and dinner-money extortions loomed large in the minds of all kids younger than him - he had beat me up a few times, and Duncan too, but he didn’t seem to remember when he started hanging around with us that summer. Mark didn’t do well at school, but he did have a respect for knowledge, or at least for the kind of boyish knowledge that I possessed: knowing how to start fires with a magnifying glass; knowing about that UFO that had crashed in America after the war and been hushed up; knowing that if you scraped the stuff off the back of playing cards you could use it make explosives. He liked people who knew about things like that.
Tom White was not like that though, he was stupid and had no cunning or sense of fairness of any kind. He lived with his dad, who was an alcoholic and let Tom do whatever he wanted, which Tom did. As a consequence he was known as a troublemaker by the adults, and as a stupid wanker by us kids. We were both right. He was always doing stupid things and getting caught, like trying to escape an after school detention by climbing out the window, but getting stuck because he was so fat. Tom got very angry if anyone called him fat, but he was, and as kids who’d frequently been bullied by him, we felt no shame in saying so behind his back. Tom did whatever Mark said, because Mark was the only person who pretended to like him. Everyone but Tom knew it was just so Mark had someone to do his bidding, and occasionally take the fall if their misdeeds got out of hand. Even Duncan had worked that out.
And me? Alan Dean?
I was thirteen, and newly conscious of the fact that I lived in a four bed detached house on the other side of the village from the ‘miners estate’, and that this marked me out to some of my class-mates as ‘posh’ and easy pickings. I was the middle child of three. My sister Kate was eighteen and had just finished her A-Levels. That summer she was still deciding between Liverpool University, Manchester University, or her boyfriend who worked in a twenty-four hour garage. That this decision was taking place at all caused a lot of friction in our household. My younger brother was two, and to me at thirteen completely uninteresting. I didn’t have much to do with either of my siblings; my parents didn’t have favourites but that summer they had a lot on with both Kate and Robert, and I was left much to my own devices. I didn’t feel I could tell them anything.
I’d always been short and skinny, and when they started to hang around with us Mark and Tom had started to call me ‘the Ethiopian’ after the pictures they'd seen of the famine on TV. I’d like to say that even then I knew it was beneath me to respond to such a crass insult, but I didn’t – I desperately wanted to comeback with something witty and biting, to which they would have no reply. I was fair haired and fair skinned, and blushed a lot, and burnt easily in the summer sun. I probably spent most of that summer holiday looking red. And it was a hot summer, or so I remember it. Certainly that day was, prickly with August heat and the lack of rain or breeze.
It was hot and we were sitting on the back of the bench, bored – Mark kept half-heartedly giving Duncan a dead-arm and jeering when he flinched; Tom was singing over and over again, “I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves, I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves...” I had the feeling that Mark and Tom were becoming bored with Duncan and me, that whatever attraction there had been in befriending kids two years younger than them had paled. That they might get up and leave me and Duncan, just walk away like we were toys they’d outgrown. And I'd have been half glad if they had.
Then Mark straightened as something occurred to him, and he spoke without looking at any of us, staring at the terraced houses opposite instead.
“Hey everyone why don’t we go up to...
***
... that old air raid shelter that Gordon Ross an’ all them
Tom White was not like that though, he was stupid and had no cunning or sense of fairness of any kind. He lived with his dad, who was an alcoholic and let Tom do whatever he wanted, which Tom did. As a consequence he was known as a troublemaker by the adults, and as a stupid wanker by us kids. We were both right. He was always doing stupid things and getting caught, like trying to escape an after school detention by climbing out the window, but getting stuck because he was so fat. Tom got very angry if anyone called him fat, but he was, and as kids who’d frequently been bullied by him, we felt no shame in saying so behind his back. Tom did whatever Mark said, because Mark was the only person who pretended to like him. Everyone but Tom knew it was just so Mark had someone to do his bidding, and occasionally take the fall if their misdeeds got out of hand. Even Duncan had worked that out.
And me? Alan Dean?
I was thirteen, and newly conscious of the fact that I lived in a four bed detached house on the other side of the village from the ‘miners estate’, and that this marked me out to some of my class-mates as ‘posh’ and easy pickings. I was the middle child of three. My sister Kate was eighteen and had just finished her A-Levels. That summer she was still deciding between Liverpool University, Manchester University, or her boyfriend who worked in a twenty-four hour garage. That this decision was taking place at all caused a lot of friction in our household. My younger brother was two, and to me at thirteen completely uninteresting. I didn’t have much to do with either of my siblings; my parents didn’t have favourites but that summer they had a lot on with both Kate and Robert, and I was left much to my own devices. I didn’t feel I could tell them anything.
I’d always been short and skinny, and when they started to hang around with us Mark and Tom had started to call me ‘the Ethiopian’ after the pictures they'd seen of the famine on TV. I’d like to say that even then I knew it was beneath me to respond to such a crass insult, but I didn’t – I desperately wanted to comeback with something witty and biting, to which they would have no reply. I was fair haired and fair skinned, and blushed a lot, and burnt easily in the summer sun. I probably spent most of that summer holiday looking red. And it was a hot summer, or so I remember it. Certainly that day was, prickly with August heat and the lack of rain or breeze.
It was hot and we were sitting on the back of the bench, bored – Mark kept half-heartedly giving Duncan a dead-arm and jeering when he flinched; Tom was singing over and over again, “I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves, I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves...” I had the feeling that Mark and Tom were becoming bored with Duncan and me, that whatever attraction there had been in befriending kids two years younger than them had paled. That they might get up and leave me and Duncan, just walk away like we were toys they’d outgrown. And I'd have been half glad if they had.
Then Mark straightened as something occurred to him, and he spoke without looking at any of us, staring at the terraced houses opposite instead.
“Hey everyone why don’t we go up to...
***
... that old air raid shelter that Gordon Ross an’ all them
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