'You can learn the violin', they said. Just like they said 'You can go to University at 17 because you have the grades', and 'You're good at Math, Physics and Art so you can be an Architect.' Always I smiled and said yes and cut myself inside. The violin was worst though. It left the worst scars.

*

I hated playing the violin. I hated the smell of the resin on the bow and I hated the feel of the rest under my chin. I hated the scent of the wooden body, its case that lacked a handle and the thin strings that left red welts on my spindly fingers. I hated the sounds that it made, but most of all I hated the simple fact that I had to play it.

[gold]

Mrs Gold was the violin tutor and she was crazy. She was just a crazy old woman. She always stank of booze and she didn't give a shit about violins. All she talked about was dogs and the War. I suppose she was that old, she remembered when she was young. She always said, 'I remember when I was your age', and then she went on rambling. I don't remember any of her stories because I was never listening anyway. She was just crazy, so I didn't. That's the way it was. She'd talk about her War and then ask about my dog. I'd say, 'She's fine', like it was a comment about my mother or something, and then she'd be off talking about her own dogs, past and present. Again, I never listened because she'd never had a Spaniel. She only ever had toy dogs. She was that kind of crazy toy dog woman. I just looked out the window and watched golfers pass by on the 16th fairway, fearing the approach of the bell.

*

The lessons were held in this weird old cottage beside the school. It was built for Home Ec. lessons, or at least that's what I heard. They used to make the girls clean it and cook in it. They made the girls run the whole cottage like it was a real little house. A dolls house where the girls themselves were the dolls. I think I laughed the first time I was told that story, but everyone swore it was true. I asked old Gold and she said simply, 'Yes', and looked at me like I was really stupid.

*

By the time Gold took up residence the old cottage was just a store for old furniture and a place to stick the music tutors. Golds room was upstairs and like the rest of the cottage it was brown. A chocolate carpet, ochre walls, a burnt sienna armchair and a mahogany table that sat by the grimy window. It was disgusting, like being in a room of shit. It was like seeing the TV pictures of the Maze prison hunger strikers with their shit smeared walls. It felt like that. I thought Bobby Sands was too stupid and brave for words for living and dying in all that shit.

[clear targets]

Violin lessons were bad, but walking home was the worst. There would be a river of purple that swept from the school gates across one of the towns seven golf courses, down towards a small humped bridge that crossed the burn. I would be carried in its flow, my head visible above the current, a clear target. My violin made me too easy for words.

*

There was an invisible wall built by the edge of this golf course. It marked a very physical boundary between the 'council' houses and the 'private' houses of the Wimpy variety. I came from the wrong side of the wall. I came from the 'rich' side. The 'snob' side. My intelligence, my neatness, my shyness, my frail figure, my parents supposed wealth or class betrayal; all my weaknesses multiplied a thousand fold in the eyes of the gangs who came from the other side of the wall. My violin was just another horribly tangible piece of evidence of my 'snobbery'. The final piece of ammunition required for my humiliation.

*

They waited by the bridge, at the gates to the Primary school. They watched for me alone. Waited for me alone.

[cigarettes and damp]

They had unkempt hair and smelled of cigarettes and damp. They wore dirty old jeans and grimy body warmers over denim shirts. They wore cheap Tesco trainers with holes in. They were smaller than I, but had meanness and aggression that I could not understand nor compete with. They had hate in their eyes and the peals of their laughter echoed like gun fire.

*

I would be stopped and stood against the wall, my violin case laid open on a ledge, it's crimson lining like a bloody wound in the grey stone. The violin itself would be passed around the hands that swarmed before my eyes, its strings being plucked and each dull plinking noise accompanied by a wicked laugh. My wet eyes asked for the return of the violin but nothing was ever going to be so easy. I would have to ask a million times. I would have to reach out my hands to have my fingers twisted and cracked whilst a pair of grey eyes looked in mine and grinned. I would have to smile and say 'please'.

*

I had to play to be let go.

*

The bow scratching over the strings. My already inept fingers in pain from the grey eyes finding it impossible to hold down the notes. A mess of noise. Alone in a circle of delighted hatred, kicks to my legs as I dragged and pushed, a mess, a mess, a mess.

*

*

When it was finally over the gang drifted off, still laughing and looking back pointing. Left around me were bodies from both sides of the wall, and in their eyes I saw occasionally both pity and contempt. But most of all I saw a relief that someone else was weaker, was more of a victim than they.

[aftermath]

I was twelve years old and did not know that these mean gangs were to be admired for their gritty harsh realism. I was unaware that their mocking humour was something to take inspiration from, that my victimisation was something I was to pity them for. I knew only that the pain in my shins and in my fingers was more real than anything I had ever experienced. That the humiliation of screeching a violin in the street in front of a horde of fellow school children would not diminish, would prevent me from making friendships for five miserable years. Would stay inside me forever.

Alistair Fitchett, 1996