18

 

 

            It felt like I was lying on my bed for hours.  Hours and hours.  I must have listened to at least three albums back to back, before my bedroom door began to open slowly.  I sat up abruptly, and turned the volume down a bit.  I was listening to Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, by The Smiths.  It was on this amazing mix tape Billy’s dad had made me.  He had written all the songs out carefully in blue biro.  Janis Joplin singing Piece Of my Heart and The Clash Someone Got Murdered sandwiching the song nicely.  It was John.  He sort of shuffled in cautiously, his brow deeply furrowed, his eyes troubled and restless, and with this huge shuddering sigh leaking out of him as he sat down on the edge of my bed.  I stared at him blankly.   I wanted him to see how little I cared.  I wanted him to see my dry, staring eyes, my slack mouth, my empty heart.

“Well you got someone on your side, at least,” he said after  a moment.  I didn’t know what he meant.

“What?”

“Billy’s dad,” he replied, smiling at me ever so faintly.  “You wouldn’t have heard the phone ringing constantly, with your music on so loud, but he’s offered to send his brother, the solicitor, to speak for you?”

I frowned slightly. “Really?”

“Yeah.  He says he can put pressure on Mr. Higgs to drop the assault charge or he’ll make a fuss about him firing me for no reason.”

“Really?” I said again.  John nodded.  He sat with his hand hanging limply between his legs.  To be honest, he looked exhausted.  His shoulders were weak.

“Yeah. Just waiting to hear back now.  Next time you hear the phone ring, you might want to turn the music down and listen.  It’ll be your future one way or the other.”

I made a face and crossed my arms over my chest.  “Well that was nice of him.”

“Yeah like I said, someone on your side.  Billy must have gone home at lunch and called him, eh?” He looked down at his hands.  “Look, about mum.”

“I hate her.”  The hatred in my voice surprised even me.  It seemed to come from deep down inside, this voice, like it had crawled up my windpipe and spewed itself up and over my clenched teeth.  John looked at me.

“You’re angry,” he said. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

“I hate her,” I said again, and this time I said it as if it should be obvious, as if I was just stating that the sky was blue and the grass was green.  “She’s a total bitch and I hate her.”

“Danny, you shouldn’t have attacked that kid, and everything else…you’ve been driving her mental!”

“It doesn’t matter!” I cried then, bringing up my knees to lean forward over them.  I could feel myself starting to tremble with it again.  I saw that hand flying towards my face, and I saw Higgs and his smug expression, taunting me day after day. “I was defending her!  I was defending you!  But I won’t bother anymore!  I’ll let them say what the hell they want about her! They can call her a slut and a whore every day and I’ll just let them!  ‘Cause that’s what she is anyway!”  John looked at the ceiling and blew his breath out slowly.  I hugged my knees with my arms.  “You’re leaving soon,” I reminded him. “I wish to God I was too.  As soon as I’m old enough, I’m getting out of here, and away from her.”

He blew his breath out again, and got to his feet.  He sort of slipped his hands into his pockets and just stood there in my room, like he knew he ought to say something else to support or guide me, but the truth was, he was all out.  Or he didn’t care.  I couldn’t blame him really.  Mum had been shoving him into the fatherly position for years, and he had never found it comfortable.  “You do understand why I’m going early, don’t you?” he asked me.  I rolled my eyes.  I got off the bed and went to the window.

“Fucks sake John, I don’t give a shit.  Go, if you’re gonna’ go.”

“It’s just I feel like I’ve been refereeing you guys my entire life.  I can’t do it anymore.  I just want my own life.”

I pushed back the net curtain and glared out at the street.  “I get it,” I told him, just to let him off the hook.  “I’d do the same, okay?  I’d do exactly the same if I were you.”

I heard him sigh and walk to the door.  He sounded relieved. “You’ve just got to stop getting in such a mess all the time,” he said to me.  “Stop getting in trouble and driving her mad.  It can’t be that hard.”  He pulled the door open and we both heard the phone ringing loudly in the hallway.  He lifted his eyebrows at me.  “Hope it’s good news.”

I hung back, waited for his footsteps to descend, and then crept out of my room and took up my spying position on the landing.  My mother had picked it up first.  “Thank you so much,” she was saying, breathlessly. “I can’t thank you enough, and I promise, this sort of thing is never happening again.  I can assure you of that.”  She said goodbye and I heard the phone click back onto the receiver.

“Good news?” John asked her.  She made a noise that was half a sigh and half a sob.

“Yes.  Not that he deserves it, but whatever Billy’s uncle said to Mr. Higgs has convinced him to drop the charges.  It’s over.”

“Bloodyhell,” said John. “What a relief.”

“Yes.  I think I might owe Mr. Madison a drink.  Both of them.”

“You gonna’ tell Danny or shall I?”

“Oh not me,” she replied haughtily.  I heard her stalk back into the kitchen. “Not me,” she said again, while I strained against the banisters to hear her.  “I’m not going near him for the time being, not until we’ve both calmed down.  Don’t tell him yet anyway John.  Let him stew for a bit.  Goddamm kid gets away with everything.”

I stood up and leaned right over.  They had pushed the kitchen door to, but it was not shut.  I heard one of them pull out a chair to sit at the table. “He gets in trouble standing up for you,” I heard John say.  I was surprised to hear him say it, and to be truthful, it made me feel a bit lighter then.  I was on tiptoes, leaning over to hear them.  The smallest smile tugged at my pursed lips.  “Don’t look at me like that,” John warned. “I’m not making excuses for what he did, I’m just trying to say kids his age are cruel, they’ll pick on you for anything.  And moving schools at that age is no fun either.  I’m just trying to get you to see it from his side, just a bit, that’s all.”

“John!”  My mother did not sound impressed.  I could picture her standing in the centre of the room, hands on hips, head thrust forward while her eyes glared.  “It’s not just today and you know it!  It’s the other fights, it’s the constant lying and stealing, and damaging Frank’s car, and the rest! You know what I’ve had to put up with, and I can tell you now, I only have so much more I can take John.  That’s it.  He can only push me so far, and I don’t know what will happen then.  Send him to bloody care or something.”

I pulled back then, my spine reeling me backwards, my neck wanting to pull into my shoulders.  “Mum,” John complained. “For God’s sake. I was only trying to say maybe both of you need to see things from each others points of view.  There’s no need to say things like that!”

“There’s too much seeing it from his view!” she shot back icily.  I could hear her rummaging, and wondered if she was packing a bag or something.  Maybe mine.  “That’s the whole problem, and God, do I realize it now.  Even you used to say I was too soft on him John!  Even you.  That I gave in too easily, I let him get around me, I wasn’t tough enough.  I know it’s true.  So it’s my fault.  It’s my fault he’s like he is.  That boy has got away with bloody murder from the day he was born!  All that blonde hair, and blue eyes, and butter wouldn’t bloody melt!  And being soft on him has got me nowhere!  Look how he’s turned out!”

“Mum, look it’s just harder on him, not having his dad around.”  I could tell John was trying his hardest and I was grateful to him for it, but I knew as well as he did he was wasting his time.  “He worries about the guys you attract and you can hardly blame him after that James fiasco.”

“Frank was nice!” she said in a shrill voice. “He chased him off with his disgusting behaviour!  He wants me single forever!  Well I’m not standing for it.  Not this time.  I’m going out John.  You’ll have to order some pizza or make toast or something.”

I heard my brother breathing through his teeth. “Where are you off to?”

“To meet Lee.”

“And who is Lee?”

“Just a friend,” she said curtly.  I heard the back door snap open.  “For now.  Don’t wait up.”  There was the predictable slam and shudder of the glass.  I turned quickly and went back into my room.  I didn’t let myself think about any of it.  I just got back on my bed and turned the music back up.  I closed my eyes and listened to The Clash, which was followed by The Beatles, Tomorrow Never Knows.  I thought, Donald was right about music, and being open minded.  There was once a time I listened to nothing but Guns ‘N’ Roses because I had found something angry and loud that pissed my mother off, and that was as far as it went.  I didn’t look for more, because I didn’t think I needed more.  But now I knew different.  Now I knew that there was never going to be enough time in my life to listen to all the music.  That was a fact.  I would just have to do my best, soak it up whenever I could, remain open and ready for all of it.  I lay on bed and thought about that, and just had the calm sense of waiting for the next thing to happen.

Well, what happened next was I got suspended from school for two weeks, and grounded as well.  I had no choice, and no room to complain, so I got on with it, and spent the time rewriting a short story Mrs. Baker had given me a merit for at school.  I paid lip service to the other subjects I had been instructed to keep up with, but I saved my genuine concentration and passion for the story.  I stayed in my room as much as possible.  Loneliness, I had decided, was preferable to mixing with my family.  Mr. James had been pleased about the charge being dropped.  He had phoned to talk to me.  “You need to use this time to reflect on what you did and how it could have turned out,” he told me, his voice sounding even deeper and throatier as it came to me down the phone lines.  “You need to think about choices Danny.  We all have choices.  Those choices can affect your entire life sometimes.  You can choose to punch someone in the face when they upset you, or you can choose to use the talent you have, and write about it instead.”

I took his advice on board.  Why not?  My mother had nothing to say to me, and John was just killing time, and packing his bags when she was not at home.  I was not allowed any friends over, and I was lucky if I managed to get to the phone before her.  The only one she would let me speak to was Billy, and this was only because she felt in debt to his father.  I got the feeling she was grateful to him for stepping in, but also resented the fact I had gotten away with it.  There was nothing but vitriol and poison between us, so we kept our distance.  I lingered in the background like a ghost, like something that had been and gone, but was not yet quite forgotten.  I had a sense of her moving on without me.  I felt heavier and heavier as the days wore on, imagining myself as the baggage around her neck, the chain upon her shoulders. I felt like the later she stayed out, and the gigglier she was on the phone, was all part of her trying to shake me off.

I listened endlessly to music.  Devouring everything and anything.  Sometimes I would lie on the floor and arrange the speakers on either side of my head.  This way I would not miss a single drum beat, a single tingling guitar riff.  I closed my eyes and I was somewhere else then.  I didn’t exist.  I had no body, only this light and joyous soul that floated above it all.  I absorbed the lyrics, sometimes scrawling them out in my notebook, whenever I heard something that resonated or meant something to me.  Jim Morrison’s haunting vocals, into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown, that was one I liked then.  That was how I felt.  Not born, but thrown.  Hurled and suddenly existing, though it was obvious pretty much no one wanted me to be.  I soaked them up, the words, and the whispers, and the growls, and the shrieks and the screams, and I shivered with them all, and when I listened to The Doors, I was Jim Morrison, and I understood what he was saying, and when I listened to Nirvana, I became Kurt Cobain, and I sensed his sadness and his despair and his rage.   It felt like each and every song added to me as a person, somehow helped me to grow, helped me to become more me.  I couldn’t explain these things to anyone without sounding insane, so I wrote it all down, day after day.  I’ve found myself in music, I wrote one day, is that possible? And what happens next?

The background of my house and family became some sort of cold and arid wasteland, and the strangest thing was watching my mother push John away.  Slowly but surely, she detached herself from him.  Maybe he was relieved, I don’t know.  As usual he remained calm and steady, and grounded.  He told me one day he would be gone within a month, and I stared back at him, thinking, and what will happen then?

In the background, where it was safe, I witnessed her guard slipping.  Her voice would grow louder on the telephone.  “Oh God, he’s nothing like Frank!” I heard her squealing to someone one day.  “Frank was just a fling really.  He was like a boy, for goodness sake.  Said all the right things, but always had his eye elsewhere, you know what I mean?  God no, Lee is different, total opposite in fact!  I only just realized Sandra, he is exactly what I have been looking for for so long.  He’s different.  He’s got that…air about him?  That confidence, without being arrogant or showy.  And oh god, he is sexy!”

These were not words I wished to hear her saying, but I was unable to tear myself away from her telephone conversations.  He was big and rough and sexy, she said.  He worked at Nancy’s, the club in town.  He told her she was classy and a one off.  He took her out to fancy restaurants and refused to let her pay for a thing.  They took long walks down at the beach afterwards, walking arm in arm, while she confided in him, while he listened to all of her troubles.

I would return to my room, crushed with nerves, and chewing at my nails.  I was desperate to see the gang again, to share my fears with Michael, because I knew he would understand, I just knew he would feel what I was feeling.  He would know what to do about it.  I sat in my room, feeling like a prisoner, and unable to shake away the building fear that something was rumbling to life all around me, something that was bad, and dark and brewing just beyond my reach.  Suspension and grounding had rendered me helpless and out of touch.  The time could not go fast enough.

19

 

 

            When I finally returned to school, I pounded the corridors with a grim and determined look on my face. But my target this time was not Edward Higgs, it was Mrs. Baker, my English teacher.  I found her in the staff room, and when she shuffled out in her flat court shoes to see me, she was cleaning her glasses on the edge of her cardigan.  Mrs. Baker was one of those women who could have been thirty five, or fifty five.  She had neat dark hair, shot through with wisps of grey.  She did not wear make-up, and her clothes were billowing and floral.  She loved her subject though, anyone could see that.  She often left her chair, came around her desk and perched on it in front of us, hands clasped together under her chin, glasses on the edge of her nose.  She was surprised but pleased to see me.  I gave her the story I had rewritten and asked her if she would consider it for the school newspaper.  She took it gently as if she was handling something precious and rare.  She made a little gasping sound, and touched a hand to her chest.  “Danny, thank you so much!” she said to me, before I ambled away again. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to read this!”

Those words stayed with me for the rest of the week because I needed them to.  I released my breath whenever I was in her class.  I didn’t say much, but when I did speak, she gave me this look, her tilted head, and warm eyes, and I felt like she knew something about me that the rest of them didn’t.  And I needed those words, and the warm glow they created inside of me, I needed them more than ever that week.

The first time I saw Higgs again was in the corridor.  Someone tapped his shoulder when I was walking past, and he turned to look at me.  He had this piece of plaster over his nose, and it looked distorted and swollen.  His eyes appeared bruised underneath.  There was a collective holding of breath, but I just walked on, and said nothing.  I ignored the whispers and the complaints that followed me wherever I went.  Who let that thug back in here?  That kid is mental.  It all washed over me.  I wasn’t going to fight any of them anymore, and part of me wanted to tell them that.  “They’re gonna’ try and wind you up,” Jake took the trouble to warn me one day, and I just smiled at him.

“I know.  It’s okay.”

“Your mother is a slut,” Higgs hissed at me the next day.  We were in the canteen, standing in the queue.  I was in a semi-trance, watching the overweight dinner lady splat ladles of baked beans onto the plate of the girl in front of me.  Every time she flung them onto the plate, the juice sprayed back on her apron, but she didn’t seem to notice, or care.  I heard Higgs and turned to him wearily.

“I know,” I told him.  “You’re right.  Whatever.”

The goading went on, pushed through teeth in hushed tones.  Behind my back in class.  In notes that were thrown at me when the teacher was not looking.  In sing song chorus style in the playground.  I didn’t rise to it, not once.

“You’re doing really well,” Lucy told me at the end of History one day.  She had an armful of books, and was struggling with her school bag slipping from her shoulder.  I caught it and took it from her, and she smiled, but I could see the difference in her smile, and I guessed I knew what it was.  It was friendly, but also guarded, cautious, like she had been warned about me, warned to stay away.  Her eyes told me one thing, and her body language told me another.  She was nervous in my company, her eyes flitting about, her gestures stiff, and her cheeks constantly red.  It wasn’t until later that I found out her dad was golf buddies with Mr. Higgs.

I tried not to waste time torturing myself about it.  I remembered what Michael had said to me that day at the bench.  About people thinking the worst of you, judging you because of where you came from, and who your family were.  Prove them wrong, he had said, make them eat their words.  I wasn’t allowed to go and see Billy’s dad, so I wrote him a thank you letter instead and passed it on to Billy.  I still couldn’t believe the trouble he had gone to in order to get me off the hook.  I felt humbled every time I thought about it.  In return for the letter, he sent me back more tapes.  Billy had hurled them at me with a roll of his eyes.  “He’s doing it just to piss me off,” he complained.  The tapes were by two guys I had never heard of.  Tom Waits, and Neil Young.  To say they both blew my mind would be pointless and an understatement.  I couldn’t get my head around what I was listening to.  Right away I felt myself go off on another adventure.  It was Donald’s fault.  Now I would have to hunt down both their back catalogues.  It was never ending and blissful.

Things continued in the same frosty vein at home, and then one afternoon my brother said something that surprised me.  Mum had just got off the phone again.  Just listening to her girlish giggles had sent a trickle of resentment through me.  I was sat at the kitchen table, scratching my fingernails back and forth against the surface.  I was seeing how much crusty tomato sauce I could collect under my nails before she came back to serve up the dinner.  John had the air of someone hovering, and when she came back in and started to serve up, he cleared his throat and said; “would it be possible to meet Lee, before I go, I mean?”

She jerked her head up to stare at him.  So did I.  I stopped scraping at the table and pushed my hair back off my face.  I looked from her, to John.  He swallowed and forced a smile.  “What do you think?”

“What do I think?”  She shot a look at me so I dropped my head again, letting my hair fall back over my eyes.  “Well what do you mean?”

“I was just wondering, you know, if things are getting serious between you two, then maybe I could meet him.  He could come over to dinner or something.”  John tried a bright smile that did nothing to soften our mothers face.  Instead, she narrowed her eyes and went back to serving up the pasta.

“You want me to invite Lee here for dinner?”  She sounded like this amused her, like she was on the brink of nervous laughter.  John nodded.

“Yeah, why not?  He seems to make you happy.  Sounds like a nice guy on the phone.  Can’t we meet him yet?”

“I know what this is about,” she returned, and her eyes shot back to me again.

“This is my idea,” John told her.  “I want to meet him before I go to Leeds, that’s all.  You know, make sure he’s good enough for you.”

Through my hair I watched my mother stop what she was doing and cross her arms over her chest.  It was a stance I knew well.  She was poised to go either way.  “You really want to meet him?” she asked, and looked my way.  “Both of you?”

I nodded slowly.  She laughed a little then, and the sound of it made me want to drop my head onto the table and cover my head with my arms.  It was so cold and hollow.  It made her sound like she had given up.  “Okay,” she cried. “Okay.  I suppose I can’t put it off any longer anyway, and he keeps asking to meet you two.  Okay then, I’ll ask him to dinner so that Danny can be rude to him and start the pathetic business of trying to scare him off.  All right?  That what you want?”

There was nothing more to be said from any of us.  We ate yet another dinner in total silence, not meeting each other’s eyes, not seeing anything except what we wanted to see.  He phoned her again that night.  I listened in every time, pressing my face against the bars on the landing, resting on my knees.  I gathered what I could.  I wrote what I had in my notebook to show Michael.  I had his name;  Lee Howard.  I had his age; forty.  I had his occupation; club manager, or was it owner?  I wasn’t sure.  I had his looks; big and rough and sexy, whatever the hell that meant.  I had his taste in television; WWE Wrestling, Big Break and Londons Burning.  All shit.

“Sounds like a bastard,” Michael said when I showed him.

“Well we’ll find out soon,” I told him.  “He’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.”

Michael gave me a look that told me he had bad news of his own.  We were sat up in my room.  My mother had finally ended the cold war of silence between us earlier that day.  It was a reaction to me showing her my story in the school newspaper.  Page Four.  The Dark Star, by Danny Bryans.  It had made her smile.  I mean, really smile.  She had held the paper in both hands, and she had looked like she was trying not to smile at first, like she was trying to hold onto being angry and disappointed with me.  But she caved in the end, and the smile she gave me lit up her face, and mine too.  She stood in front of me and read the whole thing from beginning to end, while I fidgeted and chewed at my nails beside her.  “It’s amazing,” she had said then, lowering it and reaching out to ruffle my hair.  Her touch had taken my breath away for a moment.  I’d shrugged, like it was no big deal.  “Thanks for showing me. And I mean it.  It is amazing. Just goes to show what you can do when you keep yourself out of trouble eh?”

She’d agreed to let Michael come over after that, but his face was grave when he arrived.  He sat quietly and solemnly while I showed him the things I had written about Lee Howard in my notebook.  “You’re meeting him tomorrow?” he asked me, when I closed the book up and shoved it back under my mattress. I nodded. “Well I’ve got something to tell you.  I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but you said you need all the ammunition you can get, right?”

I got to my feet then.  I made out it was just to check the door was shut, but really it was because I was unable to sit still any longer.  He was making me nervous, and I didn’t like it. “Spit it out Mike,” I urged him.  He looked down gravely.  He was holding a lighter and sporadically flipping up the flame.

“Well, Billy mentioned your mum’s new boyfriend at home, and his sister Mary-Louise piped up that her boyfriend Steve works at Nancy’s.”  He met my eyes and grimaced at me.  I was holding the door slightly ajar, and looked from him out onto the landing and then back again.  “Anyway,” he went on.  “I just came from Bill’s and Steve was there, so this information is straight from him, okay?  No Chinese whispers or anything.”  I nodded urgently, desperate for him to get on with it.  He tossed the lighter onto the bed behind him and clasped his hands morosely between his knees. “Well, Steve says this guy is quite new there.  He’s the manager, but also the co-owner.  He bought into half of the place just recently.”

“Okay.  What else?”

“Well, the rumour is the guy is loaded, has loads of money.  Drives all these flash cars and stuff.  He’s already made loads of changes since he’s been there.  People think he wants the original owner out.  This guy called Philips.  Anyway, the gist of it is Steve pretty much thinks he’s a bastard.”

“Okay,” I said, blowing my breath out quickly. “He’s bound to think that though isn’t he?  Everyone thinks their boss is a bastard.  Or is it something else?”

“Well yeah, he said he’s pretty tough and that.  Gave him a bollocking for being like three minutes late or something.  A bit of a control freak by the sounds of it.  But you don’t know Steve Danny, he’s one of these people that likes everyone you know?  He said the guy gives him the creeps.”

My mouth fell open a bit then and my stomach hit the floor.  I just stared at the carpet and felt horribly depressed.  Michael was on his feet instantly, socking me playfully in the arm.  “Don’t freak out just yet,” he was saying. “We’ll put together another plan, like with Bradley. That worked didn’t it?”

I heard the front door open downstairs.  “A plan?” I murmured.

“Yeah! A plan to get rid of him.”

“Danny!” My mother yelled up the stairs.  “Come out here a minute!”

“Jesus Christ,” I moaned and went out to the landing.

“Down here a minute,” she went on.  “I’m off out with Lee now, and he’s just popped in to say hi to you.”

I was scratching my neck, letting this unexpected information sink in.  I didn’t look back at Michael, wide eyed in my doorway.  I didn’t think I could bear to see the look on his face. I came around the banister and peered down the stairs.  I felt my mouth grow dry at the sight of my mother stood there, grinning keenly up at me, in her best dress, with her hair all fresh and bouncy.  I breathed out slowly, my eyes moving from her, to the new enemy, who was stood just behind her.  The first thing I noticed was how big he was.  He was so large, so broad and tall and filled out, that he made her appear like a little girl.  I was so confused for a moment just staring down at them.  His arms were around her middle and she seemed to just disappear among them.  She looked tiny, like a little bird being eaten alive.  As I stared, the man pulled back, straightening up, growing even taller in the cramped hallway, releasing her middle, but sliding one arm around her shoulders instead. It lay there like a thick snake, I thought, waiting to devour her should she make one wrong move.  I caught the look in her eyes, and although her expression was calm and open, there was an undeniable challenge in her eyes.  She had thrown a tornado at me and was waiting to see how I would handle it.

I came slowly down the stairs, and I felt studied by the pair of them as they watched me come.  She looked up into his face. “Lee this is Danny, my youngest.” She blinked back at me. “Danny, say hi to Lee.”

I stopped on the second to last stair and examined the hulk of a man before me.  It seemed to me that he was too big to come into our house.  He took up all the space in the hallway, and consumed all of the air.  He wore these awful stone washed jeans, with brown cowboy style boots, and a slim fitting white t-shirt that wrapped snugly over the bulging muscles of his arms and chest.  My gaze travelled slowly up to his face.  His hair was light brown, very short, and thinning on the top of his skull.  It was receding too, making his forehead look like it went on forever, and when he moved his head I could see the light from the window bouncing from it.  He had a neat beard and moustache, and when I looked at him, I thought he reminded me of someone on television, some wrestler or something.

His confidence expanded at me in the small hallway.  I felt blasted by it, shot down.  His feet were spread slightly, his legs apart, his chest puffed and ready for war.  I felt my insides shrivelling up as I stared at him.  I felt them rolling over and dying within me.  I sensed right away that he was nothing like Frank Bradley, nothing like anyone.  He stood in the hallway as if he owned it.  He was smiling broadly, the skin around his pale blue eyes wrinkling, and he gave off the air of a man who has never doubted anything in his entire life, not a thing.  I couldn’t imagine he had ever been scared, or unsure, or embarrassed or fragile.  I felt a bit like I ought to drop down onto one knee.  I had never met anyone that exuded that much confidence without even speaking before.

He kept his arm around mum, and they presented this united front to me, the enemy.  I could see it in their faces.  We were two sides, two opposite sides, and I had a deep and dragging feeling that I would not be winning the war this time.  I felt like the stranger then, the outsider trying to get in.  I was suddenly overwhelmed with all these thoughts and feelings that made me want to turn and run back up the stairs to Michael.  Michael, who as far as I knew, was frightened of nothing.  The man rolled his eyes a little, and thrust his hand out towards me, as if suggesting this was the gesture I should have been capable of.  “All right Danny?” he was asking.  “Good to meet you.”

I found myself staring dumbly at his hand, and all I could think about was how massive it was.  I was loathe to place my hand in his, in case it should swallow mine whole.  Lee Howard shrugged his shoulders and withdrew his hand, and my mother made an exasperated noise. “Danny for goodness sake! Sorry honey, he has no manners.”

“Teenagers eh?” the man replied, and she rolled her eyes knowingly.

“Don’t I know it. What’s the matter with you Danny?  Lost your tongue? Can’t you even say hi, nice to meet you?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled then, and I had to push the word out, over my tongue which seemed reluctant to cooperate.  I retreated slowly, one stair at a time.  She grabbed her coat and opened the front door.

“God I should think so too,” she sighed, with her back to me. “You two be good all right?”

I went back up the stairs, but paused and looked back one more time.  That was when I saw him staring up at me.  I frowned slightly.  My hand stole out towards the handrail.  I wondered if something passed between us then, me and him.  Some silent, knowing thing.  Something that made my heart beat faster under my skin, and I gritted my teeth against it, whatever it was, and the anger swirled to life inside my belly, and then he winked at me.

16

 

            I woke up with The Doors in my ears, and old Jim Morrison was right.  Strange days had found us.  I got dressed and left the house before either my mother or John could wake up.  I cycled slowly towards Michael’s house.  My head felt bogged down with it all, making my limbs slow and lethargic.  The bike seemed too big, too heavy.  I wanted to throw it down and walk.  I wanted to sit down and sink.  Just sink.  I had my headphones on, my Walkman attached to the waist of my jeans.  I dropped my bike at the end of the alley and approached the Anderson’s house with my arms hanging weakly at my sides.  I wanted to tell Michael all about it.  How Higgs had fucked us over.  How John was going to leave, and my mother and I would be left alone, with each other.  How joyless and endless this felt inside of me.  How she had come home drunk last night, falling over her heels in the hallway and clattering noisily into the hall table.  How John had carried her up to bed, while she giggled and lolled upon his shoulder, her make up smeared as she rattled on about her new job in the Co-Op. 

            There was a thick set and bare chested man sat in the Andersons kitchen, forking eggs and bacon rapidly into his open mouth.  I approached the back door with caution, and as I got closer, he turned and saw me and grunted through his food. “Who’re you?”

            “Danny,” I mumbled, pausing in the doorway.  The house had that smell again, I thought, my nostrils twitching in protest.  Beneath the smell of burnt bacon, slunk the low sweet smell of last night’s booze. 

            “Mikey!” the man yelled out suddenly, making me jump.  I gazed at him long enough to determine he was Michael’s father.  He had the same hair, so black it looked like shining oil, and he had the same, straight broad nose.  But this man sat hunched over a gut clad in a stained white vest, looking like a hog guarding his slops.  Michael appeared quickly, seemingly out of nowhere, in this great hurry, his eyes wide, his mouth taut.  He took my arm and spun me away from it all.  He did not speak until we were at the other end of the alley with our bikes, and then he breathed in, made a growling noise in the back of his throat and spat on the ground in front of him. I felt sad then.  Sad for him; always hurrying me away from his house and his parents, with this dark and quiet look upon his face, and sad for me, and sad for everyone.  I couldn’t imagine ever feeling light, or hopeful again.  We both looked up and back down the alley when we heard their voices rising behind us.

            Michael rolled his eyes and started to hurry away, faster and faster, until we reached a place where we could not hear them anymore.  And then he lowered his head and stood up on his pedals, and tackled the hill to the park silently.  We rode on until we reached the bench, and then we slammed our bikes down in unison and climbed upon it.  Michael sat on the back, his boots on the seat next to me, and searched his pockets for cigarettes.  “Neighbours called the cops on them last night,” he finally said, when he had found the smokes and passed me down one.  I shifted to look at him.

            “Why?”

            “Usual,” he shrugged, lighting up and flicking the hair from his eyes with a toss of his head.  “Too much noise.  They thought he was killing her.”

            I lit my cigarette and handed him back the lighter.  “Shit.  Really?”

            He shrugged again.  “Nothing new. “

            “What happened?”

            “Nothing. She’ll never file a complaint against him.  Just blames it on the drink.”

            “I’m sorry mate.”  It was all I had to say, and it was pretty crap. “Will he go again soon?”

            “Looks like it.  Anyway, what’s up with you?”

            I frowned. “Huh?”

            “You.  You look like someone pissed on your fireworks.”  A slow grin appeared tentatively on his face.  I smiled back, and puffed smoke up to the sky.  I took another drag and thought about everything that had happened and I wanted to laugh.

            “One good thing actually,” I said. “It’s all over between mum and Bradley.”

            Michael’s mouth fell open. “Oh really?  Nice one!”

            “Yeah,” I nodded. “But now she’s had to get another job or something, and John is leaving early.  I mean, really soon.”

            His face grew sombre again.  “Why?”

            I made a face.  “It will make you want to get violent if I tell you.”

            “Go on.”

            “John got fired yesterday,” I swivelled around on the bench, and sat with my legs down through the back.  “You know who his boss is yeah?”  I watched Michael’s jaw snap shut.  His eyebrows came down over his eyes and he pushed breath out through pursed lips.  “Yeah well, Higg’s dad was a bit pissed off about our little prank the other night.  Sacked him.”

            “You better be joking me.”

            “Nope.  John can’t be bothered to fight it, and he’s pissed off with me and mum fighting, so he’s leaving for Leeds now.”

            Michael shook his head slowly from one side to the other, and took a long, deep drag on his cigarette.  “Shittinghell.”

            I nodded.  “And now mum’s not speaking to either of us. She got slaughtered last night.  Obviously it’s all entirely my fault. Now we’ll be stuck with each other, when he goes.”  I closed my eyes briefly and leaned over the back of the bench.  I dropped my cigarette to the grass and watched the red end glowing on the dead grass.  I felt deflated by it all, but as I sagged, Michael grew rigid, and got onto the bench on his knees.

            “Jake was right!” he cried. “He didn’t waste any time getting us back did he? You know they can’t do that, right? That’s fucking illegal or something!  We’ll go and speak to Billy’s dad, right now, fuck it.”  He jumped down from the bench.

            “It won’t do any good,” I told him. “John won’t go back there.  He’s leaving and that’s it.”

            “We have to do something!” he said, fists briefly curled at his side, before he spun around and snatched his bike up from the ground. “Come on!  You can’t let them get away with this Danny!”

            I pulled out my legs, turned around and stood up.  I licked my lips while he shook with anger, and I pushed my sleeves up to my elbows.  “Don’t worry,” I assured him calmly. “I’m not gonna’ let him get away with it.  I’m gonna’ get him back the next time I see him.”

            Michael looked unconvinced.  “How?”

            “Gonna’ beat the hell out of him, that’s how.” I shrugged and picked up my bike. “Got nothing to lose, have I?”

 

            We cycled, grim faced over to where Jake lived.  A desolate silence hung between us on the way there.  He lived in a block of flats, just ten minutes from the sea.  There were three blocks, arranged in a semi-circle, with a flat green out the front, and a small dark wood out the back.  Beyond the wood, there was a road, and on the other side of the road a path that led down to the sand.  When we arrived, we dropped our bikes on the grass, but Michael did not head towards the doors.  Instead he started looking around on the ground until he found a couple of suitably sized stones, which he then began to hurl up towards a first floor window. 

            “We’re not going in?”  I asked.

            “Are you joking?  I never go in there.  It stinks.”

            “What?  Jake’s flat, or the whole building?”

            “All of it.  It’s like curry mixed with piss.  Horrible.”  He hunted down another stone and aimed it at the same window.

            “I wanted to meet his parents,” I said, watching. 

            “You don’t want to do that either,” advised Michael. “His old man would just bore you to death…and his mum, well, it’s just embarrassing for him mate.”

            “I heard she’s a bit fat.”

            “A bit?  She’s like a whale mate. Can’t hardly walk.”

            “I’ve heard Higgs call her a few choice names.”

            Michael growled and held up his hand. “Ahh don’t, Christ, don’t even mention that turds name in front of me.”

            The window was finally flung open then.  Jake squinted down at us, gesturing with his hands. “Okay, you can stop throwing stones at my window now.  What’s going on?”

            “Come on we need you!” Michael yelled up at him.  “Now!”

 

            Now a trio, we cycled over to Billy’s house.  As soon as we arrived we nodded at each other; this had been a good decision.  The Madisons’ had a barbeque in full flow.  We arrived in the middle of a procession of auburn haired siblings dutifully carrying plates of food out to the picnic table.  Small yapping dogs tore in and out of their legs.  June was organising the table, receiving the plates and platters from the kids, and setting them out.  She threw back her head and laughed when we shuffled in.  Her pale blonde hair was in a loose plait which hung over her shoulder. “Your timing is inexplicable boys!” she said, and beckoned to us with her free hand. “Come on, don’t be shy, you all look half starved, come on in.  There’s plenty.  Billy!  Bring out some more plates please!”

            Billy had just arrived at our side.  He rolled his eyes, and hissed; “sorry there’s no meat!” before scampering off inside the house.  Michael walked right up to Mr. Madison, who was at the barbeque, turning over vegetable burgers.  June took the plates from Billy and filled them up for us.  We all sank down onto the grass, and found our laps soon full of small wriggling dogs.  “I think I’ll just move in here,” I sighed, and grinned at Billy.  He shoved one of the dogs from his lap and winced when it bit his thumb.

            “Ouch!  No you wouldn’t say that if you knew what it was like. Mad house!”

            “I’m serious,” I told him.  He grimaced, trying to balance his food on his lap while holding off the little Jack Russell who was determined to get his needle sharp teeth into something.  I put my plate down and grabbed the dog. “You’re so lucky.  I always wanted a dog, but my mum always says no.”

            “Comes from Zoe. Her uncle had a litter. My mum is the opposite, can’t say no to anything!”

            I smiled and nodded, and picked up my vegetable burger to eat before the dog grabbed it.  It seemed content to curl up in my lap now that it wasn’t getting shoved away, so I stroked it with one hand and ate my burger with the other.  I felt a sort of tightness in my chest then, don’t ask me why, but it felt a bit like my chest wanted to cry, or something.  My eyes were dry though, it was just my chest, clutching at me for some reason.  I was watching all the chaos around me, and thinking about my mum still in bed, and Michael’s neighbours calling the police last night, and Jake’s mother being too overweight to leave the flat.  I wanted to tell Billy how lucky he was again, but you can never really tell people things like that.  People don’t really know how lucky they are.  It just sounds childish and spiteful if you try to tell them too much.

            I relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.  I lay back and watched the madness unfold around me.  Dogs nicking food and running off with it.  Kids crying and fighting, and digging massive holes in the dirt, which they then aimed the hose pipe at until they were all drenched in mud.  Billy’s dad bellowing laughter at everything, while June floated around in her own little cloud of calm contentment.  I wanted them to adopt me.  I wanted to have ginger hair and a stocky body, and green eyes and a dad who could play the guitar.

            “I can’t afford lessons,” I told him morosely and he leaned back and patted his belly, and pushed his plate away from him.  He wiped his beard and clasped his hands over his belly. “Mum says,” I added. 

            “I’m not much of a teacher, but I can show you the basics some time,” he offered.  I grinned back at him, and he leant forward again. “Michael told me what happened with your brothers job? I can put you in touch with a fantastic solicitor if he wants to take it further?  My own brother, in fact. He’s rather good!”

            “Thanks Mr. Madison but my brother doesn’t want to complain or anything. He’s leaving soon anyway.”

            “Well the offer is there if you need it.  People like Mr. Higgs need reminding to be human every once in a while in my opinion.  And hey, can you call me Donald please?” I nodded at him. “Good. People like that.  Too much power and too much money Danny.  Never mix well.  Never done any good for the human soul.”

            He tilted his chin, squinted up at the broiling summer sky and smiled.  I was sat opposite him.  I felt relaxed, and yet slightly unsettled, like I was going to start feeling sad again, and I would not be able to help it.  I wondered why happy things, nice things, like Donald Madison smiling in the sun, his freckled hands holding his full belly, could make you start to feel sad.  I felt a bit like I should creep away while he wasn’t looking.  I pushed my hands down between my thighs and rubbed them together, and felt fidgety, like I was full of things I could not articulate or share.  I bit my lip and chewed it with my teeth.  I started to think he wanted me to go.  I started to think it was time I slunk on home to lay on my bed and get lost in music.  I was scrabbling around in my mind.  Trying to think of something interesting to say, or ask.  Something that would get his attention back on me.  Something that would make him lean towards me again, and share his opinion with me. 

            “Billy said you and June went on protests in the sixties?” I blurted it out when it came to me, and I cringed when I heard myself.  He rocked back to me though, and placed one hand on the table while he sighed with the fullness of his stomach.

            “Yes we did,” he nodded. “When we lived in London.”

            “Wow.”  God, I sounded simple, I thought.  Simple and small.  “What did you protest about?”

            “Well,” he frowned slightly and rubbed at his wiry beard.  “It was mostly the war.  The war in Vietnam?  But it was other things too.  You know, womens rights, gay rights, civil rights, things like that.  Got quite caught up in it all really.  It was a unique time.”

            “Did your family hate you doing it?”  I wasn’t even thinking before I spoke now.  I was just firing pointless questions at the poor man in order to keep him talking to me.  He grinned in response and yawned widely

            “Well, sort of.  They were a different generation, with different values.  You know how it is.”  He paused then, scratched at his beard and narrowed his eyes at me. “Well aren’t you the one for questions eh?  Makes a change to have a young man interested in anything us old folk do.”

            “Well you two aren’t old,” I said quickly, and I meant it.  Old was the last thing they were.  They were older than us, but in some ways, they were younger than us too.  They weren’t jaded or sad or disappointed; how could that be? “I mean, you’re not like other older people.  Not at all.  You’re not boring.”

            Donald laughed at me.  He tipped back his head and roared, and reached out and slapped my knee, as he rocked forward again.  “I’ll take that as a compliment!” he cried, wiping tears from his eyes. “And before you go, come in and look at the music again will you?  What did you think of The Smiths?”

            “Brilliant,” I beamed back at him, shaking my head. “Thanks so much.”

            “What did I copy for you? The Queen is Dead and a bit of a mix?”  I nodded enthusiastically.  “Will do you some more,” he went on. “Got all the early singles, and stuff that’s not on albums.”

            “Great thanks, so like what music did you like growing up?  It wasn’t The Smiths was it?”

            “No, no back then, it was everything, like now, I mean, I’ve always been really open minded and just tried everything.  Soul, folks, rhythm and blues, pop. Whatever.  Loved The Beatles and The Stones obviously back then, and Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and people like Janis Joplin and Aretha  Franklin and Stevie Wonder.  Talking Heads, later on.  The Clash.”  He stroked his beard as he talked, and he gazed off, his lips pushing out through his beard as he thought. “Even country music.  There’s not much I don’t like Danny.  Think that’s the best way to be.”  He came back to me then, slapped his hand on the table and grinned. “Unlike my son, who despite his upbringing is the most narrow minded person I know when it comes to music!”

            “He just likes Nirvana,” I nodded. “That’s pretty much it at the moment.”

            “Fair enough, and so he should.  They are brilliant.”

            I couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear.  To hear an adult say the music we liked was brilliant, was just amazing to me right then.  It was the way he was looking at me too.  His head slightly lowered, his eyes smiling yet serious, his smile inevitable. “They are,” I was nodding as I spoke.  “I have to listen to them every day.  Every day.”

            Donald laughed, but got slowly to his feet, still rubbing at his belly as if in discomfort.  I tried not to let my disappointment show on my face. “They’ll go far,” he was nodding. “If they can hold it together. They make me jealous of you kids, you know, having something like that, that’s yours.”  He smiled down at me and I couldn’t believe he got it like that.  I could only smile then, because I had nothing left to say.  I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, something pathetic and embarrassing would fall out of it.  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, covering his mouth and burping into his hand.  “I think I’ve overdone it and might need to lay down for a bit.  See?  Old!”  He laughed, and sort of ambled up towards the house, still rubbing at his belly and holding a hand over his mouth.  When he was gone I found the others, just lying on the grass under the sky, their arms over their faces, murmuring about Higgs.  I lay down next to them and said nothing.  I liked the way my body felt heavy then, like the earth was holding me down.  Like I was a part of it.  I closed my eyes against the steely blue sky and thought about Billy’s dad, and solictors, and record collections. I wondered whether it was possible to always hold onto something nice like that, and keep it glowing inside of you, so that you could carry it about with you, from one day to the next.

 

            I rode home after that, my belly fit to burst, my pockets stuffed with cassettes, and I found John alone in the kitchen, frying sausages.  I shook my head, patted my belly and went into the hall to answer the phone.  “Hello?”

            There was a pause, before a voice answered me.  “Hi.  Uh, is Kay there?”

            “I dunno,” I said, trying to place the voice. “Hang on.” I held the phone to my chest and called out to John. “Is mum in?”

            “No,” he called back. “Got all dressed up and went out again.”

            I put the phone back to my ear. “No, she’s out, can I take a message?”

            “Uh, yeah,” the voice replied.  I frowned, trying to gain meaning from it.  Whoever he was sounded sort of gruff, sort of serious about things. “Yeah, I might run into her anyway as it happens, but if you see her just tell her I called. Tell her Lee called okay?”

            I didn’t like his tone.  I sneered at his tone.  It reminded me of a teacher, one of the grumpy ones who never really wanted to be a teacher.  It sounded like one of them, getting all shirty and snappy with you because you didn’t do something fast enough.  “Yeah right whatever,” I said and slammed the phone down. 

            My body reacted with bristling energy as I stalked into the kitchen and tugged at Johns’ sleeve.  He frowned down at me.  “What?  Who was it?”

            “Weird guy,” I said. “New guy.  After mum.”  And as I said the words, they tasted like poison, like something foreign and unwanted within my mouth, and I felt my mouth getting dry, and yet I wanted to spit.  John didn’t look at me.  He just went on frying his stupid sausages.

            “You don’t know he’s weird.”

            “Yes I do.  He was weird. Called Lee.”

            John shrugged. “Never heard of him.  Did he leave a message?”

            “He said he would probably run into her anyway, but to tell her he called.”  I licked my lips and stared up at my brother.  I was desperate to see a flicker of concern on his face, but he remained impassive, and I felt like kicking his shin.  “She’s got another guy after her,” I groaned, nudging him.  “And you’re going off to Leeds and leaving me to it!”

            I saw him swallow.  His jawline was tense as he poked at his sausages.  He wouldn’t look at me, and I knew why.  Because if he had looked at me then, I would have seen the guilt in his eyes, and he would not have been able to hide it.  He was running away from it all, and he knew it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17

 

Whoever he was, she was on the phone to him the next morning.  I came down, dressed for school, with this heavy pulling feeling in my gut that made me want to sit down.  She was in the hallway, twisting the telephone cord around her fingers.  She didn’t see me at first, and that’s the first time I knew it was trouble.  It was the look on her face.  Whatever it was, whoever it was, it was eating her up.  From the inside out.  She looked ravenous to me then.  She clung to the phone as if she desired to eat it.  Her smile was secret, not meant for me to see, not meant for anyone to see but him.  And when she saw me, she looked scared.  Her eyes shot wide open.  Her smile sucked inwards.  Her hands shook.  I felt fear and anger and loathing vibrating through me.  I didn’t even want to speak to her. 

            It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision to pay her back.  But that was what I did.  When I look back now, it becomes another of those moments I wish to erase.  I see myself as I was that Monday.  Riding to school, with this set look on my face, my guts all in a twist, the others riding in this solemn, eerie silence behind me.  I want to reach out and yank myself back by the collar, or something.  I want to tell myself not to do it, because every little layer of trouble I got myself into was building this weapon against myself.  I couldn’t see it then, how could I?  I had no idea.  It’s painful to think of it now.  How I passed him the ammunition, day by day.  Not even knowing that was what I was doing.

            I found Eddie Higgs at his locker.  He was with another boy who floated away as soon as he clocked the look on my face.  I felt my fury escalating the closer I got to Higgs.  I felt it tumbling down over me, like some red hot cascade of hatred, like some dark cloak, and I saw myself reaching out to him.  I felt my hands twisting in the soft wool of his school jumper, and I was shouting something at him, but I don’t remember what.  I saw his face but I gave him no time to react.  I yanked him forward and then slammed him back into his own locker, and this loud clanging noise echoed up and down the corridor, and if people had not been watching us before, they were now.  I shouldered him into place and socked him in the stomach with every ounce of strength and power I possessed.  I heard the air come out of him.  I saw his eyes bulge out as his head came down, and then I saw my knee coming up, too fast, too hard, the momentum of rage propelling me along, my entire body now out of my control.  I felt my kneecap smash into his nose, and I heard the horrible crack, and so did the staring eyes of the corridor, and red was flying about suddenly, red was spraying everywhere, and people, girls, were screaming and gasping. 

I felt hands pulling me away.  I struggled against them.  I heard Michael telling me that was enough.  I looked at Higgs, and as he looked back up, there was this awful fear in his eyes, and in that moment, he thought I was going to do more, he thought I had not finished, and I wondered dimly, if I had.  He had both hands over his nose, and blood was bubbling through his fingers. Michael was really pulling at me now.  He practically had me in a head lock, and when I turned around I could see that it was already too late.  A teacher had been called, and Michael let me go and closed his eyes tightly for a brief moment.  “Shit,” he said through his teeth.

 

The look on Mr. James’s face was difficult to read.  He was sat at his chair on the other side of the desk to me, with his big hands clasped together over his mouth.  I tried not to look at him, but when I did, I found his eyes narrowed and searching.  The look on his face was depressing; not least because it reminded me so much of the way my mother always looked at me.  He couldn’t figure me out, couldn’t figure any of it out.  He didn’t know what to say, or do.  I sat slumped in a chair, picking at some chewing gum that had got stuck to the bottom of my shoe.  Outside his office, a commotion was going on.  For a long time I could hear Eddie Higgs wailing and crying, and his father shouting furiously, among calm female voices that attempted to soothe.  Mr. James stared at me all this time.  Eventually, the noise out there died down, and Mr. James released this long whistling sigh through his fingers.  He cleared his throat.  “Your mother is on her way,” he told me.  “So are the police.”

That was it.  The thing he had been trying to say.  The thing that was making him uncomfortable, and confused.  Maybe he had never had the cops in his school before, who knows?  A silence dragged out between us.  I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, so I said nothing.  Finally, he cleared his throat yet again, and shifted slightly in his chair, as if he had been still too long, and his backside had fallen asleep.  “What do you think about that?” he asked me.  I wondered if he really wanted to know, or if it was a question merely to fill the time, and the silence.  I shrugged, and kept picking at my shoe. “A shrug,” he said. “That all you got?”  I nodded.  He shook his head. “Shall I tell you what I think?”

“Okay.”

“I think it’s sad.”

It wasn’t what I had been expecting.  I met his eyes briefly before looking back at my shoe.  The gum was pale pink and had lodged itself in the grooves under my heel.  Every little bit I pulled off, I rubbed into a ball between my fingers before flicking away. Mr. James shifted again, and laid his hands down on the desk.  “I think it’s sad that you don’t seem to care, or have anything to say for yourself or your behaviour, and I think it’s sad that you continually seek to solve things with your fists.  Do you know what happens to people who make a habit of that Daniel?  In the long term?”  I half nodded and half shrugged, imagining that he meant prison.  “They go to jail,” he informed me.  “Because that’s where people like that belong, young man.  Is that what you want for yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you want to tell me why you did it?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I don’t think the police are going to be interested in long stories.”

“Fine then.”

He made an exasperated noise and pushed his chair away from the desk.  He got up and planted his hands on his hips.  “Look at me.”  I looked.  The worse thing was, he was shaking his head at me in this really sorrowful way.  It was awful to see.  A big man like that, looking so dismayed, over me, of all people.  “Such a shame,” he said.  I wanted him to stop.  I hoped the cops were close.  “Well I hope it was worth it, this long story of yours.  This row with Edward.  I hope getting arrested at aged thirteen is worth it.  Are you proud of yourself?”

I shook my head and peeled the last bit of gum from my shoe. I wondered if I ought to tell him how I felt right then.  How I started the day off screwed up tight with anger, and how the anger had gone as soon as my fist had collided with Higgs. “It’s a shame,” he said again, still shaking his bloody head from side to side.  “Because Mrs. Baker has so many positive things to say about you in English, did you know that?  Everything she says about you Daniel.  Hard working, inquisitive, helpful and cooperative, and how your understanding of the texts is above your age.  Sounds like she is talking about a totally different boy than the one I keep running into.  You know you’ll get expelled if this continues?”  I nodded.  I wanted it to be over now.  I was bored.  I wanted to skip to the part where I had to face my mothers fireworks.  At least that would be interesting.  “Sad,” he was saying.  “Very sad.  Mrs. Baker sees talent in you and wants you to join the school paper.  Yet here you are, consistently using violence instead of words to solve your problems.”

Silence consumed us again, and I twitched with it, feeling hot faced and ashamed under his never ending stare.  I was almost relieved when I heard the voices and the flurry of footsteps outside the office.  I was all right about it, until the door opened and I saw the two police men, with my mother behind them.  Their faces were grim, and I felt this stab of fear shoot through me as I got weakly to my feet.  I shot one curious look at my mother and all I could see was how pale she was, and how dark the circles beneath her eyes.  She looked tortured with shame and was struggling not to cry.  “Your mum’s going to follow us down to the station,” one of them said to me, gesturing for me to move.  “Come on then.”  And in that moment, as I moved my feet, one after the after, I felt like the bottom had fallen out of the world.  I could not look at any of them, despite how desperately I wanted to remain defiant and careless.  I didn’t even recognise my own feet and every pathetic step they took. 

 

They dealt with me quickly and smoothly down at the station.  A weary faced officer sat in a room with me and my mum and explained that Mr. Higgs wanted to press assault charges against me.  “What will happen?” My mothers voice arose strangled and small when he had finished talking.  Tears shone in her eyes but she did not let them fall.

“It’s his first offence,” the man sighed. “He’ll probably receive a caution if it makes it to court.  Let’s just hope it will teach you a lesson, eh young man?  Make this your first, and your last offence.”  I was staring at the blue tiled floor and thinking about the cops in The Bill and I wanted to ask him if I could spend a night in the cells instead of going home with my mother. 

 

We drove home in silence. She drove with her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white.  I stole one look at her, and that was enough to keep my eyes straight ahead.  Her whole body appeared bunched up and rigid with rage.  It was all there, shaking within her.  Her mouth, a hard straight line as she glared down the road ahead.  When we arrived home, we met John pacing in the kitchen, chewing at his fingernails.  He stopped and stared at me, shaking his head slowly just as Mr. James had done. “You stupid, stupid…” he trailed off, but continued to shake his head at me.  Mum slammed the door ferociously behind her, making the glass in the square window rattle in protest.  She found a cigarette and lit it, staring right at John.

“Assault charge, no less,” she reported, in a brittle, nervy voice.  She puffed on her cigarette, and her hand was shaking.  “Probably going to end up in court. He broke the kids nose!”

John reacted by dragging his hands down the sides of his face and groaning loudly.  “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was paying him back,” I muttered, leaning against the kitchen table with my hands behind me, holding onto the edge.  “For getting you sacked.”

“That’s why you did it?” he sounded incredulous.  My mother stalked the room, one arms wrapped tightly around her middle, as she smoked her cigarette.

“Well now he’s gonna’ pay you back even more, isn’t he?” she practically screamed. “You stupid little boy!”

John placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. “Calm down a minute,” he said, his eyes flicking to me.

She slapped his hand away from her. “Calm down?  Calm down? How the hell am I supposed to do that John? I’m at my shitty job, trying to avoid my ex-boyfriend of a boss, when I get yet another call from that bloody school telling me my stupid, stupid son is getting arrested!” She shook her head, and he held her shoulder again, and under his touch she suddenly seemed to go limp, leaning back into him as the tears finally began to flow.  “I can’t cope with this, I can’t cope with this,” she said, pressing her hands over her face, her cigarette still burning between two fingers. “Oh God, if he had a bloody father around I’d send him to him! I’ve had enough John, I’ve had enough!”

I should have stayed quiet while she fell apart.  Better still, I should have been really smart and slunk off to my room.  But somehow I felt glued to that table, and my feet felt cemented to the floor.  “He did worse to me,” I said, for some reason desperate to bring things back to Higgs, the cause of all this.  He seemed to have been completely forgotten.  “He beat me up, at the park, and none of you believed me, none of you cared! He called mum loads of names! He does it every day!”

I felt their eyes back on me, staring me down, making me feel heavier and heavier, as if the table and the floor were sucking me down.  “Just shut up, shut up,” she started saying, the anger rising in her voice again, her shoulders lifting once more, stiffening with it.  “You’re so stupid, so stupid! Just shut up!”

“This is serious Danny,” my brother saw fit to tell me over her head. “You’re thirteen and you’ve been arrested. You know it goes on file?  You know that will be on record for the rest of your life?”

“Goddamn it,” mum said then, wrenching free from him and seeming to come undone all over again, as she took up her stalking. “Are you trying to drive me insane?  Are you?  Is that it?  Is that your master plan eh? Because you’re going about it the right way, you really are, you’re really close to achieving it Danny!  Since we moved here you’ve been nothing but trouble! You’re a disgrace! I can’t even look at you that’s how ashamed I am of you!”

“Well I’m ashamed of you too.”  I shouldn’t have said it.  I should have kept my mouth shut and took it.  But that wasn’t the way it went between us.  That wasn’t the way it worked.  Okay, smashing Higgs nose and getting arrested was probably the worst thing I had ever done, but that didn’t change the history, the tradition.  She screamed, I answered back, she screamed and so on.  It was what I was used to; what I had come to expect.

She stopped pacing.  One hand dangled with the cigarette.  Dangled in mid-air.  The other rose slowly and waveringly towards her hair.  “What did you say?”

John was shaking his head at me.  “I said I’m ashamed of you too.”  I was feeling it now, as I stared back at her, and all the reasons I could think of were flocking viciously to my mind, all the things she had done.  “It’s not just me who’s a disgrace,” I said, my voice shaking just a little, my hands tightening on the table behind.  “What about you?  You and Bradley at it in the lounge! Then it’s over, and some other prick is calling you up!  Who the hell is he?  Most of the fights I’ve been in have been over you, me defending you when they call you a slut!  Am I supposed to just ignore it if someone calls you a slut?”

The hand had found the hair.  It rested there weakly.  The fingers curled slowly into the scalp.  She squeezed her eyes tightly together and then shrieked; “Just shut up! I don’t want to hear another word come out of your mouth!

            “Just go upstairs,” my brother warned me then, looking really nervous.  I took a deep breath.  I shook my hair out of my eyes.  I thought about her in the hall that morning, twirling the phone cord around her finger, while her body looked fluid and weak with something inside that caused me nothing but alarm. 

            “Who’s the new guy?” I asked her. “When you gonna’ start bringing him home?”

            She now had both hands in her hair and they were clawing and scraping, and the cigarette fell from her fingers, and lay smouldering on the lino.  “I’m warning you…”

            “I need to know,” I said. “I need to know who the next twat is! Before long he’ll be walking all over my house and Higgs’ll have even more reason to call you a slut!”

            I glanced at John, so her hand, coming for me, had a head start.  I didn’t get the chance to duck or dodge it.  She slapped me hard across the cheek, so hard I sort of fell back onto the table, and my school bag slithered from the edge and slumped onto the floor. For the smallest and strangest of moments all three of us just stared at the floor, at the bag and at the cigarette, lying where they were not supposed to be, and I wondered what we were supposed to do, or say now.  Then she put her hands over her mouth and made this gulping sound.  I swallowed my own tears and walked quickly out of the room. 

14

 

            I cycled home from Cedar View, sweaty, grass stained, and with a ten pound note clutched in one hand.  The smile on my face made my cheeks ache.  Michael had been right, didn’t you know it?  He had forced us on, knocking on door after door, dazzling people with his bright smile and knowing eyes.  I don’t know how so many resisted him, to be honest, but it was Lucy’s dad, Mr. Chapman who gave us a break.  The best thing was though, not only had Mr. Chapman let us mow his lawn, but his neighbour, Mr. Wilson had wandered over and asked us to do his as well!  I had pushed the lawnmower carefully up and down Mr. Chapman’s lawn, with Michael’s words ringing in my head; prove them wrong, prove them wrong, make them think well of you.  It made sense.  It was sort of lovely.

I slammed my bike down in the drive and sauntered into the house, wearing this huge lazy grin on my face.  My mother was in the lounge, sprawled in front of the telly with her dressing gown on.  There was a little bundle of white tissues on the arm of the sofa beside her.  She wiped her eyes when she saw me, and I proudly walked right up and pressed the ten pound note into her hand.  “What’s this?”

“I’ve been cutting lawns,” I told her, throwing myself onto the sofa beside her.  “On Cedar View Hill.  I told John I could get a job too!”

She closed her hand hesitantly over the note, and half smiled, half frowned at me. “Well done,” she said.  “That’s really good.  On your own?”

“No, with Mike. Loads of people said no at first, but then some said yes.  We kept trying.”  I was basking in my own glory at that moment, I have to admit it.  I felt great.  I lifted my aching ankles onto the coffee table and crossed one over the other.  She was turning the money over in her hand, no doubt questioning whether I had just stolen it or something.  It didn’t matter to me though, whether she doubted me or not, I just felt like I had got one over on her, and on John, and that was enough.  In your face, I wanted to shout at her.  Michael had been right, I reflected, it did feel good proving people wrong.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” my mother said slowly, as if she were picking her words very carefully.  She spoke to me like that a lot.  It was either that, or the anger.  I wondered if she had ever truly felt relaxed around me.  “And you were right this morning, as it happens,” she went on, not meeting my eye.  “I am worried about money at the moment.  Housing are taking ages to sort my claim out, and I’m not getting the extra hours I was promised at work so…” she trailed off for a moment, seemingly distracted by the frayed sleeve of her dressing gown.  I waited, sensing more.  “To be honest, things have been a bit strained lately, between Frank and me.  You know, us grown ups and our complicated lives!” She laughed a short hollow laugh, and looked back at her sleeve. “But anyway, I’m going to look for another job as well, you know, to help make ends meet.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying to me.  I didn’t want to push it and ask for more, so I just nodded and smiled at her, appreciating her honesty.  I felt rather grown up then, sat there beside her, with money I had earned in her hand, and her telling me what was going on.  I had to read between the lines, of course; things were obviously not great between her and Frank, but that was her business. If it was fizzling out, then great.  I could forget about the whole Project Sleazebag thing.

Just then, we both jumped at the sound of the front door bursting open and then slamming again in the hallway.  John appeared, red faced and breathless in the lounge doorway.  “John?” my mother asked automatically, as he stared in at us wildly.  She got to her feet and positioned herself between him and me.

“You!” he shouted, pointing a finger at me.  I got up slowly.

“What?”

“What’s the matter?” mum asked him.  His chest was heaving up and down so fast, I wondered if he had ran all the way home from work, and if so, why?  I didn’t think I had ever seen him look like that before, like he wanted to kill me.  He normally just viewed me with distain and disinterest.

“Him!” John shouted, throwing the finger my way again. I threw up my hands in response.

“What have I done?”

Mum was looking from me to him, her brow heavy with a worried frown, her arms sort of half spread out, as if keeping us apart.  “John calm down,” she told him. “What’s happened?”

“I just got fired, that’s what happened!” He finally lowered the accusing finger and placed both hands breathlessly on his hips.  He was glaring at me, eyes dark with anger, and chest still rising and falling rapidly.  “I just got fired from my job, because of him.” He fixed me with a rigid stare.

“What?” my mother cried.

“How is that my fault?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything!” But even as I spoke, I remembered Eddie Higgs, at the bottom of the steps to the cinema, his face crushed and his dream in tatters, and then I knew, then I knew exactly what this was about.  I took a sort of sliding step towards the door.  I wanted to be gone.  I closed my mouth, felt my throat grow dry, and tried like hell not to let my guilt show.

“Why on earth would they fire you?” mum begged, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes burning desperately into Johns.  “Why would they do that?”

“The manager called me in to see him,” John told her, wiping his shining brow with the back of one hand.  “The manager of the whole centre, is Mr. Higgs, in case you didn’t know. Whose precious son, happens to be classmates with him!” The accusing finger was back again, heading my way.   I felt like ducking and diving from it, refusing to accept that it was mine.  “He tells me there’s been a lot of bother with some kids, bullying his son, and he has to let me go.”

Mums increasingly desperate eyes now swivelled to meet mine.  They were colder now, and they challenged me. “Oh God, what have you done?”

“Nothing.”

“Danny and Mr. Higgs’ son, have been having some kind of war,” John went on, and as I looked at my mother then, I could see it hitting her, wave by wave, as her expression changed from concern, to shock, to knowing dread.  “Apparently Danny and his mates have been playing cruel tricks on his son, I have no idea what, but the man is pretty pissed off about it and doesn’t want me there.”

I took another step towards the door and crossed my arms. “He can’t fire you, that can’t be right. He can’t fire you because of what I did.”

John came into the room, almost as if he sensed me moving closer and wanted to be away from me.  He stalked up to the window and he was shaking his head. “Well guess what?  He did!”

“But he can’t…you didn’t do anything..” I started to protest, but then I stopped when I saw the looks on both their faces.  John was just glaring at me.  His hands were on his hips, and his breath was coming out short and sharp from his nostrils. My mother stared at me and then advanced on me.

“No but you did!” she screamed, losing it then, the way I had seen her do a thousand times before.  If she had been holding anything, she would have smashed it against the wall, but all she had was her dressing gown and her hair, and her hands moved frantically from one to the other, gripping at the top of the gown, and then raking across her scalp.  “What did you do?  What the hell did you bloodywell do? What did you do to get John fired?  Oh my God Danny!”

I bit my lip, and looked out at the stairs.  I swallowed the lump that had taken over my throat and scratched at a mosquito bite on my elbow.  “Nothing,” I murmured, eyes down. “It was just a stupid prank, a joke.  He does stuff all the time…they didn’t have to fire John over it!”  I should have kept quiet.  Played it dumb and shuffled off to my room.  My mothers’ eyes were on fire.  She walked quickly around the back of the sofa and gripped the back of it, as if she did not trust her hands to be anywhere near me.

“Danny!” she shrieked in this horrible fishwife tone.  I winced.  She was so angry her face was shaking.  “John,” she said, not taking her eyes off me. “It will be okay.  This must be some kind of mistake, it must be.  I’ll get dressed and go down there. They can’t punish you for what your brother gets up to!”

“Don’t bother,” John said, turning to the window, and scratching at the back of his red neck.  “There’s no point.  I can’t work there now.  I can’t work somewhere the boss has it in for me.”

“Danny can go down there and apologize,” she said then, her fingers white and splayed against the back of the paisley sofa.  “That’s what he’ll do.  He’ll grovel and say sorry and promise to make it up to his son!”

I shook my head at her. I think I might have smiled.  “No way.”

“Get to your room,” she said it like her mouth was full of grit, like her throat was stuffed with disappointment.  She didn’t look at me then.  Her eyes were swimming in her pale face.  I took a deep breath, and walked out of the room.  I ran up the stairs, and as I did, I kind of wanted to yell back at them.  I don’t know what.  Anything.  Anything that would make them understand, but I knew it was pointless.  So I stomped up the stairs, followed by their silence.  I opened and closed my door without going in, and squatted down on the landing to listen instead.   The first thing I heard was my mother’s gasping sob.

And then John said; “Mum, I’m going to Leeds earlier than I planned.”

Shocked silence.  Nothing.  Me breathing.  The smell of washing detergent coming from the open airing cupboard door.  “What?” My mother sounding small and cold and afraid.  “You can’t.  You can’t!”

“I have to mum, I have to.  I can’t stay here anymore.”

“But don’t be so silly, I need you here!”

“Mum, I’m going soon anyway, what difference does it make if I go sooner?  I just want to get on with it now, you know?  Get there and get settled.”

“Things are not good at the moment John…”  She was sniffing, and clearing her throat.  I heard him sigh, and he didn’t sound impressed or concerned.

“You’ll work things out with Frank.”

“It’s over between me and Frank.  I need to get a new job.”  Her voice broke then, and the sobbing commenced.  I pushed my face against the railings to hear more.  Their voices had softened, now that I had gone.

“Well mum…” John sighed again.  “You’ll find one.”

“It’s not just that…” she wailed at him.  “It’s the money, it’s this house and it’s him!”

“Well he’s right in a way.  They can’t fire me for what’s gone on between him and this boy.  But I can’t be bothered to fight it mum, what’s the point?  I might as well just go now, just go and get settled.”

“I don’t want you to go John…I can’t…I can’t do it on my own.”  Her voice had dropped to a whisper now.  I imagined her hands, covering her face, her long delicate fingers shielding her frightened eyes.  Her neat red nails creeping into her hair line.

“Mum, for God’s sake…”  He sounded like he was trying to be patient.  I heard his voice get closer to the lounge door.  “I need my own life.  I need to get out on my own.  I can’t do all this anymore.  Do you know I’ve felt like an adult since I was a child?  Sorting you out when things go wrong, trying to stop you two from killing each other.  I need my own life.”

She gave him nothing but silence.  He waited, and then he sighed softly and his footsteps trod a heavy retreat into the hallway.  He came up the stairs and I ducked back into my room, but not before he saw me.  He put his hand out and stopped the door from closing.

“You heard all that then?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Should have known.  You’re always creeping around.”

“Only because you guys never tell me anything.”

“You’ll have to behave better when I’m gone,” he said shortly, before turning away. “Or God knows what’ll happen to you.”

I didn’t expect her to call us down to dinner, but she did.  I left my room reluctantly, irritably unable to shake the unsettling weight of guilt from my shoulders.  John and I tiptoed down the stairs together, each feeling sheepish for our own reasons.  She had made us sausage and mash, but she had no intentions of joining us.  She was looking strangely upbeat and serious in a navy blue knee length dress, and leather boots.  John coughed as he slid into chair at the table. “Off out?”  She would not look at him as she checked her handbag over the sink.  I could feel the hostility coming from her; it was like a flood of ominous vibrations, and I did not want to get in the way of them.  I slunk to my place and kept quiet.

“Going to look for a better job,” she said, seizing a lipstick from the bag and slashing it angrily across her lips.  “Have no choice do I?  And then I’m going to meet some friends for a drink or two in town.  If that’s okay with you lot.  About time I let my hair down and had some fun for a change.  Don’t wait up.”  With that, she dropped the lipstick into the back and strolled briskly from the house.  I looked up, and could not resist smirking at my brothers’ bereft expression.

“Ahh, pissed off with you too, that makes a change.”

He grunted and picked up his fork. “Tough.  I’m going anyway.  Soon as I bloody can.”

“I got a job today.  Cutting lawns.”

“Good for you.”

We ate the rest of our dinner in silence.

15

 

            At last,  she came in alone.   She didn’t have to say anything, she didn’t have to explain this, or say a word about any of it.  She came to the bar cloaked in a confident sorrow.  Her eyes were like a warm summers day framed with butterflies.  I wanted to hold her with my hands and lick her from her toes up to her skull, and then let go of her again.  It was exactly the way I had known it would be.  I went to her. I drifted from one end of the bar to the other, because that was exactly the way it was meant to be.  I did not smile, because I did not need to.  She could see it all in my eyes, just as I could see it in hers.  This was the beginning.

She cocked her head a little, and her stark blue eyes dropped to the bar, before rising again, swimming up liquidly to meet mine.  I held her gaze and did not release her.  Her shoulders were defeated.  Her arms crossed wearily upon the bar, but her eyes were hard like mine, hard with knowing, and wanting.  She smiled, a drifting delicate smile, which tilted her expression upwards, ironing out the worry lines.  “I need a gin and tonic,” she purred.  I lifted my eyebrows in question.  “Actually, make it a double,” she said.

“Coming right up,” I replied calmly.  I held her gaze a little longer, cementing our agreement, our quest, before turning away to make her drink.  When I turned back, she was looking over her shoulder, and had climbed onto a stool.  Her hair was swept up and clasped loosely at the back.  Her neck was this silent, tender thing, watching me.  She sighed, not knowing I was there, and her whole body shook in the little blue dress.  I cleared my throat and she jerked back to face me, and the smile whipped across her face, and she laughed.

“That was quick!”  She beamed, and unclasped her purse.  I shook a hand at her.

“On the house.”

She closed the purse slowly, her expression coy. “Really?  Are you sure?”

“It’s a new tactic we’re trying, sort of like a reward system,” I shrugged, placing my hands down on the bar.  “We like to encourage people to come back.”

She giggled, and those amazing black lashes batted accordingly.  She was beautiful.  A class act.  “Well thanks,” she smiled.  “Everyone kept saying to try this place out.  They said it used to be rubbish, but now it’s on the up?”

I nodded. “That’s what they’re all saying.  Place is rammed most nights.”

“And so, you’re the?  Manager?”

I folded my arms on the bar, leaning down towards her. “Co-owner,” I corrected her, and then I stuck my hand out.  There was no time to waste dicking around.  I had waited for her long enough.  Patience had run its rightful course, and the moment had come.  I always knew when the moment had come, and I was never wrong about it.  “Lee Howard,” I told her.  She laughed, tilting her chin up as she did, giving me another flash of still, cream neck.

“Kay Bryans,” she said, shaking my hand.  “Nice to meet you.  And thanks for the drink.”  She picked up the glass with her other hand and held it up to me.  I nodded graciously and gave her hand the smallest of squeezes.  It was not intended to hurt, or shock. It was just a little message, and as I had known it would, I saw it register in her eyes.  They widened just briefly, in a tiny second that erupted inside her with lust and fear.  Colour stole into her cheeks.  She sipped from the drink, and I lowered her hand.

“Good to meet you,” I told her, with a wink, before I walked away and left her to it.

I had things to do out the back.  The office was still a mess, so I closed the door behind me and proceeded to get on with it.  I made myself a strong cup of tea and sat down behind the desk.  As I worked, I thought about my patience.  I thought about waiting.  I saw life simply.  It was arranged in steps.  Blocks.  Blocks of life.  Life is a pavement, or a wall, moments stacking up upon each other to build something complete.  You start with nothing, and you end up as something, if you stack it right, if you build it well.  You only achieve that with patience and care.

When I returned to the bar, with my shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbows, the club was full.  A sea of people rocked and writhed before my eyes.  Men in shirts held pints of beer above heads, and slid their hands around the waists of women they did not know.  Women danced and cackled, and reached up to chain themselves around mens necks.  The music pumped and throbbed.  I had no interest in what it was.  I paid someone else to worry about that.  I surveyed it from the background.  I felt like I was standing on the edge of my own kingdom.  Everything I could see, at some point soon, would belong to me.

She was still sat at the bar.  Alone.  There were men all around her, young and old, grotesque and beautiful, and all of them were trying to catch her eye, but none of them dared reach out to her.  She sat at the bar, alone, a beauty trapped by its own rarity.  Like something sacred and unique and dangerous.  She held her head up and smiled courteously.  I appeared in front of her, and pushed a rum and coke into her waiting hands, and I watched this small, flickering smile tremble across her face.  “I’m on a break,” I leant in and shouted above the music.  “Fancy having a drink with me and telling me why you look so sad?”

She pulled back a little, laughing, one perfect hand hovering below her neck.  Then she leant forward and I felt her breath on my ear.  “You might need a long break if you really want to hear all about it,” she warned, and sipped her drink.

I nodded to a cluster of chairs in the corner, and she had to raise herself up on the bar stool in order to see where I meant.  Then she grinned and nodded, and slipped down to the floor with her drink in one hand and her purse in the other.  I met her in the crowd, and placed my hand firmly on the small of her back.  I could feel the curve of her lower spine, rising up into the arc of her backside.  She smiled up at me, and slipped her arm through mine, and that was it.  Just as I had known.  Just as I had planned.  We were linked.

12

We had instructions to meet the others outside the fish and chip shop two doors down from the cinema in the high street.  They were there before us, and started hooting and whistling when they saw us hand in hand.  We let go, and became enclosed in the circle of hand slapping and giggling.  Michael slung one arm around me and the other around Zoe. “I just spotted the victim,” he informed us, his head low and his eyes alive. “His mum dropped him off and he went in for tickets. As soon as he comes out, Zoe goes over to meet him. Drops a nice dose of reality on his feet and we arrive in time to see his face melt!  Everyone got it?”  We all nodded, and shuffled our feet around to face the right way.

We waited, until Higgs was spotted coming back down the steps from the cinema, two freshly purchased tickets clutched in one hand.  I suppose if there was any point where I felt sorry for him, it was then.  It was tragic really, watching the way he hopped exuberantly down the steps, his eyes scanning the crowd for Zoe.  He was dressed in beige chino trousers, and a neatly ironed shirt.  His blonde curtains looked bouncy and shiny as his head swivelled from side to side.  Zoe took her cue from Michael then, and strode confidently out from our secretive huddle.  I watched her go, and I had to agree with Michael that she had scary good looks.  A goddess in the making, she had long tousled blonde hair which she threw expertly from one shoulder to the other.  She was ridiculously tall and well-built for a fourteen year old.  To me, she looked like trouble piled into white sling backs.  Her blue almond shaped eyes were caked in make-up, and she had her body on full display that night, in denim hot pants and a low cut black top.

We all watched her approach him, her hips swaying, her arse wiggling, and we all watched his mouth drop open in greedy hunger, and his eyes bulge in their sockets.  She stopped right in front of him, hip cocked to one side, and she did the hair toss, and anyone could see that he was putty in her hands.  “Come on,” Michael said then, and we followed him through.  As we got nearer I saw two things happen to Eddie Higgs’ face.  Zoe leant towards his ear, and as he listened, his forehead creased in confusion.  He even tipped his head to one side, as if he was sure he had misheard her.  Then he clocked us coming up behind her, and his face, it just crumpled.  It just folded.  I’d never seen anything like it, and I couldn’t deny that I loved every bit of it.  I wished I had a video camera to record it, that’s how good it was.  I would have loved to be able to rewind that disintegrating face again and again.  Realization smacked him between his eyes, and in that moment he saw and understood everything, and even his shoulders caved in on him.

We glided up just in time to hear Zoe really put the boot in; “…and if you think I’d ever go near a slimy, tedious, nasty, ugly little mummy’s boy like you, you’re fucking crazy!” She sneered at him, looking him up and down as if she wanted to vomit on him. “You make me sick! I wouldn’t go on a date with you if you paid me!”

Michael slipped one arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Whoops! Looks like there’s been some kind of mix up here!” he chortled at Higgs and his misery.

“Monkey face, did you really think you had a chance with a hot girl like that?” Billy was smiling broadly, loving every minute of it.  “You knob end!”

“Loser…” someone else sniggered from behind.

“Very funny,” Higgs spoke up finally, and his voice was like granite, hard and flat, and dripping with venom.  He jabbed a finger towards Zoe. “The only way you’ll ever get any is by getting paid for it, you cheap brain dead slut!”

“Ah that’s not what you were saying just now Eddie,” Zoe teased, sticking her lower lip out at him.

“Still want to see the film Higgs?” I asked him, with a laugh.  His lips pursed in fury, and he suddenly ripped up the pair of tickets, threw them down and then spat on the ground next to Zoe’s feet.

“Bunch of fucking filthy loser scumbags!” he muttered, his voice shaking with anger.  “You’re not funny!  Just sad and pathetic, and I’ll get you all back for this!”

“You can call this payback from us actually,” Michael corrected him, leaning towards him with a darker expression now.  “Ganging up on Danny when it was meant to be a fair fight, four against four!  That’s how you get your kicks, being a nasty little coward. This is how we get ours.  All is fair in love and war.”

Higgs looked like he was torn between a tantrum and tears.  His face had turned bright red.  His eyes stared in a way that made him look rather deranged.  “Oh ha ha,” he sneered. “Really fucking funny, the lot of you! Enjoy it while it lasts you skanky bunch of cunts! Go on home to your slut whore mothers!”  He shoved through us then, and we scattered briefly, doubled up with laughter and scorn.  Michael slapped me on the back.

“Slut whore mothers!” he cried. “Sounds like a good name for a band!”

“What’s he gonna’ tell his mum?” Billy giggled. “He’ll have to phone her up to come get him!”

“More to the point, what’s his revenge gonna’ be?” wondered Jake, as he flicked the end of his cigarette to the ground. Michael just laughed and shoved him towards the cinema.

“Oh stop worrying old man, nothing he can do can ever top that!”

They piled energetically up the steps, but I hung back to walk with Lucy.  I glanced cautiously at her face, unable to stop wondering what her dad would have made of all that. “Bit cruel really, wasn’t it?” I asked her.  She shrugged, and she was smiling this radiant, flushed sort of smile.

“Not really. Not compared to what he says and does to people at school, and always people who are like shy, or weak or whatever. He’s a nasty bully Danny, always has been.” She slipped her arm through mine then, and I could have hooted with joy. “Come on, let’s forget about it now, I came here to see a movie!”

I drifted off easily that night, for two reasons.  One, all I could think about was how Lucy had leaned against me in the dark of the cinema, for the entirety of the film, and two, I had The Smiths in my ears, and I am pretty sure I fell asleep with a smile on my face.  I woke up suddenly at some late hour though.  You shut your mouth, how can you say, I go about things the wrong way? Billy’s dads mix tape was still whirring in my ears, and it was a strange lyric to wake up to. I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does. Beautiful though, don’t you think? My headphones fell down as I rolled over, and it was then that I heard her sobbing.  I sat up in bed, rubbing at my face with one hand, and straining my ears to listen.  It was unmistakable really, and I didn’t know what I should do about it.  I could hear water running in the bathroom, and on top of that, my mother crying.  I just sat and stared at the bedroom door.  Part of me felt an instant stab of guilt, and thought maybe I should go to her, but somehow I couldn’t do it, couldn’t make myself move.  So I just sat there uselessly, listening to her trying to control herself.  She was really crying though, you could tell.  She was running the water to try to cover up the noise.  A short time later, I heard her turn off the tap, and creak her way out of the bathroom.  She was sniffling as she padded down the landing in her slippers.  She closed her own door behind her, and that was that.  Silence.

The next morning I found John in the kitchen eating cereal before work.  “How was your date?” he asked me, with a grin.  I was sort of smiling, so I guess he already knew it had gone well.

“Really, really good! Are you working today?”

“Yep,” he nodded, washing a mouthful of cereal down with a glug of tea. “Some of us have to earn the money to keep this place up.”

I opened the cupboard to find something to eat. “Is mum still in bed?”

John drained his tea and placed it next to the sink with his empty cereal bowl. “Yes, she is, and if I were you I would stay out of her way today and not annoy her.”

I frowned at him. “Why?  What’s wrong with her? She’s gone all weird.”

John shrugged under my suspicious glare.  He knew more than I did, I could tell.  They were always confiding in each other and keeping things from me.  “She’s probably just worried about money,” he said. “Housing benefit is not sorted yet, so my job is kind of keeping us afloat at the moment.”

“I could get a job!”

John snorted and opened the back door. “Who would give you a job?”

“Oh thanks!”

“Just being honest,” he shrugged again.  I slammed the cupboard door and turned to face him properly.

“Oh yeah, great, just like mum! You guys are great at slagging me off all the time, you know, and you never notice when I’m trying to help!”

“Whatever,” John muttered, bored of me already. “Just stay out of her way, all right? Don’t give her anything else to stress about.”

“Oh go to work golden boy, go on.”

After he left, I poured myself a bowl of coco pops and sat at the table to eat them.  I glanced at the ceiling when I heard my mother in the shower.  I felt a stirring of unease in my belly.  John’s words were playing over and over inside my head as I spooned my cereal into my mouth.  Who would give me a job?  What did he mean by that?  Why did he think no one would give me a job?  I gritted my teeth and wanted to show him how wrong he was.  I could get a job, I thought petulantly.  I could earn a bit of money to help mum out, and then she would be less stressed and grumpy, wouldn’t she?  With a plan of sorts forming in my mind, I dumped my empty bowl in the sink and dashed upstairs to get dressed. I bumped right into her, coming out of the bathroom.  She had her hair all wound up in a towel on top of her head, and her dressing gown on, and she stifled a yawn when she saw me.

“Morning.  How was the date?”

“Oh fine,” I said, pausing outside my bedroom.  The question caught me a bit off guard.  I rested one hand on the door handle.  “It was really good actually.  Fun.”

She yawned again and tugged her pale green dressing gown tighter around her body.  She had that look about her again, I thought, as I watched her.  Her eyes, slightly narrowed, her head sort of low, her forehead creased, as if try as she might, she just couldn’t figure out who I was, or where I had come from.  “And how was the big introduction?  With her dad?”

“Not too bad,” I winced. “He just asked me a load of questions.”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“Like how we were settled in, and how your job was, and what my father did.”  I watched her expression become instantly hostile and aggressive, her nostrils flaring wide open, and her shoulders bunching right up to her neck.  She made a noise in her throat and rolled her eyes.

“Great!  So what did you say?”

“Nothing.  Just said he wasn’t around.”

“Well you’d think he would already know that,” she snapped. “The way gossip spreads in small towns.  He was just being rude, asking you that.”

“Was he?”

“Probably just thinks he is better than us, with his fancy house and his fancy car, and his perfect family! He was trying to make you uncomfortable asking all that!”

I didn’t know what to say.  I looked at my bedroom door, wanting to go in and close it tightly behind me.  Then I looked at my mother, and she met my eyes angrily, and I wanted to ask her was I the reason she was so angry?  Was I the sole cause of her anger and shame? “Why do people do that?” I sort of mumbled and shrugged at her.

“Don’t ask me,” she replied icily. “I’m just trying to do the best I can, raising two kids on my own, and working my arse off for peanuts. Seems that’s never enough for some people.”

“John said you were worried about money.”

Right away I regretted saying it.  Her eyes flashed at me, and she sucked breath up her nose just as Grandma had done over the phone.  “Oh don’t you start!”

“What?  I was just saying.”

“Oh go,” she said then, storming towards her bedroom, waving a hand at me dismissively as if the very sight of me aggravated her existence.  “Go, go and play, go and do whatever you do!  I’ve got enough to worry about today.”  She went into her room and closed the door.  I felt myself harden towards her then.  What was the point in trying to be on her side?  Just me being alive and breathing seemed to piss her off on a daily basis.

I dressed and left the house, grabbed my bike and skidded it around the corner to Michael’s.  Even from the front, I could hear the screaming. I grimaced, dropped my bike at the mouth of the alley, and picked my way over the broken bricks and split bin bags, to reach his back gate.  The tone of his mothers voice, shrieking and wailing over the rooftops, reminded me of my mums, when she was really mad.  Thin and tortured, irritated to the brink, a tone that begged, just get away from me, for God’s sake just get away! I pushed the gate open, and heard a deep male voice joining in.  He was basically telling her to shut the fuck up.  Just then Michael came spilling from the open back door, his face scowling, his movements hurried.  Something smashed inside the house, and he ran faster, not even seeing me until he had practically ran into me at the gate. “Shittinghell!” he burst out, hands in his hair. “Where’d you spring from?”

I grinned, and turned back down the alley. “My mum was pissing me off so I came to call for you. Sounds like yours is doing a better job though.”

He picked his bike up wearily from the end of the garden and followed me out. “Fucking crazy people,” he muttered darkly, shaking his head as he lifted his bike over the worst of the rubble.  “I would introduce you to my dad mate, but it’s a bit of a war zone in there at the moment.”

“No problem. I’ve got an idea.  You want to try and make some money?”

We paused at the end of the alley, climbing onto our bikes.  Michael pushed his shirt sleeves up to his elbows and looked at me quizzically.  “Why and how?” he questioned.  I shrugged.

“I dunno.  But get this.  John tells me mum is worried about money, which is why she’s being all shitty for no reason, so I say I could get a job and help out, and he says no one would give me a job!”

Michael looked appalled. “Did he? Idiot!”

“I know.  He thinks he’s so great.”

“We can get a job, easy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  It’s summer.  Everyone’s lawns need cutting.  The rich people don’t like cutting their own grass, do they?”  Michael pushed off and started to cycle slowly away.  I kicked off and followed him.

“Hmm?”

“Yeah, come on! We’ll cut grass, trim hedges, that kind of thing.  Easy money.  I’m telling you!”

He sounded so full of hope and enthusiasm, that I couldn’t help but feel excited.  As we rode off, I thought about how he was always like that.  Always smiling, and finding the light side of things.  My dark mood lifted, but it didn’t last for long.  An hour later we had been turned down by countless people, and decided to go for the park for a smoke instead.  I was silent by then, having slipped into a bit of a depression about it all.  Michael sat on the back of the bench and I waited while he rolled two perfect cigarettes with papers and tobacco.  He was proud of his efforts, I could tell.  He laid them out on one palm and peered at them from each angle.  “What do you think?”

I was sat on the bench, scuffing my feet back and forth against the dry grass. I nodded at them. “Very good.  Very professional.”  He smiled gently, lit one and passed it to me.

“Easier to steal papers and tobacco,” he explained. “My dad leaves his tin lying about the place.”

I took a long drag and glared back down the hill at the town we could see beyond us.  I didn’t want to bother knocking on any more doors.  It was bringing me down.  Seeing how they all lived, what cars they drove, what clothes they wore.  I didn’t want to know.  “What were they fighting about anyway?” I asked Michael, slumping forward over my knees.

“Fuck knows,” he laughed. “Money probably. I dunno.  I try to leave the house as soon as they kick off.”

“I don’t know how you turned out so well mate.”

He sniggered. “I know, I’m a credit to myself, aren’t I?”

I nodded, and smoked silently, staring and thinking about all the people that had said no to us today.  The ones who had just looked us up and down and closed their doors quickly, as if we were contagious in some way.  “Bastards,” I muttered.

“Who?”

“Everyone,” I stated, gesturing to the park and the streets beyond.  “All those gits saying no.  Lucy’s dad last night.  Higgs.  My mum.  All of ‘em.”

Michael nodded solemnly. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

I looked up at him. “Why’d they all say no to cutting their stupid grass? It’s not like some rich kid is gonna’ come along and offer to do it!  They don’t need the money!”

“Oh chill out,” Michael laughed at me.  “We’re trying again in a minute.”

“I just wanted to shut John up.  Give my mum some money.”

“We will,” Michael said brightly.  “We’ll ask Lucy’s dad next.  He has a huge fuck off lawn!”

I looked at him, shaking my head. “Piss off, there is no way I’m asking him!”

“Come on, think about it.  He’s a busy man, he has a huge garden, and you want to impress him, yeah?” I squirmed on the bench, growling slightly, because I knew he was right, but I detested the thought of knocking on his door and asking, after the humiliation of last night.   “It will look good, trust me,” Michael went on, smiling back at me, the breeze rifling through his black hair and lifting it away from his eyes. “If he says no, we’ll ask all his neighbours.  Someone will say yes eventually Danny. And then we’ll do the best job anyone’s ever done, do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No really,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to ask her dad and get humiliated again.”

“Get used to it mate,” Michael said, his dark eyes twinkling. “You’re from the estate and they think your mother is a whore. You’re gonna’ be humiliated your entire fucking life anyway.”

I stared up at him, my mouth dropping open in genuine surprise and hurt.  Michael stared right back at me though, his eyes shining in warmth and wickedness, and I wondered again, how the hell did he do it? How did he remain so positive and upbeat? “Well thanks mate,” I told him in confusion.  He giggled at me.

“It’s the truth,” he said. “Just like with me.  Always gonna’ have people think the worst of me, because of who my family are, and stuff.  So what?” He shrugged his shoulders and took a quick puff of his roll up, before hurling the butt behind him into the grass. “You can do two things, if you ask me.  You can give them exactly what they expect, and play the part.  Which can be pretty fun at times.  Or you can make them eat their own words every now and then.  You ever thought of that?”

“You’ve lost me,” I admitted. “What was last night then?”

“Oh come on,” he groaned. “We’ve got nothing to lose having a war with Higgs.  Nothing to gain from being nice to him.  But what about Lucy?  What about people like Mr. Chapman? Wouldn’t you want to prove him wrong and have him think well of you?”

I stared back out across the field below, blinking as I considered this. I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit it, but I was starting to think he might be right.  “People are so wrong about you,” I told him then, sucking the life out of my own cigarette and throwing down the butt.

He let out this delicious peal of laughter and leapt down from the back of the bench, slapping me on the knee on his way down.  “Come on then, you whining little shitbag, let’s get back out there before you change your mind!”

13

 

            I’d spoken to her at last.  It had become a regular thing, most Friday nights, her and her workmates.  Her, and that man.  Well, I didn’t make a special effort to get to her, or to seek her out, but people noticed me after a while.  People noticed me because I was the boss, and punters, clubbers, whatever you wanted to call them, they noticed things like that, they noticed who was in charge.  But it’s not just that.  People have always noticed me.  My mother used to say I had something about me.

It does not pay to get big headed about these things, but when you get to a certain age, and you have met enough people, and clocked up enough experience, then you get to be quite secure about what is fact.  She noticed me before she spoke to me, I know that for certain.  I caught her looking my way when I was training up the new girl.  She was at the bar, squeezed unceremoniously between two burly, bearded men.  I met her eyes very briefly, and my face remained impassive.  I finished training the new girl and left them all to it while I went out the back to make some phone calls.  I felt warm inside. I felt like I had given her a little bit.

The next Friday, she was in again.  She came in early, only half an hour after opening.  She had the usual gaggle of men and women with her, but I still got the feeling they were more acquaintances than friends.  When I watched her with them, it was like she stood apart from them all; despite the fact she was obviously interested in what they were saying, and she laughed and clapped and threw back her head, and looked to anyone who didn’t know better, like she was having a marvellous time with them all.

I knew better.

I was behind the bar, talking to one of the bar men.  He had been late the night before and needed a warning.  I kept it short and sharp and held his gaze the entire time; didn’t let his eyes leave mine for one second.  I saw him swallow thickly.

She came to the bar with a friend this time.  A tall, sallow faced woman with fake red hair and a turquoise dress on.  They waited while I finished my talk.  I was closest to them, so they tried to get my eye.  Short of waving at me, they were trying it all on.  Pushing their boobs against the bar, giggling and flicking their hair.  I could see her blonde fella in the corner, leaning in towards another woman.  I narrowed my eyes at her for one second.  I saw her eyes widen, just a little bit, and then I smiled.  I felt my face relax.  A smile is a magnificent thing. The effect is has on people.  The calming nature of it. The reassuring gesture that is universally accepted in this stark human world.  She smiled back.

I went to them.  “What can I get you ladies?”

I kept it short.  They wanted to talk, especially the red haired one.  They were keen to flirt, I could tell.  Women of their age often are.  They want to know they still have it.  Well, the red haired one never had it in the first place, I can tell you that.  I served them, smiled graciously, but kept things cool.  I was the boss, doing my job.  That was it.  I gave nothing away.  I just let her catch my eye one more time that night.