Mark Swallow - Zero Per Cent

“And they tend to become very difficult adolescents. Difficult men.”

“All schools produce difficult men – all schools. Jack will learn to cope. He’s got so much going on here. He doesn’t need to go whizzing off. He can learn to whiz here.”

“He’s sensitive. He’ll be bullied.”

“And he won’t be bullied somewhere else?”

“Bullied in the wrong way.”

Suddenly I was standing, with what Razza was to describe later as “summat shining in your eye”. My legs were no longer lamb-like. It was coiled-spring time.

I grabbed a racquet and fired myself towards the older boys. Half a mile away a Lear jet was accelerating at us, forcing its noise towards the playground.

“Where you going?” Michael barked.

Ducking into the group of older boys, I snatched back the tennis ball from the bully and barged out through the other side. The roar of the plane did little to drown out “You little fuck!” and “Shit, back here now!” but I was running, running towards the fence and everyone in the playground was looking at me. I had just seconds before the plane took off and before I would be brought down, pulled off the chicken wire like a convict.

When I fancied I could see the olive in Dad’s Martini, I slid to a stop, swung the racquet and, with champagne timing, crashed the balding sphere into space. As we all watched it go I caught the look of amazement, crinkling into fury, on the pilot’s speeding face. The whites of his eyes lit up for an astonished moment as the ball hit his shiny jet.

“Right between the wheels,” yelled Michael, skidding to my side with a bunch of new admirers. “Wot a shot!”

They grabbed their groins and danced in mock agony, pretending to be nutted jets.

“Aim high!” I shouted. “Forget your fucking football and aim high!”

The sphere returned to planet Earth to be caught by a laughing senior. More and more kids were doing the groin dance now and pecking their heads up into the air. I began to laugh. If I had really, really caught the Lear between the legs, Dad might have felt the tremor too. Had I made him sit up and take note of me already?

Anything seemed possible during this Lucky Break when the kids of Chevy Oak first looked up from their dribbling. Everyone was congratulating me and cussing pony-tail.

“You was shown!”

“Little kid told you, man,” said another. “That was bad!”

He staggered off and I was swamped.

As they hammered my back I smiled. I couldn’t help hearing Dad’s warning.

“In two years’ time Jack will be a basket case, bullied to a jelly.”

“Shut up, Martin.”

Shut up the pair of you! Just let me enjoy it!

“I will shut up – in a minute. Because if my prediction is true – when it becomes true – I as his father demand the right to send Jack, our by now gelatinous and quivering son, to a fee-paying school.”

“After two years he will be even more a part of this area than he is already. He will be two years stronger, Martin. He will have confidence which cannot be bought and no ‘rights’ of yours are going to mess that up…”

No-one was in at home but Ronaldson rang to confirm that I would have an enormous detention on Friday. I accepted.

“It’s not an invitation, Jack.”

“Then you can expect me, sir.”

Next day I felt I should go back into the playground. But what more could I add to my mantra of yesterday, “Aim high”? Of course every cupboard under every stair had been done over, everyone was brandishing a racquet, squash, badminton, anything – and everyone was scouring the airways. Eventually a jet approached. I was going to give the order – the least I could do – but they all fired far too early. Birds were winded but the plane escaped and hundreds of tennis balls landed in airport territory. Security’s Alsatians were soon happily collecting them from the lush grass. More teachers appeared from the school building and they shouted out punishments. I was about the only kid without a racquet.

My jet strike has passed into legend. The day they looked up from their football at the big, wide sky and saw me hit something huge. I was established at Chevy Oak before most of my year group knew the way to the toilets. Jumbo Curling before I had a single pube.

Razza also earned himself a seat at that fashionable first detention. Keen on calling up the emergency services at Primary, he had rung the airport to ask if we could have our balls back – and given his name.

“Detention in your first week, Jack,” said Dad, back from Hong Kong.

“Yup.”

“What did you get it for?”

I explained. He said he did sometimes take a Martini but was never likely to fly in a Lear jet.

“You seem to be making your mark, eh, Jack?”

“Oh Martin, please! Stay out of his education if you’re going to be like that. Imagine what it was like for me dealing with the tutor – and a phone call from the Head.”

“At least you aren’t having to sew him up again, Polly.”

They both ruffled different sides of my head, which was quite big enough for them not to have to mingle fingers. What a good moment, I thought, to put Grandad’s clicker to use. This was the only material object he had handed down after a career on the trains and Dad had passed it straight on to me. I saw a chance to use this device, with which Grandad had counted many thousands of rail travellers during his ticket-collecting days, to provide my banker of a Dad with some statistics, some hard evidence (to back up my permanent grin) of what a good time I was having.

Kids I didn’t even know greeted me at the end of Rockenden Road. I notched up seven clicks on my way into school. Others competed for my attention in the corridors and on the stairs. Everywhere it was “Safe, Jack, safe.”

“Sweet as a nut, Jumbo.”

“You’re a chief!”

“Jack’s lush an’ all!”

Click, click, click.

But how safe did I feel, how sweet was my nut, how lush my chiefiness? The day would show me. The day would show Dad. Statistics.

By break I was up to 157. What with corridor greetings, friendly cussings and happy exchanges during afternoon Maths when a cover teacher tried to control us with her skirt still tucked into her pants, I was pushing 500 clicks by the end of the day. Click, click, click. Safe, Jumbo Jack, safe mate, lush and wicked.

Dad was with us for supper as I explained the study.

“He’s enjoying himself, isn’t he, Martin?”

“Four hundred and ninety two clicks today, Dad.”

“Don’t spread yourself too thinly.” But I could tell he was pretty pleased. “Establish yourself soundly, remember?” he added. “Build up your defences.”

“Listen to the warlord,” Mum laughed.

“Dad’s a chief, Mum.”

“He’s listening to me all right, Polly…” said Dad.

But when I went back in to tell them I’d also found 42 text messages on my mobile, they were getting at each other again.

I now needed a woman. Rather than pick a peer I chose Miss Price, our young French teacher. With a word to one or two key players, I ensured that our first few lessons went well. Even Michael shut up for me.

“Jack Curling,” she said after a fortnight of progress in our mixed ability set, “you are a good man to go into the jungle with.”

“And you are a superb teacher, miss,” I groundlessly confided. “It is such a romantic tongue, la langue Français.”

I fell in love with her, ignored all other subjects and called her “maman” twice by mistake. And, Mum, I’m afraid her perfume was the first I ever noticed.

Meanwhile I decided to investigate other areas of the school, now that I had conquered the playground. Past the chilly pong and wild noises of the toilets I went, past the bins where gulls fought pigeons for the canteen’s old buns, and up past the crazy, clanging music rooms. I was wondering whether there might be opportunities for further self-establishment – in the school library.