From the Top
by Bryony Marsh

“James, what are you doing here?”

The boy gave a guilty start that spoke volumes: he was caught and there was no point in lying.

“I’m doing my Physics homework, Sir,” he said.

Simon Owens sighed. “What I mean is, why are you lurking in the library when you’re supposed to be in class?”

The boy showed the work he’d been doing. “I’m not being lazy, I just… couldn’t face it.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want to,” Mr Owens told him, trying to inject some kindness. “We don’t get to pick and choose – not until you’re on your GCSEs, and even then you don’t get to sit lessons out.”

“It was only music,” James said.

“Yeah? I hear it’s your best subject,” Mr Owens said. “Probably not a good idea to antagonise the teacher most likely to give you an ‘A’, wouldn’t you say?”

James looked uncomfortable. “It’ll either be singing or it’ll be some awful improvisation task. You don’t understand: it causes me physical pain.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but you don’t get to skip lessons just because you feel you’re too good for them. There are rules, young man.”

The boy looked miserable, but he nodded.

“Have you skipped any other classes?”

“No, Sir.”

“Alright. Well, since all you’d achieve by going down there now would be to disrupt the last five minutes of the lesson, I want you to stay here – but you’ve got to see Mister Thompson during break and apologise. Will you do that?”

“I’m down for a violin lesson with him at lunchtime, Sir: can I do it then?”

“Alright – and this is the last time you skip a lesson, understood? What if there was a fire?”

“If there was a fire, I’d walk out of that doo–”

“If there was a fire and you couldn’t be accounted for, some brave firefighter would risk his or her life to look for you in a burning building. D’you get it? It’s not all about you, James.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

“Right. What have you got next?”

“Chemistry, Sir.”

“Do you have any objection to sharing Chemistry lessons with your classmates?”

“No, Sir,” James said.

“Good. I’ll be checking your attendance.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Lunchtime music lessons were just forty minutes long. You had to eat with the First Years and then dash down to the music block. Even if everything went perfectly, you’d barely got started before it was time to pack up again.

This time, though, James had more than enough time – even allowing for the apology he had to give for skipping the music lesson.

It ought to have upset Mr Thompson, but the other thing that James did upset him far more.

“You’re returning the violin?”

“I no longer need it, Sir.”

“You’ve bought one of your own?”

“No, Sir, I just won’t be playing it any more; I’ve finished.”

“Finished?”

He put the violin on the table, along with a tub of rosin, the sheet music and several CDs. It wasn’t an argument, it wasn’t a protest – he was simply reporting the end of his studies in the same way that another student might have declared that they’d finished doing a painting, or finished reading ‘Of Mice and Men’.

Mr Thompson had been through this before – with the clarinet, the piano and the guitar. If this was like those other times then James intended never to touch the instrument again.

“You were getting very good,” he said, carefully.

“Yeah, it was fun,” the boy said.

Mr Thompson tried not to show his annoyance. “Was? What changed?”

James just shrugged. “Finished.”

“I can find you some more challenging music, if that’s the problem,” Mr Thompson said, searching through the tatty piles of sheet music.

He offered something to James, who refused it.

“I can’t read music,” he said.

“You still can’t read music?”

The boy looked miserable. “Sorry, Sir. I get the idea. I mean, I understand: it’s a code. I could decipher it, but I can’t do it when I’m playing.”

Agitated, Mr Thompson rubbed at his face. “Do you ever wonder why not?”

James shrugged. “Because the map isn’t the territory, Sir.”

“Hm, interesting… but I’ve seen you read music!”

The boy shook his head. “I always pretended. I don’t use sheet music.”

Mr Thompson was unimpressed. “Lots of people put off learning to read music. That’s why you see letters pencilled in on the score, but in the long run it’s more efficient to just learn –”

“I’m an auditory learner, Sir,” James said.

“Still a learner, though. So tell me: are you planning on toying with another instrument?”

The barb was set quite deliberately, but James didn’t notice it.

“Dunno, Sir. Although…”

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking: wondering what it might be like to play the cello.”

“Have you indeed? You’d find it a lot different to playing the violin.”

“That’s fine,” James said. “I’ve finished with the violin.”

“You don’t want to see how far you can go with it?”

The boy frowned. “How do you mean?”

Mr Thompson was getting annoyed. “It seems to me that every time you encounter something you can’t play, you declare that you’re ‘finished’, instead of trying to overcome the obstacle. Learning, in other words.”

“I didn’t encounter an ‘obstacle’,” the infuriating boy said.

“What, so you’re just bored of it? Because you can play anything? Come on!”

James just shrugged.

“Alright, stop: wait. Let me find something…” Mr Thompson turned to the computer and launched a web browser. The film he showed featured Itzhak Perlman playing the theme from ‘Schindler’s List’.

Sullenly, James watched it.

“What d’you think of that?” Mr Thompson demanded as the movie clip came to an end.

“It was good,” James said.

“Good?” the teacher demanded.

James shrugged. “I liked it.”

“I suppose you can do better?” Mr Thompson goaded him.

“Play better than that? On the violin? No, Sir.”

“Ah,” Thompson said, “so there’s –”

“I’ve finished playing violin, Sir.”

Mr Thompson took a deep breath before he spoke: “Prove it.”

“What, Sir?”

“Prove you can play the violin like that. If you’re even half as good, I’ll accept that you’re beyond anything I can teach you – and I’ll let you swap it for a cello, if you must.”

“One last time, then,” James said.

His face became an expressionless mask as he reached for the case and unsnapped the clasps. He brought out the violin and the bow, tucked the chinrest in place and looked at his teacher.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Mr Thompson said.

Note-for-note, James reproduced what he’d just heard. From start to finish, every motion copied the master violinist that he’d watched and listened to once.

The sad music always had an effect on Mr Thompson – it was one of his favourite performances – but hearing it this way was far worse: this was a farewell performance from the most gifted pupil he’d ever had. A boy who’d already given up playing several instruments. It was like a bad joke! What did the kids call it? Trolling: James Dawson was trolling him. Just showing what he was capable of and quite maliciously refusing to do it ever again.

He cleared his throat as the music came to an end. There were things he wanted to ask, like “How can you do that?” but he already knew that James couldn’t tell him. He was James Dawson and this was what James Dawson did.

He’d accepted the apology for the same reason: James couldn’t stand to hear any piece of music performed inexpertly and the music classes were torture for him. Plus it wasn’t as if you could accuse him of poor performance!

“We’re almost out of time,” Mr Thomson said. “I’ll have a cello here for you to try next time.”

“Thanks, Sir,” James said, happier now. He put the violin and bow back in their case, then reached for his coat.

Mr Thompson didn’t speak again. He was trying to hold onto the memory of that exquisite performance, delivered at a distance of five feet from an audience of one, unrecorded and never to be heard again.

He sighed.

Trolling. Definitely trolling.

“D’you have any trouble with James Dawson?” he asked, later on.

They were in the snug at the White Hart, numbing the pain. Nigel was feeding a handful of pound coins into a slot machine and explaining to anybody who’d listen that it was all a question of probabilities. (Some Maths teachers are never exactly off duty.) Tony had gone to the bar with Rose and John had gone to the toilet. Only Sally heard the question, therefore – although that suited him. He didn’t want to admit to everyone that James Dawson was getting to him, but with Sally, he could admit that he doubted his abilities as a teacher and it wouldn’t go any further.

She pondered the question. “No,” she said, after a sip of wine. “He’s away with the fairies sometimes, but to be honest, he’s pretty much invisible: one of the polite, clean ones that hands good homework in on time and doesn’t get into fights. Why?”

“He’s winding me up,” Thompson said. “Music is a discipline where you ought to put in hours of practice, right? Hours and hours –”

She nodded sympathetically. “He won’t practise?”

“He won’t even come to lessons. I don’t mean the one-to-ones: he skips class because he says he hates them so much they make him want to scream.”

“I wish Janice Cook would skip a few of mine,” Sally said, grinning.

Thompson shook his head. “Listen: yesterday, he handed his violin back. He says he’s finished with it.”

Sally nodded. “And he was good, right? The one that got away…”

Thompson hesitated, still haunted by the performance he’d heard. “I challenged him to prove himself. He said he doesn’t read music, so I played him this film clip: a real masterpiece. If you were a musician yourself, you’d appreciate that you were watching a professional at the pinnacle of his career…”

“And?”

Thompson swallowed. “So he picks up the violin, for the last time. I know that, because he’s given up instruments before. The guitar; the clarinet; the piano; he was spectacular with all of them, but he just… stopped. There isn’t a reward, an appeal or a punishment I can devise that’ll change his mind. He gets good at an instrument – I mean effortlessly perfect – and then he abandons it.”

Rose and Tony came back from the bar, with more drinks: Sally wasn’t distracted, though, which was nice.

“So he played for you?”

“Who’s this?” asked Tony.

“James Dawson,” she explained.

“Is he any good?” Rose asked.

Thompson spread his hands. “He played the most achingly perfect piece of music that I’ve ever heard. Every little accent; every vibrato. Three and a half minutes of music, note-for-note. Absolute genius: and he’d only heard it once.”

“Right, I’m having him in the show,” Rose declared.

Thompson shook his head. “I wish – but he won’t do it.”

“He won’t play in front of an audience?”

“I doubt he’ll ever touch a violin again,” Thompson said. “He’s done this before.”

Sally held his gaze. “And he’s really that good?”

Thompson nodded. “He can’t even read music. He just listens, remembers and plays it all back. Perfectly.”

“Savant syndrome,” said Rose.

Tony grinned. “What? He’s like an idiot savant? Well, he’s halfway there…”

James aimed with great care. It took a fair bit of pissing about to make an exploding airgun pellet and he didn’t want to waste one with a miss.

He’d invented them himself: you held a drill bit in your fingers and twisted it to enlarge the pellet’s cavity. You put in a few flakes from the head of a red match – enough to ensure that it detonated when squashed – then topped everything up with a fine powder made from brown matches, sealed in with a dab of epoxy. They made a very satisfying little crack when they hit a hard surface, as now. Steve just about jumped out of his skin, spilling his drink.

“Fuck’s sake, Jimbo!” he yelled – which seemed to indicate that he was impressed.

Alex laughed. “Gimme a go!”

James loved these afternoons in the woods with his friends. They’d leave their phones behind and mess around the old-fashioned way, making dens and tree houses. They were, perhaps, a little bit too old for some of the games that they still enjoyed and knew better than to seem too enthusiastic about. You weren’t supposed to like hide-and-seek at fourteen, but they still had fun, wrapping it up in a layer of boisterous humour.

They threw their empty drinks cans in the pond, then took turns to shoot holes in them until they sank, like ragged enemy ironclads. Alex’s was the last to sink, but at last he admitted that he’d stuffed it full of twigs.

“If you filled it with scraps of polystyrene, maybe I could make an incendiary pellet,” James mused.

“Bollocks,” said Steve.

“If you pack a pellet with red match heads and leave the tail end open, you get a tracer effect,” James said.

“I don’t believe you,” Alex said.

“It’s true,” James insisted. “If you lie on your back and shoot upwards, at night, you can see ’em speeding away. If one stopped inside a wad of polystyrene, it might set it on fire…”

Steve grinned. “You’re a nutter, you know that?”

“Pyromaniac,” Alex said.

Smiling, James accepted both compliments.

A little later on, with the ammunition supply exhausted, James said he needed to go home. In truth, he was uncomfortable because the other two were talking about trespassing on the railway. There was an ‘island’ of wild woodland between two railway tracks that fascinated them, but James didn’t want to take that particular risk.

He gestured at the air pistol. “I’ve got to be back before my mum, so I can get that hidden.”

This, the others accepted.

In reality, James had hours to spare. His mother was making her regular weekly visit to Aunt Sheila, who lived in sheltered housing. That meant she wouldn’t be back for hours, which was perfect.

James stashed the airgun in its usual hiding place and went for a quick shower. When he emerged from the bathroom, he had a towel around his head and another one wrapped high around his body, girly-style.

In a box that was hidden deep under his bed, behind a stack of blankets that nobody ever used, was his stash of girl’s clothing. Not exactly stolen: each piece had been intercepted from the bin or chosen with care and removed from a bag that was destined for the charity shop. His collection was therefore a little bit tatty, but every item was a treasured possession.

His regular clothes came and went as he grew out of them or wore them out, but most of his sister’s things were still to be grown into. He adored each little piece of lace edging; loved how Lycra held him tightly. The cool smoothness of the fabrics; the shapes that made him feel grown up and sophisticated. Also the way they made your heart go thud in your throat, better than the scariest fairground ride.

Sometimes, if he woke in the night and he was certain that Mum was fast asleep, he’d wear a bra and knickers under his pyjamas, feeling special and secretive.

Somehow, he’d instinctively known not to tell anybody. He knew it was wrong… and it was the best he ever felt. Once he realised that, he’d begun collecting. He loved Ellen, the older sister who was at university now. He knew she’d probably be grossed out to know that he had her old things. It wasn’t meant to be creepy, or a betrayal; it was just what a teenage boy had to do when the world had decreed that it was wrong for him to wear a bra and knickers, a pair of tights or a skirt.

Some days, lingerie was enough. (Lingerie… what a wonderful word!) On this occasion, though, he decided he’d do things properly. From among the small stash of clothing, he chose Ellen’s old school uniform. The style hadn’t changed since she’d worn it, so within a few minutes James was dressed a lot like the girls in his class. He imagined himself being friends with Hazel Smith, Michelle Nolan and Sofia Kollárová; talking about stuff, hanging out.

It would have been wonderful, he thought.

He kept the towel on his head for a while, because it allowed him to pretend that his hair was longer. Sometimes he experimented with makeup – mostly odds and ends that his mother or sister were throwing out – but the results were usually disappointing.

Instead, on this occasion he just finished dressing as a girl from Southcott School, then settled down at his desk and did his Geography homework.

He wouldn’t have done Maths as Penny – that was his name, when he was dressed – but some subjects were somehow more innately feminine than others, he felt. Penny took care to present her work with care, drawing graphs with the aid of a French curve to plot the data smoothly, adding neat lettering and using colours: the best girl that never was.

James was more than a little bit in love with Miss Sally Leighton, his Geography teacher. That was okay, because lots of the guys fancied her. She was young, she had a nice bum – and a lovely smile. You were more-or-less required to say you’d like to ‘do it’ with Miss Leighton, because it proved you weren’t gay – and certainly James was attracted to her… but it was complicated because he also wanted to be her.

Which was a load of bollocks, of course – but he could do good work for her and earn one of those beautiful smiles, at least. Perhaps Penelope Dawson could manifest herself better as time went on. James would learn how to do makeup; earn some money and buy nice clothes; find the courage he needed to confess his needs…

One day.

When he’d finished Geography, he did the assigned reading for English, then took a break, just enjoying the chance to spend some time as Penny. As the time approached half past six, he had to put her away again. He threw on some jeans and a t-shirt, then went downstairs and peeled some potatoes.

When his mother got home soon after, she kissed the top of his head and told him he was a lovely son – which hurt just a little bit, but he knew she meant well.

True to his word, Mr Thompson had produced a cello in time for his most frustrating pupil’s next lesson. Having brought it out of storage, he checked it over and tuned it… but that didn’t stop James from making a couple of minute adjustments. He never needed a tuning fork, of course.

He’d been attentive enough as he was told how to sit and hold the instrument, and Mr Thompson had managed to give him a few pointers about the differences in bowing technique. He seemed happy – and pleased with the lustre of the highly polished wood; it was a beautiful cello.

He played a scale, wincing at each imperfection, but never making the same mistake twice. He experimented, to discover the range of notes that each string offered him, and you could see him filing the information away. He accepted some pointers about finger placement, and nodded his thanks as the notes became clearer.

After twenty minutes or so of playing individual notes, quite suddenly he was playing music. Thompson recognised it as ‘Le Cygne’ from ‘The Carnival of the Animals’ by Camille Saint-Saëns.

The slow melody was delivered with James Dawson’s usual heart-wrenching perfection; a beautifully emotional piece quite at odds with his blank-faced concentration. He played for a couple of minutes, before breaking off in the middle.

Thompson could have sworn at the kid. “Why’d you stop?”

James blinked. “That’s all I heard, Sir. It was on in Mum’s car – Classic FM, I think it was – but we arrived home before the tune finished, so that’s all I got.

“That’s the only time you heard it?”

“Yes, Sir. What is it?”

“It’s called ‘The Swan’. I can find a recording of it if you give me a minute.”

James nodded. “Thank you! It’s been bugging me, not knowing how it finishes.”

Thompson managed to find a decent recording and he played it for the boy, who thanked him again for solving the mystery – but he didn’t immediately reach for the cello and play the piece.

Instead, he set it aside with care and stood.

Thompson was a proud man. He wouldn’t beg, but he had to ask: “So, is this your new musical interest?”

James considered he instrument for perhaps two seconds. “Oh, no way. Too much to carry, Sir. Thanks, anyway, though.”

“I see. Can I interest you in a triangle? Piccolo?”

The sarcasm was lost on the boy. “Flute, maybe.”

At last, Thompson allowed himself a sigh. “You really are infuriating at times, Dawson. You know that?”

“Sorry, Sir.”

“Appropriate choice of music, really,” Thompson said, angrily, “because everything’s a swansong with you, isn’t it?”

“Sir?”

“Everything’s always ending. It breaks my heart to know that each piece of music you play, you close the book on it forever. You don’t learn it: you finish it. It’s a bloody waste!”

“Are you okay, Sir?”

“No I’m not! You’re making a mockery of my profession, you know that?”

James looked a little bit frightened. “Er…”

“D’you want to hear my opinion?” Thompson demanded.

James just nodded.

“Your sister was a far better musician than you.”

That got his attention. James Dawson stared at his teacher in confusion.

“She was, though,” Thompson ploughed on, recklessly. “She had to work for it – and she did. She put the hours in. She earned her proficiency, and she valued it: treated the whole thing with respect.”

“I taught her,” James said.

“What?”

“The clarinet. I showed her how to do it. Helped her, every night. For years.”

Thompson scowled. “You were, what? Seven? I don’t believe you.”

James looked uncomfortable. “I had to,” he said. “The music was… I needed to fix it.”

“You taught Ellen to play the clarinet?”

James nodded.

Wordlessly, they regarded each other for a time.

Thompson shook himself. “She’s still a better musician than you.”

James looked hurt, but he didn’t protest.

“She got all her certificates,” Thompson pointed out. “She never turned up saying she’d ‘finished’. She never refused to perform a piece on the grounds that she’d done it before. She never switched to a completely different instrument right before a grading. She was in the orchestra! She –”

“I can’t be in the orchestra, Sir,” James said. “They make mistakes.”

“And you never do. Of course.”

“No, Sir. Sorry, Sir.”

Thompson glanced at the clock: it was almost time to finish, anyway. He took the cello and returned it to its case, closing the clasps with bitter finality.

“You have a gift,” he said, “you know that. But your sister understood better than you. Music itself is a gift and it’s meant to be shared, not hoarded. If you’re going to be a musician, sooner or later you have to perform. Not to satisfy you, but to delight an audience. Ellen was a team player, in the orchestra. You, you’re good, but you’re arrogant. I can’t even say you’re a prima donna, because at least they’d perform. You kill music. You take it in, and don’t feel it but instead you copy it and once you’ve done that, it’s dead to you, isn’t it?”

James looked as if he might cry. “Uh…”

Thompson sniffed. “I can’t do anything for you, James. God knows, I’ve tried. I can’t help you any further.”

“Sir.” James stumbled from the music room.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

James hadn’t told his mother that he wasn’t a musician any more. Better if she didn’t notice until the end of term, since the lessons had all been paid for – plus the hire of the violin. It was money they couldn’t afford to waste, but at least there’d be no new fees to pay in the future.

Still, it left him feeling aimless; disjointed. Everyone should have one thing at school that they can feel good about, and James was struggling to reinvent himself. Also, all the music he heard was clogging up his head: he couldn’t lay it to rest by understanding it in the usual way, so it all just sort of built up.

“A penny for ’em,” she prompted.

He jolted at the mention of ‘penny’, but then he brooded some more.

At last: “Is Ellen better at music than me?”

His mother looked at him strangely. “You know she isn’t.”

James pondered this. “Mister Thompson said she was.”

“Oh,” his mother said, carefully. “I see.”

“You do?” James looked hurt.

“I think I can see his point,” she said. “Girls are… pleasers. They like to do as they’re told – whereas boys, much as I love you, are a bit more challenging. I imagine you annoy Mister Thompson quite a bit. At parents’ evenings, he’s always complaining that you won’t perform for an audience…”

“Yeah, I can’t do that.”

She stroked his hair. “Why not, my love?”

James shrugged. “They always want you to rehearse, or do multiple performances. It kills it.”

His mum laughed softly. “Most people need to rehearse, darling. I’m sorry it’s boring for you.”

“It’s not boring,” he said, “it’s just…”

“What?”

“Uh, what was that you said? ‘Pleasers’?”

She frowned. “I don’t mean you’re allowed to be obnoxious, just because you’re a boy.”

He stared at his mother for a long time, deep in thought – but he didn’t share anything further.

“Thanks, Mum,” he said, giving her a squeeze.

James tried to think things through. It wasn’t easy when there was so much music playing in his head. The ‘Prince of Denmark’s March’ by Jeremiah Clarke might normally be described as a trumpet voluntary, but for James it was anything but: he felt an urgent need to play it – just to get it out of his head.

Great, he thought, I’m gonna need to get hold of a damned trumpet. But what would Penny do?

Boys brooded. They hid their fears and they told their best friends to fuck off, with a chuckle. James was good at it: he’d had to be, because that was how he concealed his secret; how he sustained his double life.

Not a double life, in fact, because ‘double’ suggested that both facets were expressed equally and that just wasn’t true. For all that he loved her, James kept Penny hidden in a box under the bed. He didn’t allow her to manifest herself: no friends and no social interactions at all. Even Mum and Ellen didn’t know about her.

“Girls are pleasers,” Mum had said. James was getting decent grades in the Geography homework that Penny did in his place. Better than the Computing and Physics that he always worked on as himself. So maybe girls were just better? James wished…

Nah, that’s bollocks: you don’t get to choose.

It rankled that Mr Thompson had said Ellen was better than him. It wasn’t fair; wasn’t true – except that when he thought about it, he couldn’t deny that she’d done far more to entertain people. She’d been more popular at school than he’d ever be. He’d always quite liked the idea of being thought ‘troubled, but brilliant’, but now he felt that he’d made a terrible mistake, alienating the one person who’d been able to see his potential.

With a sigh, he got ready for bed. He decided that it was a night when he needed to be Penny, at least to the extent of dressing in some of Ellen’s old things; releasing his alter ego from her hiding place, though it was always a hassle to have to hand-wash those clothes in secret – and drying them was particularly fraught with danger.

Even so, he found it such a relief to spend some time as Penny, and he slept well.

The next time he went to the woods with Steve and Alex, it wasn’t as good. There were some slightly older boys there and it changed the experience completely. The newcomers had cigarettes, which was bad enough because they considered smoking to be an essential rite of passage, but they also worked mischief with their lighters. Formerly lauded as a pyromaniac, James was now a ‘little baby’ because he argued against setting fire to a tree.

In a rain-sodden cardboard box, near the lane where people dumped old mattresses and the like, they found a small stash of pornographic magazines. All the boys tried to act worldly and merely amused, but were secretly fascinated by the images, each more explicit than the one before as they peeled apart the wet pages and passed them around.

Initially envious of the sexy lingerie that the model displayed, James noted that no amount of mascara could conceal the lack of enthusiasm in her eyes. He felt ashamed, guessing what Ellen – or indeed, Penny – would have said about him skulking in the woods and looking at porn.

“Fuck me, look at this!” one of the older boys said as he tore off a page to reveal the one beneath. A full-page image showed the model, now squatting in her high heels and using her fingers to spread apart the lips of her pussy for the camera and thus for half a dozen boys in a wood.

James was fascinated to get such a view of womanhood, so much more vivid than the simple line drawings in his biology textbook. It wasn’t the lust or sense of devilment that drove the other boys, but a fleeting appraisal of what he might have been equipped with. It looked neater; nicer than what he was accustomed to.

“I bet she’s had an orgasm,” one of the boys opined, trying to sound knowledgeable.

“She’s had what?” James asked, wondering if it was some kind of medical procedure.

The boy stated to explain his theory but James stood, uneasy at having seen something so private. What if they were discussing Ellen this way?

“Gotta go, guys,” he muttered, though he’d laboriously worked his way through the manufacture of no fewer than thirty exploding airgun pellets the night before.

“Why?” Steve demanded.

“Just… remembered something I ain’t done,” he bluffed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Alright,” Steve said, distractedly, gazing at a pair of breasts that were dripping with baked beans, a slight frown on his face.

“See ya,” Alex said.

“Maybe he’s queer,” one of the older boys said, before he was out of earshot.

He pretended not to hear.

Thompson stayed late, fixing loose pages back where they belonged in his sorely abused music books. Sally Leighton was also on the premises, doing some marking up in her classroom. It was a task that could have been done just as easily at home, but the two of them were killing time. By unspoken agreement, they were waiting until all the others had left. They didn’t want everyone knowing their business: for the first time they were going out for a drink as a twosome, rather than in a group. They both felt that it might be the start of something, although it was early days.

Sally arrived at the music block, shaking raindrops from her coat. It was a horrible night and she wondered if the weather was going to put a dampener on their evening.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, “just give me a minute.”

He set aside the books he’d repaired and began to check that all the windows were fastened, and the bars as well. Musical instruments were valuable and a break-in could be a disaster.

Sally understood what he was doing and she went to the opposite side of the room to perform the same checks.

A small figure in an outsized coat appeared in the doorway, dripping wet. When he threw back the hood, the anxious face of James Dawson was revealed.

“Mister Thompson,” he said, “I came to apologise.”

He glanced at Sally – Miss Leighton – finding her a complicating factor that he hadn’t anticipated, but he liked the Geography teacher. In fact, weren’t these the two people he most wanted to please?

“I was hoping…” he said, trailing off.

“Hoping for what?” Thompson prompted him.

“Can we start again? Like, from the top?”

Thompson glanced at Sally. It was late; they weren’t obliged to remain there hours after the end of classes, no matter how troubled the kids might be, but Sally flashed him a smile. It seemed she didn’t mind if this ate into the time for their putative date.

You had to be very careful in the teaching profession. There was no way that Thompson would have had a lone pupil come to him after hours, but if Sally was prepared to act as a kind of chaperone, a witness that nothing untoward had taken place…

“Won’t your mum be wondering where you are, James?” Sally asked.

The boy glanced at the clock. “She’s expecting me home by seven-thirty,” he said.

Thompson was annoyed. He noted that he hadn’t actually received the promised apology, but perhaps that was just awkwardness on the boy’s part. Kids are kids, he reminded himself. They make mistakes. So:

“What did you want, James?”

The boy squirmed. “Could I have the violin back, please, Sir?”

Thompson smiled. “You’re not finished with it, after all?”

James swallowed nervously. “I’d like to start again – and do it properly this time.”

The violin was still there: Thompson returned it to him and the boy clutched it like a shipwrecked mariner clinging to driftwood.

There was an awkward pause.

“Was there something else?” Thompson asked.

“I’ll need some sheet music, please,” James said.

The teacher gestured. “Take your pick.”

He was surprised when James went all the way to the left-hand end, where the simplest books for beginners could be found.

“I’d like to try this one, if that’s alright, Sir?”

Thompson saw that he’d chosen a collection of loose, dog-eared sheets: ‘Scarborough Fair’. He was surprised, because it was such a basic piece.

“Sure,” he said.

It seemed that there was a misunderstanding: Thompson had intended only for the boy to borrow the music, but James meant to play it there and then. He placed it on a music stand, then turned to get the violin out of its case.

Thompson shot Sally an apologetic look, but she gave a little shake of her head. She’d heard about the astonishingly talented musician and she wanted to know what he was capable of.

“You’re intending to play with your coat on?” Thompson asked, amused. “Gonna do some busking?”

Frowning, James paused. It seemed that he was making his mind up about something, but at last he set down the instrument.

When he removed his coat, it revealed full school uniform – but not his uniform. The school trousers were shown to be girls’ ones, with a short zip and a single pocket. Beneath the blouse, the lines of a bra could be seen clearly, and it seemed he’d added a little bit of padding to the cups.

Thompson frowned. “Is this some sort of j–”

Sally put a hand on his arm, silencing him.

“Huh,” she said, “that’s… a surprise.”

“Yeah,” said Thompson, still looking baffled.

James looked from one to the other, fearful but also defiant.

“Is this something we should expect to see more of?” Sally asked.

“Um, I dunno, Miss,” James said. “I… not really… I’ve only got one blouse, and no shoes, and the necker’s got the wrong house stripes, and all my tights have holes in ’em, and –”

“It’s alright,” she said, gently. “It was very brave of you to, um, to show us.”

Silence stretched, until Thompson ended it:

“You were going to play, I think?”

James gave a nervous little nod. He warmed up by playing a scale, rather hesitantly. He paused and made a minute adjustment to one of the fine tuners, then played the scale again.

Haltingly, he spoke to his teacher: “I want to do it properly. Not copying somebody else’s interpretation and stealing all their accents, but learning to do it for real. Learning from you, I mean, if that’s okay. I’ll do anything you say, if you can help me to turn these little black blobs and lines into… music.”

He was almost in tears, they could tell.

“From the top, then,” Thompson said, forcing a smile.

Haltingly, as if he’d been playing the violin for only a term or two, James played the first two pages of ‘Scarborough Fair’, his usual blank expression replaced with one of intense concentration as he glared at the sheet music, wherein the music lay trapped behind bars.

Since he wasn’t copying somebody else’s performance from memory, he didn’t know how to articulate the piece. Where he’d previously taken improvised trills, turns, mords and double stops from other performers, he got no help at all from the stark black symbols on the pages.

God help me, I’ve broken James Dawson, Thompson thought, appalled. He glanced at Sally, who he thought must be reevaluating his stories about the brilliant, maddening prodigy before them.

James played a bum note and stopped, scrunching up his face against the tears that started to flow.

Sally brought him a tissue, while Thompson chose his words with care:

“That came from a new place, I think.”

Not trusting himself to speak, James nodded.

“Good. We can build on that – and clearly, you can read music. Well done.”

“Also, you chose one my my favourite tunes,” Sally said. “I liked it – but I have a question.”

James sniffed. “Yes, Miss?”

“You’re not, uh… look: I’m a feminist, right? Because I have to be. So I’m trying to understand why Mister Thompson says James Dawson is the best musician he’s ever taught, but… but when James Dawson is…”

“Penny,” James said. “Penny Dawson.”

“Hi, Penny,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I just, uh… this better not be a ‘girls aren’t as good’ sort of thing. That would be… I’d like to think you can still be brilliant when you’ve got your bra on.”

James nodded, deep in thought.

“The thing is,” he said, “I’ve been stealing other people’s performances: other people’s ideas. Like Mister Thompson told me, I haven’t been doing it properly. Learning. I need to be less of a fake.”

“You’re not a fake,” she said.

James radiated misery as he looked at her; then his face went blank as he brought up the violin and launched into Bach’s Partita for Violin, Solo Number One in B Minor. It was a performance that Hilary Hahn had given in 2018, note-for-note.

Sally blinked in astonishment at the transformation; Thompson just listened with his head bowed and his fingertips pressed together.

James stopped in the middle of a bar, leaving the piece somehow hanging over them.

Thompson winced: the kid enjoyed trolling him that way, it seemed.

“Why’d you stop?” he demanded.

“I thought I’d made my point, Sir,” the boy said. “It’s fake, Miss: I stole that.”

“Alright, Penny,” Miss Leighton said. “Perhaps you’d prefer to play ‘Scarborough Fair’ again?”

It was getting late and he knew he was imposing on their free time, but James wanted to please them both. Not with music copied and reproduced, because that was what computers were for. It was like how grown-ups always seemed to appreciate a handmade gift, however wobbly it might be around the edges; he wanted to give them music that was his own.

He brought up the violin again, trying to still his shaking hands. He looked questioningly at his teacher, who gestured for him to begin – which he did, despite the tears that rolled down his face.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Nobody else knew about Penny. It was a shame that he couldn’t hang out with the girls – but would they have accepted him? He doubted it. Also, there’d be a shitstorm of epic proportions if all his friends thought he was gay. The inventor of the exploding airgun pellet – the boy who’d stuffed a potato up the exhaust pipe on the headmaster’s Range Rover, no less – couldn’t be thought of as a sissy.

So he’d cloak himself in a boyish disguise. (God knows, they’re simple enough to emulate, he thought.) Sometimes it was fun to be one of the guys, he had to admit… but secretly, he’d always have Penny to help him. He’d follow in Ellen’s footsteps, joining the orchestra and practising every day. He’d make Mister Thompson proud, and none of his classmates would ever know that James Dawson was a girl.

Not where it showed…

…but where it counted.

6,850 Words (c) Bryony Marsh, 2024 – all rights reserved