My chest aches and my eyes feel bulgy and sore, as if he made them almost pop out.
But it’s better than being ignored.
CONCLUSION: A complicated and very technical conflict, with a narrow victory for me, in which a major strong-hold was stormed (the bedside drawer), and a new weapon was discovered (the word ‘Vaseline’).
The Kitchen
A man needs a little respite sometimes, so I opt for the kitchen. There’s a nice, lemony smell in the air, and a big pot’s on the stove, its lid jizzling with the steam that’s coming out. Mum’s got a pile of chicken thighs in front of her, as if a whole load of chickens have got scared and flown away so fast that they left their legs behind.
She’s picking them up one by one, doing something with a knife, then pulling the skin off in a big, gloopy yank. It’s really sick and gory, and you can tell it makes the same noise as if you pulled a dead person’s skin off, and straight away I know I want a go.
‘Can I do one?’ I ask.
‘If you wash your hands first.’
There’s always a catch. This is how Mum gets me out of the kitchen – by demanding weird cleanliness rituals – but this time I’m not going to be such a pushover. I need to know what it feels like to pull skin off. Then I’ll be able to tell Olly I pretty much know what it’s like to pull someone’s face off. Because it’s bound to feel the same. Except for the holes where the eyes and mouth are, but I can make that up. So I wash my hands without even complaining and sit down next to Mum.
She makes a slit in the skin, and hands over a chicken leg. It’s cold and clammy, and much more leggy than I thought it was going to be. I’ve only ever touched them when they’re cooked, and they’re less leggy then. I grip the bone with my left hand and take a loose flap of skin between my finger and thumb. I give it a pull, but my hands come off the skin before the skin comes off the chicken. It’s too slippy.
‘You have to grip harder,’ says Mum, trying to pretend she’s not smiling, but I know she is. She can see I’m not enjoying myself as much as I hoped.
I unwrinkle my nose, to try and show her she’s wrong, and grab the skin with all my fingers at once, using my nails for extra grip. I tug hard and, with an amazing ripping sound, the gooey, goose-pimply skin comes away from the meat. It’s like tearing someone to bits. It’s incredible. And suddenly I’ve got a dangly, white flap of gloop in one hand and a lump of pink dead thing in the other. I drop both. It’s like when you get off a roller-coaster. You feel a bit sick and glad it’s over, but also ultra-happy and pleased with yourself.
‘You want to do the rest?’ asks Mum. She’s still got that smile on.
‘No, I’m busy.’
I stand up and walk to the door, but I’m hoping she’ll say something because I’m not really ready to leave yet.
‘Wash your hands,’ she says, predictably.
I stop, and shrug.
‘Ben, you’re covered in raw chicken. Wash your hands, now.’
I lean against the wall. The important thing is that she doesn’t think I’m a wimp. She mustn’t think I’m running away.
‘Can we cut eyes and a mouth into one of the chicken legs?’ I ask. ‘Then when we skin it we’ll know what it feels like to pull someone’s face off.’
There’s a look you get from Mum when you take her by surprise that has loads of meanings, starting from ‘What are you talking about?’ going all the way up to ‘Who are you? Surely we’re not related.’ This one registers pretty high (see fig. 2).
She’s stuck for an answer, which feels good. I could leave now, but I can’t think of anywhere to go, so I stay in the corner.
Mum carries on skinning the chicken legs.
‘Why don’t you go and help Dad in the garden?’ she says.
I walk to the window and look. He’s still slicing up a tree branch with a chainsaw. It’s his new toy. He said our neighbour’s branch was cutting out all the light from the upstairs – which is totally stupid because even if you close the curtains light still gets in – so he went out and bought a chainsaw and chopped it down. Now he’s cutting it up into logs, even though we’ve only got central heating, so no one knows what he wants logs for. He’s funny like that. I think he just wanted the chainsaw.
FIGURE 2. THINGS YOU CAN SAY TO MUM
Even before he took it out of the box he told me I wasn’t allowed to touch it, using a specially horrible voice, like he was already cross with me for something I hadn’t even done yet. I reckon he wants me to go out and watch, but I’m deliberately not going to, so he knows how unfair it is that I’m not allowed a go.
I don’t like Sundays. They’re twice as long as other days.
The phone rings, which for some reason makes Mum gasp and stare at her hands, tutting and sighing, as if the phone ringing is a terrible freak event, like a fridge landing on your head when you’re out for a walk in the countryside.1
She gets up and leaps at the kitchen-towel holder on the wall, rolls down a sheet with her elbow, and pulls it off using her chin for grip. Then she picks up the phone, holding it with the kitchen towel as if it’s made of dog poo.
‘Hello?’ she says, natural as anything, pretending she hasn’t got kitchen towel tickling her nose.
There’s a long silence – an extra-long silence – during which she mouths at me frantically to wash my hands, but I pretend not to understand.
When Mum eventually speaks, it’s to say, ‘Oh, noooo. He didn’t. Oh, no.’
This means two things:
1) It’s Auntie Kath.
2) Mum’ll be on the phone for an hour – minimum.
I wander out of the room. The door handle feels weirdly sticky.
I hate Sundays.
Rachel’s Room
I stand in the hall for a bit.
You’re not supposed to stand in the hall. The radiator’s never on there – I think to encourage people to move on. I don’t know why this is so important, but you can tell it is. If Dad had his way, there’d be loudhailers on the walls programmed to say, ‘Move along now, people. There’s nothing to see here.’
He hates it when Mum stands in the hall with the door open saying goodbye to someone for longer than they were in the kitchen having tea in the first place. When Dad says goodbye, it takes about half a second.
He’s definitely twitchy about the hall. Maybe there’s a body under the floorboards. After you’re dead, worms and insects eat you except for your bones and teeth, and if the police find your teeth they can tell who you are by asking your dentist where your fillings went. Once they know who you are, they can often tell who killed you, so even after years and years if you’ve killed someone you’re never safe.
The only thing in the hall, apart from the radiators that are always off and the lights that are always on, is a big cupboard with games in it. Even though I know the inside of this cupboard better than I know the inside of any cupboard in the world, I open it up and take a look. Everything’s exactly where it always is – even the Fuzzy Felt that hasn’t been touched for years, except one evening last summer when Mum and Dad were away and Donny filled the house with his strange friends who never take their hoods down, and they smoked chocolatey-smelling cigarettes and started making weird pictures with Fuzzy Felt circus animals that they thought were really funny.
The cupboard’s no help. There’s nothing in there I fancy. I open and shut the door a few times, seeing how many different noises it can make, then I decide to go and see what Rachel’s up to.
I get all the way to her room without touching the stairs, using just the banister, the skirting board and a few bits of wall. It’s easy, really. The banister creaks and sags when you do it. One day it’s going to break and I’ll plunge to my death, but it doesn’t happen this time.
She’s in her room. Obviously, Lucy’s in there, too. The Lucy-Rachel situation is probably best explained by a Venn diagram (see fig. 3). Donny thinks Lucy’s a lesbian, but I reckon that’s just his way of saying he fancies her.
There’s no point in trying anything clever on the entry front. Rachel doesn’t go for that kind of thing. You have to just walk in, as if you’re delivering an important message from Mum, then play for time until she realizes you’ve got no reason to be there, by which point you’ve hopefully invented one. It’s hard to think of one in advance because you never know what’s going on in there.
FIGURE 3.
VENN DIAGRAM EXPLAINING THE RACHEL/LUCY SITVATION
You couldn’t draw a diagram of the smells in Rachel’s room. Not even a scatter graph. There’s no pattern to it at all. Something’s always happening, though, and it always makes its own smell, which comes out of one of her zillions of bottles, jars, tubes and sprays. A zillion isn’t a real number, it’s just a turn of phrase.
Sometimes the Rachelucy smell tickles your nose, sometimes it grabs you by the throat, but whatever it is, however much you first think it might be choking you, it’s a smell that always makes you want to stay there longer.
‘Hi,’ I say, in the tone of voice you’d use if you’d been invited. I take one step into the room.
They both look at me crossly, like I’ve caught them in the middle of something private. This is how they always look at me.
A quick glance around is enough to tell there’s something interesting going on. It looks like the room’s been burgled, except by a very fussy burglar who couldn’t find anything he liked. There are clothes all over the room, magazines scattered everywhere, and cosmetics, aerosols, tissues and perfumes are heaped on the bed, in a pile so big you could hide in it.
Then I notice how they’re dressed. They were in jeans and sweatshirts at lunchtime; now they’re wearing strange things on their legs that aren’t trousers but aren’t really tights either, and their shirts aren’t like normal shirts because you can see right through the material to their skin. They’re both wearing lacy gloves that stop halfway down the fingers like Madonna’s or the milkman’s, and their hair’s standing up on end like they’re skydiving. There are blue lines around their eyes, splodges of red on their cheekbones, and their mouths are smeared with fishy-pink lipstick that twinkles. If they were on TV you’d twiddle your controls to try and get the picture back to normal.
I remember they dressed like this once before when they were getting ready to go to someone’s birthday party, and Dad was supposed to be driving them, but he wouldn’t do it because he said they looked like whores, and there was a huge argument, and they refused to change, and Rachel had a big hissy, weepy fit, and eventually Mum took them, then when Mum got back from taking them, she and Dad had a huge row that ended with them going to bed really early, and I could hear the bed squeaking from the living room, but I never said anything even though it made me feel sick, and it was obvious what they were doing because they had to get up again later to go and fetch Rachel and Lucy, and it was Dad who went this time and suddenly he didn’t seem to mind at all.
‘What do you want, nosey shit-nose?’ says Rachel.
‘Just came to say hi.’
‘Hi. Bye.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m chucking you out of my room.’
‘Hi, Lucy.’ It’s an old tactic. Appeal to a higher authority. Or a different one, anyway.
‘Hi, Ben.’ There’s something friendly in her voice. It’s a toehold.
‘How are you doing?’ I ask. I need to think of something more interesting than that, but my mind’s gone blank. She just shrugs.
‘You look nice,’ I say.
That, it turns out, is all wrong. She scowls and bags out her shirt with her hand, as if she’s just remembered it’s see-through.
‘10, 9, 8, 7 …’ says Rachel. She doesn’t even need to explain what it is she’s counting down to these days, but once she starts, you just know you don’t want to be in the same room as her when she gets to one.
‘I won’t be in your way. I’ll just sit here.’
‘6, 5, 4… Do you want a face full of hairspray?’ She picks up an aerosol from the bed, flicks off the lid, and points it at me, her finger poised on the nozzle like a sharpshooter. If I had one too, we could have a duel. With a match, I could use mine as a flame-thrower. Except that it might explode and blow my whole hand off.
‘3, 2 …’ Her arm straightens, and her finger stiffens. She’ll spray. She’s got that look in her eye.
‘Are you dressing up as whores?’ I say.
‘I.’
I duck and run for it.
Outside the room I stand there for a bit, thinking.
‘Bye, Lucy!’ I shout.
A little puff of hairspray comes out through the keyhole.
‘That could’ve blinded me!’
‘Shouldn’t be looking.’ Rachel’s voice is muffled through the door.
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Good.’
‘But I could’ve been!’
‘Would’ve taught you a lesson, then.’
‘Mum’d kill you if you blinded me.’
‘Wouldn’t care.’
‘Yes, you would.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Yes, you would.’
I decide to leave it there, while I’m ahead. Don’t want Rachel to think I’m immature.
In Donny’s room, it’s like a game of chess followed by a round of all-in wrestling against someone twice your size. In Rachel’s room, it’s like diving without knowing how far away the water’s going to be. You just jump off and wait for the splash.
The other upstairs room is Mum and Dad’s. I wander in, but not to see what there is because it’s always the same. There’s never anything to see in Mum and Dad’s room. The point is their window, a big, curvy one that gives you a view of the street in both directions. Because you’re upstairs, no one knows you’re looking at them. If I’m really bored, I’ll go in there to see if anything’s happening in the street, even though nothing ever is. It’s not a dead end, but our street isn’t on the way to anywhere, so usually it’s empty.
The flats at the bottom end got turned into a nut-house, and once a day the mad people who live there are herded up and down the street a few times, but once you’re used to them it’s not funny any more. Mrs Hale from down the road organized a campaign to stop it happening. Mum wouldn’t join in, and now when they see each other they both pretend the other one’s invisible. Donny used to be able to make me cry by pretending I was invisible, but that was years ago.
When you’ve run out of options, checking to see what’s going on in the street is your last hope.
This time, it’s a miracle. Something is happening. There’s a boy in a red tracksuit. A boy I don’t recognize. He looks about my age, maybe a bit older, and it doesn’t seem like he’s just passing through. He’s standing there, diagonally opposite, with a ball. He’s chucking it downwards as hard as he can and seeing how high it bounces.
The answer is: high. He’s not bad. And it looks like a good ball. Rubber. I can tell from where I’m standing, just by the bounce of it.
I watch for a bit, preparing myself, then run down the stairs to the front door, which I yank open and slam behind me. I slow myself before he can see me, and walk towards him at a shuffley pace, like it’s a casual thing.
This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? You want to know if this is Carl. I can see it now, the face you pull whenever I mention him. You get a greedy look in your eyes.
Sometimes I start saying things about him, then change the subject, just to annoy you.
Well…
The Street
… it is him.
But I don’t know that yet.
‘That’s a good ball,’ I say.
He shrugs.
‘Goes high.’
He shrugs again.
‘Can you get it above the trees?’
He tilts his head back, thinks, then positions himself for a good throw and slams the ball down into the tarmac as hard as he can. It flies up, up up up, but not to the top of th
e trees. The trees are all the same height, right along the street, almost as high as the houses. They’re silver birch, which is the only tree I can recognize apart from oak and fir. I could probably recognize an apple tree, but only if it had apples on it.
Mrs Sparks from next door, who’s so old she’s practically folded in half, once told me she could remember when the trees were so small they had to be held up with sticks. I don’t really believe her. Mrs Sparks is the only one who’s lived in the street right from when it was built. Mrs Sparks and the trees.
It’s funny that she’s called Sparks when she’s almost dead.
The ball comes down really fast, and he catches it well, but with two hands. Before I came out he was catching with one, and he didn’t have it perfect yet. He was on about 70 per cent, which isn’t bad.
‘Let’s have a go.’
He looks me up and down slowly, then hands over the ball. It’s warm and smooth, but also rough from where it’s been hitting the road. It’s a good size and a good weight. Feels just right in the hand. I steady myself. I have to do this well. If I throw like a spastic, he won’t want to play with me.
Bad Influence Page 2