For about three days, I had more room.
Not much. Just a little more space in the corridors — people stepping back slightly, adjusting. I didn’t know what to make of it. The word had travelled, the way those things travel.
It didn’t last.
By Monday morning assembly, the Bully was back.
Slade was everywhere that year. Every corner shop, every transistor radio, every third-year singing the chorus wrong in the corridor. Cum on feel the noize. The school was full of it.
He stood directly behind me. I know it was deliberate because he did it six times. Maybe eight. Every time the headmaster made an announcement, he’d knee me in the back of my knee and my leg would buckle. He and his cronies found this hilarious.
I said nothing. Three years of practice.
First period, we had vehicle engineering together. One of the few classes we shared.
The classroom smelled of two-stroke petrol — that minerally, slightly medicinal smell that gets into your clothes and stays there. We’d been working on the same lawnmower engines all year. Taking them apart, putting them back together. That morning, I was removing the oil sump. The bolt was an inch and a quarter across and very tight. I had a large spanner in my hand.
He came in with his entourage. Not the Minion — he wasn’t that menacing with his arm in plaster and a sling — but he had new ones. Different faces, same function.
He positioned himself behind me. Started whispering in my ear. Then he kneed me.
I turned to hit him. I forgot I was holding the spanner.
It wasn’t my fist that connected with his head. It was the spanner.
He went down.
I don’t remember the sound. I remember the silence after. The whole room looking. Him on the floor, people crouching around him, me still holding the spanner. He wasn’t cut, but he was out.
You could hear Mr. Stubbins coming from two hundred yards. He had a built-up shoe and a clamp of a walk that arrived before he did. Whale cord trousers. Elbow patches. Tissue paper stuck to the shaving cuts on his face. By the time he reached a room, everyone had already straightened.
Two chairs sat outside his office. They were rarely empty.
I sat in one for a long time.
When he finally called me in, he said he was considering whether to expel me.
I said: why?
He said: I think you’re a psychopath.
My parents had been to see him about the bullying. More than once. He had intervened — called in the boys who’d been bullying me and told them I had mentioned their names in my sleep. It made things worse. He knew that.
Last week you broke someone’s arm, he said. This morning you’ve given someone else concussion. What am I to believe?
I was fourteen. I had been taking the long way home since I was eleven.
I don’t remember exactly what I said. I know I tried to explain that I was defending myself. He listened as if I were giving evidence against myself.
He didn’t expel me.
What I remember is what he said before he let me go.
Your time at this school is hanging by a thread. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.
I walked out. Passed the chairs. Both still occupied.
I was never bullied at school again.
Part 1: Three routes home from school. The direct one, down Chesterfield Road, is where they’ll be waiting. By November the nurses at Chesterfield Royal know him by name. Carl Douglas is everywhere. Two belts. Six fractures. Then the Minion appears in the bus lane in a blazer two sizes too big, and the lapels are exactly the right height.
Part 2: Vehicle engineering, 1974. A lawnmower engine on the bench, an inch-and-a-quarter bolt. The Bully recovered from the bus lane and came back with a different plan. He positioned himself behind. Started whispering. Then he kneed me. I turned to hit him. I forgot I was holding the spanner.