level of self-confidence vis-à-vis the Arts of Rhetoric and Public Speaking. Do you second this motion, Taylor?’
I knew what he’d said but he was expecting me to act confused. ‘Sir?’
‘Do you or don’t you wish to be excused this morning’s reading?’
I said, ‘Very much, sir, yes.’
Mr Kempsey squished his mouth. People always think that not stammering is about jumping in at deep ends, about baptisms of fire. People see stammerers on TV who’re forced, one magic day, to go on stage in front of a thousand people and lo and behold a perfect voice flows out. See, everyone smiles, he had it in him all along! All he needed was a friendly push! Now he’s cured. But that’s such utter bollocks. If it ever actually happens it’s just Hangman obeying the First Commandment. Just go back and check up on that ‘cured’ stammerer one week later. You’ll see. The truth is, deep ends cause drowning. Baptisms of fire cause third-degree burns. ‘You can’t turn tail at the prospect of public speaking your whole life through, Taylor.’
Maggot said, Want to bet?
‘I know, sir. That’s why I’m doing my best to master it. With Mrs de Roo’s help.’
Mr Kempsey didn’t give in right away, but I sensed I was in the clear. ‘Very well. But I had you down as having more pluck than this, Taylor. I can only conclude that I had you down wrongly.’
I watched him go.
If I was the pope I’d’ve made Mrs de Roo a saint. On the spot.
Mr Kempsey’s reading from Plain Prayers for a Complicated World was about how in life it can rain for forty days and forty nights but God made a promise to humanity that one day a rainbow will appear. (Julia says it’s absurd how in 1982 Bible stories’re still being taught like they’re historical fact.) Then we sang the hymn that goes All good gifts around us are sent from Heaven above, so thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for a-a-all His love. I thought that was that, but after Mr Kempsey’d read the notices and orders from Mr Nixon, Gary Drake put up his hand. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I thought it was Jason Taylor’s turn to read the assembly today. I was really looking forward to hearing him. Is he going to be doing it next week instead?’
Every neck in our classroom swivelled its head my way.
Sweat sprang out in fifty places, all over me. I just stared at the chalk nebulae on the blackboard.
After a few seconds that felt like a few hours Mr Kempsey said, ‘Your spirited defence of established protocol is commendable, Drake, and, no doubt, altruistic. However, I possess reliable intelligence that Taylor’s vocal apparati are in an unseaworthy condition. Thus, your classmate is excused on quasi-medical grounds.’
‘So will he be doing it next week instead, sir?’
‘The alphabet marches on regardless of human frailties, Drake. Next week is T-for-Michelle Tirley, and Ours Is Not to Wonder Why.’
‘Doesn’t seem very fair, sir, does it?’
What’ve I ever done to Gary Drake?
‘Life is regularly unfair, Drake,’ Mr Kempsey locked the piano, ‘despite our best endeavours, and we must face its challenges as they arise. The sooner you learn that,’ our teacher shot a stare not at Gary Drake but straight at me, ‘the better.’
Wednesday kicks off with double maths with Mr Inkberrow. Double maths is just about the worst lesson of the week. Normally I sit next to Alastair Nurton in maths but this morning Alastair Nurton was sitting next to David Ockeridge. The only free seat was next to Carl Norrest, right in front of Mr Inkberrow’s desk, so I had to sit there. It was raining so hard the farms and fields outside were dissolving in whites. Mr Inkberrow frisbeed us back our exercise books from last week and started the lesson by asking a few dead easy questions to ‘engage the brain’.
‘Taylor!’ He’d caught me avoiding his eye.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘In need of a little focusing, hmm? If a is eleven and b is nine and x is the product of a times b, what is the value of x?’
The answer’s a piece of piss, it’s ninety-nine.
But ‘ninety-nine’ is a double-N word. A double-stammer. Hangman wanted revenge for my stay of execution. He’d slid his fingers into my tongue and was clasping my throat and pinching the veins that take oxygen to my brain. When Hangman’s like that I’d look a total flid if I tried to spit the word out. ‘A hundred and one, sir?’