Cold, cold tarmac
by Garry Stanton
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: School days recalled. Death is also present.
_____________________________________________________________________
I have, for some reason, been reflecting of late on some of my now-distant school experiences. You know, the people you got on with, those you didn't or were indifferent to, the teachers who were at least a little cool, those who were bastards. I look back upon those days now with the help of a rose-tinted prism, as we all do. A set of recollections honeyed with the passing of decades. Some memories, though, stand out in a different way – still raw, still lurking in the chambers, the corners of your diminishing ability to remember.
I can't recall the surname of that art teacher, but I do remember what he looked like. Too skinny, big dark-framed glasses, a weak disposition. His name was Pete something, and, unusually, we got to call him Pete. Not that he could have done anything about it. The classroom was away up in the Gods. In fact, it had the look and feel of servants' quarters: pokey, dark and musty, with the added aromas of paint, charcoals and paper. We were, as a class, not kind to Pete, a man who by any measure of common sense should not have been allowed to come within a five-mile radius of mixed up, hormone-fuelled teenage boys. More to the point, we should not have been allowed anywhere near him. And I say boys, but it was a mixed school of the seventies, a fairly normal comprehensive, with an equal number of girls present. I do not recall the girls, however, causing any problems in Pete's class. Looking back, it may have been a kind of instinctive mothering instinct. Teenage girls can be wise old birds, maybe without knowing how or why, but they are. The gifted sex.
As a collective entity, a many-headed monster, we made Pete's life a misery. That gentle, talented man who was in no way cut out to teach anyone over the age of about eight. Peering back through all those unreliable memories, it grieves me greatly. He was only trying to instruct us for God's sake. So far, this makes me sound like one of the antagonists, a ringleader or person of influence in this persecution. Far from it. I was a class mouse who, even when the tide was turning against a teacher, would resolutely not get involved. The boy who was the kingpin was Mark something. Maybe I do recall his surname but there's a block on it in my brain. Or that part of my brain that is still fourteen simply refuses to give up the information. I might get in trouble. He might get me after school. Did someone not say: you may leave school but it never leaves you? I do know, of course, that he will not now get me after school. This is beyond him.
Mark had, according to time-honoured tradition I suppose, a couple of trusted henchmen, boys who were stupidly loyal and blindly followed his orders to the letter. Mark had a vast potential for violence but I only ever saw this in action rarely. He bullied people in the playground not by smashing them in the face or pulling down their skirt but by means of good old-fashioned, primordial menace. He would walk up to you, appear to be your friend (which of course you were perversely thankful for) and even put his arm around you. Like a gangster. He would smile with those vulpine eyes, horsy features and big full lips but he would not be smiling. He would be imagining what he could do to you. Looking back, he never actually followed through where I was concerned – he maybe had other irons in the fire. I do remember walking to school one day, imagining myself hitting him when he was on his own, just in the hope that I could pre-empt any ideas he may have had in my direction. I think I would have done it too. I was easily his physical equal but bullying is normally not related to physicality, is it? Well, ok, it can be. Anyway, it never came to anything. I kept out of his way and he reserved his torment for others. Why are people like that – who knows? It's a pretty old question which I will not even attempt to answer here.
We were in Pete's garret, the attic classroom that reeked of old paint, ancient wooden desks and body odour that is not quite yet adult-strength. Last period on a Friday, when one eye is on the door, both ears anticipating the school bell that never comes, worse than a boiling kettle. We were bored but I was probably trying to be interested, not wishing to piss off any teacher, even Pete. Then, Mark and his side-men got a hold of the belt and hid it. Pete found out where it was and it got chucked around the room, much to the teacher's frustration and annoyance. Even some of the girls, despite the essence of nurture deep-seated in their DNA, got involved, and with gusto. Pete, and this was the strange thing I remember after all this time, had this rictus grin on his face when such behaviour came to confront him. His face went red, he shouted, he slammed the desk but all the time he had this kind of resigned smile all over his thin face. Maybe he thought smiling would make him feel better and get him through this ordeal. The bell sounded, mercifully, and that was that.
On a separate occasion, shortly before Mark was due to leave school and thus during a time when he was unconcerned by the threat of expulsion, he totally wrecked a music room. He threw a violin out of a third floor window and we all heard it shatter forty feet below. The teacher was a girl of perhaps twenty-five and utterly unused to this type of savagery. I think she cried. The class was suddenly calm in the certain knowledge that a line had been crossed. And nobody present could jump back across that red line. Mark was expelled, and, soon after, we all went our separate ways.
I was speaking to my sister just a few months ago. She attended the same school as I did, but is four years younger. She works in a local bank now, and occasionally comes across people from our mutual past: teachers, old now, or former pupils, middle-aged like us. She told me she had seen an old classmate of mine: Mark somebody. He was asking for me, knowing the connection between my sister and I. She said he seemed like quite a nice guy, friendly, interested in her life. I replied that if it was the same guy, I remembered him as a total cunt. A bully, an extorter, an evil individual. My sister said: Really? Can't be the same guy, surely.
She called me today. She had heard through some grapevine that Mark had died of a drug overdose. Alone, in a dingy flat in a dark Leith street. Such a stereotype. It seemed he had rarely, if ever, worked, had got into some kind of small-time thug business after school, and was now taking up valuable space in the mortuary. I wasn't sad, or glad. I thought of nothing much. Well, that's not quite accurate. I recalled faces from the past, as you do. I even saw his face, when it was alive. I thought of a sad girl at the piano, and of an ancient artist in a shit and vomit care home. I saw a cheap violin disintegrate on cold, cold tarmac. It took too long to reach the ground, but still it shattered.
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: School days recalled. Death is also present.
_____________________________________________________________________
I have, for some reason, been reflecting of late on some of my now-distant school experiences. You know, the people you got on with, those you didn't or were indifferent to, the teachers who were at least a little cool, those who were bastards. I look back upon those days now with the help of a rose-tinted prism, as we all do. A set of recollections honeyed with the passing of decades. Some memories, though, stand out in a different way – still raw, still lurking in the chambers, the corners of your diminishing ability to remember.
I can't recall the surname of that art teacher, but I do remember what he looked like. Too skinny, big dark-framed glasses, a weak disposition. His name was Pete something, and, unusually, we got to call him Pete. Not that he could have done anything about it. The classroom was away up in the Gods. In fact, it had the look and feel of servants' quarters: pokey, dark and musty, with the added aromas of paint, charcoals and paper. We were, as a class, not kind to Pete, a man who by any measure of common sense should not have been allowed to come within a five-mile radius of mixed up, hormone-fuelled teenage boys. More to the point, we should not have been allowed anywhere near him. And I say boys, but it was a mixed school of the seventies, a fairly normal comprehensive, with an equal number of girls present. I do not recall the girls, however, causing any problems in Pete's class. Looking back, it may have been a kind of instinctive mothering instinct. Teenage girls can be wise old birds, maybe without knowing how or why, but they are. The gifted sex.
As a collective entity, a many-headed monster, we made Pete's life a misery. That gentle, talented man who was in no way cut out to teach anyone over the age of about eight. Peering back through all those unreliable memories, it grieves me greatly. He was only trying to instruct us for God's sake. So far, this makes me sound like one of the antagonists, a ringleader or person of influence in this persecution. Far from it. I was a class mouse who, even when the tide was turning against a teacher, would resolutely not get involved. The boy who was the kingpin was Mark something. Maybe I do recall his surname but there's a block on it in my brain. Or that part of my brain that is still fourteen simply refuses to give up the information. I might get in trouble. He might get me after school. Did someone not say: you may leave school but it never leaves you? I do know, of course, that he will not now get me after school. This is beyond him.
Mark had, according to time-honoured tradition I suppose, a couple of trusted henchmen, boys who were stupidly loyal and blindly followed his orders to the letter. Mark had a vast potential for violence but I only ever saw this in action rarely. He bullied people in the playground not by smashing them in the face or pulling down their skirt but by means of good old-fashioned, primordial menace. He would walk up to you, appear to be your friend (which of course you were perversely thankful for) and even put his arm around you. Like a gangster. He would smile with those vulpine eyes, horsy features and big full lips but he would not be smiling. He would be imagining what he could do to you. Looking back, he never actually followed through where I was concerned – he maybe had other irons in the fire. I do remember walking to school one day, imagining myself hitting him when he was on his own, just in the hope that I could pre-empt any ideas he may have had in my direction. I think I would have done it too. I was easily his physical equal but bullying is normally not related to physicality, is it? Well, ok, it can be. Anyway, it never came to anything. I kept out of his way and he reserved his torment for others. Why are people like that – who knows? It's a pretty old question which I will not even attempt to answer here.
We were in Pete's garret, the attic classroom that reeked of old paint, ancient wooden desks and body odour that is not quite yet adult-strength. Last period on a Friday, when one eye is on the door, both ears anticipating the school bell that never comes, worse than a boiling kettle. We were bored but I was probably trying to be interested, not wishing to piss off any teacher, even Pete. Then, Mark and his side-men got a hold of the belt and hid it. Pete found out where it was and it got chucked around the room, much to the teacher's frustration and annoyance. Even some of the girls, despite the essence of nurture deep-seated in their DNA, got involved, and with gusto. Pete, and this was the strange thing I remember after all this time, had this rictus grin on his face when such behaviour came to confront him. His face went red, he shouted, he slammed the desk but all the time he had this kind of resigned smile all over his thin face. Maybe he thought smiling would make him feel better and get him through this ordeal. The bell sounded, mercifully, and that was that.
On a separate occasion, shortly before Mark was due to leave school and thus during a time when he was unconcerned by the threat of expulsion, he totally wrecked a music room. He threw a violin out of a third floor window and we all heard it shatter forty feet below. The teacher was a girl of perhaps twenty-five and utterly unused to this type of savagery. I think she cried. The class was suddenly calm in the certain knowledge that a line had been crossed. And nobody present could jump back across that red line. Mark was expelled, and, soon after, we all went our separate ways.
I was speaking to my sister just a few months ago. She attended the same school as I did, but is four years younger. She works in a local bank now, and occasionally comes across people from our mutual past: teachers, old now, or former pupils, middle-aged like us. She told me she had seen an old classmate of mine: Mark somebody. He was asking for me, knowing the connection between my sister and I. She said he seemed like quite a nice guy, friendly, interested in her life. I replied that if it was the same guy, I remembered him as a total cunt. A bully, an extorter, an evil individual. My sister said: Really? Can't be the same guy, surely.
She called me today. She had heard through some grapevine that Mark had died of a drug overdose. Alone, in a dingy flat in a dark Leith street. Such a stereotype. It seemed he had rarely, if ever, worked, had got into some kind of small-time thug business after school, and was now taking up valuable space in the mortuary. I wasn't sad, or glad. I thought of nothing much. Well, that's not quite accurate. I recalled faces from the past, as you do. I even saw his face, when it was alive. I thought of a sad girl at the piano, and of an ancient artist in a shit and vomit care home. I saw a cheap violin disintegrate on cold, cold tarmac. It took too long to reach the ground, but still it shattered.
About the Author
Born in Edinburgh and now living in Fife, Garry Stanton is a musician to trade, as well as a teacher in training. His debut album, Indigo Flats, was released online in 2010.
Garry also writes, having completed a couple of novels, several short stories and a lot of poetry. Some of his poems have been published in the Edinburgh-based poetry magazine, Harlequin. And his novel, The Heights, was published by McStorytellers in 2013.
Garry also writes, having completed a couple of novels, several short stories and a lot of poetry. Some of his poems have been published in the Edinburgh-based poetry magazine, Harlequin. And his novel, The Heights, was published by McStorytellers in 2013.