Tamsin’s comments to the laundrette owner did not change that much over time, but nor did she get bored of them. Every time he saw us there he knew what was coming. His initial shrug-and-take-it approach melted. He started to say things like, “I should call your parents” or “Shouldn’t you be at school?” but the kids would laugh him off.
“I’d love to see you fucking call my parents,” Tamsin said. “I’d love to hear what they’d say to you after what you’ve done, you fucking pervert. I’d like to see what you’ve got to say to my Dad.”
“I’m going to be a vet,” she told me once. “I like the smell of cow shit and dogs are cool.”
“I like the smell of petrol,” I told her.
“You’re fucking weird,” she said. “Cow shit’s much better.”
“Bullshit, you mean.”
“Yeah, that’s what you’re saying. Bullshit—bullshit—bullshit.”
All of our conversations were like this. You can probably tell that I was a little in love with her. She wasn’t interested in me though, because I was too safe.
One of the boys who used to sit with us was called Feggis. His surname was Feggis. It was what the police called him when they saw him.
“You behaving, Feggis?”
He knew which policemen he could tell to go fuck themselves and which ones to angrily ignore. He carried a Stanley knife in his jeans and there were stories that he had used it. There was a boy at my school, four years older than me and two years older than Feggis, who had a red scar running from his ear to the point of his chin. I never spoke to Feggis about it but I heard from someone else, maybe Tamsin, that Feggis had cut him.
We were all scared of Feggis. He didn’t seem to understand basic things or follow the meaning of what we said. At first I thought it was because he was stupid, and he was, but the real reason that he didn’t follow what we were saying, laugh at jokes, or join in the camaraderie was because that part of him didn’t exist. The only time I saw him smile was when he was kneeling on Tom’s face, holding him in place while thick spittle slowly slid from his mouth and into Tom’s hair. I was terrified of Feggis, but it was probably because of him that I carried a Swiss army knife with me. I would never have shown it to him. I just carried it.
None of the adults ever talked back to us when Feggis was there. As far as my life was concerned his was an entirely negative presence, defined by what would not happen when he was around rather than what did happen, and I am still grateful that I have no memories of Feggis bursting into irreversible action. His is a dead, heavy space in my history. The only thing that really ever happened when Feggis was around, from those that had seen, was violence. The point about Feggis, though – the real reason I mention him and probably the real reason that I tried to emulate him with the knife – is that this is what I admired about him: he was capable at any minute of unpredictable, possibly violent action. He could affect things, and because of this he mattered.