My Fault

by Billy Childish

  4. TINKER-BUD

  It’s no picnic being a kid, and it’s even tougher being the younger brother: you learn to yelp before the punch, and then everybody gets the same idea and decides to join in.

  I really was a nice polite kid at heart, there was still some joy left in me in those days, but then experience wipes all that out...

  The trouble was that by the time I got to being born, my brother and the old man already had it all sewn up, they saw me as an outsider trying to muscle in on their scene. I was viewed with suspicion bordering on outright contempt. Just the look of me gave them the willies, they made loud remarks and insinuations: apparently my pallor left a lot to be desired, my particular smell. ‘It’s the biscuits he eats.’

  My mother defended me, but that only stocked up their loathing still further.

  ‘The biscuits!’ My father scoffs, pulling out his handkerchief, he flourishes it, he shakes it to the four corners then blows, he takes his hooter in both hands and trumpets it. Honk! Honk! Honk! Reverberating, his morning reveille . . . Honk! Honk! Honk! He used to deliver some vicious blasts on that neb of his. That’s the way he used to blow that thing, that’s what all the noise is about, you understand me, now? Honk! Honk! That’s him sounding his fog horn. He looks down at me, past both barrels, he gives it a last tweak, it wobbles, he flares his nostrils . . .

  ‘Would you like to go away, Steven? A boarding school or borstal, which would you prefer?’

  I stare into the carpet, I look for my marble, the golden cat’s eye, the best one of the lot, lost for good more than likely . . . He consoles me, he pats my head, he lifts his hand, he sniffs at it.

  ‘My God, Juny, this child stinks!’

  ‘It’s the biscuits,’ she stutters it out. ‘Bourbon, his favourites...’

  He can’t believe his ears, he smacks the side of his head with his fist.

  ‘The biscuits! The biscuits! Juny, the little tyke stinks, so don’t try and tell me any different! Don’t give me biscuits, he doesn’t wipe himself properly! Don’t try and break my heart with your biscuits! He’s making a mockery, a fool of us both . . . Boarding school, that’s the only answer, they’ll install some discipline! Steven . . . Steven! Look at me when I’m talking to you! Do you want to go to prison? Do you want me to have to call the police? Is that what you want? Do we have to lock you away?’

  Children belong to their parents, that’s a fact. You don’t need a licence, just a cock and a pair of balls . . . In our world my father was omnipresent, he exercised his will from afar. He came and he went. He stayed away. He turns up and bosses us like dirt.

  ‘Look at him, Juny, he’s crawling in boils, there’s so much pus in him that it can’t get out quick enough!’

  It was true, I couldn’t move. I was swathed in bandages and calamine from head to foot. ‘Hop-a-long Cassidy’, Nana Lewis calls me — that hands everybody a laugh. ‘Hop-a-long Cassidy’... I hobble about . . .

  She used to bring us fruit, Nana Lewis, fruit on Wednesdays . . . And once a little tortoise called Charlie, she found him in the vegetable patch, a cute little fellow. I sat naked in the sun and his neck was cold and he had a mouth and eyes and everything, and his tongue was pink and came out when he ate and he lived in his own shell. And we saw big Caroline next door in the paddling pool and she had no clothes on and she didn’t have a willy.

  I put Charlie down on the grass, squat down and look between my legs, I put my head to my knees in shame. And then the snow came and we put Charlie in a cardboard box in the shed, but when we took him out in the spring, he was dead.

  ‘The frost must have gotten to him.’ Caroline pushes me on the swing. ‘You see everything dies . . .’

  I lift my feet up off the ground and swing, I study my ankles, fawn socks, black slip-on plimsolls. I lean back and Caroline smiles down at me.

  ‘No one lives forever, everyone has to die . . . Then the soul goes up to heaven.’

  ‘Where’s heaven?’

  ‘In the clouds with God.’

  Now that I’ve got to see, to see a dead man floating up into the sky on his back, like a plank.

  ‘The body dies and the soul floats up to heaven.’

  And I got the devil in me and my legs came out in boils, they spread up from my knees and out across my back. My mother holds me down whilst the old man squeezes them out, yellow worms, vicious attacks, not very lovely, unasked for. I was humbled but still rancid, a little retarded maybe? Possibly, possibly . . .

  ‘He won’t speak properly! He won’t close his mouth when he eats! He can’t piss straight! He can’t wipe his own arse! Look woman, look! He pisses directly up the wall, and not a drop of it in the basin mind! Why do you always have to urinate on the floor, Steven? And don’t tell me it’s the biscuits he eats!’

  ‘He tries, but it’s difficult to aim when he’s standing up.’

  ‘How in hell would you know woman! Christ, if he isn’t pissing the bed, he’s shitting his pants, and now this! The floor’s thick with it. He’s rotting the linoleum, look at it, clear up the wall!’ He points at the stains, the discolorations . . .

  ‘In the toilet basin, Steven! Urinate in the toilet basin! Not up the wall, for crying out loud! And wash behind your foreskin! What did I tell you to do? When you go to the toilet, pull your foreskin back, do you understand?’

  He yanks my shorts down. He orders me. I have to show him, to pull it back. I try to aim but it goes both right and left, two separate streams, a snake’s tongue . . . golden droplets. It hits the old man square in the eye, a terrible jet. He jumps back.

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ He dabs at his eye. ‘You little pig!’

  I shake it off and go to pull the foreskin back, but it won’t budge, it’s jammed . . . I give it another tug, but it’s honest to God stuck. The old man folds away his hanky and has a go himself, at first gingerly, then with both hands. He gets stuck in, but no movement, not a sausage. He looks kind of quizzical. He pours himself a triple Scotch and passes out on the sofa.

  Next morning I go to piss but nothing will come out. I try to pull back my foreskin but the nob’s as swollen as a plum. So we have to go and see the quack, Baldielocks and his Three Hairs, he licks them flat . . .

  ‘The trouble,’ as he points out, ‘is that the end’s swollen, a kind of balloon effect.’

  I stand there with my trousers round my ankles whilst he walks around playing with his face, moulding the flesh, great caskets of it, hanging down below his ears . . . He re-approaches the problem, he daubs at it with cotton wool, he applies some soapy water and gives it an experimental tug. There’s a little ripping sound, that brings me up on my toes.

  ‘Shush, Steven!’ The old man’s like a sergeant. ‘Shush!’

  A spot of blood, but otherwise no change.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, stand still, Steven!’

  I try to tell him that it hurts.

  ‘Shush!’

  His answer to everything: ‘shush!’

  Our doctor puckers his lips, kissed with a quizzical smile.

  ‘We’ll have to keep the little chap in overnight for observation, to see if there’s any further developments. I think it’s for the best.’

  He agrees with himself, walks behind his desk and lights one up, he puffs on it. .. Pretending to know what he’s talking about . . . He studies his cuticles . . .

  ‘He’ll be on the Children’s Ward, he’ll need pyjamas, dressing gown and his slippers. He motions to me with his great white dome . . . discussing my future. That’s nice, pleasant, educated — me just a piece of furniture . . .

  I run as fast as my little dick will let me, I have to gyrate my hips like a spider to stop the cloth chafing. I kind of fart all the way up the road and in through the main doors. Then I have to hang around for ages, waiting for those two loafers to catch up, the pair of them still chewing at each other’s throats. I can hear the old man barking a whole block away. It’s obvious that if I don’t get him out of the quack’s face
there’s going to be some blood spilt. It seems that the only chance I’ve got, is to usher him in off the street before he gets his head bent. I was left holding that door ’til doomsday.

  There aren’t many places that smell worse than hospitals. I hold my breath, and try not to breathe: bleach battling with piss and decay. It hits you as soon as you walk in there. I count to thirty then I get shoved. This nurse leads me to my bed, iron, chipped, forty of them in two rows. The faces of the unknown, pale-faced kids and a roaring noise, like a swimming pool.

  I have to undress, change into my pyjamas and get into bed, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon.

  The kid in the next bed’s got appendicitis, so I get to eat his cold sausages; I help myself to his grapes as well. His mother reckons I’ll get appendicitis because I swallow the pips. She walks in and she’s got one leg shorter than the other. She asks me my name and tells me that Simon isn’t allowed tomatoes at home, because the skins don’t agree with him . . .

  ‘I don’t eat tomatoes,’ I tell her, and she raises her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘I see you’re a spoilt little boy,’ she says, which means that I am bad.

  I just have time to tell her that my father’s going to buy me a squirrel for my birthday, when a load of white coats come marching up the ward. A crashing of heels . . . They make straight for my bed, pull the screens round and crowd in on the inside. They loom through the darkness. All their faces, ghastly, jammed into mine, hot mouths, discussing . . .

  ‘You’ve eaten, you shouldn’t have been allowed to eat.’

  They pull the bedclothes back and tug at my foreskin, they fight over the stethoscope and bicker like kids. They prod and swap notes. Young men mostly, red-faced and pimply, shavers, and one greybeard. He takes his thumbs from his waistcoat, an elaborate silk. First he powders his hands, then he blows into the gloves, he huffs through the talcum powder, stretching the fingers like elastic bands then lets them go Thwack! One at a time, five on each hand, ten in all, then nursy helps him into them. He flexes his fingers, he strains them, he pulls at each little pinkie individually, he makes like a pianist, he orchestrates — suspenseful, we’re caught watching.

  It seems that the time for deliberating has passed, no more dilly-dallying or chewing it over in Latin. He takes my knob between thumb and forefinger, he twists it to the left and to the right — it’s positively blossoming with blood — he polishes it up purple as a toga . . . He nods his head and nursy passes him the syringe . . .

  ‘Now this won’t hurt, just a little prick!’ He looks round, he milks his audience, they blush into their waistcoats, cheap woollen affairs. ‘And that’s all you’ll feel. You’re a big boy now, aren’t you . . .’ He reads my name tag, ‘. . . Steven? You have to be brave now.’

  He checks the syringe, he goes cross-eyed, a little jet of clear fluid caught in the strip lights, a delicate arc . . . A mole on his cheek, a clot of blood and two grey hairs. He eases it in, and I scream. It jumps out of me, long, drawn out, wrenched from the pit of my stomach . . . I writhe, my toes curl and I grip the sheets.

  ‘Tut-tut, you’re not a little girl, are you?’

  The tears sting my eyes . . . That’s rich, him and his ‘tut-tut’, then Slam! with his hot stiletto, right into the helmet, right where it was most swollen, the most sensitive. I bite the pillow and whinny like a horse.

  ‘Tut-tut.’

  He hands nursy the empty syringe and holds up his hands to be de-gloved . . .

  ‘There might be some slight bruising, just keep it clean and dry . . . You can go home in the morning.’

  His lackeys pull the screens back and they all head off down the pub. And him calling me a little girl, him with his six inch syringe! They depart and I’m left holding myself. Then I remember Tinker-bud and I hold onto him as well, a little koala bear, a glove puppet, kids stuff. We play peek-a-boo under the covers, we survey the damage, gingerly, my burst balloon, We sneak a look when the other kids aren’t looking, I don’t want to let on . . . My shame . . .

  The bruise spread right down to my balls, and lasted for a month. My mother was dead proud of it, she wanted everybody to know. I even had to show it to Bert, who ran the general store at the end the road. He wouldn’t sell me fireworks . . .

  ‘You’re under-age,’ he said.

  And I ran home crying, that was regular.

  He winces at my bruises . . .

  ‘Nasty,’ he tells my mother. ‘Very nasty.’

  They closed him down that summer . . . He asked a little girl from the council estate to come behind the counter and take off her knickers.

  ‘Nasty,’ he said.

  Me with my shorts round my knees.

  ‘Very nasty.’

  That cheered my mother up no end.

  5. OVER THE BACK

  If I tell you exactly how it was, then nobody will be able to accuse me of lying. That’s my hollow dream, that’s how I kid myself. I’ll stay terrifyingly honest, helping myself to understand, to come to terms . . .

  ‘Young gentlemen’ that’s how our father used to address us, us sat scrubbed and helpless in the back seat of his car. And somehow the old fool really seemed to believe it: ‘young gentlemen’.

  We lived under the constant threat of his impending visits, and the silent misery of my mother. Once the old girl tidied up we aren’t allowed to romp around or move so much as a hair. No more fun and games for us kids, no sir! Double scrubbed and no messing.

  And every night our mother sat at her place by the window, waiting for the car headlamps to show, sniffling to herself . . . Then the sobs . . . Then it got totally dark and she chucked the grub away. It was the same pattern night after night, week in week out, until the old buzzard finally rolls up.

  ‘Was that his lights? Did you hear a car door?’

  Me and me brother look at each other: now she’s seeing things. And then the crying, swallowed down, hollow sounding, unwinding, then winding up again. The same old tune, wheezing in the dark, at the far end . . . near the Venetian blinds. Each night, hoping, expectant, then resigned . . . Each night she makes believe as if he’s gonna show up, and we have to go through the whole charade again. She tidies up, combs her hair and paints a smile on her face . . . Then the clock watching, ’til finally she chucks the grub away and opens a bottle of Guinness. Then the phone goes . . . She chucks the moggy off her lap and leaps to it. . . He’s pissed . . . He’ll be on the next train . . . The pips go . . . then nothing . . . We sit and wait. . . Neither hide nor hair, and us double scrubbed and no playing in the garden . . . And off to bed early.

  ‘Your father’s at the station, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.’

  She fiddles with her throat and stares earnestly into the garden . . .

  ‘Is that some rubbish up by the fir tree? You didn’t drop any sweet wrappers did you, Steven? You know what your father’s like!’

  We sit around twiddling our thumbs, and not getting dirty. We play in the back room — we’re not allowed in the front room on account that I kind of fucked up the sofa by bouncing on it, so we’re not allowed in there. I paint a bird in purple and a picture of war, then my brother punches me and knocks the paint water over. I writhe on the floor screaming ’til the old girl comes in and does her nut.

  ‘Soddin’ bloody kids! Look at it! And for Christ’s sake stop whining! My God, that voice! It’s high time you learned a few facts of life!’ She looks at me meaningfully.

  Then we hear the car door go and a blond shadow at the window, ghost-like . . . We have to look twice, to be sure . . . We have to see him coming, first his titfer, then his beard. Then he comes into full view, throwing his brolly about, stabbing at toffee papers. He stops, about turns and stoops, he takes a closer look, making sure . . . He picks something up between thumb and forefinger, holds it up to the light, sniffs at it, then carries it off with him at arm’s length and presents it to my mother awaiting him on the door step. We watch out of the window. He floats up the gard
en, picks up the toffee wrapper and walks straight up to her. He goes out of sight, then comes back into view; he kind of looks at me, and I do the same . . .

  ‘Hello Nichollas, Steven.’

  He nods and walks past, his head thrown back, eyes averted. He goes into the front room, and the door closes.

  ‘Hello father,’ I say.

  The old girl runs to the kitchen full tilt and ditches the toffee wrapper, Plop! into the waste bin, it rattles around down there, amongst the potato peelings and tea leaves — she chucks it in there, the offending wrapper. Then shuffles about in the kitchen fiddling with the skin round her throat . . . He comes back out the front room practising his scowl.

  ‘What are you fussing about with now, Juny?’

  ‘Would you like something to eat, darling?’

  He stops and stares at her, he looks her up and down from head to foot.

  ‘Yes, Juny, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, please!’ She puts the lid on the bread bin. ‘Roast beef please, Juny!’. . . That’s how he answers her.

  We haven’t got any roast beef, so we have to go out to dinner and that means we have to be double scrubbed.

  ‘I could do you some cheese on toast . . . I didn’t know that you’d be coming . . . Or I could do some egg and chips.’

  He shakes his head in disbelief. No playing over the back woods, double scrubbed and no dilly-dallying. My mother chucks the cheese on toast in the bin . . . And then she has to go and get tarted up. I see her naked in the bathroom, then she gets out the talcum powder . . . The stench of lipstick and finally her mother’s old fur coat . . . It was always a signal when she put that rag on, that meant we were going out.

  ‘Can’t I go over the back instead . . . I ain’t hungry . . . I won’t stay out late . . .?’