Mr Ermey's Funeral Read online

  “Purpose?” Craig whispered, looking lost.

  Mr Ortiz had already taken one stride and was in the process of committing to another when the question registered. He spun on his heel, marking the grass. “What was that, Anderson?”

  Their eyes met; the confused look was gone from Craig’s face, now replaced by a dull bitterness.

  “You said for me to act like I had some purpose,” Craig said, “but what if I have none?”

  “No purpose? What are you talking about? I hardly think-” The instructor raised his hand to the sun, shielding his eyes. Then he did something that Alex did not expect: he took a deep breath, stepped forward, and lowered his voice. “Look,” he said, “something tells me you’re really not fit for doing Games today, Craig.” He clapped the boy’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Or even school, if it comes to that. So maybe you’d prefer to get changed and go home. What do you think?”

  Huge sobs threatened to overwhelm Craig, but he swallowed them, his face contorting with the effort. He nodded, looking away.

  “Just tell reception that I sent you, okay?” Mr Ortiz gave Craig a couple more hefty pats on the shoulder, and then continued with his tour.

  “Right! Henry! What was I up to? Heads or tails?”

  The bespectacled boy beyond Craig jumped. “Er, heads, Sir.”

  “Heads! Henry, thank you. But tell me, Henry, have you forgotten what we are supposed to be doing today? Are you writing a letter with that thing? That isn’t the world’s biggest pen you’ve got there! Here, like this…”

  “Are you alright?”

  Craig wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and looked at Alex. “I’m okay,” he said. “Think I’ll go, though.”

  Alex nodded. “I’m sorry about Mary. I’m really sorry.”

  Craig wiped his face again and sniffed. “It’s not like I even knew her.” He shook his head and stared at his trainers. “But I’d have liked to.”

  “I know.”

  Craig left the line and then wandered back past the ROSLA block. Alex watched him ignore the keen onlookers and slip away towards the main building.

  “I wonder if Mary ever knew how much Craig liked her?” Helen said.

  “I didn’t know how much he liked her. But if Mary Townsend was still the same girl I went to primary school with, I bet she knew and then some.”

  Helen nodded, and then stopped herself. She turned to look at Alex. “What do you mean?”

  That she was a crafty bitch, was the answer that came to mind, but Alex held back from saying it. He scratched his head and searched for something more fitting. Thinking about Mary suddenly seemed hard, which was weird because it felt like he had been doing nothing else all morning. “She had,” he started, raising his eyes to Helen’s, “a way of getting her own way. And it was very difficult to trick her.”

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “And you tried to trick her?”

  Uh-oh, Alex thought, not good. Is there a way out of this?

  Nope.

  “Several times. But she was always one step ahead.”

  Mr Ortiz had reached the end of the boys’ line. Everyone watched him flip a coin. “Tails,” he announced.

  “Remember to arch like I showed you! That’s one continuous motion from run-up through to release! Don’t trundle along and then suddenly fling it!

  “And please, please, whatever you do, don’t go hell for leather,” Mr Ortiz did a frantic little run, then halted and mimed a throw – it looked like he was posting a letter in an improbably high letterbox, “and then stop still. You might as well have not bothered running at all!” He headed out across the field.

  “Is he always like this?”

  “Always. I guess if the exams don’t work out, there’s always the army to consider. I’m positive they’d take me on drill experience alone.”

  Helen watched the P.E. instructor walk out across the field, heading in the direction of the fence that ran alongside Tithborough woods. “Where’s he going?”

  “Whenever we’re throwing stuff – discus, shot-put, javelin – he always stands in front of us, but just far enough away. He knows we can’t hit him, but he knows we want to. I guess it’s to encourage us. Sort us sheep out from the wolves, or us wolves out from the sheep. I never can tell which one I am.”

  “And no one’s ever hit him?”

  “I’ve seen him back up once or twice, but usually the best you get is when the javelin slips across the grass and he has to hop out of the way. If that happens, you’d think it was his birthday or something.”

  Mr Ortiz gave the order and on either side, javelins began to fly; Alex stepped away, giving Helen space.

  Helen quickly found her mark, ran, and released. The spear returned to earth at a considerable distance and pierced it with a satisfying thup.

  Alex backed up, ran to the edge of the path, and fumbled a little step that essentially brought him to a complete halt. He drew back his javelin and threw, overbalancing. Alex hopped in place as his javelin chose a diagonal path across the trajectory Helen’s had taken. They both watched as it collapsed on its side, sliding to a few metres short of hers.

  Alex punched the air. “Yes! Bea-uty!”

  Helen beamed, clapping her hands. “Wonderful shot!”

  “Aw, wasn’t it just?”

  After waiting for say-so (a brisk ‘Right!’ from Mr Ortiz) they stepped out into a field of dusty soil, weeds, and then luscious, freshly cut grass. The smell of pollen was powerful and heady, reminding him of every summer he’d ever had: those bright eternities.

  “Alex?”

  He looked up, watched her tuck her hair behind her ears, and watched it tumble back across her forehead.

  “Did you know Mary well?”

  They collected their respective javelins and started back towards the school buildings.

  “As well as anyone, at the time. We used to be good friends.”

  “Boyfriends and girlfriends?”

  Alex smiled, and was thrilled to find there was a half smile on Helen’s face too. “Not really…well, maybe. It was primary school and we were both in a gang. In fact, we used to spend most of our time hanging out on these grounds.” He gestured towards the school. “There were four of us…”

  5

  “…Mary Townsend, Thomas Whyte, Alex Turner, and me. You mean I never told you this before?”

  Lisa Taylor shook her head and took another drag from her Marlboro. They both knew he hadn’t.

  “Do you know who Thomas Whyte is?”

  She thought about it. “That’s that posh dickhead, isn’t it? The one that swallowed a dictionary? Black hair, dandruff.”

  “That’s him. What about Alex Turner?”

  “Yeah, you’ve told me about him before.”

  “I have?”

  “Mmm.” Lisa took another drag, the tip glowing.

  In the gloom of the storeroom, Buddy nodded slowly. He cast his eyes around this dusty, familiar place. Boxes of old examination papers and outdated textbooks lay stacked behind the door, broken P.E. equipment and assorted bric-a-brac lay strewn everywhere. A ‘welcome’ banner from last year’s school fair sagged in the corner, looking tired and broken – a red ‘87’ bulged from its fluorescent yellow folds. In the corner by a sink was a clutter of cleaning equipment: a circular floor polisher, a vacuum cleaner, brushes and pans, two mops and buckets, an array of bleaches, detergents and rags, and a heap of toilet rolls and hand towel refills. Two stories above, mossy skylights turned everything yellow-green.

  Buddy popped a cigarette in his mouth, opened up a box stuffed full of old examination papers, and took out a handful; he arranged them on the dusty counter that ran down one side of the room and with an absent wave invited Lisa to sit down next to him. Lisa found the fuss sweet for the fact that it was unnecessary: her gym skirt had done a fairly good job of dusting the counter already. Buddy leaned in and lit up from her cigarette, something he never did. “Anyway,” he said, “that was, what, five yea
rs ago? I haven’t spoken to any of them since.” He took a deep drag and started to fold an exam paper into a makeshift ashtray.

  “I saw you guys checking each other out just after assembly,” Lisa said.

  Buddy sighed. “I dunno, maybe I’ll talk to them at the funeral.”

  “You’re going to her funeral?” She heard the surprise in her voice and the mocking undertone that went with it, and wished she could take it back. It was hard to get used to this new Buddy; it was like he’d turned forty in the space of a weekend.

  “Yeah, I’m going,” he said, his eyes blazing. “So what?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Even so, I’m not.”

  “Well, who cares?” Buddy took another drag.

  “You, obviously. Why else would you be going?”

  “I don’t mean about that, and you kn-.”

  “Why do you want to go? Was she your first girlfriend or something?” She gave him a huge grin, and patted the back of his hand. “It’s okay to tell me, you know.”

  “I was telling you, you stupid bitch!” he said, and started to laugh.

  “Don’t call me a stupid bitch, you stupid pig!” she said, laughing too.

  “Stupid bitch!”

  “Stupid pig!”

  Buddy made snorting noises and nuzzled into her shoulder, and Lisa turned so that his head found her chest. She still hadn’t fastened her bra up from before, and Buddy took the opportunity to nibble her nipples through her teeshirt.

  “That’s enough, piggy-boy!” Lisa said, giggling.

  Buddy gave one last grunt, this time in the small of her neck; Lisa’s mouth found his and they kissed, slow and delicate. He smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and fresh sweat. At that moment, The General’s voice drifted across the playground, bounced around the gym, and floated through the connecting door:

  “Come on then, get in line. Or do I need to herd you?”

  “Jesus that guy’s loud,” Lisa said. “They’re on the field, right?”

  Buddy nodded.

  “Sheesh.” She docked her cigarette into Buddy’s improvised ashtray. “Won’t he know that you’re missing?”

  “Come on! I don’t believe it! That was just a little warm-up jog! Do you want to be sheep the rest of your lives? Move it!”

  Buddy listened, shaking his head. “Probably.” He shrugged. “Definitely. But me and The General have an understanding.”

  “And what understanding is that?”

  “Well,” Buddy started to roll his ember into the paper tray, “he understands that no one else on the school team scores as many goals as I do,” the ember came loose and he extinguished it by dabbing it with the rest of the butt, “and he knows that when it comes to the crunch, I’m always there for him.”

  “And so he goes easy on you over the occasional skipped class.”

  “It’s a cushy one.”

  Lisa hopped off the counter, patted her skirt, and picked her gym knickers off the floor. She gave the black cotton panties a shake and wriggled into them. She turned, smiled sweetly, and pushed her white teeshirt and bra to her chin. Just as her boyfriend was reaching out for another grope, she quickly fastened her bra, adjusted herself, and pulled down her teeshirt. Buddy grinned, but she noticed heavy shadows under his eyes. Lisa sat back on the counter. “So,” she said, taking another cigarette from the crumpled pack. “Tell me.”

  “There’s not a great deal to tell, really…”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Buddy searched, chasing the threads of what they had been talking about. Then, after a moment, he began to speak. His voice was low and measured:

  “Right. So you saw me nodding to those guys in the hall?”

  “Yep.”

  “And I said I hadn’t talked to them in five years, didn’t I, and that I would talk to them at the funeral, right?” Buddy picked up his box of Marlboros and started playing with it. “The funeral you’re not going to.”

  “The one I’m still wondering why you’re going to,” Lisa said, spinning the wheel on the Zippo, watching as yellow-blue fire erupted from a silver spark.

  “Yeah, well…” Buddy removed a cigarette and took a light. “If the old gang were to get together and talk, I guess you’d be wondering what we’d talk about, right?”

  “I suppose, but you don’t just go to a funeral to talk. You can do that anytime. You go to a funeral to pay your respects.”

  Buddy raised his eyebrows and puffed blue-grey smoke into the storeroom’s musty air, watching it dance with the motes enshrined in the few strands of light falling from above.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t really feel I have any choice but go to her funeral. I mean it could just as easily been me hanging myself, if you see-”

  “Is that how she did it? She hung herself? Jesus!” She paused and gave him a look. “How do you know that?”

  Buddy ran a hand through his collar length hair and swept it back. A few spots had started to develop around his forehead, and his square, angular features made him look vaguely sinister in the yellow green light. “Well that’s kind of the point. Lisa, this has been one really weird week.”

  “I don’t know how I know she hung herself. It just came to me, right there in the assembly, if you can believe that. I keep having the same dream, about one of the last times the old gang all hung out together. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been dreaming about it, but I know for certain it’s been every night for the last week. Plus there was this other thing.” Buddy scratched his ear and tapped his cigarette. “It happened during yesterday’s come-down.”

  “During the come-down?”

  “Yeah, during.” He watched it sink in. “That’s right. You were there.”

  *

  On Saturday night they’d met up at a quiet pub on the edge of the main stretch, a place to sink a few before working their way through town. Buddy had three wraps of speed in his back pocket, one apiece for Lisa, Pete, and himself. They guzzled it in the toilets, washed it down with their drinks, and headed out for the noise.

  It had been a good night but the party they’d crashed after kicking-out time turned out to be one of those ‘let’s sit around and sip beer and discuss the meaning of life’ affairs: a bunch of wannabe hippies into political debate and miserable music. Understandably, Pete had made a beeline for the girls listening to dance music in the kitchen, and so with nothing better to do, he and Lisa had gone searching for a bedroom where they could burn off some of their excess energy.

  Sometime in the early hours of the morning, they collapsed and lay there, listening to the house and their thumping hearts. The room was littered with paintings of birds, their eyes staring down at them from the walls. As sleep was hardly an option, they dressed and went downstairs.

  Buddy and Lisa peeked through the living room door. Hidden behind the sofa, away from the general tangle of bodies, Pete lay collapsed in a pile of magazines and bottles. At this sight, Buddy realised two things at once: one, that Pete had been unsuccessful with the girls he had been chasing; and two, that Pete had not taken his wrap. Buddy shook his head: Pete had been chewing gum incessantly all night, putting on a show. Would they have words? Probably. He closed the living room door, pushing Pete from his mind. It wasn’t hard to do.

  Outside, it took them a while to find their bearings. Stone-clad houses surrounded by deep gardens and driveways stretched out all around, blending into one another. Empty roads circled back on themselves, loop upon loop. As it had been Pete who had given the address to the taxi driver the night before, it crossed Buddy’s mind to return to the house to ask him where exactly they were. But then Pete would most probably join them, and Buddy didn’t want to deal with him just yet. He’d had too good of a time. Anyway, he reasoned, looking up at the hill in the distance, at least we’re still in Bracton. I’m just looking at it from an unfamiliar angle.

  They walked.

  “Stupid rabbit warrens,�
� Lisa said as they approached another meaningless T-junction. Floating in a cloudless sky, the warm and bright sun cut through the cold morning air. Their breath glowed softly. Just as they were getting used to the idea of a long, meandering stroll, they came across a familiar park and realised they were closer to home than they thought. Richmond Recreational Ground’s centrepiece was a vast, oblong rectangle of grass, bordered by avenues. Lisa and Buddy walked through the gates and towards the children’s playground. They let themselves in through the gate and stepped onto its woodchip floor. Without discussion, they manned the swings and Buddy began skinning up. Lisa watched with admiration.

  A Buddy joint was a slow but tidy affair, and something he took great pride in. It was constructed from five cigarette papers arranged in an ‘L’ shape, on this he lay the emptied guts of a normal cigarette, finishing off with a generous sprinkle of whatever he had at the time. He rolled it tight, twisted the fat end, and then shook the contents down. Next came the roach, and it was done. The result was smooth and tapered, good enough to smoke.

  He handed his construction to Lisa, who got it burning. As they smoked, they watched dew evaporate from the railings, billowing puffs of steam – they looked like they were on fire. A gentle mist hovered above the field. Birds flocked above, dove down, and skimmed the grass, catching midges.

  “This is the life,” Buddy said, exhaling a cloud.

  Lisa looked at him and he grinned at her. Then she giggled, and that set them both off, ash tumbling onto Buddy’s new trousers.

  Then Buddy saw the bird-thing.

  He had been watching the birds zooming across the park, getting their breakfast, when he saw what looked like a man standing in the centre of the field, in the exact spot where the birds’ paths intersected. His first thought was that the man was a drunk, oblivious to what was going on around him – but that seemed impossible: there were hundreds of birds, all of them swooping and soaring around the lonely figure. His second thought was that it was a scarecrow, which made more sense, apart from the small but crucial fact that this was a park, not a farm. Buddy looked again – there were even more birds than before. The mist at the stranger’s feet was transforming into a black haze of feathers that folded, turned, and tumbled.