Sweet Sorrow(2)

In the leavers’ assembly, Mr Pascoe made the speech that we’d all expected, encouraging us to look to the future but remember the past, to aim high but weather the lows, to believe in ourselves but think of others. The important thing was not only what we’d learnt – and he hoped we’d learnt a great deal! – but also the kind of young adults we’d become, and we listened, young adults, stuck between cynicism and sentimentality, boisterous on the surface but secretly daunted and sad. We sneered and rolled our eyes but elsewhere in the hall hands gripped other hands and snuffles were heard as we were urged to cherish the friendships we’d made, the friendships that would last a lifetime.

‘A lifetime? Christ, I hope not,’ said Fox, locking my head beneath his arm, fondly rubbing his knuckles there. It was prize-giving time, and we sank low in our chairs. Prizes were awarded to the kids who always got the prizes, applause fading long before they’d left the stage to stand in front of the photographer from the local press, book tokens held beneath the chin as if in an ID parade. Next, led by Mr Solomon, Music, the Merton Grange School Swing Band clattered out to satisfy our craving for the American big-band sound with a cacophonous, lolloping rendition of Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’.

‘Why? Just why?’ said Lloyd.

‘To put us in the mood,’ said Fox.

‘What mood?’ I said.

‘In a Shitty Mood,’ said Lloyd.

‘“Fucked off” by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra,’ said Fox.

‘No wonder he crashed the plane,’ said Harper, and when the barrage came to an end, Fox and Lloyd and Harper leapt to their feet and cheered bravo, bravo. On-stage, Gordon Gilbert, looking quite deranged, held the bell of his trombone with both hands and sent it high, high into the air where it hung for a moment before crashing down onto the parquet and crumpling like tin, and while Mr Solomon screamed into Gordon’s face, we shuffled out to the disco.

But I realise how absent I am from the above. I remember the day well enough, but when I try to describe my role, I find myself reaching for what I saw and heard, rather than anything I said or did. As a student, my distinctive feature was a lack of distinction. ‘Charlie works hard to meet basic standards and for the most part achieves them’; this was as good as it got, and even that slight reputation had been dimmed by events of the exam season. Not admired but not despised, not adored but not feared; I was not a bully, though I knew a fair few, but did not intervene or place myself between the pack and the victim, because I wasn’t brave either. Our year at school was distinguished by a strong criminal element, bicycle thieves and shoplifters and arsonists, and while I steered clear of the scariest kids, neither was I befriended by the bright, obedient ones, those garlanded with book tokens. I neither conformed nor rebelled, collaborated nor resisted; I stayed out of trouble without getting into anything else. Comedy was our great currency and while I was not a class clown, neither was I witless. I might occasionally get a surprised laugh from the crowd but my best jokes were either drowned out by someone with a louder voice, or came far too late, so that even now, more than twenty years later, I think of things I should have said in ’96 or ’97. I knew that I was not ugly – someone would have told me – and was vaguely aware of whispers and giggles from huddles of girls, but what use was this to someone with no idea what to say? I’d inherited height, and only height, from my father, my eyes, nose, teeth and mouth from Mum – the right way round, said Dad – but I’d also inherited his tendency to stoop and round my shoulders in order to take up less space in the world. Some lucky quirk of glands and hormones meant that I’d been spared the pulsing spots and boils that literally scarred so many adolescences, and I was neither skinny with anxiety nor plump with the chips and canned drinks that fuelled us, but I wasn’t confident about my appearance. I wasn’t confident about anything at all.

All around me, kids were adjusting their personalities with the same deliberation that they gave to changes in clothes and haircuts. We were plastic, mutable and there was still time to experiment and alter our handwriting, our politics, the way we laughed or walked or sat in a chair, before we hardened and set. The last five years had been like some great chaotic rehearsal, with discarded clothes and attitudes, friendships and opinions littering the floor; scary and exhilarating for those taking part, maddening and absurd for the parents and teachers subjected to those fraught improvisations and obliged to clear up the mess.

Soon it would be time to settle into some role we might plausibly fit, but when I tried to see myself as others saw me (sometimes literally, late at night, staring profoundly into my father’s shaving mirror, hair slicked back) I saw … nothing special. In photos of myself from that time, I’m reminded of those early incarnations of a cartoon character, the prototypes that resemble the later version but are in some way out of proportion, not quite right.

None of which is much help. Imagine, then, another photograph, the school group shot that everybody owns, faces too small to make out without peering closely. Whether it’s five or fifty years old, there’s always a vaguely familiar figure in the middle row, someone with no anecdotes or associations, scandals or triumphs to their name. You wonder: who was that?

That’s Charlie Lewis.





Sawdust


The school-leavers’ disco had a reputation for Roman levels of depravity, second only to the Biology field trip. Our arena was the sports hall, a space large enough to comfortably contain a passenger jet. To create an illusion of intimacy, ancient bunting had been strung between the wall bars and a mirror-ball dangled from a chain like a mediaeval flail, but still the space seemed exposed and barren, and for the first three songs we lined up on benches, eyeing each other across the scuffed, dusty parquet like warriors across the field of battle, passing and sipping the last of Debbie Warwick’s miniatures for courage until only Cointreau was left, Cointreau a line that none dared cross. Mr Hepburn, Geography, on the wheels of steel, veered desperately from ‘I Will Survive’ to ‘Baggy Trousers’ and even ‘Relax’ until Mr Pascoe told him to fade it out. An hour and fifteen minutes to go. We were wasting time …