Short Stories by Leicester author Clive Collins (page one)

Short Stories

(Page One)

By Clive Collins

[The Sea, The Beautiful Sea]? [Spell on You] ?[Home]? [The Weather That Christmas] [The Lost World]

It was the same every year. You'd go into Wilson's for a 'Tarzan' comic and a Bounty Bar, and you'd just be on your way out of the shop when old Mr. Wilson would remember that Mam's copy of Dalton's Weekly had come in. It was a weekly, but Mam only ever put in the one order, the second week of February, every year. When you got home she'd take the paper off of you and put it underneath the cushion on the chair where she sat at night and she wouldn't say anything except that you'd to go back to Wilson's with the money because she didn't want people talking about her owing anybody anything. There were just the two chairs then, Mam's and Dad's, one on either side of the fire. The rest of us sat where we could, on the hearthrug, at the table - under the table in my case so I could play with my toy soldiers and not have them trodden on.

After we'd had our tea, our Sally and Noreen would do the dishes, and then me and Noreen would be sent round to Cooper's for Mam and Dad's beer. Usually it was two pints of mixed, but on Saturdays Dad drank stout and Mam would have a bottle of pale ale. We got Vimto and a packet of crisps on Saturdays, although our Sally, if she was in that night, which she wasn't very often, would get a Babycham or else a miniature bottle of egg flip she'd mix up with the lemonade that came from the Corona man every week.

When we got back the radio would be on, and we'd settle down for the evening to listen to Radio Luxemburg if it was the weekend. Dad would open the beer and pour out a glass for Mam and then one for himself. I liked it if he had stout because he used to make a face in the froth on the top of the glass. He used to say that when you drank the beer, one of the eyes would wink at you but I don't remember that it ever did.

About eight o'clock Mam always went out into the kitchen again to cut up some sandwiches. On Sunday nights they'd be cold beef and dripping, but the rest of the week it was either cheese and onion, or else egg and onion. I liked putting crisps inside the bread if it was cheese and onion, though I used to get a clip off of Mam if she saw me doing it. The big plate of sandwiches was always set on the hearth, and if there was a fire, which there usually was, the edges of the bread would start to curl up because of the heat. I remember our Noreen saying once that the sandwiches were probably the warmest thing in the house, but that was a long time afterwards, when Mam and Dad were gone, and the house was gone, and we were all grown and married with our own families. It was only ever when the big plate was empty that Mam would fetch the paper out from under her cushion. Most nights it was the Leicester Mercury, but every year, one night in February, it would be Dalton's Weekly, and Mam would start reading it, looking for somewhere we could go for a fortnight in the summer.

She'd sit there with a pencil, putting a mark against something that sounded all right. Sometimes she'd ask Dad what he thought about this place or that place. Dad never said much, usually. We said nothing at all, because we were never asked. The fact that we were all going away for the August fortnight wasn't something that was open to question for any of us, including Dad. It was understood. It was also understood that Mam was responsible for deciding about wherever it was we would end up going away to even though in the past she'd landed us in some right holes.

We usually went to the East Coast, to places like Mablethorpe, or Ingoldmelis or Clacton. We never went to Skeggy, well, not for holidays anyway, although we did sometimes go for daytrips. Our Sally reckoned she got headaches in Skegness. I didn't like Skeggy because the sea was such a long way out.

I think about it now, when I take my family to Italy, the States, Morocco we went to two years ago, and Mam?s little excursions seem like nothing. At the time, though, they were very serious undertakings. When I was small, going to the Evington Park was a journey to another country to me. Getting everything ready for the big holiday: getting all our clothes washed and ironed and packed, and the house closed up; stopping the papers and the milk, the laundry and the delivery from the Corona man; cancelling the order for the meat at the butcher's; me and Dad getting our haircuts on a Friday night instead of a Saturday afternoon; our Sally sulking because she had to come with us; our Noreen sulking because our Sally had to come with us; then getting to the bus station and making sure we were on the right bus and our luggage was on the right bus and we hadn't put the thermos and the sandwiches Mam had cut up the night before in the bag that had gone in the back of the bus with the cases - well, that all seemed like going to another world.

Nobody slept much the night before, because of fights or worry or excitement; and then you were got up early and there was just a cup of tea and a bit of toast to eat; and there were fights again with our Sally and Noreen about who could get to the sink in the kitchen to have a wash first; and there were fights with our Sally and Noreen about Dad sitting out in the lavatory smoking; and fights about who had whose nylons; and then there was Mr. Bodicoate from the next street at the door with his car. I remember it all. I remember feeling cold and hungry and tired, and I remember how the new clothes Mam had bought me for going away were itchy and smelt the way that new clothes used to smell then. Somehow though we'd get on the bus, all of us, and the bus would pull away, out of the garage, out of the town, and we'd always be just coming into the country with the fields and the trees and the smell of manure and Mam would say to Dad, ?Oh bleeding hell, Pat, I've left the address on the table.? Dad would say, ?What address do you mean?' and then Mam would say, ?The address of the bleeding digs, what bleeding address do you think I mean?? We were off on our holidays.

The bus ride seemed to last for ever then. I'd sit there, next to Mam, and I'd start to get hot in my new clothes, and I'd want to stretch. If I moved at all though, I got a clip from Mam for fidgeting, so I watched the fields to one side, or I watched Mam emptying her bag out on the other, looking for the address of the place where we were supposed to be staying.

At some point the bus would pull up at a transport caf? and everyone got out for a stretch, a pee, a cup of coffee or tea at this strange building in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of petrol pumps, and a few apple trees, and garage and caf? smells, you know, petrol and oil and coffee and bacon frying in a pan. Mam usually made us come straight back to the bus after we'd been to the lavatory, because she couldn't see the sense in spending money on food and drink when she'd gone to the trouble of bringing sandwiches and flasks of hot tea. I didn't mind. I liked the way the tea tasted out of the flask, and I liked the little bottle Mam used for the milk, with a bit of greaseproof paper stuck in the top with the cork so the milk didn't leak. I liked the sugar, in a twist of blue paper from the sugar packet at home. I allways thought it looked like a giant version of the salt in a packet of crisps.

Our Sally and Noreen weren't keen though. I suppose it was because they were that much older than me. Sally was old enough not to want to be on holiday with the rest of us in the first place, and Noreen was old enough not to want to be sat out in the bus eating egg and onion sandwiches, when everybody else was inside having a proper meal.

Just once, I remember, we didn't stay on the bus. That was the year we found Uncle Francis and Auntie Eileen and their Molly and Peter already on the bus when we got to the garage. Well, Mam never had much time for Uncle Francis or Auntie Eileen, and as for their Molly, who was a student at the art college when she could have been at work and earning good money, well, Mam was beyond words. We had to sit near them, of course, otherwise it wouldn't have looked polite, and then, when we stopped and they trooped off with everybody else to go into the caf?, well, we couldn't help but follow, or, at least, that's what Mam said afterwards when she was talking to Dad.

I was glad that Uncle Francis and Auntie Eileen were there because I liked them, and I liked going into the caf? instead of sitting in the bus, and I liked eating the big bacon sandwich Dad had to cut in half for me because the taste of the hot bacon and the melted butter mixed itself up in a nice way with the milky coffee I had for a change instead of Vimto or Tizer. Most of all I liked watching my cousin Molly, with her long black hair and her big red sweater and the funny black trousers she had on that didn't come much past her knees. She put some money into a juke-box and a record called ?Freight Train? started to play, and Molly danced in front of the juke-box all alone. I thought she was beautiful, and I fell in love for the first time, just looking at her.

Mam usually found the address of where we were going to stay just when the collection for the driver came round. She used to have money ready, and she would make me put it in the hat. It was always a sixpence on the top, and then coppers underneath, so that it sounded like a lot when you put it in, but wasn't really. Mam always said the driver got enough for driving the bus, that we'd paid before we got on the bus, so she couldn't see why we had to pay again before we got off. It was a bus, she said, it wasn't a church.

Mam liked to tidy herself up a bit before we arrived, and in my memory all the journeys I took sitting next to her end in the same way. The fields beyond the glass begin to change: caravans appear, and then buildings. The road seems streaked with sand, and then the town is all around me again but not the way the town where I live is all around. This town is different. I don't know why it is different, but it is. Perhaps the difference has to do with the sand in the streets. Perhaps it has to do with where the sand comes from, blown by the wind. Perhaps it has to do with that, but more, perhaps it has to do with what is still beyond my senses to see or hear or smell, but which I know is there, somewhere, lending this town, these streets and buildings, their difference: the sea. Then I think that I can smell it, smell that sea smell, but I turn and it's the little towels moistened with cologne Mam is using. She keeps them in her handbag with the bottle of sal volatile she has in case somebody has a funny turn on the bus, and her powder compact, and the chalky white medicine she gets from the doctor for her stomach. I look at Mam, but the sea is all I can think of.

The sea is all I can think of, but Mam has the address for where we're going to stay, and suddenly the journey ends. We're here. We get out and stand about, and we're strangers, smelling the smells we've smelt before, petrol and oil, the hot engine of the bus, but that smell different now. The cases come out of the back of the bus. Ours are always the last. Mam gets hold of them and we all follow her out of the garage, Dad and our Sally and Noreen and me, and there are boys with pushcarts waiting for us. Mam chooses one, puts the cases in his cart, shows him the address, and then we set off again, a line of us, explorers in Africa, following our guide.

There's a photograph. I don't know who took it, perhaps it was one of those men that used to walk up and down the sea front with a camera, taking pictures and then more or less forcing you to buy the one he'd taken of you, plus an enlargement. Whoever it was took this picture, it wasn't one of us. It couldn't have been because we're all in it, Mam and Dad, me, our Sally and Noreen. We're walking along a road, Mam's holding my hand, then comes our Noreen, looking miserable, then Dad, struggling along with his sticks. He looks miserable as well. Our Sally is lagging so far behind you wouldn't think she was with the rest of us, and, from the photograph, you wouldn't even know it was our Sally, because you can't see her face. I imagine though, that she looks as miserable as the rest of them, Mam, Dad, Noreen, do. Mind you, you'd think we were all out for a walk in mid-December rather than the start of the August Bank Holiday fortnight. We've all got our heavy raincoats on, scarves, umbrellas. Perhaps we were just cold. The only way you'd know we were on holiday is the boy with the pushcart right at the front of the photograph. He's just in his khaki shorts and sandals, and short-sleeved shirt, but he looks as happy as Larry. I hated those boys.

I hated those boys because they made me feel uncomfortable. They irritated me, like my new clothes. They weren't any older than me for a start, and yet, there they were, running these little businesses and earning more money than I thought I'd ever see as long as I lived. Then, they had these funny ways of talking, and it made them seem older than me, and better than me. They were cheeky as well, cheeky to Mam. I mean, if I'd have talked to Mam the way those boys did, I'd have ended up sitting in the gutter with my head spinning. Looking at that picture again, I think I look miserable as well.

I don't know where or when that photograph was taken. Our Noreen reckons it was one year when we went a bit further than usual. We went to a place called Littlehampton. I remember going there, but whether or not that's where the photograph was taken, I don't know. Our Noreen swears it was. Our Sally swears it wasn't. Still, I do remember going to Littlehampton. I remember because it was when Mam and Dad had a row. The row was about where we were staying.

I remember it all looked wrong when the boy who was carrying the cases took us along this sort of canal. I thought there were snakes in the water, but it was just a funny sort of seaweed. We finally fetched up in front of one of those gates that factories and garages used to have, you know, there's a big gate, with a little door in it so you can go in and out and not have to open the big gate all the time. I remember Mam asking the boy if he was sure he had the right place, and, when he'd gone, I remember Dad telling Mam that she'd really picked a beauty this time. Our Noreen started to cry and our Sally said she wasn't stopping. Mam fetched our Noreen one across the back of her head so as she'd have something to cry about, and she told our Sally to shut up as well or else she'd get something to think about herself.

We went in through the little gate and we were in a sort of yard, with cobblestones. If you looked up at the sky, all you could see were the gas-works. The lady that owned the house where we were to stay was called Mrs. Cottrell. She was very old, and she was dirty as well.

Usually, when you arrived at your digs, the lady took you into the front room, but Mrs. Cottrell took us straight into the kitchen. There was a funny smell in there and at the time I didn't know what it was because we didn't have a cat. Mam couldn't abide cats in a house. There were a lot of cats in this house. They were all over the place: on the chairs, on the window-ledge, at the side of the sink. There were three big ones on the kitchen table where Mrs. Cottrell was getting somebody's tea ready, in fact it was our tea, and there was another watching a saucepan boil on the cooker.

I don't remember much more about that holiday except the row Mam and Dad had on the first night in their bedroom. I had to sleep in a little bed next to theirs so I heard what was said, even though they were whispering. The bedrooms weren't in the house where Mrs. Cottrell lived, they were across the yard and you had to climb what she called the steps but what was really more like a ladder than steps, and of course Dad could hardly manage it because of his sticks and his big boots. Dad had been a boy soldier in the Great War and he'd been wounded very badly and crippled. I think it was having to get up and down that ladder that made him have the row with Mam. They didn't have a lot of rows, mainly because Dad was a very patient man. This time, because I had to lie in bed and listen to them, I got really frightened. That night I had a dream about falling into the canal with the snakes, and when I woke up I found that I'd wet the bed. Mam said she was going to give me a hiding, but Dad said she wasn't and they had another row about that.

That wasn't the only time I wet the bed when we were on holiday. I did it on the very last holiday we all had together. I'd remember that holiday anyway, because it was the last one we all of us went on together, wetting the bed again just makes it that bit easier to remember. It was a disaster from start to finish, that holiday was. The thing is, I can't remember where we actually went to. I think it might have been Cromer. I remember the name of the lady where we stayed, Mrs. Lake. I remember her name because it seems to fit with everything else that happened that year.

Mrs. Lake was what Mam used to call very good living. What Mam meant by that was that she went to church and she didn't hold with drinking, smoking, swearing or gambling. In her front room there were some very old pictures showing what happened to people who did any of the things that she didn't hold with. There was also a picture of a sailor, and it had a black ribbon tied around it that our Sally said was morbid, but Mam told her to shut up again or she'd clip her one, big as she was.

Mrs. Lake had a lot of rules about what you mustn't do if you stayed in her house. It wasn't just that you mustn't drink, smoke, swear or gamble. You couldn't do any of those things, of course, in the house; in fact, you couldn't do them outside either really, because she said that she didn't want people coming in with the smell of alcohol or tobacco on them, and she didn't want people bringing in things that they might have won on games of chance at the fun-fair near the beach. I remember she called that fun-fair ?the Devil's playground.?

There were lots of other things you had to remember not to do as well. For a start, Mrs. Lake didn't want lights on in the house after ten at night. Then, there was no washing of clothes allowed. In fact, there wasn't a lot of washing of any sort allowed. There was a bathroom upstairs, but it wasn't for guests. Guests had a jug and bowl provided, and the gentleman, she meant Dad, would find a kettle of water for him to shave with outside the door at six-thirty. The lavatory was in the bathroom, and as it was the only one in the house, we were told we could use it, but that was all. Mam had to promise we wouldn't use the water in the bathroom under any circumstances, and she had to promise to take me when I wanted to go, in case I had an accident and wet the seat.

Mam and Dad smoked. Well, I mean, everybody did then. Our Sally did. Dad smoked a lot, in fact, you seldom saw him without a cigarette going. He used to smoke at night as well, when everyone else was asleep. He used to wake up all the time; I suppose it was the pain he was always in, or else dreams about the war. Well, he used to smoke, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark.

Both Mam and Dad had to have a cigarette when they got up to the room, but Mam opened the window as soon as we got in and they both more or less stood leaning out so that the smell wouldn't stay in the room. I suppose Dad remembered that. In the night he must have got up to have a smoke and lit the cigarette by the open window. The trouble was he didn't think to move the net curtain, so when he went to put his head out of the window the tip of his fag went straight through the net; then he dropped it, and by the time he'd got the thing put out, he'd woken Mam up and he'd woken me up and there were three or four burn holes in the curtain.

Mam took the net down and put it up back-to-front so that the heavy curtain more or less hid the damage, and then she had to go out and buy another pair to put up instead. The trouble was the new ones were that white it was obvious they shouldn't have been there. They had to go up though, even if they didn't look right, because Mam couldn't think of anything else she could do. Then, that night, Dad had another accident.

At home we just had a lavatory out in the yard, so there was a chamber pot under each of the beds for the night. Mam and Dad had one each. Dad used to use his a lot. You always knew his when it was out on the stairs with Mam's, waiting to be emptied, because it had cigarette-ends floating in it. Mam's didn't. Well, that night, Dad must have reached under the bed from sheer force of habit and found what he thought was the jerry. In fact it was one of his boots. He didn't realize what he'd done until the next morning when he'd got dressed and he went to put his boots on. Then he found that one was wet. He even found a couple of soggy fag-ends inside it.

The worst thing, of course, was that the carpet was sodden because the pee hadn't stayed in the boot. So, Mam had to try and dry it out. She had to use her spare underwear because she daren't use Mrs. Lake's towels, and then she had to bundle what she'd used up ready to take out of the house with her when we left after breakfast. She said she'd have to take them to a laundry. Even then, after she'd tried to dry the carpet with her vest and knickers, it was still wet, so she moved the bed and turned the carpet back and put sheets of newspaper she fetched out of the drawers underneath. Then she sprinkled Yardley's lavender water everywhere in case there was a smell. She shouldn't have bothered. That night there was another accident and she had it all to do again.

It wasn't Dad's fault this time. It was Mam's. Mam used to go a bit funny when we went on holiday. Usually, she was very careful about money. Well, she had to be because there were five of us, and only Dad's wages coming into the house. Our Sally worked of course, but she only paid her board and she couldn't afford very much of that. Still, Mam used to go a bit daft with money on holidays. She had this weakness for new things. One year she got Dad Brylcream in a tube. Usually, he just bought a little jar of it from Stan Bonsor's when we went for our haircuts the Friday night before we went on holiday. Mam said the tube was better.

Dad didn't argue with her, he almost never did, and he was more or less coming round to the idea of having his Brylcream in a tube when he got mixed up one morning and he cleaned his teeth with it instead of the toothpaste. He threw it straight out of the window after that, and he wouldn't leave the house until our Noreen had been sent out to get him ajar like he was used to from the chemists.

The new thing that year, the year we were staying at Mrs. Lake's, was beer in tins. It was called Long Life, and again, Dad wasn't very keen on the idea; it was Mam. They both of them liked a drink in the evening, but they only ever went to pubs on holidays. Even then, they wouldn't actually go into the pub, they'd find one with a children's room so that we could all go in, or else, if the weather wasn't too bad, we'd sit out in the yard if there were tables there. I liked it. I had Vimto to drink every night, and crisps every night, and sometimes I'd have a saucer of hot peas or a cheese cob as well. Mam and Dad would have eels, or a bag of boiled shrimps, or a plate of cockles or whelks.

The year we stayed with Mrs. Lake though, they daren't go into a pub even to sit in the children's room or in the yard. Mrs. Lake was very choosey about who she let have a front-door key, or so she said to Mam the day we arrived when Mam went down to ask for one. Mrs. Lake only reckoned to give out keys to regular guests, people who came from one year to the next. She didn't actually say Mam couldn't have a key, she just pointed out that this was the first time we'd made a booking with her. After that Mam just came back up the stairs.

What this meant was that when we got back at night we had to knock for Mrs. Lake to let us in the house. Well, even if they'd done what Dad wanted and sucked on a mouthful of violet cashous to hide the smell of the drink, Mrs. Lake would still have smelt the cigarettes. Mam and Dad had tried to cut right down, but sitting in a room in a pub, everyone else would have been smoking and the smell would have been there on our clothes. This was why Mam bought the tins of Long Life. She said that they would go in her bag better than bottles of beer, and they wouldn't clink the way bottles did. She showed Dad and he had to agree she was right, about that, anyway.

The man in the off-licence had given Mam a special opener for the tins, but she couldn't find it sitting in the dark. It was usually late when we came back, and Mrs. Lake made quite a to-do about turning off the lights in the hallway and on the stairs and the landing when the clock she had downstairs chimed for ten. The first night Mam and Dad had put their light off, but our Sally and Noreen kept theirs on, and Mrs. Lake stood out on the landing clearing her throat until Mam went and turned the light off in the girls' room herself. Mam had bought a little torch from Woolworth's, but it wasn't much use really. In the end, they just used to sit in the dark, talking about what a miserable place they'd come to.

When Mam couldn't find the opener for the tins of beer she made Dad give her his penknife, and she used it to punch a hole in the first tin. I can still remember exactly what happened next even though it was all over, well the first bit was all over, in a few seconds. I can still remember because even though it happened so fast, when I remember everything it happens very, very slowly, like in a film or in a dream when you try to run and you can't make your legs go. What happened was that the beer sprayed out of the tin; it sprayed out of the tin with such force Mam dropped the tin. The tin went onto the floor then, and started spinning round and round, like a firework, spraying beer all over the place, all over the carpet, all over the walls, all over the beds, over Mam, and Dad and me.

It was dark of course, just the light from the little torch we'd got from Woolies was all we had to see by. It was dark, but in my memory it isn't dark at all. There's a sort of golden light coming from that tin, and it's as if it's this golden light that is spraying round the room, not beer. It's like a firework, like a Catherine wheel on Guy Fawkes' night, except that it isn't sparks that are lighting everything up, it's this mysterious golden liquid spreading itself all over the room, all over everything.

It couldn't have lasted much more than a minute, but the place was soaking again. Mam was down on her hands and knees trying to get the worst of it up before it went into the carpet. Dad was trying as best he could to get the blankets off the beds so he could sponge them a bit with what water there was left in the jug. Our Sally and Noreen came in because they'd heard the noise when the tin went off, and then they'd heard Mam and Dad carrying on. Our Sally put the light on. Then, of course, Mrs. Lake was at the door, wanting to know what was going on, and our Sally said, ?It's all right. It's all right. It's only me little brother. He has fits. He'll be all right, only we've got to keep the light on for a bit.? I could only have been seven or eight, but I could have killed our Sally for saying that.

The room smelt really badly of beer the next morning. Even we could smell it, and we'd been in there all night long. Mam had had the windows open all night, and she'd put sheets and blankets and pillows out on the window ledge to try and get them a bit dry. It had been really cold that night and we'd had to sleep in our coats on the bare mattresses. I remember Mam saying to Dad that she didn't know what to do, and she didn't. In the end it was our Sally that did something. She went down to Mrs. Lake and said that she was terribly sorry, but that her brother had been poorly on the carpet and she'd have to ask for a bucket of hot water and some strong disinfectant and a bit of newspaper.

Well, Mrs. Lake didn't come up to see what it was I was supposed to have done because she could imagine it, and when we went down to breakfast that morning, after our Sally and Mam had finished, the room smelt like the inside of a bottle of Jeyes' Fluid. Mam was ever so pleased with our Sally, and perhaps it was this that gave our Sally the courage to tell Mam that she was going home that afternoon.

She said it was because of her headaches. It was the air pressure that was doing it, she said, just like at Skeggy. She'd been moping about the place ever since we arrived, fighting with our Noreen, fighting with Mam. It was Dad who said she could go. I think he'd just had about all he could stand. He said she could go the next morning, and she did. Of course, after she went our Noreen started playing up.

Dad always used to say that if our Sally had one thing, then our Noreen would want two of the same. He was right. They're still like that. Then though, Noreen just kept going on and on about our Sally being let do whatever she wanted, and nothing said. When Dad asked what she meant, our Noreen said about the dances.

She meant the dances on the pier. There was a dance hall there, and the second night our Sally had said she was going and Mam had said she was if she was going with Noreen. There was a row about that. Afterwards Noreen wanted to go again, but Mam said she couldn't go on her own, she'd have to ask Sally. Sally wouldn't go. She said it was because the place was no good, but now I suppose it was just to spite our Noreen. Well, with Sally gone, Noreen went on and on about being let go to the dances. Mam said no, but again, Dad, in the end, said yes, just to put a stop to the rows. Mam said that our Noreen was only sixteen and that was why she couldn't go, but Dad said that sixteen was old enough if she was in by a quarter-to-ten, and she was.

One of the funny things about that last holiday was that we hardly saw the sea. The weather was bad. It was cold. It was raining. The second day that we were there, these very strong winds started blowing. It wasn't that you didn't want to sit on the beach, you couldn't. We dragged around the town most of the time. For a bit of a change we started going to this hotel where they had a palm court, with a little orchestra, and you could have morning coffee. After we found it, we went there nearly every day.

We'd tried sitting in one of the shelters on the front, and Mam had fetched jugs of tea and coffee, but in the end the weather got so bad the stall selling refreshments shut and so we started going to the hotel. None of us liked it. It was expensive for a start, and you had to put on quite decent clothes or else the waiter who took you to your table gave you a nasty look, or so Mam said. I hated the place. I had to sit still all the time, and the chairs used to hurt my legs. I wasn't even allowed to eat the biscuits you got the way I wanted. They had a picture of a coffee cup on them, those biscuits did, and I used to like to eat them by biting round the shape of the coffee cup. Mam made me stop because she said people were looking.

The only good thing about the weather on that holiday was that I got bought lots of toys. I always got things, toys, I mean, when we went on holiday, but that year I got more than I'd ever had. Well, we were in and out of the shops all the time, especially the toy shops. I got soldiers, and a gun, and a cowboy suit. I was supposed to go and have my picture taken in that cowboy suit, but when we got to the shop I wouldn't go in.

I remember our Noreen saying that I was a spoilt little sod because of all the things I'd been bought on that holiday, and Mam clipped her one right there and then. We were in the restaurant where we went to have our dinner everyday. We went there because they did very nice fish and chips, with as much bread and butter and as many pots of tea as you wanted, all for the one price. There's another photograph, taken just after we'd come out of that restaurant. We're walking through an amusement arcade, me and Mam, and our Noreen, and Dad. Mam's got hold of my hand and her face looks like thunder. Our Noreen's face looks like thunder as well, but that was because she's just had Mam's hand across it. Dad looks like he always does in holiday photographs, fed up. I suppose it was one of those men from the sea-front who took the picture again. I suppose he'd been driven inside by the bad weather just like we had.

Still the sun did shine, in the end. It was the day before we were to go home. I remember waking up and thinking something was different. It was something about the way the room smelt, and it was something about the way the room looked. It was the sun, is what it was. The room looked different because the sun was shining into it, and was lighting everything up, the wallpaper and the wardrobes and the chest of drawers and the picture of 'The Gleaners' over Mam and Dad's bed. It was the sun, and it was the sea.

We still kept the windows open, even though it rained all the time; we kept them open because Mam swore she could smell the beer coming up through the Jeyes' Fluid, and Dad swore he could smell something else - he meant what he'd done in his boot - coming up through the Jeyes' fluid and the beer. This morning I could smell something else again: I could smell the sea. I could smell the sea, but the funny thing was, I couldn't hear it.

We went down on the beach first thing. The sand was so clean. It looked like somebody had got up early and washed it. The sun was hot. There was no wind. The sea - the sea was flat and still and bluer than any sea I'd seen before, and the sunlight that came off it was golden, just as if it had come straight from the sun itself, so that you had to squint wherever you looked.

It was wonderful that day. We had cheese cobs for our dinner instead of fish and chips, and we didn't even think about going to that hotel for a cup of coffee. In fact, Mam fetched a big jug of coffee at half-past ten, and when she came back with it, she had some little packets of those biscuits with the coffee cup on them with her. She gave me a packet for myself, and with every one I bit out the coffee cup and Mam never said anything. Then the Salvation Army came round collecting, and I remember that I was lying on my tummy and the lady tickled my foot and when I squealed, she said that showed I'd been born at home. Mam was so impressed by this, because I had been born at home, she put two shillings in the collecting tin.

It was the best day of the holiday, and when it was time to go I went down to the sea because we were going home early in the morning the next day and I shouldn't see it again. I went down to the sea, and I stood right at the edge. It was so calm, so still, the water almost didn't break against the sand even, and I could stay there and not get my feet wet. I stood there, I remember, I stood there and I thought I had never seen anything as beautiful as this, not even my cousin Molly, when she'd danced by herself to that record in the caf? all that time before. Until then, I'd thought Molly was the most beautiful thing in the world, but I knew now she wasn't beautiful the way this sea was beautiful.

We had to go back to Mrs. Lake's that night because Mam had to put my swimming trunks out to dry so she could pack them for the morning. She had to put some calamine lotion on me as well but I was so happy I didn't mind, and I didn't mind when it was dry and we went out again and I had that funny shivering feeling you get when you've had calamine lotion put on and then you go out with your best clothes on at night.

I think we were all happy, Mam, Dad, even our Noreen. She didn't go dancing that last night. She came with us to play bingo. Mam and Dad had stayed away from the pubs, but they'd had to do something in the evenings and so they'd taken to playing bingo at the fair, what Mrs. Lake called ?the Devil's playground.?

Mam had been quite lucky, and had usually managed to get at least one win most nights, but she hadn't taken a prize yet because on this stall you got points for every win and you could save up these points towards one of the big prizes they had on display in the middle of the stall, where the man stood when he called out the numbers. Mam wanted the canteen of cutlery. She only needed one more win and she could get it, but that night it was our Noreen that won, not Mam.

When Noreen shouted 'House!' Mam got her coupons out ready to ask for the canteen of cutlery, but she wasn't quick enough because Noreen got hold of them and she said to the man, ?We'll have the teddy bear, the big one,? and even though Mam clipped her again, that's what we got. Of course, to make things worse, that night I had a dream that I was swimming in the sea, all calm and flat. The next morning I found I'd wet the bed again. This time there was no hiding things from Mrs. Lake, and Mam had to go down and apologize and get the sheets and blankets washed. We nearly missed the bus back home.

Coming back from holiday was always the same. There was this feeling of relief that you were back home, and yet the house always seemed different. It was as if it wasn't your house, as if you'd come back to one that was like your house, very like it, but this house hadn't just been empty for a fortnight, it had been empty for years. I used to like to go straight out into the yard when we got back, while Mam was getting the cases unpacked and Dad or Noreen or Sally was off round to the fish and chip shop to get our supper. I used to like to go out and walk in the grass and look at the plants and the trees. We had a couple of apple trees in the backyard and the fruit was always so much bigger on them than it had been before we went away. It was the same with the grass; it was always so long.

In the backyard, even more than in the house itself, you could imagine that you were the first person to stand where you were standing for years and years and years. The time we came back from Mrs. Lake's, it was a bit different because Sally had been in the house, so there wasn't that cold smell that houses get when they're left empty, even for a little while, but she hadn't touched the garden and I went out and stood there, the way I always did. That night, when I went up to bed, a Jacky Longlegs ran across my pillow and I wouldn't lie down. I slept with Mam and Dad again, just like I'd done all through the holiday.

It wasn't just all the things that happened on that holiday that make me remember it so well; in fact, I sometimes wonder if all those things did happen on that one holiday or if perhaps I'm remembering things that happened at different times and in different places and I'm mixing them all up. It's like the sea being so calm that day. I mean, I don't really see how it could have been, not so soon after all the bad weather we had, but, then again, it was. I suppose anything's possible really, and they do say as how the mind can play tricks on you. Still, I don't think I am mixing things up, and I know that I'm not when it comes to what happened afterwards because what happened afterwards changed everything, and, as I said, we never went on holiday together again.

I was too young to understand what did happen, to understand it properly, I mean. I know now, of course, but then, well, I was just a little boy. What I remember are the rows that started around the Christmas time. I remember one, it was actually on Christmas Day, and I remember Mam shouting at our Sally. She shouted ?Done nothing? Done nothing? Who do you think you are, the bleeding Virgin Mary??

Well, of course, what had happened was that our Sally had been seeing this fellow on the quiet, and she'd come back to be with him, and having the house to herself, she'd had him in to stay, of course, and, well, she was going to have a baby. She did have a baby. It was born just after she came back from honeymoon, because, in those days, you had to get married, if you could; it was either that or the baby was adopted. That's what happened to our Noreen's baby. She was pregnant as well, you see. It was some man in the band that had played for the dances on the pier. Mam went back and found him, but he was married, so there was nothing for it but to give the baby up for adoption.

You can understand it, well, I can. In those days, like I say, you got married if you could, and if you couldn't, well, you couldn't keep the baby, not in the sort of neighbourhood where we lived, not being the sort of people we were. Noreen never understood though. She came back home one Friday and said she wanted to go into the WRNS. She had her medical, got her forms, everything, in a week. It was Dad who signed her forms. When she went away she told Mam she wouldn't ever come back and, apart from Dad's funeral, she never did. She didn't come back when Mam died and we buried her, and she didn't come back when me and our Sally cleared out the house afterwards.

I remember that night, the night when we'd more or less done it all, all the packing. It was in August and for me it was just like the nights when we'd be getting ready to go away. Well, that's what we were doing, except this time I knew we would never be coming back. I went out into the yard on my own because I wanted to be there on my own for this last time. Mam had been gone for about a month then and, of course, nobody had looked after the garden. We'd been too busy. The grass was long, and the apple trees were there with all the fruit on them, and as I stood there it seemed as if two things were coming together at the same time, as if I was back from a holiday I hadn't been on yet.

I was out there for a long time. I watched the sun set and still I stood there. Our Sally came out in the end and asked me what I was doing. I told her. I said I was remembering. Well, that more or less shut Sally up because she doesn't like talking about the past. I can understand it really. I remember though. I remember a lot. Sometimes I think I remember so much because my two sisters don't, or won't or can't. That night, the last night I ever stood in Mam and Dad's house, the last night I ever went out into their backyard, that night I remembered a lot. I remembered a lot, and that night it really did start to get all mixed up, but what stood clear of everything else was the fortnight at Mrs. Lake's.

I stood there in the dark and I thought about Dad peeing in his boot, and me peeing in the bed, and the beer spraying round the room, and the curtains burning and then that day when the weather turned so hot and the sunlight came off the sea and how beautiful it made the sea and everything else look.

I remembered as well that Mam took me to see our Noreen in the hospital, just like she'd taken me to see our Sally. She never told me our Noreen had had a baby as well, of course. I thought she was just ill. Our Noreen had the big pink teddy bear she'd won with Mam's points on the bingo in the hospital with her. I thought about that when I stood out in the back yard all on my own. I thought about that, and I thought about how everything had flowed that sum mer. Everything, pee and beer and disinfectant and water and, even though I'd been too young to know it, the seed of the men that had been with our Sally and our Noreen. That had flowed as well. It had burst and sprayed and flowed inside my sisters just like that beer had inside Mam and Dad's room. Long Life that beer was called.

The one thing that was still the day I saw it was the sea. They do say all life comes from the sea, don't they? Perhaps that day the sea knew what we didn't, me and Mam and Dad, even our Sally and Noreen, because they couldn't have known either. Just the sea, it knew and because of that it knew something else as well: the sea knew that there'd been enough flowing and so, that day, it could he still, it could be almost still.

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Spell on You

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Stevie Macnamara called himself Stevie long before ever Little Stevie Wonder or Stevie Winwood come out, so it were hardly right to say, like some did, that this were affectation on Stevie's part because it weren't.? Stevie always were just a little bit different, and that plus the fact he were such a liar, which even I have to say he were, accounted for him never having many friends, though I liked him.

Definitely different though, Stevie.? In 1963, when everybody else tried hard to look like George Harrison or Brian Jones, Stevie went and had his head cropped.? He kept it that way all one year, but the following summer, at just about the same time Ron's on the Tower give up clippers for scissors, and the town Mods what went there was all asking for short cuts again, Stevie let his sides get long, then slicked the buggers back. Some of them at school started calling him Grease when they seen this development, though it weren't Brylcream he used, nor Sylvikrin neither, because they wouldn't do the job.? It were Imperial Leather pomade Stevie put on his hair.? I should know.? I went into Boots with him often enough to fetch it.? Bloody terrible stuff and all, the smell alone having the strength to empty the top deck of a 53 bus.?You always knew Stevie's whereabouts in them days.

So there were how he done his hair, and then there were his taste in music.? Them days, lads never felt properly dressed unless they had a twelve-inch LP in one hand when they went out the door.? It were important what LP it were and all.? Ote by the Rolling Stones were all right, some Beatles.? Hard Day's Night were acceptable, so were Rubber Soul, but not Beatles for Sale.?Well, Stevie used to carry records around the place with him same as the rest, only his would be by people nobody had ever heard of like Lefty.

Frizzell or the Louvin Brothers.? Stevie's record collection were more or less entirely made up of a job lot of country and western LPs he got cheap off a stall in the market, which I always reckoned were the principal attraction as far as Stevie were concerned, though he used to go on about how country and western were one of the last sources of authentic music, authentic being a big word with Stevie then.? It were what he judged things by, and not just music, but all sorts, although he used it to talk about music perhaps more than ote else.? I remember Stevie having a right barney with Col Birchenall one time when the Stones come out with Little Red Rooster.? Things got that heated, I thought Col might land him one and moved in a bit close, just in case, though it never come to ote in the end.? I'm glad it never, because Col were a big bastard who played prop forward for the school First Fifteen even then.

Col wanted to know just who Stevie thought he were handing out judgements on records - he meant pop records - when he, Stevie that is, never bought any himself, never read Melody Maker, or ote like that, NME, ote like that, and, to be fair to Col, he had a point because as far as I knew Stevie had only ever bought two pop records in his life.? One were a version of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the other were this single by the Mojos called No No No No No.? Neither done much in the charts, but that were perhaps why Stevie cottoned to them, lack of success carrying considerable weight in any discussion as to whether or not something were authentic.? I heard No No No No No on the radio just the other day, and that must have been what set me off thinking about Stevie again.? It weren't the song so much as the name of the group, the Mojos.

We had mojos on the brain in them days, the music then being full of hoodoo and voodoo, hoochy-coochy men, zombies, and all such sorts of business.? It weren't just the music neither, because there was the James Bond books, and then the Denis Wheatley books and all, and there were a lot of voodoo in some of them.? Still, there were none of us could have said what, exactly, a mojo were when it were at home, what one looked like or how it were supposed to do what it were supposed to do, so there were no need for them such as What? Tyler and his pals to go on about Stevie's being a liar the way they done when he come to school with what he reckoned were a mojo in his pocket.? I mean, I knew it weren't no more than a lump of off-cut he'd picked up out the gutter in front of Walker's timber yard on the East Park Road, done a bit of carving to with his sheath-knife, polished up with a dab of Kiwi and glued a few feathers on from off an old hat of his mam's he'd fetched out the back of their glory hole, but no bugger else did, so who were Tyler and his pals to say 'ote?

I've said not many at our school ever took to Stevie, and the truth is I never neither, not in the very beginning, though we did fetch up mates eventually and stopped that way all through until Stevie went off to university.? Tyler, though, he really hated Stevie, hated him right from the word go, and seemed to make it the main purpose in his life to see that Stevie's were miserable.? It were Tyler come up with the various names Stevie were known by in the school, the first of which were Pinhead, and that by no means the cruellest.? Another were C***struck, a name which come about when Stevie were fourteen or so, and had once or twice been clocked talking to some tart on the Tower, one a good two or three years older than he were, and a bit nice with it and all.

The fact is, it weren't just some tart Stevie'd been stood there with.? Her name were Sue Roberts, and she lived down Stevie's street.? She went to America when quite young to live with her sister Val, who'd married a Yank off the base at Bruntingthorpe, but found she couldn't stick it over there and so come home again. Sometimes she travelled up town on the same bus as Stevie in the mornings, and seeing they knew each other, and had done for years, naturally enough they sat together on the bus, and then walked part-way through the market together and all, which were where they was seen, in fact, not the Tower.? That were Tyler trying to make Sue seem cheap.? Had it been credible, he'd have had them in front of The Blue Moon in bloody Horsefair Street.

I said to Stevie then it weren't note but jealousy because Sue were such a looker, and none of them calling him C***struck would have stood a chance of getting anywhere near her, nor known how to go on afterwards if they had.? In a way, that business over him being seen talking to Sue weren't greatly different from what went on about the mojos.? I told Stevie not to bother himself with it; such things - I meant name-calling and that - never lasted long, and I were right.? It weren't six or seven weeks before they'd forgot they'd ever called him C***struck, and took to calling him Homo instead.

It were a cruel business Tyler proceeded in against Stevie then.? Every time there were no teachers about it started, with Tyler himself shouting, What d'you think of MacNamara?, just like he were down Leicester City on a Saturday afternoon going, What d'you think of Leeds? or whoever were playing.? Then, instead of shouting back, Shit! Shit! Shit!, the way they would have at the football, Tyler's pals would go, Ho-ho-mo!? Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo! Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo!

They done it whenever there were no teacher near to hear what were going on, though, to say the truth, how it happened no teacher ever did hear what were going on, I never fathomed, but none did.? So it went on morning, noon and all but night time too. Tyler and his gang got so they'd start things even on the bus going up the games field, and that definitely were a case of authority turning a deaf ear.? It couldn't have been ote else, not with teachers sat downstairs on the same bus.

Again I said to Stevie, it weren't note but jealousy, as it had been over him and Sue Roberts.? This time it were the mojos, for not long after Stevie had first showed us his, and all the piss-taking finished, a couple of lads, Col Birchenall for one, said could Stevie fix them up with something similar?? This after Stevie's indicated he don't want to part with the one he's got.? He said straight out he'd made his himself.? He never lied about it.? He asked just what the two lads wanted, and Col said his were to go on a bit of leather or something similar so he could hang it round his neck.? Col were a big bugger, as I've said, who passed easily for eighteen or even twenty, and he used to go dancing down the County Arms on Friday nights at a time when most of us still reckoned getting in the pictures to see an X-certificate a desperate and daring deed.? Col said he thought one of Stevie's mojos might help him pull a bird, which, aside from playing rugby for the county youth team, constituted his major ambition in life.? Once he'd got his orders, Stevie set to and delivered the goods the next week, after which he pocketed half-a-dollar off each lad for his time, trouble and materials.

The Monday following, Col Birchenall come up to Stevie and shoved another half-a-dollar in his pocket, the reason behind this unlooked for generosity being Col had clicked with a staff nurse from the Royal that Friday night.? He'd seen her again on the Saturday, and after they'd had coffees in Kenco and she'd done a bit of shopping, she took him back for the rest of the afternoon and evening to this little flat she had just off the London Road, during which time, Col said, he cracked it.? He stopped with her Saturday night, and he'd have been there Sunday night and all, except she had to go back on duty.? Of course, he got a pasting off his dad, Col did, when he finally rolled up at his own house, big as he were, for he were only fifteen and the bogies had been out looking for him since the Saturday teatime.? Still, Col reckoned the pasting well worthwhile, considering.? The extra half-dollar he slipped in Stevie's pocket come as payment for services more than satisfactorily rendered, seeing it had been Stevie's mojo got the whole thing started just the way Col had hoped it would.

A story like that can get round a lads' school faster than a fart from a greyhound's arsehole, and Stevie subsequently found himself and his mojos to be greatly in demand.? He had that many orders he couldn't manage with what bits of wood he might scavenge from Walker's gateway any more, so he nipped inside one night and took home a sack filled with off-cuts a bloke what worked there give him.? He were more or less set after that, Stevie were, and I have to say, with practice, his mojos definitely improved, definitely got a lot more professional.? He started getting real character into the faces, because he were doing them with faces, and, depending on what the order were, he painted some and put polish on others.? The supply of feathers off his mam's hat soon finished, but he got another load from the fish and poultry shop down what used to be the ottom end of Charny.? They let him help himself from the bin of chicken feathers they kept out the back.? Yes, after a week or two of mojo-making, Stevie were definitely turning out a consistently improving product.? He were coining it and all, which were no doubt what fetched Tyler and his oppos round again.

They started on Stevie in the classroom straight after the dinner-break this one day, when we sat waiting for a teacher to come.? Tyler goes on about how what Stevie were making were crap, and all that sort of thing; how Stevie had been chucked out of woodwork at the end of the First Year and all that sort of thing, which were true but so what?? Well, Stevie give back as good as he were getting, and he says to Tyler it's not just the woodworking, it's the other stuff that goes into the making what counts.? Tyler goes, What you talking about, the other stuff?? Do you mean a coat of shoe polish and some feathers?? Stevie goes, No, I mean the magic, I mean the hoo-doo.? Tyler goes, F *** off, MacNamara, all the magic you know you could stick up your arse and shit none the less well for.? Stevie goes, Oh ah?? Tyler goes, Oh ah?? Then Tyler looks round at his pals and goes, Mojos me arse!? Homos is more like it!? You and that? prat Reeves.? Well, when that come out it were only the teacher sauntering in the room stopped me from shoving Tyler's bollocks in his gob to shut him up, me being Reeves, and had it been any teacher who come in just then I still might have, only it weren't, it were Dave Begley, and everybody in the school were frit of him, so that were that, or it were until the end of the class, when Tyler and his mates starts the chanting about Stevie, Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo!

I reckon it had just been Stevie talking when he'd said to Tyler about the magic business with his mojos, but he got very serious on the subject straight way after, and him and me went round the Central Library when we come out the school that afternoon.? Stevie found this book called Black Magic, White Magic, and took it out.? From then on, he were involved with magic in a very big way.? So much so, he recalled all the mojos he'd made up to that time so he could, as he put it, upgrade their performance, and he never charged note neither.? The only lad not to take up Stevie's offer of a supernatural rebore were Col Birchenall.? He said he didn't need ote doing to his mojo, it were his legs he wanted seeing to.? He'd been on the bed with his nurse that much recently, he reckoned, all the strength had more or less gone out of them, with dire consequences for his performances on the playing field.? Stevie told Col to let him have a pair of his rugby socks then, and he'd see what he could do.? Not long after getting the socks back, Col were named as prop in the county youth side against Warwickshire.

He played a blinder, Col did.? Me and Stevie went to watch him.? His nurse were there and all, cheering him on, and Col introduced us at half-time.? Bloody smashing, she were.? He reckoned she more or less shagged him senseless once she got him back to her place after the game, but, having seen her, nobody in their right mind would have thought that ote to grieve over. Not that Col were moaning about it neither, not really, but he did cop another pasting off his dad because of being stopped out again all night, and when Col seen Stevie he asked if ote could be done to about it, meaning the pastings.? Stevie said the easiest way to stop what Col were getting off his dad would be to cut down on what Col were getting off his nurse, seeing as how the one were the cause of the other, but were this what Col had in mind?? Well, Col had to go away and ponder that one.

After all of this, Col Birchenall's clicking with a nurse, and then getting in the county youth side, plus one or two more little items other lads who'd equipped themselves with Stevie's wares reported, the mojos could only be judged a major success.? Stevie had every reason to feel proud of himself, but he never let what had happened go to his head or ote like that.? One reason he never might have been the constant bloody cries of ?Homo! Homo! he had to put up with from Tyler and friends.? There didn't seem ote much him or his mojos could do about that.

And still Stevie kept renewing the loan on the book of magic.? He carried it round with him the way other lads did records, the way he did records before he'd found the bloody thing.? He read it, time and time again.? It seemed to fascinate him, and a good part of the fascination were to do with what it had to say magic really were, which were ... a power often the resource of the physically weak in primitive societies.? Something along them lines.? Well, that were more or less Stevie; he were weak and he lived in a primitive society, our school.? I mean, the reason I palled up with him when we first come to the school were because he were weak. He were quite little for his age, and some of the bigger lads, Tyler among them, used to pick on him.

Like I said, I never cottoned to Stevie, not? straight off I never, because quite early on he tried to feed me some of his old guff, claiming he'd watched Leicester City play Wolves this one Saturday.? Well, I said, Oh ah? when I heard him because I had been to the match and, I don't know why, but it come to me somehow that Stevie hadn't, and he were just talking to seem big, which in fact is what he were doing.? So, I asked him about the strips, which he knew, but that proved note.? I mean, everybody knew the Wolves' strip because they was such a big club then, particularly round where we lived, and City weren't called the Blues owing to the fact they turned out in red every home game.? So then I asked him where he'd stood, and which ends the goals had gone in, and it were obvious he were lying, only he still wouldn't admit it.? I pushed off not long after, because so far as I were concerned I'd proved me point, but some of the others, What? Tyler included, kept on at him and, in the end, Tyler started shoving Stevie about, which were my cue to get back in on things.? I told Tyler he could lay off, and when he wouldn't I dabbed him one, which meant he were more or less set against me for the rest of the time we was at the school, and against Stevie and all, of course, and Stevie and me ended up keeping company even though I weren't too keen on him, not seeing as how he'd said he'd been down the City when he hadn't.

To start with, Stevie used to come up to me with biscuits and such like in the breaks, because he wanted me around him for protection when we was out in the yard, and, to start with, I let him because he were always there handy with a Penguin or a Kit-Kat, or something a bit similar at just the time my guts started to grumble.? In the finish though, I did like him, and it had note to do with his keeping me in chocolate biscuits.? I found he were interesting to talk to, and funny and all, and even though a lot of what he used to come out with were, well, it were a load of cobbler's really, I didn't much care any more.? We'd ended up pals, even if we hadn't set out to be such, and you'll tolerate more or less ote at all in a pal.

Any road, Stevie's lying were largely to do with him being so feeble.? I soon twigged that.? More or less all Stevie had going for him in life were the stories he could tell.? He were like a - I don't know what he were like really -? but he could talk the hind leg of a donkey, or himself out of a walloping, half the time.? I suppose there weren't a lot to choose really between his lying and him discovering magic.? I mean, it were all only a load of words when you come down to it really, and it were the one lot - him saying to Tyler about his mojos and what made them special - had led to the other.? They both got him a place in the school, so, in that sense, you could say his magic worked.? But again, the one thing he couldn't do were get Tyler off his back, and I couldn't do it for him neither.? As I told him times, if he wanted Tyler's gob stopped, he'd have to see to it himself.

I said about Dave Begley, the teacher we was all frit of.? Spanish Dave we called him, or else Dago because, though he took us for French, he taught Spanish in the sixth form.? He were a right hard face, and the reason we got him were because the bloke we'd had the year before turned out weak as water, so, the world turning how it does, we'd more or less pissed all over him, and not just us neither, every one of his classes served him the same.? So much so, the poor bugger had some sort of a breakdown and left.

Well, Spanish Dave come in his place, and just to let us know who were to be boss right from the word go, he walks in that first day and sets about knocking the chops off a little lad called Jimmy Phillips.? Jim were harmless, which were probably why it were him got selected and not some big sod like Col Birchenall or Tyler, or me.? You know, not even the innocent shall be spared sort of thing.? Any road, Spanish Dave drops Jim back in his chair more or less half-conscious, and he says, Right, gents, now I've got your attention, and if you're all sitting comfortably, then we'll begin.? We bloody did and all.

A bastard is what Spanish Dave were.? In one of his merrier moments, and he did have them, he told us how he were dead set on proving all his professors wrong about what he called the power of negative reinforcement.? A lad at the back of the class, Johnny Cox, shoved his hand up and said what were that when it were at home? so Spanish Dave obliged him with a demonstration.? He says for Johnny to take out his ruler, a pencil and a bit of paper.? Then he gets Ray Price, the lad sat at the next desk, to tie his scarf round Johnny's eyes.? When that were done, Spanish Dave tells Johnny to draw a straight line two inches long on the bit of paper.? Johnny goes, Don't be daft, sir, I can't see.? Well, I were expecting John to cop a strong dose of hate for that, but Spanish Dave just says for him to try.? Johnny does.? Spanish Dave says, A shade too long, son. Try again.? Johnny does.? Spanish Dave says, A shade too short, me old flower, me old beauty.? Try again.? Johnny does.

Well, they carries on in this fashion until, after, I don't know, twenty tries maybe, Johnny gets it right -? he draws a line exactly two inches long.? Spanish Dave holds up the bit of paper and goes, Taa-daa! That, gents, is called positive reinforcement.? We all clapped and cheered, and otherwise indicated general approbation because, first off, it had definitely been a touch amazing what we'd just seen, and second, it were better than doing French.

There were more to come.? Spanish Dave shuts us up, and then he says that for his next trick he'll show us what negative reinforcement is.? Again, he tells Johnny Cox, who's still got the scarf over his face, to draw a line, only this time it has to be four inches long.? Johnny does it, well he draws a line, except it weren't four inches long, but still he sits there after he's finished with a grin on him like our cat had the day it found it could piss milk and shit cods' heads, and continued in this fashion until Spanish Dave says, No, too long, and fetches him a real crack across the ear hole.? Then Spanish Dave says for Johnny to draw the line again.

It took Johnny six goes to get it right, and he were roaring before he done it because each of the five times previous he took a clip off Spanish Dave, but we all had to agree being walloped made what Spanish Dave called the learning process a sight faster drawing a line four inches long than it had been? using kindness to do the one two inches shorter.? That were negative reinforcement, and it were how Spanish Dave taught us French.? Pain, he used to say, and the fear of pain, are memory's helpmates.? And he were dead keen for us to remember things.? We had tests every lesson.? Get more than two things wrong and you got clipped for every extra mistake.? We had written homework to hand in every lesson.? More than two mistakes and you got clipped for each one extra you made the next time he seen you.

Spanish Dave used to say, I never ask the impossible, gents.? I don't expect you to understand all I tell you. I do expect you to remember it though, and show you remember it by repeating what you've remembered.? My f***ing parrot can do that.? If it can't, I knock it off its perch until it can.? The same goes for you.?I don't know if he had a parrot really, but if he did I bet it were good at saying, Pretty Polly.

That's just how the Dago used to carry on.? The time he got Johnny Cox on drawing them lines, he reckoned he'd chose the measurements special because the average length of our p***ks fully extended, as he put it, were probably somewhere in between the two.? He knew we wouldn't report him for talking that way, same as he knew we wouldn't report him for knocking us about.? He knew we was all too frit of him, that were why, and he weren't frit of nobody, that were why and all.

He weren't frit of nobody neither, not even the gaffer.? I remember one time, it were near the end of the term, and Spanish Dave were doing his reports.? Well, the gaffer's kid, poor little bugger, went to our school.? The gaffer's kid!? I mean, you can imagine the hammerings he used to take, though I always felt sorry for him because it weren't his fault he were the gaffer's kid, same as it weren't his fault he'd had to come to is dad's school.? Any road up, the gaffer's kid were at our school and he were in one of Spanish Dave's classes.? So, the Dago's doing his reports, and we're all working away, trying to ensure the continuation of our moral and physical, particularly physical, well-being by learning a new set of tenses or whatever it were, when he stops, Spanish Dave does, and he looks all thoughtful, and he goes, Watkins, Leo.? And it's all done like he's not got us lot there in front of him, but he's sat on his own thinking out loud to himself.? Watkins, Leo, he goes, meaning the gaffer's kid,? Watkins, Leo. What can we say about Watkins, Leo?? Then there's another pause, like he's thinking again, and then he goes, Ah yes, I know, Lacks parental guidance.? And he bloody well wrote it down and all.? The lads sat at the front seen him do it.? And it were in ink.? Lacks parental bloody guidance!? Frit of no bugger Spanish Dave weren't.

That were one of the Dago's merrier moments.? It went off all right that one did, but things could get quite dangerous when he were in one of them moods.? Most of the time, you knew where you stood with him.? It were a bit like going round the barbers' when you was a kid, frightening to start with but eventually you knew the form, you knew what were going to happen and you knew how much it were going to cost and all like that.? I remember it frit the life out of me the first time I ever seen a bloke having the hairs in his ear holes singed,? but after a couple of visits I knew what were going on, I knew I weren't going to have my ears set light to, so everything were all right.? That's how it were with Spanish Dave.? He were alarming to start with, bloody alarming really, but you come to know what he wanted and how he'd carry on if he didn't get it.? He had his methods, and they worked.? The dangerous times were when you didn't know how he'd carry on, which were mainly in his merrier moments.? It were dangerous then because he never knew how he'd carry on himself.

Stevie managed all right in that class, surprisingly enough.? It weren't that he were outstanding at French or ote of that sort because he weren't.? Any road, being outstanding were no safeguard against a sudden onset of violence because the best kid in the class, who were a kid called Mick Bassett, got a thumping once for the simple reason he'd never had one before.? Spanish Dave reckoned it were to stop the lad getting overconfident.? Stevie took a few cuffs, same as everybody else, but, I don't know, he never had that many and it were perhaps because early on he fell into what passed for the Dago's good books.

He forgot his homework one time, Stevie did.? Normally, that meant going home damaged.? Spanish Dave would say to the lad who'd come up short, Right son, you know what happens next, only before it does, let's have the story, the excuse, and, for your own sake, son, don't try insulting my intelligence by trotting out one of the same old chestnuts again.? Entertain me.? Astonish me even.? But don't patronise me.? Understand?? Yes?? Well then, you have sixty seconds until I beat your clock.? Then he'd listen, he'd laugh, and he'd hit you.? Only with Stevie that time, he never.? He listened.? He laughed, and then he told Stevie to sit down and he'd sort him out later, which we all assumed, Stevie included, meant Spanish Dave were intent on stopping just about the right side of murder and preferred to perform the act with no witnesses present in case police proceedings followed.

Well, we was all wrong because note happened at all, only Stevie being directed to bring the work in the next morning first thing.? Everybody were amazed, but, when I thought about it, the story Stevie'd come out with by way of an excuse were - well, it were a bloody work of art really, and I think it got to the Dago, which were why he never touched Stevie, no that time any road.? On another occasion, he did touch Stevie.? It were in one of the merrier moments, which, like I say, were when Spanish Dave were at his most dangerous.

He used to go on a lot about the length of lads' hair, the Dago did.? He'd go up to a lad, Ray Price were a real favourite for this treatment, take a ruler off the desk and then start wrapping the lad's hair round and round it so the lad had to slowly stand up or else risk losing a good piece of his thatch.? While this were going on Spanish Dave'd be doing a Kenneth Wolstenholme.? He'd go, Look at the length of this bugger.? Look at it!? I know women who'd give you a feel of their right tit for hair like this.? I know women who'd give you their right tit for hair like this.

He could get through half a lesson engaged in antics of this sort some days, if he were in a good mood.? He'd twist lads' hair up on a ruler, or hold it up with his fingers and measure the length, and all the time he'd be passing remarks such as, In certain primitive societies the amount of hair on a man's head is taken as an indication of his sexual potency and prowess.? If you gents had cocks to match your hair, and powers of performance to match your cocks, there'd be a queue of women a mile long outside this school.? On and on like this he'd go, until eventually he'd end up in front of Stevie and his modified brush cut, and he'd say, But then we come to MacNamara.? And he'd stand there, and stand there, and Stevie, who knew what were expected, just done what he were supposed to, which were grin back at Spanish Dave like a prat, and we'd all laugh, and then Spanish Dave would go over to the window, look outside, where naturally enough there was not huge numbers of females congregating by the school railings, come back to Stevie and say, Well, at least MacNamara knows his limitations.? Isn't that right, MacNamara?? And Stevie would go, Yes, sir.

That were the general way of things during Spanish Dave's merrier moments, but, like I say, it always were unpredictable and this one time the Dago starts on about lads' hair again, only instead of measuring it or twisting it, he gets going on the subject of long hair being a fire risk.? It all had to do with these stories in the papers then about young girls at bus-stops going up in flames when somebody in the queue lit a fag near their hairdos. It were supposed to be all the lacquer they used.

Well, there was a few lads in that class then used hair lacquer and all.? I did, for one.? It were called Cossack, but that were only to make them such as me feel less like nancies for buying it.? What were in the tin were no different from what me sister sprayed on her hair.? That day, Spanish Dave, who seemed in a particularly jolly frame of mind, went strolling round the room with his Ronson, flicking it on and off to see if any of us would catch light.? Nobody did, but then he goes and stands in front of Stevie, same as usual when a merrier moment were ending, and he says, right out the blue, Spanish Dave does, Let's have a brush fire.? He puts the lighter to Stevie's head, and Stevie's hair, what there were of it, went whoosh.? I suppose this sudden and, even on Spanish Dave's part, unexpected? conflagration had to do with all the bloody Imperial Leather pomade Stevie rubbed in each and every morning.? Not washing his hair too regular, things had built up to where the vapours coming off it had reached a particularly low flash point.

It were over in a second, a bit like Christmas at our house when me Dad tries to set the pudding on fire: you know, not worth shutting the lights off for; and the truth is there weren't much damage done and what there were weren't perma nent, but the fact that his hair had caught shook Stevie, and I reckon, from how he carried on after, it shook Spanish Dave and all.? I mean, he even brushed some of the burnt bits off Stevie's head, so he must have been concerned, and then, at the end of the lesson like, he says for Stevie to see to himself properly in the cloakroom before the next class.? In fact, I went with Stevie and stood there while he give his hair a quick rinse in the sink, and it were then bloody Tyler and his mates come up and started on Stevie again.

Stevie gets his head out the sink, and he goes, Why don't you do yourself and everybody else a favour, Tyler, and just disappear?? Which weren't like Stevie at all, and went to show how rattled he must have been by his hair going on fire like that. Tyler says, What? What? and Stevie goes, That's right, What? What? What? Tyler. Are you deaf, daft, just plain stupid or a combination of all three?? I said, Disappear!

Tyler, who hated being called What? about the same as Stevie hated being called Pinhead or C***struck or Homo, finally got the message and went, Why don't you make me, Homo? Stevie goes back to soaking his crew cut, but he says, as much to the sink as to Tyler, I might, one of these days, so you should watch yourself. Tyler heard him and goes, You might what, Homo?? You have trouble making turds disappear down the bog according to them that goes in after you, you dirty Irish homo bastard.

He says this and then he gives the grin to his mates, waiting for the applause to start, only before it does, Ray Price, who were stood combing his hair in front of the mirror at the next sink, says to Stevie, Bugger Tyler, why don't you do everybody a favour and vanish Spanish Dave?? Which were more or less the end of things, because the bell went for the next lesson and the whole bloody lot of us was late.

Only it weren't the end for Stevie.? He milked a few laughs explaining to Ramblin' Lew Rablin why he were late, but he went off at four o'clock dead set on the idea he could make anybody disappear he felt like making disappear.? He'd get his mojos working and put a spell on them, and he'd start with Spanish Dave and then progress to his chief oppressor, What? Tyler.? Piecing bits together from how things went on after, I reckon when Stevie got in home that night he settled down to his tea in front of the telly same as usual, only instead of watching the programmes and doing his homework, he set to reading the book on magic again, the one he'd got out from the library that time, renewed I don't know how often, and had two reminders put through the letterbox to bring back because somebody else wanted a go at it.

Things cooled off then, or they did for two or three weeks.? Even Spanish Dave seemed subdued and content to perform at several degrees below his usual level of malevolence.? I don't mean to say he let the hate go by the board entirely, because he never.? It were just that he went a bit quiet. And Stevie were very quiet then and all, though I thought that were because the Homo! Homo! business had started to get him down a lot more than it ever had before.

It got near Easter, and we had revising to do for tests. One Friday night, I were sat in the Evington cinema with Stevie and two or three other lads waiting for the big picture to start.? We was still a bit young for picking up tarts then, the spirit were definitely willing but the flesh wouldn't pass muster, and if we'd have tried ote on any of them old enough to interest us, they'd just have laughed and gone back to licking their Mivis; which were why we sat there moaning about what were happening at school, the tests and that, and in particular this right bastard Spanish Dave had promised us.? One lad, Tom Hutchins, says how he could kill Spanish Dave, and how the Dago'd be handing out hard knocks instead of eggs for Easter.? And load us with bleeding home work over the holidays and all, somebody else shoves in.? Then Stevie, who'd more or less just sat there all night, says, Don't worry lads.

There won't be no French test, not this term there won't, and I can guarantee you, you've had the last of? your troubles with Spanish Dave.? We looked at him gone out, but he wouldn't say ote else, and any road, the film were beginning.? Spartacus it were. The next afternoon me and Stevie went to see City play, and after, on the bus going home, I asked him what he'd meant the night previous concerning the French test and Spanish Dave?? That were when he told me he were dead set on making magic, voodoo, and that he were going to put a spell on the Dago.? Then he says, And I'll see to Tyler and all while I'm about it.

I never took him serious, not then I never because in some ways Stevie were always a bit childish.? I mean, I give my toy soldiers away to our Pauline's kids soon as I heard I'd passed for the grammar school, but Stevie kept his, and I knew he still played with them right up to that time because he never hid the fact.? He'd build little forts and such in his mam's garden, and when that series about the First World War come on telly, Stevie made a model of the trenches on the Western Front under one of the lilac trees, and he kept it soaked with water so it were all muddy just like the real thing.

Like I say, he never tried to hide the fact of his playing with soldiers still, and sometimes on a Saturday morning if I went down his house he'd get me involved and all.? The way he used to talk you through what he were doing, well, it were highly convincing and he'd have me completely forgetting I were a fifteen year-old, with better things to do in life than stand ankle-deep in muck re-enacting the battle of the Somme.? I mean at that time I were expending much of my energy on trying to talk Thelma Jackson, who I'd sat next to right the way through Bridge Road school, infants and junior, into going up the stairs with me for twenty minutes some Sunday if her mam went out.? Any road, what I mean to say is, I thought all this talk about spells and such like, voodoo and that, were on a par with his playing soldiers, only I were wrong because it weren't.

We went round Stevie's and he showed me in the book where it said about making an effigy, and what could happen if you done it right.? To tell the truth, it frit me just reading the bugger, and I said as much.? I told Stevie he should leave it alone, but he reckoned it were too late for leaving it alone, and then he showed me what he'd already done.

He took me into the back-garden, and fetched an old shoe box from out behind the lilac tree.? Inside there were this sort of a doll he'd made.? Of a high degree of grisliness it were and all, the body being fashioned from mud, with bits of feather and what might have been hair mixed in it, and the smell of the whole definitely not such as to prompt exclamations of delight from the Bisto Kids, should they have been numbered among any onlookers.? When I asked him about it, he reckoned the mixture were three parts muck he'd fetched out the Welford Road cemetery, plus the remains of an inattentive pigeon a car had gone over in the street.? He said he'd put hair and fingernails in for seasoning, and these had come from, as he phrased it, his victims.? I didn't believe that any more than I did the bit about his having fetched muck out the Welford Road cemetery and such - well, there might have been a bit of compressed pigeon involved somewhere or other, but I could see a significant area of the Somme battlefield had not long been shovelled up, so I knew the odds was that at least some of it had gone towards making up the contents of that shoe-box.? Still, I said then to Stevie he were getting into the business far too deep, and I said so because the body, if such it were, weren't the worst part.

On top of what you might want to say was the shoulders, there was not one, but two heads, or any road, two of what could have started out as off-cuts from Walkers, and perhaps progressed to prototype mojos before they'd ended up topping off that concoction of mud and what the cat wouldn't have bothered bringing in, which, by itself and from a distance might otherwise have give the distinct impression of being not a lot more sinister than the deposits of some well-nourished Alsatian.? It were them two blank bits of wood lent the thing such evil aspect, especially when they stopped being blank, as come about after Stevie put his hand in his trouser pocket and fetched out two faces, Spanish Dave's and What? Tyler's.?? When I asked him where he'd got them from, he said he'd cut up the previous October's school photo.? He laid one on each bit of wood, and he said that, when he were good and ready, he were going to slice his thumb and use the blood to paste the buggers on permanent.? Daft like, I says, Ready for what? and Stevie goes, Revenge.

I definitely never wanted note more to do with it after that, and I told him so.? I went home, had me tea, watched the telly and went to bed.? I lay there that night and tried thinking about what Thelma Jackson were keeping all to herself inside her Prova underwear.? This weren't entirely for reasons of erotic self-stimulation neither; it were more so I didn't have to think about what Stevie MacNamara had stored away in that shoe-box he were hiding behind his mam's lilac tree.

It never worked, me thinking about Thelma Jackson never, and when I did finally get to sleep, I had horrible dreams.? It were just the same on the Sunday night, worse if anything because in the afternoon Thelma, after what I'd took for a certain amount of initial encouragement on her part, had said no again, so I added a broken heart, not to mention a very painful case of the blue balls, to being haunted by Stevie's schemes for the undoing of Spanish Dave Begley, and each twinge of me testicles served notice that that were what Stevie were set on.

I collared Stevie as soon as I seen him on the Monday, and I said for him to pack it in right then and there.? I didn't need to go into the details; he knew what I were talking about.? I really did get hold of him that time and all, and if it would have done any good to either of us I'd have give him one, only it were too late for that because he said he'd done it - whatever it were he'd had to do.? He meant needles and that, I suppose, or nails.? I didn't want to know.? Well, there were no use of anything any more so I just let him go.

Word of what had been said in the pictures had got round, and as far as Tyler and his mates went it were just another bullet to fire at Stevie.? On top of all the usual business, they now sat there singing, I'll put a spell on you, and running their hands across the desk-lids like they was all fully paid-up members of the Alan Price Set, because you're mine.? Then, when they come to the bit about not lying, they stopped the song and went, Liar! Liar! Liar, liar, liar! Homo! Homo! Liar, liar, liar! Homo! Homo! Liar, liar, liar!? Stevie never so much as blinked.

The night before Spanish Dave's test, Stevie and me went to the Evo again.? I can't remember what we went to see.? Watching a film weren't the real object of the exercise.? For Stevie, going out that particular evening instead of stopping in home to revise for the test were an act of faith in his ability to completely contradict logic and the laws of science.? My going along and all were a gesture of solidarity with a mate, though I have to admit I were awake until nearly three after I got up the top of our stairs, making sure I could conjugate the subjunctive tense of every bloody verb we'd ever done.? This were because, first, memorising French verbs kept me mind off of zombies and such like a lot more effectively than all that wishful thinking about Thelma Jackson's twat had.? Second, I thought studying up for Spanish Dave's test might nudge his chances of survival along a bit by acting as a vote of confidence in such an outcome, if you follow me.? As things turned out, this strategy proved right in the end, but only up to a point.

We never had the test.? We should've done it second period in the morning, but first off, Spanish Dave don't show up, and then another teacher wanders in, says Mr Begley has had an accident, and we've to get on with private studying for the rest of the period.? I looked at Stevie, and he looked at me, and, well, I still don't know about his expression; I mean, whether it were triumph, relief or disappointment in the final outcome of his endeavours.? It's a personal failing this; when I were little I could never spot the differences between the Fry's Five Boys, not even on the wrapper, and any road, at that particular moment in time, I were confused as to just what I felt then, never mind any bugger else.

I say we never had the test, but what I mean is, we never had it that day.? It come eventually, when Spanish Dave limped back into our lives, his right leg in plaster, his right wrist in plaster, his face most grisly to behold because of the bruising, and bearing, in my eyes any road, a strong likeness to what had been revealed when the lid come off Stevie's shoe-box.?All these injuries the Dago had sustained when the bus on which he were then travelling into town braked sudden as it turned into Humberstone Gate.? Spanish Dave, who listed smoking among his no doubt several vices, had been, at the moment the bus pulled up, on the point of negotiating the stairs down from the top deck.? Well, he'd come down onto the platform a sight bleeding quicker than ever he thought he would and finished up in the Royal, where, by coincidence, he received care at the hands of Col Birchenall's staff nurse.? It were her filled us in on the details of what happened.

Col's nurse looking after the Dago weren't the only coincidence neither, because there were somebody else missing from the classroom that day.? That somebody were one of Tyler's crew, a fat lad named Brian Banks, although, for obvious reasons, Gordon were what he more usually answered to.? Gordon always sat next to Tyler, a dubious honour given some of Tyler's personal habits, and it had been him who'd caused the bus carrying Spanish Dave to pull up so sharp because? the daft prat had tried to go across the Tower against the lights.? Nor were this the end of things as far as Gordon were concerned, for besides interrupting Spanish Dave's journey to school, he had to share the ambulance ride to hospital with him and all.? This owing to the fact that, though the bus had come to a halt before flattening Gordon more or less the same as some car had that pigeon Stevie reckoned he'd scraped up off the street, it only managed it within a hair's breadth of Gordon's red and green striped tie, which caused the lad to spill most of his breakfast down his blazer, and also drop a load in his trousers.

When we heard of these goings on from Col's nurse, all she said were that Gordon had been sick and shit himself at more or less the same time, so he'd had to go to hospital along with the Dago just in case, though the ambulance blokes reckoned he played hell about it.? That's Gordon who played up, not the Dago, and you don't need much imagination to understand why neither.

After Stevie got done with the story - well, he'd more or less fashioned a five-act play out of what might have been said in the back of that ambulance on the way to the Royal, and he had Gordon gobbing a three-course meal out in the middle of the roadway, the constituents of which was all readily identifiable: a bowl of Ready-Brek here, two slices of buttered toast liberally spread with CWS marmalade over there, a cup of Typhoo, milk and three sugars, a tangerine, seedless, peeled, an apple, not neither.? All of this plus the Milky Way and half a roll of Toffos Stevie said Gordon were scoffing while he shuffled towards his appointment with fate, or, as it happened, Spanish Dave's bus, though by the time Stevie were entertaining us in such fashion, Gordon were more generally known as Both-Ends Banksie.?And Stevie?? Well, certain benefits fell Stevie's way due to what we all acknowledged was the effects of his supernatural manipulations, though some of these weren't immediately apparent.

First off, his mojo business went through the roof, or it did until that particular obsession give way before a new craze not so easily satisfied with bits of off-cut, a knife, a bag of feathers and a tin of shoe polish.? He had by this time, however, established himself in the school as a man not to be meddled with, which done him good in every possible way.? He grew sidies when he could, took to carrying an umbrella, and wore a yellow waistcoat he picked up second-hand off the same stall in the market where he'd earlier equipped himself with both a record collection and an attitude to music, not to mention life itself.? Towards the end of his school career he gained yet more celebrity by telling the gaffer where to shove his offer of being a prefect.? And all of the above undertaken in a spirit far removed from that which had driven his idiosyncrasies in times previous.

Spanish Dave would have been proud, though that last little escapade with the gaffer come some time after the Dago had left the school to work in a Borstal, or so it was said, this embellishment coming, of course, from Stevie.? By that time, I also had gone to face life in a different arena, and me and Stevie was no longer so close as we once had been.?In the months left to Spanish Dave as our teacher though, Stevie's relationship with him underwent certain changes, and these come to light a lot sooner than the ones I've just mentioned between Stevie and me.? Like I said, we did do the Dago's test in the end, and because it were late in coming we never got the results until the next term.? None of us done well, not even Mick Bassett, but Stevie really distinguished himself by getting note.? Normally such an outcome would have meant we all went home disabled, some more severely than others; but the fact is, Spanish Dave never put so much as a finger on any of us, not then he never, the same as he never put so much as a finger on Stevie neither, not then or ever after in his case.? In fact, Spanish Dave seemed to make a point of excusing Stevie's performance because when he give him back his paper he says, Not your day, MacNamara, was it?? Stevie never so much as opened his mouth.

Of course, the cessation of violence on the part of Spanish Dave weren't permanent.? After the plaster and other wrappings all come off he did start clipping lads again, but it were merely a shadow of how it once had been because the hate weren't there no more, and what blows did fall come from the left hand, not the right.? Some said this were owing to continuing weakness in that wrist, though healed.? I held firm in the belief the weakness, its location and its cause might all be found elsewhere, and stood ready to argue the toss, but who really knew, and after Spanish Dave had passed into legend, which happened soon enough, who really cared, except perhaps for Stevie, and except perhaps for me?

The Homo! Homo! business from Tyler were another thing to finish not long after Spanish Dave took his fall.? This though were definitely not caused by mojos or ote else even remotely to do with the powers of darkness.? It were me.? I done what I'd said to Stevie I wouldn't do, and give What? Tyler a pasting.? I let him know he'd be due another and all if he didn't leave Stevie alone.? He got the message.?Come to think of it, perhaps the fact that I did do the big prat after saying I wouldn't were magic of a sort.? The way I done him definitely were.? I mean to say, it felt like magic to me, or it did in the little while I were about it.

[The Sea, The Beautiful Sea]? [Spell on You]? [The Weather That Christmas] [The Lost World]

[Novels by Clive Collins]

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