Men from the Boys. Tony Parsons

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       One

      September. The first day of school. New blue blazers everywhere, leaves and conkers underfoot, but an untouched sky and summer clinging on. And now I thought I understood why my son had been so quiet and preoccupied all through the long holiday. I should have guessed, shouldn’t I? Sooner or later, there was going to be a girl.

      I had wanted to believe it was just because he was almost fifteen.

      I watched my son watching the girl. His face got red just looking at her.

      ‘You could talk to her,’ I said. ‘You could just walk right up to her and – you know. Talk to her.’

      Pat laughed. He watched the girl dawdling by the school gates. Black haired, brown eyed. Laughing, swinging a rucksack stuffed with books. Tall for her age. Radiant in the blue blazer of Ramsay MacDonald Comprehensive School. Surrounded by admirers.

      ‘Talk to her?’ he muttered, all polite disbelief, as though I had said, Levitate, why don’t you? The ladies love a bit of levitation. The chicks go crazy when they see a lad who can levitate. ‘Probably not,’ he said.

      ‘Is she in your year?’ I said.

      He shook his head, and a matted veil of blond hair fell over his eyes. He pushed it away with a sigh, the love-sick Hamlet of the local comp.

      ‘No, she’s in the year above me.’

       So she was fifteen. Or maybe already sixteen. An older woman. I should have guessed he would fall for СКАЧАТЬ