Peter May - Runaway

Jeff had already left school by then. Failing all but one of his ‘O’ Grades, he had quit at the end of the fourth year and got himself a job as a trainee car salesman with Anderson’s of Newton Mearns, a big sprawling Rootes dealership that sat on the south-west corner of Mearns Cross. It was Jeff who owned the group van, a beat-up old Commer, and drove us to all our gigs. By way of compensation he did none of the gear humping, and before and after bookings he sat up in the front of the van, smoking, while we loaded and unloaded.

The rest of us had gone back for a fifth year to sit our Highers, but the fact that Jeff was out there working made him seem older than us, more mature. Although nothing could have been further from the truth.

But Jeff enjoyed coming back to the school. Lording it over us. We were mere schoolkids, and he adopted a worldly air of superiority. We all smoked in those days, except for Luke. The new Player’s No. 6, small and rough and cheap in their blue and white striped packs. But Jeff had arrived that night with something a little different. Pot. Or marijuana, to give it its proper name. Or dope, as it’s known these days. Jeff called it ‘grass’ because that’s what the American kids called it. But it wasn’t. It was cannabis resin. A little chunk of it wrapped in silver paper, dark and pungent.

It was the first time any of us had taken anything stronger than beer. We went round to the sheds at the back of the school before the dance and gathered in a huddle as Jeff ‘cooked’ the resin in its silver paper, held over the flame of a match. Then he crumbled it into some loose tobacco in a cigarette paper and rolled it into a joint. You heard all sorts of things in those days about how ‘reefers’ could make you lose your mind, and we were all a bit nervous. Jeff said he’d smoked it often, and I thought that wasn’t a particularly great recommendation.

Luke declined, and watched in consternation as the rest of us passed the joint around, and were reduced within minutes to helpless giggling idiots. I can’t ever remember having been so hopelessly amused by nothing at all.

Fortunately, the worst effects had worn off by the time we took to the stage, and we were just feeling mellow and relaxed.

We had a forty-five-minute break at the interval, and I begged Jeff to give me a piece of resin. I wanted to smoke with Jenny. And I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that the pot might lead us to more than the heavy petting that we’d indulged in up until then.

There were lots of kids milling around outside, so we went to the boiler room where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed. I had a big furry coat in those days, which my mother had bought me in Copeland’s department store in Sauchiehall Street. It wasn’t real fur, of course, just some kind of coarse, shredded polyester that melted if you burned it with your cigarette. But it went down to my knees, had a big collar, and was as warm as anything in the winter.

I laid it down on the concrete floor and we squatted on it, and I fumbled my way through the cooking ritual, then managed to spill both the crumbled resin and the loose tobacco into the lining.

Which was when the door burst open, and the janitor stood there in his dark blue uniform, glaring at us in the light of the single yellow bulb that lit the room, and foiling my plans to lose my virginity.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’

We both scrambled to our feet.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

But he sniffed the air, and there was a knowing look on his face. ‘You kids have been smoking pot, haven’t you?’

‘No, sir,’ Jenny said truthfully.

He nodded towards my coat on the floor, the contents of the joint along with a cigarette paper and a piece of silver foil scattered over the lining. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Just a cigarette,’ I said, stooping to pick up the coat.

But the edge in his raised voice stopped me short. ‘Leave it!’ He made us stand back as he crouched down to fold the coat carefully over on itself, so that the remains of the unsmoked joint were gathered inside. He stood up again, holding the coat to his chest. ‘I know you two,’ he said. ‘You’ll be hearing about this in the morning.’ He jerked his thumb towards the door. ‘Out!’

‘What about my coat?’

He gave me a dangerous look. ‘You’ll get it back tomorrow, son.’

I don’t remember much about the second half of the dance, and I know I never slept a wink that night. And it was with a sick feeling in my gut that I walked to school the next day. A dull, cold day with a low, pewtery sky drizzling on a colourless world.

The summons to the headmaster’s room came before ten o’clock. I walked the length of the lower-ground corridor with legs like jelly, only to find a pale Jenny sitting in the outer office. I sat beside her without a word, ignoring the frequent, curious glances of the school secretary, and we waited for what seemed like an eternity but was probably just a few minutes. Jenny’s hand reached for mine in the gap between the chairs, unseen by the gimlet-eyed secretary. And when she found it, she gave it the smallest of squeezes. I felt an almost disabling wave of gratitude and affection for that tiny gesture of support, and it steeled me to face the dark moments to come.

And come they did.

The door to the headmaster’s room opened and he stood glaring at us for a moment. He was a thickset man with thinning grey hair oiled back over a broad skull. He had a grey overtrimmed moustache that was almost Hitleresque, and wore a grey tweed suit. In fact, everything about him was grey, even his complexion and his colourless, washed-out eyes. The sole exception was the nicotine that stained the fingers of his right hand. He was known by everyone at the school, teachers and pupils alike, simply as Willie.

He flicked his head back towards his room. ‘In here. Both of you.’ He closed the door behind us and left us standing as he went to his desk. He turned, holding up a white envelope. ‘I imagine if I handed this over to the police, they’d find that it contained grains of an illegal Class B drug called cannabis.’ He looked at me. ‘Collected from the lining of your coat, Mackay. A very serious offence, possession of cannabis.’

‘It was entirely my fault, sir. Jenny had no idea what was in the cigarette.’

His eyes flickered towards her and back again. ‘Is that the truth, Mackay?’

‘Yes, sir. It was all my idea.’

‘Not sure I believe you, sonny.’ He swivelled his eyes back to Jenny and he sighed deeply. ‘On the other hand, Miss Macfarlane here has an exemplary record. Academically bright. Destined for university. It would be a shame to spoil her future because of a moment of stupidity.’ Eyes back on me. ‘And bad judgement in her choice of boyfriend.’ He turned again to Jenny. ‘So you can go, young lady. But I want you back here in the morning with a letter from your father explaining the circumstances in which you were found in the boiler room with Jack Mackay.’

I glanced at Jenny, and saw that she had turned a ghostly shade of pale.

‘Go!’

As she turned, she caught my eye for a fleeting moment, then was gone, leaving me standing to face Willie alone. If he was going to take the tawse to me, I was determined to refuse it. He tilted his head, and the slightest of smiles crept over his lips. ‘Jack Mackay. Jack the Lad. Ye of the unexplained absences and the poor exam results. Ye of the big coat and the long hair, guitar player in a trashy pop group. Setter of such a bad example to the whole school. You think I haven’t seen you in the corridor, sonny? Doing your cock o’ the walk. Well, you cocked it up royally this time, boy.’ He paused to let that sink in for a moment. Then he waved the envelope at me. ‘If I were to report this to the police, it would be a stain on the rest of your life.’ He dropped the envelope on the desk. ‘So be grateful I’m not that vindictive.’ He let that hang for a very long moment. ‘Have you anything to say for yourself?’