Forty-eight hours after the first mock examination
Howard and his fellow students gathered outside
the hall nervously awaiting the ordeal of the
next. Howard cringed. Steve was moving in his
direction.
'Oi, get this, ya man, that first paper was
cinch! Ain't never no problem!' The peak of
Steve's baseball cap nodded up and down as if
in agreement with its owner. 'The questions
checked out real cool man, dead easy, man!'
'Oh yeah, well, I scored ninety percent if I
notched up a single mark,' cried Howard. He
hoped his face radiated enough confidence to
pull off his story. Steve looked troubled by
this unexpected burst of ebullience.
'Huh! That ain't nothing man. Me: ninety-
five
percent! Sorted!'
With an uneasy smirk, Steve drifted off. Howard
took care to follow Steve into the hall. Then,
once Steve was seated Howard sat at the desk
directly behind him. The examiner issued his
instructions and unleashed his starting orders.
A flurry of synchronised paper-turning stirred
the hall. Howard pretended to read his exam
question.
'
Psssst, Steve!' he whispered. 'I know
that pigs give you
the horn! Karen told
me all about it!'
Steve's head snapped up from the exam paper
he was poring over. Howard had been looking
forward to this moment.
'
Oink!'
Steve didn't turn around. He seemed as tense
as steel.
'
Oink!'
For the next three hours Howard muttered pig
noises under his breath, hardly moving his lips
so as to avoid detection by the exam supervisor
who paced back and forth at the front of the
hall. Occasionally the supervisor looked askance
in Howard's direction, narrowed his eyes and
then continued his aimless march. Steve squirmed
and writhed and shuffled. He put his hand to
his mouth and then slapped both palms to his
temples. The exam supervisor stopped and stared
at Steve with extreme suspicion.
Howard whispered his pig impressions softly.
For the remaining two hours of the examination
Steve wrote little. For long stretches of time
he simply sat still, as if he was debilitated.
The exam finished its hushed course. It had
not gone well for Howard himself. As with the
first paper he had found the questions tough
and he had been woefully under prepared. He
has being able to at least attempt most of the
questions though he had been powerless to nail
them.
The students gathered up their pens and calculators
and flooded towards the exit. Steve grabbed
Howard's arm.
'Man, I'll get you for this! You better watch
out, man. I know people and I know where you
live. You're a dead man, man!'
'The questions were so
easy today,'
taunted Howard as he shook his arm free, 'I
thought the one about deriving Schrodinger's
equation was a complete give-away. I bet
everybody
got full marks for
that.'
Steve's face twisted into a boiling sculpture
of rage. He barged and elbowed his way through
the throng of exiting students, leaving swirling
eddies of indignant faces in his wake.
The following day the final mock exam was scheduled
for two in the afternoon. Again Howard waited
until Steve was seated but Steve chose a table
that was surrounded by already-occupied tables.
Howard had to settle for a place nearby but
from where he was unable to distract Steve with
his verbal taunts. From beneath his baseball
cap Steve grimaced and shot threatening looks
towards Howard. The examiner gave the signal
to start.
Howard's strategy was to question-spot the more
mathematical questions because providing the
requested proofs required less revision and
were a quick way to gain marks. He smiled to
himself. This paper was kinder to him. He set
to work. Twenty minutes into the exam he thrust
his hand high into the air. The examiner walked
over. Howard requested more paper. He had written
little and certainly he was not in need of more
paper; his plan was merely to annoy Steve. The
examiner frowned irritably but the requested
paper was provided. Howard noticed that his
ruse seemed to have agitated not only Steve
but also many of the other students in the room.
They deepened the furrows of their brows and
affected flustered movements. Steve, however,
prodded and poked at the material on his desk.
He looked around him with an anguished countenance.
Then Howard saw Steve fall under the spell of
something astonishing.
Behind the examiner there were windows abutting
the sports hall foyer. On the other side of
the toughened glass stood Greg. Howard's eyes
bulged. Greg was holding up a pig. Greg's huge
face was alight with a grin that combined jest
with sheer jubilation. The pink creature he
grasped looked bemused. Between its curled ears
was a navy blue baseball cap uncannily similar
to the one on Steve's head. Steve's jaw hung
open as if swinging from an over-slack hinge.
After a couple of minutes of Steve's maintaining
this odd mien, the examination supervisor's
attention was attracted. He wondered over to
Steve and whispered to him. Steve said something
inaudible. The supervisor turned and cast his
gaze towards the window.
There was no one there.
The supervisor castigated Steve for his inappropriate
conduct.
'What the fuck, man!' yelled Steve.
The assembled crowd looked on in awe as Steve
tipped over his desk and stormed from the hall.
As the examiner appealed for calm, Howard saw
Greg reappear in the window. Greg was backing
away as Steve advanced. Then Steve swung a punch
and hit Greg on his robust jaw. Greg looked
displeased. He struck Steve in the head with
his pig. Steve's baseball cap flew from his
head like a Frisbee. Steve staggered forwards
a few steps, swayed and then collapsed to the
floor. Howard's eyes widened. In addition to
Howard, many of the assembled students and the
examiner himself watched this melee. Greg smiled
at them, waved with the pig's trotter and strolled
nonchalantly out of view. The flabbergasted
examiner gave everybody an extra five minutes
to compensate for the distraction. Howard giggled.
It took him longer than five minutes to tame
his paroxysms and concentrate on the exam. The
examiner shot him stern looks.
The students' allotted time expired. The ordeal
of the mock exams was over, as was the autumn
term and the relieved students piled into the
Students Union bar. Steve was nowhere to be
seen. The bookish students stoked their own
egos by telling everyone who would listen the
correct answers to the exam questions. With
a sickened horror Howard realised that he had
not understood the questions so well after all.
He exited the bar in disgust and walked to Napoleon
Terrace in deep contemplation.
Upon entering the lounge he saw Greg and Gallie
reclined on the sofa. Gallie was drinking coffee.
Greg held a can of super-strength lager.
'Greg! Where did you get that pig?' cried Howard.
Greg guffawed.
'A man in a pub lent it me. Lovely pig too,
it-'
Greg paused. The front door had opened and heavy
footsteps drummed towards the lounge. Karen
crashed into the room with an entrance befitting
of a detonating grenade.
'Greg!' she shrieked. Her fingers clenched into
claw-like fists. 'Greg! You absolute
shithead!
How fucking
dare you? Howard! How fucking
dare you? I still love Steve and I miss
him and... and you do... this!'
'Ohhh, Karen, you saw Steve?' said Gallie in
an overly concerned tone. 'I thought...'
'
Greg! Take that fucking smirk off your
face you utter
bastard!'
Greg made a loud noise reminiscent of a squealing
pig.
Karen turned her wrath towards Gallie.
'You bitch!
You told him didn't you!
You told him what I told you about Steve
pretending to be a pig when we made love. And
now he's got concussion and, like, a black eye!'
Gallie stared at Karen in horrified, wide-eyed
perplexity.
At this point Howard felt that he should confess
that he had eavesdropped on the conversation
that Karen alluded to. Gallie was innocent of
the crime she was being blamed for and it was
his duty to sacrifice himself so that Gallie
might be saved from Karen's retribution. Karen
would be furious at him but he would take it
like a man.
'Erm, Karen-' he ventured.
'Shut up! So, Gallie, you
betrayed me!
Like after all I've done for you! I'm never
ever going to tell you anything again in my
life, actually. Who would have thought that
Gallie of all people would betray me and my
secrets? I thought you were brill, but now,
actually, I realise that you're, like, a
bitch!'
Karen burst into tears. Gallie looked aghast.
She got up and tentatively reached out a consoling
arm but her aggressor was not to be calmed.
'Get away from me you traitor, you
cow!'
screamed Karen.
With great energy she dashed down the hall.
The front door slammed with a blow that would
have shaken Thor. Gallie began to weep. Howard
chewed on his lip at the sight of Gallie's misery.
All this was
his fault. He wanted to
confess to Gallie that it was his fault, but
words would not formulate in his throat. He
despised himself for his cowardice.
'Sodom and Gomorrah!
Karen!' roared Greg.
He took another sip from his can. 'Fuss not,
Gallie darling! To every problem, no matter
how frigging shite, there is a solution. Wait
here. I'll get the
cannabis sativa.'
Greg returned with a Rover biscuit tin. He deactivated
the television by pulling the plug and installed
a round dark red lampshade, casting the lounge
into in a darkened, ruddy hue. Gallie grabbed
a tape.
Greg held up a large palm.
'
Spandau frigging
Ballet? For
Satan's sake! Hold it right there, Gal!
He that bringeth the gear doth picketh the bleeding
tunes!' He slapped an Ozric Tentacles tape into
a player. The ambience of the room was so changed
Howard felt had been projected into a different
world.
With the flame from his lighter, Greg smouldered
a chunk of brown resin and crumbled it into
the reservoir of tobacco on the magazine on
his lap. With the easy dexterity of a chef
he mixed the ingredients and tipped the mix
into a funnel rolled from a couple of cigarette
papers. Howard marvelled uneasily awe at Greg's
practised craftsmanship.
An upsurge of breath brought an amber shine
to the tobacco at the tip of the spliff. The
room filled with the pungency of the bittersweet
smoke. Greg passed the fuming paper to Gallie.
She puffed meditatively and passed it to Howard.
He puffed overanxiously and coughed. Greg and
Gallie smiled small smiles. He felt ashamed
and inadequate. Was he totally incapable of
not humiliating himself in front of Gallie and
Greg? Would he ever rise above the status of
a joke in their eyes?
Before long another joint was lit and circulated.
Howard's tenseness was evaporating. His breathing
relaxed. He was savouring a weird sense of displacement.
'Oh no, no! That won't work. That should be
like killing the goose that lays the golden
eggs!' he found himself saying.
Greg rolled another joint. The topic of conversation
meandered seemingly at random.
'You know, I have one bloody good ear and one
bloody crap ear. The crap one I always turn
towards Karen,' said Greg.
'There's non so blind as turn a blind eye to
beauty,' said Howard. He felt comfortable and
glazed. He gazed at Gallie and grinned.
Greg lamented that the Japanese had taken over
the motorbike market.
'But you can't moan, you ride a Jap motorbike,'
said Howard.
'Yeah, the next best thing to a chick between
yer knees is a Kamizaki 1000,' said Greg happily.
He extolled the merits of recent advances in
engine, tyre and brake technology. He told
anecdotes that illustrated how bikes back in
the sixties were 'death-traps'.
'Perhaps it's best not to ride in bad weather,'
mooted Howard. He regretted his proposition.
'Bollocks! We
real bikers are so fucked
off with
good weather riders!' boomed
Greg. 'They get themselves killed and give us
real bikers a bad name. It's the same with
middle-aged geezers. At the first sign of midlife
fucking crisis they suddenly think that sitting
on a high velocity chunk of horsepower will
make them young again, the sad bastards. If
they ever rode before, it was in their youth
on some crappy tin that couldn't muster forty
and they go out and buy some top of the range
fucking monster that runs on rocket fuel. They
think they know it all and go and lose it on
the first corner and hug a tree doing a ton.
Stupid bastards. Surgeons have got more middle-aged
bikers' internal organs than they know what
to do with so they flog 'em them on to Pedigree.
What do you think passes for bleeding dog food
these days? That's right. Fido gets to tuck
into
Rabbit and Biker's Kidney flavour
chunks. You might get middle-aged biker in
yer meat vindaloo, or just yer traditional rat.'
Howard's head swayed upon his sagging body that
slumped so deeply into the sofa it seemed to
mould into it. He imagined himself sliding
down the back of the seat and being discovered
sometime the following week. He smiled. He
watched Gallie grab the spiff and suck on it.
She blew the smoke high into the air. Greg shone
a torch onto a spinning chromium disc that tortured
the light into spectral fountains of colour.
He held the disk under Gallie' face and then
Howard's.
'The galaxy is flowing on my head.'
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