Masterminders Read online

It was getting dark and the beach, already freezing, was only getting colder so I was glad of the raging fire under the oil drum. A pungent green-brown plume was soon pouring out of the top of the drum. Making sure it wasn’t blowing in my direction, I settled down for a quick nap. Bobby woke me up with a gentle kick to the head.

  “There’s only a cup left. Did you drink the rest?” Bobby demanded as he stomped out the fire, plunging us into darkness and a bitter chill.

  The next morning, before school, we went to drop off Mr McTater’s cup of perfume, which he seemed entirely happy with when Bobby explained that one drop of the good stuff mixed with a really cheap perfume would turn it into a unique, high value, as-worn-by-the-stars scent bomb. As it turned out our perfume didn’t suit Mrs McTater; it didn’t agree with her tan or her parrot. The smallest squirt and her fake tan curled up and cratered, leaving her looking a little on the living dead side. Her parrot wasn’t too happy either; it couldn’t stop throwing up. Fortuitously, the peeling tan gave Mr McTater an idea. He sprayed his car with the stuff and it completely dissolved the gull gunk. Even better, the gulls left it alone for ever afterwards.

  Wearing rubber gloves and his dad’s motorcycle helmet, Bobby mixed a tiny amount, which we’d kept back, with root beer and poured it into a pretty little bottle that had once contained something called anchovy essence. Off we went to school, ready to calm Madge, and immediately encountered a bit of a setback; or more accurately, Bobby’s right eye was set back. Madge had accepted the perfume offering quite eagerly, then she took a sniff. Her nose started to bleed, she threw up on Bobby’s shoes, shook her head, recovered and in a whirlwind of rage flung herself into the air to whack Bobby in the eye. Quite the opposite effect to the one we had anticipated. Eventually, Madge tired of beating up Bobby and staggered off, still looking a little dazed.

  “Stupid girl, you’re not supposed to sniff it, just dab a bit behind your ears. Quality is obviously wasted on you, Madge,” Bobby whispered defiantly after Madge’s swaying form as she zigzagged across the playground towards the toilets. “Women are obviously untameable. Madge is never going to take us behind the bins. Sorry, Terry, but we’ll have to fall back on the windbreak,” Bobby continued as he slowly recovered his breath.

  “Perhaps we should have used less root beer?” I speculated gingerly.

  “Terry, you have to grasp the conceptual difference between men and women. For women, logic is a meaningless word. While we might consider, analyse, postulate and reason, women are driven only to shopping, acts of violence and eating.”

  “What about my mum? She’s a woman, keen on eating and shops a lot, but hardly ever punches anyone in the eye?” I queried.

  “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I always knew you had potential, what a clever little acolyte you are,” Bobby almost shouted while jumping up and down as he clutched at his trousers.

  “What, what did I say?”

  Bobby stopped jumping and looked around furtively to make sure Madge was nowhere near and pulled me over towards a darker corner of the playground.

  “Don’t you see, mums are calm, yours, mine, everyone’s. All we have to do to fix Madge is get her pregnant, then she’ll get us behind the bins without any fuss at all,” Bobby whispered.

  Only two days of Sticking Up for Women’s week were left and Madge was still not pregnant. We’d made some progress. After explaining and humbly apologising for the perfume incident Madge herself told us the secret of female tranquillity. The most effective woman-calmer of all was chocolate. After that revelation Madge demanded an awful lot of calming.

  Bobby decided not to tell Madge about our plan to get her pregnant. His research suggested the treatment would be more effective if she was happily surprised by her newfound serenity and imminent motherhood.

  After hours of Discovery DVD research watching Mother Nature’s weirdest sex at Bobby’s house I had to confess that I was baffled and confused by the myriad ways in which females could get pregnant. Which one was right for Madge and which method would ensure we were not eaten afterwards?

  “It has to be IVF: it’s guaranteed to get her very, very pregnant, she’ll have scores of Bobbys and Terrys, and it’s safe for us,” Bobby concluded.

  “What’s IVF?”

  “Now that’s why you’re the contestant and I’m the judge. Impossibly Violent Female cure; obvious really,” Bobby kindly explained.

  “Genius!”

  Friday arrived, the last day of Sticking Up For Women’s week, the day we would get Madge pregnant and cure her once and for all of her punctuation, hysteria, black and white pause, and of course her inevitable brush with erectile dysfunction. Bobby had discovered that once a woman was pregnant a malfunctioning erectile no longer bothered her.

  We were both fully prepared for the day’s labours. I had brought an extra large bag of Maltesers and each of us was carrying a tissue that we had prepared the night before. Bobby had quite rightly insisted the individual tissues had our names on them so that we could tell whose kid was whose without having to bother with IQ tests. Writing on tissue proved very challenging. I’d eventually ended up using mum’s lipstick. I was looking forward to being a father. Mine were going to be very helpful with homework and I had thoughts of forming a little duo and a half of my own with the most able of my offspring; the rest would no doubt earn lots of money and keep the intellectuals of the family properly supplied with eats and other essentials. Bobby had already decided that all of his would be called Bobby Junior. He generously said I could have his girls. Madge would do mornings at my place and afternoons cleaning up at Bobby’s. The evenings would be boys’ nights and all the girls would go to Madge’s. Everything was organised: it was time to impregnate Madge.

  “Angelina Jolie, that’s right, you’ll look just like her only more so,” Bobby explained to Madge.

  “Prefer Christina Aguilera,” Madge replied with increasing interest in Bobby’s offer of a sure-fire beauty potion as she tucked into the Maltesers.

  “A minor adjustment to the formula,” Bobby calmly replied.

  “Actually, maybe add some Brittany and a little Kylie?” Madge questioned.

  “Is there any other kind of Kylie? It will take a while longer to prepare but meet us here this afternoon.”

  “If this doesn’t work, you’re dog meat,” Madge playfully concluded.

  I was troubled: I liked Madge the way she was. Her rough beauty attracted me, and fortunately no one else. If she really did end up looking like all those other women, I could be killed in the stampede. After the transformation she’d never be interested in me. As it was she already hid her passion for me very effectively.

  “She has addled your brain, it’s a ruse. We’re using the only weakness she has in her armoury of violence, her vanity. Unlike men, who don’t mind if they blow their nose or just suck it up, women can be very self-conscious. You saw how she overreacted to the whole perfume episode. Now, back to business. We need the final ingredient that will guarantee conception: only morning potato oil can sooth Madge into the receptive state necessary for incubation. Terry, your mission is to secure a cup of oil from the chip pans at lunchtime.”

  “Right,” I replied, feeling slightly queasy and already burnt.

  That relatively mild afternoon we assembled behind the rubbish bins, a place that would soon be our safe haven from future playground storms. Bobby and I were ready to make babies and Madge was ready for adulation.

  “You want me to drink this stuff with coloured bits of tissue in it? How do I know it’s not drugged, and what exactly is the gook in the tin?” Madge questioned.

  “Beauty comes at a price. The unique beauty of a pop tart is within your grasp. Are you afraid?” Bobby sneered and then gasped for air as Madge punched him in the stomach.

  “No one calls me a coward. I’ll show you, but we should share. You two are the ugliest boys I’ve ever seen,” Madge declared.

  My heart skipped a beat; she had noticed me.

  “Ma
dge, Madge, Madge, physical beauty would only distract us from our pursuit of knowledge, but you go ahead,” Bobby quipped.

  “I’m not asking, stupid, I’m telling. We drink a third each or you’re both carrion,” Madge ordered with a delightfully evil smirk.

  For a moment I daydreamed about looking like Beckham, then I remembered the purpose of the potion: we would be committing incest. I looked at Bobby; his face screwed up in horror as he stared down at the paper cup filled with lukewarm oil and used tissue bits. Madge had folded her arms, showing off her powerful biceps, and waited, sphinx-like.

  “That’s not a third, more, swallow, swallow. Now you, short arse.” Madge was unrelenting.

  That evening as Bobby and I wound our chilly way home, still a little green around the eyes, I had to ask the horrible question that had been hanging in the air all afternoon.

  “Am I pregnant?”

  “Probably, as am I and of course so is Madge,” Bobby sadly answered.

  “When will we know, when will it happen, what are we going to do?” I wept.

  “IVF can take years; we’ll just have to wait. The first signs are a craving for coal.”

  For months afterwards I lived in fear of coal but Madge did beat us up a little less and started washing her hair a little more.

  “She’s cured,” Bobby jubilantly declared as he recovered his breath after a particularly lightweight beating; my nose was hardly bleeding at all.

  Unfortunately, by then it was all too late – the weather had turned. The bins were no longer a place of shelter, just very smelly. Bobby was right about another thing: only intellectuals bleed.

  Chapter Three – Politics

  The weather had turned again and not in a nice direction. Piles of dirty snow rimmed the playground, glinting weakly under the sparse, murky rays of sunlight that escaped through an asphalt sky. I was keen to talk to Bobby about another weird dad conversation I’d had with Mum. Usually, Mum didn’t say much in the evenings, she was so dog tired. A funny expression that. Most of the dogs I knew were very big and energetic, had frothy loud mouths lined with razor teeth and were usually hurtling towards my backside. Most evenings I tried to cheer Mum up with a heavily edited account of my latest adventure with Bobby, but she routinely fell asleep on the sofa just as I got to the exciting bit. I’d cover her up with the old woollen blanket and go to bed thinking I’d get to finish the story next time. Last night was different – she wanted to talk to me – and now I needed to talk to Bobby.

  “My mum says Dad’s making a new life in Glasgow. What does that mean?”

  “I didn’t know your father was a biochemist. What’s he working on, cloning or artificial life?” Bobby replied, suddenly interested.

  “He’s in the rag trade,” I answered, perplexed by Bobby’s chain of thought.

  “Never mind, good place to start if he’s interested in riches, but if your problem is not of a higher order I really can’t be wasting my cerebral heat on such mundane issues.”

  “Glasgow, Bobby, Glasgow, where the streets are lined with more than one sweet shop,” I gushed, trying to get Bobby to focus. But it was no use, Bobby’s eyes glazed over as he concentrated on directing the warmth from his frontal lobe out towards his ears. Maybe if I’d persevered I might have got his attention but we were ambushed and my thoughts were dragged back to the demands of the playground.

  Bits of snow and hard little cinders clung to my bobble hat from the bombardment the Power Three had dealt us. Bobby didn’t have a hat. His ears, stuffed with hard snow, glowed like beacons. I wasn’t worried; the heat from his enormous brain would soon melt away the snow.

  “What did you say?” Bobby queried.

  “Those three will be the only candidates; one of them is bound to win,” I repeated, shouting this time to be heard above the wind and hoping to penetrate Bobby’s snow-blocked ears. He rolled his eyes and then started banging the palm of his hand against the side of his head till melting, yellow-and-black-tinged snow was flying everywhere.

  “Whatever, but you know that if we don’t act now one of those sods will win the election,” Bobby echoed.

  The evil nuns had concocted a scheme to let the school’s top bullies have their way with us for the whole week. They’d covered up their wicked intentions by calling it an exercise in democracy.

  “What’ll we do?” I asked tentatively, unsure whether Bobby’s ears had fully recovered.

  “We will form a party, put up candidates and win this election,” Bobby proclaimed.

  “The Power Three will just force us to vote for one of them; we don’t stand a chance,” I glumly replied.

  “It’s a secret ballot, and ours will be a very, very low-key campaign.”

  “They’ll find out and she’ll grate our nipples,” I replied with a shudder, remembering the last time Marge had cornered me with the cheese grater. There was a moment when I’d imagined we were on a date and her grating was some kind of foreplay and, briefly, I’d quite enjoyed it, but then the pain kicked in and my screams dragged me back to reality.

  “Courage, mon ami, now is the time to rise up, overthrow the yoke of tyranny and establish our own benevolent one-party state,” Bobby solemnly declared. “And the nuns will be first against the wall, followed by the Power Three, Madge, Tony and George.”

  “You’re going to put them all in detention? Fantastic. So how do we get started?” I gleefully asked with the thought that I would pardon Madge and she’d be forever grateful.

  “We will be a party of two. I shall propose you for President of Vice, and you will propose me for Supreme Leader and Emperor.”

  “How?”

  “Just, kneel down before your Emperor and say ‘I second the motion’.”

  “Better than that, I’ll first the motion with knobs on,” I happily shouted despite my knee being in a cold puddle of melting snow.

  “An interesting but acceptable variation. Party formed, candidates nominated, now we must start politicking,” Bobby declared.

  “Exactly what is politics?”

  “Never lying to the people while avoiding, at all cost, telling the truth. Promising to deliver anything the people want except if it’s bad for them, unless by so doing you would lose their vote. Integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality are not essential but can be useful as long as the first two rules are always kept in mind. Any questions?” Bobby queried.

  “How can you avoid lying if you never tell the truth?” I asked with a puzzled expression.

  “Statistics,” Bobby mysteriously replied.

  Tuesday morning crawled out of the darkness into a cold twilight, our first day of real campaigning.

  Before the end of the first break Madge’s Decapitated, Tony’s Spawn and George’s Monster parties had already signed up the entire school, including Bobby and me. An immensely fair process. The voters were herded together at one end of the playground and our three would-be leaders stood at the other. One by one we were shared out between the three without let or favour, just as the nuns had told us it should be. I was now a Monster and Bobby was a Spawn. George had won, having one more party member than anyone else. I was never going to get any vice to be president of.

  “You two twats, stop right there,” George commanded, and of course we obeyed without even stopping to think whether we were the twats in question. George was the raw power in the Power Three. He was big in every direction: his body blocked out the sun, the playground tarmac cracked under his weight and when he shuffled, his chafing thighs made a noise like low thunder. George was our obesity poster boy. He hadn’t seen his feet in years and they appeared to be directly attached to the bottom of his thighs without the bother of a knee, lower leg or ankle. His resting arms stuck out at forty-five degrees and his fat, shorn head had eaten his neck. It was rare for George to speak as this involved cessation of eating, so we knew it was important.

  “Mad nuns want us to talk about stuff, so you’re doing it for us,” Tony added by way of an inscrutab
le explanation. Tony specialised in cruel. He oversaw the Three’s bully agenda – nominating targets, scheduling beating dates and devising new methods of torture. Fortunately, Tony had a limited imagination and got most of his ideas from Blue Peter. He was even taller than Bobby but had proper muscle supporting his wiry frame, allowing him to strike quickly and with some force. He specialised in the knuckle flick, an insidious lightning blow to the forehead that left your brain vibrating violently. Somehow his black hair was always greasy and remained plastered to his head whatever the weather. Another prominent feature that cried out for cruel jokes that no one ever made was his huge, bony nose; the tip almost touched his fat lower lip. How he avoided drowning himself during the runny nose season was a great mystery. His eyes appeared slightly melted and sagged over his cheeks, making him look like a St Bernard but without being cute in any way.

  “Happily, Tony, but perhaps you could elaborate a little on the subject matter?” Bobby asked with some nervousness.

  “It’s this afternoon, some kind of debate. I’ll be doing it for the Decapitated, you two will stand in for George and Tony, and you’d better be good, or else,” Madge explained as she playfully punched Bobby in the neck.

  “This is terrible: we have to help them win some more even though they’ve already won. And why are George and Tony not doing the debate themselves?” I asked Bobby as we headed back in from the break.

  “Words, speaking and coherent argument are not George’s or Tony’s specialties; besides, George would have to stop chewing. Anyway, this could work to our advantage,” Bobby whispered as his hands hovered over his trouser belt.

  Mother Superior introduced the debate, explaining that it was a wonderful opportunity for the three parties to explain their policies and take questions from the voters. The three of us, Madge, Bobby and I, were up on the stage behind wooden lecterns normally used by the church choir. Spread before us was the whole school, already bored and restless, all except for Tony and George who were very attentive. Bobby’s instructions for my speech were as baffling as they were simple, “Keep it short and use the phrase.”