Saturday 25th March 1978: AM Release from Posh Prison for the Easter Vac:
The Bedford coach, with its 44 occupants, boys between the ages of 14 and 18, rumble eastwards over the Pennine moors, engine strained, windows fogged with condensation and cigarette smoke. All wear the school-reqired tweed jacket, shirt and tie and black trousers, and black shoes.The older boys along the back share cans of McEwan’s Export, some smoking. The younger boys towards the front of the coach try to remain out of sight and so out of target range.
Mike McAdam, with his posing central parting, has a copy of Mayfair open and reads bits from the editorial while ogling the women between its pages, his words of wisdom expounded to his acolytes rotates between the classic designs of the Morgan car and how customers can specify their own colours and materials and ‘Good Heavens’, the story of a ‘A Choirgirl Unclothed’ which has him waxing lyrical about how he’d like to adjust Julie-Anne’s undercarriage like he did over Christmas and customise her underwear in black leather.
Sixteen-year-old Robbie keeps his reading matter to himself. He has thoughtful blue eyes and deranged mousey brown hair that he’d attacked with a razor-comb in an act of rebelliousness. He face is buried in a book, and the cover he keeps is well hidden. For all anyone else knows, it’s their Upper Fifth English Literature text, Silas Marner; in fact, it is the paperback edition of ‘The Hite Report’. To Robbie, this was like learning about glaciation, having never stepped onto an Alpine glacier, or studying Shakespeare with only schoolboy productions to go on rather than the mentality of the RSC, because sex and the female of the species was entirely theoretical.
Robbie drifts. The moorland rolls past. Once over the Pennines, it’s a dash up the dual carriageway of the North Road. He wakes to raucous laughter and a jostling scrum of boys behind him. To his horror he realises his copy of the Hite Report is not on his lap, or on the floor, but is being tossed around the back of the bus, with excerpts quoted about any girl the boys could think of, from the Biology teacher’s daughter to girls they might hook up with that Easter.
To raise his head above his seat will invite conflict.
“Hey, Robbie, are you sharing this with your sister?!” Mike shouted, eager to rile Robbie as he held the pink-covered paperback copy of The Hite Report over his head.
“You know what they say about twins.” He added, “Play doctors and nurses, do you? You show me yours, I’ll show you mine!”
Robbie has had enough, and as he lunges for the book, it is lobbed back and forth across the bus like a rugby ball. A couple of Robbie’s friends see if they can intercept the book, but neither Edward Elliot or Pills Parker can manage to get their hands on it.
Mike makes a crude gesture with his fingers.
“Katherine, ready for a bit of this?” he suggests, hoping he’d get a chance as he plays with his fingers.
“Anyone else hoping to get their hand in first?” A question he puts to the older boys, a few put their hands up.
At times like this, boys take sides or play neutral. They’d clear away for the pending fight and egg them on if they had more space.
Robbie is straight onto his feet and isn’t averse to punching the taller, larger, prop-forward of a rugby-playing Mike McAdam.
“Go for it, Jaws!” Yells Pills, a boy Robbie’s age but more like a fourteen-year-old in appearance, using the nickname Robbie had acquired on showing up to school 18 months previously with a brace cemented to his teeth.
Robbie goes at Mike with a fist, only to change his mind at the last moment and smack the older boy’s jaw with the palm of his hand instead. It’s almost as bad as a bare-fisted punch, as the force from his arm and the lurch of the bus results in his entire hand being wrenched backwards, breaking his wrist. Not paying enough attention to the duck, Robbie then takes a fist to the mouth, resulting in his brace piercing his gum and blood going everywhere.
The bus lurches and comes to a rapid halt, throwing some boys off their feet.
Horns from the cars behind blare out. The bus driver, furious, gets out of his seat and comes down the bus. He realises there is no way he can tackle 44 stoked-up rugby boys fuelled on cheap alcohol, so he makes a simple threat.
“Any more trouble!” he barks in a strong Geordie accent, “And I’ll pull over and kick the lot of you off! Trunks included. You can then sort it out with your parents, who can come and fetch you.”
A few boys turned to others, asking what he’d said. That’s how poor their understanding of their own local dialect was.
Robbie is clearly in pain from the split lip and broken wrist. He takes his seat. His torn, dishevelled paperback copy of The Hite Report is returned to him. Mike is also in pain and frustrated that he may have broken a finger—his bowling arm—which could scupper his chances of bowling for the first Eleven that summer.
As if to make up for the scrap and the broken wrist, let alone the split lip, Mike breaks off a can of Carlsberg and drops it into Robbie’s lap.
“One for the Virgin squad.” He remarks.
Robbie welcomes the offer of appeasement, but makes the mistake of opening the can which then explodes a froth of lager over him and his precious book. The situation erupts. Kicking replaces any efforts to grapple with each other as both are injured in the hand department. This time the driver is adamant. He pulls over and kicks Robbie and Mike off the bus. He’ll take their trunks and tuck boxes to Gosforth but they can make their own way there.
The idea that Mike McAdam and Robbie Foster are going to share a lift to Newcastle, Darlington, Scotch Corner who wherever they can get is for the fairies. Do they bond as they try first one, then the other, then both together to hitch a lift. Not at all. Robbie heads off along the A66 content to walk home if needs be. He knows that if he can get to Scotch Corner there’s a popular pick up point for hitch-hikers on the slip road. And so it goes. From the A66 Motel is around 7 miles. The owner offered to call him a taxi. Robbie declined. His wife, a former nurse, offered to look at his wrist. She expressed her concern that he should get an X-ray and managed to bind it for now. That would do. On leaving he saw that Mike had still go nowhere at the side of the road. Robbie set off at a jog. Not a runner by Sedbergh standards, he could still keep up a steady jog for 7 miles and made it to Scotch Corner in under an hour and a half
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