two

Later that afternoon, as I sat at the back of the chemistry lab and ate my packed lunch of cheese and pickle sandwiches, I decided that I'd rather be a rock star than a footballer. Every break time after that, if the music room were left unlocked and there was no orchestra or choir rehearsal going on, I would sneak into the big cupboard where all the guitars were kept and practice my chords.

The cupboard had all kinds of instruments in it and smelt of furniture polish, Brasso and bow resin. No one was really supposed to go in there unless there was a teacher in the room, and although I was the kind of kid who generally obeyed every rule going, I just couldn't help myself. I had become addicted to guitars and nothing could keep me out of that cupboard full of them.

One lunchtime I was sitting cross-legged in the cupboard beneath a table covered in glockenspiels, wood blocks and chime bars, practising an F minor barre chord (which is one of those tricky chords where you have to hold all the strings down at the same time with one finger) when I heard a noise outside. I quickly slithered behind the pair of kettle drums that stood in the corner of the cupboard.

The drums were very old (one of them had a little plaque on it - a smaller version of the sort you see on bequeathed park benches - stating that it had been donated to the school by the Westing Symphony Orchestra in nineteen-sixty-five). The drums were also very large and hence enabled me to hide from the snobbier members of the school's various lunchtime music groups, some of whom, I knew, would derive great pleasure in informing the powers that be of my unauthorised guitar playing.

As the cupboard door swung open, I scrunched myself up behind the drums and prayed that it wouldn't be the senior choir again. I once had to sit there for almost an hour listening to them singing that song Moonlight from the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber (and I can tell you, your average chorus of tom cats could have sung it a damn sight better). Holding my breath, I peeped out between the drums and watched as a face slowly appeared round the edge of the door. The face belonged to a boy my own age, but it was not a face I recognised. Whoever the boy was he wasn't in any of my teaching groups and I guessed that he must be new at the school.

Now, whereas my face was blighted by angry red spots and a nose that wouldn't have looked out of place on an aardvark, this boy had unreally smooth skin and a tiny nose. It was almost as if his skin had been coated in a translucent veneer of plastic, preventing any penetration by blackheads or adolescent expansion of features. This cherubic face, all pensive, brown calf eyes and pursed postbox-red lips, was framed by a straight fringe of fine fawn-coloured hair more befitting of a Vidal Sassoon model than a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. I assumed that he must be a member of the junior choir and can remember thinking to myself (rather bitterly) that this was bound to be the one whose bollocks hadn't dropped and would be chosen to sing the soprano solo of Once In Royal David's City at the Christmas carol concert.

Those big brown eyes peering into the cupboard suddenly widened as they met my own peering out from between the kettle drums. And, without so much as a word of invitation, the boy crept into the cupboard knelt down in front of the drums and whispered:

"What are you hiding in here for?"

"Piss off," I said.

The boy looked taken aback.

"I'll get done if they find me in here," I said.

"Who?" asked the boy, alarm filling his voice and eyes.

"The choir," I said.

"What choir?" whispered the boy.

"Ain't you in the choir then?" I asked.

The boy shook his head. I slid out from behind the kettle drums.

"You better not tell anyone I was in here," I said.

"I won't," whispered the boy.

"What are you looking for anyhow?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"What are you doing in here then?" I asked.

"I heard the guitar," he said, "through the window." He gestured up at the narrow frosted glass panel that ran the length of the cupboard wall just beneath the artexed ceiling. "Was that you playing?"

"Probably" I said picking up the guitar and finger-picking a couple of F minor arpeggios.

"Wow, that's brilliant," he said joining me beneath the table.

"It's easy" I said brusquely, slightly annoyed that my secret hiding place had been invaded. "Dead easy."

"Really?" exclaimed the boy uncertainly. "Can you show me how to play that?"

"If you want," I said.

And then the bell went for the end of lunch.

"Shit!" I exclaimed dramatically as I glanced down at my watch. "We better get the hell out of here." And I scrambled out from under the table, dragging the boy with me. We hurried out of the cupboard as if there were a bomb about to explode in there, and then ran across the music room and out into the playground.

When we got outside we kept running past all the other kids, who were traipsing to their lessons as slowly as they could, until we reached the gym where I'd left my bag. We both leaned against the wall panting. The boy smiled at me. I grudgingly forced myself to grin back at him.

"What year are you in?" I asked.

"Second," he said (which was the same year as me).

"You new then?" I asked.

He nodded.

I offered him my hand, the way my dad used to when he met people for the first time. We shook hands and I introduced myself.

"Peter Sharpe," I said. "But everyone calls me Sharpy."

"My proper name's Anthony Mallon," said the boy looking embarrassed. "But everyone at my old school called me Melon."

I laughed.

"I didn't really like it though," he added hastily. "My mum calls me Tone sometimes."

"Well I'll call you Tony then," I said.

"And I'll call you Pete" he said.

"No. Call me Sharpy," I said.

"All right," he said.

I picked up my Spurs sports bag.

"I've got double Art now," I said.

"Double French," he said. "In the Lang Lab."

"That's shite that is," I said. "I hate French."

"So do I," he said.

"I've got Mrs Thomas for Art."

"The fat one?" he asked.

"Yea, but she's all right," I said. "She don't mind if you're a bit late." I swung my bag over my shoulder and gave him the thumbs up. "Better go though," I said. "See ya later Tony."

"See ya Pete, I mean, Sharpy," he said.

As I walked off he called after me, "Hey, Sharpy!" He mimed playing a guitar and shouted across the by-then deserted playground. "When are you going to...?"

"Tomorrow lunch time," I said, "one o'clock. But don't tell no one right?"

He nodded and waved and I walked off. And that was how I first met the Casino Kid and how I came to start teaching him the guitar. Of course, it wasn't until quite some while later that he attained that nickname. So, whilst I explain a bit more about how we got into this whole guitar playing thing, I shall refer to the Kid by the name I knew him by then, Tony Melon (sorry, Mallon).

When me and Tony started to learn guitar we both shared the same tutorial, one we had found in that music room cupboard. It was a tattered, ring-bound thing from the early seventies with a lurid photo of some hippy, with a goatee beard and two-foot long sideburns, sitting cross-legged on the cover. He was resplendent in psychedelic tie-dye smock, bean green flares and sandals that matched his rainbow-coloured guitar strap (a kind of Burt Weedon on acid, I suppose).

I was quite content to skip all the theory in the tutorial, and learned to play simply by copying the diagrams on the back page that showed you where to put your fingers to produce each chord. However, Tony spent ages learning the names and positions of all the individual notes as he went along. He methodically worked his way through every exercise and technique in that tutorial, refusing to move onto a new page until he had successfully mastered every little detail on the previous one. I suppose Tony's was the proper way to teach yourself to play, but I frequently found his painstaking approach to learning quite infuriating (especially as most of the learn-as-you-play exercises appeared to be based on popular morris dancing tunes).

"Does this sound all right?" he would ask, playing one of those awful one-string-at-a-time melodies. "Was my little finger parallel with the third fret? Could you see my thumb behind the back of the neck."

"That stuff don't matter," I'd say as I strummed away. "Come on I'll show you how to play Me and Bobby McGee."

But Tony would refuse my offer, and peer studiously over the front of his guitar to check that the knuckles of his right hand were perfectly parallel with the neck.

At the very front of that old guitar tutorial tutor were these black and white photographs of the hippy who was on the cover and some skinny cow wearing a flowery ankle-length frock, showing you how to sit properly when you were playing. The only reason I ever studied those pages was to ridicule the hippies' outmoded fashions, and to surmise whether or not they were tripping out of their skulls at the time the photos were taken. I could never be bothered with all that shit about how to grip the guitar properly and which knee to rest it on and everything.

Of course, I have to teach all that kind of stuff to my pupils now, but back then when I was a kid I wasn't interested in it at all. As far as I was concerned it didn't matter how the hell you played so long as it sounded all right. But, like I say, Tony had to do everything just so. He had to have his knee in the correct position and his forearm resting in the right place and his wrist at the correct angle and all sorts of other things, which can prove to be quite difficult when there are two of you crouching beneath a small table!

Now, I cannot entirely blame Tony for us getting caught in the cupboard in the music room. But had he not insisted in sitting on the floor beside the table rather than hiding under it, so as he could hold the guitar like it said you should in the book, I think the chances are that Mrs Winters wouldn't have found us hiding there that day.