The Merman (9 page)

‘We shouldn't start riding, right?' asked my brother. ‘It might look suspicious. Better to stroll along as if nothing happened.'

‘You're a fast learner,' I said with a sour tone. ‘Soon you'll be ready to start working with Dad.'

‘Thanks!'

‘I meant it ironically. By the way, did you know he's coming home soon? In two weeks and six days' time, to be precise.'

‘Everything will work out okay, Nella. As long as Dad's out.'

I did not bother to contradict him. This was his day. New trainers. News about Dad. Reality would soon catch up with him. Dad would turn up with a jailbird mate, chaos would ensue, and my brother and I would be forced to share a room while a storm engulfed the entire sea outside.

T
ommy wasn't at school on Monday morning either. It wasn't like him to be away for so long, at least not without saying why. I wondered whether something had happened. Maybe he had had to help his brothers with their fishing? Sometimes when they returned with big catches he would stay at home without asking permission.

Large cliques sat at the tables in the common room, telling each other what they had done at the weekend. Some lads were playing cards, gin rummy or twenty-one, shouting over each other's heads and generally whingeing that there were five whole days left until Friday. A couple of Glommen kids disappeared out into the corridor, so it was clear the school bus had arrived. I put my PE bag in my locker, as well as the plastic carrier bag with the Walkman wrapped inside.

‘Did you have a good weekend?' someone behind me asked.

It was Ola. He had snuck up without my noticing.

‘It was okay.'

‘That's nice to hear. Hung out with your retarded brother, maybe? Or with Tommy? Or that cripple you're mates with?'

‘I was at home.'

‘Okay. Just wanted to know if you've started scraping together some cash yet. Gerard needs it by Friday at the latest. Otherwise there'll be interest payable. Lots of interest.'

Cripple
, I thought. He must mean the Professor.

‘He'll get it, you can tell him that.'

I looked over towards the doors. People were still coming in from the schoolyard. Perhaps Tommy would turn up there anyway, reassurance that I didn't have anything to worry about.

‘I hope so... Oh, and Ironing Board, I hope you're not going to blab about what happened in the woods last Friday. Like you blabbed about the cat, I mean. Because that story is getting bigger. Gerard had to go up to the headmaster's office again. And L.G. rang my dad at home last Friday. It's making me pretty upset, as a matter of fact.'

His ID tag around his neck was moving in time with his Adam's apple as he spoke. He had a ‘Non-Smoking Generation' sweatshirt on under his denim jacket. I presumed it was a joke, because he smoked.

‘A whole load of shit has blown up, and in my opinion it never needed to happen. It's a tragedy, in fact.'

He noticed something on his thumbnail and bit it cautiously. Looked at it. Bit it again.

‘Whose cat was it?' I asked.

I don't know where that question came from; it just popped into my head from nowhere and came out of my mouth. Ola looked away towards the corridor, where people had started to shuffle off to their classrooms. A tiny piece of his thumbnail had got stuck on his bottom lip.

‘How the hell should I know? It just happened to be there... a little farm cat, they're a penny a pound. Who cares?'

‘Wasn't it Peder's? Doesn't he have cats at home?'

‘I dunno anything about it, Ironing Board. And if I did know anything about it, I'd make sure I forgot it, and that's what you should do too.'

I already regretted getting into a conversation with him, but it was too late now. That's how it is with words, I thought: they're always on their way somewhere, like tiny invisible missiles. They could strike anyone, and the damage was impossible to calculate.

Ola took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped one out and placed it behind his ear.

‘I don't think you should talk about that cat any more. We just won't mention it again. That'll be better for everyone.'

It was as if our conversation wiped out an old picture of him and replaced it with a newer one: his nails were chewed down to the quick, leaving only narrow strips that were embedded in his fingertips like pillows made of meat; his strong thighs and muscular arms. The face he had started shaving in Year Six, with a downy moustache and hints of a beard... the fleshy nose, the tracksuit jacket that was straining at the shoulders. He sometimes lifted scrap iron in Peder's basement. I had heard them bragging about how much they could lift on the bench press. And yet I got the sense that he was scared of me.

‘Social Studies test,' he said, nodding in the direction of the classroom. ‘I'm aiming for straight Fs again this year. But Social Studies is like the fly in my ointment. No matter how hard I try, I always get a D. I think the teacher's a queer. He gives me better marks because he hopes I'll wank him off.'

I finished the test in twenty minutes. The questions weren't particularly hard. We were doing foreign policy, learning about NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the forms of government in different countries, and the names of presidents and prime ministers: Andropov in Russia, Thatcher in Britain, Kohl and Mitterrand in West Germany and France. Even though I hadn't had a chance to revise I had a decent grasp of all that. And there were more important things to worry about than my mark in Social Studies.

I handed in my test paper and went over to the door. Gerard looked at me with his creepy smirk, Peder waved, and when I glanced over my shoulder I realised that the entire class was following me with their eyes.

Out in the corridor, I slunk into the first decent toilet. I felt like I needed to have some peace for a while.

I just sat there with the door locked and looked at the graffiti on the walls, cocks that people had drawn and phone numbers you were supposed to call if you wanted to have a shag or get a blow job. Sometimes there would be things about me and my brother as
well, but I didn't see anything this time. Maybe the caretaker had come by with his tin of paint?

I wondered whether the Tommy situation had anything to do with me, and all the other stuff that had happened. But I didn't think so. In his case, it was about other things. It was strange that he wasn't back. He'd said he was healthy and was going to come today. The more I thought about it, the stranger I thought he'd sounded on the phone.

The toilet was located opposite the staff room. When I opened the door, I ran straight into L.G. There was no chance of getting away. He stood there like a huge roadblock, dressed in his worn-out corduroy jacket and jeans which he hoped would make him look youthful, and he did not appear to be in any sort of hurry.

‘Ah, I'm glad I've got hold of you,' he said. ‘You were absent all afternoon last Friday. Have you got an explanation?'

‘I was ill.'

‘You have to report that. Those are the rules. You could have rung from home.'

‘I forgot. I caught something during recess. Suddenly felt sick.'

L.G. stood with the door open, as if he were considering whether to bring me in for a longer interrogation. I could see the staff room behind him: people sitting smoking and reading newspapers as they waited for the next lesson.

‘You know what, Petronella? I don't believe you. But I won't bother with it this time. I won't send a letter home to your parents... '

There were coats and bags hanging in the cloakroom in a corner that was not visible from the front desk. I thought: if you can get in there without anyone noticing, there's a small fortune there for the taking.

‘I think you had other reasons for being absent. And you should know one thing: you can always come and talk to me if there's something worrying you. It's part of my job, you know.'

It would have been so easy, I thought, to let my guard down for a moment, to just open up, tell him what had happened, get all the
crap that had been building up off my chest, and when I was in full flow to remember to tell him that Dad was on his way home and that Mum was probably lying asleep in her own vomit while we were standing there killing time. But I just didn't feel like it.

‘I've got an issue right now that has to do with some of your classmates. I can't reveal what it's about, but I wonder whether you've been having a tough time precisely because of it. If you have, you can certainly come and talk to me about it. And whatever you say, I promise I will not pass it along to anyone else.'

‘It's no problem. I just got sick, something with my stomach, and forgot to ring. I'll remember next time. How is Tommy, by the way, is he still at home?'

L.G. gave me a strange look.

‘Wasn't he in Social Studies today?'

‘No.'

‘It's the same thing there: absent without calling in sick. It sounds as though I'll have to bring this up at the next class assembly so everyone knows what the rules are.'

He sounded formal again, on the way back to his role masquerading as a teacher. He looked at his watch; I understood that my time was up.

When I reached my locker, Jessica, the class gossip, was standing there waiting. She was wearing her Takano jumpsuit with leg warmers and Peter Pan boots, and fingerless gloves in white lace. She embodied a sort of summary of all the girls in Year Nine, with Nivea Ultra lip gloss, home-permed curls and round white rings round her eyes from the goggles they wore on the sunbed. The only mismatch was her acne. Underneath her face powder she looked as if she'd been hit by a hail of buckshot.

‘How'd the test go?' she asked.

‘Okay. Why are you asking?'

‘I thought the questions were hard. Like that one about the Pershing missiles, what countries they're in. And why do we have
to memorise all the names? You should just ask someone who knows if you don't. A teacher or somebody.'

She looked at me like it was my fault there was something called Social Studies that existed in the world. She was a good pupil, almost as good as me, but she didn't think it was appropriate to admit it. Presumably she was convinced it would make her less attractive to boys.

‘Did you know Gerard had to go to the headmaster's office last Friday?' she asked. ‘Did you know about that before you ran off?'

‘No.'

‘He's been reported to the police for something... that's what it was about. He spent an hour in the office because of that. L.G. was there too. And the school welfare officer. Somebody said they saw a policeman up there too. I heard a rumour it was about a whole load of sick stuff they've done... a whole kettle of fish that's going to get blown wide open. Stuff they've been up to this past year. Everybody was talking about it at the weekend. The whole school, it seems like.'

I took my PE bag out of my locker and tried not to listen to her. The Walkman was right at the back of the shelf, along with an envelope containing five hundred kronor. Two hundred and seventy were my own, and the rest came from the old lady at the chemist's. Maybe the best thing was not to drag it out any longer, just go and find Gerard and tell him what I had to offer? But he didn't seem to be in any great hurry.

‘Was that why they went after you and your brother?'

‘Huh?'

‘Because you guys knew something?'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about.'

Jessica took her chewing gum out of her mouth and inspected it between two fingers.

‘What exactly did they do to you? In the woods. I didn't want to listen when they were telling about it. It sounded so gross. Is it true they took your clothes off?'

‘No. And why are you pretending you care?'

She chewed her gum like a cud again, and seemed to ponder seriously whether it was time to blow a bubble. I could smell the aroma of Juicy Fruit mingling with the smell of minestrone soup from the dining room.

‘But I do, really. I thought they went too far. Peder said they pulled your trousers off and... ' – she lowered her voice – ‘...stuffed something up back there. That's really disgusting! I wouldn't have been able to bear it. Did it hurt?'

It felt completely ridiculous to be having this conversation. And yet I couldn't resist answering.

‘So why didn't you tell somebody? L.G. or the headmaster? If you're so concerned about me now, tell them you heard that Gerard had done disgusting things to me. Do me that favour and maybe some things will change around here. But you don't give a damn, Jessica, you're just pretending, and there is a hell of a difference.'

‘Well, excuse me for living, but you're fucking mental. Always suffering soooo much. A real victim.'

She smacked her hand against the locker door and went on her way. I stood there in a cloud of Juicy Fruit and Date perfume. Date Natalie, it smelled like.

Communal PE on Mondays was one of the more annoying parts of the school week. I couldn't stand how the girls checked out each other's bodies in the changing room, commented on who was fat or thin, whose breasts had grown the most or how you deal with everything down there. I was badly off in those respects, with hardly a hint of breasts and nearly bare between my legs. I wasn't even anywhere close to having regular periods. At the end of primary school I usually didn't bother to shower because of all the glances and all the talk, but when we started Year Seven it became sort of an unwritten rule. And I'd rather be called Ironing Board than ‘puke' or something along those lines. For the boys, it was pubic hair that mattered, all kinds of hair growth really,
the more the better, and their voices breaking of course. The ones whose voices hadn't broken by Year Nine were classified as third-class citizens. There were some who tried to disguise it by lowering their voices. Like Petter Andrén, the smallest boy in our year, who valiantly attempted to seem mature by speaking way down in his throat, all mushy and muffled, like he had swallowed solid darkness. I might have preferred that if I'd had a choice, because in the girls' changing room it was all about the bodies, and how you smelled, if you were nice and clean or not...