Boy Who Made It Rain (11 page)

I noticed Rosie after a couple of days. We were in the same classes for English, Italian and Religion. She didn't display any great flair for the subjects I have to say, that's not to suggest that I found her unintelligent. Uninterested would be more accurate. She was quiet in the classes. She spoke only when the teachers asked her to. There was something different about her; she stood out from the other girls. By a mile. I have racked my brain as to what made her stand out so much and concluded that it wasn't really her look that cast her aside, although it did play a significant part in it, but rather her attitude and general demeanour. When I first noticed her she had this look on her face, a look that suggested she was having a bad day. Snarly almost. It was a real don't-mess-with-me kind of expression. That look alone made her more exciting and interesting in an instance. She had more going on behind those eyes of hers than anyone else. She gave the impression that she thought the guys in the school were humdrum, immature and tedious. My embryonic experience wouldn't have challenged her on this. I hadn't seen too many hanging around her so my belief was that her would-be suitors had understood clearly her don't-even-bloody-think-about-it aura.

Rosie reminded me of the Ally Sheedy character in
The Breakfast Club
. Sheedy played the dark mysterious one with the sultry eyes, cool clothes and independent taste in music. I remember when a few of the lads at my last school watched it for the first time everyone was raving about Molly Ringwald's character, the sweet, innocent, girl-next-door type. Let's be honest, she was attractive in her own way but not anything to write home about. Not to mention the red hair. I was in the Ally Sheedy camp. Rosie reminded me of Ally Sheedy, only a much better-looking version. In a way she reminded me of home.

I never approached Rosie for fear of rousing the passions of others and because I wasn't in the mood for any kind of rejection. I didn't wish to start my new school with a humiliating cloud hovering over me. Folk sneering from afar. It's not as if I was playing it cool either. What I was doing was innocently admiring a girl from a safe distance. I suppose it all started in that Italian class:

‘Rosie, you pair up with Clem,' silence from both of us. My heart sped up. ‘I'll give you five minutes or so to go through the handout on ‘directions'.' My heart picked up the pace. ‘If you want you can veer away from the handout and ask for directions here in Scotland, or where Clem is from.' My heart was sprinting. ‘Where are you from again, Clem?'

‘Eastbourne, Miss.' I was wondering why she had inserted ‘again' into her question.

‘How lovely. Okay, get on with it.' I shifted chairs.

‘Hi. I'm Clem.' What else could I have said?

‘Rosie,' she said, all curt and cute.

‘Listen, Rosie I'm not that hot at Italian, I only crashed it last year, at my other school. If I make any mistakes please forgive me.'

‘Well I'm completely shite at it, so I wouldn't know if you were making any mistakes anyway.'

‘Okay, shall we start?'

‘Go ahead, amigo.'

‘That's Spanish.'

‘What?'

‘
“
Amigo,
”
it's Spanish, not Italian,' I knew it was an inappropriate thing to say. Stupid thing to say. Not cool.

‘I knew that. What, do you think I am, pure thick or something?'

‘Not at all.'

‘Well then.'

‘Okay, shall we start again?'

‘Okay, on you go…AMIGO.'

‘Okay,' I said.

‘Right, go.'

‘Okay.'

‘Fuck sake, GO,' she said. I sucked in some air.

‘Scusi, dove è la piazza principale?'

‘What?'

‘Dove è la piazza principale?'

‘Say it in English first.'

‘Then it wouldn't be an Italian exercise.'

‘Who cares, it's not as if I'll need Italian in these parts anyway, some people are still perfecting English up here, you know. So Italian would be like a pure foreign language to them.'

I didn't know what to say. I knew by then that I was attracted to this girl. Really attracted to her.

‘Yeah, I suppose so.'

‘That was a joke, by the way.'

‘Oh, of course.'

‘God almighty. No sense of humour down where you're from?'

‘Sorry I was just admiring your badges. I like the
Bright Eyes
ones.'

‘You know
Bright Eyes
?'

‘Of course I do. I didn't know you were an emo chick,' I said. Just like that I had said it, without thinking. What a clown! Like why should I have known one way or the other? I had let my guard slip. She'd have known that I was on to her. Keeping an eye on her.

‘Who are you calling a fucking Emu?

‘No, not an Emu. Emo, it means emotional, like the band's songs. It has nothing to do with the birds.' I was laughing. Her look of perplexity reminded me of Paris Hilton, not that she looked anything like Paris Hilton, thank God. It was just the sheepish way she reverted into herself that's all, like a bimbo. I think she felt it too. Then, instead of doing the role-play, we had a conversation about music and school and students and teachers and just general nonsense.

‘You should check out
The Smiths,
' I said.

‘Who?'

‘You've never heard of
The Smiths
?

‘No.'

‘
The Smiths
will save your soul,' I said.

‘Right, okay, John Peel, don't rub it in, just tell me who they are,' which I did. She told me that she would discover them that very night. Then the class ended. I was gutted.

I knew that the next day she would be eager to tell me that she had just listened to the best band in the world. And, if she hadn't, if she thought they were completely shit, then I knew we were never meant to be. I had consigned myself to it. How could anyone think
The Smiths
were shit? It's a good barometer with which to judge someone. The perfect barometer. Thinking
The Smiths
are shit tells me a lot about a person. Thinking they're brilliant tells me more.

When Rosie told me what it actually meant I thought it was absolutely hilarious. We had a comparable demographic in England yet the word Chav was nowhere near as inventive as the word NED. You have to applaud the clever use of the acronym. I mean Non-Educated Delinquent is brilliant in capturing everything about them. Classic. It was comical that some actually referred to the term NED to describe themselves. And how correct they were. One of them actually screamed down the corridor at me, ‘Don't fuck with the NEDs.' Middle fingers on full display. I didn't believe their referencing the word was self-deprecation; they didn't strike me as being that ironic. NEDs. The name tickled me.

I didn't hate them. Hate wasn't the word I'd use. I certainly disliked them, I even pitied them at one point, but hate would have been too powerful an emotion for me to express. I wouldn't have given any of them the satisfaction of having my hate. I found them benign. More than anything else they annoyed me. That was on a good day when I could actually understand what the hell they were saying…oh, it was the usual thoughtless stuff; it didn't extend beyond sexual preferences, religious bigotry, my clothes or what football team I supported. It was funny because it seemed to vex them more when I informed them that I didn't like football. Apparently this is just not acceptable behaviour in Glasgow. Everyone has to be labelled, tarred or pigeon holed. I refused to be branded in such an infantile way. They categorised me regardless of my beliefs and preferences, however. My first experience of a lose-lose situation.

When all the slagging started I assumed it was because I was English, but I quickly learnt that it wasn't. They viewed me as an easy target. A guy isolated in a big new school, in a big new city. Someone searching to find his way. I was a sitting duck to them. Easy pickings. Fodder.

I didn't say anything in my defence as it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that I'd be better off ignoring them. We did have a similar level of ignorance, prejudice and intolerance in England; Glasgow didn't have a monopoly on brainless delinquency. I wasn't much of a fighter, but I knew when and where to speak my mind, or to challenge sensibilities. I also wanted to maintain my dignity. What was the point in any case? Was I that special person who was going to ignite the flame of reason in their heads? Were we about to arrive at a common understanding through a succession of long-winded and exhaustive negotiations? No way. Be a man, walk away, takes the bigger and braver man, and all that jargon. Fundamentally I valued my own aesthetic too much to step over that line.

It started pretty much as soon as I arrived in the school, give or take a few days here or there. It wasn't something I was used to in my last school. If anything problematic occurred it was settled rapidly through fisticuffs, or one swift fisticuff. That's how I settled it in the past. An old teacher told me to belt the bully if he was becoming too tiresome. I did. We played rugby at my last school, so you could say there was an inherent level of aggression that permeated. And, in many ways, an honour to settling scores with fists. However, I didn't think I would have taken on that advice here. That past, that experience, seemed like a lifetime ago.

I was thankful that Rosie was around. Not that I used her because I was getting a hard time. She was my girlfriend and we were together. Hard time or not, we would have still been together. Another thing to remember: I wasn't singled out. They harangued the life out of most folk. At a rough guess there were about ten of them. Sometimes there would be just a handful. They were always in numbers and always a threat. I kept saying to myself,
a year up here, tops
. I had a thick skin and was very determined. My determination wouldn't overstretch any boundaries. I was in control of the situation. There was no point approaching a teacher, it's not as if they were oblivious to the situation either, they buried their heads in the sand and pretended that nothing was happening. Anything for an easy-life approach. Probably the reality is that half of them were NED intimidated too, especially the female teachers. They may have found their swanky cars scratched from boot to bonnet had they confronted them.

There were a few comments about Miss Croal. Water off a duck's back. I heard the rumours. It's not as if I wandered around the school like Helen Keller…what could I do? I let them wash over me; I started to realise the moments when to turn my iPod on, block everything out. My main concern was trying to alleviate Rosie's fears. I was also worried that Miss Croal would be victimised because of what people were saying about her, about us, that the school's superiors would get wind of it and make life difficult for her. In a sense I was thankful that the majority of the defamatory comments came from the NEDs because their opinions and beliefs didn't exactly hold any weight or have any credence in the school. To quote the local parlance, they spoke pure pish. No, I'm not suggesting I was blameless. Not for one minute am I doing that. I'd admit that there was a part of me that enjoyed the attention, the ambiguity of the situation and, in a perverse way, the potentially dire consequences of the remarks being true. It's good to be noticed. After all, we are all narcissists at heart, are we not? I could have dined out on the tale in years to come.

To my recollection, Miss Croal and I never fully discussed the situation. There was nothing to discuss. Nothing. Our relationship continued in a similar vein. But that's not to say that it wasn't hanging in the air, it was, but we never addressed it. The elephant hovered. I carried on with the study classes and my time spent in her English class was as it was: unfulfilling, unremarkable and uninspiring. That didn't make her a bad person or a bad teacher for that matter. The problem could have been me. I understood she was pitching her lessons to a class that was inferior to my academic prowess. That's not snobbery or arrogance on my part, that's reality. I wasn't challenged. Thousands of students like their teachers and vice versa.

 The thing is sooner or later you'll be hunted. Sooner or later they'll sniff you out. In any environment, you get a sense of who to steer clear of. This new school was no different. They wandered around in packs. No less than four, no more than twelve. They looked malnourished and unkempt. What struck me was the state of their skin, it looked damaged and unhappy. The complexion of poverty. Two had distinctive scars straight down their right cheek in what appeared to be a premeditated assault. To my innocent and naïve eye it did, anyway. These scars were worn like badges and sent out a clear message of intent to onlookers. It worked, I was…terrified would be the wrong word to use…perturbed would be more accurate. I was perturbed by them, the scars that is. On the rare occasion I heard them chatting among themselves I found it nigh on impossible to understand what they were saying. The odd word here and there. Their tone and temperament, on the other hand, was easier to decipher. I stayed clear of them.

I tried to make myself invisible around them, to draw no attention to myself. Did it work? No chance. As an Englishman in a Scottish school, I may as well have hung a red neon sign on my back saying
English guy! Feel free to kick the shit out of him
. At first it was stares and internal questioning. ‘Who the hell is that?' ‘When did that prick come to our school?' And they were not wrong about the use of
our
; it was their school, too. They controlled it. They provided its foundations. They controlled where other students wandered…as well as some teachers. They controlled the atmosphere of each lesson. After that came the odd bark, ‘Haw fanny man, wit ir you doin up here?' ‘Git back tae yer own country, ya bawbag.' Never once did I retaliate or make, what could have been, a misinter-preted gesture. Usually I plugged my earphones in, and blocked their comments out. As long as they remained just comments I could handle it, no problem. Keep eyes on the floor! Keep eyes on the floor! Keep eyes on the floor! My mantra when they were about. What galled me most was that these lowlife bastards drove fear into the vulnerable and insecure. Sought out and preyed on the weak. I was determined not to appear weak.