Sinister: i tried to take it all in, but now all i remember is trying to remember

[Kieran Devaney]

when i was at primary school there was a boy in our class, anthony, that 
nobody really liked, he was a bit of a loner. he was a rough boy too, though 
that wasn't the thing that excluded him; far from it, ours was quite a rough 
class, it was more that he never really knew where to draw the line, was 
rough at inappropriate times, and didn't really know how to deal with kids 
who were harder than him. he had a nervous twitch. he was a bit of a pariah 
at school, the teachers didn't like him either because he was the sort of 
person that easily draws attention to themselves, and because his mum was 
the busybody who ran the PTA and was forever goading the staff into meetings 
about cake sales and fund raising, and harrassing them at breaktimes for 
'chats' about her sons progress. he seemed custom built to annoy our primary 
school teachers, and they seemed custom built to be annoyed by him. his time 
at primary school can't have been easy.

i can't really remember why, but i was sort of became this boys friend at 
school, though not always, i had my own group of proper friends, and with 
childish capriciousness we would elect to play with him some days, and 
exclude him others - he was a bit rough for us really. he didn't seem to 
mind though, and was quite happy to join in when we let him. i think i saw a 
genuine sort of innocence in him, he never meant to hurt anyone really, and 
was never malicious, as most of the other kids could be. he was just 
boisterous, it was in his nature.

one of my most vivid childhood memories includes this boy. i can't remember 
exactly which year we were in, or which classroom, because we didn't have 
our proper teacher in that day, and we were being covered by the awful 
deputy headmistress, mrs connelly. it was a monday, i know it was a monday 
because i can remember that the day before was a sunday, and my parents had 
gone out and left my brother and i with my gran and grandad. we didn't like 
staying with them, they only lived down the road and their house was too 
familiar, not familiar like home is - a different sort of familiar. it was 
always too cold or much too hot up there, still is, and very dark because 
there are trees on the edge of the pavement outside their house, blocking 
the sun for the whole day, except a few hours in the morning. because mum 
and dad knew we didn't really like staying up there they promised to bring 
us back a surprise - so we agreed to stay whilst they went and did the 
shopping.

they bought us back a pair of pencils, one each; but not ordainary pencils, 
these had a rubber on one end, and they came unsharpened, the tip was flat 
and smooth, so that when you were ready to start using it you had to sharpen 
the flat surface away and away until the lead became a point. i always loved 
doing that. but best of all was the colour, they wrote in ordinary grey like 
normal pencils, but the outside was covered with a kind of metallic effect, 
with black patterns across it. metallic green for me because green was my 
favourite colour, and red for my brother because red was his favourite 
colour. we were thrilled, and i sharpened mine and started doodling with it 
right away. of course i wanted to take it to school the next day to show 
off, but my mum said i probably shouldn't, because it might get taken; she 
knew what they were like in my class. but i put it into my pencil case 
anyway, and my pencil case went into my bag for the next day.

as i said, our real teacher wasn't in that day, so mrs connelly was covering 
us, which was annoying because she hated people talking in class, and i 
wanted to tell people about my new pencil. we were set some work to do, i 
think it was sums but thats not important. i was sitting next to anthony and 
i was so eager to show him and my other friends the pencil that, in my 
haste, as i took my pencil case out of my bag i dropped it onto the floor. 
it was one of those tin pencil cases that comes in two bits, and one half is 
a lid and the other is the base, anyone who has owned one of those sorts of 
pencil cases will know that if you drop them they never stay shut, and all 
your stuff ends up on the floor. all my stuff ended up on the floor, 
including the pencil, which had rolled a bit and settled under anthony's 
desk - that was the first thing i went to pick up. as i grabbed it anthony 
said
"hey! thats mine!" and pulled it out of my hand,
"no, it's not - give it back!" i exclaimed, growing immediately despondant, 
i sensed this wouldn't end well.
"it's mine!" anthony said with an air of finality, and by this time, what 
with all my stuff still spilt on the floor and our arguing breaking the 
silence of the classroom, everyone had turned to look. mrs connelly made her 
way over.
"whats going on?" she asked, already annoyed
"he's got my pencil..."
"he took my pencil.." we both spoke at once. mrs connelly rarely minced her 
words, rarely dragged anything out, she rolled her eyes,
"give me the pencil." she demanded,
"but miss..."
"sit down and get on with your work." she took the pencil. there was no 
arguing with her, we both felt like crying; in fact the only thing making me 
feel a bit better was seeing him feeling as bad as me. i wasn't sure why he 
should feel bad, after all - he had tried to take my pencil, and hadn't even 
been punished for it properly. i resolved never to be his friend again, to 
treat him as everyone else did.

we both cried at breaktime, i sat alone in the corner, and i could tell that 
anthony had been too because his eyes were red and his cheeks flushed as we 
went back inside. we sat apart and exchanged angry glances for the rest of 
the day. i wanted to fight him, but i knew i would lose - i felt hopeless, 
and i couldn't tell my mum what had happened because she had told me not to 
take the pencil to school in the first place. it was my own fault.

we got back home, and there was a while before teatime, where we'd usually 
watch telly or something, but my brother ran straight away and got out his 
lovely red metallic pencil and started doing some colouring in. i wanted to 
cry again. but then something strange happened, my mum came in from the 
kitchen saying:
"do you want to do some drawing as well kieran?" i cringed.
"no" i said sullenly
"are you sure?" she said, handing me a pencil that looked suspiciously like 
my metallic green one. i looked closer at it, my mum grinned at me and went 
back into the kitchen. it was definitely the same one i had had on sunday, i 
recognised the way it had been sharpened, and the little bit of rubber that 
had been worn away. she definitely hadn't got it from mrs connelly, because 
mrs connelly never gave back stuff she confiscated, and besides, i had run 
straight from mrs connelly's class out into the playground to mum at the end 
of the day. there was no way they could have spoken during that time. she 
must have taken it out of my pencil case before i went to school. i didn't 
feel much better really. but i didn't tell anthony the truth in school the 
next day, didn't apologise - i couldn't bring myself to do it.

in time we silently forgave eachother, and i lost interest in the pencil - 
the novelty was gone, and i couldn't use it without thinking about what i 
had done to my friend. it might still be in the house somewhere, abandoned 
at the back of a drawer or cupboard. you can still buy that type of pencil 
in various places, i saw a pack of five of them for 99p in a papershop the 
other day, they looked cheap.

________________________________________________________________________


i can't get that memory out of my head at the moment, perhaps it was seeing 
those pencils for sale the other day that sparked it. the last i heard of 
anthony he had been sacked from a job as a lifeguard at the local swimming 
baths on his first day for groping a girl he was 'rescuing'
i see him around sometimes too, and we usually nod at eachother but don't 
speak.

what's odd about that memory is that i can't really recall all of it, i can 
see our exchange of words as he snatches back the pencil, but the other 
details are fuzzy. i can picture it happening in nearly all the classrooms 
of my primary school, with us at varying ages and sizes. it occurs to me too 
that the memory works a lot like the biscuit story from 'hitch hikers 
guide...' you'll know the one if you've read it, and will possibly have 
noticed the similarities. and yet thats how i remember it, even though that 
certainly happened before i read the book. have i adapted a memory to part 
of a story from a book? it's hard to say really - theres something about it 
that doesn't seem quite right in my recollection, an extra paragraph that i 
can't quite access in my head.

- kieran


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