Nicking Time (3 page)

Today’s Wednesday – two days to Cathkin! – so for once I’m not out early. Wednesday’s the day
The Flashing Blade
is on in the morning. Kit and I are still in our pyjamas, waiting for it to start. To create a cinema effect, we’ve closed the curtains and the door to the kitchen, so the television is the only bright thing in the room. We’re lying on the floor on top of all the cushions from the settee, which we’ve piled up just in front of the screen. Everybody knows not to disturb us during
The Flashing Blade
, so when the door goes, we ignore it. It won’t be for us. Anybody we’d want to see is at this moment in their own house, glued to their own telly.

“It’s Lemur,” says my mum, showing him in.

He’s out of breath from running.

“Can I watch?” he asks, collapsing onto the cushions beside me. He has just made it before the music starts, lucky for him. Kit and I sing along, as usual.
You’ve got to fight for what you want, For all that you believe!
The beat of the music fits the mad galloping of the horses as the fighters ride across endless fields, determined
to save France. We’re word perfect. We’ve practised – a lot. Lemur does not know the words. Lemur has never seen
The Flashing Blade
. I don’t know how this is even possible. It is
probably
the best series in the history of television. I say
probably
because
Dr Who
is a contender, of course. (Must remember to use that one in the next Skooshie’s Game:
The Flashing Blade
or
Dr Who
? How will Lemur begin to answer that one, with these sorts of gaps in his knowledge? Sometimes you’ve got to wonder whether he’s quite as clever as he seems.) To go back to the whole
Flashing Blade/Dr Who
debate, maybe it comes down to this: if you were to ask me, Midge Laird, age twelve, of Glasgow, Scotland, if I’d rather be François, the Chevalier de Recci, or a time lord, I’d say, “Pass me my sword!”

“What they’re saying doesn’t fit what their mouths are doing,” Lemur points out.

“Shut up,” I warn him. “Watch now, talk later.”

It’s the opening episode. The castle is under attack from the Spanish, who think they’re going to storm it easy-peasy. They hit it with one cannonball after another. It’s already a smoking ruin and you can’t see how the people inside the castle can possibly hold out. But this is the one where the French heroes, François and Guillot, sneak up behind the Spanish troops and start firing on them with their own spare cannons. They set fire to a barrel of gunpowder in a horse-drawn cart and send the horses careering madly into the Spanish camp. It’s infectious, the obvious delight of François and Guillot. They laugh like madmen – big HA HA HA HA! laughs – and jump up and down with joy as the
Spaniards die on all sides, usually in an impressively acrobatic way.

I have to confess that we’re a bit hazy on where and when the story takes place. I mean, at the start it does say Casal 1630, but that doesn’t give us a lot to go on. We’ve wondered, we’ve discussed, we’ve debated. Given all the Spanish and French soldiers involved, it seems obvious Casal is in or near France or Spain (or potentially both). Though Hector raised the interesting possibility that it could be an actual country that doesn’t exist any more. (We like this idea.) We’re as shaky on dates as we are on geography. We’ve no idea what else was going on in the world in 1630, not a clue. For us history is made up of odd, brilliant, disconnected stories, against a background of dull bits. We pad it out a bit with stuff we read in books and comics and watch on television, and to be honest we’re not always sure what really happened and what details we’ve added to make it more exciting. I wonder if that matters? We’ve agreed there are some advantages to not knowing. François and Guillot seem much more heroic out of time and place. They’re pure heroes. And we want to be them.

I hear Lemur’s intake of breath as François and Guillot are nearly caught by the Spanish soldiers. They leap onto their horses and gallop away just in time.

It’s very busy,
The Flashing Blade
, with people arguing and fighting, all determined to find some way to either capture the castle or repel the attackers. You can’t be totally sure who’s telling the truth. There’s a fair amount of double-dealing going on (and the dubbing can make all the characters seem a bit shifty). Even after a few
repeats (and Kit, Bru, Skooshie, Hector and I are totally obsessed and reckon we’ve seen every episode at least three times, apart from the last one, which isn’t shown very often and we’ve only managed to see once –
once!
– and even then the picture was rubbish and kept going fuzzy), we haven’t quite grasped all of the reasons behind the different ploys each side uses. (To be honest, I have to make some of it up when Kit asks.)

But it’s clear the Spanish are the bad guys and the French are the good guys. We know this because the French are outnumbered and are fighting against the odds and François and Guillot laugh in the face of this, while the Spaniards are arrogant and have no sense of humour. They also have ridiculous moustaches. I have a theory that those may slow them down when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, because the French usually win. The fights are brilliant! We are 100% behind François, even when he gets into trouble with his own side – because he’s thinking for himself and doesn’t do what he’s told when he knows it’s wrong. He’s the best sword fighter by miles and is also really good at disguises – both very handy skills, as it turns out.

“That was fantastic!” shouts Lemur, bouncing up and down on the cushions as Kit and I treat him to a rousing chorus of the song again while the closing credits roll up the screen. “Can I watch it with you again next time?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m very tempted to tell him that by episode two François will have been condemned to death
by his own side
, just to see the horror on Lemur’s face. But a week’s a long time to wait not knowing the outcome. I mean,
a week, a whole week
– it feels like
torture to me and I already know what will happen! There’s this brilliant bit when François is being taken away to prison and he says, “I surrender my sword to no man!” and he breaks his sword in two
on his knee
and throws away the pieces.

“Why have you never seen it before?” asks Kit. “Are you not allowed to watch it at home?”

Lemur looks embarrassed. “We don’t have a television,” he confesses.

That explains a lot.

“Why not?” asks Kit.

Lemur shrugs. “We just don’t. Don’t tell the others,” he says to me.

“I think you should,” I say. “They’ll feel sorry for you. At the moment they just think you’re weird.”

In fact, I don’t even give him the chance to think about it. As soon as we get into the den, I say, “Hey, guess what? Lemur hasn’t got a telly!”

This is a technique of my dad’s. No wee clues or hinting, no giving people time to work it out for themselves so they’re not shocked. It’s like ripping a plaster off your knee. You can do it slow and make the agony bearable but last for a long time or you can do it with one brutal yank that takes your breath away. But then it’s done.

They suspect a wind-up at first. We don’t know
anybody
who doesn’t have a television! And when Lemur tells them it is in fact true, Skooshie looks so sad
for him I think he’s going to take Lemur home to his already very full house and ask Mrs Skooshie to adopt him.

“So he’s just seen his very first episode of
The Flashing Blade
!” I say.

“What did you think? Isn’t François fantastic?” They fling questions at him without waiting for answers. Everybody’s talking at once about their favourite bits. This goes on for some time until there’s really nothing else to say. That happens just after Skooshie’s asked, “What
is
a swash and what happens if you don’t buckle it?” We decide it’s time to go and do something else.

As always happens, one thing leads on to another and next thing we know, it’s much too near the end of another sunny day. We’re outside, on the patch of rough ground by Cathkin. We’ve been collecting dark purple berries. They’re on a tree that’s been allowed to seed and sprout inside Cathkin. Its neglected branches now tumble over the fence and the berries hanging heavily on them are easy to reach. They’re small and a bit hard – we’re not sure they are in fact ripe – but if you squash them you do get a pale purplish juice. We’re using it to make wine.

None of us actually drinks it. We’re not too sure about the berries but we’re pretty confident that all the other stuff we’ve added will make us vomit, big time. We consider selling it but we haven’t got enough cups.

Lemur’s standing up at the fence. It’s one of those mesh fences, where the wire is twisted into interlinked diamond shapes. Thousands and thousands of them. The kind of pattern that makes your eyes go funny if
you stare at it. He’s twisted his fingers round the mesh and he’s pushed his nose through one of the diamonds. Technically part of him is inside Cathkin. He looks round at us and we know exactly what he’s going to say.

He grins. “I’ve got a plan.”

I like Lemur’s plans – we all do. He has pure dead brilliant ideas and the ones that aren’t wild, illegal and/or lethal always turn out to be loads of fun. But the rest… Before the holidays, he tried to talk us into breaking into the Hampden Bowl, the abandoned bowling alley on Somerville Drive. And I mean
break in
. The place has no windows. We’d need actual equipment. He was all, “
C’mon
– let’s do it!” If we don’t watch him, he’s going to land us in real trouble sometime.

What I’ve realised is that Lemur needs us – that his best plans are the ones that we’ve all helped shape: Hector with all his knowledge of weird and wonderful facts and his enthusiasm for planning; Bru with his ability to look at things from odd angles and ask the kind of questions that show up gaps in the thinking. Me, I think I’m good at coming up with alternative suggestions. And Skooshie? He crashes in, taking Lemur’s ideas and making them crazier, until even Lemur can see we’re sledging down a vertical mountain with no helmets and no brakes. At this point, if we’re lucky, somebody will shout Whoa!, allowing us to tip ourselves sideways and sprawl in the snow catching our breath, while the sledge careers on down into the ravine…

So all I’m saying is that usually when Lemur says, “I’ve got a plan,” it’s time to start listening
very
carefully.

For Cathkin, what we need, as Hector says, is a plan devised and executed with military precision. A plan that is better than any other plan we’ve ever come up with. If we get caught, there will be no second chance. I will be kept in until I’ve done my Highers. “That I can
guarantee,” my mum has said. If you know her, you’ll know she’s not exaggerating.

From the sixth floor of our flats you can see everything. You can see anybody coming from or going into the back of the building. Any advancing armies (or unwelcome relatives), we know they’re coming, no bother. The only weak spot is right up against the wall of the flats – anything slinking in that way you could only see if you loosened the safety catch on the window and leant out. That’s not recommended – I know because I’ve gone close enough to see if it was do-able and there was hell to pay, believe me. Also, in our house we only have windows on two sides of the flats. So if people come in the front door, for example, you can’t see them at all. I admit this would be quite a weakness in any serious attempt at defence.

Out the kitchen window you can see all the way to the West End. You can make out the tower of the university. And across the city more church spires than you can count. (Kit and I have tried: it has lead to arguments. She was so wrong.) And beyond the city, the Campsie Fells on the horizon. I like living high up. Not only is it always bright, even on quite cloudy days, and you can see what’s going on, it also gives you a brilliant feeling of being truly Weegie, like the city’s all yours. Who else is lucky enough to feel like this? Well, the people one floor up, maybe. And the ones on the sixth and seventh floors of the other flats, on the sides facing in the right direction. But you know what I mean. When I look out, I promise myself I will never live anywhere but here.

But the high-in-the-sky advantageous viewpoint can
sometimes be an actual disadvantage. Out our
living-room
window, on the other side, is where you get a panoramic view of Cathkin. It’s the stuff of cheering daydreams. You can stand and look, imagining the players shouting for the ball on the pitch and the crowds roaring on the terraces. But this prime location is what’s causing us so many problems. Because doing Cathkin isn’t just a question of getting past the corrugated metal put up to stop enterprising adventurers like us. The further we get into the park, the clearer the view my mum could have of us: dealing with
that
is the bigger challenge.

“It’s a death-trap,” she says. According to her, it would only take one of us to laugh too loudly for the whole roof of the abandoned stand to come crashing down on our heads. Or we’d trip on the unstable concrete (worn by time and smashed by hooligans), and tumble below the terracing, breaking a leg in the process (the leg wouldn’t finish us off, but the starvation would, as we lay in the dank, dark hole, too weak to call for help). Or bogey men, waiting just for us, would jump out from their hiding places under the stand and carry us off. She doesn’t say where to, just leaves you speculating, knowing that what you can think up is much, much worse than anything she can say… Oh, she’s good, my mum.

But not quite as good as she thinks. Because with every word she says to me, she makes Cathkin more and more irresistible. We want to feel what it was like in its heyday: we want to run onto the pitch ready to do battle, like the players did. We want to lean on the crumbling concrete supports, and picture strikers running full pelt
up the pitch and blasting the ball into the net in front of us. We want to risk the gloom of the stand, lying back and staring up at the rusting roof. We want to walk over every bit of broken concrete, challenging each other to find and leap the most dangerous gaps. We want to be players, managers, spectators, villains, heroes. It’s the stage for so many possible adventures. It’s calling out and we’re the boys to answer it. We are desperate to get in there.

We fantasise about being the first, but accept the impossibility of this. Plenty of people have been there before us: we’ve heard them, sometimes spotted signs of them from my living-room window. When they first built the barrier round the whole park, abandoning it to thieves, vandals and natural rot, we were all about three. Plus our flats hadn’t even been built. Some disappointments you just have to accept.

But now is our time. So there’s a lot to organise. We have arguments about whether we should focus on identifying where to break in or on a plan to be invisible inside the park or on deciding what we’ll do when we get there. It usually ends with everybody talking, nobody listening and nothing being decided. Which is getting us exactly nowhere. We’re counting down. There are
two days
before we go in. So this time when Lemur turns to us, saying with so much confidence that he’s got a plan, I say, “Let’s hear it then.” And even before I hear it, I’m thinking, “Let’s do it!”

“Let’s find somewhere safe we can talk,” says Hector.

We’re sitting on the grass, above the steps to Prospecthill Road. From here we see anybody approaching from any direction. Hector chose the place. We’re listening to Lemur.

“Where
exactly
?” I ask, unable to believe my ears.

“The bit right – under – your – living – room – window,” he says triumphantly.

“Are you mad?”

“No. Look. We’ve talked about getting in behind the stand. That does give the best cover – you can’t see there from your house. But – and it’s a big but – we would have to walk halfway round the outside of the park to get there.”

“We’d be spotted for sure,” Hector says.

“Exactly,” says Lemur. “Whereas, if we slip in behind the corrugated iron opposite, we only run the risk of being seen for a minute.”

“But we’ll be seen as soon as we’re up the embankment inside – you can see
everything
from our house.”

“But we’re not climbing the embankment,” says Lemur. “We’re going to go
along the bottom of it
.”

“He’s right, Midge,” says Bru. “It’s all overgrown there. It’ll hide us.”

“We go right round, most of the way to the stand. There’s an open bit between the terracing and the stand. We’ll need to sprint that.”

“It might work,” I say grudgingly. I’m up for it – I just don’t want Lemur getting all the glory. “Wait a minute – how loose is the corrugated iron? Are you sure we can just pull it open?”

We screw up our eyes and look down the hill, trying to form a judgement. Not being owls, we’re defeated by the dark and the distance.

Then we hear somebody trundling the front door of our flats open. My dad gives us a wave as he heads off down the road to the lighting depot. He’s working nightshift this week, so he’s carrying his flask and his cheese pieces wrapped up in tinfoil. I run down to see him.

“Ten minutes, son. Then up, OK?”

“OK, Dad. See you in the morning.”

“See you, son. See you, lads.”

“Just enough time to check out the iron barrier,” says Bru, once my dad’s out of sight. He jumps to his feet. Lemur pulls him back down. “No. We don’t want to risk it. A big crowd of us gathering round there – we might be spotted. I’ll check it out on my way home.”

“No, let Hector go,” I say. “You’ve already looked at it, Lemur. A second opinion’s what we need.”

Hector’s up and off before Lemur can object. He gives us a grin and a salute and disappears into the gloaming. “I’ll report back tomorrow!”

The rest of us get up, reluctantly. “See youse,” says Skooshie, with a sigh. At times like these we would give anything we own or are ever likely to own just to stay out playing. Where’s that Time Bank when we need it?

I’m obviously more berry stained than I realised, because when I go up, the first thing my mum says is, “Bath!”

“I’m not sure I have the energy,” I tell her. “I might drown.”

“Bath!”

When I go to bed at night, I’m asleep before my head even hits the pillow. But in the morning the light wakes me early. And as I lie there, I can’t not think about school sometimes. I think about knowing nobody. I think about the fact half of them will know each other, because they went to the same primary school. I think about all the new subjects and teachers. And it’s exciting – really exciting – but I’m scared as well. Don’t think I’m worried about not being clever enough – I think I can handle that. I just can’t imagine what it will feel like to fit in, in a place that has no Lemur, no Hector, no Skoosh, no Bru.

They don’t blame me, I don’t think they do. Our teacher said Bru and Hector should try too, and Hector did and he got in as well but then he said he wasn’t going. Bru’s mum and dad didn’t think it was worth Bru trying.

So it’s just me.