22

We spent the rest of Sunday listening to music at Billy’s house.  Michael seemed cool and confident about everything, sprawled on the floor reading a magazine, while Jake rolled us smokes, and Billy rolled around laughing over the prank we had played.  I didn’t feel like that funnily enough.  I felt like I was in hiding.  But I had to go home eventually.  Billy shook his head when he had run out of laughter. “He’ll be painting the hall brown by now!” he said, nudging me with his elbow.  We were side by side on his bed, our backs against the wall.  “Anyway, listen,” he said then, suddenly coming over all serious, as he straightened up and smoothed his hair down with both hands. “I’ve got even more information from Steve!”  His eyes were bright and eager and alert, and both Jake and Michael looked up from what they were doing, mouths falling open in intrigue.  Me, I really resented the instant stirring of nerves in my gut.  They made me want to wriggle and fidget.  My mind wandered again, before I could prevent it, back to the hand on the neck, back to the squeeze.  I didn’t think I wanted, or needed to hear what else Billy had to say.  “He found out where Howard came from,” said Billy, leaning forward over his knees now that he had all eyes on him.

“Go on,” Michael urged, impatiently.

“He’s been at Nancy’s about three or four months.  Came from somewhere in Essex originally.  Apparently he’s been running bars and clubs all over the place for years, then stepped in and saved Nancy’s just before it went down the shit hole.  He shows up with his money and experience, and suddenly things are on the up again.  Now everyone’s talking about what a great place it is.  Everyone wants to go.”  Billy paused for breath. “That’s what Steve reckons anyway.  The other thing is, he plays cards after closing sometimes with a bunch of other men.  Some of them cops Steve reckons.”

We gazed around at each other, absorbing the information and what it might mean.  I found Michael’s bright eyes firmly on me, as he nodded.  “Very interesting,” he said. “He was just going on about cops being friends, wasn’t he Danny?  Like he was trying to warn us, or threaten us or something.”  I nodded in return, my expression solemn.

“Well anyway,” Billy went on. “Basically Steve warned us off the guy.  He said don’t bother messing with him.  His exact words.  What do you think about that?”

Jake stuck a roll up between his teeth and shook his long fine hair from his eyes as he lit it up.  “That is starting to sound like a bloody good idea,” he said. Michael glared at him instantly.

“What?  Are you mental?  This is even more reason to get rid of the guy Jake! You wouldn’t want someone like that hanging around your mother, would you?”  Jake sighed and looked at me.

“Why don’t you just talk to your mum?” he asked.  “Just tell her what you’re worried about.  Tell her you don’t like him.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know my mum,” I told him. “She’d have a fit if she knew we’d been sneaking around, and the fact I hate him won’t bother her! Plus, this isn’t enough, this isn’t enough to prove he’s a bad guy.”

Jake looked frustrated and ran his long fingers back through his hair. “So what exactly is the point in all this then?”

“The point Jake, is to make life difficult for the guy and get rid of him!” Michael barked then, appearing genuinely aggravated that Jake did not see this as clearly as he did.  “We have to mess with his head any way we can, find shit out about him and blackmail him, and get him away from Danny’s mum!”  He rolled his eyes and looked back at me. “But mate,” he said, a little more gently. “At the end of the day it’s up to you whether we keep going or not.  I don’t give a shit if we get in trouble, but it’s you who has to deal with the fallout at home.”

I released a sigh and glanced at Billy’s hi-fi system for a moment.  The Clash were singing Guns of Brixton.  When they knock down your front door, how you gonna’ come? They were asking me.  With your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun?  That was sort of what it came down to, I thought then.  Do nothing, surrender, or put up a fight.  I looked back at Michael and nodded. “I know but I don’t want that prick in my life, or my mum’s.  It’ll be worth it, if it works.”

It was agreed.  No backing down, no chickening out.  We sat for the following hour, detailing the next shots we would take.

The fallout at first, was predictable enough.  My mother was alone when I arrived home from Billy’s.  I came in the back door, and found her in the kitchen.  She was sat at the table, her back rigid, her face like stone, and her hands clasped firmly around the stem of a wine glass.  Her eyes were red around the rims.  “Wondering how the painting went by any chance?” she asked me as I tried to sneak past.  There was a worrying shake to her voice.  “Well we didn’t get much done in the end,” she sniffed, not looking at me.  “Was the strangest thing really.  Lee came down sick. I mean, really suddenly.  Doubled up in agony he was.  One moment he was fine, and the next…”  She shook her head as if she could not fathom it, and finally she turned and her eyes locked on mine.

“Oh dear,” I said, not looking forward to what was about to erupt.  She turned in her chair, turned right around, one hand on the wine glass and the other gripping the back of the chair.

“You boys think you’re so bloody clever don’t you? And don’t you dare come the innocent with me young man! I’ve been your mother long enough to know when you’re lying, which is most of the time! You little idiots put something in his drink, didn’t you?”

I said nothing.  Just stood there with my arms hanging and my face blank.  I just stared back into her quickly reddening face and felt my fear washing away.  I wanted to laugh at her for some reason.  I wanted to scream laughter right into her twisted little face.  I wanted to say, yeah, so what?  I kept my mouth shut.  There were tears shining in her eyes, but her mouth was an ugly snarl.  “We know that you did, so you don’t need to have the guts to admit it Danny.  And what about his slashed tyres, eh?  Funny that happening after you admitting damaging Frank’s car!  And no other cars in the street are targeted!  Like someone’s trying to give him a message, eh?”  She paused, tilted her head, maybe giving me the opportunity to speak, but there was no point, so I stayed silent.  “I wanted to call the police,” she said then. “But Lee wouldn’t hear of it.  For some reason, he actually likes you and wants to be friends with you!”  She got up then, still clutching her wine glass, and she seemed out of breath, as if if her anger was consuming all the oxygen.  “I don’t know why I’m surprised at you Danny, but I never thought even you would stoop this low!  Spiking someone’s drink!  Do you know how dangerous that is?  He’s been so ill he’s missed work!  What the hell is wrong with you?”

I started to edge towards the door. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered uneasily.  “We didn’t do anything.”

Her eyes shot wide open then.  I moved quick, but she was quick getting after me, screeching; “Liar!  You are nothing but a liar!  I don’t believe a word you say, not ever!  And it won’t work!  Do you hear me, it won’t work!”  I was on the stairs, pounding up them to escape her. “He told me!” she was screaming behind me. “He told me nothing you do will ever scare him away!  It doesn’t matter what you little shits do!  He loves me!  Did you hear that you twisted little boy?  He loves me and I love him back!”

I wrenched open my door and slammed it behind me.  “I am ashamed to be your mother!” I heard her shriek.  “If I knew where your dad was I would pack you off to him, because I have had enough!”

I slid the lock across the door and pressed my forehead into the wood.  I could hear it vibrating with her noise.  I stayed like that until her noise stopped.  The house fell silent.  I heard her car starting up outside, and then I was alone.  It didn’t matter I thought, while I shook with rage and blinked away tears.  It didn’t matter, what she said or thought about me, it didn’t fucking matter at the end of the day.  All that mattered was the plan.  All that mattered was keeping that creepy gorilla away from my home and my life.  Love, I thought, my lips parting in a snarl, how the fuck could they love each other after a couple of weeks?  “Bullshit,” I turned around and told Kurt Cobain.  He stared back at me from above my bed.  I’d bought the poster for £3.99 in Our Price, and it was the best one I had.  Just him, glaring through his hair, looking like he felt how I felt most of the time in this life.  Confused and pissed off.  I stomped to my desk and hit play.  Smells Like Teen Spirit throbbed it’s steady, building beat.  I turned it up as loud as it would go. “Plan C is next anyway,” I said to the poster.  “Plan C starts tomorrow, you stupid fuckers!”

“What the hell is Plan C anyway?” Billy wanted to know, when we were gathered again after school the next day.  This time we were at Michael’s.  He had returned home from school to find a note from his mother pinned to the fridge.  She had gone to her sisters for a few days, and he was alone.  We spread ourselves out in the lounge, the stereo on, blasting out The Stone Roses.  Michael beamed and clapped his hands at the question.

“You’re gonna’ like Plan C,” he announced to us in confidence.  “Plan C is prank call time!”

I was sprawled on the sofa with my legs dangling over the arm.  I had a pile of tapes on my belly and was sorting through them.  “Nice,” I nodded in response.  “I like the sound of that.  Subtle.”

Michael jerked his head towards the phone in the hallway. “Who wants to go first?”

Plan C was still in action a few weeks later, as school limped along towards the last week of term.  The summer holiday stretched out beyond us like a promise.  It would have dragged, that week, if we hadn’t had the plan to keep us busy.  I kept out of the phone calls, which had become a daily source of fun for the gang.  I’d played witness to a fair few though, and that was good enough.  They would put on fake voices and call Howard at his flat, or at the club.  They pretended to be people he owed money to, or women he had dumped, while I curled up with laughter in the background.  When nothing came down on me at home, they got braver.  They called the club and spoke to the staff, telling whoever answered the phone that Howard owed them money and if he didn’t pay it soon the club would be torched.  Sometimes I was genuinely shocked by the stories Michael came up with.  His voices were brilliant too.  It was like he could create a believable and realistic character out of thin air, and then just become them totally, for however long the phone call lasted.  Sometimes laughter would get the better of him though, and he would be forced to hang up and sink down to his knees, gasping for air.  They were times that all four of us just ended up rolling around on the floor at Mike’s house, hugging our bellies as we screamed laughter at the ceiling.  Every day, I slunk home, expecting the shit to hit the fan, expecting my mother and Howard to confront me, but nothing happened.  Nothing.  Howard stayed away, and my mother floated in and out of the house to see him, as if nothing could touch her, as if she knew and cared for nothing.

Towards the end of the week, the gang took things up yet another notch. I guess Michael was feeling untouchable, because even I was shocked when he told me what they had done the next day at school.  They had snuck out together, dressed head to toe in black, and hurled a couple of bricks through the back windows of Howard’s club.  Then they had scampered back off into the darkness.  Hearing this, some nerves returned to chew at me, but I reminded myself that they were on my side, that was the thing.  They were doing this for me, and also, it was working!  Howard had stayed away, which was fine with me.  John was packed up and leaving within the week.  I had returned to being the invisible kid in my home, but that was okay, I reasoned.  I scribbled in my notebook every chance I got, spilling out the details of the plan, clinging to my writing and my music, gathering them all together at the end of each day.  And when it was all out of my system, I would just lie back and stare at the ceiling in relative peace, reflecting that it was all working, it was all coming together.   I thought about the merit Mr James had awarded me in assembly for my story in the newspaper.  I’d had to go up in front of everyone to collect it.  Lucy told me that she kept a copy of the story under her pillow, and this admission flushed me right through with renewed hope that one day, maybe when we were older, something would happen between us.

Looking back, I was an idiot.  We all were.  We thought we were big and clever and rebellious and we thought we had some measure of control.  We were all fooling ourselves.  We were none of those things, and it didn’t take long for me to see this.  On the last day of term I cycled home alone.  We were meant to be meeting up later, at the beach.  It was going to be brilliant.  The whole school would be down there, they said.  People were going to sneak drinks down there, and bring food and music.  One huge out of control party was on the horizon.  I had a faint smile on my lips as I cycled along, planning in my head what clothes I would change into, wondering if Lucy would be down there, wondering if I would have the guts to talk to her again…I was watching my front wheel rolling, and when I finally lifted my head, it was Howard’s silver Mercedes that I saw, parked in the drive, right in front of me.  I yanked my brakes, and skidded to a standstill.

 

23

 

Okay, I thought, and started to weave my bike up onto the pavement towards the drive.  Okay then.  I climbed off my bike beside the long silver shark of a car.   I just stood there for a few minutes, thinking.  I could get back on my bike I thought.  Get back on and get the hell out of there.  Go down the beach early and wait for the party to start.  Or, I could carry on, and walk inside my own house as if nothing had ever happened.  I could put on the clothes I wanted to wear, and sort out some music and roll ups to take.  As Michael seemed keen to impress upon me daily; they couldn’t prove a thing.  I hadn’t done a thing.  My hands tightened on the handlebars as I chewed at my lip and thought things over.  There was no doubt in my mind that turning around and cycling down to the beach was a far more attractive option, but then I bristled with a sting of anger, and remembered that I did not want to be like John.  I did not want to pretend everything was okay and just go along with things.  I didn’t want to roll over and surrender like some dopey puppy dog.  And what was that bastard doing alone in my house anyway?  Since when did he have a key?

I forced myself forward then, or rather my indignation did.  I had plenty of it back then, you see.  I was fed up of these bastard men taking liberties, the arrogant pricks.  I reminded myself of the plan, of not taking it anymore, of fighting back.  I imagined myself as the true man of the house as I stalked towards it, and propped my bike against the wall outside the kitchen.  The back door was slightly open, and I could see Howard was there all right.  He was sat at the table, and I felt myself recoil slightly, at the sight and the size of him.  The kitchen was a small room, but with him occupying it, it seemed even smaller, like there was not even enough room for the air.  He was leaning back in the chair closest to the hallway, with his fucking cowboy boots up on the table, and a beer in one hand, looking like he fucking owned the place, and Jesus Christ, I wanted to spit at him.  I stiffened with the resentment that flooded me then.  My nostrils flared and my top lip lifted.  I stepped in through the door, and he merely grinned at me, and lifted the beer in a hello.  “Ooh look who it is!” he exclaimed with excitement, making out he was pleased to see me, but I could see it was all fakery and bullshit.  He was drowning in the stuff.  It seeped through his very fucking pores.  His feet left the table and hit the floor. “Danny the boy with no tongue! You got your little friend behind you to do your talking, or are you all alone?” He cocked his head at me questioningly.  “Oh good.  ‘Cause I’m here to have a proper chat with you mate.  Man to man, so to speak.”

I attempted to swallow the incredible dryness which lined my throat and started to walk towards the hall. “No thanks,” I growled in reply.  Howard was on his feet quickly, blocking the doorway with his immense frame, beer still in hand, and a friendly smile on his face.

“Whoa hold on there a minute, where you going so fast?” he asked me, his tone dropping now.  “Slow down.  Your mum asked me to come and talk to you.  Just you and me, and it’s pretty important, so here I am.”

I clenched my fists and stared at the tiny amount of space on either side of him.  “I don’t think so,” I said.

“Unruly little shit, aren’t you?”  he said, and his smile had faded to nothing.  I scowled at him.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, ponderingly, his small eyes narrowing slightly as they took me in and worked me out.  “You and your little pals.  Little troublemakers eh?  Bunch of fucking comedians.”

I shrugged my shoulders, and despite my inner nerves, I offered him a withering sneer.  “Don’t know what you’re talking about prick.”  I dragged the word out and met his eyes while I spoke it.  I watched his small eyes widen and his thin lipped mouth drop open.  It was then that it struck me who he reminded me of, who he looked like, it was that fucking WCW wrestler, Steve Austin, or Stunning Steve Austin they called him.  Christ I thought then, they could have been twins.

“Prick?” he repeated the word as if the feel of it in his mouth offended him.  He cocked his head and hooked his thumbs into his belt.  He frowned.  He looked genuinely puzzled and confused.  I just stared back at him blankly. “Prick?” he asked again, and shook his head at me.  “My god, you kids today are unbelievable!  You know what I would have got if I’d ever dared say that to my old man, or any other adult for that matter?” He unhooked one thumb and patted his belt with his free hand, whilst his eyes drilled into mine.  “I would’ve got a taste of this, little man.  Real arrogant little shit, aren’t you?  I mean your mum, she warned me about you, but I guess I didn’t really believe her, until I had the pleasure of meeting you that is.  Now you listen here mate,” he slid his hands down his thighs, leaning down until his face was level with mine.  He looked at me as if I were an alien, something he  had never encountered before, and he spoke slowly and surely, as if I were stupid.  “I know it was you and your mate put that stuff in my drink.  Yeah, that’s right, I know it.  I know it’s you and them making silly calls, and I know it’s you lot who smashed my windows and slashed my tyres.  Oh yeah, I know, and your mum knows too, which is why she asked me to come here today to speak to you about something we’ve come up with, but before I do I’ve got something of my own to tell you.”  He smiled at me then.  I felt chilled to the bone, I’m telling you, I felt cold all over, and it was a sweltering July day outside.  There was an icy glint in his eyes and as he stared into me, he ran a slow and considered tongue around his lips, coating them in a thin trail of saliva, and I felt for a second then, that he was preparing to eat me.  “You’ve gone and made an enemy of me,” he nodded, “and you really didn’t want to do that.”  He straightened up then, and I released the breath I had been holding and looked again at the options of space on either side of him.  It felt like my chest was close to bursting with the panicked hammering of my heart.

“You can’t prove anything,” I decided to tell him then, fighting to keep the shake from my voice, desperate to uphold an unbothered exterior, while inside I was panicking, inside I knew there was something wrong with all of this, inside my heart was beating faster and faster and faster.

“No I don’t need to buddy,” he told me, delivering a fresh and dazzling smile.  “But you need to realize that your pathetic little stunts haven’t worked, yeah?  Just like I told you before, your shit won’t scare me away, in fact if anything they’ve brought me and your mum even closer together.  United, you might say.  So carry on if you feel the need, but you’re wasting your time, because I am still here.”  He lowered his voice down to a whisper. “I’m still screwing your mother.” His smile flicked up at the edges, and his small eyes shone, enticing me to react, and then he merely rocked back on his heels, drank his beer and waited.

“Get out of my way,” I said through gritted teeth.  He laughed.

“I haven’t quite finished yet, little man.  Hang on,” he held up a hand and feigned a serious expression.  “What your mum wanted me to talk about, you see, well, you know she’s been struggling to pay the rent, and work two jobs, and I’ve been helping her out with money here and there, you know? Well we just decided you see, it’s crazy us paying two lots of rent when we spend all our time together anyway, so look, take a look over there!” He finally moved to one side and revealed the hallway, and a pile of luggage that was sat neatly by the front door.  “I’m moving in!” he yelled happily, and slipped back into his chair at the table. “Isn’t that great?”

“You can’t be!” I yelled, taking a step towards the pile of bags, and then staring back in horror at Howard, and the smug look upon his face.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, or hearing.  I felt like the walls were crashing down on me then.  I felt like the entire world had gone fucking crazy.  “She doesn’t even know you!” I cried, and it was true, how could she?

“She knows enough pal,” he grinned back at me, rubbing his hands together in unmistakable glee.  “Thing is Danny, let me explain it to you.  She needs me here because of you.  Because she can’t cope with you.  So if you wanna’ get pissed off about me moving in here, get pissed off with yourself, little man.  You wanna’ blame someone, blame yourself.” He picked up the pack of cigarettes that lay on the table and pulled one out.  I was a dumb and shaking, sweating ball of maddening, relentless anger as I watched him stick it between his teeth, flick the flame on his lighter and inhale.  He leaned forward then, caught my eye, and grinned a lop-sided grin.  “You stupid little bastard.”

Well, to say I went a little bit insane after that, is probably an understatement.  I went completely insane.  I had no more fear then, none.  I had nothing but red mist.  The red mist swirled like a tornado behind my eyes, and the faster it swirled, the darker it became, until it became black.  I don’t really remember what I did, or said, except for I know I screamed you fucker quite a lot, and I know that John appeared from upstairs and manhandled me away, with his arms around my middle.  I’d gone for him too.  I remember kicking his shins, scratching his hands and punching his head.  He somehow, I don’t know how, managed to drag me upstairs, shoved me in my room and shut the door on me, with him on the other side.  He held onto the handle when I started to wrench it up and down.  He tried to tell me to calm down so that he could come in and speak to me.  I told him to fuck off, told them all to fuck off.  I screamed and bellowed and kicked my door until I made a hole in the bottom of it.

After a while I could hear my mother downstairs, so I locked my door and changed my mind about wanting to come out.  John and her conversed in tense tones on the stairs.  She rapped on my door and I screamed at her to fuck off. “Danny, I can’t afford the rent on my own!” she started wailing on the other side, while John mumbled words of discontent in the background. “We’ll lose the house!  Stop being such a child and let me come in and speak to your properly!”

“Big mistake,” I could hear John telling her.  “They needed time to get to know each other first mum, what are you thinking?”

I got up from where I had slumped on the floor and pressed my ear against the wood.  Howard’s voice was droning on downstairs.  I tried to pick up what he was saying, something about not throwing his weight around, and being more of a lodger than anything, but mum and John were arguing over the top of him, so it was hard to tell.

“John, I’ve been at my wits end!” she was saying. “You have no idea!  Do you even know the awful stuff that boy has been up to lately?  Well I can’t cope, and who have I got to help me now you’re off eh?  Not my mother, and not his father, no one!  I can’t do it John, so you can say what you like and think what you like, but I either have Lee here to help me emotionally and financially, or I get carted off to the bloody loony bin, and I am serious!”

“If you let Lee move in now, you’ll be living in a war zone,” John told her.  She laughed.

“We already are if you hadn’t noticed!  Since we moved here, that boy has been nothing but trouble!  Fighting from day one, stealing, lying, getting arrested!  Damaging people’s cars!  I can’t control him John, I admit it, I hold my hands up! He doesn’t listen to a word I say, because he has no respect for me whatsoever!”

“Your mum needs a rest,” I heard the gruff voice in the hallway.  I kicked the door again then, I couldn’t help it, I just had to.  I turned around, picked up my chair and threw it at the wall.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” My mother screeched. “I’ll kick the door down if I have to young man!”

“Mum, leave him, leave him, come on, we all have to leave him.”

She listened to John, and I listened to their footsteps hurrying back down the stairs and away from me and my rage.  I didn’t know what to do with it then.  I stared wildly around at my room.  I wanted to smash the window and kick in the wardrobe.  I stayed where I was though, anger rooting me to the spot.

Eventually a thought came to me.   I don’t have to live here.  They can’t keep me here if they hate me so much.  No one will care if I just fuck off.  So I packed a few clothes and things into my school bag, opened up my door and stole out onto the landing.  I could hear all three of them still discussing me in the kitchen.  They had the door closed for obvious reasons, which made it easier for me to creep down the stairs.  Just before I opened the front door I heard Howard talking in this voice which was the complete opposite of the one he had used with me.  “I won’t interfere,” he was assuring my brother.  “I’m not into all that.  I’m just here to help Kay with the rent and bills so she doesn’t have to kill herself working two jobs, and I’m just here for her, that’s all.  To support and care for her at the end of the day.  Once you’re gone, you know?  To help her out, that’s all.  And I’m pretty sure once he gets used to the idea, and he gets to know me, he’ll be just fine.  I can guarantee it John.  I’m convinced of it.”

Fucking bullshitter, I seethed and slipped out of the door without any of them knowing.  I walked around the corner, with my hands in my pockets and my head low, and I suddenly felt the loneliest person in the world.  I went around to the back of Michael’s house and began to hurl stones up at his window.  “Come on you bastard let me in!” I yelled, before it dawned on me that he would be down at the beach by now, that they all would be.  My legs seemed to go weak on me then, so I sat down heavily on the back doorstep.  I caught my head in my hands and as my breath hitched in my chest.  My heart remained in a panic.  I knew I should go to the beach to find them.  I knew I should join them, join in the fun, but my legs didn’t want to know at that moment.  So I stayed where I was, staring through my fingers at the thousands of dog ends that lay scattered on the dry earth around the doorstep.  I felt wretched and sick, if you want to know the truth.  Worse than that, I felt small, and like an idiot.  I thought helplessly about all the things I had done to drive my mother crazy.  I felt like I’d been punched in the gut when I realized how easily I had driven her towards his arms.  I sat there, accepting the trembles of rage, and feeling queasy with the awful turning, churning that went on in my belly.  I sat there and could not believe that any of this was really happening.

I stayed there for so long, that the sun began to slip down in the sky behind Michael’s alley way.  Dusk was upon me.  Fingers of gold and orange reached out on either side of the sun, washing the sky and bathing the unkempt garden in an eerie, pinkish light.  I pictured my friends at the beach, maybe dancing around a fire, maybe drinking stolen beers.  I wondered if Lucy was there with them, celebrating the end of the school year.  My backside grew numb and cold on the step, so I shifted position and sat sideways instead, pulling my legs up onto the step and leaning against the closed door.  It was like a bad dream, I thought, as the time slipped by.  What made it all worse was the niggling feeling that I was only getting what I deserved.  My mother had fallen in love with some kind of monster, and nobody could see it except for me.  I chewed my lip until it felt sore, remembering their words in the kitchen.  To them, I was the problem, I was the one at fault.  No one had heard Howard call me a stupid little bastard, and no one had heard him say I had made an enemy of him.

I was so relieved when I finally heard Michael dragging his bike down the alley, I could have cried.  I was close, I can tell you.  I felt like my life had slipped through my fingers and smashed into pieces on the ground.  I felt like I was staring at the pieces of it, with no idea how to collect them up or reassemble them.  I stayed on the step, hugging my knees and shivering in the growing darkness, and I called out a warning to him as he bundled through the gate. “Hey Mike, it’s me.”

“What the hell, Danny?” he said, coming quickly towards me. “What you doing there mate?  Where the hell were you tonight?”

“Something happened.”

“What?”

“Mum’s let Howard move in.  He’s moved in Mike.”

“You are fucking kidding me!” Michael spat, arriving beside me, his expression outraged, his fists already balled. “No way!”

“He knows everything Mike,” I said, my head hanging. “He hates me.  He’s fucking moved in.  They just let him.  I can’t live there now Mike.  I can’t live with him.”

Michael breathed out slowly and placed his hands on his hips.  He shook his head and gazed around in wonder.  “Stay here mate,” he said to my relief.  “Just stay here.”

20

 

            Michael had us all assembled at the base the following day after school.  It was imperative he said, that we be there.  It was vital.  The dinner with Lee Howard was to go ahead that night, and it hung over me all day, like a bad smell I could not shake off.  I looked at Michael when I needed light, and hope and humor.  He had come prepared.  He had torn the side off an old cupboard box and propped it against the wall on the table.  He had a permanent black marker in one hand, and had scrawled across the top of the cardboard in capital letters; PROJECT ARSEHOLE.  It made sense, I thought.  We were all there that day.  Jake, he was sat at the table in his usual fluid style, yawning while he expertly rolled us a few cigarettes to smoke.  Billy, was on my other side, and squirming with the excitement he found in telling me how hated Lee Howard was down at Nancy’s.  Mike waved his pen about and commanded us to be silent.  We were all there the day we decided to mess with Lee Howard.  Maybe if I’d said no, maybe if I’d said hey, let’s not bother, maybe, who knows,  maybe things would have been different.

“This is Plan A, and it goes into immediate effect,” Michael was shouting in the style of an American army officer.  Jake slumped back further and yawned again.

“No chance of you guys just giving him a chance first, eh?”

“Are you mental?” was Billy’s outraged retort.  “Have you listened to a word I said? Steve hates the guy, Jake, hates him!  He’s already looking for a new job!”

“Everyone hates their boss,” Jake pointed out, exactly as I had before I met the man in my hallway.  “He might be a nice bloke outside of work.”

“You sound like John,” I told him, unimpressed.

“He’s an arsehole Jake,” Michael said, holding up a hand to indicate there would be no debate on this fact. “It’s obvious.  Worse than Frank Bradley, right Danny?”

“He’s got really mean eyes,” I nodded at Jake.  “And he’s bloody enormous!  Like a giant gorilla!”

Jake laughed and lit the first roll up. “Just thought you were trying to stay out of trouble, that’s all.”

“Listen men!” Michael bellowed at us then, eyeing us all fiercely and pointing at us with his marker pen.  “This is not the time for doubts and fears! This is what we do!  We make trouble for bad guys!  Now come on, who is with me?  Who’s on board for Project Arsehole?  The stuff I’ve got planned needs as many men as possible, so come on!”

So that was it.  The start of the war, if you like.  The start of all of this.

I cycled home when the finer details of Michael’s first plan had been discussed and confirmed.  It was to start that very night, the night of the dinner.  I arrived home later than planned and met my mother struggling with shopping bags in the driveway.  I slammed down my bike and made an apologetic face at her stressed grimace.  “Sorry.”

“That’s all you ever say,” she muttered, and staggered on into the house with her bags.  “And put your bike away properly!  Someone will run over it one day and you won’t be getting a new one!”

I growled a little under my breath, picked my bike back up and wheeled it around to the back.  When I stepped into the kitchen, she was chucking packets and tins of food into the cupboards, and her face was flushed and irritated.  John appeared calmly in the doorway and offered to help.  “What are we having?”

“Some chicken thing,” she panted, stepping back from it all to push her hair back away from her face. “I’ve got the recipe somewhere.  Can you put the rest of this away for me boys? I’ve got to have my bath and get ready, and I’ve already got a banging headache from the stress of it all.”  She pressed one hand to her forehead and whimpered.

“It’s only dinner mum,” John reminded her.  “No need to get in a state.  Why not just order takeaway?”

“I don’t want to!” she snapped at him, whirling around and marching from the room. “I want to make something special for Lee, and make up for how rude Danny was to him last night!”

John waited until she was upstairs before he looked at me. “You met him last night?”

“Yeah, he popped in to say hi. And I wasn’t rude.  I didn’t do anything.”

“And what was he like?”

“Hmm,” I replied, with a knowing smile. “You’ll have to make your own mind up golden boy.  I’ll be very interested to hear your opinion afterwards.”

I went up to my room and listened to Nirvana until dinner was ready.  I needed it pumping through me to prepare me for what was to come.  I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, and my feet danced at the bottom of the bed, and I thought about everything Michael had said.  I had a job to do at the dinner table, but the most important thing was not provoking my mothers’ anger, whilst interrogating Howard as much as I could get away with.  We needed as much information, or ammunition as possible.  It would all be written down in the notebook later.  The boys had their own part to play, and it was the knowledge of this that gave me a brave and warm feeling inside as I waited.  By the time I was called down for dinner, I was throbbing with resentment and scorn, my fists curled at my sides under the cuffs of my oversized shirt.  I entered the room and slid into a chair and offered the man an icy smile across the table.

For some time, I just sat and ate in a good natured silence.  I tucked into the chicken dinner my mother had slaved over, and just listened to the flow of adult conversation around me.  John had a few questions for Lee, which I paid close attention to.  In fact I watched John almost as much as I watched Howard.  I tried to note his tone, and his facial expressions, but my brother was always so polite and pleasant to everyone, it was impossible to tell what he really thought.  I at least hoped he had noticed how the guy talked with his mouth full.  I watched him do it, fascinated.  It was sort of obvious that he knew he shouldn’t do it, that he knew it was rude, or whatever.  He tried to chew and swallow faster when he had something to say, but it was like his words couldn’t wait, or they were too important to hold back, so they would spill out anyway, food or no food.  He was so impatient to deliver his opinion, that good table manners went out of the window.  It disgusted me, so I chalked up another reason to despise him.  I took time dissecting the way he was dressed too.  Those stone washed jeans again, and a matching denim shirt.  Awful.  Just seeing him in a denim shirt made me want to collect up every single shirt like it in the entire world, throw them in a pit and set fire to them.

And then there was the way he interrupted people, and spoke over the top of them.  Again, I noticed that he did it in a clever way, not making it too obvious.  He would nod and say yes, yes while they were speaking, and he would slide in little words here and there, agreeing with them, and before you knew it he had stolen the conversation, whipped it right out from under them.  Took it off on his own boring tangent.  I sat and stared and absorbed and prickled, and wondered how the fuck my brother and my mum could not see what I saw.

My ears pricked up when he started to tell us about Nancy’s. “Really turning the place around now,” he said, still chewing and gulping down the remnants of a new potato.  His pale blue eyes went around the table, taking us in one by one.  He had this serious tone as he forked another potato into his mouth and nodded at us. “That place was going down the toilet when I arrived.  Unbelievable how bad Philips had let things get.  It was only a couple of months away from folding completely.  But crazy as it sounds, that was the kind of place I was looking to invest in.  I mean, to put your money into a place that’s already a success is fine, but to go in and turn around a place that’s on the brink of disaster, is more of a challenge.  I mean, you can’t take much of the credit if the place is already doing well.  You can’t say you’ve achieved much.  No, I wanted a challenge.  I had no fear about that.”

I shot a look at John.  He was nodding and eating, but glancing constantly at the clock on the wall.  I started to worry that he had plans after dinner, and was just going to shoot off once he had eaten.  “Just needed money and fresh blood,” Howard was still saying.  I watched him fork a piece of chicken, whip it around in the sauce and then pop it into his mouth.  He chewed hard and fast and then said; “Plus experience of course.  Luckily I had buckets of both, and I could see what a little goldmine the place had potential to be.”

“You’ve got lots of experience in pubs then?” I spoke up.  It was the first time I had said anything, and I felt all their eyes fall on me at once.  My mother seemed to suck in her breath and lower her head slightly, her eyes averting to her dinner plate.  Howard just looked at me and nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh yeah.  Been working in pubs and clubs my whole life.  There’s nothing I don’t know about working in that environment.  God, I’ve done it all over the years…” he grinned through his food and started to count off on his big, thick fingers.  “Barman, doorman, manager…”

“Drunk?” I enquired brightly and teasingly.  I avoided the desperate look I knew my mother was probably giving me and let my eyes lock with Howards.

“Danny for God’s sake,” my mother complained.   I heard John clear his throat.  Howard’s expression did not really alter as he stared back at me.  He stared back, and refused to look away.  He made a hand gesture towards mum.

“No, it’s all right,” he assured her.

“There was no need for that,” my mother was shaking her head at me.

“Sorry,” I shrugged. “Just a joke.”

“It’s all right,” Howard said, his thin smile stretching out a little at either end.  “I see what you’re getting at, and the answer is obviously no.  You wouldn’t get far in any job, let alone in the drinks business, if you were a drunk.  You only have to look at the guy I co-own the place with.” His lips lifted apart then, as he smiled with his teeth.  I could see all these little bits of chicken stuck and stranded between them.  He had small teeth, I noticed then.  Small and straight.  “Your mum warned me about you,” he said.

I shrugged and glanced at John, who had finished his meal and pushed his plate away.  When I looked back, I found Howard still staring at me.  I felt myself stranded there too. I looked away, at the wall, or the floor, or the food on my plate, but whenever I looked back his face had not changed and his eyes were still completely on me.  I shivered with it.  Shivered from my scalp right down to my feet, and I hated myself a bit then, and I started to make myself think about the gang outside, doing their bit.

“You guys could learn a lot from Lee,” my mum announced, putting down her knife and fork and pushing her own plate away.  He looked away from me then, smiling intently at her and slinging an appreciative arm around the back of her chair.  “I’m serious,” she said. “Started out with nothing and worked his way up to the top, isn’t that right honey?”

“Well yes,” he agreed, as I stared on in horror.  “The fact is boys, you can’t climb as high as me if you’re too fond of the drink.  Back when I was wiping tables and cleaning toilets, I told myself, one day I’ll the boss of a place like this, and then I made it happen.”  He turned his other palm up on the table as if to say there you go, simple.

I felt close to bursting with my scorn and my disbelief.  I wanted to open my mouth up wide and scream laughter across the table.  I wanted Michael right there with me, so he could share the moment, so he could see what I saw.  I looked at the way Howard sat in his chair, leaning back like king of the fucking castle, like he fucking owned the place, with his arm now draped over my mothers’ shoulder.  I looked at him and saw a gorilla.  A monkey man, a body packed full of power and energy and I offered him my fakest smile. “Well done,” I said.  “Really pleased to hear that.  Amazing stuff.  Never been so inspired in my life.”

“I got to make a move mum,” John said quickly, filling the gap before my mother could admonish my sarcasm.  I looked up in genuine alarm as he shoved back his chair and carried his plate to the sink.  “Meeting someone.”

“Who?” I asked, but they all ignored me.  John leaned in and offered his hand to Howard, who got to his feet and shook it vigorously.  I wanted to vomit then, I really did.  I wanted to bring my chicken back up and hurl it across the table.

“Nice to meet you finally Lee,” he was saying, and then he was gone, out the door, the sneaky, spineless, waste of space bastard.  I sat at the table, dumbfounded, just shaking my head at the back door.  My mother was watching me intently so I looked her way and waited.

“We’ll leave you to wash the dishes Danny,” she said to me curtly.  “I think it’s the least you can do.”

I groaned at the pile of pots and pans stacked up beside the sink.  I dropped my head into one hand. “Great, thanks.”

She smiled a tepid smile, and rose from the table with her wine glass in hand. “Well the thing is Danny, when you start to behave as well as your brother does, you’ll be able to have the same privileges, won’t you?” She left me with that pearl of obvious wisdom and carried her wine through to the lounge.

“We can’t all be perfect,” I mumbled, and started to roll up my sleeves.  I felt relieved though, to be honest.  The dinner was over.  I had plenty to tell the gang, plenty to laugh about, and if everything had gone to plan, their part would be done and dusted now too.  All I had to do was clean up the dishes, and escape up to my room and wait.  I went to the sink and started to fill it up.  My mum had this little old transistor radio that she kept on a shelf above the sink.  I turned it on and fiddled with the knob for a bit until I found a station playing The Doors.  I began to hum under my breath, and for a moment I was totally lost in the music, as I waited for the sink to fill.  It was Break On Through.  I opened my mouth a little and sung along so no one could hear.

It was not until I heard the strike of a match behind me that I realized I was not alone.  I jumped, just a little and looked over my shoulder, and there he was.  The big gorilla.  He was still sat at the table, his gut straining slightly against the tight black belt he wore.  He shook out the match, placed it on the table, took a long pensive drag of his cigarette, and looked at me.  As I stared back, he lifted one cowboy boot and placed it on the chair next to his.  How fucking rude, I wanted to say.  “So,” he said finally, softly. “Your mum tells me you’ve been in a lot of trouble lately?” I offered him a blank stare and watched him rise slowly from the chair.  It was like watching a mountain rise and rise.  It was like he was never going to stop.  His cigarette dangled loosely between his thin lips as he gathered up the last of the glasses on the table and placed them on the side next to me.  He then positioned himself squarely on my other side and pulled a tea towel from the hook down below.

“You better not be helping him Lee!” My mum yelled out a warning from the other room.

“I insist!” he bellowed back, grinning down at me. “Dinner was amazing!” He picked up a plate I had just washed and began to dry it.

“I’ve got it,” I muttered. “You’re all right.”

He carried on regardless, so I looked back into the sink of water. I felt filled with a hot and trembling anger. I blew breath out noisily between my teeth, picked up the next plate and started washing faster, just desperate to get this over with now and get the hell away from him.  For a few moments, there was just the splash of the water as I scrubbed, and the music murmuring from above, just The Doors, and then; “Troublemaker eh?”

I shook my head.  This was horrendous.  I fixed my eyes on the bubbly water and searched for something biting to reply with.  “Ah lost your tongue again, like last night?” he said.  His voice was low and smooth, like a purr, and he followed the question by puffing his smoke out above the sink.  I watched the grey swirls rising in the air towards the radio.  “Maybe you keep your mouth shut so you don’t say something stupid eh?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I heard myself say, looking up at him. He returned this with a small and knowing smile.

“Oh course I do.  Get kids like you in my place all the time.”

“Yeah well I hear you’re not so popular down there, anyway.”

“Oh?  What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.  Just been doing my research, that’s all.” I glared back down at the water.  To my utter disgust and fury, I found my hands were shaking under the bubbles.

“Oh well that’s nice,” he said easily. “To hear you’ve taken such an interest in me, but you don’t need to go to any trouble to do that. You can ask me anything you like.”  He stopped drying then and screwed the tea towel into a little ball, before tossing it onto the side.  “Listen, I don’t want a row with you mate,” he said, puffing more smoke out above the sink.  “But I do have one thing I want to say to you.”

I scowled up at him.  I didn’t want to, not one little bit, but I felt I had to.  I had to show him I was not flustered, that my hands were not really letting me down under the water, that I was not afraid of anything, or anyone.   I glared darkly up into his face, and I noted how small his eyes were, far too small for that large, prominent forehead.  They seemed to beam out from his face like pebbles on a beach, like stones. “I’m crazy about your mother,” he said softly. “I think the world of her, and things are getting pretty serious between us, so…”

“Yeah whatever,” I snapped, cutting him off in the rudest way I could think of and turning my shoulder to block him out.  He stood still, in a shocked little silence, and I started to think I had won, I had got the better of him and he would shut the hell up and shuffle on out of there.  And then he started talking again.

“I also know about all the shit you gave the last guy she went out with,” he said, and then, as he said it, he moved closer to me and placed his hand on the back of my neck, as he leaned in towards my ear.  I just froze, my hands turning to stone beneath the water. “Just to warn you little man, that kind of shit won’t work with me so don’t waste your time.  I won’t be going anywhere, and the sooner you get used to that the better.”  He pulled back, tightened his hand briefly, and then was gone.  I turned slowly, locked in a dumb stupor, and watched him saunter casually down the hall to the lounge.  I found myself stood there, staring back at the water and wondering if it had really happened.  It was so quick, just this brief hard squeeze and then nothing, gone.  I found myself rubbing at my neck, questioning if it had really happened.

Before long, I was unable to stand either the dirty dishes or the booming laughter that flowed back from the lounge, so I gave up and went into the back garden for some fresh air.  The evening was cool outside, the daylight dwindling.  I could hear the distant voices of children playing, probably riding their bikes around in a last set of circuits before they were called in for bed.  I found a roll up in my back pocket, squeezed it back into shape and lit up, leaning against the back wall of the house.  As I smoked it, I wrapped one arm around my middle and took deep slow breaths, in and out, in and out, but it wasn’t working, the rage was building and bubbling and rolling around inside of me helplessly.  I projected it all bitterly towards my mother, the hurt swelling every time I imagined her talking to him about me.  The bastard was too well prepared, I thought.  I would have to tell Michael tomorrow.  I felt an impossible and shaking hatred for her then.  She was never on my side was she?  Never.

Just moments later the back door pushed open and she appeared beside me, her face small and pale in the darkness of the garden.  As soon as she saw me she folded her arms over her chest and tapped one slippered foot angrily against the ground.  I made a slow and unbothered job of finishing my smoke and dropping it before speaking to her. “Checking up on me?”

“Thought you might have disappeared somewhere,” she replied cooly.

“Sounds like a plan,” I muttered and started to walk past her.  As I did so, she reached out and grabbed my arm, stopping me.  The look in her eyes was desperate and confused.

“Why do you want to spoil it for me?” she begged.  I shook her off.

“Why do you have to pick the biggest bastard boyfriend ever?”

She shook her head, close to tears. “You don’t know anything about him.”

“Neither do you,” I said, and went inside.

Up in my room I closed the door and went to the window to wait.  I made myself comfortable there, with my music on low, and the window slightly open.  I sat and let the cool breeze soothe the angry redness of my face and mind.  Every now and again, without even meaning to, my hand would rise and wander to the back of my neck.  I was afraid to ask myself if it hurt or not, if my skin could still recall the press of fingers.  I knocked the thoughts away when they came.  What had happened there?  Eventually I retrieved my notebook and sat at the window scribbling lyrics into it instead.  It was the only way to get the thoughts from my head.  Stone me, why can’t you see?  You’re a no one, nowhere, washed up baby who’d look better dead. I did it to stop myself thinking and wondering, but it didn’t work too well.  My mind kept taking me back there, kept replaying it over and over again in my mind.  He had stepped closer.  Leaned forward to speak into my ear.  It was just a hand on my neck, I rolled my eyes and told myself.

Yes, but had it been a pat or a squeeze, or what?  Surely it had only been some kind of clumsy pat, and my heart had no business beating so hard and so fast under my clothes, as if it was trying to get out.  A pat was okay, I thought.  A pat on the back, or the shoulder would have been better, I replied.  Why hadn’t he done that?  You didn’t touch people’s necks, did you?  I tried to think as I scribbled down words, had I ever done that to anyone?  In play, or jest, or anything? The questions flew into my mind faster than I was able to chase them away.  A pat on the back would not have gotten me into this state, I thought.

Sometime later, I was still perched at the window, scribbling down my favourite parts of Stone Roses songs, when I heard the front door opening down below.  I immediately dropped my pen and book to the floor and yanked the curtains across to disguise myself.  I could hear them talking, softly and lovingly.  I could hear the wetness of their prolonged kissing.  And then, through a tiny gap in the curtains, I watched the big man himself sashay brashly down to his car and get in.  I held my breath.  The engine roared into life, he drove off a little way, and then all hell broke loose.  Raised voices.  Slamming doors.  My mother ran down to see what was wrong.  I could see him stalking around the tyres, stooping down to inspect each one in turn.  My mother started to flap about and talk in a high voice, and every now and then she just stopped and stared up at my window.  I ducked down and smiled to myself.  If Michael and the boys had had enough time and nerve, then all four of Lee Howard’s tyres would be slashed and stabbed in several places.

21

 

 

            Fear and regret steamrollered me into moving the next morning.  In fact I don’t think I have ever got out of bed as fast as I did that day.  I grabbed my bike and scooted over to Michael’s house.  I ran around to the back and started to throw stones at his window.  I got three solid hits in before he appeared at the window, bleary eyed and messy haired.  He opened it and stared in amusement down at me. “What the hell? It’s seven in the morning!”

“I know. You coming out?”

“Oh man.  Hang on.”

Minutes later I watched him bundle sleepily out of the back door, still pulling his arms through his checked shirt.  “You’re insane,” he yawned at me. “What’s going on?”

We started down the alley and climbed onto our bikes. “Had to get out the house,” I explained to him. “Before mum work up.”

Michael nodded, releasing another mammoth sigh. “Oh shit, yeah, I nearly forgot.  What happened?  Did they go mental?”

“No,” I shook my head, my eyes on him. “Not yet.  She called a taxi for him then went to bed.  Didn’t say a word to me.  They were out there talking for ages though.  He knows too much Mike, that’s the problem.  He already knows what we did to Bradley, everything!”

“Shittinghell,” Michael shook his head very seriously as we rode slowly along.  “You know, we went a bit far actually, got a bit carried away. I hope to hell no one saw us out there.”

“He deserves it,” I grumbled, eyes down, following the progress of the front wheel as it rolled me along.  “Should’ve got you to smash all the bloody windows too.”

Without discussing it, we had cycled out onto Somerley road and were heading towards town. “What about the dinner?” Michael wanted to know.  “Find anything useful out?”

“Nah not really.  Just that he’s a big mouthed cunt who talks with his mouth full and interrupts people all the time.”

Michael snorted laughter. “Fair to say you still don’t like him then?”

I grunted. “And fucking John.  Jesus Christ Mike, he arranged the whole thing, it was all his idea, and he asks fuck all and scoots off right after dinner!  Useless fucking twat.”

“Jesus,” Michael whistled through his teeth. “Sounds terrible mate.”

I nodded.  It was terrible, and now that I was up and out and thinking about it all again, it was just awful.  I was getting this crushing tightness in my chest, this horrible sensation of having no room to breathe, of anger filling each and every part of me.

“We need to do something,” Michael said then, and I nodded in agreement, feeling the same, but I had no idea what.  We rode on for a while in silence.  I took the time to gaze around, noticing for the first time how quiet and still the streets were.  It was Sunday, and the town had not woken yet.  I’d felt a rise of excitement in seeing Mike, but I could feel it drying up inside of me now.  Instead there was this gnawing anxiety, and it was there constantly in my head as we rode our bikes along; tell him, tell Mike about Howard’s hand on your neck, tell him, because you know it wasn’t right, you know it was weird, it was…I still didn’t really know what it was.  That was half the problem.   I kept thinking about how it would sound if I said it to him, and the further time moved me from the moment it had occurred, the more I found myself wondering if had even happened, and if it had, if it meant anything at all anyway.  Maybe it didn’t mean anything.  Some adults were like that, I thought, they ruffled your hair and patted your back, even if they didn’t know you that well.  Like June Madison, touching my arm, holding onto it even, as she rocked back and forth with laughter that crinkled up her eyes.  So why then, did just thinking about it make me shudder?  We rode up and over the two bridges, towards the high street.

The shops were all closed, and the high street seemed ghostly and desolate in the absence of shoppers.  A gang of swooping, screeching seagulls had decided to follow our progress though, and every time I glanced up at their beating wings and open beaks, I was reminded of the gang before I knew them, circling their bikes outside my house.  It seemed like a lifetime ago, I realized then.  “Are you okay?” I heard Michael asking me.  He was looking at me with a frown.

“Hmm?”

“You okay?  You hungry?  ‘Cause I have an idea.”

I shrugged in reply and he gestured for me to follow.  He crossed the road and took a left down a narrow alley that ran along the back of the high street.  All the businesses, shops and cafes backed out onto this alley.  Michael stood up on his pedals and pumped his legs, picking up speed until we arrived at the back of Nell’s Diner.  It was a traditional style café, popular with teenagers, cheap and cheerful and a place to hang out.  There was a white van parked out the back, the doors open, as it made its deliveries.  The smell of baking bread and cakes rolled sweetly down the alley towards us, and I closed my eyes briefly, inhaling it deep within my lungs.  Michael nodded, and as we looked on, a portly bald man in a white apron, came out the back of the café, grabbed a tray from the van and staggered back inside with it.  It was then that Michael made his move, and made it swiftly.  He was so fast, so sudden in his actions, that I was almost left behind in surprise.  I had barely caught up to him, when he stopped his bike, reached into the van, grabbed the nearest thing to hand and sped off again.

I was right behind him then, roaring with laughter as he struggled to cycle fast with two massive French sticks tucked under one arm.

We kept cycling, seen by no one, doubling back on ourselves and riding down towards the old Priory church.  We zig zagged through the ancient, crumbling tombstones of the long dead and forgotten, and freewheeled down the hill, through a deserted car park and out onto the quay.  There was no one.  Not a body in sight.  Just old sailboats and dingy’s jostling gently on the shining water of the harbour.  I was laughing too much to cycle, so I got off and pushed my bike up to the edge of the water.  Michael dumped his and claimed a bench, as always, sitting on the back with his boots on the seat.  I joined him, weak and breathless with laughter, and as I flopped down, he pushed one of the sticks onto my lap, and it was still warm. “Breakfast is served!” he said, grinning broadly.

“You’re mental!” I told him, still giggling and wiping at my leaking eyes. “You can’t just do that!  You dirty little thief!”

“Hey don’t call me names, I just got you breakfast!”

“You’ve done that before haven’t you?”

He nodded.  “Once or twice.  Tuck in.”  He tore a huge chunk of bread off with his teeth.  The sun was spilling orange juice out onto the water as it continued its climb up to the clouds.  The light reflected off his black hair.  He looked for a moment, as if he had a hazy halo surrounded his head, and it made me have to look down, look away.

“Thanks Mike,” I told him. “You’re a legend.”

“I know.  And you’re welcome.”

For a while we just ate in silence.  It was nice.  Just sat there, staring at the orange tipped water and not saying anything about anything.  We could have been anyone, I thought, anyone going anywhere.  The warmth of the stolen bread filled our minds and our stomachs.  Beyond the harbour, the marshland grasses stood tall and proud, swaying in the breeze that teased our hair.  Swans glided by in pairs.  Ducks quacked, especially when they got a whiff of our breakfast.  We started throwing them some after a while.  We didn’t have the room to eat an entire French stick each. I pulled my feet up onto the bench and wrapped my arms around my knees.  The seagulls croaked and squawked behind us, strutting about on the grass, hoping for leftovers.  The boats bumped and moved gently against each other.  I found myself wondering if this view, this silence was what my mother had been trying to tell me about before we moved here.  I just stared at it, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it meant to me.  “We should do this again,” I said eventually, turning to Michael.  He was tugging pieces of bread from the last portion of his stick and tossing it out to the ducks.  “It’s nice, I mean.  Everyone else asleep, or whatever.”

“We should.  It’s cool.  Think of all the mischief we could get up to with no one else around.”  We looked at each other and grinned. “You want to know the next part of the plan?” he asked me then.  I swallowed and smiled a little.  My stomach pulled down, not wanting to go there.  “Got a shit hot idea,” he went on. “Laxatives in his drink!”

I laughed out loud. “We can’t do that!”

“Yes we can,” Michael giggled. “I can steal them off my mum.  We did it to Higgs once!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, at school. Slipped them into his coke in the canteen.  He doubled up instantly.  Legged it to the toilet, shit stains everywhere!” Michael let off a peal of laughter, lifting his chin to the sky and clapping his hands together. “Brilliant!”

I nodded. “God, I wish I’d seen that.”

“Well we’ll do it to the arsehole. Whenever he’s next at yours call me, and I’ll bring them over.  It’s easy.”  He slipped down beside me then, hunting in his pockets for a cigarette.  Coming up with nothing he sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. “If you want to, that is. You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” I said, staring back out at the water.  “I’ll do anything Mike.  I do not want that creep with my mother.  Trouble is, I don’t think he’s gonna’ be the pushover Bradley was.” I swallowed again, and it was there on the tip of my tongue, tell him, tell him what you’re thinking, what happened, what it might have been, what it might have meant, tell him!  I felt Michael watching me carefully, waiting for more.  I coughed into my hand.  “I mean, she’s warned him hasn’t she?  He’s prepared for it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Michael replied simply. “He still has a limit.  Everyone has a limit.  We’ll push him to it. Whatever it takes to piss him off.  Whatever it takes to get rid of him, we’ll do it.  One thing after another, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Only thing is, you’re mum is gonna’ be pretty pissed off with you for a while.”

I shrugged. “Used to that.”

“But be careful at school,” he advised me. “Stay out of trouble with Higgs and everything. We don’t need all that shit.”

“Be a good boy?” I looked at him and grinned.

“Prove them wrong,” he corrected me.

I had a puncture when I got home, so I turned the bike upside down, and sat on the doorstep to spin the wheel around.  I was lost in this for a moment, sleepiness washing over me from my early start, so it made me jump when my mother cleared her throat loudly right behind me.  I immediately felt the guilt stealing across my face, and looked up at her reluctantly.  She regarded me as she always did.  Eyes narrowed down, forehead furrowed, and mouth small.  “You were up early,” she stated.  I opened my mouth to explain but she didn’t let me speak. “Lee’s coming over in a minute. To help with the painting.”

I floundered, struggling for words, struggling with the heavy sinking of my gut.  She turned and grabbed the kettle and carried it to the sink to fill.  I stood up and wiped my oily hands down the legs of my jeans.  “What painting?”

“About time I started sorting this place out,” she replied with her back to me.  “Gonna’ start with the hall. He’ll be here all day helping me. I might as well ask him to stay for dinner again to thank him.”

I had no words for her.  I could only stare at her back.  I watched her make her coffee and carry it away.  I would have been lost in anger and disbelief if I hadn’t recalled Michael and his plan.  So I hovered near the door until I heard her upstairs, and then I dashed for the phone.  Do you ever read a book, or watch a film, and watch the main character start to make a massive mistake?  You can see it’s all going to go horribly wrong, and they should be able to see it as well, but somehow they can’t, and they go blindly on, they go staggering dumbly towards this stupid, stupid thing.  You want to scream at the TV or the book, don’t you?  You want to reach out and grab them and shake them, pull them aside and say hey, really you don’t want to do that, it’s all going to backfire, listen to me a minute.  Well I wish I’d had someone to do that for me that day.  With the grotesquely unfair and useless benefit of hindsight, I can now see that I should have stopped myself.  I should have sat back down and got on with looking for the puncture.   I should have politely ignored Michael’s offer to help humiliate and deter Lee Howard.  I should have stood back patiently in the sidelines, and waited for it to go wrong by itself.

But I didn’t.  All I could see was that man, and his pebble like eyes, and his monstrous chest, and his shining forehead, and I wanted to hurt him.  I wanted to punish him for ever coming near my mother in the first place, and I wanted to show him that his words in the kitchen meant nothing to me.  That shit won’t work with me, he had said.  Well I wanted to show him that his shit wouldn’t work with me either.  So I called Michael and told him to come over with the stuff.

Michael arrived on his bike, with a battered old tool box swinging from one hand, just moments later.  He found me sat forlornly on the doorstep with my bike lying on the ground before me.  I held my head in one hand and gazed up at him.  I felt sick.  “What’s the matter?” he asked me, dumping down the tool box. “You look like you’re ill.”

I blew my breath out. “You got the stuff?”

He lifted his t-shirt and showed me the tub of pills poking up from one of the front pockets of his jeans.  “Mum swears by it,” he whispered. “Totally undetectable in drinks.”

“Don’t think I want to know.”

“Your tyres need pumping? I brought the tool box as a cover story.  You know, we’re out here fixing our bikes.”

“Got a puncture,” I told him wearily. “Your alley is full of glass.”

“Oh cool.  Genuine cover story.  Why’s he coming back over anyway?”  He knelt down then, unclipped the lid of the rusty tool box and started to pull spanners and screwdrivers out. “Puncture repair kit in here somewhere, I know there is.”

I got up then.  My stomach felt cramped and small so I stood up and stretched myself out.  I put my hands in my pockets and gazed down the driveway. “Painting apparently. I think they know we did the car,” I said softly. “They must do.  My mum’s face Mike.  They know.”

“Don’t freak out,” he warned me. “Guilt shows if you’re not careful.  They can’t prove anything, or they would have said something by now.”

Just then we heard the sound of a car purring smoothly into the road.  We looked up and watched the silver Mercedes, the very car Michael and the others had sabotaged last night, roll up into the drive behind my mother’s Fiat.  Michael shot a look at me.  I was chewing my nail, my lip curled up, my forehead creased. “For fucks sake,” he hissed. “Relax.  They know nothing!”

Howard climbed out of his car, locked the door, and then checked it.  He looked up and nodded at us in recognition.  He then lowered his head slightly and walked right around the car, scrutinising it.  I heard Michael snort discreetly beside me and I resisted the urge to elbow him.  Finally, Howard nodded in satisfaction and came up towards us.  “Morning lads,” he announced, clapping his hands together loudly as he approached.  Michael smiled back at him sunnily.  I tried not to look as guilty as fuck.  Howard was wearing his cowboy boots, with the pointed toes, and the horrible stone washed jeans.  His black belt pulled tightly restrained a degree of middle age spread, but above that loomed a body of serious power and strength.  He was wearing a crisp white shirt, tucked into his jeans, and with the top three buttons undone.  I met his eyes briefly before looking away.  I thought how they reminded me of marbles, little balls of glass flicked with blue.  He was smiling, but that smile seemed to see right through me, and appeared as fake and as dangerous as the look in those eyes.  “Up to no good I bet?” he said to us.

Michael raised his eyebrows and smirked.  “Always,” he replied confidently.  I kept on chewing at my nail.  Howard jerked his thumb towards the house.

“Your mother in there?” he asked me.  I nodded, unable and unwilling to speak.  “Lost your tongue again eh?” Howard rocked back on his heels and hooked his thumbs into his pockets.  His grin seemed frozen in place, unflinching.  He glanced at Michael. “Not very talkative is he?”

Michael was still smirking nicely. “He’s just a bit choosy about who he converses with,” he said.

“Oh is that so?” Howard looked amused, as he looked from me to Michael and back to me again.  “Ah that’s all right, except I wanted to ask him a few questions, so maybe I can ask you and you can answer for him then?”

Michael frowned and folded his arms.  He looked ready for war and he looked like he was enjoying every minute of it.  Not like me.  I was sweating.  I could feel it breaking out across my neck and shoulder blades, and dripping slowly down my spine.  “What questions?”

Howard shrugged. “Well there was some funny business last night, that’s all. Came out and found all my tyres slashed.  I didn’t realise it wasn’t safe to park a nice car around here.  A bit rough is it?”

“What are you, new?” Michael demanded, his tone churlish, his lip lifting.

“Been in town a few months,” Howard replied steadily. “Of course I’m no stranger to rough types.  Get all sorts in the club.”

“Oh yeah?” Michael sounded bored now.

“Yeah, yeah, just the other night we caught a couple of low lifes trying to deal drugs in the toilets.  Had some of my staff keep them busy while we called the cops in.” He sniffed then.  His grin seemed to have faded. “Pays to be on good terms with the police in my game.  Favours for favours, you know?  Got some good friends in the force.” He nodded at us.  “Always handy. “  He smiled then, and it reminded me of a shark, all those little teeth lined up neatly, revealed one by one by the parting of his thin lips.  “Well better get on with the painting eh? Have this place looking like home in no time Danny.”  He walked past us and patted me on the back.  I was taken by surprise by the contact and sort of jumped and turned and felt a strange creep of disgust.

Michael sneered when he had gone.  “Shittinghell,” he hissed through his teeth. “What a fucking giant prick.”

“What does he mean, like home?” I asked wonderingly.  Michael looked intense and took my arm, pulling me down the drive a little way.

“I was paying more attention to the bit about cops,” he said. “What was that about?  Do you think that’s true, or more bullshit?” I just shrugged unhappily.  I felt weak for some reason.  Weak, and small and tired.  But Michael was grinning back at me then, his grin growing bigger and bigger, his eyes lighting up. “We have to be careful,” he told me.  “Wait ‘til he has a drink on the go and then sneak in.”

I sighed and turned back to my bike.  “You gonna’ help me fix this or what?”

We had to wait, and Michael was all for it, keeping his eye on the kitchen, and the hallway beyond, where we could hear my mother and Howard talking in low tones.  Every now and then Michael cocked his finger and shot an imaginary gun in their direction.  I remained silent, brooding, unwilling to talk.  We fixed my bike and hung about, waiting for the chance.  I rode my bike up and down the drive just to kill time and keep busy.  Michael remained close to the back door, his dark eyes alight with mischief.  Just when I was starting to get bored of the whole thing, Michael marched up to me and winked. “Two drinks,” he whispered. “They just made them and left them on the kitchen table. One tea and one coffee. Do you want to do the deed, or shall I?”

My mouth was dry.  I nodded and pushed him a little.  “You. Mum’s is the coffee.”

He grinned and turned back to the house.  He was only in there about a minute.  And then he came reeling back around the corner of the house, his smile ear splitting, his hair flying back from his forehead.  “Go,” he urged me, jumping onto his bike and pushing off.  We didn’t waste any time.  We were gone in seconds.

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.