Mr Ermey's Funeral Read online

  “Shh.”

  Buddy touched the handle, waited, and then it came: movement erupted on the other side. Hundreds of chairs shifted across a wooden floor, momentarily filling the world with a small avalanche of sound. Even so, the headmaster’s amplified nasal tones cut through the noise:

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

  As voices chanted, Buddy and Pete sneaked into the back of the assembly hall. Other fifth years noticed them, but only two acknowledged them: Daniel Timley gestured to the empty chairs beside him, and Lisa Taylor smiled.

  Buddy nodded at her, and joined Daniel on the back row.

  “What’s all this then, Danny-boy?” Pete asked, wearing his usual grin.

  Although he had long since conditioned himself not to outwardly wince at that nickname, Daniel Timley couldn’t help but feel revulsion whenever little Peter Oatley used it. Indeed, whenever little Pete said anything, Daniel’s stomach made a queasy lurch and the same thought crossed his mind: If you didn’t know Richard Budden, my little friend, I would have taken care of that stupid face of yours a long time ago.

  “One of the girls in our year died over the weekend,” Daniel whispered, eyeing his registration teacher at the end of the row – Mr Ermey was dabbing a handkerchief against his brow and mumbling along with everyone else. “So Makinson called a special assembly.”

  Pete punched the air and shuffled his feet like a boxer. “I knew it. Tell him, Buddy. Tell him I said somebody’d snuffed it.”

  The headmaster’s voice returned to the tinny P.A. “Amen. Now let us pray to our Lady Of Lourdes…”

  The pupils joined in:

  “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

  And Buddy looked up, his eyes wide and fearful.

  No.

  But it was impossible to ignore the way everyone had said that name: the unusual emphasis from most of the audience had combined with a hesitant stumbling from some parts, as if ‘Mary’ was a difficult word to pronounce.

  No.

  Buddy watched the fifth year girls. A few were crying, which he was surprised to see – as far as he knew, Mary had become something of a loner. But what did he know, really? Apart from the dreams, when was the last time he’d given any thought to Mary Townsend?

  She killed herself on Saturday. Hung herself. You know it. The dreams knew it.

  “…amongst women, and blessed is…”

  For the first time since he could remember, Richard Budden began to pray aloud; it happened without forethought, and came as naturally as lighting up:

  “…is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary…”

  Pete turned at the sound of Buddy’s voice, and he grinned as he waited for the punch line.

  “…pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  He waited.

  “In the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.”

  As Buddy made the sign of the cross, Pete’s grin faded.

  “Now, if you can all make your way to your first period lessons, there should be at least,” the headmaster checked his wristwatch, “another twenty minutes, so let’s make the most of it, shall we? Thank you.”

  Chairs and feet began shuffling, and Buddy was dimly aware of movement to his right: his line filing out towards the centre aisle. Pete was still beside him, but Danny had gone. At his right, Buddy could sense Lisa hovering, but he ignored her and stayed where he was. He looked out at the thinning crowd, searching.

  He finally spotted them a few rows away.

  Tom had sat down again, and was picking at the seat of a nearby chair. No doubt sensing he was being watched, he turned to Buddy and nodded; dark circles lay beneath his eyes. Tom looked away and Buddy followed his gaze, which led directly to a stocky guy with a crew cut.

  Alex was staring right back at him. They exchanged nods.

  “You coming, Buddy?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied without looking, “but in a minute. You go on, I’ll see you there.”

  Pete turned, only to find himself face to chest with Lisa. His eyes homed in on her thin, white blouse, taking in the pale contours of her bra. As always, he wondered what it would be like to undo those little buttons and scoop out a handful.

  “He wants to be alone,” he told her left breast.

  “Well I just thought, what with the news, and ev-”

  “That’s why he wants to be on his own!” He ran a hand through his spiky blonde hair. “Come on, you can walk with me.”

  Pete reached out and took Lisa’s arm, but with one fluid motion, she shrugged out of his grip and clamped her hand over his. Before he knew what was happening, she was tugging his hand at an angle he would never have considered possible. Pain flared along his arm and he instinctively leant forwards to counter it. Lisa twisted his hand even more, sending another bolt to his shoulder. There was only one place to go, and he duly knelt before her.

  Lisa stooped over him, easing off the pressure a fraction. Pete obediently kept still and despite everything had time to marvel at how good she smelled: clean skin and light, slightly fruity, perfume. She whispered in his ear:

  “Buddy’s mate or not, if you ever touch me again, I’ll crush your balls so hard, you’ll hear them go pop!” With this, she re-applied the pressure, smiled as he caught his breath, then let go.

  Pete looked up to see if Buddy had seen any of that, but thankfully the big guy was still leaning against the chair in front of him, probably thinking his new Holy Thoughts. Pete got to his feet and checked his hair with the hand that wasn’t throbbing, and then watched Lisa seesaw on the balls of her feet, still holding out for Buddy’s attention. When she realised that she wasn’t going to get it any more than he was, she turned to go. Pete followed her at a distance, wishing that they were headed for different classes, wishing that school was going to finish in two weeks instead of two months, wishing he was taller, and wishing he was a million miles away.

  Richard Budden watched the hall empty out completely, then drifted towards the rest of his day.

  3

  In the narrow corridor leading to the hall, the stack of many different conversations happening at once was deafening.

  Why do people have to talk so loud?

  “This is such a pain in the neck. I’ve got my timed piece today.”

  Why does Angela have to talk so loud?

  Thomas Whyte listened with one ear, and as his girlfriend debated the sensitive issue of her exam’s allocated time, it came to his attention that it was a sunny day. It was a good thing to notice, he thought, all things considered. He hadn’t paid any real attention to the weather on the way in, but he had just noticed that everyone was wearing shirts and blouses.

  No jumpers, no blazers, just shirts and blouses.

  Shirts and blouses, blouses and shirts. Is a blouse a woman’s shirt, he wondered, or is a shirt a man’s blouse?

  His father’s painkillers might not be doing such a great job with his headache – it felt as if some miserable soul had inserted a knitting needle into one of his ears, and was slowly pushing it through to the other side, thoughtfully giving it the occasional wiggle for good measure – but they were certainly making him feel a little tipsy.

  “Mr Ermey’d better schedule another period to make up for the lost time, there’s no way I’m going to finish otherwise.”

  Tom opened his mouth, thinking of words to appease but not pander:

  Well, I’m sure Mr Ermey will be able to work around it Angela; he’ll be at the assembly too, you know.

  Or:

  Angela, my darling, these things were sent to try us. I’m sure many other people feel the same way about their projects today.

  Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

  Then, being short of something better to say, he just said what was on his mind.

  He just blurted it out.

  “Mary Townsend committed suicide on Saturday, Angela.”

  Just as they were passing, a
girl with long black hair tied in a ponytail emerged from the girls’ toilets. Tom looked, and it was Mary. Tom’s breath caught in his throat for a second and he blinked, but in the fragment of time his eyes were closed, the girl transformed back into someone else: Susan Somebody from Fourth Year, maybe. He looked again. She had freckles and a thin chin, and Mary had had neither.

  Angela did a little horsy start with her feet, having to stop suddenly to avoid walking into the back of the girl who was no longer Mary. She threw out her hands and gave Tom her patented ‘can-you-believe-this?’ look. Then she frowned at him, his bizarre statement finally registering.

  “What did you say?”

  “Mary Townsend committed suicide on Saturday, Angela.”

  It was the truth and he knew it. He had no real idea how he could be so certain, but he was, and for a moment back there, a part of him had thought that that was enough. But suddenly he realised that of course it wasn’t, that the truth could make things difficult here, and that if only his head didn’t hurt so much he could think of an inventive way of getting out of this.

  Angela turned to him and spoke as quietly as she could in the noisy corridor.

  “How do you mean, committed suicide? I didn’t think you knew Mary.”

  Shooting pains stabbed his temples, and he rubbed them.

  “She killed herself, Angela. A self-imposed, indefinite period of breathing abstinence.” Then, his voice trailing off, “But I’m not sure she knew what she was doing, if that makes things seem any better.” He looked down at the tiles; they were cleaner than usual, just a little dusty. He stopped rubbing his temples and closed his eyes, and there in the red darkness, a girl in a yellow cagoule held out her hands in a framing gesture. He opened them fast.

  “Well, maybe she did, I don’t know,” he said. “And I didn’t say that I knew her.”

  Deep lines etched themselves across Angela’s forehead, visible beneath the fringe of her dark brown hair. Her usual expression of being constantly bemused by everything had turned into something altogether less lovely.

  And I’m just going to make it worse.

  “Although I used to know her,” he added.

  Angela’s eyes widened.

  “We were at the same primary school. We were in a gang. There was Yours Unruly, Alex Turner, Richard Budden…”

  “Richard Budden? I definitely didn’t think you knew-”

  “I said it was a gang, Angela. Not a sewing circle.”

  She glowered at him.

  “Anyway, there was Richard Budden, and there was also Mary. She was our token female, if you will. For the feminists. But now she’s dead and of use to no one. So there you go.” He ended this with a dismissive hand gesture, regretting his words instantly but damned if he was going to apologise for them. It occurred to him that excruciating head pain made him act poorly.

  “How do you know all this?”

  And there it was. That he had dreamed the whole thing made no sense at all: but that was about the size of it. The dreams had been so relentless, they were on a loop, interrupting his nights, making the idea of a good night’s sleep seem almost mythical: the old gang discussing what they’d done to David; the dog dream, which was nothing but David again; and then this newer version where the older Mary had shown up as a spectator or something. There had been a desperate expression on her face, as if she wanted to change what was happening, as if she wanted to get off the ride. As each night had worn on, he had watched her desperation turn into terror.

  In the same way he didn’t need to ask himself how he knew his head felt on the verge of exploding, he didn’t need to ask how he knew Mary had committed suicide. It was just there.

  It’s time to lay this all out for her, he thought. You’ve got to tell her.

  But not right now.

  Not right here.

  “It’s just something I heard from one of the neighbours. We don’t live that far from the Townsends, or any of the others. I mean, that’s how we ended up at the same school and in a gang in the first place.”

  It was a good lie. So good in fact, that he wished it was true.

  “So that’s what this is all about?” She gestured towards the door that led to the rapidly filling hall.

  “So I presume.” There was another burst of pain as the pure-woollens surgeon investigated an alternative path through his soft, grey mass. Tom cowered and held his head – he knew he looked like someone expecting a bomb to go off, but he was helpless to do otherwise.

  “Tom?” Angela dropped her bag and put an arm around him.

  “Sorry , it’s just…a-” The surgeon reassumed the default path: a straight line from ear to ear. The pain made his eyes water but he swallowed it down the best he could. “It’s just these headaches,” he said, breathing hard, controlling himself, “I can hardly see straight, let alone think straight.”

  He took another deep breath – this one slower and calmer – and steadied himself against her. An image flashed in his mind: the two of them as old people, huddled together in their twilight years. In his mental picture, their complexions were ashen and drawn; he wore glasses and stooped worse than ever, and her hair was blue. Despite everything, Tom smiled.

  “What’s so funny all of a sudden?” Angela asked, wearing her own smile – one of relief. Her voice sounded a little too loud and they realised that, except for the movement from behind the hall’s doors, the corridor had fallen silent.

  Tom straightened himself and embraced her, running his hands up and down her arms. “Nothing. Everything. These last few days…” He shook his head.

  He looked at Angela Welch. For the longest time, he had seen their relationship as just a fad. Correction: he thought she had seen their relationship as just a fad, something to do while getting school, and maybe sixth-form college, over with. University would see them go their separate ways for sure, and that would be the end of that. Recently, however, he had begun to think that they might have a real future together, a get-married-buy-a-house-have-some-kids future. It was a strange feeling and it made everything seem so trivial, as if his everyday world was paper thin, just a rehearsal for the reality that lay ahead.

  “Angela, these last few weeks I’ve been dreaming some terrible dreams, mostly about the old gang I used to be in. There’s a lot to tell, and, well, I’ve written most of it down, so…”

  Through the door, he could see Angela’s Art teacher staring at them; he was tapping his watch.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” he said, and they went in.

  4

  “Come on then, get in line. Or do I need to herd you?” Mr Ortiz shouted at his swollen and already exhausted Games class, half of which looked at each other with incredulous expressions, and then looked back at their temporary P.E. instructor. “Come on! I don’t believe it! That jog was just a little warm-up! Are you girls sheep, or wolves? Now move it!” The stocky instructor in tight, navy blue shorts and vest began pacing back and forth, waving his arms at the white teeshirted masses before him.

  “Should I baa?” Helen asked Alex as they took their places.

  “I wouldn’t bother.”

  “An old joke?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Taking the lead from the boys, who were busy spreading themselves along the ROSLA block edge of the school field, a quarter of the female visitors to Mr Ortiz’s Games lesson began to work their way past them, some tapping the tips of their javelins on the grass as they went. By the time Gerald ‘The General’ Ortiz commenced his inspection, the line of pupils approached the rear gates at the bottom of the field, creating a line of fire dangerously near the pond. Helen and Alex positioned themselves on the ends of their respective lines, creating the point of connection between the boys and girls.

  Mr Ortiz strode to the end of the line.

  “Teresa…it is Teresa isn’t it? Good. Teresa, this is a javelin, not a paper dart! You need a claw grip. See? Like this.”

  The tiniest squeal drifted towards them as
Mr Ortiz presumably took Teresa’s hand and twisted it into the shape he had demonstrated at the start of the lesson.

  “Think savage, Teresa! Savage! Now don’t faint on me, girl. And keep your grip loose! No, loose! Like this.” More twisting, but no more squealing. “Good. Thank you Teresa! You’re heads! Now, Gail, is it? Ahh, quick on the uptake, Gail, that’s good! You’re tails! Right, Sarah, sorry, Sandra…”

  Mr Ortiz’s voice grew louder with each name. Helen slid two fingers down the shaft of her javelin and cushioned it in her palm, ready. Alex watched her and did the same, his thoughts far away. At last, it was their turn. Mr Ortiz was close. A breeze caught the back of Alex’s legs, sending goose bumps up his back. In the distance, he could hear birds singing. The world seemed removed, somehow, a copy of itself. Since hearing the news about Mary, Alex couldn’t shake the dream he’d had. It was foggy, but the more he thought about it, the more details came back. He was on his BMX, and they were dumping Mary – he’d figured that much out. Had he dreamt of that miserable day before? Maybe. It felt as if it had been there all along, playing in the back of his mind, slowly edging its way back into his conscious thoughts.

  The P.E. instructor’s voice was loud, and he tried hard to bring himself back to what he was doing.

  “Helen! Excellent grip! Tails! Alex! My goodness, words fail me. That’s a fine claw grip, Alex, just fine.” The instructor’s eyes darted back at Helen. “Spending time with this young lady has evidently shown you a thing or two. Heads!”

  That brought him back.

  He looked at Helen – her mouth agape – and they both flushed crimson from the neck up.

  Satisfied, Mr Ortiz moved on to the next boy.

  “Now, Craig! What do you call that grip? The mopping-the-floor-slouch? Look lively, lad! Watch how Alex is holding his.”

  Like a string puppet being picked up off the floor, Craig straightened himself using the javelin for support. Slowly, he started to adjust his grip.

  “Goodness me! Act like you have some purpose boy! Tails!” He clapped his hands and started to move on. “Come on people, I’m expecting my wolves to shine today!”