Jack Houston

Icarus

“Lonely as the blue sky
Higher than the clouds”
– JONES

The main playground of Cranley Hill Boys’ School is full of breaktime, full of boys running and jumping, boys screaming and shouting, boys kicking tennis balls across markings for various sports as Mr Haversack strides purposefully through the fun and into the middle of the tarmac yard. He holds a wide brass bell by its wooden handle, swings the bell up and aloft and clangs it against the air. The activity in the playground ripples to a halt, the boys knotting together to head toward either the front or the side door and back to their lessons.

From up here they are small, indistinguishable, insignificant, unable to be heard; it’s impossible to worry about what they believe or think of anything. Even Mr Haversack in his dark suit buttoned against the heat of the day, his bald patch glinting in the sunshine, doesn’t seem like much of a presence, doesn’t seem like the kind of person who could have you bashing your hips into desks as you hurry from his classroom in tears.

I fold the tinfoil my sandwich was wrapped in. Fold it again. Place it, with my empty juice carton and my crisp packet, into my lunchbox. I reach behind me to where I’ve tucked my schoolbag, put the lunchbox inside it. Between the dark slates of the sloping roof of the school, this small space is just big enough for me to sit cross-legged. I get up and stretch, careful to keep my balance. I feel the wind in my hair, the sky an absolute blue above me and for miles in every direction. I can see over the whole of the town from here.

Turning to carefully squeeze back through the small window, in between the toilet cistern and another wall, I climb down onto the lid of the toilet and open the cubicle door. In front of me is a sink. And another door. I have wondered before, coming up here as regularly as I do, why whosoever designed this toilet thought to put a cubicle stall around a toilet when it was the only toilet in the room, even though there is a bolt on the inside of the door to the hallway. It means I feel safe though, safer than I did eating my lunch in one of the multi-cubicled toilets downstairs. And that was before I discovered I could squeeze through the window.

The lesson I’m supposed to be sitting in has already started in a room along one of the corridors two flights of stairs down from where I have just eaten my lunch. Double English. It’s with Mr Haversack, who was just on playground duty, and is another reason I was on the roof. I’m good at English. I’d enjoy it, I guess, if Mr Haversack wasn’t the kind of teacher two-hundred-odd square metres of paint-marked tarmac wasn’t enough to hide from in. I unbolt the toilet door, pull it open. The corridor beyond is empty. No one still scurrying into a classroom, no one still loitering by the big double door to the stairs. I already know I don’t have a lot of time, having seen the playground emptying and Mr Haversack already rounding up the stragglers. I walk out across the hallway, my shoes squeaking on the floor, toward the double door, toward the stairs down to the other floors. I try to stop my shoes’ noise, pressing each heel gently down then rolling the foot forward onto my toe. Like this, I can move in silence.

I knock on the classroom door that is partly ajar.

Yes? says Mr Haversack from inside the room.

It’s me, sir, I say. I’m sorry I’m late.

And who is me?

I haven’t pushed the door open. I probably should have pushed it open and walked in and then said, It’s me.

Or just confidently strode in and taken a seat. But I didn’t. I haven’t. I can already hear the rest of my class giggling. Now the door is being pulled from the inside, and here’s Mr Haversack looming over me. He’s frowning. As he peers down, he raises the glasses he has on a chain around his neck and holds them in front of his face.

And who are you? he says.

James Welling, I say.

And you’re in this class are you?

I think so, sir.

The class inside giggles again, and I wish I could disappear.

You think so?

Yes, sir.

Then why weren’t you here when the bell went?

I was in the toilet, sir.

The toilet.

Cue full-on laughter from the class.

I suppose you’d better come in then.

He pulls the door open, standing back so I can enter the room.

Everyone is staring at me, stifling sniggers, no one wanting to laugh out loud now that Mr Haversack’s attention has returned to the inside of the room. I keep my head down, shuffle to the one empty desk at the back.

Someone makes a long, low farting sound.

The class laugh, quieter, but still at me.

Now then, that’s enough, says Mr Haversack. Who can remind me of what we were all just talking about? 

One desk in front of me, to my right, out of the corner of my eye, I can see Russell Cooper turn in his seat to stare at me. He’s got a look on his face like a dog does before a dog fight. Not that I’ve ever seen a dog fight. But I’m sure Russell has. Which is probably where he got the look from. And I’m sure he’s growling. At least on the inside. He may well be growling on the outside too, but quietly.

Sitting in the seat next to Russell is Simon Hart. Russell and Simon are best friends. They both used to be my friend, too. Simon has very straight, shiny hair. His nose is very straight, too, but I can’t see that from here. I know it suits his cheeks though. And his chin. Everything about Simon suits everything else. Some people are lucky like that.

This is year nine, what my brother still calls the third year, the one my brother, Tim, keeps telling me is the best, before you have to start really working but are old enough to have gotten to grips with how the school operates.

I wish it was like that for me.

It’s easy for Tim. He’s old, nearly a grown-up, and not like me. He’s confident. He styles his hair the way they do on Top of the Pops, and he likes girls, and racing cars, and sport and all the things boys are supposed to like.

I try to copy what Tim does, or boys from school like Russell do, and what they say, and how they act, but it never quite feels right. It’s like I’m playing a part in a play in which everyone else has been given the script but me.

Mr Haversack stands, walks stiffly over to the blackboard and begins to write something out, peering at the piece of paper in his hand he’s copying from. It takes him a long time, and in the silence Russell is still turned to me, staring, leaning his head to the side as I try my best to avoid eye contact, instead concentrate on what Mr Haversack is writing out in chalk in front of us as he reaches the bottom of the blackboard. He smacks the chalk into a full stop, turns back to face the class. He still hasn’t noticed Russell is paying more attention to me than to his lesson, and instead asks if anyone would like to read the poem he has written out. I’ve read through it already, but do not put my hand up. The title’s in French. There’s no way I’m going to try and pronounce that in front of the class. There’s something in the first line about Old Masters but I’m not sure who they are. The rest of it seems clear enough. Funny even. And I think it rhymes, at least in places. I’ve never put my hand up to read anything aloud in class. And I never will. Or answer a question. I know to keep my head down, keep my eyes on the desk in front of me, hope the day ends without anyone or anything bringing any more attention to me than necessary.

James Welling, says Mr Haversack.

I look back up. I don’t say anything.

Why don’t you read the poem for us? Seeing as you were so late?

Me, sir?

You, Master Welling.

I stand, hope my legs will hold me.

I can see Russell’s scowl twisting rictus-like into a sort of smile.

I hope Simon doesn’t turn around to look at me. I don’t think I could bear it if Simon turned around to look at me.

Things went bad between me and Russell at the beginning of the year. Around the same time as I first noticed how Simon’s lips were perfectly proportioned with his eyebrows. I don’t think the two are connected though.

We were in the playground. This was when I still hung around in the playground, with everyone else. We were in a small group, me, Russell, Simon – Mark and Chris were there too. Russell was wearing beer bottle tops tied into his shoelaces. Grolsch ones, specifically.

He claimed this was fashionable.

Simon said he thought it looked cool, too.

I thought it looked stupid.

And I told them both that.

Russell looked at me as if I’d just spat on his Grolsch-bottle-topped school shoes as I told him that no one was doing that anymore, that even my brother who used to do it ages and ages ago had stopped. That it wasn’t even really cool then, and certainly wasn’t now. That it was just sad.

He looked like he wasn’t sure what to say. And so instead of saying anything he shoved me, hard enough that I fell backwards and landed on my bum. It was at that point that he walked off. Simon, and Mark and Chris, followed him.

I take the long route to my next lesson, slipping left out of the door of Mr Haversack’s room and up the stairs there instead of right with everyone else. If I climb two flights, I’m higher, walking along an almost empty corridor before coming back down and into our last lesson of the day: double maths, my favourite. I like Mr Jacobs, too. He smiles at me as I enter the room, even though I’ve come in late, again. Everyone else is already sat down at their desks.

I try to avoid Russell’s stare as I walk past him.

It’s about the way in which great things and small things can happen in the same spaces, he says, in a falsetto voice, imitating what I’d said in Mr Haversack’s class.

Russell can’t seem to bear that Mr Haversack was clearly but quietly impressed with my answer. Perhaps I should have tried to get it wrong. But trying to think up a wrong answer would have been far more difficult than giving what I thought was the right one. I now realise this was a mistake, the correct answer being in fact the wrong one, and one that will result in me, later, being somehow punished by Russell.

I do, though, catch Simon’s eye as I file down between the desks. He holds my gaze for a second. Then looks away. My heart flutters in my chest like a bird.

***

At home, that evening, mum makes me and Tim sausages and chips and baked beans and asks me how my day was. I say it was okay. Tim starts talking about how he has been offered more hours, and a possible promotion, at the garage, and mum tells him how he’s always been such a hard worker and well done and dad will be so proud when she tells him about it when he gets home.

I pick at my chips. I don’t say anything else.

***

It’s well before the morning bell and I’m back outside the toilet window on the fifth floor, even though the sky is filled with dark clouds and it’s actually quite cold and I can feel spits of rain hitting my face but not enough to have me climb back to the warm inside. I like to get here early, telling mum I’m doing homework in the library. I’m not even sure the library is open yet, but mum’s unlikely to check.

This is where I feel safe, where I can look down on the entirety of the main playground, see it stretch off wide and empty until it hits the wall at the back, nobody else here, only me to watch over it. Before long a teacher, and then another teacher, come in through the gate, carrying bags, unaware I’m watching. In a short while, the first of my schoolmates will arrive, their blue blazers dark against the grey tarmac, their shirts flashing white underneath.

Simon and Russell are talking outside Miss Pemberton’s room. Miss Pemberton teaches Humanities, which is like English in that there isn’t always a defined ‘right’ answer, which I sometimes find unnerving, but Miss Pemberton makes us, and especially me, feel like every answer we give is worth listening to.

Russell walks away and I’m so relieved I walk over to Simon, nod hello. I am too nervous to actually say anything to him. His hair runs shiny and smooth down to his collar, his eyes the same gold as honey. He glances at me, looks away.

And then Russell is behind me, grabbing one of my wrists and twisting it up behind my back, wrapping his other arm round my neck, pushing me toward Simon. Everyone else waiting in the hallway for the class to start is ignoring us and what’s happening. I can’t see Miss Pemberton anywhere. 

Simon glowers at me. Why do you keep staring at me? he says.

I can’t answer. I can barely breathe.

Yeah, stop looking at him you little poof, Russell whispers into my ear. I can feel flecks of his spittle in my earlobe.

Simon stares at me, dead-eyed, shifts his gaze to Russell, says, Let him go.

Miss Pemberton appears.

Sorry I’m late, she says. Staff meeting. She stops, looks at me, then at Simon, then at Russell. She narrows her eyes, asks, Are you okay James?

I nod, drop my eyes to the wooden flooring as if I’ve dropped something, my ability to say anything, were I even sure of what that might be, having rolled under one of the large iron radiators that line the corridor.

I don’t look at Simon for the whole of the lesson. I don’t look at Russell either.

Lunch time, and I’m up in my safe space, the boys down in the playground so far below I can’t tell them apart, their screams and their shouts like a faraway war. I try a bite of my sandwich, cheese and pickle, but I can’t eat it, the sandwich clagging in my mouth with every chew until I’m barely able to swallow, have to wash each bite down with sips of Ribena. I stare out over the playground, the sun slightly dazzling my eyes, the wind buffeting off the roof around me as a plane makes its lonely way across the sky above my head, leaving a thin trail of vapour as the only evidence it had ever passed through. I stand, and with the extra height, standing at the edge of the school roof, I feel strong, fearless, like nothing can hurt me, nothing can stop me. I’ll show Simon and Russell; Mark and Chris, too. Everyone at Cranley Hill. I’ll show them I can do whatever I want. I’ll show them I can fly.

Filling the playground with their shouts and screams, the boys run, the boys jump, the boys kick tennis balls.

Jack Houston is a writer and public-library worker from London. His short stories have featured in Far Away Places, Litro, Fictive Dream, Storgy, A Thousand Word Photos, and in the Brick Lane Bookshop Prize and BBC National Short Story Award Anthologies. He is currently working towards a debut collection.