Aired on Radio BBC 4
25 October, 2000

I’ve had my head down, hidden in this group,
Not to be picked – to be overlooked.
Only to find our ring is a clock face –
No numbers missed, no point untouched.
And I have a fist of stories after all,
Though only one, that isn’t one.

When I was young one summer, in my school,
On an afternoon so very warm
It nuzzled the distant trees and the white bridges of the motorway.
In the mind’s eye the old school field
Was spread as if with flowers, with story times –
Children in streams around the chairs of teachers.

We, alone, my class 5S, had stayed indoors.
Because that day, alone and without warning or reason why,
Had come our way one Mrs. Leech.
She told us Mr White (who never forgot a promise made)
Was ill, and she’d been called to take his place.
And the longest day in memory had followed.

While the world lay on the grass and dreamed of times
We fumed, inside. For something – for a drawing
On the blackboard, we had been told, we would be held
Beyond the end of lesson’s bell and home bell
And home time, and daytime – if need be, into night
Until the one who’d made this sketch confessed as such.

I hadn’t drawn a sketch of Mrs. Leech, burning alive –
Beneath, a grave. But someone had and in three shades of chalk,
It blistered sight. While by and by the story times
Dispersed on the great field, and the bells went
That had once meant home and play and sunshine
And were now, though Heaven-sent, irrelevant.

She said she knew who’d done it, when and how,
This Mrs. Leech. She wound her watch.
She said she’d walk the corridors a while,
By the door, she said; that the one the one who did,
If he or she owned up, would go scot-free –
For honesty. Would. Honestly.

And when she was gone we laughed
Like we could die, in ridicule at this avowal.
Though one did take her purely at her word –
Poor Bobby Hale, the general fool,
Who told her when she came, “I done the drawing.”
Believing nothing would follow. Nothing did.

He was let go. He was set free. With open mouths,
Empty of breaths, we watched him walk, trot, tear across the field
Towards the gate, out of sight – this Mrs Leech, to our astonishment,
(Drawn burned and buried) had let the culprit out.
A bush of hands grew, in each mouth budded a voice:
“My drawing, Miss!” We knew it was too late.

She rose again, behind her desk, and said, “I’ll ask again,
For I love honesty.” She sighed, “I seek the truth.”
She said, with force, “Bob Hale is not the culprit any more than my dead mother”
It was one other. And we shall stay here
Till the one I know committed these depravities admits it,
Or the sun sets, or the night falls, or the cock crows, or the time goes.

Next time she left my enemy spoke up. He sat far back.
He seared my neck with insults and the sting of rubber bands
And hated me. Devotedly. “You did it, Dog.
You say so or tomorrow, dye your hair and say a prayer.”
I said, “I didn’t do it!” And my crush, a girl not yet forgotten quite
Agreed with him, “It’s Dog. It’s only him who’s weird enough to do that stuff.”

When Mrs. Leech came back there were ten more
Keen to admit they’d done the deed
She sent them out to spend the next half hour picking up rubbish
After they’d done this, home they could go.
“I’m quite satisfied the guilty one is not yet gone.”
There were ten of us still there.

There were the dim, not cottoned-on, slow-thinking ones,
And there was my enemy, who, next time we were abandoned here
Said with a sneer, “I didn’t do it. So I ain’t about to say I did.
I wish I had, and I will next time –
I’d hang her from a lamp-post –
But it wasn’t me. End of story.”

There was my crush, who said,
“I’m interested to see what happens, but nothing matters.”
She was the brainiest but didn’t care for anybody
She knew, already.
And there was me, my enemy’s “Dead Dog,”
And I can swear, across the years – I didn’t do that drawing.

In those days I didn’t lie, and don’t do now. I
Sat and waited till she next returned
As time went by, and the blue sky
Had whitened with the sun that, aging now, was in our eyes.
She had the blinds brought down, and seven more
Crept to their feet to claim the crime.

Soon, each of them was running round the field
In uniform. Nine whole times.
Between the blinds you glimpsed the distant figures
As they staggered to the street at last
To be free of this. With the other culprits, meek, uncredited
Long out of here.

Now, three were there.
The bully at the back, the girl, or me, it must have been,
Who’d done this thing –
Who’d sprung at a fresh hatred in a breath
And with three chalks, let from the box
This ugliness upon her.

From the back, my enemy, repeatedly, said,
“Give it up now, Dog. It’s you she means.
Shut all your books –
You’re for the axe!
I ain’t confessing to a thing I ain’t the doer of,
Whatever stuff this witch has got in store.”

My crush agreed:
“Dog, spill the beans, it’s you she means,
We all know you’re the artist –
I don’t care enough to lie!
There – alibi!
Confess, and get us out of this.”

The door went wide again,
The witch came in,
(As we’d agreed to call her),
Now she sighed,
“One evil doer, two fools for sure,
But which is which is which?”

We laughed at that, and she went white.
She went chalk-white,
And one by one we found her face an inch from each of ours.
In three dry whispers,
“You see me burning, and you see my grave,
In an image, in an outrage!

Which no one has confessed to, honestly.
But you and I know truth from lie!
The next confession earns the guilty one
A thousand lines
By morning time.
The other two are free, to disappear.”

When, yet again, the witch was gone,
My enemy spoke up:
“In a goat’s arse are we out of here.
She’s a bloody liar!
I ain’t confessing when I ain’t done shit!
My crush agreed:

“That’s sweetly put,” she said,
“And very bright, for an imbecile.
She’s set a trap – I’m shutting up.
We know it’s Dog who did it, and I’ve time
To wait for him to give his name. It makes no odds how long he takes
To know he’s on a hiding to worse than nothing.”

“I didn’t do it!” I said,
And I say now to you in the dark of a world apart,
I didn’t do it.
But when she reappeared, and the sun’s eye was half an eye,
My enemy broke ranks and suddenly he said,
“Okay, have it your way! I drew the thing. A thousand lines it is.”

The witch stared hard, my crush stared hard.
And she, the one I loved first of all girls,
Was first to hiss,
“He’s lying, Miss!”
To which Mrs. Leech, with a tight throat, said,
“Is he, now? How would you know?”

My crush had amber hair, it was straight and long –
I’d know her for just two years more.
She wore a tartan frock and a silver bow.
She told the witch that fearful sketch
Must have been drawn at break, at “short playtime,”
‘Round three o’clock.

But at that break, she, my crush,
Could swear she’d seen him go.
My enemy and his gang of three
To the far rim of the golden field.
“For what?” the witch shot back,
“For a cigarette? And why would you know that?

What makes you spend your dearest time in watching him?”
To which a silence came, and my poor crush,
Fighting for breath,
Stuck with the truth, selected it,
Protecting him from harm.
“I watch for him,” she said, “’Cos I’m interested.”

“In him?” the woman sneered.
“In him,” she said, her face as red
As the last rays of sun or the last clouds that ushered it out of our sight.
“You’re off the hook,” my enemy was told,
“Your ‘lady love,’ I do believe, has caught you in a lie,
So a thousand lines at any rate, by morning break.

And now this pitiful unholy duo
Between themselves can please themselves
For the real culprit in the name of truth
Ten thousand lines, loss of all playtimes.
And for the other, freedom.
Once again, who did this deed?”

My crush now sighed,
One secret out it seems she had another.
“I saw him there,” she said, “From here, because I was inside.
I did the drawing, only the heat has made the sweat,
That washed my hands of chalk.
I drew that horror.”

The witch stood back, grinning.
The dark lit up her teeth that parted into laughter:
“Ha! Ha! Ha! A girl drew these atrocities?”
My crush began to tremble in her corner,
“I drew the death, the aftermath.
I drew it all because it doesn’t matter!”

But something did. She bowed her head,
Began to sob – but I could see no reason.
Now on my breath there grew a truth, I said,
“She’s saying that but she’s mistaken!”
They stared at me, my enemy,
The witch and my unhappy crush.

The room was dark and small –
Uncrossable,
And I imagined even that the building flew with us
Miles through the stars.
So far away seemed everything beloved.
My voice came up, like a last footstep, and said:

“I never spent a moment here, and didn’t know where she might go.
And in that break I watched her as she stood,
Out on the field.
Her hair was gold against the grass and she was
Nowhere else but in my eyes
Until she rose when the bell for the last class began.”

The witch, admitting this into her ears,
Winced till she savoured it.
“Ah! Another tale of the uninvited and unrequited!
It seems girls too, can lie
And she will write ten thousand lines and lose all playtimes!
And sit, a ghost indoors, when the sun is blazing.

Now she can go and he can go.”
She meant my enemy who had been quiet for quite a time
Now any blame had shifted from him.
He was looking out at the last light of crimson sunset through the blinds
The witch demanded why:
“You haven’t left, not even moved, though you are free to go?”

From the dark row he sat in nothing came but breathing.
“Well?” the witch continued,
“Once again I’ll leave you here, and if I hear,
On my return, the truth from the last boy,
The day is done, and only one
Will suffer.

He and I shall spend the time together here.
We two will share the night
And all its consequences.”
Gone! In such a dark that as she spoke she seemed to half have left us,
And the words hung in the air for ages after,
As I was waiting for the worst there was.

Across the room, distant as home,
My crush was silent
And behind us both,
My enemy breathed raggedly.
The time that passed then, I have spent my life in flight from.
Still, its tentacles I feel at times –

My total innocence, between my hands that held like wounds,
It shone its lamplight in the rotten gloom.
As stretched away, in my mind’s eye
A night with this insane intruder.
Long had I been sure she hailed
From where no human came.

Yet somewhere in that time was hatched some hope,
Some light to keep - for they believed me!
Both of them – my crush, my enemy,
And suddenly they sat by me,
And no less suddenly, like a new gang,
We formed a ring.

And had our creed, and password, and a sign,
And this to speak, when she came back:
“We don’t know one another,
But believe each other’s words against your words.
We don’t you at all
But we do feel we don’t deserve the things you give.

We don’t know anything
But we all hope you go away
Because the day is over
And a school at night is somewhere no one belongs.
These are the things we say and do you´rorst to us
But no one’s going home tonight alone.”

We wrote it, spoke it, learnt it, and I know it now,
But it remained unsaid.
For all the time we crouched by the dark walls, linked in a ring
Chanting, waiting!
But when the footsteps came –
A shaft of light shone straight in, and –

An old man, in overalls,
Was flicking all the switches.
Bright light on me, my enemy,
And making blink the red eyes of my crush,
As we were taken, wrapped, and driven
And separated into kindliness.

No Mrs. Leech, or any such, was known to our headmaster.
No such woman ever taught in any spot,
Unless you know of one?
I never shared a word with either of those others
Except by little images in chalk,
I’d find at times.

Where orange flames engulfed a matchstick woman
And above, three leaning crosses were nearly -
Kisses.
Well, I have no other stories except – stories.
May the grey light come.
May we all find home.