Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet Page B

machine. George had finished the job unaided, had experienced a childish pleasure winding the crane’s little winch to hook the lid off the mustard pot. Then Clem had spent much of cheerless Boxing Day drawing ever more madly complex Meccano plans, numbering each component and providing a number key. He’d covered the blank side of half a roll of leftover wallpaper. The set itself was never used again. George had been disappointed in his son, just as he had become disappointed with everything else. But here was a thing, now: passing the ruddy Scholarship!
    George felt himself to be a cut above the rest of the estate. Rather than join the beery crowd watching Borstead Wanderers boot a ball about, he spent his Saturday afternoons doing jobs around the house, keeping it dress-parade smart. He wished others would do the same. The Leggetts had turned number 16 into a one-family slum. He’d seen a rat in the street the other night, and he was pretty sure where it’d come from.
    There were three wages coming in, now that Ruth had her part-time job at Griffin’s, managing the till and checking the prescriptions. In all but name, he was the foreman at Ling’s. His wages went up a pound a week every year. They were doing all right. George was proud of the fact that his wife had a new washing machine that gurgled itself empty via a ribbed gray pipe into the sink. He’d bought himself a new bike. Secretly, he nursed plans to rent a television set. His son getting a place at Newgate seemed part of . . . it. What “it” was, George couldn’t rightly say. Change? Progress? Socialism? Well, that hadn’t lasted long. Bloody Tories were back in. Short memories people had. As soon as they could put bacon and cheese in their sandwiches again, they’d gone and voted Conservative, like the idiot sheep they were. “It” was a better life, though, no matter what. The future he’d fought for. He’d imagined love, respect, comfort, pranky sex. “It” hadn’t turned out to be that, though. Quite the opposite. But his boy had passed the Scholarship.
    Suddenly and urgently George wanted to know if any of the other kids on the estate had passed. He hoped not, by Christ.
    Sundays, in the 1950s, were days of fathomless boredom and infinite silence. Clem hated them, numbly. His grandmother’s power over the household had diminished since the move to Borstead, but in accordance with some deal or treaty he had not witnessed, she still held sway over Sundays. In fact, since she had fallen out with the chapel and joined those Brethren loonies, keeping the Sabbath holy had got a lot worse. Clem was not allowed to play football or ride his bike or go down to the park. Nor read comics, which gave off a satanic aroma that only Win’s subtle nose could detect. There was no proper breakfast because there would be a Big Dinner. The Big Dinner was mince-and-onion pie with potatoes and sprouts. The house brewed the smell of it through the morning. He had to wear Best Clothes, which, on this hot summer day, consisted of a clean Ladybird T-shirt and long khaki-colored shorts that bloomered out below a snake belt. In the afternoon, while the grown-ups snored to the wireless, he swung himself back and forth on the front gate, pushing himself away from the post with his left foot until the hinge groaned and sent him slowly forward to the post again, with a clonk. And a clonk. And a clonk. The sun burned his cropped head.
    Something moved at the edge of his dazed vision.
    “Wotcha, Ackroyd, you skunkwhiff.”
    Goz Gosling, perched on his almost-motionless bike. Goz lived on Milton Road, on the far side of the estate from Lovelace. He was something of an outsider. In part this was to do with his odd looks. Goz had black curly hair that sat on top of his head like a nest that had landed there without him noticing. He had darkish skin and a long nose that widened at the end like a spoon. (It was a belief shared by Win, among others, that a Gyppo had once