Past Mortem (4 page)

Now, it seemed, this famous relationship was history. Christine had seen Paul shopping in HMV Records with his arm round a girl from his village who went to the local comprehensive, which was known to produce nothing but slags. The girl wore white stilettos and, despite the winter weather, an electric pink boob-tube from which her frozen nipples protruded like bullets. Christine had watched Paul kissing her in front of the singles rack. She’d watched as Paul gripped her backside as they squeezed themselves into one of the listening booths. It was here that Christine confronted them as they shared a set of headphones.

Now Christine and Paul stood in very different parts of the room. Two bright and separate stars in the firmament that — was the Shalford Grant-maintained Grammar School Combined Fourth and Fifth Form Christmas Disco. Two stars around which their respective posses revolved, Paul and his mates near the crisps, making plans to go to the pub, and Christine and her girlfriends bopping like wild things. A dozen cute, ra-ra-skirt-topped legs tripping, skipping and hopping about amongst their glittery little handbags, fancy party tights and clouds of Top Shop cotton, a whirl of colour and breathless delight. The lustful focus of so many male eyes, including Newson’s. Six lovely girls making it noisily and exuberantly clear to one another, to the party and indeed to the whole world that they were
it
. Wild, beautiful and oh so happy.

What happened next surprised everybody. It surprised Newson most of all. Helen had just brought two cups of fruit punch back to where Newson was standing and had asked him if he wanted to step outside for a cigarette. He’d been about to go when Christine Copperfield broke away from her group of cavorting friends and walked over to them.

‘Hi, Helen,’ she said.

‘Hi, Christine,’ Helen replied.

Then Christine turned her gorgeous violet eyes on Newson. ‘Hi, Ed. Cool jacket,’ she said.

Newson had chosen his ensemble with care. When you’re only five foot two you have to make an effort, and he was wearing a tight-fitting grey leather bomber jacket, black button-down shirt and skinny piano-pattern tie.

‘Thanks, Christine. You look amazing. Wow. Fantastic,’ Newson spluttered.

‘That was great about Simon Bates,’ Christine continued. Newson had recently caused a huge stir by writing a spoof letter to the Simon Bates Radio One ‘Our Tune’ slot, in which listeners wrote in to tell the world of their heartache. Bates would read out these small sagas of tortured emotions to the accompaniment of lush backing music, ending with an appeal for true love to triumph: ‘So, Sandra, if you’re out there why not give Bob a call? Who knows, it could be the best five pence you ever spent.’

He’d invented a love story using the names of Mr Bathurst and Mrs Curtis, had sent it in and to the delight of the whole school it had been read out on the radio as the real thing. Even the hard nuts had had to pat Newson on the back for that one and he was briefly and happily famous.

‘Yeah. I think Mrs Curtis heard about it, but she hasn’t said anything. Imagine her and Bastard Bathurst shagging.’

‘Yeah.’

They laughed together at the comically horrifying thought.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me to dance, then?’ Christine said.

Newson was stunned. It was so unexpected. Helen was surprised too, but Newson wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t thinking of her. Christine Copperfield wanted to dance! It could not have been any more surprising or indeed any more fabulous had Madonna herself walked into the party and asked him to treat her like a virgin.

‘Um…do you want to dance?’

‘ ‘Girls just want to have fun,’’ said Helen, using a phrase that was new at the time.

Newson’s heart pounded, his senses on fire, but he was also cool, cool in his own quirky way. He put down the cup that Helen had brought him, bent his knees, went forward on to his toes, gripped his crotch, thrust his other arm skywards and went ‘Ooh!’ at exactly the point when Michael Jackson went ‘Ooh!’ over DJ Dewhurst’s speakers.

Christine, with only the briefest of glances towards Paul, who was affecting not to notice, also punched the air and went ‘Ooh!’ And then they were together in the middle of the floor, leaping, jumping, punching the air and going ‘Ooh!’ The most surprising new couple in the school, Queen Christine’ and her court jester.

How the hardnuts gaped in astonishment. How they snarled. Roland Marcella. Ollie Dane. Collingwood, Reed and Simmons, and above all Paul. The tough guys of the fifth year, the ones who saw the fit birds from the fourth year as theirs by right because their own lush girls were going out with sixth-formers or lads who’d left and had real jobs, albeit crap ones.

They snarled, but there was respect there. Newson was funny, and he’d fooled Simon Bates and got something on the radio. Now he was dancing with the fittest bird in the fourth form, the fittest bird in the school, in fact. You had to respect that.

Wham! played and Newson and Christine jitterbugged briefly into each other’s hearts. They shouted and let it all out to Tears for Fears, punching the air and stamping their feet. They agreed with Boy George that war was stupid and that people were stupid.

Relax
, said Frankie. And relax they did, Spewsome Newson and the Golden Girl of the school. Newson the envy of every boy in the room save Gary Whitfield and Nicholas Perkins, who it was firmly believed were gay.
Relax
, the whole room shouted together. And everyone in the room wondered if Mr Bathurst knew that the song was about blowjobs.

Newson could hardly believe it when the time came to leave. The evening had passed in a thrilling blur and it was eleven o’clock. Outside Roger Jameson was puking in a flowerbed while his friend Pete Woolford finished off the half-bottle of Teacher’s they’d stolen from the Pakistani supermarket. And at the front of the school parents’ cars were beginning to block each other in as they arrived to collect their offspring.

Inside the twinkling hall DJ Dewhurst spun up his left-hand deck and put on ‘Last Christmas’, Wham!’s anthem to lost love, the Number One that never was, having been kept off the top slot by Band Aid with the single that claimed to save lives.

The final dance had arrived. And all the boys lucky enough to have secured themselves a girl to smooch with pulled their partners close and started to push the bone. Hands dropped down to close around bottoms and Fun-sized Mars bars were ground into the stomachs of those girls who would- accept them. Christine accepted Newson’s. He simply could not believe what was happening to him as the girl of his dreams allowed him to push his bulging Top Man trousers against her perfect tummy. Fortunately, he was wearing heels and Christine was only a few inches taller than him, so it was possible to work his quivering hips amongst the starchy folds of Christine’s skirt. She even allowed him to place his face amongst the brittle, lacquered curls of her big hair and brush his lips against her adorable ears. Across the room Paul put on his motorbike helmet. For one brief moment Christine stared back before placing her face before Newson’s and kissing him.

In another part of the room someone else was staring. Helen had told Newson on the way to the disco that she considered such parties bourgeois crap, and he assumed she had left hours before. But she hadn’t. She’d watched all evening as Newson had danced with Christine.

In the darkness of his study Newson pressed GO and went in search of Christine Copperfield.

She was not there, of course. Why would she be? Christine Copperfield would have far better things to do at the age of thirty-five than sit alone in a dark room dreaming of kisses twenty years cold. Not Christine; she wouldn’t have time, not with her undoubtedly full and successful life. Christine Copperfield did not need to look back.

But other ghosts had left their mark. Other voices from the class of ‘81 to ‘88 could be heard in the darkness.

Newson pressed ‘Gary Whitfield’. Up came Gary’s profile, his email and voicemail details, and the little paragraph of information that he had elected to leave.

I hated school and it turns my stomach to return even in this virtual sense. But I had to do this because I wanted to let you all know that, yes, you were right, congratulations. I AM a poof! I am queer! Gay! Yippee, well done, you were right And do you know what? I’m SO glad. I love my life. I love my partner, he’s kind and sweet and everything that you all were not You’re shits, all of you and I HATE you! All of you. I hate the ones who tormented me and I hate the ones who let it happen. But most of all I hate YOU Roger Jameson and I hope you rot in Hell for what you did to me. Does anyone remember but me? Does anyone remember what used to happen in the changing rooms? Let me jog your memory…

Newson had not expected this. He’d been so swept up in post-adolescent fantasy that it had never occurred to him that the Friends site could be used as a medium for finally answering back. It was obvious, of course, when he thought about it.

Poor Gary Whitfield. Newson did remember what had happened to him in the changing rooms because he’d been one of the ones to let it happen. This shameful truth had been lurking at the back of his conscience ever since and now as he read Gary Whitfield’s account of the torture he had suffered Newson felt his guilt keenly once more. Newson could still see a weedy little boy cowering in the corner of the changing rooms while Jameson and some of his toughs hemmed him in, whacking him with wet towels and chanting ‘
Poof! Poof! Poof!
’ One day they’d taken Mr Jenkins’ overhead projector pen and written ‘I am queer’ on Gary’s forehead. Newson could still remember Whitfield being held down while Jameson wrote the words. The ink had been indelible and it had stayed on his forehead for days, faded but legible. Newson remembered Gary’s red skin, sore from his mother’s frantic scrubbing.

And he had let it happen. They had all let it happen. It was not good enough that he was small and Roger Jameson was big and tough. He could have done
something
. He should have done something.

And here now was Roger Jameson, also returned to class after twenty years. Another policeman of all things, just like Newson himself. Two in a class. It must have been Bastard Bathurst going on so much about respecting authority.

Maybe you guys remember I left at fourteen. My family went to the States and guess what? I ended up joining the NYPDI Yeah. Kind of a long way from Shalford huh?

Newson remembered Roger Jameson with very little affection. They had been friends at first. In fact, at eleven they’d been best friends, and a remnant of that friendship had remained throughout their time in the same class. But for Newson’s part it had very quickly become a friendship based on unease. Jameson had a cruel streak, and he was tough. Newson had been scared of him; the whole class had been.

Currently I’m on an extended leave from the Department In fact I’ve been staying here in the UK, Rossiter Hotel, Marble Arch, if anybody wants to look me up. If I’m honest this stretch of leave is kind of a medical thing. Being a cop is very stressful as you can imagine and I guess I’m a little burned out right now. New York’s a great city but it’s tough. Maybe you all heard about our zero tolerance thing. Sometimes me and the boys think it’s zero tolerance of cops. I was married for a while to a sweet lady from New Jersey. We met when we were just eighteen at a Springsteen concert, how cool is that? I’m a big guy and she asked to get up on my shoulders. Well hey that ain’t something a. girl has to ask this fellah twice! She left in the end. Being a cop makes relationship stuff hard.

Newson wondered if Jameson had left his information before Gary Whitfield left his. It must have been strange for him, logging on in a spirit of melancholic self-pity and finding himself being screamed at from across a chasm two decades wide. Newson felt sorry for Jameson, which was the last thing he would have expected. But Jameson was a lonely cop too. Of all the people in Newson’s class, Jameson was the last with whom he’d have imagined having parallel experiences.

Newson scrolled down the list of names. Most he remembered, a few he’d forgotten; each one had a little story to tell, reaching out for a sense of significance.

I did a degree in accountancy (boring I know!!)…

Yes I married Josh and we moved to Exeter but sadly we broke up…

I still see Karen and Nancy (Godmother to my three great kids!!) and the other day I bumped into RYAN!

I own my own sports shop and am SERIOUSLY into my music, so no change there then I’m with Microsoft now and they’ve relocated me to Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island…

I’d love to hear from anyone who remembers me…If you remember me, drop me a line…Does anyone remember me?

Remember me…Remember me…

Was that what this site was about? Not so much a desire to remember as a yearning to be remembered.

Helen was there. He hadn’t expected this one either. She’d always wanted to leave school and had done so two years earlier than anyone else, opting to do her sixth form at a tech. 1984 — 5 had been her last year at Shalford. Now, however, she was back. Newson wondered why. She’d left no biography only her contact details. For a moment Newson thought about sending her a note; he’d been fond of her for those few months in the fourth form, her the angry punk and him the disaffected nerd. In the end he thought better of it. It was Christine he was after.