Other Facts of Life

by Morris Gleitzman

  Di smashed a set-clincher past her opponent and noticed Jean pointing discreetly across the court. She turned, saw Ben and came over to him.

  ‘Hi love,’ she said with a sad little smile. ‘I was hoping to see you ’cause I want to have a little word with you.’

  She pointed to the gate at the end of the court and they started walking towards it, the fence between them.

  Ben’s heart was pounding. Please, please don’t let the little word be rare neuro-metabolic condition. He prayed that Di would now reveal there’d been a mix-up at the lab, a careless technician confusing her blood sample with that of a ninety-year-old alcoholic snake handler. Anything that she not be sick.

  ‘It’s about Dad,’ said Di. ‘Now I don’t want you to worry but we’ve just heard he’s got a bit of a problem with his liver.’

  Ben stared at his mother through the wire fence, his fear gradually being replaced by a horrible, cold suspicion.

  ‘And kidneys,’ said Di. ‘Now it’s nothing to worry about as long as he takes it easy and doesn’t get worked up …’

  They reached the gate. Di opened it and put her hands on Ben’s shoulders.

  ‘… but there is a tiny danger that if he has a shock, say from seeing you on TV again, or too much stress, say from hearing about nuclear war or something, he could … well, there is a chance he could …’

  Before she could say the awful word Jean rushed over and started tugging frantically at her tennis dress. Di looked up. Galloping towards them across the carpark, red-faced and gesticulating wildly, was Ron.

  Ben looked at his approaching father and then at his mother’s horrified face. His suspicion was very quickly becoming anger.

  It had all been a lie. Everything. The rare neuro-metabolic condition. The liver and kidneys. Dad’s concern about superglueing Shane Moore to the council garbage truck. Everything.

  Di tried to save the situation.

  ‘There’s nothing actually wrong with his heart,’ she stammered, as Ron lumbered towards them. ‘Exercise is fine, in fact the doctor said for liver and kidney problems exercise is the best …’

  She saw from Ben’s face that they’d blown it.

  Ron staggered up to them, gasping for breath.

  ‘We agreed I’d do it,’ hissed Di.

  ‘Only if I couldn’t find an opportunity,’ gasped Ron.

  Jean buried her face in her hands, cringing at the sheer volume of her friends’ incompetence.

  ‘Liars!’ screamed Ben, and turned and ran, his eyes filling with tears. He didn’t want to think or feel, just run.

  Ron and Di clung to each other, rooted to the spot with shame and guilt.

  ‘Ben!’

  ‘Ben!’

  15

  One Man’s Meat

  It was the first block of flats Ben had been inside in his life and he was trying to knock them down.

  Or at least the door of number forty-seven.

  His tears had dried on the train trip out to the grimy industrial suburb and been replaced by an ice-cold determination to do what he was now doing.

  As he stood there on the bleak landing, pounding on the door’s cracked paintwork, he knew exactly why his parents didn’t give a stuff about what was happening to the world.

  Under those familiar outsides they were evil, scheming, selfish, lying monsters with green scales and little red eyes and waxed black moustaches.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  He spun around.

  Esmé was looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘How did you get my address?’ she asked.

  Ben saw the faint marks on her black coat where the chicken droppings hadn’t quite washed out.

  ‘I heard you giving it to the police.’

  ‘Pity you couldn’t have made this much racket on that occasion,’ she said dryly. ‘Might have saved me the inconvenience of an appearance in court.’

  ‘What did they …?’

  ‘Suspended sentence. Next time they’ll put me in the slammer with the chocks. That’s if they catch me.’ She gave a grin.

  ‘I want to come and live with you,’ said Ben.

  Esmé’s grin faded.

  ‘Really,’ she said dryly.

  ‘I want to help you free chickens.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Her voice made the Simpson Desert seem like a lake.

  ‘I can be a better lookout,’ said Ben eagerly. He turned to the door and started pounding on it and yelling.

  ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

  Esmé hurriedly pulled him away from her crumbling paintwork.

  ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘What about the starving millions?’

  ‘We can help them in our holidays,’ said Ben. ‘Take overseas trips.’

  ‘And what do your parents think of that little arrangement?’

  Ben stared out across the industrial landscape. On the horizon, pipes towering above an oil refinery spewed flames into the sky. Ben wondered if the pipes were wide enough to stuff parents down.

  ‘They don’t care,’ he mumbled. ‘They’re selfish liars.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ replied Esmé, her voice softening a little, ‘but what do they think of their son becoming an apprentice chicken commando and part-time Son of God?’

  She drew a halo in the air above Ben’s bald head.

  ‘Dad wouldn’t even notice I’d gone,’ said Ben bitterly. ‘All he cares about is opening his stupid wholesale meat store tomorrow.’

  Suddenly he felt he had to prove to Esmé he wasn’t part of Ron’s animal slaughtering empire.

  ‘I’m getting better at it, watch.’ He threw himself at the front door and battered at it, yelling at the top of his voice.

  ‘The police are coming! The police are coming!’

  Along the landing, doors flew open and anxious residents peered out. Esmé hurriedly stuck her key into the lock and bundled Ben inside.

  ‘Last time anyone yelled that out around here six of my neighbours threw their TV sets over the back balcony.’ She closed the door behind them.

  Ben didn’t hear her.

  He was staring, appalled, at Esmé’s flat.

  It was a single room about the size of his bedroom at home but that’s where the similarity ended. This one had a tiny kitchenette crammed into one corner and another corner partitioned off with sheets of frosted glass. It was dark and smelt of stale bread.

  Ben counted five pieces of furniture. A table with a faded pink laminex top, a straight-backed wooden chair with a cracked vinyl seat, an armchair with a blanket thrown over it to stop the springs sticking through, a wooden reading lamp with a fringed shade, and a mattress on the floor.

  For a fleeting moment Ben thought she’d been burgled and this was just the junk not worth taking. But the sight of Esmé unconcernedly throwing her coat over the back of the chair and whistling while she filled the kettle made that unlikely.

  ‘You live … here?’ he said. He realised it was a pretty stupid thing to say but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘Only during the week,’ said Esmé sarcastically. ‘I have a mansion in the south of France for weekends.’

  Ben wandered around the room in a kind of shock. He stared at the walls, which were bare except for a couple of Animal Liberation posters. He stared at the plastic washing basket full of shoes and books on the floor by the mattress. He stared at the few clothes on wire hangers. And the length of string they hung from tied between the window frame and a pipe on the wall. He stared at the line on the floor.

  ‘Where’s the carpet?’ he said.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ asked Esmé.

  Ben stared at the mattress on the floor, its sheets neatly folded back and tucked in under a nylon sleeping bag opened out for a quilt.

  ‘Where are the legs off your bed?’

  ‘They ran off together,’ said Esmé. ‘Cup or yoghurt pot?’ She held up a china cup with no handle and a plastic yoghurt pot with most of the colour scrubbed off.

  ‘Do you live
just in this one room?’ asked Ben, knowing she must do but hoping he’d missed something like a breakfast room out the back and maybe a rumpus room.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ said Esmé, amused by the furrowed brow under his shiny smooth dome. ‘If this was Calcutta there’d be two families in here. Empty this for me.’ She held out a battered blue metal teapot.

  Ben stepped over to the kitchenette and surveyed the scanty fittings. The funny curved fridge. The portable plug-in hotplate. He couldn’t see the microwave. The one at home was off being fixed half the time too.

  He took the teapot and went to empty it into the sink.

  ‘Not in the sink,’ said Esmé.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘Hungry Henry …’

  ‘Who’s Hungry Henry?’

  Ben had never heard anyone over three ask that before.

  ‘The automatic waste disposal,’ he said pointing to the plughole in the sink. The plughole which didn’t have an automatic waste disposal.

  Ben looked at Esmé.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a real house?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do with my money,’ she said, pointing to a poster like the one she’d stuck to the hot food bar in the chicken shop.

  That’s ridiculous, thought Ben. Those posters can’t cost that much. He noticed for the first time that Esmé wasn’t wearing a single bit of makeup.

  ‘But you could spend a bit more on yourself.’

  It was Esmé’s turn to look serious.

  ‘How could I?’ she said. She picked up a can. ‘My tea.’

  Ben read the label. Vegetarian sausages. He’d never heard of vegetarian sausages. Perhaps they were made from animals who were vegetarians.

  ‘The cost of this can is my busfare to a farm where I could save fifty chickens.’

  ‘Why did you buy it?’ asked Ben.

  ‘I didn’t. I pinched it.’

  Ben stared at her. Was this what you had to do if you cared about the world? He looked around the room again. If this was Calcutta there might be two families living there but they’d have a TV and a carpet and legs on the bed.

  ‘So,’ said Esmé, ‘when are you moving in?’

  Ben didn’t know what to say.

  Esmé came over and put her arm round him.

  ‘You can do much more good at home,’ she said softly.

  16

  Live and Loin

  Ben lay awake in bed wondering if he was as bad as his parents.

  He sat up, switched on his bedside lamp, climbed out of bed, dragged the mattress off the bed base onto the carpet and lay down on it.

  He tried to relax. The furniture loomed above him.

  It felt strange.

  It felt awful.

  He stood up and dragged the mattress back onto the base.

  Then he lay down and looked around.

  He wondered if he could live without a pine bed base, a carpet, a wardrobe with sort of slits in the doors and a full-length mirror inside, a desk with a yellow top and built-in moulded plastic pencil holder, a video recorder, a custom-made pine TV trolley on castors, hand-printed curtains from Finland or Iceland or somewhere, an angle-poise desk lamp with dimmer and self-reflecting globe …

  He didn’t think he could.

  Did this mean he didn’t care either?

  He heard a noise outside the door, switched the bedside lamp off and pretended to be asleep, his eyes closed and his mind seething.

  The bedroom door opened slowly and Di crept in holding her dressing gown around her. She switched on the bedside lamp and sat on the corner of Ben’s bed.

  Ben opened his eyes and looked at her.

  ‘Heard you bumping around,’ she said softly. ‘I couldn’t sleep either. Dad and I just want to say sorry.’

  Ben turned away violently and closed his eyes.

  ‘We’re not as bad as you think,’ she continued. ‘People change, that’s all. Other things become important. Like you.’

  She leant forward and kissed him on the side of the head. There was a pause. Then he heard her get up and quietly leave the room. The door clicked shut behind her.

  He opened his eyes. Lying next to his head on the pillow was a photograph. He held it under the light.

  It was black and white, grainy, faded, and it showed a group of people sitting round a camp fire at night. Ben studied it closely. A woman was playing a guitar and a couple of the people were holding placards with strange signs on them, like clocks with four hands that were saying five o’clock and six o’clock and seven o’clock at the same time.

  Ben remembered where he’d seen those signs before. At school in history when they did The Sixties. All the pictures of demonstrations and rock concerts had them. They meant Ban The Bomb.

  There was another placard being held up by someone in the group. Ben squinted to make out the blurred lettering. ‘Butchers For Peace’.

  Then he saw the face under the placard.

  It was thinner, smoother, with greasy slicked-back hair and it was much younger than Ben had ever seen it.

  But there was no mistaking it.

  It was Dad.

  Ron hurried to the garage looking tired and tense. This wasn’t unusual, most mornings leaving for work he looked tired and tense.

  It was just this morning he looked worse.

  The greyness from under his eyes seemed to have run in the shower and spread over most of his face. Including his lips.

  He heaved his briefcase into the car and flopped in after it. Just as he was about to turn the ignition key he saw out of the corner of his eye something move towards him out of the shadows.

  This was it. He’d heard rumours this sort of thing went on but had never believed it. Hired muscle from the Mr Bigs of meat wholesaling. ‘Just a word of advice, Mister Guthrie. It’s a very crowded line of business what you’re trying to crack into. If you get our drift.’ Broken legs. And not the ones in his shop window.

  He scrabbled for the lock buttons on the doors.

  Then he saw it was Ben.

  ‘Dad, can I have a word?’ shouted Ben through the glass.

  Ron wound down the window.

  ‘Not now, mate,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve got a million things to do for the opening this arvo. Tonight, eh?’

  He turned the ignition key and drove out of the garage and down the driveway.

  Ben stood watching the departing car.

  ‘Why did you stop?’ he yelled.

  He looked down at the photo in his hand.

  Butchers For Peace.

  17

  Stuffed Heart

  ‘The big day,’ said Wal. ‘Here’s to Ron.’

  ‘To Ron.’

  Di and Jean clinked their champagne glasses with Barry and Claire.

  Across the inside of the bulkstore roof was strung a huge banner saying ‘Grand Opening’ and underneath it stood groups of people holding glasses and nibbling delicacies on Jatz biscuits.

  They were mostly employees from Ron’s shops or senior meat industry types. You could tell Ron’s employees, they had an almost noticeable air of excitement in their chatter and only a hundred and ninety-seven fingers and thumbs between the twenty of them.

  The senior meat industry types wore striped ties and contrary to Ron’s moment of paranoia that morning wouldn’t have considered breaking his legs in a million years. Just drinking all his champagne in twenty minutes.

  ‘Hang in there, mate,’ said Wal cheerfully, raising his glass as Ron hurried past. Ron just about managed a smile. If he’d looked tired and tense that morning he now looked double tired and triple tense.

  ‘He was awake all night worrying,’ said Di to Jean.

  ‘About Ben?’

  ‘About the wholesale price of mutton.’ That was a slight exaggeration but Di was still feeling a bit resentful. She’d wanted Ron to come with her into Ben’s room. Digging out the old photo had been a flash of inspiration but it had really needed flesh and blood backup. Still, ‘on
ce the bulk store’s open’ had been Ron’s regular cry so he wouldn’t have any excuse after today.

  ‘Where is Ben?’ asked Jean.

  ‘Went off on his bike this morning,’ said Di. ‘Thank God he’s getting some exercise. Might even meet some girls.’ Well, you could hope.

  ‘You know what they say,’ said Wal. For some reason he’d marked the occasion by putting on a shirt one size too small and was having trouble getting a soothing finger down between his neck and the collar. ‘Exercise makes the heart grow fonder.’

  Nobody was sure if this was a joke or not and there was a brief awkward silence until Barry saved the day by being tactless.

  ‘So we won’t be seeing a performance by the Domed Crusader.’

  Jean would have kicked him but the shoes she’d put on to match her Spring Carnival racing hat were killing her.

  Ben wouldn’t do anything today, thought Di for the hundredth time. Not today. He wouldn’t. He’d had the photo with him when he’d left the house that morning so it must have made an impression. She felt better.

  ‘Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen.’

  Ron was standing in front of the red ribbon stretched across the cold-room doors. He was holding his arms in the air.

  ‘Excuse me …’

  ‘Bit of hush, please,’ yelled Wal, and when the hubbub had died down and everyone had turned to face Ron, ‘Speech! Speech!’

  There was a patter of applause and Ron stared down as if he’d only just noticed the floor in his new bulkstore was concrete. Then he looked up at the expectant faces and took a deep breath.

  ‘I don’t want to make a big speech here today …’

  One of the apprentices gave a low cheer and a couple of his mates tittered. Di wondered if butchers ever slipped and cut their own heads off.

  ‘… we all know why we’re here and … I just want to say it’s been a hard slog but we’ve made it and …’

  Ron paused, breathing hard.

  Come on, thought Di, you rehearsed it enough times in the shower. God, he looked grey.