‘I remember.’ Edie swivelled to face him, legs apart, elbows resting on her knees. ‘My bit I mean. From last week.’
‘She remembers, Bri,’ said Tom, taking pride. He winked, lowering an eyelid brilliantly adorned with red and blue flowers. Brian had long been agitatedly concerned over Tom’s eyelids. As far as he could see the pattern never varied by as much as a petal’s fall. The vivid colours were never smudged. The thought had struck him once that the lids might be tattooed, that this was some test of high machismo that only the greatly brave essayed. He’d never had the nerve to ask.
‘Excellent. So what was the situation? Listen everyone.’ Brian clapped his hands.
‘I were this woman that got really mad at her husband.’
‘And do you remember why, Edie?’
‘Yeah. ’Cause he were married to me and knocking somebody else about.’
‘Ah.’
‘So I go: “Eat shit, scumbag. Piss off to the fat old slag. See if I care. And take your stinking dog with you.” He had this pit bull, y’see.’
‘Bor could be the dog,’ said Collar.
‘Bloody ain’t.’ The royal-blue track suit rolled into a tight ball, like a hedgehog.
‘He’s little enough,’ Denzil grinned. ‘Trouble is, he’d never bite anybody. ’Cause he’s chicken - aincha, Bor?’
‘No!’ Boreham screwed up his eyes and folded his arms around his head.
‘Chicken . . . chicken. Kwaa . . . kwaa . . .’ Denzil and Collar began to walk around, arms winged, moving in sharp, quick little jerks. Cast down glances darted everywhere. Feet, booted and sneakered, were slowly lifted and put down again with splayed out, finicky precision. It was very funny and, considering their sole experience of the real thing had been via Iceland’s frozen-food cabinet, amazingly accurate.
Brian hugged himself, rocking backwards and forwards on his non-existent bottom at these inventive and exuberant ad hoc measures. Then Denzil pecked Collar, who flapped his arms wildly in response and started to run about in all directions, squawking loudly.
Brian climbed wearily to his feet. Clapping his hands yet again and with much the same effect, he called: ‘OK. Kill the impro. That’s enough.’
Plainly it was not. The fowl play continued. Boreham, seeing his teasing compatriots were safely engaged elsewhere, decided after all to occupy the role of pit bull. He ran on all fours to where Brian was standing and started savaging his trousers.
‘Stop that, Boreham.’ Then, thinking a jovial note might restore the status quo, ‘Down boy!’ Little Bor lifted his leg.
Tom and Edie sat, unnaturally still and self-contained, watching. There was something about the quality of their attention, as they took in Brian’s dilemma, that disturbed him. He sensed both pity and relish, in which he was half right.
‘Everyone? Listen . . .’ He put a friendly chuckle into the words. Bor, encouraged, gave an extra matey nudge and Brian crashed to the floor.
At this point the swing door was pushed open and Miss Panter, the head’s secretary, showed in two men. One, tall and heavily built, wore a tweed overcoat. The second, slim as a whip, was wrapped in black leather. Only Brian did not recognise the intruders immediately for what they were.
‘Mr Clapton?’
‘Yes.’
The older man came over and showed Brian a card with a photograph on. ‘Chief Inspector Barnaby, Causton CID. We’d like a word, please.’
‘Of course.’ Brian scrambled up awkwardly. ‘What about?’
‘In private.’
The younger man held the door open and Brian followed them out, unaware that his stock had just zoomed from rock bottom to something approaching gilt-edged.
They walked briskly towards the headmaster’s office, Brian, who happened to be in the middle, with the air of a squaddie being escorted to the jail house.
Troy had re-entered the portals of his Alma Mater with a certain swagger but no sense of nostalgia or pride. He had hated school. But, knowing from an early age what he wanted to be when he grew up, he had worked hard at the subjects that bored him as well as the few (social studies, computer science) that, just about, held his interest. He also avoided mixing with any hard-line bunking-off troublemakers. His ferocity at games, which kept him off the sports field almost as much as on, also kept him free of the jeering hassle any consistent attempts at serious study would otherwise have provoked. Now, striding over stained brown haircord down well-remembered corridors he muttered, ‘God, I loathe this place.’
Barnaby had finished his own schooling in the early fifties, before the local grammar had been integrated, but his daughter had been through the comprehensive system, eventually winning an exhibition to Cambridge. The Barnabys had been members of the PTA during her time at ‘this place’ and both had been impressed by the dedication of the teachers - often, it had seemed to them, in the face of overwhelming odds.