The Vale - Chapter 5

 

It was so much colder back then, nothing like the soft, Southern air which I find myself gliding through so easily these days. I remember frequent freezing fog so thick that all your muscles tensed as you waded through it and could barely see eight feet ahead of you. It was the sort of weather which ruined your appearance, your hair, your face, your thoughts, everything. There were kids without proper coats, paper thin anoraks, trembling, the skin on their legs blotched in purple patterns like corned beef. 

 

It was one such morning when Adam and I were walking along together, out of the estate towards our school. The air was biting cold and our small, unformed bodies clunked as we sauntered along, hands in pockets, not keen to rush but still new enough to want to avoid being late for the register.

 

There were other kids around but Adam and I were a tight unit in those early days. We knew of other boys but we were unsure of being accepted and didn’t really interact with them. That was until a whirlwind came between us in the form of Daniel Bell. I’d noticed him, queueing up for school lunch and I was aware that he was in our year. He was loud, confident with a thick mop of dark hair and arms down to his knees. It occurred to me that he might have skipped some layers of evolution.

 

He jumped on us, placing a hand on each of our shoulders, almost knocking us to the ground. One of the things I noticed about the first few years of secondary school was the disparity in the size of the boys, some of us were barely five foot tall and six and a half stone, yet others were towering at six foot and broad with heavy limbs.

 

‘Alright lads!’ he said.

 

We composed ourselves and laughed nervously. Adam still had a high voice and to my horror, he held out his hand like a tiny businessman and said, ‘Hello, I’m Adam. You must be..?’ 

 

‘Dan,’ he said, without looking at us, slapping his chest like a gorilla. ‘I’m Dan the man, everyone knows me. I’ve clocked you two, walking my way. Yes, I’ve seen you loads but you ignored me but you can’t ignore me forever. I live in Kemble. Do you two live over in the houses?’

 

‘He does,’ I said, pointing at Adam.

 

Adam pointed back at me. ‘And he lives in the towers.’

 

Dan laughed. ‘You’re like a double act, the Two Ronnies.’

 

I cringed because we weren’t. ‘Cranwell,’ I said, cringing even more at the sound of the word. I hated all the names of the tower blocks. I hated how as an innocent child I had learned them all in the same way as I learned colours and weather and the names of animals. I hated the subtle differences between them based on stereotypes. I knew that Kemble was where some of the stronger characters of our neighbourhood lived and I’d never been inside it. I laughed slightly and added, ‘I’m Jamie.’ 

 

‘Jam,’ said Adam quickly, ‘he’s called him Jam because he only eats jam sandwiches.’

 

‘Not really. I’m trying to branch out. I eat chips now and burnt sausages…and cucumber.’

 

‘You ate fish at mine.’

 

That was a true fact. I did eat some fish at Adam’s house but the experience was absolutely horrifying. I was still recovering from it and feared I could wretch if I thought too hard about it.

 

‘Hey, we need to divert to the shop, friends. I need my herbal tablets, I’m freezing my bollocks off,’ Dan said, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them.

 

‘And we’ve got cross country this morning,’ said Adam.

 

Dan stopped suddenly. ‘Oh shit, have we. I might have to borrow part of your kit, just a bit of it, a single, you know, garment. If I forget all of it again, I’ll get detention but if I just have one thing then they’ll see that I made an effort.’

 

Adam instantly began burrowing inside his kit bag, he pulled out a sweatshirt and held it out for our brand new mate, thrilled to have been able to flex the generous qualities his parents had instilled into him. Dan snatched it from him and promised to return it clean the following day, he never did.

 

We didn’t go straight to school that day, we diverted to the shop to purchase some peculiar sweets called Gray's Herbal Tablets, which we quickly found to be quite addictive. Before long we were buying them every morning. That was our first foray into both diversions and addictive substances.

 

The following weekend Dan asked us to come to his flat because his parents would be out and we could play on his computer, a ZX Spectrum. We agreed straight away because we were at that age and stage where we just wanted to dive into everything, grow and become worldly. 

 

My parents rarely asked me much about school, beyond a few basic questions; ‘Have you done your homework. Is your uniform all ready for tomorrow?’ I’m unsure what they thought my days were actually like but I suspected they had no idea of the truly feral nature of modern comprehensive schools.

 

I could see several tower blocks, including Kemble tower from my bedroom window and the evening before we were due to go to Dan’s, I turned out my lights and spent some time gazing across at it. It seemed strange, perhaps because I had never got to know any of its inhabitants though I would most definitely have seen them around. 

 

The other towers may as well have been great, lifeless boulders since I wasn’t in the habit of dwelling upon the flesh and blood inside; people with real lives and problems, breathing, breeding and doing all the things that people do. I knew a couple of people in other blocks but there were just so many hundreds of humans in a vertical stack, the concept was a difficult one to grasp.

 

Somehow Kemble looked rougher than my own building, just in the sense that a couple of the flats had aberrant curtain arrangements or string vests hanging up to dry on the balcony. I wondered how my own windows looked from the outside. This thought gave me a cold feeling in my heart, like I was nothing and the little enclave of towers where fate had placed me was simply a sick game, somewhere in an irrelevant corner of the universe. 

 

I drew myself away and sat down on my bed in the darkness but Gary had joined me and he continued looking out. He stood silently in front of the glass, dressed in the pale blue top and trousers which he always wore. I suddenly felt overcome with an urge to shout out his name but I knew it would upset my mother and make my father very angry so I suppressed it which made me feel more anxious and pulled apart. My tension made him disappear.

 

I phoned Adam in the morning to make sure he was still up for the visit to Dan’s because I really didn’t fancy going there alone. He said he was and he sounded excited so I diverted to his house even though mine was closer but Adam hadn’t been to mine yet and I wasn’t quite ready for him to meet my mum. Partly because I was always waiting for her to snap out of it and become normal and I sort of hoped, at any one time, that this was imminent but she never did. 

 

Adam was dressed in his usual, squashy bumbling attire of trousers which looked like they were made from wool and a heavy knitted jumper devoid of any nod to current fashions. It was such a short walk to Kemble, just mere yards but the vertical nature of the habitat meant those who dwelled within it felt so much farther away, floating out of reach.

 

 

As we approached the main door, we noticed a figure lingering outside, leaning against the wall and smoking. He threw his cigarette on the floor and killed it dead with his foot, staring at us the whole time. I quickly realised it was Marcus Whale. Just as we were about to open the door, he began to walk towards us, leading with his head which jutted out from a protruding neck, a foot in front of his chest.

 

He had a way of staring which was more like drilling, his light blue eyes were filled with an innate madness. ‘A pass, you need a pass to come this way,’ he said in a voice which was neither aggressive or friendly.