Life's Lottery (12 page)

The void still gapes. Maybe Sedgwater College is a way of putting it off? But if you have to work full out on an O-for-Ordinary Level course, how could you do at A-for-Advanced Level? The black void extends spider-tendrils.

You are often in a state of suppressed panic.

In the run-up to your exams – mostly CSEs, but those two O Levels loom larger – your parents take you to Sedgwater College for a special interview.

If you pass all your exams – a big if – the college will accept you, studying not for A Levels but for a certificate in business studies. That alone won’t get you into a university.

Business studies.

‘It’s a good grounding,’ Dad says. He left school at sixteen to work in the bank. ‘It could lead to a position. We always have openings.’

The future is an unimaginable emptiness. You have no conception of what you want from it. But of one thing you are sure. You don’t want to work in a fucking bank. You don’t want to spend two years on a certificate in business studies. You might as well buy a prat suit, like Laraine’s bank clerk ex-boyfriend Sean Rye wears, and bury yourself alive.

You feel yourself falling. Spider-webs of shade cling to you, wrapping you tight.

It’s all the worse for the time and effort you’ve wasted on what turn out to be useless O Levels. You were betrayed. When you were persuaded to take maths and French, you weren’t told you needed at least three O Level passes for it to mean anything. You might then have stretched yourself, and gone for history or art or English. It might then have meant something.

But you were conned. You’ve jumped through hoops – you’ve been patronised by that big-titted cow Rowena, you’ve given up hours of free time sweating over a slide-rule – and all for nothing. A big fat zero.

Again, you won’t talk to your parents.

You slacken off revising. Oddly, this means you’re less worried and more relaxed when you sit the exams, and probably do better than you would have done if you’d been screwing yourself into knots trying to be at your best.

After the exams are done, a German soldier leans over your wounded body and cackles, ‘For you, Tommy, ze education iss over.’ Whatever results you get, you’re not taking business studies. You go home and wait for the darkness to close in.

Go to 29.

‘
Y
our, uh,
friend’s
here,’ Mum says. ‘She looks very nice,’ she whispers. This is embarrassing. Your parents are delighted you have asked Mary out. They don’t remember the monster from primary school. Parents have an incredible ability to forget the unforgettable.

Mary lives in Achelzoy, the outlying village where Michael Dixon will throw his party after the show, and she has learned to drive. It seems strange but
she
is calling for
you
, in her mum’s Honda Civic.

That she can drive and you can’t makes you feel – briefly – like a girl. You’ve grown up familiar with the rituals of teenage courtship shown in American movies and TV programmes, but things are different in Britain. You suppose you and Mary have a date, but no one at Sedgwater College would call it that. Now you feel as if you are dolled up in a prom dress with a ribbon in your beehive hair, while Mary idles below in her hot-rod, a pack of cigarettes tucked into the upturned sleeve of her T-shirt and a wad of gum going in her mouth.

Downstairs, Mary waits. She is wearing a yellow dress and an orange overcoat. She has used make-up cleverly, to hide the scariness in her face.

Momentarily, you are certain you have made a mistake. Mary has agreed to go with you to the show and the party as part of her long-planned revenge scheme.

You called her a girl once and she nearly killed you. Now, you’ve asked her to be your girlfriend and she’s going along with it, drawing it out, scheming.

You think of the bucket of pig’s blood in
Carrie
.

Mary smiles and makes polite conversation with your mother about college work. Mary says she would like to take a year off after college to work before going on, if she does, to university. She is thinking of working on her uncle’s farm.

Dad, hiding behind a newspaper, is stricken. You notice, as usually you don’t, that Mary has a yokel burr. You’ve failed to pick up a Somerset voice but rarely realise how strongly accented your friends are. You imagine Mary driving a tractor, sucking a straw, wearing a smock.

You hurry through the hallway, hustling Mary out of the house. Your parents come to the door to watch you go, beaming with a pride that reddens your face. You mumble promises to be back sometime, though you fully expect not to return until tomorrow. They wave as if you were going to Afghanistan. You want to hit your dad right in the grin.

You struggle with the unfamiliar seatbelt in Mary’s car: it doesn’t seem to fit together properly, offering two identical catches that refuse to interlock. Mary slides into the driving seat and sits beside you, in the dark. You are sure her X-ray eyes discern the packet of condoms you have got from the machine in the Gents at the Lime Kiln after waiting for twenty minutes in a stall for the place to be empty so no one would see you. It is highly unlikely you’ll have any use for them, but you are used to planning for all eventualities.

Mary leans closer to you. To kiss?

A warm, sickly feeling nesdes in your throat. You feel the threat of an erection.

Mary turns on the overhead light.

‘Hello, you,’ she says.

Are you expected to kiss her?

‘Hello, Mary,’ you say, almost croaking.

‘Your mum don’t half go on.’

You
know
your face is scarlet. You mumble that Mary is right. Recently, your parents have been impossible. It must be their time of life.

Mary reaches down and sorts out your seatbelt. You have been trying to fasten yours to hers. You curse yourself for an idiot, knowing what the girl – it’s all right to call Mary a girl these days – thinks of you now.

‘Well,’ Mary says, smiling, ‘wagons roll.’

She lets off the handbrake.

It’s too late. You are now going out with Mary Yatman, and you have no idea what that means.

* * *

Later, with cider inside, you have relaxed. Checking your face in mirrors, you see you are no longer scarlet. You look cool. The black suede jacket was a worthwhile purchase. Some of the other students are in fancy dress, left over from parading round the town centre all day for charity.

The Rag Show is an informal event. Students and hangers-on drift in and out of the college auditorium. Knots of secretive kids drink or smoke, avoiding the lecturers nominally in charge.

You are outside the main building, with Mary. The weather has turned cold. Shallow pools of recent rain turn to gritty ice. The noise of Flaming Torture explodes through the tall windows. All their songs sound alike, and you can only hear Gully’s drum-beat and Vic’s cut-glass high notes.

Michael Dixon, in a dinner jacket and bow tie, is trying to calm down an irate, shivering neighbour who has turned up in her dressing-gown to complain about after-hours noise. He is talking fast, stuttering all over the show, to distract the woman from Vic’s lyrics.

Victoria Conyer is singing a song about strangling the Queen Mother with barbed wire.

Mary thinks it’s funny.

‘She’s got a lovely voice,’ she comments.

‘She’s certainly got the full octave.’

The song ends, with Vic screeching. Dogs in the area must be bursting eardrums.

You still aren’t sure about Mary. All through the evening, she’s been pretending to be normal. You know all about that. You’ve been pretending to be normal too. If anyone has questions about you being with Mary, they’ve kept them to themselves. You’ve been studiedly casual, occasionally looking at Mary from one side, thinking, ‘That’s my girlfriend.’

You sort of expected people to come up and congratulate you, to welcome you to the world of coupledom. All that has happened is that Roger has warned you against the wiles of wicked women. He is drifting around drunkenly embittered without Rowena (she stayed at home) and breathing cider on various girls. You think he’s got off with Jacqui Edwardes, which wouldn’t surprise anyone.

‘Are you coming to the party?’ Michael asks you both.

‘Might as well,’ Mary says.

‘Top hole,’ Michael says.

He is harassed by a hundred things that need organising and explaining. Michael gets off on orchestrating events.

‘Gramma’s away and there are no neighbours,’ Michael says. ‘That’ll be a relief. No possible complainants.’

Just inside the glass doors of the college hall, Desmond Fewsham lifts a fire extinguisher from its bracket, fending off a desperately drunk Mickey Yeo, who advances under a raised cloak like a punk Dracula. Michael, appalled, knows before it happens that Desmond will let the thing off, squirting foam all over the place. White froth spatters the doors and ghost-faces Mickey.

‘Excuse me,’ Michael says. ‘I zh-zh-zhust have to kill some close friends.’

As he stalks off, Mary laughs. You do too, and find you are holding her hand.

‘Glad you came?’ you ask.

She doesn’t answer, just squeezes your hand. It occurs to you that Mary has never been out with anyone before. She is just as lost as you are.

Maybe that’s not so bad.

Mickey, screaming and laughing through his frozen and foamed face, staggers through the double doors like a monster, arms outstretched.

Shadows flit across the car park. You realise how cold it is. Your breath and Mary’s frost in the air under the halogen lights.

‘Do you remember my monster, Keith?’

You say nothing, pretending. It was a long time ago. You
could
have forgotten.

‘My monster remembers you.’

She dances away from you, literally, picking up the beat of Flaming Torture. Harsh shadows make a kabuki mask of her face. Her hair falls over her forehead in a wing. Her lips are red as blood. Her teeth are sharp.

She dances with her shadows. They flicker away from her, spreading like skirts, and fall back into her body, scattered tendrils of her dark.

You wonder if you’ve drunk too much. Are you going to be sick?

Your head whirls as Mary dances, arms out, fingers beckoning you. With an effort of will, you hold back sickness, swallowing fluid.

You are in control.

You reach and take one of Mary’s hands. She pulls you out from between cars and you dance. Her shadow twines around yours.

* * *

It is time to drive out to Achelzoy, to Michael’s party. Mary lets go of you long enough to get into the driver’s seat of the Honda. She opens the passenger door and you get in, bumping your head on the frame.

‘Poor thing,’ she coos.

She has already reversed out of her parking space, nearly side-swiping a still-foamed Mickey, as you reach for that impossible, unfamiliar seatbelt. Your fingers might as well be sausages as they grope for the catch.

Mary has driven on to the road, face set in concentration. Outside the college is a traffic light. Amber switches to red. As Mary stops, the car interior is filled with a red glow. You are still trying to work the seatbelt.

Her face a glowing red, Mary leans close to you. The engine is in an idling thrum. You smell perfume. Mary’s lips are slightly open, her eyes almost closed.

You cannot get the belt to connect.

Party-goers stream across the road in front of the car, ignoring you both. They are whooping drunk.

The moment won’t last. Amber will come, then green.

What do you do?

If you insist Mary help you do up the seatbelt, read 35 and go to 37. If you kiss Mary, read 35 and go to 40.

Y
ou don’t tell Mum and Dad you’ve been offered the chance to take two O Levels. The school gives you a letter for them, which you read and dump. You mumble something about wanting to pass CSEs with good grades rather than fail O Levels, and Mr Bird accepts it. You sense his disappointment but he’s busy with too many other crises – Tony Bennett has scandalised the school by assaulting a woodwork teacher with a chisel – to follow up.

You spend more time with Vince and Marie-Laure, getting stoned and worrying. Vince accepts nothingness as his future, and has found out how to sign on for supplementary benefit as soon as school is over. You talk about ‘fill-in’ jobs, not careers but things you might do to get money.

You make plans to go to festivals, hitching around the country together. You see
Easy Rider
at the Palace Cinema and wonder about saving up to buy motorbikes.

School doesn’t take up much time or thought. You’re as clever and as qualified as you’re ever going to be. A lot of kids in the CSE stream bunk off more or less all the time. You don’t go as far as that and turn up to most of your classes. Through habit, as much as anything else. You can do the work without much fuss and bother, so you do.

Tony Bennett goes to approved school. Paul and Dickie idolise him, glorying in their tearaway reputations. They terrorise the more misfit O Level kids, preferably a year younger and a lot smaller than them. They have a collection of stolen ties, and extort dinner tickets from whoever seems easy meat. Once or twice, you go along with them, but the bullying seems childish, a throwback to infants’ school. A gang of girls (Vanda is one) harass poor, demented Timmy Gossett, which makes you sick.

Two terms slip by. At Easter 1976, you realise you have only until the summer before school runs out.

You’ve been in education – from Denbeigh Kindergarten through Ash Grove Primary through Hemphill Secondary Modern to Ash Grove Comprehensive – for all the life you can remember. Soon, that’ll be over. If you think about it too much, it stops you sleeping.

Dad takes you aside and a heavy pall of dread falls on you. He asks you about the future, about your plans, your thoughts. You have nothing to say to him. He doesn’t notice, and instead goes on about how he left school at sixteen to work in a bank and made something of himself.

You have a heart-clutching certainty he’ll make you work in the bank. Laraine’s ex-boyfriend Sean started as a tea-maker and minion before ascending to the position of clerk. You’ll become a teenage suicide statistic before you wear a prat suit like Sean Rye.