by Nathan Filer
‘What are you talking about? Who said anything about—’
‘It’s just a bit stuffy in here. And I don’t mind getting you Lynx or whichever it is you want, but you need to put it on the list because—’
‘Jesus. I didn’t ask you to come in.’
‘No. But what if a friend came around?’
‘Like who?’
‘Like, like anyone. Like Jacob. It’s not the point. Now please, for me. Please Matt. Even if you don’t care how you’ve done, I still do.’
In life there are milestones. Events that mark out certain days as being special from the other days.
They begin before we’re old enough to know about them, like the day we uttered our first proper word, and the day we took our first steps. We made it through the night without a nappy. We learnt other people have feelings, and the stabilizers came off our bikes.
If we’re lucky – and I am, I do know that – we get help along the way. Nobody swam my first width of the pool for me, but Dad drove me back and forth to swimming classes, even though he’d never learnt to swim himself, and when I got awarded my Tony the Tiger Five Metres badge, it was Mum who carefully sewed it onto my swimming trunks. So I reckon a lot of my early milestones were their milestones too.
Mum’s hands slipped from her hips, then she folded her arms across her chest, then back to her hips.
She was nervous – that was it.
‘Even if you don’t care how you’ve done, I still do.’
She’d woken up first thing with my dad and driven him to work. In the car they’d listened to the radio. I can’t know this. I’m guessing. It’s what you might call an educated guess. On the local news a roaming reporter had based himself at one of the high schools. They didn’t catch which one, but maybe mine. The reporter talked about how average GCSE grades were up for the millionth year in a row; he talked about how boys were closing the gap on girls; he talked about a slight increase in home education, and Mum felt her tummy do a somersault. Then he took his regional accent to meet a group of squealing girls – prising one away for the obligatory interview. Um, four A stars, 3 As and two Bs, the girl says, breathless with excitement. Oh, and a C in Maths, she giggles. I hate Maths.
Getting out of the car, Dad paused. ‘He’s a smart lad. He’ll have done okay.’
Mum answered quietly. ‘Yes. I know.’
I’m guessing. It’s an educated guess.
Sitting in slow traffic, in slight drizzle – enough to use the windscreen wipers, but not enough to stop them squeaking – Mum would have allowed herself the small luxury of imagining the perfect morning.
In this morning, this perfect morning, she’d get home and I’d be out of bed already – waiting for her in the kitchen. I’ve made myself some toast but hardly taken a bite. I’m too nervous. ‘Do you mind driving me Mum? It’s just— I want you to be there.’
‘Of course,’ she smiles. She sits beside me at the table, stealing a cheeky bite of toast. ‘Now listen,’ she says.
Now listen.
Listen.
Listen.
Sitting in traffic, she rehearsed.
Her voice would be perfect. A soothing voice – tender and reassuring. Not her scratchy, knotted voice. Not the exasperated I’ll-count-to-ten-and-start-again voice, the voice I’d started mimicking to send her over the edge.
‘Now listen. You have nothing to be nervous about. You worked so hard. You tried your best. And really, Matt. That’s all that matters.’
Then the doubts appeared. Or they were there all along, but now she noticed them. Like specks of rain on the windscreen. The way you can look right through them at first, focus into the distance, as if they’re not even there, but as soon as you see them, you can’t stop seeing them. For this perfect morning, there would have needed to be other perfect mornings: a string of days before this, where I actually had worked hard, when I had tried my best.
And by now – I’m guessing, I’m only guessing – the car in front had long since pulled away, and the driver behind beeped his horn. Mum panicked and stalled the engine.
By the time she got home, she had already worked herself into a state – was already weighing up the decision to wake me and drive me in, or take a yellow pill and head back to bed herself.
‘I’m not going,’ I said again. The bed spring twanged against my jaw. ‘You don’t have to collect them. It says in the letter. If you don’t show up they post them.’
‘But— It doesn’t make sense. Please. I’ll drive you.’
‘No. I’m not going.’
Mum had her own theories. They filled the dark space at the foot of my bed.
‘Do you want to hurt me?’ she asked.
I rolled over, end of the conversation.
I didn’t hear her leave.
I lifted from my saddle, pushing harder on the pedals. Pulling at the handlebars. It was there in the distance. Far in the distance, but getting closer with each turn of the wheels.
It erupted from the ground and reached high into the sky – glass and bricks and concrete.
I watched my front wheel, watched it criss-cross her knees, her torso, her head. I was pulling away.
I’m doing it. I’m really doing it.
You know what dreams are like.
the same story
Only fifteen minutes today, then puncture time. I have a few compliance problems with tablets, the answer – a long, sharp needle.
Every other week, alternate sides.
I’d rather not think about it now. It’s best not to think until the injection is actually going in.
Fuck this.
I’m going home.
MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME
I didn’t tell you where I live yet.
It probably doesn’t matter, but I’ll tell you now, because then you can have some pictures in your mind as you read. Reading is a bit like hallucinating.
Hallucinate this:
An ash grey sky over a block of council flats, painted jaundice yellow. I’ll buzz you up. It’s the sixth floor, No. 607. Come in. The narrow, dim-lit hall is cluttered with pairs of old trainers, empty Coke and Dr Pepper bottles, takeaway menus, and free newspapers.
To your left is the kitchen, sorry about the mess. The kettle’s billowing steam onto the peeling lime green wallpaper. There is an ashtray by the window, and if you open those blinds you can spy on half of Bristol.
It can spy on you too.
The toilet’s just across the hall but the bolt doesn’t slide properly, so you’ll need to prop it closed with a doorstop. On the ceiling is the carcass of a spider, tangled in its own web. My razor blade is getting blunt, and I’m out of toothpaste.
I have a small bedroom with a single mattress on the floor, and a Hungarian Goose Down Pillow bought from John Lewis for nearly fifty pounds. The room smells of broken sleep and marijuana, and well into the night you can hear my neighbours bickering above your head.
In the main room a couple of rugs cover a worn-through carpet. I spend most of my time in here and do try to keep it tidy, but it’s small so feels cluttered whatever. I do not have a television or a radio. On the small wooden table beside the window is a book called Living with Voices, and a few loose stacks of my writing and sketches.
In the far corner, and stretching across the back wall behind the armchair and curtains, is the tangled mass of sprawling plastic tubing and dirt-encrusted bottles and jars, that make up what has survived of my Special Project.
Today it’s warm because I’ve had the heating on. I don’t usually bother, but I did today because it’s Thursday, which means Nanny Noo has been to visit me. To be honest, I didn’t want her to come because I was worried she might slip on the ice. There has been so much snow lately, more than I’ve ever seen, and where it is starting to melt away, the crisp white has turned to a dirty slush.
I don’t own a phone, so first thing this morning I threw some stuff in a carrier bag for The Pig, put on my coat and set off to the public payph
one at the end of the street. I dialled Nanny Noo’s number.
‘4960216.’ That’s how my granddad answers the telephone. He answers by telling you what you have just dialled. It’s pointless.
‘Granddad, it’s Matthew.’
‘Hello?’ My granddad has bad hearing, so you have to speak loudly on the phone to him.
‘IT’S MATTHEW.’
‘Matthew, your nan’s on her way.’
‘I didn’t want her to come, because of the ice.’
‘I told her not to go because of the ice, but she’s stubborn.’
‘Okay Granddad. Bye.’
‘Hello?’
‘BYE GRANDDAD.’
‘Your nanny’s on her way. She just left.’
I didn’t go straight back. I walked to the mini market and bought two potatoes and a can of Carlsberg Special Brew.
I don’t know if you’ve been to Bristol, but if you have then you might know that triangle of grass and broken glass where Jamaica Street joins Cheltenham Road – just along from the homeless hostel and The Massage Parlour where they charge for full sex even if you only want cuddles and breast feeding. There are usually a few homeless people hanging about, killing time. I like The Pig most.
That’s an unkind name, but it’s what he calls himself. He does look like a pig too. His nostrils are turned up in a snout, and he has piggy little eyes behind thick dirty lenses. He even snorts. To be honest, he plays it up a bit.
We never really met, so much as kept bumping into each other. Each morning when I walk to the Day Centre, and each afternoon when I come back home, he’s always there. I wouldn’t usually make a special point of seeing him, but last night I kept imagining being homeless in this weather. It’s easier to sleep with problems if you know you’re going to do something about them. So I decided this morning I’d take him a couple of jumpers and a flask of Chicken & Mushroom Cup-a-Soup.
‘Okay Lad?’ He always calls me Lad. I think he probably can’t remember my name. We’re not close friends, we just sit together sometimes.
‘Alright, The Pig. Cold innit?’
I opened my Special Brew. The Pig is an alcoholic, so I feel a bit guilty when I drink with him. He shook his Big Issue at a woman wearing fluffy snow boots. She smiled politely, and crossed the road.
He doesn’t actually sell the Big Issue. He waves one around from time to time to get attention, and if someone wants to buy it he asks if they could give him money instead. I keep meaning to get him the latest copy. The other week this guy with ginger dreadlocks and a duffel coat lectured him for giving legitimate vendors a bad name. He actually stopped in the street just to tell him off. Then he offered about eight pence in coppers, and bounced across the street to a bar. I suppose he had a point. But he was still a wanker.
I gulped back the last of my can. It doesn’t taste too nice; it’s more a functional drink.
‘You forgot your bag, Lad.’
‘No. That’s for you.’
He opened the flask, sniffing the soup like a pig after truffles. He might have been hoping for something stronger.
As I cut back through the empty garages and up the footpath, Nanny Noo was rounding the corner in her car. She waved in that sudden nervous way people do when they aren’t expecting to see you, or if they’re afraid to take their hand off the steering wheel. I waited for her to park, and helped her out.
‘I didn’t want you to come, because of the ice.’
‘Nonsense. Help me with these bags.’
She is very generous. I told you that. And whenever she visits she brings me some food for our lunch, and extra for me to have in the week, and a bottle or two of fizzy pop. That’s what she calls it. Fizzy pop.
‘That one too,’ she said, pointing at a cream-coloured plastic case with a brown handle.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s heavy. Can you manage it?’
‘Yes. What’s in it?’
‘Wait and see.’
The lift is out-of-order. It’s always out-of-order, and even when it isn’t there’s usually another reason you might not want your Nanny Noo to use it, like if someone has taken a piss in the corner, or graffitied something cruel about you. I’ve lived here more than two years now, since I was seventeen, and I’m not sure Nanny has ever once used the lift. I worry about her falling on the stairs though, so I walked up behind her. She calls me a gentleman.
‘Look at this mess.’
‘Sorry Nanny. I meant to clean up.’
Seventeen was still young to leave home, I know that. And I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to move out on my own, but I wasn’t on my own, not at the beginning. I should talk about that in a bit.
In the kitchen we placed the bags of food out on the counter. ‘I already bought potatoes,’ I offered. ‘I thought I’d make us jacket potatoes.’
I was feeling light-headed from the drink, and I hoped it would be a short visit. I can be selfish like that.
‘Good boy. But no. You’ll starve. I’ll make us a pasta bake.’
With Nanny Noo it is best not to protest too much. She can be very stubborn. So I loitered around and helped her slice vegetables. The good thing with Nanny Noo is that she doesn’t talk much, and she doesn’t ask many questions.
‘Have you seen your mum recently?’
Except that one, she did ask that one. I didn’t answer her though. Nanny Noo smiled and put her hand on mine. ‘You’re a good boy Matthew, we just worry about you.’
‘Who does?’
‘I do. And your mum, and your father. But they might worry less if you saw them more often.’ She squeezed my fingers, and I thought about how her hand is a lot like my mum’s; cold, with papery flesh.
‘How’s Granddad?’ I asked
‘Getting old, Matthew. We’re both getting old.’
I hope she never dies.
So we ate pasta bake. I sat on the wooden chair and she sat on the armchair with the busy floral pattern and the soft cushions. She ran her fingernails over the blistered part on the arm where I sometimes put out cigarettes, and she started to form a thought about how I needed to be more careful. Then she looked at what’s left of my Special Project – the remaining jars and tubes that I can’t ever seem to bring myself to throw away, even after so long. She started to form a thought about that too, but then what she actually said was, ‘It’s nice to see you, Matthew.’
‘Thanks. I’ll clean up next time.’
She smiled and rubbed her hands together, saying, ‘Do you want your present then?’
‘You got me something?’
I’d left the plastic case in the hall so went to get it, and placed it on the carpet in front of Nanny Noo. ‘Open it up then,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘Well, open it and see. You push those clips at the side.’
I suppose it’s an unusual gift to buy someone these days, but Nanny saw it in a charity shop and she thought of me. ‘For your writing,’ she said.
It was probably the Special Brew, but I felt so happy I could have cried.
‘Well, it isn’t a computer,’ she said. ‘I know that. But these are what we used to type on when I was your age, and they were good enough. There’s a bit of a knack to it. If you tap more than one key at a time those arms tend to get jammed, and there isn’t a delete, but, well, I thought it might be useful for writing your stories.’
It’s hard to know what to say sometimes, when someone does something so nice. It’s hard to know where to look.
We took our dishes through to the kitchen and I started the washing up, and Nanny Noo took her secret pack of menthol cigarettes out of the drawer. I’m the only person in the family who knows that she smokes, and she only smokes with me. I’m not saying that to show off because it’s a stupid thing to show off about. But it does make me feel important, somehow. I can’t explain it.
She blew smoke out of the window and said, ‘Horrid day, isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s a good day,’ I
answered, washing a smudge of ink from my thumb. ‘It’s a really good day.’
She didn’t stay much longer. We walked down the stairwell, with her arm through mine. Then before she climbed into her car she kissed me twice; once on the forehead, once on the cheek. I smoked another cigarette by the big yellow bins, and watched one of my neighbours kick his dog.
Anyway, I just thought I should say where I live. It isn’t perfect, but it’s home, and now that I have a typewriter, I’m not leaving any time soon.
Matthew Homes
Flat 607
Terrence House
Kingsdown
Bristol
Friday 5th Feb ’10
Dear Matthew,
I popped by to check if everything is okay. You disappeared from Hope Road very suddenly on Wednesday, and we didn’t see you today either? I’ll be on duty until 5 p.m, but will keep my work mobile with me this evening too, so when you get this give me a call if you can on 07700 900934 (I’ve put 50p in the envelope because I know you don’t always have change for the phone).
All the best,
Denise Lovell
Care Co-ordinator
Brunel CMHT – Bristol
SHE DIDN’T MENTION THE NEEDLE. You’ll notice she didn’t mention that. Popping by to check if everything is okay? Yeah, right. And if I did answer the door it would be, Oh whilst I’m here Matt we might as well give you your injection too.
No thanks.
Not today Denise Lovell. I’m busy telling my story, thank you.
She stayed at the door for ages too. Standing there, knocking, standing there, knock knock knock. It must have been ten minutes at least, with me being careful not to make a sound, before she finally gave up and pushed the note through the letter box.
I need to be careful though. I am a mentally unwell man, and things have gone wrong for me before.