64

 

            I stayed as invisible as I could for the rest of the school term.  I was rarely seen anywhere, and I liked it that way.  It was safer for everyone.  I felt I had well and truly burned my bridges with Lucy, and on the rare occasions that I did make it into school, I ducked my head and looked the other way if I saw her coming.  “You’re being an idiot,” Michael told me angrily whenever I was around him long enough to listen to him speak.  “She just wants to talk to you! Why are you pushing us all away?”

“She’s better off without me,” I replied coldly, and walked away from him.  The only thing that kept me going, the only glint of light on the horizon was going to Chaos on a Friday night.  If music was my religion, then Chaos became my church.  I went every week without fail.  I went with the others, and I went on my own, it didn’t matter to me either way.  I went high and I went straight.  As long as I went, as long as I made it to Friday, then there was some joy and some pleasure, and the adrenalin from a happiness that eluded me the rest of the time.  I felt like a different person when I was on the dance floor, or when I was sat in the corner, just listening to the music thumping through the walls and up from the floorboards.  I felt the music beating in my veins and I remembered that I was alive, and that this was a life.  Friday was my day, my only day.  I would meet with Jaime first, if I had the money.  Sometimes he would come to Jack’s flat, sometimes he would meet me in the alley behind The Record Shop.  I never offered speed or anything else to Michael again, and he never asked me for any.

Anthony strolled into the record shop one day, wearing what looked like chefs whites under his big winter coat.  I felt the childish urge to laugh at him, and right away, he was smiling at me, with this mischievous sparkle in his dark eyes.  We looked at each other and it was like we both wanted to smile and laugh, though I had no idea why.  He gestured to himself and did a little bow. “What d’you think of the threads? Pretty cool huh?”  I just nodded and grinned, and he came up to me and patted my shoulder.  For some reason the gesture, and the weight of his hand on me, made me want to cry.

“Jaime said you had a job,” I said instead.

“Oh yes.  Working man of the house I am these days mate.  Mum’s done a runner, it would seem.  I am the proud father of a sixteen year old boy!”

We both laughed, and he patted my shoulder once more and then took his hand away and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.  “I’m sorry Danny,” he said then, and I could see it, the awful regret behind his eyes.  I shook my head at him. “No really,” he insisted. “I didn’t mean what I said to you that day.  I would never do that, you know that right?  We’re mates.  More than mates. You’re family. Yeah?”  He was staring right into my eyes, millions of unsaid things passing easily between us, and so I smiled at him and nodded, and watched the relief fill his face as his shoulders sagged with it.  “I mean it,” he told me. “You’re family.”

“Hey I deserved it,” I told him. “I’m sorry too, yeah? I wouldn’t, you know, ever do that again.  I haven’t.”

“I know that stupid,” he grinned and winked at me. “But hey, I am working on things, just so you know. To help you out, I mean.  I haven’t forgotten.  It’s just taking longer than I thought that’s all.”  I nodded and waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, so I had to assume that he would explain all to me when he needed to. “You’re alright though?” he asked me. “You’re doing okay?”

“I’m okay,” I told him, and he looked relieved.

I worried about it afterwards though.  I worried about what he was working on.  What did that mean?  What was going on between him and Jaime?  Did Anthony trust Jaime?  Was that a good idea, or an incredibly dangerous one?  Since as far as Howard knew, I had nothing whatsoever to with Mike or his brother, he had left them both alone.  But how long would it stay like that?  If Howard got a sniff of anything, if he even got an inkling that people were up to something behind his back….It didn’t bear thinking about.  What would happen to Michael if Anthony was sent back to prison?  They had no idea where their mother was.  The thought sent a shiver down my spine.  So when I saw them coming, I did my best to hide, and avoid them.  And when they showed up at Chaos, it was fine, because it was our world, and we were safe from view, and we were all united and full of hope and life, but then when it was over, I would go home alone.

Things were steady between Howard and I while my mother was away.  I sensed his calmness, his sense of control over me restored by the electric cable lashing.  He had me right back where he wanted me, and he knew it and he fucking loved it.  It gave him a smug fat look upon his dour face, and it made him relaxed, and it made him laugh.  He made me go about with him, as if I were his little pet.  In the company of other people, he would sling a fatherly arm around my shoulders, and tell them how I had got myself a job in the record shop.  He liked to keep up these false pretences and it made me wonder what his motives were underneath.  Did he hate me or love me?  Did he loathe me, or did he want me as his son?  There were times he appeared so reasonable.  Times he would join Jack and I in the flat, laughing at the TV, engaging in conversations, trying to coax me out of myself, trying to let me know how far we had come.  And then there were times he would grind his lit fags into my skin just for the hell of it, just because it made him feel good, and there were times he would stare deep into my eyes and say; “how much pain can you take eh? Tough little fucker.  How much can you take?”

“This is all wrong,” I would tell him.  But he didn’t understand.  I didn’t know what he understood, or what motivated him, and I didn’t think I ever would.  There were times I lay awake for hours dreaming up intricate ways to murder him, and there were times I just wanted him to be nice to me. Things changed again as soon as my mother returned from Leeds.  Figure that out.  He gets his precious Barbie doll wife back and goes all aggressive again.  He went back to complaining about me quitting the club to work in the fat mans shop instead.  He seemed constantly on edge, and he seemed to direct it all at my mother, as if my failings were all her fault.  He was quick to temper, and his expectations grew increasingly unrealistic.  Was he trying to push her away?  Would she finally get to see the real him, the monster he had kept under wraps for her for so very lon? Or did she already know?  I would lie on my bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling and listening to them arguing downstairs.

I wondered how long before he let it come down on her.  Before she felt the force of his feet, or his fists.  I felt like it was coming, or something was.  It felt like things were unravelling faster and I didn’t know whether I ought to welcome it or fear it.  I did everything I could to avoid the man.  Disappearing out of the back door if I heard him come through the front.  Leaving Jack’s flat if there was any hint of Howard coming over.  I did whatever it took to remain off his radar, to not get on his nerves with my existence.  But when Howard became fixated on something that irritated him, he was like a rabid dog attacking a bone with no meat on it.  He wouldn’t let it go.

With my mother back, I started going to school again.  She was in a constant nervous state about my attendance and my grades.  If I didn’t go, the school would phone her, threatening all sorts, winding her up into meltdown about my future.  She would cling all teary-eyed to Howard, as if he had all the answers, although she obviously had no idea what his answers usually involved.  So I would go back to school.  Trail my way through days of misery and boredom, just to please her, and she would go overboard with the praise and the encouragement at home.  Making me special dinners.  Buying me CD’s she thought I would like.  It was as if she had suddenly remembered my shadowy existence, and thought she ought to be nurturing it in some way.  She would be oblivious to the darkening rage on her husband’s face.  She did not seem to see the massive fists clenching and unclenching as she babbled on about how proud of me she was.  It was a no win situation.  Didn’t matter what I did.  Either way I would be pissing one of them off.

But then the answer hit me right between the eyes one afternoon when I was at school, sat slumped at my desk, while the children around me scribbled frantic notes in the margins of Hamlet.  I glanced around at them all; as usual unable to concentrate on anything for very long, the remains of last night’s highs giving me an ear bashing of a headache and a dull, sick feeling in my belly.  Being close to my peers just reminded me of the distance between us, how I was not one of them, and never had been.  I sat there, feeling the urge to escape building stronger and stronger inside of me.  I realized that I was trapped on a never ending roundabout of despair, unable to ever please anyone, least of all myself.  I suddenly started thinking about what Mr James had said to me once.  Something about having a hard job keeping me in this school if my behaviour continued.  The answer hit me then, and it was so easy and simple, it was almost beautiful.  There would be repercussions of course, but it would be worth it, just to be free of this place, this chain around my neck.  I smiled to myself and started to kick the chair in front of me, the chair occupied by Edward Higgs.

He turned to glare at me, and I stared back, my expression blank and uncaring.  I noticed how grown up Higgs looked these days.  He was so much taller and broader, and when I looked down at myself in comparison I felt stunted and fragile, and a surge of hatred rushed up from my guts.  I kicked his chair harder and harder, knocking him forward and into his desk.  “Idiot!” he hissed at me, before flinging his arm into the air. “Mrs Baker! Danny Bryans is kicking my chair on purpose!”

I felt the eyes of the class turn upon me in hungry wonder. Mrs Baker rose slowly from her desk, a fidgety look on her face.  She placed her hands on the desk and peered over her spectacles at me.  “Danny, what on earth are you doing?  Stop that please, there is no need to be disruptive.” But disruptive was exactly what I planned on being.  I kicked the chair harder, and harder, until Higgs gave up and got to his feet, holding up his hands in a gesture of frustration for the teacher.  “Danny!” she barked at me.  She left her desk rather reluctantly and approached mine, fat hands fluttering around her hips as her long floral skirt swishing around her ankles.  “Danny, that’s enough, what on earth are you playing at?  That’s enough I said!  Quite enough!”

I stopped kicking and stared up at her, narrowing my eyes. “Fuck you.”

A collective gasp of horror arose from the class, followed closely by an expectant silence, as they all stared at Mrs Baker, wondering what the hell she would do now.  I thought she looked confused.  Hurt even.  She shook her grey perm at me. “What did you just say?”

“I said fuck you,” I told her with a shrug. “What are you deaf?”

“Get out of my classroom right now!” She spoke through her teeth, and pointed a slightly shaking hand at the door. “Go to Mr James’s office right now!”

I got up and said nothing as I walked casually to the door, enjoying the stunned silence that followed me.  I closed the door behind me and traipsed down the corridor, trailing one hand lightly along the wall as I walked.  As I went, I inhaled all of the usual school smells for what I hoped would be the last time.  Blackboard dust, disinfectant floor cleaner, and canteen chips.  I arrived at the heads office and opened the door without knocking.  This was going to be fun.

Mr James was on the phone, and stared at me in surprise as I sauntered on in. “Let me call you back,” he said, and hung up on them.  He was frowning at me as he nodded at the chair opposite his.  I slumped into it and stared back at him.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked me.  “First you grace us with your presence at school, and now I am honoured with a personal visit!”

“Just came to tell you what I told Mrs Baker,” I said to him, and as I said it, I lifted my feet and planted them down on the edge of his desk.  He stared at me in total horror.  He looked like he had just been punched in the mouth or something.  His hands spread out slowly across the desk and his lips pursed tightly together, allowing no sound to come out. “Go fuck yourself,” I added with a shrug. “Both of you.”

“I beg your pardon!” he roared at me then. “And get your damn feet off my desk!”

I yawned. “Are you gonna’ make me?.”

He looked like he was for a second.  He shoved back his chair and got violently to his feet, and pointed his finger at me.  “Get your feet off my desk right now young man, or I’m phoning your mother to come and get you!”

“Do it.  I don’t care.  Call her.  Call the bitch.”

He shook his head.  He looked dazed and baffled and saddened and furious all at once and I really wanted to laugh at him. “You don’t care?  What the hell is wrong with you boy? You’re never at school, failing nearly every subject, and when you are here you are disruptive and rude!  I told you before young man, I do not have to tolerate this kind of behaviour in my school!”

“Good, cool, throw me out then.”  I got to my feet and walked around the chair.  Mr James shook his head at me.

“What is this about?  You want to be expelled?  I don’t understand you Daniel.”

I walked around the edge of his office slowly, taking it all in, the filing cabinets, and the pot plants, and the framed pictures of his family that he kept upon his desk.  “You warned me once, if I kept it up, you’d throw me out.”

“I did Daniel, but there is no need for this.  I don’t want to see you expelled. I don’t want to see you ruin your life.”

“Too late for that,” I muttered in reply.  I was bored.  This was taking too long.  I picked up a large spider plant from one of the filing cabinets and held it in my hands.

“Too late?  What does that mean?  Why don’t you put that down and talk to me properly Daniel?  Tell me what is bothering you.  Whatever it is, we can sort it out, you know.  We can help you.”

“Help me,” I said, with a laugh. “Throw me out then.  That would help me a lot right now.”

“Well I won’t do it,” he told me adamantly. “This is ridiculous and childish.  You have everything ahead of you, and you are a smart young man Daniel. I don’t understand what this is all about. What is wrong with you?”

“Dunno,” I said, and let the pot slip through my fingers.  It crashed to the floor, the terracotta plant pot cracking open to spill the black soil out across his carpet.  “Oops.”

“Oh get out!” he yelled at me then, pointing at the door. “Go on get out!  Get out of my school right now!”

I was relieved.  I smiled and slouched over to the door.  I opened it and looked back over my shoulder at him.  “Can you call my mum and tell her I’m out, or I will come back and burn the whole fucking place down, and I mean it.”  I walked out, leaving him in his stupefied silence.

I walked home slowly, hoping he would get right on the phone to my mum and Howard.  I chuckled to myself as I walked.  I could almost imagine how the phone call would go.  He would tell my mum I couldn’t come back.  He would tell her how strange and threatening I had been.  He would suggest I still had a problem with drugs.  He would say the school are not equipped to deal with such things.  He would tell her I needed help, and she would believe it all, she would suck it all up like she always did, and I knew this was true, and I saw it all over her tear streaked face when I walked in through the back door.  Here I was.  Her druggy drop out son.  Hurray.

She was at the sink, peeling potatoes.  When she saw me shuffle in, she dropped the peeler and turned to face me, hugging her arms around her thin body as if to comfort herself.  I viewed her coldly, and turned my eyes on Howard.  He was sat at the table with a newspaper spread out before him, but he rose to his feet as I walked in, and all at once his body and his being consumed all of the air, and I felt like I was going to choke.  He stepped behind her, took hold of her shoulders and kept her standing, while his eyes shot icy daggers at me.  “Why did you do it?” she started saying, shaking her head and sending fresh tears flying all over the room.  “Are you insane?  Have you gone crazy?  Why would you do such a thing?  Why?  What are you going to do now Danny?  Don’t you even care about your future?”

I shrugged with my hands in my pockets and my eyes on hers.  “Not really no. Couldn’t give a shit if you want the truth.”

She pressed a hand over her gaping mouth and wailed thinly behind it. “Why are you doing this to me?  Why do you want to hurt me so much?  Why Danny?”

“Because he’s a selfish little bastard who doesn’t care about anyone except himself,” came the slow, cold words from Howards mouth as he rubbed her shoulders from behind.

“Are you on drugs again?” She asked me. “That’s what Mr James thinks!  He said we should get you some help…take you to the doctor…Lee,” she looked up into his face. “That’s what we need to do, the school said!”

“It’s up to you,” he shrugged back at her. “But I don’t know how we’d make him go.  And what will they do anyway?  What can they do about it?  But it’s up to you, call them if you want to baby.”

I wanted to leave them to it, so I balled my fists at my sides and walked towards the hallway.  “He just doesn’t want to go to school,” Howard snarled over her head then. “That’s what it is.  Wants to spend all his time in that record shop.  Thinks that’s where his future lies!” He laughed out loud at the very idea.  I stared back, and felt nothing but numb hatred for the pair of them.

“You won’t have them bothering you anymore,” I said. “And if it makes you happy I’ll go and sit the exams in the summer.”

“Ha!” Howard cried in triumph. “See honey?  He gets to do what he wants! You can see exactly what he’s playing at!”

I laughed over my shoulder as I trudged down the hallway.  “Oh you’re so funny Lee,” I said to him.  “If only mum knew the truth eh?  If only she knew.”  It made me chuckle as I walked up the stairs.  I sniggered, remembering his jealous sulks every time mum praised my efforts to go to school.  The whole thing was ridiculous.  They had followed me out to the hallway, and were staring up at me, their matching expressions of disgust and outrage glowering up at me.  In that moment, I saw them as one person, as one enemy, one monster. My mother looked and sounded like she had been devoured completely by Howard, like she had been absorbed into him, and even the eyes that stared out from her face were his, like he had crawled right inside her soul.  That’s never happening to me, I thought, staring back at her, I would rather die first.  She was clinging to his shirt like a small tearful child, and he was staring at me with stone like eyes, and a flicker of a smile upon his face.

“You really are the most selfish, unpleasant piece of work I’ve ever had to deal with,” he said, which was ironic really, if you thought about it.  So I laughed.  I knew I would pay for it as soon as she passed out, but in that moment I didn’t care.  It was playtime.  I could let him know what I really thought about him.

“You sound like you’re talking about yourself Lee,” I told him with a smirk. “Although I could add a few things to the list that mum doesn’t know about.” I raised my eyebrows, daring him to disagree.

“Danny go to your room,” my mother said then, pulling her wet face away from his shirt. “It’s best if we all calm down, then we can talk about this tomorrow and see what to do.”

“Do?” I cried back at her, incredulous.  “We’re not going to do anything mother, so don’t stand there trying to make out you give a shit about me. We all know you don’t and you never have!” I stomped up the stairs, but she called out to me.

“Danny!” I paused and looked back at her, and I wondered what she really saw when she looked at me; something evil?  Something damaged and broken, something she had never really loved?  I searched her eyes with my own, begging her to see the truth, pleading with her, but then I saw her hands rising up to find Howard’s again, and I saw the way it was always going to be.  I nodded at her.

“Just leave me alone.  Before you know it I’ll be out of your hair for good.” I turned and ran swiftly up the stairs.  I closed my door, sat on my bed and pressed my hands together between my steadily shaking knees. I squeezed my eyes shut and let the waiting begin.

I waited in my room for hours.  I waited for the thing to be over.  The knot of dread and fear inside my stomach increased in size like a bad tempered tumour.  I moved restlessly around my room in an attempt to shift it, but it clung to me wherever I went.  I thought I would vomit if it went on much longer, so I took a deep breath and pulled the chair out from where I had wedged it under the door handle.  It was close to midnight and I was desperate for a piss.  I had considered aiming it out of the window, but what was the point in delaying the inevitable?  Might as well let him get it out of his system now, before it built up any longer.  I reminded myself that once it was over, it was over, and another day would begin.  I swallowed dry air, opened the door and dashed to the bathroom.

He pounced on my way back.  I heard the single creak on the stairs that gave away what would happen next, and then he loomed up like a horrific shadow out of the dark chasm of the stairs.  I tried to run, but he pinned my arms to my sides and when I opened my mouth to scream, he slapped his hand over my lips before any sound could be made and hauled me roughly back into my room.  He kicked the door shut behind us and hissed into my ear. “Don’t try pulling that stunt again shit stain!  She won’t hear you anyway! She’s out cold!” He pushed me down on the bed, twisted my right arm up behind me and planted his knee into the small of my back.  I grunted in pain and there was no escape.  “I’ve just about had enough of you,” he was snarling and dribbling over me.  “You still don’t learn do you?  You’re still not doing what I say in my own fucking house! Thought you were clever eh?  Getting kicked out of school so you can hang about in that shop all day! What’s it gonna’ take eh?  What’s it gonna’ take to get you in line and keep you there?”  He pulled back a knee and looped a hard fist into my kidneys.  “More of that?” he asked breathlessly, pressing his cold thin lips to my ear every time he spoke.  Another fist thundered in, hitting the same spot and opening up the pain again, making my body want to weep and bleed.  Break me, I thought to myself, with my face pressed into the duvet, my eyes closed tightly as another fist smashed into my ribs. Break me all apart, do it, do it, break me all up, do it, just fucking do it!

He stopped punching then and leaned down into my ear.  “You think your mum can hear anything?” his voice rasped and licked against my skin. “She can’t hear a thing.  She’s fucking comatose on sleeping pills” He put his hand around my neck then, holding me down, while his other hand was doing something, wrestling with something.  “So don’t bother calling for her this time little man, because she won’t fucking come, and she wouldn’t fucking come even if she could hear you, do you know that?  Do you know she wishes she had aborted you?  Yeah!  Did you know that, did you?  She’s told me a thousand times little man.  She even went to the clinic, that’s how close she came, that’s how much she never wanted you! So call her if you like and see if she cares!  Because no one cares Danny!  No one cares about you, except me, so I don’t know why you keep fucking me off all the time and making me angry!  I don’t get why you keep messing with me, you little fuckbag, why do you do it?  Why do you want to wind me up all the time?  You’re still not the good boy I told you to be, are you?  You’re a scruffy little fucked up dope head, that’s what you are! So what’re we gonna’ do about that then eh?”

He was tugging at something and when he got it free he held it down in front of my face, and I opened my eyes to see his belt doubled over.  “You asked for this yet again,” he told me in a hoarse, choked voice.  “Yet again you pushed me to it.  You never fucking learn.  When will you fucking learn you won’t win Danny?  You won’t ever win!”

The first strike sliced into my clammy skin and I wanted to scream, so I wriggled enough to get one of my hands up to my mouth, and I pushed it right it, crammed my fist right back against my teeth so that I wouldn’t.  Because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.  I crushed the pain down with my teeth and waited for it to be over.

63

 

 

October 1994

The most important thing was making sure I did not feel anything anymore.  I had wondered if it was possible, that day on the bench.  I discovered it was actually pretty easy, with a little bit of help.  That had become my main aim, my main purpose upon waking every single day.  There were moments, where the last drink wore off, when a new day began without my permission, when the cold fingers of reality would arrive to tap me briskly on the shoulder.  I never looked reality in the face.  I turned away, and picked up another drink.  Nothing panicked me more than the sensation of the veil beginning to lift.  I would catch just a glimpse, of my own mind ticking back into action, starting to form thoughts again, and that was never a good thing, because thinking too much led to pain, one way or another.  Thinking too much made it all come back, and it was too much then, too much for me to bear.  The useless and bitter disappointment of it all.  In moments of sad clarity such as these, I would feel as if I had awoken briefly from a confusing dream, and I would look down at myself, usually slumped like a rag doll on Jack’s grotty sofa.  I would ask stupid, hollow questions while tears filled my eyes.  “Why is he like that?”  Jack would only shake his head and chuckle and smile.  “Why does he want to destroy me?  You must know.  I’ll save him the trouble today. I’ll go and jump off the cliff.”  I meant it when I said it, but I never did it.

My questions would simply echo, unanswered around the perpetually darkened flat, which had become my refuge, and my prison.  Then Jack would do his best to cheer me up, and there was always something on offer, and he was pretty generous with his offerings, and I would never say no, and then I would drift away again, and there would be no pain, no sorrow, no nothing.

Nothingness was good, nothingness was always welcome.  I tried to fight back with it when the self-loathing and disgust crept in to torture me.  It only haunted me when I was alone, when Jack was out and about, doing whatever it was he did.  Day after day I would sit and rip myself to shreds, peeling back the layers until I became a nothing person, a nothing, an empty shell who simply lived and breathed.  My aim, to reach a point where I would not be able to experience fear anymore, because I wouldn’t be able to feel it, I wouldn’t be able to feel anything.  Waking up sober was a terrible torture.  Instantly my mind was sickened and I felt disgusted with myself, for what I had taken, for what I had done to myself, for everything, and I would think, I am dying slowly inside, this is a slow death, and he will win. Because he was winning, he was the victor.  I found that I did not really care, so long as all of this was over.

Rebirth seemed a nice option, if only such a thing existed.  I daydreamed about it sometimes when I was spaced out in the flat.  It seemed a warm and wonderful thought to pay attention to.  Being born again, as someone else, someone new.  Someone better than I was; someone who was innocent and pure, and good and strong.  Sometimes I would lay and stare at the skin that covered my bones, and I would have the strongest urge to start scratching away at it, to scrape back the layers in case there was someone better hidden underneath.

When I slept, Lee Howard was there, infesting all of my dreams.  I sought to drink and smoke as much as I could in order to find a level of unconsciousness that would hold the dreams at bay.  But it never worked for long, because he was always there, looming over me, with doom in his eye and he was twisting a knife around in my belly, laughing and laughing as he turned it, curling my guts slowly up the blade.  Nights were full of horror.  I twisted and turned among wretched dreams, sometimes waking myself up with my own screams.  Jack watched over me, and I had begun to have paranoid thoughts that he was my jailor, not my protector.

The day after Lucy closed the door on me, and Anthony threatened me, I pushed them all away inside my mind.  I decided I didn’t want or need any of them.  In my mind, things could not get any darker.  I hid out at Jack’s flat, until Howard hunted me down there.  He came through the door like a tornado, spewing out eye bulging rage, his teeth shining and gnashing, his hands reaching for me.  I knew it was coming, and I did nothing to avoid the storm. “Your mother has gone to Leeds to see John,” he stood before me and said, planting his hands on his wide hips, staring down at me, with a loose, slack look to his face.  “What do you think about that eh?”

I shrugged and told him what I really thought.  “I don’t give a shit.”

He laughed.  It was high pitched and manic. He told me he had been looking for me everywhere.  That it was about time I learnt my lesson again.  That he would make me give a shit.  I wondered if he had been drinking, because he had a crazed look in his eyes, and he was sweating like a pig, and I just sat there and stared up at him, a look of dull defiance on my face especially for him.  “I’ll get you back in line,” he started ranting, before he picked me up and threw me to the floor.  He was in a state, wrestling with the waist band of his jeans. “Get you right back in fucking line!” He realized he was not wearing a belt, and went completely insane, kicking over Jack’s glass coffee table and sending it shattering to the floor. He then started pacing around the flat, and I looked up from the floor and saw the door, but I couldn’t even be bothered to try to get to it.  He came back from the kitchen, brandishing the cord from the kettle, and he put his foot on me and started lashing out with it.  And Jack did nothing and said nothing.  I could see his shoes, I could smell his cigar.  I wondered if he was scared.  Scared to speak up.  Scared to help.  I knew what Howard was doing, putting me right back to square one, and I didn’t care, in fact I was glad.  It was easier that way.  “You won’t fuck with me!” he kept screaming, and I thought yeah, you’re right, I won’t, I can’t be arsed.

He left, and I found myself existing in a fire of agony that would not cease.  I got onto the sofa, sobbing and moaning, and the pain was electric, the kind of pain you cannot even breathe through, the kind of pain that makes you want to die, the kind of pain that ties your mind up in a cage.  I writhed and panted on the sofa, and it was Jack that rolled me a joint and held it to my lips.  “He doesn’t know any other way,” I heard him murmuring softly.  I could not determine the tone of his voice. “It’s all his knows. Best you just stay on the right side of him, with your mum gone again.” The joint did nothing to help the pain, and I lay there and whimpered until he fetched me a shot of whiskey, followed by another.  Eventually I guess he got annoyed with my crying, because he came and pushed a pill inside my mouth, and I swallowed it and I was so glad, so relieved, because whatever it was worked and worked quickly, and I felt my body being lifted up by kind and gentle hands that carried me away down a dark and twisted corridor, and for ages after that I felt like I was floating, just floating on the ocean.

When I woke up in the night, he was sat beside me, with his hand resting on my head.  He didn’t ever seem to sleep, unless it was in the middle of the day, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide and snoring.  I would roll away from his hand, shivering as I felt his fingers unwind one by one from my hair.  I would bury myself in the blankets and the thick deep sleep would arrive to claim me and I would forget about it all in the morning, because I would wake up searching for escape, and because everything that existed inside my head was pushed away, stamped down, wiped out.

There was nothing to do, nowhere to turn to except oblivion, and Jack let me have whatever I wanted. If it was there I could have it.  If it wasn’t there, then we would call Jaime Lawler over.  I kept myself topped up, and the biggest fear I had was any of it wearing it off.  Jack pushed food in front of me but it all turned my stomach.  I didn’t want to do anything that would prolong my existence, but I did not have the courage to end it suddenly either.  I wondered dully in those strange moments if Jack was helping me or finishing me off.  I didn’t know, and I didn’t care, but sometimes the way he looked at me made me want to close my eyes and cease to exist, because that would be easier.  He looked at me.  Sometimes he looked at me too much, and I didn’t know what, if anything, his eyes were trying to say.  I felt like a goldfish, swimming aimlessly inside a bowl. “Try this,” he would say to me. “Just try this…”  The only thing that made me move was music.  The only thing that made my heart beat was music.  The only reason I left the flat was music.  I had to leave the flat to find the music, and when I was in The Record Shop, though Terry viewed me with a perturbed and distainful expression, he never turned me away.

He let me stay in there for hours if I wanted to.  I didn’t talk to him much.  He laughed about this, saying that at one point he could never shut me up.  He made me cups of tea and he started offering me money to sort out the shelves, or to answer the phone.  I took it graciously, thankful and yet silent.  Sometimes he tried to pull conversations out of me, asking my opinion on new releases, offering me singles and albums to take home and try for free. “Your opinion is worth more than mine,” he would explain. “The kids that come in here don’t take my word for it these days!”  The shop was busier than it had ever been.  It was the same kinds of kids that came in, day after day.  Terry called them Indie kids, and they all had hair like the Gallaghers, or hair like Jarvis Cocker.  They wore parka coats, and flared jeans, and devoured music by the likes of Pulp, Suede, Blur, Elastica and Supergrass.  Terry had a fair amount of sarcasm for the lot of them.  Members of a scene, he explained.  Followers of a rule book.  “Not like you,” he told me once.  “You’re cool, because you like everything.”

It seemed like word got out quickly about the fat man letting me hang around in the shop, letting me work for money.  Michael came through the door one day after school.  He shook his head slowly and sadly when he saw me crouched on the floor, dusting off cassettes before I put them in order.  Just the desperate look in his eye made me want to sever an artery.  I looked away from him.  I wondered what the hell he wanted.  He picked up a CD and squatted down next to me, while Terry went back to his magazine behind the counter.

“You’re never at school,” he started, and he was right.  I had given up on that again.  I hadn’t been for weeks.  My mother was still up in Leeds with John.  I was starting to wonder if she would ever come back at all.  I rolled my eyes and ignored him. “I’ve been talking to Lucy,” he went on regardless, speaking in low tones, with his eyes on my face.  “I took her to the café yesterday Danny. I explained everything to her.  Are you listening?  I know you don’t want people to know stuff, but I had to explain it to her, I had to make her see why you didn’t turn up that day.”  I didn’t look at him.  I didn’t allow the words or the information to infiltrate my mind.  I picked up another cassette.  The best of Dusty Springfield.  I started to wipe it clean with the yellow duster Terry had given me.  Michael sighed beside me. “Listen,” he said. “She understands.  The reason she was mad at you, is she went back the next week, in case you went back…she said she really thought you would, you know, because you’d been going every Sunday for like months.  She went back Danny, the next few Sundays in a row to see you there.  To sort things out.”

I rolled my eyes again and shrugged loosely.  I placed the cassette on the shelf under D and picked up the next one.  Guns ‘N’ Roses, Appetite For Destruction.  The casing was split, so I put it in another pile, knowing Terry would want it in the discount bin next to the counter.  Michael clicked his tongue angrily. “Danny, can you speak?  For fucks sake mate! I’m just gonna’ keep coming in here until you do! Did you hear what I said?  About Lucy? She’s gonna’ come and see you in here mate, I don’t know when, but she said she would because she wants you two to make up, you know?”

“Going to Chaos this Friday,” I told him then, frowning down at the next tape in the pile.  More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits.  “If you wanna’ come.  I’ll meet you there.  Or whatever.”

He nodded instantly. “Okay then.  I fucking will. I’ll see you there.  We’ll talk then, right?  We’ll catch up.”  I nodded and he got up and walked out.

I had another visitor not long after.  Jaime Lawler, at first just hovering outside of the door, finishing off his cigarette.  I watched him from inside.  He was tall and thin, and hunched up against the cold, with his cap pulled low and his tracksuit jacket zipped right up to his chin.  He nodded at me when he saw me looking.  Terry was on his stool, his wide berth dripping down either side of it.  His nose buried in the NME.  He didn’t even look up when Jaime walked in through the door.  He played it cool at first, well about as cool as he was capable of.  He picked up a CD, then put it back too quickly.  Walked along and picked up another, and then came right up to me with it.  Not exactly subtle.  I was starting to think the guy was a bit simple, to be honest.  He could have had DRUG DEALER tattooed across his forehead and it still would have been more discreet than his behaviour at times.  He loped up to the side of me with this lop-sided grin on his thin face. “Alright mate? You working in here now or what?”

“Sort of,” I shrugged.

He looked pleased and stared around at the shelves full of music.  “Wow, pretty cool ain’t it? Must be your idea of heaven eh?” He nudged me with one spiky elbow and I flinched. He looked sorry and tried a grin instead.  “Still waiting for my money mate,” he said then, leaning towards me and dropping his voice to a whisper.  I nodded at him.  I dug around in my back pocket and brought out a crumpled ten pound note, and a handful of change.  He took it and examined it before slipping it into his own pocket. “That don’t even really touch what you owe me mate,” he said, with a regretful shrug.  I nodded again.

“I know.  I’ll get you some more.” I looked at Terry briefly. “He’s started paying me a bit.  I might get a proper job here when I’m sixteen.”

Jaime looked hopeful. “Oh yeah? When’s that?”

“August.”

He made a face. “Fuckinghell I can’t wait that long mate!  Look we’ll talk later yeah, I got to go and meet this mate of yours now.  You know he’s working in The Ship?”

I was totally confused. “Who is?”

“Anthony.  Me old mate from school. Bless him.”

“He’s working in The Ship?”

“Yeah, out the back, cheffing.  I’m gonna’ go and get me a pie and chips, warm me right up.” Jaime patted my back and headed for the door.  I stepped behind him.

“What do you mean you’re meeting him?  What for?”

Jaime pulled open the door and a rush of cold air swirled around our ankles. He looked down at me, and there was for once an almost human look in his restless grey eyes, and it looked like he was trying to decide what to say to me, and how to say it.  He grimaced a little and scratched at his scrawny neck, and then pushed his cap back so that he could rake his short nails through the front of his wispy blonde hair.  He tugged the cap back into place and clapped me on the back instead. “Well you know me,” he said. “Keep everyone’s secrets don’t I eh? Ask him yourself if you wanna’ know.  Seeya’ later mate.  You at Chaos on Friday or what?”  I nodded that I was.  He snorted as he left. “I’ll be expecting a begging call from you then.  Seeya’ mate.”

I went back to my work, dazed and wondering.  Part of my mind wanted to know more, and wanted to chase down the road after him.  But the other part of my mind wanted to know nothing about anything, and went back to sleep instead.  There was nothing I could do anyway, I reasoned.  I hadn’t seen Anthony since he had laid into me for giving Michael speed that night.  I imagined he hated me, and that was that.  Truth was, I was too ashamed of myself to go anywhere near him.

“Dodgy as fuck, that one,” Terry remarked wearily from his stool.  I couldn’t have agreed with him more.  I went back to the tapes, taking my time over each one, cleaning them and checking them for wear and damage.  The Stone Roses were playing Shoot You Down on the record player.  “All this new indie Britpop stuff,” Terry started saying. “It’s all influenced by The Stone Roses, I mean, it started with them and Inspirals and all that right?”  I looked up and shrugged, not sure if I could be bothered to get into a debate with him right then.  “And they were influenced by The Smiths.  It all comes back to The Smiths you see.”

“Bullshit,” I told him. “Who were they influenced by then? Sixties guitar bands?”

“No, punk you idiot!” he roared back at me. “It’s a well known fact that Morrissey was a fan of The New York Dolls. I’m putting them on next to educate you.”

I just sighed and let him get on with it.  The man had an unhealthy obsession with The Smiths.  According to him, anything good about music today could be attributed to them.  He slipped off his stool after a while and went out the back to put the kettle on.  While he was gone, the door opened again, and Lucy walked in.  She looked awkward and nervous, in her smart school uniform, her bag on her shoulder, and two thick text books clutched to her chest.  Her face brightened when she saw me kneeling on the floor. “There you are!”

“Yeah,” I said, and stood up.  She hugged her books and smiled sheepishly.

“How are you?”  I shrugged at her.

“Good.”

Her smile faltered, and then returned stronger. “Want to try and sell me some music? You normally can’t shut up about it.”  I shook my head at her.  I was tired.  I didn’t need this, whatever this was.  I felt like cringing under her pitying glare.  I couldn’t stand the thought of what Michael had told her.  I imagined them sat in the café together, their heads lowered over their coffees or their milkshakes, while Michael filled her in on the full story of my pathetic little life.  I felt a cold anger shaking through me.  It was directed right at her, and yet again, I thought, here he is, here is the monster right on cue, seeping through me, taking me over.  I wanted her away from me.  I was no good for her. I would only drag her down and destroy her.  Couldn’t she see that?  “I just wanted to see you,” she tried to explain, her smile gone now, her eyes heavy with sadness. “Michael…I mean, he spoke to me…He explained so much to me Danny…and I had to see you, I just had to come and see you.”

I gave her a hard and withering look of contempt. “Well now you’ve seen me,” I said, and turned away from her.

62

 

 

            Michael and I slept through Billy and Jake awaking to hangovers that sent them scuttling home the next day.  We slept right through the morning, wrapped tight in delicious dreams.  The music rang on inside my head.  I slept with a smile upon my face.  Anthony tried all morning to coax us from our slumbers, but we were too far gone, too deep down, not coming back for anyone.  He just had to wait.

When I started to wake up properly, I remembered that my body was battered and that pain was a constant companion.  I pushed this knowledge aside however.  I listened to the music inside my head, and my feet danced at the ends of my legs.  I was not in a hurry to move, or speak, or live.  I just wanted to stay there, wrapped in blankets on the floor of the darkened lounge, while Sunday morning life kicked into action outside the window.  Anthony stomped in and out, waving a wooden spoon about and talking about breakfast, and then lunch.  Eventually he sat down and turned the TV on, keeping a watchful eye on us as we stirred slowly and reluctantly into life.  The more we stirred, the more he sighed and clicked his tongue.  After a while, he picked up a cushion and threw it at us.  We laughed under our blankets, but this was not the effect he wanted.  He got up, stood next to us and poked at Michael with his shoe.  “Wakey wakey,” he was saying to us gruffly.  I opened my eyes and saw his grim expression bearing down on us.  He started poking at my shoulder with his shoe.  I had the sudden and undeniable urge to punch his foot away. My smile faded.  He looked pissed off and about to explode.  “Rise and shine,” he said. “You fucking little bastards.”

Michael merely giggled, not understanding the look upon his brothers face.  I understood it, and it made me feel wary.  I sat up slowly, my muscles screaming into my life, as I rubbed with both hands at my sleepy face.  I tested my lip with my tongue.  It felt crusty and swollen.  Anthony had not finished with us.  He squatted down, his eyebrows raised, his face expectant and waiting.  I offered him a pointless shrug. “Was a good night,” Michael was murmuring beside me.  “Was an amazing, fucking night.”

I wanted to agree with him, and drag back the memories and the good feeling I had woken up with, but I was caught in the glare of Anthony’s dark eyes, and I felt the accusation lying behind them.  “I ought to kick both your arses,” he told us then, his eyes flicking angrily between us.  Michael sat up, frowned and yawned.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” he snapped, shaking his head. “I know what the fuck you two did.  I saw your eyes when you got in.  I sat and listened to you babbling away for hours, not making any sense.”  He nodded when Michael’s cheeks burnt red, and then his eyes turned on me. “And as for you sunshine, aren’t you supposed to be meeting someone down the beach? I have been trying to wake you up all morning, so don’t blame me if she’s pissed off home by now.”

I stared back at him blankly.  It took a few minutes for the information and the reality to sink in, and as I stared Anthony stared back, his mouth a tight straight line, his dark eyes full of disappointment and anger.  When the realisation hit me fully, it sent me lunging up from the floor, slapping a hand against my own cheek as I mumbled; “oh fuckinghell Lucy.”

There was nothing for it.  I was bone tired and heavy headed, but I had to go.  I pulled on my jacket and stumbled out of the front door, straight into the dazzling cruelty of the afternoon sun.  I couldn’t run.  My body was like wet lead and I ached all over.  I felt like I’d gone twenty rounds in a boxing ring.  I felt like elephants had trampled over my body during my sleep.  I felt a rising rage and disgust within me.  I loped and trotted and plodded mechanically towards the beach, and every now and again I would pass a wall and feel the urge to drag the back of my hand along it.  Don’t ask me why.  I wanted to be in bed, and that was pissing me off, but I had to find her, I had to explain.

Down on the beach, the sun was warmer on the top of my head, but the wind was fiercer, and I had to brace myself against the sprays of water and sand that whipped across the beach to batter me.  She was not there.  I trudged along the beach front to check the shop and the café, but they were deserted.  She had gone.  I lowered my shoulders in recognition of defeat, in surrender to misery, turned around and started to trudge slowly back the way I had came.  The music was still pumping through my brain in a strange and distorted way.  Jumbled up lyrics and melodies that tried to out run each other.  I clung to it though.  I played the night back over in my head, and it was either remember that, or remember the foot to my face and the blood spray, and the things that were to come.

I walked slowly and clumsily towards her house.  I staggered along the road she lived on, recalling with bitter memory how Michael and I had gone up there to cut people’s lawns.  How naïve we had been, I thought then, as I slipped past like a ghost.  Thinking we could impress these kinds of people, with their huge houses, and their gardens the size of football pitches.  I planted one foot in front of the other, slowly and deliberately.  People like that, I was thinking, people like that act like they want to help you and like you, but in truth, they don’t want you anywhere fucking near them.  Under the pretence of niceness, they were always searching for the cracks.  The proof they needed to know they were right to distrust you in the first place.  I knew it was going to be like that when I knocked upon the Chapman’s front door.

Her house had an unobstructed view of the sea and an epic, sweeping drive.  I felt small and rat like as I slunk along it, towards her front door.  The door was heavy and thick, and would have looked at home on a castle, or on a country manor.  I lifted the brass knocker with pathetically weak hands, and let it fall again.  I had to lean with one arm against the wall, my legs giving up the effort, my body feeling fluid like the sea I could hear washing in and out behind me.  As I waited for a response, I glanced around.  I looked at the crawling creeping flowers and plants that grew up the sides of the house and around the windows.  There were window planters and borders, and shrubs, and millions of things I didn’t know the names of.  I gazed around at the lawn, and at the gardener who stood watching me from the other end, gloves on, cap low, and eye blinking in the sunshine.  I sighed and sensed inevitability and failure all around me, all inside me.  I gave myself up to it.

Her father answered the door, dressed in casual weekend trousers and a polite short sleeved shirt.  He wore these soft white shoes upon his feet, and I imagined that he had a game of golf planned for later in the day, or something.  I opened my mouth and asked for Lucy, and I watched his forehead crease and crinkle into about a million little lines of despair and worry.  His lips twitched and his body visibly stiffened.  “I really need to see her,” I added, not even convincing myself.  His mouth tightened, and he straightened his back and shoulders and looked as if he were trying to distinguish a way to speak the truth politely.

“Well she’s very upset Daniel,” he said, with this little shake of his head, when probably what he felt like doing was giving my dishevelled body a good shake.

“I was supposed to meet her,” I tried to explain sorrowfully. “I was late, because I slept in, because I was feeling ill…but that’s why, I mean, can I explain that to her please?”

He looked me up and down very quickly, and I knew what he was thinking and seeing behind his neat little spectacles.  “I’ll tell her you’re here,” he said, his face nothing less than a blustering, awkward and angry mess.

I nodded and smiled and waited patiently, eyeing up the roses, as they were the only plant I knew the name of.  When she came to the door, moments later, she stepped neatly outside and pulled it shut behind her.  I could see right away that she had been crying, as the rims of her eyes were all red.  I felt like shit because of it, but I could also see that she was angry, and I realised I had never seen her angry before.  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest.  She looked a bit like she had made an effort, I thought then, for some reason.  She was wearing a dress, for one thing.  And make-up.  I wanted to groan, which would have been cruel, but I wanted to tell her that she should know I didn’t give a shit about those stupid things.  She didn’t have to bother, I wanted to explain.  “I waited for you,” she said then, her voice wavering slightly on the last word, letting her down a little.  She took a breath and glanced away to compose herself before going on.  “I waited for three hours on that beach for you.  Where were you?”

“At Mike’s,” I told her, hoping the desperate look in my blue eyes would do the trick.  “I was just asleep!  Didn’t mean to sleep that long, but we all went out to this crazy, amazing club last night Lucy! I just slept in, and as soon as I woke up, I ran down to the beach, and then came straight here Luce.”

“It’s gone one o’clock,” she told me icily.  I nodded.

“Yep, I know.  Well, I know now.  We had a really late night.”  I offered an apologetic smile and a slight shrug of the shoulders but she was having none of it.  She was silent as she ran her brown eyes up and down my shabby appearance, just as her father had done.

“You look awful,” she said to me.

“Thanks.”

“What happened to your face?”

I smiled slightly.  She was pissing me off, to be honest.  Being all like her stuck up dad, looking me up and down like I was a piece of dog shit on the precious green lawn.  I touched a finger to my cut lip and rolled my eyes. I felt like whipping up my t-shirt and flashing her a glimpse of my black bruises, laughing in her screwed up little face and asking if she had a better reason than that to be pissed off?  “Nothing,” I told her. “I fell over.”

“Where did you go?”

“This club called Chaos,” I said, starting to get a little bit excited again.  “This amazing place in Belfield Park!  Plays all the music we like!  None of this mainstream pop shit, just decent, proper music!  You have to come next time Luce, I’m serious. They didn’t play one bad song, not one.”

She was just frowning and not caring. “How did you get in? You’re not old enough.”

“Fake I.D’s,” I said. “But we didn’t even need them in the end.  It was brilliant Lucy, we had the best time ever, just the most amazing night ever!”

She regarded me with still, cool eyes. “Yeah, you look like you did.  Did you take that stuff again?”

The question caught me off guard. I opened my mouth, and had no idea whether to lie about it or tell the truth.  I wondered why she cared, I wondered what business it was of hers?  My hesitation and flustering was enough of an answer for her though.  She nodded once, answering her own question and I just smiled a helpless smile.  “I just wanted to have fun,” I said defensively. “Just wanted to have a really, really good night.  I needed to.”

“So you can’t have fun without it?  You can’t have a good time without taking that stuff?  Even though it made you really ill last time?  Have you completely forgotten about that Danny?”

“Course not,” I shrugged. “Listen, Lucy I just needed a good time, I’m serious, you have no idea how crap things have been lately.”

“And did you?”

“What?”

“Did you enjoy your night at this club, on speed, or whatever else it was this time!” She was getting angrier by the second and I sighed, dropped my shoulders and glanced over my shoulders in a bored kind of way.  I felt like backing off and leaving her to her little tantrum.  Her arms tightened over her chest and her lower lip shook at me. “And how was the morning after this time?” she went on. “I’m assuming it wasn’t as terrible as last time, seeing as how you can walk by yourself and you’re not crying all over me!”

My mouth fell open in surprise and hurt.  I was genuinely shocked she had hit me with that.  My weak smile evaporated to nothing. “That’s not fair,” I said rigidly. “You have no idea the crap I’ve had to deal with lately, you have no fucking idea! Alright for you isn’t it? Up here with your perfect house and your perfect family! It’s not like that for everyone you know! You have no idea!”  I was getting angry with her now, and it was an ugly thing.  Jealously and resentment directed at the last person who deserved it.  Her expression was indignant, and I felt small, and judged.

“No!” she shouted right back at me.  “Because you never tell me! You don’t tell me anything at all Danny, you keep it all to yourself, whatever it is, you just want me there for company or whatever! You just expect me to there to comfort you, without ever telling me why you need it!”

I took a deep breath and looked away from her. I could see the gardener out of the corner of my eye.  He had his gloved hands resting on the end of his rake.  A curtain twitched in one of the front rooms.  I didn’t need this shit.  I was going to have worse shit than this to deal with pretty soon, and I wanted to get some sleep somewhere first.  I was close to telling her to piss off, close to telling her a lot of things, but I tried to calm down, I tried to gain control of things before they spiralled out of control. “Look, I am sorry I was late, but I did go, I was just late Lucy, and I’m here now!  Ran all the way I did.”

“Late,” she snapped. “Because you were too busy coming down, or whatever the hell you call it.  I don’t even want to know. I think it’s pathetic if you want the truth.  I think you look a total mess, and you’re screwing up your life, and it’s not worth it, not for one night of fun! And because taking it is so important to you, you missed our date.”

“Date?” I asked, not understanding.  I saw the instant flash of hostility in her eyes, the anger which slipped quickly into hurt, and I took a reproachful step towards her, reaching out for her arm.  She pulled away from me. Tears had sprung into her eyes.

“Well I thought it was a date,” she said, and her whole face seemed to tremble with the effort it was taking her not to cry. “But obviously I was wrong, obviously I was wrong about a lot of things, and obviously I’ve been wasting my time and making a complete idiot of myself, and you would much rather be getting off your head and lying in bed all day than being with me so….”  She left the statement hanging in the air and gazed down at her shoeless feet, her teeth raking back over her quivering bottom lip.

“I wouldn’t rather do that,” I told her, sinking my hands into my pockets.  “You’re not being very fair Luce. It’s only happened once…”

“Yeah, and it will happen again,” she declared with a sudden and definitive toss of her head, as she spun around and pushed open the door. “Until you sort yourself out.”

I stepped forward desperately. “I can’t do that without you!”

“Danny, I’m not going to be your counsellor or something,” she said this softly, now safely returned to the warmth of the hallway.  “I just wanted to be your girlfriend, that’s all.  But I don’t think that’s what you want right now.” She sniffed up her tears and closed the door on me.  I found myself facing the wood again.  I let out a growl and kicked it, again and again, with a rush of anger that shook through me without warning.

“Lucy!  Come back and talk to me!  Lucy!”

The door reopened and Mr Chapman stared down at me unhappily.  His face was even more concerned and twitchy now, and I felt his middle-aged eyes running up and down me again, making me want to snarl and lash out like a cornered dog.  “I just wanna’ talk to her!”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” he explained this calmly and firmly. “Now, I don’t know yet exactly what you’ve done to upset her so much, but I strongly suggest you go away now, and don’t come back.” He gave me a long, warning stare, and then closed the door again.  I felt the rage boil over again, and kicked and punched at the door in my face.

“Well fuck you!” I heard my voice screeching back at him.  “Fuck you mate!  Think you’re better than me!  Fuck you you fucking stuck up bastard!” I would have gone on longer, kicking and shouting at the door, but the gardener was already on his way over, marching in olive green wellingtons across the lawn, with his rake still in one hand.  I gave him the finger and stormed away.

I walked back to the estate in a whirlwind of fury and self-pity.  My mind was a muddle of guilt, rage and self-loathing, and my feet wanted to kick something, my hands wanted to punch something, and if someone had stepped into my way I probably would have knocked them out.  I’m turning into him now, I thought in growing amazement and horror as I walked on, he’s infected me with it, and that’s what will happen, that’s what I will become.  A monster.  It was almost like I could feel it happening inside of me, like my soul was curling and peeling away from me, blackened and rotting, revealing something primitive and ugly beneath.

I was storming blindly past Michael’s front door, when it flung open suddenly, and Anthony appeared before me, practically jumping right into my path.  He stopped me with a finger held in the air, and a dark look in his eyes.  “A word,” he said, and so I stopped and stared right back at him, waiting and dreading and hating.

“What?”

Anthony breathed noisily down through his nose, and as he kept the finger pointed at my face, one of his eyebrows rose on its own. “You ever give my brother that nasty dangerous shit again, and I’ll kick your fucking arse, right?”

I recoiled from him in miserable anger and shock.  I swung my body around his, but paused long enough to snarl up into his face; “Oh yeah? Like to see you fucking try!  You’re just like everyone else!”  I stuffed my hands deep into my pockets and rushed away from him.

I couldn’t bear it.  I didn’t think I could bear it, not ever.  I walked in a circle, not thinking, just breathing too fast, feeling like I was about to explode one way or the other.  I didn’t know what to do or where to go.  I couldn’t go home.  I couldn’t go anywhere.  Pity overloaded me then.  Grief, and guilt and regret, it wrenched itself through me, dragging me down, crushing me slowly.  I’ll just go home and find Howard, I thought then. Let him kill me.  Let him do it.  They’d all be happy then, wouldn’t they?  Instead, I ended up at the park, sat on a bench, and shivering in my Nirvana t-shirt.  I swung my feet back and forth, scuffing the soles of my boot against the tarmac.  The swings shifted restlessly just in front of me.  I watched a massive seagull land on the top of the slide, where he sat for ages, just laughing at me.  I stared at the ground, and watched the rubbish roll by, and I felt nothing less than wretched and pathetic and hated by everyone.  I wanted a drink.  I wanted a hundred drinks.  I wanted a smoke.  I wanted to smoke until my eyes bled and my vision failed.  I wanted a pill to put me out of my misery.  I wanted to learn how not to give a shit about anything, how not to care, and I wondered if it would ever become possible.

I could feel a lump in my back pocket and wondered what it was.  I searched there, and pulled it out, and it was my knife, and I didn’t even remember putting it there, but it made me smile just for a second.  Hello, I wanted to say to it.  Hello knife.  I passed it from one hand to the other as the wind lifted my hair, sending it flying back over my forehead.  Then I laid the blade down onto one palm, and I felt my body begin to loosen, and relax.  I took deep breaths, staring at the knife, before running one curious finger down the sharp edge of the blade.  I held it by the handle and started to try to carve my name into the bench.  I had carved Dan in jagged, spidery letters when I stopped suddenly, and gave in to a crazy impulse, slashing the blade across my own arm instead.  I took a sharp intake of breath and heard the knife clatter to the ground.  I held my wrist up to my face and stared in morbid curiosity at the cut I had made.  Thick dark blood welled to life along the slash, and so I pressed a finger into it, and watched the blood dripping faster, trailing a ruby zig-zag down towards my elbow.  I stared at the mess of it all in complete detached wonder and felt a strange and numb calm wash over me.

A short while later I picked up the knife, slipped it back into my pocket and walked away from the bench, and the park.  The cut was stinging, but the blood had stopped.  As I walked I focused my mind on the stinging, and I felt satisfied by it.  Don’t ask me why.  How can you explain these things?  I suppose, if I look back now, I was trying to take some control, by inflicting the pain on myself instead of waiting for someone else to do it.  I don’t know. Who knows?  Who cares?  It was him or me.  I knew that all along.  I knew that from the beginning. It was always going to come down to that.

Half an hour later I was letting myself into Jack’s flat.  He grunted from his favourite sofa, where he was sprawled out, in a white vest and loose grey trousers.  The smell of stale sweat and cold curry permeated my nostrils.  The flat was warm though.  The TV was on.  He made me a whiskey and coke without saying a word and passed it to me when I sat down.  My body lolled into the sofa, too heavy and broken to ever move again.  I stared at the TV screen. “Don’t tell him I’m here,” I said after a while.  Jack lit his cigar and laughed.

“You on the run?”

“Just don’t tell him,” I repeated. “He’s evil you know.  He’s going to kill me one of these days.  One of these days, he’s going to kill me.”

“Well I don’t expect to see his lordship tonight,” Jack told me with a sigh.  “So you can stop getting your knickers in a twist. Oh that reminds me though.  Someone else is looking for you.”

I looked at him sharply.  “Who?”

“Jaime Lawler,” he replied, eyes firmly on me. “Came round earlier. Says you owe him money.”

“Oh yeah.  I do.”

“Howard says you’re not working at the club anymore?  That right?”

I nodded at him. “I’m never stepping foot in that place again in my life. Not with that evil bastard.”

Jack smoked his cigar and drummed the podgy fingers of one hand against the armrest of the sofa.  “Well then, seems to me you better start thinking of other ways to earn money kiddo.  Or you’re gonna’ be finding yourself in all kinds of trouble.”

61

 

 

            The night that followed at Chaos, was everything I had so desperately dreamed and hoped it would be.  We jumped off the bus in Belfield Park and hurried down to the part of the high street that had been pedestrianized, taking the second left as Jaime had instructed me to do.  There was a kebab place on the corner, and when I saw this I whooped loudly and declared we were close.  We followed the road down to its dead end, and then took a right which led down a narrow lane, already bustling and crowded with people.  At the end of the lane stood a tall, three-storey, grubbily white washed Victorian building.  It loomed up out of the darkness before us, almost church like in its height and grace and mystery.  Break On Through by The Doors was pumping out onto the street.  People pushed and milled and lunged to get through the doors.  I turned to my friends and jumped up and down on the pavement.  “This is it!” I declared excitedly, emotionally, gripping a wide-eyed Billy by the lapels of his shirt and spinning him around in a circle. “This is the place!”

We followed the crowd, we merged into the flock, we grinned and slapped hands and hugged each other, and we didn’t even need the fake I.D’s.  We shoved our money into the hands on the doors that reached for it, and there was no real queue, just a disorderly crowd of revellers who surged towards the opening.  We found ourselves swept up in among them, piling down some stairs to the lower floor, where there was no natural light, and the walls were painted a dark and disturbing yellow.  We paused at the bottom of the stairs, while people flowed past us on either sides.  The bar curved around to the left, the floors wooden and scarred, battered red and black sofas stuffed into the corners. Mismatched tables and chairs, and stools, were arranged around the edge of a large dance floor, complete with stage at one end. The floor was already full.  I grinned.  I wanted to run onto it and jump up and down and throw my hair about.  The crowd looked young and wild and hungry.  “Everyone looks like us!” Billy said beside me, his hand curling around my arm.  I looked into his face and beamed.

“I know,” I said, looking at each of them in turn, at their flushed cheeks and their stretched and amazed smiles of recognition. “I told you didn’t I?” Just then the music changed and I immediately started leaping about, wrapping my arms around Billy’s neck and taking him with me. “Up In The Sky!! Hey you!  Up in the sky!  Learning to fly!” We bounced around like that, all four of us, until we were on the dance floor, going mental.

“Tell me how high do you think you’ll go?” Billy was bellowing into my ear. “Before you start faaaaaaaaling!”

“Our music!” I was screaming back at him. “They play our music!”

Jake went to get the drinks in.  I had given him the money earlier.  He was the tallest by far, and looked older than he was.  We bounced around until the song ended and then flung ourselves at the nearest table when Jake came back with the drinks. He placed four whiskey and cokes on the table and we hovered around the edges, as there were no spare chairs.  Sonic Youth’s Sugar Cane had just come on.  I picked up my drink and had a hard time getting it down me, my grin was so huge.  Billy came to my side.  His eyes were big and solemn, and he touched my arm and looked like he was in shock. “Danny,” he said. “This is the best fucking place in the Universe. I never want to go home ever. But we have to drink up quick and dance and do it all quick, ‘cause they’ll take it away from us when they realize we’re underage! I swear to god they will!” He looked desperately panicked at the very thought.  I laughed at him, nodding along to the music.

“Don’t be stupid Bill, they can’t kick us out now we’re in and we’ve paid. Look around mate, does it look like anyone gives a shit? Relax!”

We drank the whiskeys, so Jake went back and got bottles of beer next. “That’s it,” he said, handing me the change. “Out of money.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I shrugged. “Who needs booze when the music is this good?”

With the drink stoking my belly and the music setting my brain on fire, a short while later I nudged Michael and told him to come to the toilets with me.  He nodded without question and followed me across the dance floor, both of us gaping in wonder at the rock chicks and indie girls who swayed as we passed them, pint glasses in hand. Michael punched me in the back as we pushed into the mens toilets.  They were painted black, and the strip light on the ceiling flickered ominously as we walked in. They were crowded too; I had never seen so many interesting hairstyles and tattoos on display in one place. “Amazing,” he kept saying to me, over and over. “Amazing Danny, so amazing, best place ever!”

I was laughing helplessly as I shoved Michael into a cubicle and piled in after him.  I had a quick piss, throwing my head back and hooting when Blur’s For Tomorrow started to play.  I moved back so Michael could take his turn, and while he was at it, I took out the wrap of speed Jaime had given me.  I had cigarette papers in my other pockets and made us both a speed bomb.  I held one out to Michael when he had done up his flies and turned around. “You want to?”

He stared at it, his mouth falling open in surprise and then closing again slowly.  He made a sort of awkward face and shrugged his shoulders at me.  I was about to withdraw my hand and leave him out of it after all, when he suddenly snorted laughter through his nose and snatched it from my hand. “Oh why the fuck not? You fucking crazy bastard!”

We didn’t need any more drinks after that.  We bounced back out onto the dance floor, and when Supersonic kicked off, we dragged Jake and Billy out with us, and that was it.  “I need to be myself!” We sang at the top of our lungs, slinging our arms around each other, roaring out the words. “I can’t be no one else!” And all that followed after that was endless dancing and the worship of the music we loved.  The music jumped from one genre to the next, playing Nirvana’s Come As You Are, behind Suedes Animal Nitrate, and followed by The Clash, Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Of course I thought I was going to die with happiness when they played I Am The Resurrection.  As soon as that long drum intro started, I just stood still, my eyes bulging from my face, my face and hair slick with sweat, and then they all grabbed me and threw me about, knowing how much I loved it, how much it meant to me, and fuck, did I scream out those lyrics!  I thought the music couldn’t get any better, but I was wrong again and again and when Smells Like Teen Spirit started, we were like a bomb had gone off inside of us!  It wasn’t just us either.  It was the whole place!  The dance floor was like this unified thing, an animal, twisting, leaping, shoving, moving, and the floor was being pounded, and the vibrations shook up and down my body.

After that Billy and Jake seemed to be fading fast.  They scraped enough money off the floor to buy themselves a coke to share and slunk back to the table with it.  Michael and I continued to go off like rockets.  We thought of Anthony when Primal Scream’s Movin’ On Up started, and Michael bellowed into my ear that he would drag him along next time.  I soon worked out that although the DJ had been well and truly in control at the beginning of the night, he was now operating a request system.  I watched the line of people winding slowly up the black spiral staircase to reach him.  I dragged Michael with me, gripping the thrumming hand rail with sweat slicked hands, damp hair in my eyes, and my blood hurtling through my veins at breakneck speed.  The DJ was a tall guy in his late twenties with long black hair and he grinned and nodded when I reeled off my list of requests.  By the time we had descended the stairs again, Panic by The Smiths was already playing, and I started laughing, and just couldn’t stop.  I knew I was as high as a kite, as happy as it was possible to get, as full of life and love as I would probably ever be.  I felt on top of the world, bigger and stronger than ever, in control and I didn’t want it to ever end.  That was the only bad thing, the only thing that caused my mood and spirit to flag; the thought of it all coming to an end.  “Burn down the disco!” I grabbed Michael and sang into his shining face.  “Hang the blessed DJ! Because the music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life!”

Song after song, after song.  “Not one bad one!  Not one shitty song!  Not one single one!” I repeated it like a broken record all the way home.  I couldn’t keep still on the bus, I wanted to be dancing and jumping, with the music vibrating all over me.  I wanted my head to be permanently full of it. I didn’t want it to ever be turned down, or turned off.  “Not one bad song,” I said it again and again. “Not even one!”

Back at Michael’s, we entertained a skeptical looking Anthony with our run down of the most amazing night we had ever experienced, while Billy and Jake sunk onto either end of the sofa, asleep before their heads hit the cushions.  I could remember every single song that had been played, a fact which astonished and mesmerized Michael.  I babbled on for a few more hours, talking so fast that Anthony had to keep holding his hand up and telling me to slow down, to calm down.  He listened, but regarded me with a sombre and suspicious eye.  Eventually he declared he was off to bed, and dropped a load of blankets on top of where we lay on the lounge floor.  When he was gone I took out the pills from Jaime and passed one under the blankets to Michael. “What’s this?” he whispered, his face pale and clammy, his pupils like specks of dust in his massive brown eyes.

“It’s so you don’t feel crappy tomorrow,” I told him, still smiling endlessly with the warm and fuzzy feeling that had captured me.  “So Anthony won’t notice anything.”  He looked impressed and took the pill.  We lay on our bellies beside each other, kicking our legs up and down under the blankets.

“Fucking good night,” Michael said softly, turning his face to the side to grin at me.  “The best ever.”

I smiled back, this huge dopey smile, and I felt like the love and the light and all of everything that was pure and good, was alive and living inside my brain, shining out at him from behind my eyes.  I was sure of it.  I believed in it totally and utterly.  “You deserve it,” he told me then.  “You deserve a good time.”

“There’s a lot of joy…in a lot of things, isn’t there?” I said to him, before the pills took hold. I think it was the last thing I said to him, but I’m not sure.  In my dreams I carried on talking all night long.  Listing the songs, clinging on to the feeling.