“Oi, Antwerp! What’s so funny?” called a voice. They were a good way along the route by then and the bus had nearly filled.
Lawrence made a show of being engrossed by the boy opposite. The kid was pulling a clod of gum into a vine and letting it swing from his fingers.
“Antwerp, you cunt!”
It was Ryan Fenton and a crony peering across the bottom deck from the stairwell. Through the cobweb of smoke drifting down the gangway, Lawrence could see Fenton’s gold earring, his prosthetic-looking head leering cruelly at him.
“Fuck knows what he’s laughin’ at. His slap head’s turning blue in’t cold. Here, give us a wave, Antwerp.”
Lawrence forced a laugh. Since his head had been shaved, everyone had been calling him Antwerp because he was the spit of a Belgian war victim from the history text book. It was Regis’ fault. The silly twat had nodded and smiled when it was first mentioned in class, and that legitimised everything. Now thanks to a clueless history teacher and a pair of warring parents, Lawrence was stuck, singled out in a way he couldn’t lie or joke his way out of.
People were looking◦– he was going to have to respond. “Blue head?” he called down the bus. “It’s March not Christmas, you pricks.”
There were ‘ohs’ from the people within earshot. Ryan Fenton’s face dropped as he shoved through the crowd towards Lawrence, the whiteheads on his forehead livid, mouth parting like a badly-sliced chicken fillet.
Lawrence was preparing to spring over the seats in front when the bus intervened, swerving around a corner and throwing anyone on their feet to the other side of the aisle. He darted from his chair, feeling a hand cuff him around the head as he went to stand by the driver. An Antwerp, give us a wave, chant followed him; it was taken up by the entire bus. “That you they’re on at?” said the driver. Each hand sported a hazy tattoo of a swallow.
“No,” said Lawrence. “I don’t know who they’re on about.”
In part, Fernside Grammar looked like a medical complex. Flat-roofed and monochrome, the new blocks were divided into conjoined buildings, blank windows dividing up the wall space. The old building was mossy and spired. It had a bell tower and a munificent stained glass window, the school insignia carved into a cornerstone above the main entrance. Its approach was a steep wind tunnel with a shaking school sign. The pupils headed under the sign through the main gates. They buttoned and held their blazers, shrieked through the double-doors to seek shelter.
First lesson was Food Tech, and they were making Shepherd’s Pie. Lawrence perched on a stool in the kitchen classroom while his teacher, Miss Potts, demonstrated how to chop onions. Cookery was better than CDT and metalwork, which were taught in the winter and summer terms respectively. With cookery you got a second tea, which was usually devoured cold on the bus home.
This was a low ability set and it wasn’t difficult to see why. Lawrence always ended up with the duds. Miss Potts had tears in her eyes, her slender fingers gripping the chef’s knife, onion peelings littering the table like pencil shavings. The sleek way her lips formed, they could have been made of clay. Lawrence imagined being asked to stay behind after the lesson; it wouldn’t take long for total concession to ensue, Miss Potts gasping acceptance. The fantasy was getting really interesting when a paper ball rebounded off the back of his head. He turned around and there was Ryan Fenton, grinning at him.
“Merry Christmas yourself,” Lawrence muttered, scrunching the note up and sweeping it to the floor.
After the demonstration the class busied themselves. Lawrence had asked for cookery money but his mam had insisted on getting the ingredients in herself, providing him with a wrap of mutton, most of a turnip and a can of haricot beans instead of lamb, carrots and peas. A pot of Smash instead of real potatoes.
Lawrence smuggled his meagre lot onto the counter and hid it under a tea towel. Some other items were also missing, of course, so he put his hand up to summon Miss Potts, who grabbed the nearest pupil, Ryan Fenton, and asked him if he could share his ingredients. All Lawrence needed was the stock and garlic.
Fenton duly disappeared, eventually returning with two miniscule cloves of garlic and a mighty blob of orange powder, poorly wrapped in foil. The stock was damp for some reason and smelled bizarre, but Lawrence set it by his other ingredients and set to work.
When the time came, the class stood waiting for Miss Potts to emerge from the store cupboard. She had a habit of lingering in front of a symmetry mirror she’d taken from the maths department and blu-tacked to the wall in there. Lawrence listened to her blasting hairspray all over her head as he secured the tea towel across what remained of his cheapo ingredients. He knew he’d used too much water in his pie, so had added cornflour as an afterthought to thicken the sauce. The turnip meanwhile had been diced so thickly that it had been just about all he could fit on the tines of his fork.
Miss Potts appeared with a dessert spoon and a clipboard with a pen on a string sellotaped to it. She patrolled the rush of cooling ovens, tasting and grading each crackling pie until she came to Lawrence’s steaming creation. Hands guarded by oven-gloves, she lifted the Pyrex dish from the worktop, nose hovering above the puttering grey bubbles, then, like an oar delving into a shifting swamp, slid her worn metal spoon beneath the pie’s crust.
The spoon lasted perhaps five seconds in the teacher’s mouth. Miss Potts began to gag, retching, until, overcome, she hunched over the worktop and coughed out a brown gobbet of pie that shuddered and caught the glare from the striplights in the polystyrene-tiled ceiling.
Nervous laughter began to concuss the room. Everyone was looking as Miss Potts hurried to the sink, filled a glass of water, drank it in one, re-filled it and then drank some more.
“How much spice was in that concoction?” she said to Lawrence after she’d collected herself.
“Spice, Miss?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t know.”
Miss Potts stared.
“Honest, Miss, I don’t know!”
There was no time for a reply. Ryan Fenton lunged forward, reaching over Lawrence’s station and tearing the towel from what was left of his ingredients. “Antwerp’s been on the rations,” Fenton cried, presenting the empty stock wrapper to the rest of the class. “An’ they stink of fuckin’ chilli!”
The whole room erupted. Fenton began to prance about, declaring that Antwerp’s Spicy Smash and Mutton Pie should be served in the canteen. He had the Smash tube and began waving it in Lawrence’s face, so Lawrence leapt for it, accidentally colliding with Miss Potts and sending her stumbling against the worktop, where she knocked his pie onto the floor. The precise shatter of the Pyrex dish finally silenced the room.
Miss Potts made to seize Lawrence but in her haste stepped in the mess and slipped, her foot crunching sideways in the broken glass. She wailed, prone on her back, her lovely hair draped in pie muck. The shock in her eyes was terrible. Lawrence took one look at the bloody spur of bone jutting free of her ankle and pelted from the room, his loose sole slapping the corridor tiles until he’d reached the main doors and, past them, streets of safety. He could see in his mind the Litten Path. It was a steep finger of stones leading to the moor.
No one would find him in Barnes’ Wood, the forest adjacent to Litten Hill. Lawrence crossed the road, skipping between a minibus and several cars packed with men who were probably on their way to a picket somewhere.