PANTS ON FIRE

‘There were no parties at 10 Downing Street...  I was not aware of any parties...  I have been assured there were no parties... I am shocked to learn there was an event, which may have looked like a party...  I did indeed attend an event which was technically allowed by the guidelines, which were flexible... We certainly did follow the rules... One hundred people were invited and told to bring their own booze and, yes, people were sent out to get alcohol in a suitcase... they may have vomited and left at 4am by the back door to avoid the press but any event that occurred, that may have occurred was, I firmly believe, essential for work purposes... Indeed, my wife and dog were also present but, hand on my heart, I did not mislead the House of Commons... I take full responsibility and wish to apologise for... for the impression that may have been given.’ 

Nobody believes a word, he thought as he watched the television coverage. Not one fucking word. You liar.

But the idea of telling a whopper and hoping that repetition alone would convince others that black was white was not entirely alien to him. 

‘I picked it up, shook it and put it back.’

That had been his story and he’d stuck to it like shit to a shoe. It’s what he wanted them to believe. 

‘I picked it up, shook it and put it back.’

He said it so many times he almost believed it himself. 

Almost. 

Except it was a lie. Not a half-truth or a fib. A big fat juicy lie. 

He’d only arrived recently at that school, Balsall Common Primary, when his Dad changed job from Birmingham to Coventry and they had to move home. It was opposite the church, St Peter’s, where he soon enrolled as a choirboy. Not because he believed in all the god nonsense but he liked wearing the white cassock, had a good treble voice and wanted to earn the sixpence a service and half-a-crown for weddings. Nobody mentioned funerals. 

It must have been the spring when he moved into the newly-built house in Station Road. It had a big oak tree in the front lawn and his Dad planted crocuses around it. Or was it his Mum? They were always out there at the weekends, planting and pruning and weeding, trying to get him involved instead of reading books or kicking a ball around. They taught him about ‘white lies’ that were versions of the truth designed to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. ‘I’m sorry I can’t come to your party as I have a bad cold,’ when the truth was he was scared of the dog. But this was not that. 

‘I picked it up, shook it and put it in my blazer pocket.’ 

Yes, that’s what he’d really done. He stole it. Unforgivable. Both within the family and from someone who’d been anointed with the most prestigious role of all. He got a special red badge to wear in the shape of a shield, the words HEAD and BOY picked out in gold letters. A second one in a different colour – a sharp yellow – had HOUSE and CAPTAIN on it. Such honours. And because he’d saved up the labels from Robinson’s jam and sent them away to an address in Scotland with a postal order, he also had a third enamelled badge that he pinned to his blazer lapel. It was their familiar logo: a smiling black faced doll an inch tall. He would hesitate now to say the word they used then. The racism came from ignorance. He had never seen a black or brown face in the school or the village. The world was entirely white and mostly middle class. He was aware of the council estate, of course, and had been taught not be afraid of those ‘other’ people, but he certainly didn’t have friends who lived there. They were ‘salt of the earth’, whatever that meant. But people who lived in the big houses on Station Road were nice families who played tennis and went to church and didn’t steal or tell lies. 

Soon after he started to appear in the playground with his three badges a rule was introduced: two badges only. So he removed the HOUSE CAPTAIN badge; he didn’t like the yellow colour anyway. 

He spent only a single term in Form 6, one below the top. The head boy that year was Philip Pring, a good-looking lad who had National Health glasses and a metal contraption around his shin with a thick boot on one foot, which gave him a faltering limp. He got the notion that Philip Pring must have had polio but he didn’t recall being told that specifically. He had no concept of words like disabled or special needs. This was the Sixties. Children were simply bright or thick, fit or fat, like us or from the council estate. It didn’t occur to him until much later that Philip Pring was appointed to the role to boost his self-confidence, give him authority and prestige as a ballast against potential bullying.  

It also hadn’t crossed his mind until quite recently, more than half a century later, that the reason he stepped, metaphorically, into Philip Pring’s shoes was that he was also perceived as a boy who might need protection, the buoyancy that came with titles. He’d arrived as an unknown towards the end of a school year. How would he fit in, make friends, find his place? Let’s give him badges and a role. Let’s trust him to live up to the role with honour and grace. 

In fact he made friends easily. He was bright, got noticed, wasn’t yet at the age of being self-conscious or afraid of being truly seen. Confidence is a powerful engine. 

And so he spent the top year, Form 7, proudly sporting that red badge of honour. He had duties to allot to the other prefects: Andrew Suswain, Stephen Hodges, Simon Luckett and so on. Nothing too arduous or with any real power; they were ten years old, after all. Gate patrol, changing room and lunchtime checks. It was more of a ceremonial role. He knew how the Queen felt. 

But confidence can also breed entitlement. Being Head Boy gave him delusions of grandeur and privilege. At the summer fête he’d gone along with his pocket money to play the tombola, have a luck dip in the bran tub, scout the white elephant stall – an accordion for a shilling! – watch the parents’ tug of war and take part in the Scottish Country Dancing display. He was in the leading pair with his girlfriend Pauline McCoy. She had fascinatingly thick wavy hair and, miraculously, played the flute. Her birthday was one day after his and their desks were next to each other in Mr Bleasedale’s class. They’d kissed once with tentative tongues but he didn’t like it. 

A boy in Form 6, the year below, had baked a cake which was to be auctioned. This was being announced in the playground to the assembled crowd by the headmaster, Mr Booen. Fooling around with some friends, he was only half paying attention, wanting to explore the second-hand comics and dipping for apples once the event had been declared open. 

‘And here is the magnificently-iced, sultana sponge cake baked by a remarkable young pupil,’ Mr Booen announced into a hand-held microphone, which gave a brief squeal. There was a ripple of applause. ‘So, while we open the bidding at, what shall we say... half a crown? If he would like to come up and display his handiwork... Where are you, lad? Come along.’ 

He heard the call and, so used was he to being in the spotlight, acting in a play, singing to the school, Head Boy, House Captain, that he turned away from his friends, strode across the playground, took the cake from Mr Booen and stood there, smiling and accepting the applause of teachers, parents and pupils. Then he realised his arrogant mistake. But it was too late to back down. Somewhere in that crowd, confused and aggrieved, was the rightful creator of the cake who deserved the praise, not him, the impostor. 

The cake was auctioned. He handed it over to the winning bidder and slunk away, embarrassed at his own vanity. Most of the adults wouldn’t have known one ten year old from another. But some would. They must have gasped at his entitlement. Nothing was said. Nothing has ever been said. It sits unresolved and festering on his conscience to this day. But at least it was a genuine error. 

The glitter incident, however, was altogether different. It was bad enough at the time, the summer of 1966, but it has festered ever since with the power to make him squirm. Humiliation is a poison that leaves an indelible stain.  

On lunchtime duty that day, he went into classrooms to… what? Prowl like a friendly bobby; be a figure of mild authority. These visits had no real purpose other than to make the prefects feel they mattered. In Mrs Gray’s classroom a handful of younger pupils were gathered, doing innocent things: drawing, playing with a new toy, squabbling half-heartedly. He stayed at the front of the room, by the big teacher’s desk, basking in the sense of his own clout. Naïvely, he believed he was someone special. Well, look at those badges. If he had any power but he didn’t use it unkindly. Just stupidly.

There was some conversation. Well-mannered and light; not confrontational. The usual raucous cries and shouting were outside in the playground. Sunlight was pouring through the tall windows, shafts of brightness falling across the pairs of wooden desks with their sloping tops and redundant holes for inkwells. If this were a film the special effects department would make sure there were dust particles dancing in the beams and if he was trying to convince you of the veracity of the scene, he would add the aromas of boiled cabbage, chalk and industrial bleach to the narrative. But they would be a whimsical elaboration, another lie. And he’s had enough of those. 

He does remember the shelves along the wall between Mrs Gray’s desk and the door. Tall, modern, stacked and packed with books and boxes and the sort of paraphernalia that clutter up classrooms. Cardboard boxes, cotton wool, crêpe paper, round-ended scissors, wax crayons, tubes of adhesive. 

And there, in a wooden tray at waist height, he spotted a small tube of silver glitter. The kind he’d seen before and sprinkled onto glued parts of home-made Christmas cards. Nothing special really. Except that it caught his eye. And he wanted it.

While continuing to talk to the younger children in that pleasant way which emphasised his own maturity, he reached out, picked up the plastic tube, held it at each end between finger and thumb, shook it a couple of times watching the tiny particles tumble and sparkle and then -  

‘... I put it back.’

No, he put it in his blazer pocket. The right hand one, away from others’ view. He wanted it and he took it. 

He told the youngsters to settle down and behave themselves. He left the classroom and went on patrolling until the end of lunch break. But midway through the afternoon, as Mr Bleasedale was trying to explain the angles in geometry, a boy from Mrs Gray’s class came in and said she would like to see him. He went to her classroom, next door. She asked if he’d been in her room at lunchtime. Yes. Did he see the tube of glitter on the shelf? Yes. Had he touched it? Yes. And had he taken it? 

‘No,’ he told her. ‘I picked it up, shook it and put it back.’

One of the children in her class must have seen him and told her. A  child who already had a sense of justice far more developed than his. ‘Miss... Miss... I saw the Head Boy take your glitter.’ 

She asked him a few times to be certain. He had seen it? He had touched it? But he hadn’t taken it?  He stuck to his lie. 

‘I picked it up, shook it and put it back.’  

She told him to return to Mr Bleasedale’s class. 

He thought that was the end of it. 

But then he was called by the school secretary, Miss Fay, to go to the Headmaster’s office, on the first floor above the cloakroom and boys’ toilets. Mr Booen asked him the same question but he used different words; harder, grown-up words. 

‘Do you assure me... promise me, that you didn’t steal an item that belongs to Mrs Gray?’ 

He nodded. 

‘Do you give me your word, young man?’ 

He swallowed hard. This was the time for confession, apology and a plea for mercy. 

‘I promise,’ he whispered. ‘I picked it up and I put it back. I didn’t steal the glitter.’

If Mr Booen had asked him to empty his blazer pockets he’d have found it. The truth would be out, his fabrication exposed. There in his sweaty, shaking hand would have been the evidence. But Mr Booen didn’t have the heart to expose him. He would rather have a Head Boy examined and not charged than one exposed as a thief. And so he permitted him to hide behind his flimsy defence. The Headmaster had done his duty and been compassionate, surely aware from the boy’s tone of voice, body language and frightened eyes, that he was floundering. But Mr Booen stopped short of accusation, of humiliation. He nodded sagely at the gravity of the situation. 

‘You can go back to your classroom now,’ he said, turning away.  

‘I picked it up, shook it and put it in my pocket. I stole it. I stole Mrs Gray’s glitter. I was Head Boy and I thought the rules didn’t apply to me.’

Nobody believed a word, you liar. Not a fucking word. 

I had that tube on a shelf in my bedroom for a long time, until we moved away from the village and it must have got lost. I never sprinkled its sparkly contents onto any object. I never picked it up, shook it and put it back. I never touched it again. It wasn’t mine to use. It was still Mrs Gray’s. 

I drove past the house on Station Road recently. There are extra windows where it’s been extended into the roof and the front garden has shrunk to a strip so they can park more cars on a tarmac drive. It’s all gone: oak tree, lawn, crocuses, Mum and Dad. But not the searing stab of shame.