A Flawed Alliance

What do you mean you weren’t sick?” asked Arthur. “Why didn’t you come to school then?”

I produced a somewhat smug smile, and tapped my nose.

Arthur initially looked disgruntled, then suddenly excited as enlightenment dawned. “I’ll bet you only pretended to be sick,” he declared. “Faked a temperature, forced yourself to puke – fooled your mum that way.” He seemed impressed, though whether with himself or me was hard to tell.

“Not even warm,” I said, lying back on the lawn in our favourite corner of the school playground, and chewing serenely on a desiccated stalk of grass.

“What then?” demanded Arthur. “You know you can tell me, whatever it is – I won’t squeal.” He looked at me almost imploringly. “We’re mates, aren’t we?” he felt it might assist his cause by adding.

I casually removed the grass stalk from my mouth and tossed it aside before manoeuvring myself into a sitting position. “I just felt like a coupla days holiday,” I told him. “That’s all – no big deal.”

Arthur balanced my disclosure on his own tongue and started to evaluate it by tentatively sucking. “But what about your sick notes?” he demanded. “I saw you giving ‘em to Vincent – so don’t deny it!”

“What about ‘em?” I replied.

“Your parents must’ve at least thought you weren’t well to give you a sick note,” he suggested. Then, suddenly animated again, “Or did they have special permission to take you somewhere?” His born again face was riding on the breeze, alert with all the possibilities of freedom.

“Cold, cold, cold,” I taunted, as I stretched myself out once more across the saving lawn.

“Ahah – of course!” exclaimed Arthur, giving himself a theatrical smack on the side of his head with the palm of his hand. “You had to go the dentist, didn’t you? That’s not quite the same as being sick.” By proffering a qualifying remark like this, Arthur presumably believed he was bolstering his chances of being right, and his normally pallid face was flushed with certitude as he warmed to the imminent prospect of his achievement.

I rose again to a sitting position and helpfully commenced a summary of the key facts that Arthur had so far uncovered, counting them off sequentially on my fingers as I spoke. “OK, point one – I wasn’t sick. Point two – I never pretended to be sick. Three – my parents didn’t have permission to take me anywhere. Four – no, I didn’t go the dentist’s. Five – yes, I did give notes to Sister Vincent when I came back to school after being off. Six – the notes said I’d been sick. Seven” – and here I looked mischievously into Arthur’s eyes; I may even have winked – “Seven,” I repeated, “ – neither of my parents wrote, or knew anything about, those notes.” I grinned, with what was in truth only a vague approximation of triumph, as I had started feeling bored. “Add all that up, and what do you get?”

A shadow of alarm momentarily darkened Arthur’s features, but was quickly replaced by a combination of incredulity and awe. “Have you been playing hooky?” His words were precious jewels, wrapped up in a deceptively nondescript cloth bag, and then carefully removed.

Blithely, to fuel the vestiges of my enthusiasm, I nodded.

For a few moments, Arthur seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. “Why’d you do it?” he eventually asked, determinedly suppressing his astonishment, but forced to gulp in any case from trepidation, or alarm.

“I’m sick of spending the day with the babies,” I informed him. “It’s driving me nuts.”

Arthur knew to at least appear consoling. “It doesn’t seem fair,” he agreed, “the way she only seems to pick on you.”

“Anyway, I’d had enough,” I went on, flicking exasperatedly at the ground with my index finger. “I’ve no desire to be a martyr,” it somehow seemed appropriate to add.

Arthur was regarding me with seemingly unabashed admiration. He might indeed have swooned, had not conviction suddenly burst like an over-inflated balloon. “Hang on a minute,” he said, “what about the sick notes? You said they were sick notes, but your parents didn’t write them……..”

“That’s right,” I conceded, suddenly enjoying myself once more.

“That means,” said Arthur, visibly daring himself to draw the obvious conclusion. “That means – if – if you – you didn’t?”

I grinned, and nodded. “Yep,” I said, unnecessarily.

“But – but – but – .” Arthur’s mouth was farting in bewilderment and disarray. For a couple of seconds, he looked as though he would have liked to have refused to believe, but a sudden wave of admiration swept aside all doubts. Arthur was rolling on the grass then, contorted by mirth into a helpless abandonment of unremembered limbs. “That’s fuckin’ amazing, Devaney!” he chortled repeatedly, only partly for reassurance. “Absolutely fuckin’ amazing!”

All at once, he came to a stop, and sat, staring at me, in the thrall of a sudden, overwhelming impulse. “We should do it together,” he said simply.

I stared back at him, uncertainly. If the Sindocic brothers had contrived the simplistic (and erroneous) theory that I was a goody-goody, there could be little or no doubt that Arthur was the genuine article. “Are you sure?” I prodded, suspecting that his reaction had been distorted, or perhaps even created, by the senses of relief and liberation he was feeling at having finally uncovered my secret.

“Of course I’m sure!” he insisted, a little too swiftly and determinedly to convince.

“All right then,” I said, “let’s do it tomorrow. I’ll be waiting for you in the scrubland near your house at half eight in the morning. We can go up into the hills, or spend the day at the Centre together.”

“No worries!” agreed Arthur, with a keenness that was almost tangible. His traitorous eyes, however, told a different, more predictable tale.