Runaway (7 page)

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?’

I shrugged. ‘I didn’t think my hair was that long, sir.’

I saw his expression harden, like setting concrete. He strode across his room to a coat stand, where I noticed my coat hanging for the first time. He grabbed it and threw it at me. ‘Take your big furry coat, and your long hair, and go home, Mackay. And don’t come back. Ever.’

I found Luke in the art department. He was sitting on a stool at one of the high wooden benches reading the latest copy of
Mad
magazine. The place was deserted. He looked up and cocked an eyebrow at my big furry coat.

‘Willie’ll go ape if he sees you wearing that,’ he said.

But I suppose something in my face must have told him that all was not well.

He frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just got expelled.’

It took him a moment to realize I wasn’t joking. Then his eyes opened wide. ‘Why?’

‘Long story.’

‘Bloody hell, Jack. What are you going to tell your folks?’

‘I’m not.’ In the time it had taken me to walk from Willie’s office to the pottery room I had already decided what I was going to do. And facing my parents with the news that I’d been expelled wasn’t on the agenda. ‘I’m going to London.’

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing for me here, Luke. Might as well go and see if I can’t make something of myself in the Big Smoke.’

Luke slipped off his stool and stood up, taking me by the shoulders. ‘You’re not thinking straight, man.’ He stared at me with those big, pale green eyes of his, fair locks tumbling in golden curls over the frown on his forehead.

‘I’m thinking as straight as I’ve ever done,’ I said. ‘I’m going. And I’m going tonight.’

He gazed at me for a moment longer, and I could see the workings of his mind behind troubled eyes.

Then he said, ‘Not without me, you’re not.’

I was totally taken aback. ‘Why? Why would you want to do that? You’re the smartest of all of us.’

He turned away, and I saw him clench his fists at his sides.

‘Because I’m sick of fighting with my folks. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been, Jack. Kicking against their disapproval. Every practice, every gig, is a fight. I leave the house in a rage. And when I get back, I never know if they’ll let me in or not.’

I looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you tell us?’

He turned, eyes full of rage. ‘Same reason I never told anyone about the misery of all those years being presented to strangers on doorsteps, so they wouldn’t slam the door in my parents’ face. Evenings and weekends, walking the streets in all weathers, getting laughed at, or abused, physically assaulted sometimes. All in the name of Jehovah. Clutching my little Bible and smiling for those poor people who hadn’t yet seen the light. No point in telling anyone, Jack. Because nothing I said or did was going to change it.’

His unexpected burst of emotion seemed suddenly to drain him, and I saw the slump of his shoulders and the pain behind his eyes, before he recovered his spirit and drew himself up to his full height again.

‘So if you’re really going. If you really are. Then I’m going with you.’

_IV

What had started as a grain of an idea in my head as I made that long, depressing walk along the corridor and upstairs to the art department began to take on a momentum of its own. And when we met up with Maurie and Dave at lunchtime, it snowballed.

They listened in wide-eyed silence to me and Luke as we told them what it was we intended to do, and why.

Then Maurie said, ‘What about the group?’

I shrugged. ‘What about it?’

‘Well, you’re going to need a singer.’

Luke said, ‘Your parents’d kill you.’

‘My parents’ll kill me, anyway. They’ve got my whole life mapped out for me. Law degree, solicitor’s practice. Doesn’t matter what
I
want to do. I’m coming, too.’

Quite involuntarily we looked at Dave.

A big grin spread itself across his face. ‘You’re still gonnae need me tae make the girls scream.’

And no one questioned why he might want to run away from home. We’d all seen the bruises.

That was four out of five.

Luke said, ‘What about Jeff?’

And Maurie’s face set. ‘I’m not going without him.’

The new cars at Anderson’s were all kept indoors, in the big glass-walled showroom. The second-hand cars sat out front. Two rows of them, with big price stickers on the windows. Jeff had told us that it was his job first thing each winter’s morning to start every one of them.