My Fault

by Billy Childish

  ‘You know your trouble? You’re over-competitive! You want to learn to relax a bit . . . Learn something from the Buddha . . . You’re too competitive by far!’ He tut-tuts me.

  Obviously, I’m pushing my luck writing without his permission, lacking the correct qualifications — no wonder I get up his nose. If old bro’ had his way, he wouldn’t allow me to set pen to paper. He’s not impressed by the writings of a dullard, no way! He’s got opinions of his own, and he’s read the books to prove it! Acres of them, whole bookshelves.

  I put my little notebook away, shamed . . . I tell you now, the official censor is defunct. The slate’s already been wiped clean, in the high chairs and the nurseries, in the schools and the playgrounds. Family and friends have been keeping each other’s traps buttoned for centuries, for whole epochs! A few low-down lies, whisperings mostly, but that’s about it. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters have been tying each other up with their extravagant shows of love, loyalty and their final demands for silence and respect.

  I pull faces, chewing on my pencil, I follow it around my mouth with my tongue.

  I know I should quit this here and now, but in truth I’ve swallowed just about all the half-truths and spite that I can stomach. Just let me hear one more piece of cock-eyed bullshit from the likes of my brother, and I’ll be fit to puke the whole gut load of lies back up again, half-eaten and rancid, double fermented in its own juices. One last great gob of bile to drown the universe, a mouth-wash for all the arseholes of the world!

  ‘More tea?’

  I look up, my mother’s face.

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘No thanks, mum.’

  ‘You said you wanted one, I’ve just made it. I’ll pour you one, anyway, then you decide. Do you want a cup?’

  My brother nods, sieves his cup and passes it for a refill.

  ‘Have you seen the poems he writes, mother?’

  My mother’s eyes travel from Nick to me.

  ‘I know, it’s awful . . . You shouldn’t write things like that about your brother, Steven.’

  She hands me the cup, a little saucer, a spoon.

  ‘Thanks.’ I sip at it — tea is life.

  ‘The social security will be after him if he keeps writing stuff like that. They’ll see it, see your name, then they’ll be on to you . . . They’ll stop his money!’

  The old girl comes back in from the kitchen, clasping her tea-pot.

  ‘Have you seen my cats? Nig-nig, the black one?’

  ‘It’s sitting there.’ I point to it, fat, licking itself.

  ‘Oh, there you are, girlie. I’ve got some creams for you dens.’

  ‘Don’t give it cream, mum, Christ, look at it, it’ll have a heart attack! There’s a poster at the vet’s, it says, “Don’t kill your cat with kindness!” ’

  She eyes me coldly, picks it up, the Nigs, and staggers with it to the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t listen to dem dens. No, you’re not fat, are you? No, you’re my girlie.’

  The door closes. He looks at me, the lines showing . . . He’s one of these bozos who talks about Hemingway as if somebody’s fondling his dick. Aggressive? Sure, he’s aggressive, but what really gets his goat is the idea of me sitting here painting and writing without the correct qualifications. I’m over-competitive, I can’t spell and I don’t know who Burgess is. And then I have the gall to even exist. The way he sees it, I’m cheating.

  He watches my pen move, I shield the page. He fiddles with himself. Something’s eating away at his miserable little bean, or why’s he bother showing up here, after all the fighting’s over? After his great absence so to speak: old Johnny come lately.

  He clears his throat and makes his forehead turn black. The big brother routine. I’ve heard it all before; I ignore him, I chew gum through his sermons. Apparently, I don’t know what ‘syntax’ is. He’s dead right, I shake my head . . . a lot of bollocks about adverbs and preverbs and things I’ve never even heard of.

  Just as I’m trying to get to grips with one set of laws, he invokes another, throwing names around like they were confetti. Talking of the great and famous as if they are his personal friends.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve read more books than you!’ he announces.

  I stare into his drinker’s pimple, centre stage, smack bang on the end of his neb. I concentrate on it. He’s watching to see the effect, making sure that his words of wisdom are sinking in. I don’t blame him, he can’t help himself. It’s a habit, it dates from when we were kids.

  ‘I’ll give you a tutorial of your work.’ He jumps up, claps his hands together and strides out of the room. He puts his head round the door . . .

  ‘Come along, if you want me to take a look at your new paintings . . . I’ll give you a tutorial.’

  I have to rise and follow him, to comply with his enthusiasms, with his judgements.

  He screws up his face and peers into the paintwork, he dissects the pictorial from the abstract, and back again.

  ‘I mean, just look at it, that’s how I sign my signature and you know it! And it isn’t even composition! That river, I mean, the sail, it blends in with the bank and halts the natural rhythm. The paint’s totally the wrong colour! It’s OK in its own right I suppose. . . I don’t mean I don’t like it personally, but the way it merges with the bank . . .’

  He shakes his head sorrowfully, raises his palms to the ceiling, shrugs his shoulders and droops his jowls.

  ‘What colour is that? No, don’t tell me . . . Indian red?’ He nods and agrees with himself. ‘Aha, hmmm . . . I thought as much, tried vermilion have you, with just a touch of burnt umber?’ He turns to me and wags his finger. ‘You should read the magazines, you know, wake up to what’s going on out there in the big wide world! You’re too . . . cynical! Don’t you read the magazines? Take a look, learn something . . . You can’t be the ignorant little provincial all of your life! Do yourself a favour and get out there, take a look around. Find out who’s buying and who’s selling, then market your goods. Hit the middle ground! You’re just too reactionary . . . I used to think like you but I’ve learned. I’ve seen it, I’ve been there, I’ve done it! Don’t forget, I’m four years older than you and four years wiser! You’ve got to learn to take advice! Don’t look at me like that. . . OK, that’s it! Mother, see? He isn’t even prepared to listen!’

  My mother’s in full agreement. ‘Don’t tell me! you’re wasting your breath, he’s just like his soddin’ father.’

  We’re onto that one again, the great list of my similarities to our dreaded father. We’re both thin and I even look a bit like him.

  ‘He’s got the same hands!’ My brother explodes. That’s enough for them; in their eyes I’m guilty.

  And my humble portraits? My attempts to communicate an emotion sincerely felt? — I’m pissing in the wind! What my talking in paint fails to do, is satisfy his hard learned intellectualism. Expression of the soul, rather than the rubbing-selling variety. My doodles of the heart leave him stony cold, the same goes for Picasso, until he reads the autograph. The connoisseurs of the blue period? Autograph-hunters more like! Naturally, I keep my opinions to myself, I button my lip and chew my tongue.

  ‘Obviously, there is a difference between being true to your art and outright commercialism, and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, if you’d only take the time to just listen! That special niche is the middle ground where all true art lies. Everybody’s at it, for Christ’s sake! Rembrandt, Picasso every last one of them, businessmen first, artists second!’

  I can hardly believe it! At last he’s got there, finally! I check my ears. For once he’s playing my tune. I agree with him wholeheartedly, I fan myself, phew!

  ‘It’s pointless talking to you, you just won’t listen! You’re arrogant! You won’t take any criticism!’

  He peeps out of his skull.

  Sure as shit, he’s got the whole world sewn up! He’s worldly wise, he exudes confidence, apart from one or two deep rooted anxieties, so
me of his lesser known trepidations.

  ‘My ambition,’ he states, ‘is to have a one man show at the Tate Gallery.’

  He’s off again. I try and suppress a yawn, I pull a half smile, I nod encouragingly. He believes he’s immortal, he knows he’s right and he knows he’ll live to be a hundred and fifty . . . a thousand maybe . . . sure as shit!

  ‘You always have to be right, don’t you? You’re so bloody righteous!’ He goes cross-eyed, throwing his weight about. I’m used to it, I’m the kid brother. I’ve told you all about it. It’s his ritual, it helps him to get a stiffy. I repeat myself? Well, I’ll say it again, twenty, thirty times, but it doesn’t do me any good. The majority agree, and I’m in a minority of one — I eat humble pie.

  He digs his fingers in, and changes tack mid-stream. He butters his words, his tongue’s so thick he can hardly get his mouth round them.

  ‘Look kid, this is our house, alright! It’s as much mine as yours! Christ, you’re just like the old man! I come back here, and the atmosphere’s exactly the same, apart from it’s you laying the law down! When are you going to grow up, get out there and see the big wide world? You can’t carry on living with mummy for ever!’

  He glares at me, leans in, hushed and conspiratorial. . . ‘Look, one day all this is going to be ours. You understand me? You and me, fifty-fifty! Our investment for the future!’ He looks over his shoulder, lifts his podgy mitt, and encompasses the whole house. ‘When all this is ours,’ he arches them again, ‘we can sell up and get our own places . . . Think of it, something in town, London . . . the centre . . . At heart, I’ve always thought of myself as a Londoner, as being “of” the city.’

  So that’s his racket, that’s what’s lying at the bottom of his unexpected visit. I should have cottoned on to that one earlier. Him playing the big ‘I am’, with all his brotherly advice, and all the time he’s been counting the family silver. So, that’s what brought this hyena running. Well well, playing the doting son, whilst all the time he’s fishing for sovereigns. Of course, I say nothing. I keep my trap shut. I realise that being the young brother I’m not supposed to have too many opinions of my own.

  Painting pictures? Writing things down? ‘You’re getting a little too big for your britches, sonny Jim! You’d better save it for the birds, you low down Communist!’ Oh, he’s a political genius as well, didn’t I tell you? He presides and lectures, he sits back. He elaborates and paints the air. His bumptiousness knows no bounds. When it comes to vanity, the bastard’s insatiable. The king of the boloney! He sucks and blows, he dives in and doesn’t come up for air, as gluttonous as sixteen piglets and as preening as a cage full of cockatoos. And you can’t back-chat him either, no sir! Not on your life!

  He expands and he encompasses. He reiterates and contradicts. He calls Buddha and Thatcher to witness. He’s acquainted with the whole horror show. And all along I nod and I agree. Yes me, the one person who disagrees with everything. He’s got me beat. I give him the benefit of the doubt, the big lug. So he gave me a rough time as a kid? Well, so what? He’ll get his come-uppance.

  He ruffles his feathers and gobbles like a turkey. He gives me his superior little smile, the one I keep going on about. It creeps in from round the edges, the fat pinches together.

  ‘I think,’ he says, ‘I think that I know more than you.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I reply.

  59. OUR HEARTS FROZEN

  It’s the memories that come for you in the night, that keep you nailed to the past. Trembling, shit-smeared and child-like. It’s those dark moments of the soul that must be relived and faced like assassins. Each sickening echo grasped and denuded before it becomes yet another missed opportunity, before it’s too late.

  I’m six years old sat playing on the floor in the front room and my mother’s lying upstairs ill in bed. My father tells me that on no account am I to disturb her. He fidgets his fingers in his eye sockets. I’m told to shush! I know that one, ‘Your opinions? Stow ’em, kid!’

  ‘Goodnight.’ And I kind of blow a kiss, clumsy, in the dark. ‘Goodnight, mum.’ I sneak upstairs in spite of them. Who are they to tell a young kid when and where he can kiss his own mother goodnight? I sneak up there, regardless, and whisper my good-nights. I push the door to and say it to the night. I hear her stir, at the dark end, beneath the black headboard, muttering in her sleep. I guess I’ve woken her. I close the door and get out of there double quick. I’ve said what I came to say, now I exit. I skip back downstairs, with stealth, trying to whistle to myself, nonchalant.

  Nichollas looks up at me with the eye of suspicion . . . I stare into the carpet looking for my soldier, the one with the bayonet . . . Then there’s a thud from upstairs and the door goes. The old man stares through the ceiling, pulls at his beard and spits. We hear her on the landing, each step. And then she comes through the room like a ghost-walker and hits the bottle.

  She walks into the room, grey-faced, and heads straight for the whisky cabinet. She looks neither right nor left, and my brother and father stare at me. I find my soldier, he’s got a rifle and a bayonet . . . She fills her glass and will talk to no one. He’s got shorts on and he’s charging in the carpet.

  The old man tells me to clean my teeth and tidy all my rubbish away . . . He marches into the toilet and flashes his dick at the pan.

  ‘Come along, you boys, bed, bed, bed! Chop-chop!’

  I cling to my covers, my little heart bruised in its chest. We can still hear her on the stairs, raised voices, the neck of the bottle hits the glass. She glugs it out, swills it back and takes a refill . . .

  Her comings and goings into the night. And then there’s a thud and a cry . . . something on the stairs . . . the sound of a body falling.

  Me and my brother jump up and run to our bedroom door. He shoves me, so’s I can’t see, an elbow in the face. He opens it slowly and we peek out . . . They’re both there, naked under the little red lamp shades. Him pulling at her, dragging her backwards up the stairs.

  We blink through the murder, we see bodies and hell. There’s his cock and his beard with teeth. He tries to shoulder her weight, he staggers . . . She looks dead, our mother with her tits and arse, and him with that thing between his legs, red-faced and heaving

  Then he turns on us and we shrivel.

  ‘Get back to bed, the pair of you! Before I bang your bloody heads together! Now, this instant!’

  We stand caught in that doorway, our hearts frozen, and we are still there. Caught in time, unable to step into our lives. Then the second clicks and we scamper to our beds and duck back under the covers.

  It was my fault. I bite the sheets; I make them into fists. It was me! And the night light burns deathly red, and we hear the muffled voices, and strange thuds . . . And our necks are cranked off the pillows and we don’t breathe ’til the very end of night, when there’s a long, drawn-out scream, wringed from my mother’s throat.

  60. ROSY

  ‘You saved my life.’

  And I called her Rosy. I thought she said her name was Rosy. I’d been drinking and I misheard. It was Dolli, not Rosy; now I remember, then I didn’t. And then she tried to hide under the table from me, that was funny. And I sat at her knees staring up into her gob of metal and said, ‘You saved my life tonight.’ And it was true, I swear to God it was true. I wasn’t kidding about, not trying to put one over on her . . . And the fog, like an animal at the door, right across the back of Chatham . . . rolling in off the Medway. ‘What’s all that metal in your mouth?’

  She shows me, she flicks it out with her tongue, thumb and forefinger. It’s her plate, three or four teeth attached. She pops it back in, readjusts it, pulls a face, wriggles her jaw. Me still at her knees.

  For pity’s sake, memories are the worst, the pits. To forget is to give it all up, to remember is to die and to suffer. I sup my beer; it’s hard for a soul in this world, but for a sentimental soul it is hell. I down the dark stuff and order some poison, for my sad heart, golden, enchantin
g. The optic fills, and I tip it back. I like to watch the way he fills it, four little glugs, and he passes it to me and I tip it back. Hardly a measure at all.

  ‘I’ll have a double,’ I tell him, and there it goes again. He catches the last drip then places it to the bar and I down it. It kicks in when it hits the bottom. That’s how I know my stomach’s fucked. I order the same again and smile through the tears . . .

  No one’s in tonight, just the fruit machine gibbering away to itself . . . and all these pretty jugs and tankards hanging from the ceiling . . . each on its own little brass hook. I lean back on my heels and hold onto the bar. I count them like gold, near on a hundred I shouldn’t wonder, more like a hundred and fifty. From all round the world, the beer kellers of Munich, the watering holes of Denmark, all over . . . Intricate designs, each with their specific characters. There’s fifty-two, up until the second lamp, at least fifty . . . and there’s four lamps in all . . . I pull out my notebook and lick my pencil:

  ‘The George Vaults, Rochester High Street, 2nd September 1983. Being a list and summery of all mugs, jugs and tankards held therein, for the reference and betterance of future generations to come. Item:’

  I spend a lot of time staring into the mug with the four leaf clover drawn on it. That’s Ireland, that is . . . and this is an Irish pub. She is number fifty-five or fifty-six, that little teacup.

  I order another measure of gut rot and take a note of all the brands of whiskys held behind the bar, and how many packets of salted nuts are missing from the card. I fill in four whole pages before I down my drink and leave.

  I cross by the White Heart and go up past the George Inn and that’s when it hits me — you’re never far from the river in this town. Like an animal it keeps itself hidden, but it’s always there, with its special stink, at the end of summer.

  The grey-black waters, hints of gold, the shimmerings of the night . . . The street lamps flaring up over Strood, spreading like a piss stain in the rain — the torches of man. The towns and the suburbs beyond, one giant co-operative of the disenchanted. A billion fractured, sorry souls and each locked into each other’s existences, man to woman, woman to man, poor to rich and all to blind power. By hook or by crook, we’ve all of us been caught. Oh yes, we create our own merry little hell and everybody’s implicated, the devil and his wife included.