Buddy

His name was always Buddy. It was better than Beauregard. An unusual name is generally of no use at all, until you're old enough to be interesting to the opposite sex. He arrived in High School preceded by rumours of tattoos and a flick knife. He'd have called it a stiletto or shiv: just like he was the only one who called it the High School. It was a comp. When my older brother had truanted from it, it was a Secondary Modern. It was in Suffolk, and so was Buddy, now. The day he arrived was the day I finally let my kid brother have my spud gun.

His dad was something at the USAF base over by N_________, over 30 miles away. There was a high school on the base, and scores of schools between our town and it. Mom and Dad were working some things out, Buddy told me one day; Mom was staying with - well Buddy reckoned she said it was a friend. But the word came out like something you couldn't swallow because of the taste. So Buddy, as alien as a panda in pyjamas, was 15 years old and in the C stream with yours truly. He'd long ago started shaving and often arrived with cuts, stubble and erupting acne fighting for supremacy on his face. I nicked my dad's razor after I started knocking around with Buddy, but not as often as it nicked me. Truth was, not even bum-fluff grew on my skin, but you know how it is.

'Greaser' Jackson was our form teacher; forever stuck in 1956. Welcomed Buddy the first day, making sure to enunciate Beauregard very carefully. Natch, Buddy got detention just for saying; 'it's Buddy.' Everything about him was just like we'd seen in the films, the jacket, the jeans, the biker boots. He didn't wear the uniform the whole six months he was in my class. The girls actually went slack-mouthed when he went by. Girls who wouldn't give someone a second thought, if they didn't own a Yammy 125 at least.

The first fight was with one of the fifth years; January, grey and miserable under the big oak where the school grounds sloped away from the far end of the soccer pitch. Buddy got pasted. Razzer walked off with a sneer for the Yank on the muddy grass.

'Where was the knife?' I asked.

Buddy rolled his eyes, 'You are such a jerk.' He said.

Razzer had a 10 speed racing bike he rode to school. He stopped soon after the fight. Couldn't afford the tyres. He left our school with a CSE grade 2 in art, I heard he joined the Army.

I asked Buddy about the girls.

'They're only interested, 'cause I'm not.'

He wasn't a Yank, or at least not a Yankee. His parents came from South Carolina, but he didn't he said.

'But I'm not a redneck cracker either.' He went on.

'What are yuh, then.' I liked to imitate his accent.

'I've been in 11 countries and 15 schools in 10 years; I'd like to know too.'

He was a good student; gifted in art, drama and music, but more than capable in any subject. They said he'd be more comfortable in the C-stream, 'because of the unfamiliarity with the curriculum.' Buddy liked to take off the teachers, as we used to say then; he was an astounding mimic. That's something they say the Yanks can't do – but Buddy could.

I hung around with Buddy a lot; I liked him - a lot. We'd knock around the public park off Sebastopol Terrace after school. Usually I left as it got dark; tea would be on the table at six – or else. I ate a lot of else. Looking back, I'd see him waving, standing by the public conveniences at the park gates. I had other friends, of course: friends I'd known from the first day in the infants. But they didn't like Buddy; and I saw them less and less until he left for good after the end of year exams.

Greaser Jackson left then too. He was in the News of the World, quite the scandal over the summer holidays but September always brings a new start, at school. I'm not even sure it was called cottaging then: but what did for him was the 'corrupting the morals of a minor' charge. Of course the underage boy in the public loos wasn't named, but I knew who it was.