Zero Per Cent

Two of our classmates were taking the opportunity to play mini-tennis with a couple of old racquets. I saw my pony-tailed attacker from yesterday casually interrupt the mini-tennis (“Can I be ball boy, children?”) and walk off with their ball to laugh coldly with his mates.

“He’ll be dragged down…” Dad’s insistence was loud inside my head.

“It’s a perfectly good school with a nice mix of all sorts. There aren’t that many difficult kids. Besides, what do you think he is going to be dragged down into? This is where he lives – he’s in it already. Difficult kids are part of the experience. They lead difficult, realistic lives.”

“And they tend to become very difficult adolescents. Difficult men.”

“All schools produce difficult men – all schools. Jack will learn to cope. He’s got so much going on here. He doesn’t need to go whizzing off. He can learn to whiz here.”

“He’s sensitive. He’ll be bullied.”

“And he won’t be bullied somewhere else?”

“Bullied in the wrong way.”

Suddenly I was standing, with what Razza was to describe later as “summat shining in your eye”. My legs were no longer lamb-like. It was coiled-spring time.

I grabbed a racquet and fired myself towards the older boys. Half a mile away a Lear jet was accelerating at us, forcing its noise towards the playground.

“Where you going?” Michael barked.

Ducking into the group of older boys, I snatched back the tennis ball from the bully and barged out through the other side. The roar of the plane did little to drown out “You little fuck!” and “Shit, back here now!” but I was running, running towards the fence and everyone in the playground was looking at me. I had just seconds before the plane took off and before I would be brought down, pulled off the chicken wire like a convict.

When I fancied I could see the olive in Dad’s Martini, I slid to a stop, swung the racquet and, with champagne timing, crashed the balding sphere into space. As we all watched it go I caught the look of amazement, crinkling into fury, on the pilot’s speeding face. The whites of his eyes lit up for an astonished moment as the ball hit his shiny jet.

“Right between the wheels,” yelled Michael, skidding to my side with a bunch of new admirers. “Wot a shot!”

They grabbed their groins and danced in mock agony, pretending to be nutted jets.

“Aim high!” I shouted. “Forget your fucking football and aim high!”

The sphere returned to planet Earth to be caught by a laughing senior. More and more kids were doing the groin dance now and pecking their heads up into the air. I began to laugh. If I had really, really caught the Lear between the legs, Dad might have felt the tremor too. Had I made him sit up and take note of me already?

Anything seemed possible during this Lucky Break when the kids of Chevy Oak first looked up from their dribbling. Everyone was congratulating me and cussing pony-tail.

“You was shown!”

“Little kid told you, man,” said another. “That was bad!”

He staggered off and I was swamped.

As they hammered my back I smiled. I couldn’t help hearing Dad’s warning.

“In two years’ time Jack will be a basket case, bullied to a jelly.”

“Shut up, Martin.”

Shut up the pair of you! Just let me enjoy it!

“I will shut up – in a minute. Because if my prediction is true – when it becomes true – I as his father demand the right to send Jack, our by now gelatinous and quivering son, to a fee-paying school.”

“After two years he will be even more a part of this area than he is already. He will be two years stronger, Martin. He will have confidence which cannot be bought and no ‘rights’ of yours are going to mess that up…”

No-one was in at home but Ronaldson rang to confirm that I would have an enormous detention on Friday. I accepted.

“It’s not an invitation, Jack.”

“Then you can expect me, sir.”

Next day I felt I should go back into the playground. But what more could I add to my mantra of yesterday, “Aim high”? Of course every cupboard under every stair had been done over, everyone was brandishing a racquet, squash, badminton, anything – and everyone was scouring the airways. Eventually a jet approached. I was going to give the order – the least I could do – but they all fired far too early. Birds were winded but the plane escaped and hundreds of tennis balls landed in airport territory. Security’s Alsatians were soon happily collecting them from the lush grass. More teachers appeared from the school building and they shouted out punishments. I was about the only kid without a racquet.

My jet strike has passed into legend. The day they looked up from their football at the big, wide sky and saw me hit something huge. I was established at Chevy Oak before most of my year group knew the way to the toilets. Jumbo Curling before I had a single pube.

Razza also earned himself a seat at that fashionable first detention. Keen on calling up the emergency services at Primary, he had rung the airport to ask if we could have our balls back – and given his name.

“Detention in your first week, Jack,” said Dad, back from Hong Kong.

“Yup.”

“What did you get it for?”

I explained. He said he did sometimes take a Martini but was never likely to fly in a Lear jet.

“You seem to be making your mark, eh, Jack?”

“Oh Martin, please! Stay out of his education if you’re going to be like that. Imagine what it was like for me dealing with the tutor – and a phone call from the Head.”

“At least you aren’t having to sew him up again, Polly.”

They both ruffled different sides of my head, which was quite big enough for them not to have to mingle fingers. What a good moment, I thought, to put Grandad’s clicker to use. This was the only material object he had handed down after a career on the trains and Dad had passed it straight on to me. I saw a chance to use this device, with which Grandad had counted many thousands of rail travellers during his ticket-collecting days, to provide my banker of a Dad with some statistics, some hard evidence (to back up my permanent grin) of what a good time I was having.

Kids I didn’t even know greeted me at the end of Rockenden Road. I notched up seven clicks on my way into school. Others competed for my attention in the corridors and on the stairs. Everywhere it was “Safe, Jack, safe.”

“Sweet as a nut, Jumbo.”

“You’re a chief!”

“Jack’s lush an’ all!”

Click, click, click.

But how safe did I feel, how sweet was my nut, how lush my chiefiness? The day would show me. The day would show Dad. Statistics.

By break I was up to 157. What with corridor greetings, friendly cussings and happy exchanges during afternoon Maths when a cover teacher tried to control us with her skirt still tucked into her pants, I was pushing 500 clicks by the end of the day. Click, click, click. Safe, Jumbo Jack, safe mate, lush and wicked.

Dad was with us for supper as I explained the study.

“He’s enjoying himself, isn’t he, Martin?”

“Four hundred and ninety two clicks today, Dad.”

“Don’t spread yourself too thinly.” But I could tell he was pretty pleased. “Establish yourself soundly, remember?” he added. “Build up your defences.”

“Listen to the warlord,” Mum laughed.

“Dad’s a chief, Mum.”

“He’s listening to me all right, Polly…” said Dad.

But when I went back in to tell them I’d also found 42 text messages on my mobile, they were getting at each other again.

I now needed a woman. Rather than pick a peer I chose Miss Price, our young French teacher. With a word to one or two key players, I ensured that our first few lessons went well. Even Michael shut up for me.

“Jack Curling,” she said after a fortnight of progress in our mixed ability set, “you are a good man to go into the jungle with.”

“And you are a superb teacher, miss,” I groundlessly confided. “It is such a romantic tongue, la langue Français.”

I fell in love with her, ignored all other subjects and called her “maman” twice by mistake. And, Mum, I’m afraid her perfume was the first I ever noticed.

Meanwhile I decided to investigate other areas of the school, now that I had conquered the playground. Past the chilly pong and wild noises of the toilets I went, past the bins where gulls fought pigeons for the canteen’s old buns, and up past the crazy, clanging music rooms. I was wondering whether there might be opportunities for further self-establishment – in the school library.

It turned out to be a large room full of stiffs and girls clustered at tables or pecking at high walls of shelves with dog-eared signs on: ‘Kwikreads!’, ‘Lotsa Laughs!!’ and ‘Horror!!!’ The main window looked out over the playground and up Jumbo Jack’s Runway beyond. I pressed my nose against the glass. I swung my bag up to the sky. I fucking loved this school.

A throat cleared. I turned to see a small dark-haired man behind the desk.

“In the bag drop, please,” he said from out of a small head with a nose tipped like Concorde.

“Sorry, sir.”

He followed me and my bag to the drop to inform me that he was not a ‘sir’.

“I’m not paid as much as a sir so I don’t see why I should be sirred. I am Mr Schuman, the Librarian.” He stuck out his hand. “And you are?”

Watching your snout, Mister.

“Jack Curling.” We shook. (Don’t touch teachers but Support Staff’s all right.)

“I thought so.”

“You know me?”

A plane went overhead.

“I happened to be looking out of the window that day. A remarkable shot. I’ve been wanting to outlaw aeroplanes for years.”

“Really?”

“Approximately every three minutes I yearn for a ban on the beastly birds.”

“Well, I was lucky.”

“I imagine you suffered.”

“What?”

“They went for you, I suppose.”

“Yes, but only after I had made my point, Mr Schuman.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“Welcome to the library anyway. Do you, by any extraordinary chance, like reading?”

“Not much.”

“Something?”

“Adventure?” I hazarded.

He looked disappointed but showed me to the relevant shelf. Much more to my interest was the number of teachers who entered the library, nodded at Schuman and then disappeared into a side room. This struck me as intriguing. I sidled over and Schuman followed.

“They’ve put me in charge of reprographics as well.”

“What’s that?”

He threw open the door to reveal a teacher about to kick the side of a large photocopier.

“Of course they don’t pay me any extra. I don’t complain because I haven’t a clue how it works – any more than he has!”

I wasn’t sure yet how I would make use of the library but I liked what I’d seen already. The buzzer sounded. Another jumbo wheeled off left as I headed to the next lesson.

Others flourished in different spheres. Michael scored an early success when the Music teacher gave him an hour, for gobbing into Razza’s cornet during ‘orchestra’.

“A hour? A hour? You can’t do that!”

“I can,” he said, uneasy with the challenge.

“Not without twenty-four hours’ notice you can’t. What if I’m not home when I’m expected? Eh?”

Michael has always been good on his rights and others’ wrongs.

“Your mother will be relieved.”

This teacher couldn’t even do sarcasm.

“Nah, nah, nah, that ain’t funny. You can’t do it, mister. Twenty minutes, innit, twenty minutes max or Denny’ll come and explain matters t’ya.”

There were other coups. Stacey Timms claimed to have done it in the toilets with a Year Nine protected by a salt and vinegar crisp bag. Razza, the son of the caretaker, told a teacher to kiss his arse. Clearly I was needed to raise the tone.

The following week the school secretary came to pull me out of a lively Music lesson.

“Sorry to, er, interrupt – but could I borrow Jack for a moment? There’s a visitor for him.”

I didn’t know what model I had demanded: anything so long as she was drop-head gorgeous and red. I wasn’t disappointed and, if my man was, he didn’t show it.

“Don’t worry, sir. You did write a remarkably good letter. Fooled us fair and square. This is the least we can do – and perhaps in a few years’ time our indulgence will pay off in terms of brand loyalty. The horn is in the usual place. One blast should do the trick.”

I climbed inside to hit the horn, which made such a very horny sound that the music-room windows filled with kids – and other windows too. After smearing the mahogany veneer with my sticky fingers, I got slowly back out, pacing around her and leaning into gales of envy. I shot a few questions at the man, cocking my head in interest at his replies. I took the odd note in my homework diary before languidly checking my phone for messages: too many to cope with now. Might have to get a school secretary myself.

I eased back inside and, to grateful cheers, sent the roof up and back, retracting sexily into its slot. I nodded to the school’s façade which now included a lifelike bust of Bumcheeks. The bust sprouted a quick finger and bellowed, “My study, now!”

“I have meant to make your acquaintance earlier, young man. Of course I have spoken to your mother once or twice. I spent a good deal of time at the start of the year apologising for you to the airport authority and now I dare say a car manufacturer will be in touch. This is not going to become a craze, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.” I knew Razza had written to a Chinese company about a clever-looking military vehicle which could fire bridges across raging rivers.

“And I think you would do well from now on to restrict your activities to the school. Stop getting muddled up with the outside world.”

“You mean lower my horizons, sir? I have always tried to aim high…”

“I mean, Jack Curling, focus your energies where they count, which is in the classroom.”

Before taking this advice, I couldn’t resist writing to the photocopier company and getting a manual which I learnt off by heart. Schuman was much impressed by my enlarging, my stapling and my shrinking. He gave me increasing access to what I now saw as key school power node.

“I’ve never really understood any of the buttons but you seem to realise it has been underachieving,” he moaned. “Like so much round here…”

There were delicious dividends. Teachers, stressed and confused, so often left behind on the glass what they had been copying. Salary statements, pages of their own boring stories, an invitation to a taster bell-ringing evening in Feltham. Nothing, however, on Miss Price, whom I was looking forward to introducing to Mum and Dad at parents’ evening.

The atmosphere was good. The teachers looked a bit knackered but the really mad kids never come to these dos, their madder folks refusing to be bollocked by smarmy young graduates – so there was little for anyone to worry about on such a beautiful sunny evening.

I had left Miss Price to last on the bookings sheet. I told Mum even as I saw the Science teacher setting out his table that he had said he was unable to make it.

“Family matters, I think.”

This avoided a difficult meeting for me and gave Dad the chance to moan about the school (“We’ve come all this way and he can’t be bothered to stay. Think of the holidays they all get…”) which improved his mood. History, Maths, English and ICT passed OK except Mum thought the English teacher was a bit snobby.

“Always were,” said Dad.

Bumcheeks breezed by and greeted us civilly which did no harm. Ronaldson let me down a little by saying I wasn’t trying hard enough and called me a “great asset”, which sounded rude. Miss Price alone remained, in the still sunny Modern Languages room.

“Hello, miss,” I beamed at her, eagerly pulling up a chair and letting Mum and Dad find their own. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you, Jack. Hello, Mr Curling, Mrs Curling.” She’d done her research and knew there were no carers, guardians or steps for me.

“Really, I have nothing but praise for Jack. He has been a wonderful student all year and he has improved a great deal.”

“In what way, Miss Price? Can you give us some specifics?”

She looked at Dad and entered into some curriculum detail and the way I’d been handling it.

“… Furthermore he has also been a tremendous help to other less talented students in class, especially in group work. He’s even helped with some of their homework.”

“I can’t see what good can come of that,” sniffed Dad. “That was called plain cheating in my day.”

But he and I both knew Mum would love it. She squeezed my shoulder.

“It’s really nice to hear about you helping – poor Michael, was it?”

I remembered my cheeky little comments in his margins, ‘Bon soir, Madame, je suis partout!’ and ‘Ici aussi!’ and I beamed too.

On the way to the car, Dad put his arm lightly round me and said, “Well, they seem to like you, Jack.”

“Yeah, it’s all right there, isn’t it, Dad?”

“Your tutor is a funny looking man though.”

“Oh I do like Mr Ronaldson!” chimed Mum. “He’s got such a nice way with you all. And he really does care.”

“Yes, Mum, I suppose he does.”

“Oh definitely, Jack. You are lucky to have him.”

I asked her quietly the meaning of ‘asset’ and she didn’t hear.

“No, Martin, we’ll walk thank you.”

“I came across a stall trying to sell the Business Studies department, Jack,” said Dad as he unlocked the car. “Very enthusiastic teacher actually. You might like to find out some more about that…”

“Jack seems to be doing the business anyway, don’t you think, Martin?” Mum hugged me and laughed. Suddenly I wished I were alone with Dad again, eating caviar and hearing about how he really thought I was doing on the survival front.

He drove home, and Mum and I meandered back past the familiar premises of Nobbi, our neighbourhood greengrocer, who was just throwing down his metal casements.

“How’s it going, with big school?” he called.

“Fine thanks, Nob.”

“One to be proud of, eh, Mrs C?”

Mum laughed and patted my head.

“I really am proud of you,” she said as we walked on. “You’ve settled in so brilliantly. Even Dad has to admit it.”

“Do you think he does? Thanks. Did you like Miss Price?”

“Well she certainly seems to like you.”

“Do you think so?”

“Nice girl. Horrid perfume though.”

It sometimes seemed to me that the school tried to lay on events to distract us from our work. How else can you interpret the arrival of student teachers? Certainly it is open season if you’re lucky enough to get one. Which we were – in place of the History teacher. Clean-cut and youthful, Mr Carew was very friendly. So we took the piss immediately.

“How long are you with us, Mr Caroooo?” I felt obliged to open the hostilities.

“Oh, for a good long while. You must think of me as your permanent teacher now, Jake.”

“It’s Jack actually.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right, Mr Caroooo, but don’t you return to the institute soon – for feedback? Stress counselling?”

“What? Look, why don’t you just get on with the task?”

“Only if you tell us your Aims for the lesson.”

“My aims?”

“And afterwards your Objectives. They should be written in your lesson plan.”

“You cheeky little—”

“In fact, Mr Caroooo, I wouldn’t half mind seeing your entire Scheme of Work. Michael’s Uncle Denny takes a lively interest in modern approaches to the subject, when he’s not pumping iron down at the gym…”

This got reported to Bumcheeks, who gave me a two-hour though he could hardly deny I’d been concentrating my energies in the classroom – and specifically on the teacher.

The next few History lessons went better – from Carew’s point of view – largely because the Head himself was ‘observing’. Nevertheless, Razza couldn’t resist again asking our trainee when he was going to let our ‘proper’ teacher back in and soon there was a general chorus of “How do you do, Mr Caroooo?” going down.

In the photocopy room one lunchtime Miss Price said Mr Carew was having a tough time with some of his classes.

“Does he teach you, Jack?”

“Er…”

“Well, if you do come across him just be helpful – as I know you can be.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s a bit of a jungle, as we know. And his supervisor’s in next week.”

“Leave it with me, miss,” I said, flattered to have her go so unprofessional on me. “We’ll get Mr Carew through.”

Just for yoooou.

But here I made two fatal underestimations: of my classmates’ malice and of Carew’s teaching skills. For the lesson in question, with the geezer from the institute stroking his clipboard at the back of the room, Carew made a pig of a choice. Of course he had worked it down to the last minute. I could see the spindly writing of his lesson plan had dedicated the eleventh and the twelfth minute after ten to ‘greeting pupils and settling them’. He did the first and I just about managed the second though Michael, it so happened, was out for blood today.

“Fuck off, Jack,” he said, as I tried to hush him. When I gestured to the back of the class he elaborately turned in his chair and whistled salaciously at the grey-haired suit already scribbling on to his clipboard. We wet ourselves. Had to.

“Right, everyone,” Mr Carew started, “today we’ve got a lot to get through so I just want to explain a few things and then we’ll, er, get right into the fun stuff. OK?”

“We know you, Mr Caroooo!” had started up, though it mutated around Michael’s area into, “We’ll have you, Mr Caroooo!”

I had to break the destructive cycle – for Miss Price’s sake.

“Sir?”

“Yes, what is it, Jack?” He was wary.

“Can I just say something before the, er, fun stuff?”

“As long as it’s relevant. And quick.” He looked at his watch and I realised I was eating into his three minutes’ introduction so I just blurted it out.

“Can I just say I’ve never really seen the point of History…”

“What?”

“Up till now, I mean. Until you started taking us. You make it come alive. I think a lot of us feel the same way…”

I was just trying to help. But this was not the way to do it. Mr Carew smiled with gratitude for about a second but then the peers started burrowing noses into imaginary holes and making powerful sucking noises which darkened his brow.

“Let’s talk about your love for the subject after the lesson, shall we?” He then revealed his absurd plans for cutting out statements about Napoleon’s life, discarding the false ones and ordering the trues chronologically. On sugar paper, if you please. With scissors. And glue.

I tried to cheat the historical inevitability of Mr Carew turning to another profession. I still ask for forgiveness from time to time. Mr Caroooo, I did try but you were one of my failures, a campaign too far.

He was everywhere – and nowhere – that lesson. I still like Napoleon and firmly believe we should have buried him as he fancied in Westminster Abbey. He taught us a thing or two. Mr Carew, however, didn’t. And when, towards the end of that deciding battle he set about retrieving the weapons, seven pairs of scissors and seven glue sticks, he only got six scissors – and no glues.