‘My fa-fa-fa-fa . . .’
His face purples up, his eyes hideous. Come on, spit it out! His fa-fa what? He hangs his tongue out and bugs his eyes.
‘Ma-ma-ma, fa-fa . . . my father’s a vicar, wh-wh-wh-what’s yours do?’
‘He does drawing’
‘Wh-what’s he draw?’
‘Cats ’n’ stuff?’
‘Where’s he w-work’
‘I dunno . . . I don’t renember . . .’
‘Y-y-you-you mean “remember”.’
‘What?’
‘You said “renember”! You-you-you sh-sh-sh-should say “remember”.’
‘Renember.’ I try to say it, but it comes out wrong.
That makes his day, he holds onto himself. I look at the bushes, at the passing cars. I kick at a slug, black, creeping, a trail of slime. I split its guts, yellow, I toe it; then his old man shows up.
‘Hello fa-fa-father, th-this is Ste-Ste-Steven . . . He-he-he ca-ca-can’t say remember . . .’
‘Yes, I can! I just forgot, that’s all.’
‘Forgot? Can’t you “renember”?’
Old God Squad smirks down at me. Oh, so the vic’s got a sense of humour! Johnty’s positively beaming.
The wrong book for two whole weeks, and me just a kid, still in shorts, too shit-scared to tell Mister Jones, or to let on to the other brats, my superior classmates. I stared that Johnty kid down, despite his old man being there.
‘You shut it, Johnty!’
‘Johnty? What’s this “Johnty’?’ Jonathan! That’s his name! Jonathan! I suppose you can say that alright? Jonathan! He wasn’t christened Johnty! Jonathan is his name, so use it!’
I looked to Johnty and back to that prick in the dog’s collar.
‘Johnafun,’ I say.
17. 5 PARK DRIVE
I showed him my crucifix, I took it into school with me, and showed it to God’s kid. Wooden with a brass inlay, dangling on a bit of old rope. I dig it out my pocket and show him it after assembly.
‘It’s real wood, with gold! This man made it for me, his name’s Norman, he’s a woodwork teacher in the big school. He knows my mum. It’s for scaring off vampires, smart in’t it? He didn’t buy it or nothing, he made it by hand, all by himself! It keeps off vampires — here, take it, go on. You can spit on it if you like. Go on, spit on it!’
That makes him look at me, his delicate little gob doesn’t look quite so superior anymore, he puckers up his lips like a cat’s arse
‘Go on, spit on it!’
T-TI-I-I ca-ca-ca-nn’t, my fa-fa-fa-father’s a vicar!’
‘So what, don’t mean you can’t spit on it, does it? You don’t believe in God, do you?’
‘I ha-ha-have to, my father’s a vicar.’
‘Don’t mean you have to, just because your dad does, does it? Go on, spit on it! I spit on it, I spat on it this morning. I keep it under my pillow, it keeps off vampires. Give us it here.’
I snort one up, I suck my cheeks in and gob. I hold it under his nose for inspection.
‘Come on, don’t be a wanker!’
‘Wha-wha-wha-what’s a wa-wa-wanker?’
I look at him sideways. What’s he trying to pull? Him with his ‘what’s a wa-wa-wanker?’
‘You don’t know what wanking means? Really?’
‘N-n-n-n-no . . .’
‘Well, it’s . . . it’s wanking, isn’t it? You do it to women ’n’ things. You see, you have stuff, spunk . . . After the wanking . . .’
‘Wh-wh-what?’
‘It’s like, you know, weeing . . . Only you do it up ’em.’
He gives me a blank one.
‘The women, you do it up the women and that gives them a baby . . . You put it up their cunt for a white one and up their arse for a black one.’
That took him aback, his stupid little kisser mincing about, chewing on it. I knew I had something over on him. I lean in, and say it right in his ear.
‘How long’s your winkle on the donk? You have to rub it; look I’ll show you . . .’
I looked about, checked the coast was clear and unbuttoned it.
We got good at that game — we used to lock ourselves in the toilets and get a stiffy by looking through my old man’s porno mags. Once we got a donk-on, we measured them up and played sword fights, and put them against each others arses. The idea was to check each week to see if they’d grown. But that God’s kid used to have a half hard-on, and then swear blind that it was still on the soft. You have to watch those religious types, any chance they get they’ll cheat. They think they’ve got the whole universe sewn up: they’ve seen it and they’ve fucked it, they know the whole show!
There was no doubts that he fancied himself, what with his freckles, rose-bud lips and his literary genius. Him with his Green Book volume eighteen. And what with his ‘remember’ not ‘renember’, he got to thinking that maybe he could ‘boss’ me! I had to drag him down through the shit, to out-dirt him on every count.
‘You can come round my house after school if you want, we’ve got these woods ’n’ fields over the back, ’n’ these ants nests. You get a spade ’n’ bucket ’n’ dig up a red ants nest, then you chuck it on top of a black ants nest ’n’ watch ’em fight. . . The red ants always win, they’re smaller ’n’ slower, but when they get hold of one of them black ants, they rip its fuckin’ head off! It’s smart! You gonna come? Go on, say you’ll come, ’n’ I’ll show you me wasp collection! They’re still alive, I feed ’em on flies! They sting ’em ’n’ carry ’em around, hanging underneath whilst they’re flying . . . We can go and see Terry, he’s gonna be a Hell’s Angel!’
‘A Hell’s Angel?’
‘They ride motorbikes ’n’ piss on their jeans, ’n’ they don’t wash ’em, ’n’ you mustn’t let your mum wash ’em either. They piss on ’em ’n’ rub oil ’n’ stuff into ’em, my brother knows all about it, he’s got the book. And Terry, the man over the road, when he gets his licence he’s gonna be one, ’n’ he says I can have a go on the back of his Triumph, when he gets it. You see, they have smaller people on the back, ’cos then it makes the one on the front look bigger. But you have to piss on your jeans, it’s good, ’n’ you rub oil ’n’ stuff in ’em. There’s some in my dad’s garidge . . .’
That took some convincing, getting God’s kid to piss on himself. I have to build him up to it, that and the gobbing on the crucifix. The fucking king of the Green Book!
After school I take him down Smelly Al’s, and both of us chuck in for a pack of 5 Park Drive. I show him how you’re supposed to smoke. You hook your thumb in your belt loop and suck it all down ’til it hurts. We light up inside my old man’s garage. Johnty couldn’t do it as good as me, so I had to finish his for him. Then we got our dicks out and measure them up with a steel ruler. Johnty reckons his has grown half an inch since last week, which is bullshit.
We go into the garage, piss on each other’s jeans, then head over the back into the woods. We go the short way round to the big beech tree and set up the crucifix and the melted action men. You burn off the arms and legs and stick the knitting needles through their heads. Then you pour in the red paint, like real bullet holes. I arrange one either side of Jesus, then get the big jar of jaspers out. I shake them up to make them dizzy.
‘Look at these bastards! You see that one? That’s the queen!’
Big, holding in mid-air, revolving her antennae, spinning like radars, a special glow, orange-yellow.
‘I caught her by the dustbins with a cigarette case. You snap it shut ’n’ catch ’em mid-air! That’s a special one, that one, probably a hornet or something.’
I take a lug on my ciggie and blow the smoke in on top of them, just to be on the safe side.
‘If that bastard gets out she’ll sting you to death, she’s specially trained!’
I empty them out onto the deck, black and yellow, creepy-crawling, little circles, testing their wings.
‘Quick, put the hornet back, we’ll save
her ’til last.’
I get out my jack-knife and hold it under her legs, ’til she clings on, heavy, bloated. She sticks her sting into the blade, she unsheathes it and flexes her abdomen. . . I flick her back into the jar. ‘Give us the matches before they fly off!’
I squidged a bit of Evostick onto the heads of the matches, glue them onto the jaspers’ backs, then stake them out in a nice little row. Six in all, feet kicking.
‘You yellow faced Jap bastards, we got you now!’
I squint right into their faces, their little hands wiping their jaws, outraged, cursing, showing their teeth.
‘Look, they’re trying to kill ’emselves, but they can’t reach! Don’t worry little jaspers, you’ll know death soon enough! But first you can watch your comrades die!’
I snatch up the little plastic bomber, camouflaged with black crosses, chuck it on the ground and squirt it with lighter fuel. ‘Right, burn the wasps. Now! Come on, quick, like this!’
I strike a match and let it burn up the stake. The wasp kicks, his wings singed, jaws going, his body doubles back trying to sting himself, the little spike throbbing in and out, then the match explodes.
‘Did you see it? Did you see it? See, come on, it’s your turn now . . .’
I chuck the match on the Heinkel and squirt more lighter fuel, the plastic curls, giving off black smoke.
‘Look, the fuckin’ Nazis, they’re burning!’
I speak to the action men. ‘Come on Frank, Joey, do the rest of ’em, torch ’em! ‘I can’t Frank, I’m dying, it’s my arm, arrghh!’ ‘Joey, Joey speak to me!’ OK men, the flame thrower, torch ’em!’ We fumble with the matches, then one by one the jaspers flare up, legs blackening, their antennae droop, they gnash their jaws, their abdomens Crack! and Pop! Six in all, maybe seven of them, burned alive at the stake. Captured and shamed, my power supreme! I pick up the action men, make them salute, and knight them with my jack-knife.
‘Well done men, it’s been a great day for peace and freedom! You Frank, and you Joey, you’re heroes, an inspiration to your country. You have served bravely and wisely, with God on your side. So now, let us pray for the glorious dead!’
I kneel them down in the dirt and put their stumps together.
‘God in heaven, gentle Jesus ’n’ all the other ghosts, we thank you for this victory . . . Remember the glorious dead . . . Never let them stray from the path of righteousness, Amen!’
We unbuttoned our hoses and let go a stream of hot piss, it hisses and steams, frothing up the black dirt. It’s a race against time to see who can piss out the most wasps. Life and death, little channels, pools of piss. We roll in it and kick those mean little bastards back into the black earth! We stamp them back into the sod, teaching those jaspers a lesson, letting them know who’s boss! The Judgement of the Christ, that’s what, that’s who, and that’s what! The game of the little yellow and black ones.
We lie back, covered in shit, breathing in fits and starts. ‘Those bastards won’t come back in a hurry!’ I light a ciggie, draw the smoke in deep and cough, my eyes watering. I lean forward and spit on the cross, yellow juice.
‘Go on, spit on it!’
Johnty looks up startled.
‘Come on, God’s kid, fuckin’ spit on it, you fuckin’ Christ lover!’
I jump up and shout it in his face. I swing his action man round by its dislocated ankle. I wag it right under his nose blood-red, stumps for arms, neck broken, a quarter inch shell hole right through his bonce.
‘Jesus ain’t gonna save you now, so spit on it! Spit on it, you wanker!’
I watched his mug crumble, the lips twitching, the freckles, the delicate eyelashes. He chews his lips and blubbers, a tear rolling down his smoke-blackened mug. He doesn’t talk about his ‘Green Book’ now, nor his ‘renember’. No, he isn’t such a big kid now. He’s implicated — he pissed on the dead — he’s measured, and he’s burnt, and his poxy god has deserted him! He sucks on his spit and twiddles with his tongue.
‘M . . . m-m-m-m . . . fa-fa-fa . . . m-m-m-fa-fa-father says I’m not to p-play with you no more!’
He goes to get to his feet. I shove him hard in the chest.
‘Yeah, ’n’ your old man stinks, just like his fucking church!’
He swings round and slips in the piss, he picks himself up, he looks at me, then his face explodes and he runs howling through the woods . . . I watch him go . . .
‘Johnty! Johnty!’
I call after him, but nothing . . . just his banshee, decreasing . . . a few blackbirds, nothing . . . I chuck his action man onto the heap . . .
‘OK, Joey? Joey! Joey!’
‘I don’t want to die, Franky, I don’t want to die!’
‘It’s got to come off, Joey, it’s gangrenous.’
‘Arrghh!’
‘Here, bite on this . . . I’ve got to do it Joey, I’ve got to cut it out!’
I kneel in the leaves, black dirt, a few twigs, crap . . . I open my jack-knife, cross myself, kiss the blade and swish the queen’s head clean off . . .
18. NANA LEWIS
If it hadn’t been for Nana Lewis keeping us going on handouts, we’d of all starved to death on the spot, years back even. That was my mother’s opinion, and she never tired of repeating it, quietly, to herself. That’s the way she talked, in whispers, repetitively, trailing off. She never ever finished a sentence in twenty-five years of marriage.
‘The thing is . . .’
I sit waiting, I look at her face, ageing, then stare out of the window. The silence grows, there’s a thousand different types of silence in this world, but hers was total, apart from a few twitterings in the branches, in the distance, on the edge of hearing. I’m still waiting, suspenseful, the penny that never dropped. It was sure to wind the old man up, her pronouncements. He staggers in drunk, half two in the morning, pulling at his shirt studs, hopping round the bedroom on one leg. He walks into the wall and pisses in the wardrobe. What really gets his goat is that it’s all perfectly true.
‘Love-a-duck, Juny, you can’t live off fresh air alone you know! My poor little angels! Here take this, Juny, no I insist, spend it on the kids!’
She forces a bluey into the old girl’s mitt.
Nana Lewis had imagination alright. She not only kept me and my brother in pocket money, but she paid off half the household bills to boot. She forced half crowns into our hands; she knew us kids needed a little treat once in a while.
‘Rationing isn’t the norm these days, you know Juny, there isn’t a war on anymore, you know!’
The old man got tired of hearing it; he bit his lip and stared up at the ceiling. He finds a boil in his beard, he scratches at it, raking his fingernails through the bristles, he lances it, walks to the cabinet and pours himself a stiff one. He downs it in one and scowls round the room.
‘That mother of yours! I’m a stranger in my own house! Why don’t you all piss off and live with her?’
Once he caught wind that Nana Lewis was bringing in fruits and supplies, he almost choked. He popped his eyes at us and flung his hands around like bundles of sticks, he refused point blank to sink another brass farthing into the upkeep.
‘OK, that’s it, Juny! Do you hear me? Out! You, your kids, the oil heater, the mutt, the whole stinking lot of you! Out, out, out!’ He shakes it at us, dripping paraffin, he storms in and out the hallway, he marches round the garden with it. . . He flings it left, right and centre, he interrogates it.
‘You’re thick, the lot of you, thick and bone idle! Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know! You imbeciles! You’ll end up blowing yourselves sky-high!’ He rattles its cage. ‘Well, I tell you this much for free, I’m not slogging my guts out, dragging my arse up to London every day, just so’s you lot can lie in the lap of luxury, abusing my facilities! Who’s going to pay the telephone bill? The electricity? Well, no longer am I going to bear the brunt of your ridiculous extravagances! Come along woman, all of you, out! Chop-chop! You don’t like my hospitality? Fin
e! Clear out and take those snivelling brats with you! It’s time to call a halt, for you to learn to shoulder your own responsibilities! Enough is enough, as they say! I’m afraid you’ve bled me dry, now go see how your mother likes having a bunch of bone idle loafers cluttering up her doorstep! I wash my hands of you, here and now!’
He dips his hands in the wick and he crosses himself with the oil, he absolves himself, walks to the garage and climbs into his bus. We stand agape, staring after him. A winter fly wakes up and bangs into the lampshade, Hearboy comes out from under the table and bites at it. We look at each other, I go to breathe, I forgot. Just as we think the hurricane has blown itself out, we hear another crash and he emerges from out of his little house.
‘How low do you want to crawl, exactly? What sort of ground teat do you want to suck on? Come on woman, answer me! Because I’ll tell you this much, a sow’s is too high, that’s plain as day!’
We make him sick alright, we don’t budge an inch, we know our rights. We sit tight on our wicket, electricity or no electricity, we refuse to be intimidated.
So it gets pretty cold in England round about Christmas time. Nothing too extreme, but you get to notice it. The damp, the fog, the pea-soupers, every type of downpour, and then there’s the frosts . . . The oil stove is banished, we get the message: ‘it stinks!’
‘It’s as senseless as burning money, you may as well walk to the gutter and chuck it down the drain!’
That’s his opinion. We’ve heard them all in duplicate — he’s delivered his tirade, he’s made his point. He winds down, takes a swig at his bottle, he chucks it back in great golden glugs, then spits it back out again. He slams the door, we can hear him crashing about in the garage. He takes the oil-stove with him, he’s axing it once and for all, he rips into it, he lets it know who’s boss, he gains control.
‘How do you like that? You bastard!’
My mother tugs at the skin on her throat. We haven’t seen the old coot for two months, and then here he is, laying down the law. He turns up completely out of the blue, as righteous as a priest. He quits dismantling the flue and we hear him in his jalopy, gunning the motor; he reverses in and out of the garage, grinding the gears. He accelerates, then slams on all four brakes. He isn’t going anywhere, it’s all for effect — he’s got a two year ban, a drink driving rap. He’s just winding her up, trying to get the old girl’s goat. He jumps out his seat, slams and re-slams the door — it rebounds so hard that it hits him in the shins. He turns jet-white, grinds his maulers into dust and spits out the fillings. He implodes, he gets out the car and rips the door off, he bites at the wing mirrors.
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