To start with, Marsha was our leader this summer. She’s gone now and good riddance, I say. She was much too busy for me. Small wonder the council made her play-scheme supervisor. They recognised something in her, a restless and commandeering energy. Bossy, I call it. She always had to be up and at ‘em. It was something new every five minutes. Never a moment’s rest and it got on my nerves, me starting this job and thinking I was on to a cushy number. Even the poor bairns were going home knackered by teatime.
Rounders out on the playing field for the whole afternoon, that’s what Marsha liked. Nonstop rounders, mind. That terrible version of the game in which, if someone’s struck off, you’ve only got the time of the protesting scream that goes up to grab the flung-down bat if you’re next in line and get struck off yourself. The tennis ball gets chucked at your wicket without you when you’re not fast enough. Marsha liked this breakneck version because it kept everyone engaged and concentrating all afternoon. And it did, it did, I have to admit, but I went home with my shoulders and arms like a lobster and my knees actually shook as if I’d been kicked, after all that dashing about.
Horrible Ruby, the gingham-smocked caretaker of the community centre where our scheme is housed when the days are raining, came to the doors to watch us play, to make sure we weren’t ruining the council’s equipment. She snapped a fag in and out of her mouth, smoking efficiently, using a blue bucket as an ashtray and saying to me as I wandered over, glad of the break, That Marsha’s a miracle worker, isn’t she? Getting those scruffy bairns playing a fair game all afternoon. The bairns round here’d be running wild without her.’
There was no sitting on the back of the giant spider all afternoon with Marsha.
Once we had an inspection to see how we were getting on and a bloke turned up in a car. But we were out. We had walked all forty of our kids across town in a godawful raucous convoy. Over three main roads and honest, I think about it now and we could have lost or killed any number of them. Little bastards running off and tearing about as we walked alongside the rank Burn. They went wild in the trees, in the mottled blue shadows down the Burn. Marsha strode ahead. She made a stick for herself, stripping leaves and bark off a slender branch and she swished it along. Not a care in the world. Assured that everyone was behaving themselves. I was bringing up the rear, sweating.
* * *
For this job, which ends in September, the council pays me fifty pounds a week. Although I am paid to entertain the kiddies and keep them off the streets, I realise now what I am really being paid for.
Taking the blame should any child on the estates our scheme caters for be killed this summer by a car or a pervert or another kid or whatever. Because there is a scheme, there ought to be no casualties. They are catered for. I am a caterer. The parents are customers, with a right to complain if their kids are damaged. The parents here shove their kids out their doors at eight in the morning, take them in again at night-time, later as summer advances. It would be like this even without a scheme nearby. The scheme is convenient for emergencies. The same parents send two-year-old, three-year-old bairns in pushchairs. Our posters say six to twelve. We get the extremes; the insensible babies and the bored teenagers lolling over fences, gobbing and leering at us, wanting, really, to join in, I reckon.
Our bodies, as supervisors, sun-branded and sore and toughened from days out in the sullied air, are rented out to kids half our age. We are walking climbing frames. On walks they cling to our arms, dangle from us, clamber round our necks; they follow us about and are familiar with us. We’re not like teachers and they take pride in knowing us by our first names. We are older brothers and sisters to them; they take our hands, wait to delight in hearing us swear by mistake. They take a keen interest in progress made by Neil and Michelle, helpers with another scheme across town. Everyone knows they’ve been fucking since June and suddenly Michelle is having a bairn of her own.
It’s later summer now and, if anything, hotter than ever. I’ve not known a season last as long as this since I was a bairn. Being out in it all so much makes me feel I’ve wrung every drop from it. Like the precious days on the estate, down the Burn, when I was about ten, say. Summer a long season then, everything reeking of dog shit because people take their dogs on longer walks and the shit gets spread that much further afield. The company of children gives me back an illusion of a lifetime in the sun. I’ve gone a glorious suntanned colour; pale old me, it’s incredible. Especially since so much of the time we’ve spent underwater. This afternoon we are under the ocean once more. I managed to talk them out of Jurassic Park. Which last time gave me a headache, actually.
Martin hasn’t been on the giant spider today. He kept his place on the swings, doggedly as if he thought it was doing him some good. A few minutes ago he left his swing to its own devices and he went sniffing round the brick pavilion at the back of us.
The brick pavilion is disused and dark. I remember it as having an ice-cream counter inside. A window with an old woman squirting yellow Mr Whippy out of a machine. There were toilets. One of those swinging signs outside for Lyon’s Maid; a picture of three kids skipping, holding hands. Now
