It was June 1966, the second last day of term before the summer holidays…

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What follows is part of the first chapter of a book I’m working on, provisionally called 1966: The Mermaids of Troon. It’s a crime thriller but draws on my own experience of growing up in that Ayrshire town at the same time as wee Andy Strachan…for reference, the Brazil team stayed at The Marine Hotel in Troon that month, preparing for a friendly with Scotland at Hampden and the subsequent World Cup. Famously, they trained at Troon Juniors’ ground, Portland Park, attended by numerous boys skiving off the last few hours of school before the summer break.

From the depths of his dusty, threadbare gown, the teacher withdrew an ancient Lochgelly tawse, its leather cracked and hardened with age. Andy had seen it used in anger, but never suffered this particular strap’s impact on his hands and wrists.

But he’d suffered the belt before, several times. He felt the fearful tingle of  anticipation as the memories raced in: Miss Kemmet at that private pre-school in Glasgow before the move to Troon, just one from her blackened implement of pain for running in the girls’ playground. He had been just five and a half years old. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever suffered, a kind of sudden shock to the entire body. He cried. Of course he cried. Of course he’d told his mother (‘don’t tell dad’) ; she undoubtedly had, but  neither sympathy nor further punishment was forthcoming. It was an early lesson in not informing your parents: what happened at school stayed at school.

Then at seven, three from another of the disfigured former war heroes who seemed to infest schools.  Barassie Street primary, where Andy’s Glaswegian ways (and especially the initial wearing of his green St Ronan’s uniform, a sign of evil Catholicism his Gospel Hall credentials couldn’t overcome) had brought endless contempt and slagging from classmates. It was the ordinary central Troon school and contained every element of a small town that combined heavy coastal industries and the incoming middle classes searching for sanctuary from the city. Three blows to his crossed hands, one palm exchanged for the other other after each strike. He remembered the outrage he felt as one hand got twice as many hits as the other, incredible agony on top of terrible pain, the tawse creeping onto his puny wrist, bursting blood vessels, leaving a bruise it was easy to explain away to his parents as messing about with elastic bands. The key was always not to blubber. Not to display weakness.

That time it was part of a group punishment (boys only, the girls got lines) for making a student teacher cry, he couldn’t remember how. Something to do with chewing gum and spitting. And come secondary, there had been a brutally memorable six from the deputy head here at Marr for forgetting a hymn book on three consecutive occasions. A Church of Scotland hymn book his father had bought reluctantly, but which every pupil at Marr was expected to possess, even the Catholics. Even the Brethren.

There were teachers who wielded words, not the belt, who would enjoy their own eloquence while mystifying their hapless pupils. ‘I have a few more pearls to cast before you,” Miss Jenner had once sneeringly told a class getting ready too soon for the anticipated bell. Only Andy had known the reference to Matthew Chapter Seven, verse six: ‘Neither cast ye your pearls before swine’, and the rest of  it. ‘Lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.’ That rending would come, he was sure.

But this. With the summer holidays beckoning, everything relaxing, easing its way into leisure. Andy couldn’t believe it. Automatically, he dropped his BOAC bag on the stone vestibule floor, which was now deserted apart from Congreve and himself. He started to hold out his hands, began  crossing them in the traditionally accepted manner for receiving punishment. And then suddenly, something changed. He thought of the Brazil players he’d seen earlier, emerging from that clapboard clubhouse at Portland Park; those green and gold figures, black or burnt by a strange sun. Their authority and grace, their smiles and certainty in themselves; dropped his hands to his side.

‘No,’ he said. He looked up into Congreve’s yellowed, bloodshot eyes. ‘No. Fuck off.’ Words he had heard used by his pals but never,  for fear of immediate divine wrath, spoken aloud himself.

A tremendous sense of calm enveloped Andy as he walked past the teacher, who was seemingly paralysed, and headed for the art department. The bell signalling the end of registration trilled.

After that, nothing was the same. It was the 22^nd of June, 1966.

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