Part 5 (2/2)

11.

In the Saddle After the eleven-plus they transferred their attentions from the football-club changing rooms to the gymkhana pavilion. Over the past two years they'd poked out the football club's windows on a regular basis, gouged holes in the door, committed the offence of breaking and entering in order to scribble on the nude pin-ups tacked to the walls and wrecked the internal plumbing of the showers.

Perhaps it was the eleven-plus itself that provoked this change in policy. Sam and Terry had sat the exam side by side. 'If you pa.s.s, you go to Thomas Aquinas Grammar School,' Terry reasoned, 'which has a s.h.i.+t football team. Fail, and you go to Redstone Secondary, which cleaned up the A, B and C leagues last season.'

Sam found a question which asked them to Describe a recent holiday you have taken with your family. Before setting out to answer it, he looked over at his friend. Terry had laid down his pen and his eyelashes fluttered furiously. Sam pa.s.sed, Terry failed. Clive, having breezed the eleven-plus exam when he was only seven, had no need to sit it again. He was to stay on at the Epstein Foundation.

'With the geeks and the freaks,' he said staring grimly into the pond. They sat with their backs to the football pitch. The football club kept in readiness a net on a long pole for hooking the ball out of the water.

'So that's it then,' Terry said. 'I'm thick, so I go to Redstone. You're bright, so you go to Epstein, and Sam's-'

'Mediocre,' said Clive, 'so he goes to grammar school.'

'f.u.c.k off, Epstein egg-head,' said Sam.

'You f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off.'

'Let's leave the football buildings,' Terry broke into the gay banter, 'and give the gymkhana pavilion some hammer instead.'

'Why?'

Terry rubbed his chin judiciously. Now that it was settled he was going to Redstone Secondary, he was aware that one or two of the senior boys played for Redstone Football Club, and that one day he might too. 'Football is for ordinary folk. Gymkhana is for the snotty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. We play football.'

'I don't play f.u.c.king football,' Clive objected. 'You two play f.u.c.king football, but I don't.'

'No,' Terry agreed. 'You play three-dimensional chess while composing music along with boys from another planet. f.u.c.king egg-head.'

'f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off'

'Fair enough,' said Sam. 'We move on to gymkhana.'

'So your reasons are proto-political,' said Clive.

'f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off.'

'You're out-voted,' said Terry. 'It's decided.'

'Who said this is a democracy? It isn't. Heard of intelocracy?'

'Government by the brains,' Clive continued. 'I get three votes. Sam gets two votes. Terry, with his school for turnip-toppers, gets one vote.'

'Have you heard of punch-in-the-mouth-ocracy?'

'f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off.'

'You f.u.c.k off.'

But power in this group, true power, rested in the hands of the one who had the stamina to say, 'f.u.c.k off' more times and more vigorously than the next man. Clive, who didn't give a hoot whether they wrecked the football rooms or the gymkhana pavilion, surrendered early to the new political order.

The sun made intermittent stabs between wind-chased clouds. The gymkhana ring was just two fields away. They ducked under the barbed-wire dividing the fields, crossing between the crimson-and-white and black-and-white painted poles of the show-jumps. Stepping around the ramshackle wooden toilets, they paused to squint through knot-holes large enough, it was remarked, to watch women taking a p.i.s.s if the opportunity arose. Beyond that was the large timber pavilion, with its stainless-steel tea-urn and storage area to the rear. The pavilion backed on to marshy, soot-coloured ancient woods, a close-knit copse breathing odours of fungus and decomposed leaf into the Sat.u.r.day afternoon sky.

'And a big hand for Abigail,' cheered Clive as they pa.s.sed the empty commentary box, before drawing abreast of the pavilion.

Forcing an entry was easy. Terry, standing on Sam's shoulders, broke a pane of gla.s.s and reached in to release a small horizontally opening window. Scrambling inside, he opened a larger window at the side of the pavilion, through which the other two followed. Working on a scale of one to five, they had just agreed on some level-two vandalism before a Land-Rover sped through the open gate at the uppermost corner of the field. The vehicle revved its engine through the mud and b.u.mped across the gra.s.s towards the pavilion.

The boys froze. Then thawed, and there was an ecstatic scurrying as they buried themselves under the painted poles and simulated brick-blocks at the back of the storage area. They scrambled into holes only rats could have found. The dust was still settling when the padlocked door was rattled from the other side. A heavy bolt shot back, and they heard a man's deep voice. Sam's range of vision was restricted to a pair of muddy green Wellingtons and the knees of corduroy trousers, followed by a pair of slender legs in jodhpurs and riding boots. A pile of sticks tied with cloth pennants tumbled to the ground. The two pairs of legs went out again but returned in the s.p.a.ce of a few heartbeats. A pile of plastic hoops clattered to the floor. Sam's gla.s.ses were hanging off his head, suspended by one ear.

'h.e.l.lo,' said the man's voice. 'What's this, then? I see it. They've broken the swining window.'

'Did they get in?' said a girl's voice.

'Look at that! Little swines! Wish I could catch 'em. I'd make 'em into pulp! I would! Make 'em into pulp!'

There was the sound of the entry window being b.u.mped shut. Then the heavy Wellingtons trooped out again, and there was a manly shout from outside. The jodhpurs and boots trotted after the Wellingtons. Then the riding boots came back in again, and the jodhpurs kneeled on the ground as a pile of numbered armbands with string-ties slithered to the floor. A girl not much older than Sam collected the armbands and shuffled them into a neat pile. She was wearing a baggy woollen jumper, threadbare at both elbows. Her long, dark hair was tied behind her head. She looked up and her slate-blue eyes locked with Sam's.

Sam was wedged behind a pole painted with black and white hoops. He knew that only the band of his eyes was visible. If he blinked, she would recognize what she was seeing, and if he closed his eyes he would give them all away. He tried to make himself black and white, to conjure a badger's stripes across his face, feel himself as a piece of painted wood. The Tooth Fairy, he knew, could have accomplished such a trick. Still on her knees, the girl continued to stare back at him. In her eyes he identified both confusion and recognition. Sam felt an insect, perhaps a wood louse or a spider, crawl inside his collar and down his back.

The driver of the Land-Rover sounded his horn. The girl scrambled to her feet and went out. The bolt shot in its cradle, and the sound was followed by the rattle of hasp and padlock. Then the Land-Rover moved off, the sound of its engine diminis.h.i.+ng slowly.

'Could be a trap,' Sam warned the others in a low whisper.

Five breathless, heart-stopped, insect-crawled minutes pa.s.sed before Sam exploded from his bolt-hole, snorting dust, scattering poles and tearing off his s.h.i.+rt.

'Close,' said Terry, emerging from the pile, face streaked with pitch.

'Too close,' said Clive, escaping from a crate. Sam was still twisting and clawing at his bare back. 'At least they didn't see us.'

The next day they returned to the scene of their almost-crime to pour scorn on the gymkhana. They had to pa.s.s the Sunday school on their way. Mr Phillips was just emerging from the gate, looking rather pleased with himself. 'h.e.l.lo! Haven't seen you chaps in a good while!' The boys' answer was to smirk and to avoid eye-contact as they pa.s.sed. Each of them sensed Mr Phillips watching their necks a good way up the road.

It was a dry, bl.u.s.tery day, and the early-morning rain had not discouraged the fifty or sixty pony-riders who'd spread their horse-boxes and towing vehicles around the gymkhana ring like pioneers of the Western prairie. Some kind of game was in progress, involving the pennanted sticks Sam had seen, from his hiding place, dumped on the pavilion floor.

Most of the pony-riders were either younger than the boys or in their early teens. Terry thought it was hilarious to go from cl.u.s.ter to cl.u.s.ter of the girl riders asking for a fict.i.tious Abigail.

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