She thrilled at the word as she hadn’t since she was eight. ‘Ooops,’ went Vince. ‘Can’t you get them to change the music?’ He whirled round. ‘Here, boys,’ he called and went up to them. They were taller than him, all in dark cardigans. ‘Can I put something on?’ Bemused, they stood back and let him flip through the records and tapes. Here there were things left by generations of sixth-formers. It was a tradition scrupulously kept up, this donation of successive eras’ favourite music. Vince found a faded copy of David Bowie’s Hunky Dory album and turned it on with a triumphant grin.
One of the boys in cardigans nodded. ‘That’s meant to be smart, that is.’
Vince looked at him. ‘It’s just wonderful.’
Penny watched him walk back towards her. ‘I was thinking of going into town for lunch,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come? I can’t sit watching them boring bastards in the staff room eating coleslaw sandwiches again.’
Penny was nodding, aglow and — she suddenly realised — tingling madly. ‘We can go to the Copper Kettle. It’s all there.
They escaped as the dinner bell rang, ahead of the rush, through the technical department where the machines in the workshops clanged and buzzed laboriously and the smell of oil hung about like an abattoir smell.
Over the fields it was drizzling. Penny waded uncertainly while Vince plodged ahead. They kept up a companionable silence for a while.
Behind them the school was warmly lit, each classroom giving off its separate yellow glow. From here it seemed peaceful, but they knew that inside it would be full of noise and the tang of sweat and paper and smoke. Penny was lagging behind, looking at it. She heard the squelch of mud as Vince came back to stand by her. She stared at the orange brick building in the middle of school, the circular deaf unit they all called the Magic Roundabout, because it seemed the whole school revolved around the deaf kids in there. Sometimes the kids who could hear chased the deaf kids just for the fun of it. They got jealous because the Magic Roundabout had better carpets and double glazing and two videos. There was one belligerent kid who had no ears at all, only two frail wires coming out of the holes in his head.
‘You haven’t got long to stay here,’ Vince said.
‘I’ve only just got here.’
‘I know. But, really, this is just time in between. Enjoy it, but you’ll like it more when you get away. Wherever you go.’
‘I haven’t thought about afterwards yet,’ she said, with a shiver.
‘Afterwards it will all be better.’
The precinct was a five-minute walk across the field, through the old houses and across the car parks. Vince started telling Penny about the Queen visiting, about the time of her silver jubilee. She’d come down in a helicopter on to the car park where Kwiksave was now. His infant school had trooped all the kids out to stand at the railings and wave crayoned Union Jacks. ‘My teacher, the immortal and terrible Miss Kinsey, had us terrified in case we acted out of turn. Death to anyone who made a show of her in front of the Queen. I wouldn’t care, but the Queen was only coming to open up the borstal. It wasn’t to see me.’
No one had quite reckoned on the gale-force winds brought down by the Queen’s helicopter in such restricted space. Kids were blown over, the home-made flags shot off somewhere and Miss Kinsey herself dashed backwards, screaming helplessly, into the cordoned-off road. Vince had felt sorry for her, wanting so much to greet the Queen and looking, once the wind had stopped and the mayor and the royal party came past nodding, like an insane woman.
Since then and since he had last lived here, the town centre precinct had had all-sorts added to it. Whole new shops with rent so dear they stayed empty. The indoor bit for the Christians and gamblers. A gym, up on the ramp, above Kwiksave. The precinct had arrived at this state through a gradual accretion. In the fifties it had been a high street, paved over in the seventies, built up in the eighties, and taken over by the cheap shops in the nineties. The cheap shops like Boyes and Winners and Bill’s Bargain Basement had become Vince’s favourites, with all their tat and tawdry cheeriness.
They were walking past Winners now as Penny pointed out that she hated seeing all these women in ski pants and anoraks. ‘They may as well come out in what they sleep in. And they don’t look like they wash their hair.’
‘Don’t be so snobby and picky.’
‘It depresses me, all this, though.’
‘Aye, but think of them looking at you,’ he said, ‘thinking, look at young Lady Shite over there, in her trendy black jacket and her PVC rucksack. Thinking she’s smart because she’s about to piss off to college.’
This chastened her for a moment. ‘I never said I was going anywhere. I could just end up on this town like any of the other lasses. With a double pushchair and toddlers piled four deep. I’m not setting myself above no one. I know where I’m from.’
‘Good,’ he said. They were held up then by a couple in their twenties, sailing complacently out of Woollies and cutting across their path.
‘I bloody hate that,’ Penny said, ‘when the bloke has hold of the woman by her waist or shoulders. Like she can’t keep herself upright.’
Vince rolled his eyes and said in a singsong voice, ‘I thought it looked quite gallant.’
They were walking in the wake of the happy couple.
‘He’s got his hand cupped right on her arse,’ Penny said. ‘Like he’s scared she’s going to shit.’
‘Touching cloth.’ Vince grinned. ‘My mam used to say that, I remember. Horrible thing to say.’
‘Have you got a nice mam?’
