Иэн Рэнкин - The Flood

How’s the money working out? Don’t take any nonsense from that bloody bank manager, and please remember that you have my money in the account as a standby. I would be really grateful if you would feel that you can freely use it. I told you. It has been arranged with the bank for ages. I’ll never touch that money, I don’t need it, and I’m sure Mum and Dad would have wanted you to take it. I know they would. Please.

Well, Mary, I’m being allowed out of doors for a breath of fresh construction-site air in five minutes, so I better finish this. It was real nice to get your letter, Mary. Thanks. And keep them coming. Also, tell Sandy that if he doesn’t write to me soon I will do something drastic to him while he sleeps! And all my love to him as well as to your good, good self. Closing for now.

All my love,

The daytimes glazed through the rest of the spring, blowing warm winds and the smell of grass into the nostrils of those still aware enough to appreciate such things. Everything opened up into the transient summer. Sandy would rise early, afraid of oversleeping for his exams. He took them seriously, and did an hour’s revision before breakfast. Then, leaving his mother at the door, he would choose a stone to kick all the way to school.

The examination hall was stuffy and full of smiling, unserious contenders. He feared to look up in case his attention should be distracted and his crammed memory evaporate entirely. He had been storing rote answers for weeks. It needed only one of Belly Martin’s funny faces to knock a dozen equations from his head. So he kept his eyes on the desk, though the air near the wood was dank and overpowering. Here was his school career: scrawls on a scratched desktop; a rickety chair; a list of multiple-choice questions; a one-in-five chance; feet sliding over the dusty tiled floor. One teacher sat at the front of the hall reading his newspaper. Another stared out of a window as he paced the rows of desks. This was it. Everything. It was ludicrous. Nothing about it equated with ten years of schooling. Sandy was suddenly glad that he had swotted — not that he meant to stay on, but grades mattered. It had been drummed into him until it had seemed as casual a knowledge as the gospel stories he had known as a child, and like them this new knowledge — not knowledge, but facts pure and simple would be forgotten in time.

The examinations weren’t too difficult. Between them there were days of nothing, a time to laze and to taste freedom and to study the few sentences which constituted a distillation of several years’ teaching. Sandy carried his lists of important sentences and equations around with him. He would take a list from his pocket and study it at random moments. These nuggets replaced, for a few weeks, his collection of good stones.

After each exam he was pleasantly surprised to feel himself drained and in need of sleep. He would go home and doze in the chair until tea-time. On waking, he would be unable to recall many of the exam questions. He would delete from his lists the information no longer needed, then would take the examination paper from his pocket and examine it as if it were an alien object. He could not have answered it. It would not seem the same paper that he had so recently sat. Even the words would be unfamiliar. It was a curious sensation, and one which others experienced. Belly Martin laughed at them when they discussed it one day.

‘You’re fucked then, aren’t you? When that happens it means you haven’t been concentrating. You might have written anything down. Serves you right, you fucking swots. What good will it do you when we leave? There’s no jobs anyway. Why bother?’

Belly Martin’s stomach sagged obscenely over his waistband, and his pudgy fingers would lift leftovers from a neighbour’s school-dinner plate straight into his gaping mouth. Fat boys are usually ridiculed at school, both in comics and in reality, but Belly was too ghastly to have even that fate befall him. He was not the archetypal fat boy.

Indeed, Sandy often shuddered when he contemplated the differences. Belly was vicious. He would hug you to him in a clinch and would crush your face against his chest, smothering you. His shirt smelled of vinegar, as if he had not washed for a long time. He lied and stole and cheated, and if confronted by a teacher would retreat into the guise of typical fat boy — picked on, unloved, unwanted, innocent. To the frustration of his classmates, it was a part he played to perfection. He would spread his arms wide plaintively, and his eyes and mouth would open in astonishment, then he would blurt out his controlled acting until the teacher frowned and looked again for a culprit. Belly would soon be grinning, and would reach a hand deep into his trouser pocket, wriggling it around until he found some ancient paper-covered sweet. This he would crunch into tiny pieces, still laughing and slavering mild taunts at those who had informed on him.

‘Ha! Better luck next time, clipes. Go tell fucking teacher. Ha!’

Sandy was revolted by the boy and always had been. He seemed impervious to pain, either mental or physical, like a lumbering dinosaur. That was the frustrating thing. Sandy tried not to be sitting near him in the examination hall. Belly scratched his bemused face with a rasping sound like the unwrapping of a difficult toffee and made life unbearable for those around him.

Revenges, often colossal in intent, were planned against him, but were never carried through with any degree of success. Sandy had planned several of his own. The simplest was the braining of Belly with an empty bottle in a dark alley. The most complex involved pieces of machinery, a trifle containing ground glass, and a nest of rats. Sandy used to keep these plans in a stolen jotter in his secret drawer at home, but he had guiltily torn them up just before his exams in case there was a God and it or he or she decided to spite him with low marks. It had been childish anyway. Any worthwhile revenge would be simple and short-winded. But what? That was the problem.

After the final examination, Economics, a few of them went down to the park with a carry-out filched from Colin’s father’s drinks cabinet. They leapt what had once been the hot burn — now a sorry old thing, dehydrated, its clay a raw, rusty colour — and jogged across the playing field in the direction of a small pond in the Wilderness. They carried the cans of warm lager inside their rolled-up jackets. They were so nearly men, only weeks away from the dole and the free money that came with it.

All except Sandy.

‘Christmas!’ yelled Colin. ‘Christ’s Mass! Sandy’s got to stay on till Christmas!’ As Sandy wiped his damp forehead he found it impossibly difficult to envisage snow and being wrapped up in layers of clothes and rushing to the fireside. It seemed too ludicrous an idea to have any grounding in the real world. He became disorientated, and almost asked his companions if they really believed in something as alien as snow. Then his head cleared a little, just in time for him to realise that they were crossing the pipeline over the river. He watched the others playing at being acrobats as they walked over the slender cylinder, then walked across himself, his legs trembling. They were waiting on the other side, laughing and pleading with him to fall off. He tried to smile, but kept looking down at the long green tendrils of weed in the water below. Once over, he leapt from the pipe on to crumbly brown earth. It was a good feeling. They jogged the rest of the way through the field to a pool of algae covered water. Immediately one of them, Clark, stripped, and penis waving like a comedian’s wand ran into the pond. He shrieked, but no one told him to be quiet. They were truly in the wilds here. No one would hear them shout or laugh or scream. Clark splashed out of the pool, green tapioca clinging to his white body. He scratched it away with a look of disgust.