They point at the blackboard, they reiterate, us sat yawning. That chalk made a special sound when it screeched those letters, and a choking dust . . . But no matter what I just couldn’t get myself interested in their fancy calligraphy. The difference between a ‘p’ and a ‘q’? Don’t even ask . . .
If they’d have just let me spend a little more time mixing with the crabs and the butterflies, I’d have been a sight happier. Have you ever seen a crab walk? Now that’s something to see, they walk sideways. They lift themselves up and head off in that direction, like that! They pick up their skirts, shake their heels and they’re off! Style, finesse and individuality: crabs. That’s what I’m talking about, the little fellows you got on Seasalter beach before the big freeze of 1963.
And the big girls from the caravan site used to come and take me by the hand and lead me out across those mud flats. I knew all the best places to look — the mussel bank, out around the reef. You have to approach them from behind, that’s the only way to avoid their pinchers, and then you pick them up, like that! The same goes for butterflies, you’ve got to have finesse. You can’t just go busting up their wings like Kevin Harding did: gently does it and don’t throw a shadow! You try explaining that to the ignorant and they won’t listen. They know it all, they just barge in there and smash everything up. It’s all the same to them; poetry is meaningless! There’s nothing I didn’t know about butterflies in those days. The only person who knew more than me was Caroline and she was five years older than me and went to the big school.
‘You have to be very still and quiet, and don’t go between the butterfly and the sun.’
Big Caroline had a picture book, Butterflies of the Chalk Downs, page after page in full colour, from caterpillars to chrysalis, from chrysalis to butterfly. Intricate hues, and not all of them common, the chalk blue for example, you don’t see that little fellow any more.
All that went out the window, twenty-odd years back, when big Caroline moved, my father walked out and my brother stepped into his shoes. The woods came down and the estates went up, people with no understanding of natural habitats, kids who’d sooner crush a thing of beauty than take a second look at it, kids with chips on their shoulders this big! Butterflies? Forget it! Smack!
‘You can’t even read ’n’ write?’
My brother drops a brick onto my head . . . He tumbles them off the big stack in Nigel Forman’s front yard. Smash! There goes my head again.
The world was becoming mighty serious for me, my brother made sure of that.
And to think that when I was a kid I knew that animals could talk to each other, I absolutely knew it, and now I know next to nothing, zilch! Just a handful of crummy memories, the destroying blackboard, the world that knows best! I lie awake at night and think of those woods, I see how far I can go into them. I search them in memory, the big beech tree, a certain hollow stump, I keep them all alive, I have to, now that I’m a fossil.
9. THE SILENCE OF WORDS
That’s a fine arse you’ve got on you, Juny!’
My father walks over and slaps it and I go out into the garden. My brother won’t let me in his tent so I sit on the grass and make a daisy chain. I put it over my head and watch a flying saucer come up over the trees . . . It revolves lazily in the clear blue. ‘Look Nick, a flying saucer!’
He undoes the ties and comes out on his hands and knees, and shades his eyes.
‘No it ain’t, it’s a jet.’
‘But it’s spinning.’
‘I tell you it’s a jet, alright!’
He kicks my knee and I fall . . . I start crying.
‘Arse!’ I say.
‘What?’
‘ARSE!’
I hear him running . . . The old man comes across the lawn at me, I squeal as he pulls me to my feet and starts slapping my legs . . .
My brother stands by the little green tent and folds his arms. The old man dragging me back towards the house.
‘What did I hear you say! I’ll teach you to speak such filth! You can go to your room until you’re fit to mix with other human beings! Do I make myself clear? Now get moving!’
He twists my arm, my face filled with snot . . . And I saw a
flying saucer as true as I write this . . .
* * *
If my father had just truly upped and left us, we’d all of been a sight happier. But as it was, we couldn’t relax, he kept hanging on, on account that we were occupying his collateral. That’s what it amounted to. ‘You’re using my facilities!’ That was his catch phrase . . . One thing you could be sure of with the old man was that he would never tire of roasting the same old chestnuts.
‘You use my facilities, but you’re not prepared to contribute a thing! You could mow the lawn, paint the shed, but no! You use my facilities but contribute positively nothing, nil!’
He’s letting us know his feelings, putting us in the picture. That’s him alright, I’d recognise that dandy anywhere, the one in the whiskers, the blond bombshell! Side-buckle shoes, and the big opinions, stable, never changing. Three years go by, he shows up, another six months and there he is, in all his finery, resplendent, clasping his brolly.
‘There’s no food in the house! We’ll have to go out to dinner. Wah!’
I step on his corns, I’m at that age . . . I bang into things, uncoordinated, gawky . . . I had them all out in one go you see, twelve of them, and now I’ve got new tusks, they stick out over my lips. I have to use my hand to grin and I breathe kind of heavy, I can’t breathe and eat at the same time.
‘For goodness sake close your mouth and breathe through your nose when you eat, Steven!’
They kept telling me, but I couldn’t, it was blocked or something, I honestly tried but I made a snorting noise.
‘Take him to the doctor if he can’t breathe! He isn’t a pig, is he? Breathe through your nose, Steven!’
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Well, try!’
My brother punctuates it with a kick in the ankle, to be sure I’ve heard, that I am paying attention to our father. Boot! And the anger in his eyes, directed at me personally, you understand. Then he looks up to his father, an apologetic smile, one of love and confusion, desperate to be liked, to be appreciated.
I tried breathing through my nose, I concentrated on it, I snorted and slapped my chops. That’s what they went to great lengths to point out: apparently, I wasn’t that lovely, and then there was the smell.
‘Can you smell something?’ My father beams.
‘It’s stinky Steven,’ chants my brother. ‘He stinks awfully father, Steven smells!’
‘No,’ my father corrects him, ‘not Steven, you mean The Smell, Nichollas, The Smell!’
He smiles at his joke and pats his kisser with his handkerchief. It was the old girl who lit his fuse asking him what he’d like for dinner.
‘I don’t want to eat, Juny, I don’t care if I never eat again! There’s never any damned food in this house anyway!’ He marches out, then turns and sticks his head back round the door. ‘Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding! You haven’t got it? You haven’t got it!
‘Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding’, that’s how he always answered, and he knew damn well that we didn’t have three pennies to keep each other company, let alone forking out on luxuries. ‘Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, please, Juny.’ And us living on a few mouldering potatoes, and the occasional sausage. We haven’t got ‘roast beef’, so we have to go out for dinner.
He rings up in advance, just to keep her on tenterhooks. She’s got no time for us kids, we have to tidy our lives away. Then his mistress rings up, dishing the dirt — it became a regular occurrence. Every evening, six o’clock, the phone goes and the old girl sits there chewing the fat. I play on the rug driving my toy Batmobile, but she won’t talk to me, just, ‘Shush! In a minute! For crying out loud!’ Finally she serves up the egg and chips, and she’s crying into the yolk . . . Then she sags at the knees and drops the plate, a big string of snot
. . .
‘I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,’ she tells me, and I know that she means she is going to die and leave me.
Every time I come in from school I look to see if she’s been strangled, lying naked on her bed, face down with her crotchless knickers stuffed in her mouth. That’s what they were. I found them at the back of the drawer.
‘Come along, Juny, we’re going out for dinner. I haven’t eaten since luncheon. Are those children ready? Come along, chop-chop!’
The trouble is, I’ve got these teeth, I have to use my hand to grin on account of the monstrous effect, and I breathe kind of heavy, I can’t eat and breathe at the same time. And then there’s my teeth, it all gets mixed up, it antagonises people.
‘For God’s sake, breathe through your nose and close your mouth when you eat, Steven! If only you could see yourself!’
‘It’s his voice, I just can’t stand his voice,’ my mother chips in. ‘It’s that whining. You don’t have to listen to it. My God, his voice!’
They repeat themselves, they’re waiting for it to sink in, to penetrate my thick skull. Eating silently, that was a tough one, and speaking the Queen’s English . . . I had to hear about it regularly, in detail, the list of my inadequacies . . .
‘The thing about steak,’ as my father explains, ‘is you mustn’t be able to see any blood, none of it must come out when you cut it . . . It must be well done, not even a whisper of pink.’
No juice, that was his point, he didn’t like the juice, the fact that is was an animal, he picked at it and sniffed . . .
‘Steak, please, very well done . . . And Smell, what would you like, egg and chips?’ He raises his voice, he looks to the other tables and waves his wallet around.
‘Anything on the menu . . . Have anything you wish.’
Then he turns back to us. He whispers at us with venom, but silently, without words. I stare into my plate. This is his great moment of grandness: the family meal . . . misery located on a table top. He swigs at the claret and explains all about the butter, the specific type of flock wallpaper, sharks.
‘They couldn’t take the man’s wet-suit off because it was the only thing holding him together. Then there was the blood!’
He peers at his meal, hideously charred . . . His crisp little steak, he picks at it and blows kisses . . . Phut! Phut! He thinks it over, nibbling at his fingertips, then he sniffs and pops his eyes, he’s found something . . .
‘This isn’t well done! Look, Juny, it’s perfectly raw!’ It’s true. In the depths of the brittle piece of meat is a thread-like vein of pink. ‘You heard me make my order, didn’t you? I specifically asked you for well done! I can’t eat that! What do you think? The chips?’ He loosens his collar and coughs, his studs ping off like shrapnel.. . ‘It’s raw! Look at it! Waiter! Waiter!’
I eat the skin of the chip first, then blow on the white stuff inside . . . The waitress shows up, clutching her breasts.
‘Look at this, and I ordered well done.’ He speaks evenly and succulently, a gentle, authoritarian whisper, charm itself . . . ‘I don’t like to complain my dear, but I did specifically ask for very well done, didn’t I, darling?’
My mother nods into her fish and chips, she’s caught with a mouthful of hake. ‘Oh yes he did, he specifically asked for very well done . . .
My father looks at her with great distaste and waves his napkin in her face . . .
‘Please, Juny, let me handle this.’
‘I’ll take it away and change it for you immediately, sir . . .’
‘No! No! It’s too late now, I’ve lost my appetite, anyway. No, don’t worry yourself. I didn’t want it anyway, I just thought I’d point it out to you, that’s all.’
He tugs at the plate, his thumb skids in the gravy . . . He relinquishes his hold. He lets her win: the tug of war of the plate . . . She adjusts her headgear and retreats, plate in hand. The little burnt steak, it goes back to the kitchen.
‘Stupid girl, I didn’t want it changed. You saw it, Juny, blood red! I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’
He consoles himself with a roll, playing with the butter, still griping, justifying himself to the grave. He rolls the dough round in his gob, his tongue following just behind, then takes another gargle on the red stuff and swills the whole thing between his teeth. He questions the rest of us with his eyebrows, little blond crescents. He swallows and gags, then another slurp.
‘It was raw! Perfectly raw!’
10. PLASTIC ELEPHANT
All my troubles date from my first life. I ate nothing but chocolate bars up until I was eighteen. It contributed to my overall smell, black teeth, green teeth. Holes so deep I could feel right the way through to the centre, using my tongue, rough edges, busted, then hard shiny gum. A little platform, right in the middle, a kind of courtyard inside the crumbling tooth . . .
The dentist was a half hour bus ride up to Gillingham. They gave you cocaine in those days, and my mother bought me a plastic elephant with removable tusks and ears, just to cheer me up, to stop me being quite such a pain in the arse. Anything to do with wild animals is alright by me. We bought it from the shop next door, the one that used to have the money flying across the ceiling on wires. You don’t see that sort of thing these days, Zing! It went right over your head, Zing! That’s the cash box, magical. Wee-zing! Right over your head, real money, on strings.
11. THE SMELL OF DOG
We only occupied the smallest room in that mansion of ours, on account of the cold. Between his visits the old man was starving us out . . . We lived under the constant threat of repossession . . .
‘We’re on an economy drive!’ That’s what the old girl kept repeating, that and, ‘I’m going to have a nervous breakdown!’
I lived my whole life on one of her economy drives.
I draw a picture of her crying, with the cat on her lap.
We sit huddled round that antique oil stove smouldering away in the corner. An acrid stench, glowing through the gloom, a glimmer of warmth, defused, candle-like. Apparently it ‘conserved energy’, besides we aren’t allowed to so much as set foot in the front room on account of my bouncing. The sofa was a wreck, I was banned, it was unanimous; on that one count everyone was in full agreement.
‘He’s been bouncing on the sofa again, Juny! I don’t want him in there! Do you understand me? Use the front room? Waste coal on an open fire? Have we got money to burn? And think of the furniture! It’s already thread-bare without your kids clambering about all over it!’
I push my Dinky car about on the floor, I examine the tyres -one of them keeps coming off.
‘Can you put my tyre back on for me?’
He rolls his eye into the back of his skull.
‘Shhh, your father’s busy!’
He massages his sockets . . . I pick at it, the little tyre, rubbery, a loop.
‘If I find out you’ve been bouncing!’ He bites down.
Yes sir! The smallest room for us, and no wasting precious gas or electricity! We sat holed up in that cave for the whole winter, bleak, enduring, twiddling our thumbs, the oil stove creaking out noxious gases, thick and oily. My skin turned waxy to the touch, a ghostly grey, a little green round the gills, but otherwise yellow. Not too much chance of getting any fresh air, not in amongst that soot, great plumes of the stuff. And me with my boils, sort of illuminations, glistening through the smog . . . Me, me mum and me brother, huddled over the wick . . . Paraffin I think it burned on, just one miserable dribble left in the whole can, to last ’til the end of January.
What gave the old man his blacklist moods, was the stench, it permeated everything, it was absorbed into the furniture and fittings.
He rolls up out of the night, his feet sounding on the gravel, a visitation . . . white, bearded, a face at the window. My mother hits the panic button and we drop everything . . .
‘Oh my goodness! Put the stove out! Nichollas open the window! He’ll smell it!’
She flaps her arms abo
ut in the murk, trying to dispel the fumes. She ushers the smoke out of the window. The room turns to ice .. . That was his ultimate trick, turning up on the doorstep, completely unannounced, stamping his feet through the frost, teeth gritted, his nose in the air.
‘Have you been burning that stove again? My God the place stinks of it! Come along woman, admit it! You don’t need to, I can smell it. My whole fucking wardrobe reeks of the stuff!’
It was the idea that we’d actually been keeping warm that antagonised him, that me and Nick had been roasting a few harmless chestnuts in the dying coals, windfalls, gatherings in the leaves. The shells are pretty messy, it seems we fucked up the carpet. It was obvious that he’d have to put his foot down.
‘You’ve been burning that stove again, haven’t you, Juny? Christ, I can smell it from down the end of the street! As soon as my back is turned! I’ve told you a thousand times, leave it in the shed woman! You’ve got coal, you’ve got electricity! I provide for everything, don’t I?’
It’s cold, damp, real fog, winter-time, gusts of ice and snow, regular drifts, and us huddled over that burner, a little blue flame, blushing, eerie-looking. We keep our heads down, we daren’t answer back. No back-chat! Not in the slightest, it ain’t worth the aggravation. And smiles are out of the question, too, or any kind of talking . . . That would just crank him up into new crescendos
‘Have you been peeling chestnuts on the carpet? ’Ain’t’! ’ain’t’! What sort of language is that?’
We hear him barking down the phone, making all kinds of threats, promises about his imminent return. He hasn’t shown his face in the last two months, but still he yells his tirades. We hear him woofing in the distance, little sparks of electricity. He hasn’t paid the bills — the constant fear that we’ll be disconnected.
‘Don’t I give you house-keeping, Juny? What the hell are you spending it on down there? Because I warn you, there isn’t another brass farthing coming from me, my good woman! You’ve already bled me dry! The lot of you! Shit and damnation! I’ve been in a terrible accident, the car’s a write-off! A man was killed! I’ll be ba . . .’ Prrrrrrrr . . . The pips go . . . he loses his tuppence . . . We’re left dangling on a string, under the constant threat of his appearance . . . or possible eviction.
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