your school down, and you’ve let yourself down…’ Mr Kempsey did us after. ‘I do not recall, in twenty-six years of teaching, feeling this sickened. You have behaved like a pack of hooligans…’
This took till 12.30.
Grimy windows rectangled misty gloom.
The exact colour of boredom.
‘You shall remain in your seats,’ announced Mr Nixon, ‘until the one o’clock bell. You will not move. You will not speak. “But, sir! What if I need the lavatory?” Humiliate yourself, as you sought to humiliate a member of my staff. You will fetch a mop after the bell. Your detention shall be repeated every lunch-time this week.’ (Nobody dared groan.) ‘“But, sir! What is the point of this static punishment?” The point is that the victimization of the few – or even the one – by the many has no place in our school.’
Our head then left. Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch had books to mark. Only their scratching pens, kids’ stomachs, flies entombed in the strip-lights and distant cries of free kids ruckled the silence. The unfriendly clock’s second hand shuddered, shuddered, shuddered, shuddered. That clock was more than likely the last thing in the world the kid who hanged himself saw.
Thanks to these detentions, Ross Wilcox won’t get me in the next few lunch-times. Any normal kid’d be nervous if they’d got two classes of boys sentenced to a week of detention. Might Mr Nixon be banking on us doing his job punishing the ringleaders ourselves? I sneaked a glance at Ross Wilcox.
Ross Wilcox must’ve been staring at me. He flashed me a fuck you V and mouthed, ‘Maggot.’
‘“I got the conch—” Jack turned fiercely. “You shut up!”’ Shit. The word ‘circle’ was coming up. ‘“Piggy wilted. Ralph took the conch from him and looked round the—”’ Desperately, I used the Trip Method, where you set up the stammer letter (‘s’) but sort of trip over it into the vowel to get the word out. ‘Sss-ircle of boys.’ Cased in sweat now, I glanced at Mr Monk, our student teacher for English. Miss Lippetts never makes me read aloud but Miss Lippetts’d gone to the staffroom. Obviously she hadn’t told Mr Monk about our arrangement.
‘“We’ve got to have special people for looking after the fire.”’ (S-consonant words’re easier than S-vowel words, I don’t know why.) ‘“Any day there”,’ I swallowed, ‘“there m-may be a ship out there” – he waved his arm at the taut wire of the horizon – “and if we have a signal going they’ll come and take us off.”’ (Hangman let me say ‘signal’ like a superior boxer lets the loser land a punch or two, for fun.) ‘“And another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that’s a meeting. The sssame up here as down there.” They—’, Oh shit shit shit. Now I couldn’t say ‘assented’. Normally it’s only words beginning with S. ‘Erm…’
‘“Assented,”’ said Mr Monk, surprised a kid in the top form couldn’t read such a simple word.
I wasn’t stupid enough to try to repeat it, like Mr Monk expected. ‘Piggy opened his mouth to ssspeak, caught Jack’s eye and shut it again.’ There’s no way I was hiding my stammer now. Hangman knew he was on to a major victory. I’d just had to use the Punch Method again for ‘speak’. Using brute force to punch the word out’s a last resort ’cause your face goes spaz. And if