probably forget how to speak English between the time the last tourist leaves and the first of the year arrives.’ And on like that.
So I set fire to the art department stockroom. I went into school one morning and my mate Luke and I torched the stacks of paper, each vertically arranged in neat compartments. It’s a bastard of a job, getting a good blaze going, but we managed it just as the rest of the school was going through the attendance registers. Couldn’t have been me, could it—I wasn’t there?
It wasn’t a real fire, I mean the school didn’t burn down or anything, but the art department didn’t look the same again. There’s something beautiful about what a lick of flame can do to wood, the charring effect, little bits of black carbon spiraling up to touch the ceiling—makes a place look lived-in. And oil paints have their own excitement when they blaze. This was performance art on a grand scale, but Luke and I didn’t get any points for it. In fact, we chickened out. I wanted everyone to know we’d done it deliberately, but maybe that would have been a bit heavy-duty, so we opted for the having-a-quick-smoke-ohdear-look-what-happened line. We got a bollocking, suspension and all that, the threat of expulsion, but it could have been worse. I mean that. Someone could have been hurt.
That did it for Dad, though. As far as Devon went, that took me out of the contest. I think he knew it was no accident. Schools don’t really know you, but parents have a good idea.
I knew he was angry, because his face changed, as if the tension was wrestling through a forest of muscles and veins in his forehead in an attempt to get out.
‘There’s a school nine miles from the village with a good record in math,’ he told me. ‘There’s a school bus. It takes about forty-five minutes each way. You just gave up your right to choose.’
I wanted to ask, ‘How far is the nearest fire station?’ but it was too easy.
7
The deal came later. I knew I’d get something. Dad suffers terrible guilt when he loses his temper, and he must have already been feeling bad about this one, because he did everything to
make the move bearable for me. It was Mum I had to watch. The little incident over the fire had severely dampened her faith in me, and while I could cope with Dad’s brief outburst of anger, Mum’s disappointment was harder to live with.
‘This is probably a big mistake.’ Dad’s voice comes to me with an undisguisable edge of love and concern, despite his determination still to sound pissed-off as he hands me the video camera. A moment accompanies the giving of a gift like this, it happens outside considerations of value or acquisition, beyond the emotional range of a TV commercial. There’s magic attached, we both know that: it can do things, this camera, it can steal little bits of life. This is a key fatherson experience (he wants it as much as I do, it’s higher resolution than anything he has and he’s a technology freak, that’s part of it—and Mum, too, with the baby due: home-video time), but it comes with a lecture.
‘This is no reward, buster, OK? Tell me something. When you started that fire, couldn’t you see how it would end up? Couldn’t you see the kind of trouble it would get you into?’
Nothing from me. What can I say? It’s our second day in Devon, and I’m playing it cool. Even with all the doors open, the cottage smells foreign, like someone else’s bed. Outside, the sun is blazing. Time for a spot of cricket and some fighting in the streets. But I’m not looking for aggravation, not today.
‘Well?’ ‘I suppose…’
‘I hope so. You’re not stupid, Tom, don’t try and pretend you are.
You’re very full of yourself and you like f lirting with danger. But think long-term for a moment. If you can’t persuade yourself out of such ideas now, what’s going to change? Are you going to be pissing about setting things on fire in ten years’ time?’
‘You’re going
So I set fire to the art department stockroom. I went into school one morning and my mate Luke and I torched the stacks of paper, each vertically arranged in neat compartments. It’s a bastard of a job, getting a good blaze going, but we managed it just as the rest of the school was going through the attendance registers. Couldn’t have been me, could it—I wasn’t there?
It wasn’t a real fire, I mean the school didn’t burn down or anything, but the art department didn’t look the same again. There’s something beautiful about what a lick of flame can do to wood, the charring effect, little bits of black carbon spiraling up to touch the ceiling—makes a place look lived-in. And oil paints have their own excitement when they blaze. This was performance art on a grand scale, but Luke and I didn’t get any points for it. In fact, we chickened out. I wanted everyone to know we’d done it deliberately, but maybe that would have been a bit heavy-duty, so we opted for the having-a-quick-smoke-ohdear-look-what-happened line. We got a bollocking, suspension and all that, the threat of expulsion, but it could have been worse. I mean that. Someone could have been hurt.
That did it for Dad, though. As far as Devon went, that took me out of the contest. I think he knew it was no accident. Schools don’t really know you, but parents have a good idea.
I knew he was angry, because his face changed, as if the tension was wrestling through a forest of muscles and veins in his forehead in an attempt to get out.
‘There’s a school nine miles from the village with a good record in math,’ he told me. ‘There’s a school bus. It takes about forty-five minutes each way. You just gave up your right to choose.’
I wanted to ask, ‘How far is the nearest fire station?’ but it was too easy.
7
The deal came later. I knew I’d get something. Dad suffers terrible guilt when he loses his temper, and he must have already been feeling bad about this one, because he did everything to
make the move bearable for me. It was Mum I had to watch. The little incident over the fire had severely dampened her faith in me, and while I could cope with Dad’s brief outburst of anger, Mum’s disappointment was harder to live with.
‘This is probably a big mistake.’ Dad’s voice comes to me with an undisguisable edge of love and concern, despite his determination still to sound pissed-off as he hands me the video camera. A moment accompanies the giving of a gift like this, it happens outside considerations of value or acquisition, beyond the emotional range of a TV commercial. There’s magic attached, we both know that: it can do things, this camera, it can steal little bits of life. This is a key fatherson experience (he wants it as much as I do, it’s higher resolution than anything he has and he’s a technology freak, that’s part of it—and Mum, too, with the baby due: home-video time), but it comes with a lecture.
‘This is no reward, buster, OK? Tell me something. When you started that fire, couldn’t you see how it would end up? Couldn’t you see the kind of trouble it would get you into?’
Nothing from me. What can I say? It’s our second day in Devon, and I’m playing it cool. Even with all the doors open, the cottage smells foreign, like someone else’s bed. Outside, the sun is blazing. Time for a spot of cricket and some fighting in the streets. But I’m not looking for aggravation, not today.
‘Well?’ ‘I suppose…’
‘I hope so. You’re not stupid, Tom, don’t try and pretend you are.
You’re very full of yourself and you like f lirting with danger. But think long-term for a moment. If you can’t persuade yourself out of such ideas now, what’s going to change? Are you going to be pissing about setting things on fire in ten years’ time?’
‘You’re going
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