My Fault

by Billy Childish

  ‘I got you an Easter egg.’

  ‘Look at that, Steven,’ chimes in my mother, ‘isn’t that lovely? Say thank-you to . . . what’s your name, dear?’

  ‘Crowsfeet.’

  ‘Say thank-you to Crowsfeet. . . Would you like to come home with us and you can share it with Steven?’

  He sucks on his snot and nods. His lips crusty round the edges, like a custard tart with hinges . . . I was planning a massive war against the ants in the front garden, and now the old girl goes and invites him back for tea!

  I nod. ‘Thank-you.’ I go along with it: shit, I’ll go along with any crappy piece of bullshit. People have a way of getting to me. My ability to say no is non-existent. Any bastard just has to walk in and rummage with my heart, turn the whole shop upside down, then wipe their stinking feet on my soul and march back out again without so much as an, ‘I beg your pardon’. I’ve got that type of face, a jutting jawline, and a nose that’s just crying out to be broken.

  Crowsfeet, he called himself. We sit there chewing on it, breaking bits off, and then he takes my bit and scoffs that as well. I watch him — he does it deliberately, he picks up the chocolate and jams it in his trap along with the rest of the garbage. I watch it moving about in there, his tongue stirring through the soup. Then I have to give him my pop as well. He snatches the bottle right out my hand and swigs at it. He doesn’t wipe the mouth piece either, he just lugs it back, viciously, as if it’s his by birthright . . . He fucks it up with his dirty gob, bits floating, cloudy . . . contaminated . . . He burps, sits back and farts, daring me to contradict him.

  I keep schtum, I pretend not to notice, so then he gets testy. He stares upwards and back, like as if he’s studying the inside of his skull, a curious effect. A little scowl, the mouth twists up, the lips knot into the nostrils, then his eyes roll — presto! He pulled some pretty ugly masks, that cunt! His eyes rolling about like marbles in a yoghurt. And then the mouth, he moves it around like some kind of egg custard.

  No sooner has he got one foot in the door than he makes himself right at home. He puts his feet up and lights up . . . He moves right in on the spot and starts reorganising my life: from now on all my pocket money’s spent on snouts: Cadets and Park Drive mostly . . . He drags it deep then puffs it right back out in my face. Threatening. He sucks the smoke down hard and quick, then, ‘Poof!’ out it comes: rank, suffocating, mixed in with some old cake . . . He rolls his eyes back and then, Smack! he lets one go. I have to take it, to cry weakly, to myself . . . Bang! right in the guts.

  ‘Stand up and take your punishment like a man!’

  That was his catch phrase. ‘Take your punishment like a man!’ and, ‘Don’t whinge and don’t whine.’ Then — Smack! Between him and my brother, I flinched every time the door knocker went. ‘Don’t flinch, stand up and take it like a man!’ I didn’t know if it was Monday or Thursday, I was shocked, caught off my guard. He bought me an Easter egg and my mother actually asked him round to our house to eat it. As soon as I saw his weasel face coming, I should have smelled a rat.

  That’s all that people have got in mind when they start handing round presents: their own furtherance. The excuse to take liberties! To justify their hatred. Inflicting misery with a licence, he was just looking for an opening, for any excuse.

  It was that Crowsfeet who was behind the break-ins at my parents’ gaff. It all comes clear after the event, after we have the courage to admit the truth to ourselves, of our own short falls. It didn’t take a genius to set it up. The old man was never home, me and my brother were at school all day, and so whenever the old girl took the mutt out for walkies it was open house. Two seconds after she went down the back alley, Crowsfeet and his mates were in through the window rifling the dump. Classes? They didn’t go to no stinking classes. They were relaxing themselves at my family’s expense. I saw the whole show unfolding — what I didn’t know I guessed, I have a hawk on my right shoulder, no kidding, I saw the whole picture — but I keep mum. I don’t breathe a word

  That’s me, reliable and true, the eternal fall guy. Even at the last ditch, when everybody else has finally fallen, caved in and sold out. After all the love has dried up, when it’s too late to say or do anything but scatter the ashes. That’s when I’ll be at my freshest, that’s when I wake up, take a look around and announce myself: the one who remained true.

  We had some pretty big bruisers in that school of ours: hefty louts, regular prize fighters. The toughest of the tough, Irish and gypsies mostly, with great shocks of red and black hair. It was sad to see our student teachers squaring up to those giants. College scarves and a few little whiffs of beard, apologetic and pockmarked. Biff! and they were down. Those third and fourth year kids could pack quite a punch. The boys with the mortar-boards measuring up to those brawny fellows? There wasn’t even a contest, just threats and a yelp, a bloodied handkerchief and another kid takes a short cut to Borstal.

  I was blonde and sensitive; no one looked out for me. I had to become a loudmouth pretty quick, a showman. When I saw a punch coming, I thought up a joke on the spot, I looked for the laugh, any possible means of escape . . . On top of that I had to pretend to be thick.

  Crowsfeet’s gang mooched around the estate chucking stones at cars . . . The youngest was in the same year as me, anything that wasn’t nailed down twice found its way into his pockets, he had no scruples whatsoever. He really didn’t give two shits! Young, old, blind, crippled, it was all grist to his mill. When it came to low-down underhandedness, he left the whole lot of us standing . . . House break-ins! Petty theft! Arson! Demanding money with menaces! A.B.H.! G.B.H.! He’d have the lot, anyway. If they bent over, he nicked their piss-pots.

  I get the third degree every evening, a right going over from the old girl and my brother. Cross questioning me, every word I utter was twisted and reinvented — I couldn’t say meow without them drawing the wildest conclusions. They had me guilty of every crime in the book, and not even allowed the right of silence.

  Apparently the house has been ransacked! Every last copper filched! They even had the cheek to check down the back of the settee! It seems that the whole of the old girl’s allowance has been spirited away, and my brother’s pocket money to boot!

  ‘It’s that crowd you hang about with, isn’t it? That bunch of hoodlums! That boy Crowsfeet, is that what he calls himself? Well, isn’t it? Steven! Answer me! He comes round here bold as brass! I caught him sitting on the gate yesterday afternoon . . . He said he wanted a cigarette! What do you think of that? Asking me to finance his habits! The gall of the boy! Well, it’s not the first time, far from it! It’s the fifth or sixth at least . . . We’ve lost money every month now, all last week’s house-keeping gone! And where to, you might ask? Scotch mist! Your father isn’t going to pay the bills . . . you can be sure of that much! He’s working all the hours God sends, as it is! I don’t know when we’ll see him next, let alone the next penny! You don’t think it could be your father, could it? He wouldn’t come here stealing, would he? He might, you know, as a last attempt to force us out?’

  She ponders on that one. I encourage her. I put forward even more outlandish theories and accusations. I bring plots and sub-plots into play. I implicate the Prime Minister himself; I throw in the Jews and the Freemasons for good measure. Obviously, it’s the old man up to his dirty tricks again! I back her up to the hilt - it’s our dear father trying one last ditch effort to starve us out of house and home. Of course, the old coot’s been staging the break-ins all along! I congratulate her on her shrewdness.

  The old coot staging break-ins? The old girl weighs the ifs and buts, she doesn’t reject the possibility out of hand, but then again, you couldn’t say that she exactly swallows it whole either. In fact, she all but accuses me of lying through my front teeth. She knows the type of company I’ve been keeping, the exact type of acquaintances and their addresses. I was helpless, a slave to everybody’s whims.

  Crowsfeet and his cronies come round the house,
chucking rocks at my window. They knock me out of bed, little stones, then bigger ones. In the end I have to get up, open the door and rub my eyes. They go through my pockets, nick my last few coppers and then send me packing . . . A kick and a harsh word, they send me sprawling.

  I had to suffer for all the injustices that had been perpetrated against them in the name of class and discipline. Crowsfeet shows me his leg, which has been gashed open by his old man. His father beat him round the legs with a wire brush for dawdling, for punching his little brother and for asking too many stupid questions! He shows me the bruises, I see them for myself. Great welts, a million pin pricks, blue with red polka dots . . . He cowers in front of his father, then beats me in revenge. He regurgitates all the bile, he’s learned it off pat. I was at the lowest end of the food chain . . . The only thing humbler was a slug.

  Every game we play ends in a punch-up. We scamper about barking like geese. He chases me round the fir tree. I get half way round then change direction and double back. I run into him full tilt: smack! In the bread basket. I put my head down and charge, I’m gurgling with glee, I see nothing, then, Oof! I ground him, he’s on his back, winded, clutching his guts. He goes bug-eyed and wheezes.

  ‘Does anybody want to see a fight?’

  He gets to his feet and calls all his mates together. ‘Who wants to see a fight?’

  He stands with his hands on his knees, he gets his wind back then moves in, he challenges me.

  ‘Who wants to see someone get their head kicked in? Come on, put your hands up! Take your punishment like a man!’

  Fight? Me fight? All I’ve ever done is been beaten by my friends. No, fighting’s out of the question. Fisticuffs? No, it couldn’t be, you see I was already a trained victim, no delusions of grandeur whatsoever. Only a bittersweet contentment in my own misery. No self-respect — content to blubber, whinge and whine myself into my own grave, if necessary . . . A whipping post, with the effrontery to yelp and complain, that’s me.

  The punch, it whistles, it revolves, it comes out of the darkness, continuously . . . I go down, but not hit, I drop to my wretched knees and beg for forgiveness, I sob. Dignity? I have none! I drop and crawl round on all fours at the feet of my bully. I implore him, worshipfully.

  Forgiveness? Sorry son, in this world there is no forgiveness, only retribution for sins unknown. God looks down upon my sorry little head and doesn’t even manage a half smirk. I crawl round in the dust and disgust myself.

  I scrape right up next to his feet, amongst the little circle of my playmates. I sob so deep and hard that it burns. I wring my eyes out.. . but no matter how long I stay down there, no matter how hard and deep I grovel, no matter to what depths I sink, one day sooner or later I will have to drag myself up onto my knees and take it on the chin.

  I even offered him my bottle of pop! Everything I owned and money too . . . Silver! Heavy! Round! A half crown! With Elizabeth on it . . . revolving . . . money, the pig! Elizabeth, the bitch! Coin of the realm? Worthless! Grief and misery is the only real currency, the only thing of any real weight in this world.

  You sink and you stink? Bravo! It’s your final excuse to indulge yourself, your big chance to see how utterly wretched and abominable you truly are. Drenched in shit and self-pity, and a little warm feeling . . . that special tingling of self-satisfaction, that you have finally debased yourself to the limit, that you have plumbed to the very bowels of self-degradation.

  Ten, eleven years old, shamelessly boo-hooing at the feet of my bully, imploring him. Too dumb and timid, too obliterated by the insidious viciousness of my family to stand up and fight like a man. That’s what he said to me, my so-called friend, my very own bully. He barks it, jams open his dirty cake hole and stares upwards into the back of his skull.

  ‘Get up and take your punishment like a man!’

  He screams it at me, and I lay there at his feet, the little circle of incredulous playmates, gathered, appalled at my humility . . . sickened to the core . . .

  ‘Get up and take your punishment like a man!’

  And I groan and I gurgle in the mud, rolling in the dust at his feet.

  ‘Get up and take your punishment like a man!’

  That’s the story of my life. ‘Stand up and take your punishment like a man! On the chin sucker! Out your bed, you’re next!’ And I creep to the door bollock naked, queuing up for my personal dose of misery.

  And I hold out my hands and accept it, because deep down in my inadequate little heart I believe that I deserve it, I believe in its inevitability, so that I can exist.

  When all the supermarkets finally shut up shop and all the parties are over . . . When the million and one distractions of man have been used up, rinsed out and washed clean away, we will be left with nothing but Him — our dark little friend, and we’ll embrace Him and take Him home with us . . . our personal little dose of poison, and we will nurture Him close to our bosoms, with some kind of half-arsed pride, yes, some kind of glowing half-arsed pride.

  23. THE WLA

  I starve myself so as to remember. Never to be a slug, that’s my ambition. Never to be a glutton of the fat. To live with a little hunger, a feeling, always hollow in my belly. Never to become one of them, absolutely never to become a grown-up.

  The woods, our woods . . . They moved in and flattened the lot! Crushed to the ground! Without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Age old and noble. There’s no doubt that those woods belonged to us kids, us kids, the dickie-birds and the occasional adder. One day rabbits, spiders and birds, the next: bulldozers!

  People are always claiming their special prerogative to exploit and demean. They shake your hand then give you a sly one round the back, a kidney punch. People have no rights and kids have less than none. They knocked down our world with no warning, with no consultation. Their only emotion: contempt! An atrocity that should never be forgotten. I write it down, here for all to see, to be documented for future generations. The holocaust against our friends the trees, the grasses, the flowers and all their myriad of friends and relations, four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, and wings of the sky. I swear to Christ, it makes me see red, even after all these softening years . . .

  Us kids looked upon the destruction of our habitat and we saw that it was bad. We made effigies of their potato heads and dug their eyes out. The faceless men with tape-measures, they march like idiots, dealing in land, dividing it into plots and squares . . . Unasked for, and all-powerful! Unseeing of the field mice, not knowing of the jay, blind to the bluebell. They brought in their bulldozers, hideous hues of yellow, cranking their way through the trees. A man shouts, he waves his arms, they gun the motor and smash into everything, churning the forest floor into shit.

  We blacken our faces with charcoal and make midnight sorties. We go on all fours. Any plot they stake out, we rip it up. We re-design their buildings for them, subtly, vandalism of the heart. We replant their stakes two or three feet out, saving the odd bush, a silver birch. Kicking over all the freshly cemented walls. Filling the mixers with concrete to set solid overnight. Sugaring the bulldozers’ petrol tanks. Painting out all the windows. ‘W.L.A.’ we write it on all of the trucks, in olive green, in three foot high letters, dripping enamel.

  The Walderslade Liberation Army. It was Goldfish’s idea — he was the oldest, and he showed us how to make guns, not toys, but real guns, out of old metal pipes.

  I met him in the science lab, swiping a bottle of nitric acid, right in front of Dog-Jaw’s eyes. A real smooth operator, old Goldfish, on the best of terms with the lab technician. Nothing brash or showy, he didn’t go seeking unasked-for attentions, he wasn’t the type. Calculating, that was Goldfish; he played the swot, his fishies blinking, half under the lids, and of course, his nose dripping, the centre of activity. Then: whoops! The vanishing of the bottle. The nitric acid? It’s gone walkies, my friends! One minute it’s sitting on the desk in front of you, the next, presto! Abracadabra! I look again, no sign whatsoever, just thin air.


  ‘All we need now is glycerine.’ He blinks.

  What’s this oaf on, him with his glycerine? I nod. ‘Yeah, glycerine.’

  I’ve agreed with him, he likes that . . . He’s ecstatic, over the moon! He blows bubbles, two big green ones, one out of each nostril. . . a little lava flow, they follow the line of his lip, then he sucks them back up again, a kind of see-saw effect.

  That was his big problem: snot. Oozing from his neb, a regular waterfall of bogeys, truly out of control. He sucks back on it, but no matter how many snot rags his old girl stuffed in his pockets, they were always soaked through by dinner time.

  ‘Black powder!’ He explains. ‘Weed-killer!’

  Oh, I see, I get his drift now, now I follow him.

  ‘Nitro!’

  Everything’s falling into place.

  ‘Black powder and, of course, the weed-killer!’

  That explains it. I don’t let anything show on my face. He tries to read my mask, no dice, I just nod. ‘Yeah . . . sure . . . weed-killer . . .’

  I’m stringing him along, playing him at his own game, I keep my hand close to my chest. ‘And black powder . . . hmmm . . .’

  He paces up and down, crashing into things. That’s how he thinks. Size twelves I’d say, at least, maybe even thirteens. He flaps them around like ironing boards. The whole effect set off by his ankle stranglers, his trousers bound to his calves like bandages, cutting off the circulation. He drools at the nose and mouth, staggering around like some kind of hideous fawn.

  ‘We need guns and we need politics! The politics of our situation!’

  He certainly had some brains on him, that Goldfish. Politics? Politics? That’s a pretty big word to start chucking round the classroom. I can see that he’s no ordinary fish, this one, not by a long chalk. ‘Politics’ he said, I just heard him. ‘The politics of our situation!’ That was his phrase. Hey, that’s not bad, that makes me look at him afresh. Prancing around in front of me, leaping from toe to toe . . .