On a School Leavers' Outing

"Are your parents still alive?" Mary asked, in May 1996.

There was a sort of yellowy glow in the light brown sky. The day would be hot and sticky.

" Expect sneezing, wheezing and personal hygiene problems. So, let it all hang out," twanged the local radio station, before turning the music back up, to jangle and fray, it seemed. We'd been travelling for about half an hour and had another thirty miles or so to go. Baseball cap turned backwards, the tall one called Billy Jones began manfully letting in the M25 to impress the girls, opening sunroofs, until one with rusty catches wrecked his chances. He tried to laugh it off as jeers of "wanker" gauntleted him back to his seat.

It was one of those elderly coaches which, having wasted their youth touring Europe, was no longer quite up to serving England as well as she expected. Before long, no doubt, it would be sent to grunt out its last days ferrying civilisation and guns round Africa, or collapse, overstuffed and oversuckled like a weary sow in the heat of India. You felt the fusty fabric of the seats bore the imprints of the dead and the dying: pensioners packing in their last days; football fans fading away after the final whistle; children who'd gone home for the last time and left themselves on the beach.

About to sit their GCSEs in a few days time, the forty-five Bishops Cross Comprehensive pupils were in no hurry to arrive; nor were they thinking it was better to travel. They'd done travelling. Holidays: they'd seen the world already and it was as boring as being asked to show where they'd been was to be found on a map. As if they could. When Mary asked her question, they were already eating crisps and sweets at nine o'clock in the morning because everybody was eating crisps and sweets at nine o'clock in the morning, while sharing walkmans and tapes with their mates; and marking out their areas with insults about taste in music - and loners. Loners who stuck to their guns and shrivelled behind their shields, or who changed tastes as often as they belched and lashed out with their bottles of Coke to show they weren't loners at all.

Soon they'd be  swaggering. All forty-five of them, and their mates on the other coaches, and the other schools, they'd all be swaggering.  And they'd show us. This was their fifth and final end-of-year trip to Chessington World of Adventures. If they screamed and got frightened, or pretended to, and got soaking wet on the rides, it would be like the falling in and out of love they'd done so often, and would reckon they'd got over and would never remember. And they would make a deliberate point of not remembering this day for the rest of their lives, the best days of which were at this moment being towed, rattling and squeaking, to the breaker's yard. And they wouldn't admit they'd just had the best days of their lives because they didn't agree with what teachers told them.  On principle.

Looking very summery and agreeably substantial in shorts and a revealing, sleeveless blouse, Mary was a Special Needs assistant who hadn't had the disconcerting pleasure of my company before. She had enveloping warmth and a heady, inexpensive perfume that took thirty years off me as well as any  madeleine.She would need, however, to be good at her job to keep a conversation going with me, or someone had tipped her off, I hoped, and supplied her with a set of questions before she got on the coach. For both of us it would be either chat or have an awkward silence. I'd done some professional sitting with the pupils at the back to see they settled down for as long as I could put off having to move forward to appear sociable. As I nervously eased myself onto the side of my seat which was furthest from the expanses of her arm and thigh, I saw she had a newspaper.  The Sun. She apologised: "My son brings it back from his paper-round," and I immediately felt less tense: she'd be able to offer me it if we ran out of conversation.

Her last question was disconcerting. In successfully dealing with the others: the usual "Is your wife a teacher?" and "How old are your children?", I had told all and hardly had any secrets left. Suddenly, nodding and smiling were coming so easily that I found I didn't need to counter her questions with my own as she supplied the information herself anyway. But, were my parents still alive? I had to think quickly, keep my face right, and suppress incipient embarrassment because, like a sack of flour, her contents had settled, producing zones of sticky heat where we touched. Sensing her line of questioning meant she was going to make another revelation about herself, I wondered if I would be able to cope if she wanted to share something unpleasant. Would my hesitant interpersonal skills extend to showing sympathy, to grief-counselling? I was beginning to think I had shown too much empathy for my own good.

"Sit down, please, Billy," I snapped.

"I just wanted the driver to play this tape, sir."

"Not a good idea, Billy, he's got these road-works to get through."

In fact, it was more complicated than this; there was the inner me to think about. How long did I have to come up with an answer? I was reeling on three counts. Firstly, she'd hit me with the implication that I looked old enough to have parents who might be on their way, but I'd convinced myself that unless you got ill, or had an accident, or had early death in your genes, you could look after yourself, and choose to go when you wanted, when you'd done all the "carpe diem" possible. This might entail practically living forever. But we couldn't have too many people thinking like that, could we? There aren't enough Eastbournes in England! So, I didn't want to let that bit of my private person slip out, did I?

"Are you any good at fixing walkmans, sir? My tape's got stuck."

"I'll see what I can do, Georgia-Lee. Go and sit down."

"Thank you, sir." She minced along the catwalk back to her seat.

Count number two: there was the business of being upset. Grieving and all that. My headmaster claimed he was sorry when I told him my father had died. Better if he'd asked first how I felt. Funny how people think you;ll be upset. My mother didn't seem upset either, not during the short address in the crematorium - there really wasn't much the vicar could say; nor anyone else for that matter: not after the curtains had closed; and not during the trip back to the house at a faster speed, as fast as was respectable because there was only the Social Services job left to do - the one with no one still alive or no one bothering - and then they could knock off early.

"Put your litter in the bags!" I yelled, retrieving an empty Coke can which had appeared by my feet.

The cars followed a route I knew by heart, streets behind Tranmere Rovers' football ground in which I'd played as a child, ridden my bike, grazed my knees - days when I could have started preparing for his death. I could have looked at the tarmac outside number 26 Parkheath Road and said to myself this would be where the shiny black hearse would park and, in the tradition of the well-trained horse-drawn variety, relieve itself with a little puddle of equally shiny black oil.  And we'd come out of the house, the three of us, and follow his coffin, to the crematorium. My mother, my sister and myself. And a few friends he didn't have. With miserable faces. But I didn't prepare for it; I went out to play instead - in the fifties - when you had the conspiracies of silence, the whispering, people drawing curtains -  iron curtains, spies everywhere. And you took off your cap when hearses went by, you didn't stare, you showed respect - except for the King, of course, when he died - then you could stare. On Movietone. Clearly he didn't matter; it was all right to look at his fancy coffin and all those streets of people with their miserable faces.

"Turn it up, driver!" A track they approved of began playing.

 Catafalque, cortège: lovely new words and Miss Groves, whose need to stand you on a chair and slap your legs if you talked in the juniors didn't diminish in the slightest when she became Mrs Baker, could have set us a project on the King's funeral. She could have said "... and don't forget to use any nice words you've learnt." The late King George. All that tragedy wasted. She was no better when she announced: "Christopher's not here today. He's lost his mother." She didn't say "died." Perhaps Mrs Baker's still alive, crippled with guilt in a home, realising at last that some of us who hadn't begun to understand what was behind the iron curtains must have thought Christopher was very careless. He was back the next day anyway, in goal as usual; not looking any different, when we stared.

"Shut up, you loner! We don't want to hear that crap!"

Matter-of-fact was what it was, my father's do, like a combination of putting her best hat on and going down town to pay the rates on time and getting someone to take her old cooker away. She wasn't unfeeling; I did see her cry once - when we took our old cat, Peter, after he'd had a bad case of constipation in the coal-shed, to the vets, and she heard the whiff of gas. This time she was past crying. And not because his death was not unexpected - what with all those strokes he'd had and all those blessed trips to the hospital. With her feet.

"Bugger" and "swine" - those were the words she kept using, to his empty chair. Not the vicar, he didn't use words like that - he stuck to saying what vicars say - that death's a wall and one day we'll see what's on the other side. Not him, I hope, I expect my mother thought. Not that I had any reason to think that during the service. They'd always seemed a not too unhappy couple whose rows were reasonably quiet and didn't happen too often, and who didn't embarrass you in front of your mates. "Bugger"and "swine" - she explained later. My sister was older, she already knew.

"Who are you calling a loner?"

Not upset, not grieving, none of us. Was I meant to tell Mary? That we must have been an odd family? That she was sitting next to a scarred member of this odd family? Someone who had driven two hundred and fifty miles back home to Birkenhead to see his father in hospital, and had to live with the memory of having to sit and watch helplessly while he dribbled and spilt his drink, kicking his restless legs that were snarled up in aertex blankets? A son who, on several "last" visits had said "Goodbye and see you next time, Dad"; and noticed he had started holding onto my hand a little longer each time, his expression somewhere between late affection, panic and balls-up. Was I part of his balls-up? An accident in an air-raid shelter?

"Hard luck, driver! You missed that one!"

Count number three: what to say about my mother? "How will I ever manage when he's gone?" over and over in their house always as cold as the winter outside. Did she mean how would she cope with not having him there, getting on her nerves, twiddling knobs on the radio till she screamed at him to stop and the widower next door turned his television up? But she couldn't blame him for the cold. Too house-proud for her own good. Obsessive. She'd never wanted them "coming in, making messes" to fit central heating. "They'd make bits everywhere. Bad enough with him never clearing up." Hypothermia. Poor circulation and falling over. I followed her, slowly, upstairs. "I can't even change a light-bulb. He did everything." Fetching the little ladder he kept in the box-room for little jobs - while refusing to take out life-insurance for the big one - I began showing her how to change a light bulb - I thought I'd better change it anyway as she reckoned it was "about to go" - I looked down: she had dropped to the floor of the landing, and was screaming and kicking her legs. "I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" - a powerful technique she'd used nearly half a century before to stop me blubbing with cold in the bath when there was no hot water, and just an effete paraffin heater, making a stink.

"Billy! Just what do you think you're playing at?"

Say that she's fallen over so often she's gone into a home? "Never thought my children would put me in an institution!"  Say that her numbness one day turned to anger? That she's started walking the streets in her nightdress, wanting to die? That, unable to do so, she lives only to seize unhappiness and turn it into an art-form? That she keeps remembering his last word to her was "sorry." That why he said sorry has been on her mind ever since? That she doesn't know whether it was for dying and leaving her to it, or for his first act of violence when they were newly married and he beat her breasts black and blue? "The way she kept house," he complained, to her parents. Or the other time when he broke her thumb in a fight? During the war. After she called in when she was down town. With my sister. Saw him on his knees. Over "that bit of a girl"in his bicycle shop. On the counter, dangling her legs. And all the time she had someone else, but he still kept going out in the evenings, pathetically, "to stretch his legs" past her house. Still going years later. Took me with him. A row of houses opposite the Co-op. Or was he just sorry he was making another mess for her clear up? Perhaps I should simply say she keeps wanting her house back, where she was happier when she was lonely, cold and falling over? Or that she pours out tea rather well, for the other residents in the home?

"Sorry, missed what you said," contorting my face to mean I couldn't hear very well above the grumbling of the engine.

"I said are your parents still alive?"

"I lost my father about ten years ago. My mother's in a home. She's got all her faculties, though."

"Would you like a sweet, sir, ma'am?" It was Billy Jones, limiting the damage, his cap turned the other way.

"Er...Thank you very much. Very kind. I'll save it for later."

"Not for me, thanks, I'm watching my weight, Billy," Mary chuckled, releasing a whiff of perfume as she shook.

"Go on, ma'am."

"Oh, all right. Thanks. Now hurry up back to your seat, please."

Making sure he obeyed, she turned to look over the seat. It was like removing sticking plaster: the adjoining patches of skin coming apart. As her pendulous breasts swung past my ear, I said, "Mind if I have a quick look at your paper?" By now Billy had sat down. Mary settled back into her seat and handed me the paper. I looked up a few moments later, and contemplated the road ahead, curving round, almost imperceptibly, in a vast, satisfying circle. Calmly, I set about trying to fix Georgia-Lee's walkman.

Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, but feel like a stupid American for not being able to figure out:

"Baseball cap turned backwards, the tall one called Billy Jones began manfully letting in the M25 to impress the girls, opening sunroofs, until one with rusty catches wrecked his chances."

I think M25 is a major highway, I know what sunroofs are in the US but I am baffled by everything else in this sentence. I would love to be enlightened.

[Gerald Parker]

Thanks for liking my story. About that sentence: in "Baseball cap turned backwards", "turned" is a past participle and not an active so the phrase is in the Latin ablative absolute style and means "With his baseball hat turned backwards." "letting in the M25", i.e. letting in all the noise and air pollution from the motorway. "one with rusty catches wrecked his chances." means that because Billy couldn't open or had to struggle with this sunroof, he would have appeared feeble and therefore unable to impress the girls. "wrecked his chances", of course, means that the girls would not fancy him. Does this help?

[SweetNutmeg]

Ahh, ok. I figured out the baseball cap thing myself, although I am not familiar with the terminology you used. Like I said, I'm American. Our schools aren't too great. And the rest now makes perfect sense. Thank you.