CHAPTER 6
That was the end of everything, it seemed. Our entire world was gone in one stupid accident.

Everything, even our house, as Army married quarters, was gone, and with hindsight the only factor that was keeping my mother from collapse of one sort or another, his distant presence and reassurance that there was worth to the world, had now been yanked from under her feet. Gone. Smashed by so many tons of badly driven armour plate.

Dad’s coffin was delivered a fortnight later, for that was how it felt. Our belongings had arrived from Singapore in a number of wooden crates, onto which my father had stencilled our name, and it felt just like that. Another box from abroad, another crate of our most prized possessions, but this one was broken beyond any possibility of repair. We buried him next to his parents in the yard of his old church, St Mary’s in Gosforth, not that far from Ravenglass, where he had met Mam, and apart from a sizeable number of his comrades, for that was what they told me to call them, the only family left to mourn were the three of us and Nana.

It was a typical West Cumbrian day, all wind and horizontal rain off the sea, the nuclear power plant seeming to hum along with the little organ as we sang some platitudinous hymn or other, until I had to get out of the pew to walk off the pain in my guts from where they had carved my life out of me. We stayed at Nana’s for a couple of nights afterwards, the rain and wind lashing and moaning round the corners of the house, and I tried to put what life I had left into perspective. I knew, now, exactly what the bastards had done to me, just as I knew what would happen to me when the school shits found out, as they would. I now truly had nothing in the world except a brother too young to depend on, and a mother gradually dropping further into the bottle. Nana did her best, but she was in Boot, and Mam was determined to stay where we were, or as near as she could, and so we waited in our grudgingly provided billet until a council house could be available.

One finally came up, and if Anthorn had been hell, Maryport was hell with more demons. That stretch of coast had been a coal mining area, but as they failed, and the docks lost trade, all the coastal towns, like (not)Workington, fell into the limbo of hopelessness that long term unemployment brings. Which, of course, explained why there was a house available for us, as anyone with any mobility had got on their bikes, as a later politician would put it, and just got out as far away as possible. Too far from the Lakes honeypots to get the tourists and their money, the only real industries left there were the atom plant and the Jennings brewery in Cockermouth not far away. For the rest, it was the dole. Mam got a job working a till in a supermarket, supplementing Dad’s pension, and Iain and I got a new school. He was old enough, now, to go to the same school as me, and while I still wasn’t growing, he was shooting up to match Dad. I had nothing, nothing at all, apart from the fact that I had finally escaped from my persecutors, or at least one batch of them. I could only hope that this place would be better.

And I wasn’t arriving as a wog, this time, but as just another totally normal stunted dwarf eunuch.

The new school was a place called Netherhall, and I was stunned by the reception we got. Nowadays, it is a specialist sports establishment in tandem with a secondary school, but back then it was simply a school that insisted on sports as a way of putting ‘character’ into its pupils. That sounds terribly Victorian, awfully intimidating if you are the sort who doesn’t do, or even get, sport, but it wasn’t like that. Mam took us in the first day, and we met the Deputy Head, Miss Graham. She was a solidly built woman of middle age, who wore a wool twin-set rather than a gym skirt. We were sat down in a waiting room as some woman typed away at a desk and Mam went into her office for a private chat. She was, for her, reasonably sober.

A few minutes later Iain and I were called in, and Miss Graham held out her hand to Iain to shake.

“Stevie…”

“No, I’m Iain. That’s me brother there”

“Oh. I see”

There was a brief look between Mam and teacher, and then she was off on a welcome speech.

“So, what are your sports, then? Football? Rugby? Cricket? We have a good, solid reputation in all of those”

Iain was grinning. “Football for me, Miss, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Do we get time off classes for it?”

He was still very young. Miss Graham smiled. “No, er, Iain, but we do run a lot of after school activities, and football is one of the main ones. Once you have settled here, I am sure you will fit in, but…” and here she put on a sterner voice “Academic–classroom studies–come first. We don’t just turn out jocks”

Iain looked puzzled, and I could see how his mind was working, and then Mam clicked to his train of thought as well. She grinned, and suddenly months and years of pain vanished, just for a second or two, as she spoke to the Deputy.

“I think he’s worried you’re planning to turn him Scottish”

The two women laughed, and the one in the hairy suit turned to me.

“What about you, Stevie? Do you play anything?”

I muttered my answer very quietly, almost too quietly to hear. She gently asked again.

“I like to run in the hills with my Nana”

Mam took my hand. “My mother was a shepherdess on the high fells for years. She started with the war, and then sort of stayed with it on and off, and she still helps out even now when it’s lambing season and that. She’s been taking him running with her, up around Eskdale. Isn’t that right, pet?”

Miss Graham’s eyebrows rose. “A fell runner? Like our Joss?”

“Sorry, miss, who’s Joss?”

“Ah, you have a lot to learn, Stevie, so it’s rather fortunate that this is a school and I am a teacher, for learning is what we are for.”

She handed me a pamphlet, made of press clippings that had been badly xeroxed, marked “Local Heroes: We can all be one”

“Take this with you, and have a read of it. It will tell you all you need to know about Joss Naylor, and a few others, and if you are running the hills of Eskdale I look forward to seeing you on the track here.”

She turned serious. “Stevie, this school has a very good reputation, and we value it. I hear from your mother that you had a bit of a hard time in your old place…here, there’s no need for that, I have a hanky somewhere. Please….take your time, but listen, please, to what I have to say.

“We do not tolerate bullying here. Not in any way. Anyone who goes down that road goes down the road out of the school gates and doesn’t come back. Look at me, now, boy, and remember this. I have a very, very good temper. I do not lose it. That makes me a very, very bad enemy. Anyone that does not abide by this school's principles is my enemy. Somehow, I do not see you as falling into that group….so you will make me a promise”

I dried my eyes. “What promise is that, Miss?”

“No silliness about grassing, or telling tales. If you have a problem, you come to me, and me alone. I will deal with it. Do you understand me?”

Iain and I nodded, as Mam squeezed my hand.

“Right. Eight o’clock Monday morning it is then, boys! Iain, bring your boots. Stevie, we can wait until you are well before you show us whether Mr Naylor has any competition on his horizon. Till Monday, then!”