Fight

I must have been nine and in my second year of the top class when my decisive fight happened. I think my mother was supply teaching again, because I recall the fear of getting to the child minder’s house alone. I’d learned to wait in the girl’s loos until all was quiet, then I’d sneak back into the main school corridor and out through the boys’ changing rooms. Going that way, to avoid the children waiting to beat me up at the school gates. I’d run down the boy’s alleyway around to the top playground and jump over the back wall to escape through the fields. It always worked, but it also made my journey back to the child minder much longer and my delay to arrive made my younger siblings upset.

A few days before the fight, I’d arrived in the boys changing rooms only to find Derek Benet loitering there. He was a small cute blond boy who spent his weekends and holidays playing football in our garden. His mother worked long hours and he was always left alone. He just smiled and said “Hi,” as I span past him and out the back. To this day, I like to pretend, he didn’t ‘egg on me,’ but then next time I needed to escape out back, I found a little crowd of children waiting for me and that’s when I knew, from somewhere deep inside I knew he’d snitched, but I still like to think of him as my friend and therefore I hope that it was all a coincidence and he did not.  

The head teacher, Mr Newton was not bothered by the fights. He would occasionally look out the window as a crowd of children gathered, but I don’t recall him ever questioning it or arriving outside. Vicky Cowlishaw was planning to beat me up today. She was a tough looking larger girl who had a cutting nasty way in the classroom. She wasn’t particularly sharp, but she would consistently refer to me as Fleabag Flynn and several other horrible names that I’ve chosen not to repeat. I was tiny, the smallest and youngest in the year group, but there was one thing Vicky and I had not taken into consideration. I had three brothers and she had grown up half siblings.

Running down the boy’s alleyway I was cornered, well surrounded, Vicky began the fight by shouting, kicking, hitting, and spitting. I stood back glanced around for an exit, then caught my breath and watched, I giggled embarrassed. Then suddenly. her kick hurt. I attacked, she was soon at my mercy, curled, underneath me. I held her by the scruff of her neck, my hands twisting a wad of hair, as I pushed her farther down with a directive to boot. To hold her in place I soon kneeled on top of her. But this wasn’t enough to calm me, so I just kept on yelping and twisting. I’d further trapped her arm inside her jacket and under my knee. She screamed and wept, as I brought her ever so slowly down to the ground. Her protests were getting louder, but her defensive skills were pathetic. Eventually I let her drop. A weeping bundle on the grey concrete playground. I ran off through the front gates.

I ran right past the child minders house. My body was shaking and tears rolled down my face. I did not want my siblings to see me like this, but the story was heading home. Daniel, the next down in age from me, had been silently there, in the crowd. He loved football and was popular with the boys, so nobody bothered him. He had simply stood and watched. I’d run out fast, but Daniel couldn’t be far behind me. I suddenly feared him and the whole world.

I found myself running down a dried dirt path, with remnants of cobble. I swung through a stone archway, in an unfamiliar row of back yards and flung myself down. I listened for a time, but it was silent. I crept further back and huddled down between an old outdoor toilet and some rubbish bins. I gazed across a rusting gate, it must have once stood, surrounded by the beautifully, decaying large archway. I wept. If my elder brother Luke had been there, he would have intervened. Put a stop to all the fighting nonsense, but Mr Newton had caned him once too often. He’d been moved to the school in the next village. I smiled, my fight would have impressed Luke, but distressed my mother. Then finally my father would arrive home, receive an exaggerated update and launch off into one of his moral, high minded, guilt speeches.

No, I was better placed behind these bins, with my silent salty tears, in my secret retreat. I observed what was left of the old stone cobbles and enjoyed the vast differences between the types of moss. I watch the thriving lives of insects moving around me and gradually crawling up my legs and skirt. As I sat like a rat, squeezed amongst the waste, I felt accepted, I belong here, part of the thriving decay. Hours passed. I watch the clear February sky turn a deep blue. The yellow stone archway became a showed space, hiding witches and scary men. As my world turned black, my new kingdom became fearful. I faulted, stretched my legs and moved around just a little. To stamp out the fear, I ventured back, beyond the archway and was soon under the beam of headlights. I twitched and froze. A red Ford pulled in. A strange man got out. He stared into my snarling face then entered a nearby house. I ran back and again flung myself behind and between my bins.

I comforted myself by licking up runny snot and salty tears, but I heard movement, so I curled up and sat very quiet, small and still. It did not feel long before other cars arrived, the archway was lit up by a blue rotating light. There were voices. I heard my father shout and I came out. The light was from a police car and the policemen wondering around me. My father hugged me and laughed. Everybody was kind. Nobody said much. A police man directed us to our car and I was taken home. I remember feeling surprised to find the wild older teenager, Sandra Taylor at home with my siblings when we arrive. My mother was still combing the streets looking for me. My father rushed off to find her.

Sandra’s mother had been standing outside the village shop near Vicky’s house to smoke, and sent her teenage daughter up to help. The fight news and my vanishing trick was everywhere. Vicky had a broken arm and now had a plaster and a sling. To my astonishment, Sandra was delighted, proud of me. She and Luke, my elder brother, shut the children in the other room so we could have a grownup chat. Well, Daniel soon tried to come back in and Helen had already fallen asleep on the settee, so she had been left. Well, that only left the baby and Laurence shut out. So they let him in too. He sat on my knee, while Daniel told the story. Daniel had a lot to say, as I realised how he could act all grown up too. I was glad to silently sit back surrounded, by Sandra Taylor’s smiles at my sportive siblings, discussing how tough I was, as Helen quietly sat up and listened too.

By Renee Santosa