by Peter Wild
Eventually, Derek pushes his bowl away from him and stretches. He looks out of the kitchen window at the brambles waving in the front window. It is grey outside, rain tapping the window and falling in dotted diagonals. Garry stares at the patterns the drops make. He wonders about Morse code. Dots and dashes. Wonders whether there is writing on the window, a secret message, a joke from the world to him.
‘I reckon I’ll start on those brambles this afternoon,’ Derek says, ‘I brought my clippers with me.’
Christine murmurs and spreads her fingers over his shoulders, takes his bowl away.
‘You going to come out and give me a hand?’ he says to Garry.
‘No,’ Garry says, ‘I’ve got something in my room I’m working on. Homework. I’ve got something for a project.’
‘Schoolwork, eh?’ Derek says, and laughs. Perhaps he is making fun because Christine introduced Garry to Derek as ‘the brainbox’. Perhaps he is laughing because he doesn’t think Garry is going up to do schoolwork at all, but to open his flies and look at magazines and play with himself.
Garry looks at Christine’s back: she is standing at the sink, blocking the view from the window. He can hear her hands dipping in and out of the water. The pattern on her dress hurts his eyes.
‘Leave him, Derek,’ Christine says, turning to touch his shoulder again, ‘he’ll be all right upstairs.’
‘Head in a book,’ Derek says, and mutters something about fresh air.
‘He’ll open the window a crack, won’t you, love?’
‘I’ll open it,’ Garry says, but Christine is giggling because Derek has reached up and grabbed her. His fingers sink into the softness under her ribs and above her hips.
‘Derek!’ Christine says, and squirms into him. Her wide forearms shake as she laughs, and Derek puts his head forward. The movement reminds Garry of a tortoise’s turd-coloured head coming out of its shell. He bites her arm gently and she laughs again.
Garry goes upstairs.
In his room, Garry lines the matchsticks up carefully on his desk. He spreads glue on to one side of each matchstick with another matchstick. He sticks the matchsticks together to make a wall. He uses Christine’s travel hairdryer with a folding handle to dry the glue. He likes the order of this. He likes the way the thing builds gradually: a lampshade, a model guitar, a ship, a house–whatever it will be, it always starts the same, one match against another and the sharp fishy smell of the glue prickling the pink rims of his eyes.
He’s making a box now. The book says it’s for jewellery, but Garry is making it for himself. A herringbone box with a lid hinged with brown string: something to keep his Stanley knife, spare blades, squares of sandpaper, tubes of glue. It’s a hobby box.
Brainbox, Garry thinks, my son the brainbox, and doesn’t laugh.
Derek comes to stay three or four times a week. Garry isn’t sure whether it is worse that he is supposed to call him ‘uncle’, or that he’s not supposed to notice that his mother lets her ‘brother’ bump her in the night.
Once, Derek came to pick up Garry from school. Garry saw his white Ford parked across from the gates, Derek’s bare arm hanging out of the window, his hairy hand slapping the roof of the car in time to music. Garry had turned and walked quickly in the other direction. Smack into those three girls, who had laughed, and poked his shoulders.
‘Where you going, Garry?’
They always said his name like that. Sarcastic, as if there was something wrong with it. He’d shaken his head and wondered whether ‘Garry’ meant something obscene in a foreign language. One those girls had been learning because they were in Set One for everything, and one whose existence was a secret from him because he was in Set Three for everything. Brainbox. He turned quickly, and brushed the tall one with the back of his wrist as he moved.
‘Ugh!’ she said, delighted. The other two cackled–the darker-haired one a beat slower, and less loudly than the others.
‘Ugh!’ she said. ‘Garry just touched my tit! My tit!’
More laughter. Garry felt his face, his neck, even the parts of his head that were under his hair, turning red. He saw Derek leaning out of the car. Saw he had no shirt on.
‘Did you want to see her tits, Garry? Check if they’re as big as your mum’s?’ the tall one said.
‘No,’ Garry said.
‘Not feel them?’
Garry shook his head again.
‘So you wanted to suck on them? Like you do with your mummy?’
The one with the dark hair laughed, and put her thumb in her mouth. She put her head on one side and giggled around her thumb. Garry saw her tongue touch her thumbnail as she spoke.
‘Your mum’s a right fat get, isn’t she, Garry?’
They shouted something else but Garry was running, his backpack banging against his side. Derek was unfastening his seat belt and staring. The girls were walking more quickly, catching up with some fifth-years, telling them that Garry had just marched up to them and grabbed their tits, told them he wanted to check whether they were like his mum’s.
Garry reached the car, got in, fastened his seat belt.
‘What was all that about?’ Derek said. No hurry to drive away. He turned in his seat, put a puzzled and concerned expression on his face.
‘Just a game,’ Garry said, and, ‘let’s go.’
‘Shall I have a word? They’re big lads. Maybe need someone bigger to tell them what’s what?’
Lads? Garry looked out of the window and saw the three girls with the fifth-year boys. The boys were huge. Dark hair on their top lips and real smells after PE.
‘It’s nothing,’ Garry said. ‘They’re mates of mine.’
Mates was a good word. Derek laughed suddenly.
‘Horseplay,’ he said, ‘best days of your life,’ and started the car. They drove home and Garry remembered hearing Derek’s voice on the landing in the middle of the night, consonants softened by Carling, whispering to Christine and saying ‘fun bags’ in the dark.
He pressed the tips of his fingers against the window until they turned white, looked at them, then did it again.
There are noises on the landing. Bumping noises, and giggling. A door opens and closes. It’s three in the afternoon, but Garry hears the bed creak and Christine’s special drawer slide open, and he wants to throw himself through the window. He bends over his matchsticks and thinks about Silverkin hairspray.
It comes in a gold can. There’s a picture of a woman with big swaying hair on the side of it. Garry leaves his matchsticks, goes to his own drawer. Takes out the can. It feels cool and light in his hands. It took him weeks of furtive trips to the chemist’s to find the right brand. He shakes it, pops the cap and sprays it on to a pair of briefs. They’re not boxers: they’re blue Danger Mouse briefs he’s never worn, but he closes his eyes and inhales Silverkin and thinks about those three girls.
His head tips and he thinks about that girl, the one with the darker, fuzzy hair. Garry lies on his bed and breathes in hard and looks at the skin on the back of her knee. It’s just a slice of skin: a rectangle between the top of her sock and the hem of her skirt. It’s ordinary. It’s white and shot with blue veins that wander like slug trails. Garry wants to touch the back of that knee more than anything else in the world. It is white and blue and it smells like Silverkin Mega Firm.
Derek doesn’t come again until Friday. Christine is sulky and tells him he needn’t bother expecting his tea making because she hasn’t got anything in. Derek stays on the path, kicking the dead ends of the brambles into the lawn. One of the prickly stalks catches on his jeans and he swears and kicks it away.
‘For God’s sake,’ Christine says, ‘it isn’t a snake. It’s a twig.’
Eventually, Christine lets him in and they stand in the kitchen. Garry watches him, and Derek doesn’t look. He knows he makes the uncles feel guilty, even if he doesn’t talk to them.
‘Did you stop by the offy on your way?’ Christine asks, hopefully.
Her
face is as pale and transparent as a shell. Something brittle and translucent–a vase in a posh shop. There are signs: you break it, you pay for it.
Derek doesn’t say anything and Garry goes upstairs. He sits at his desk and cuts string for the lid of the brainbox and doesn’t listen. An hour, maybe two, and the front door bangs closed. It always happens like this. They go, after a while. Mostly, they leave their presents behind them. Derek promised a drive of the white Ford on the beach at Southport, but it had never materialised.
After a while, Garry puts the glue away and goes down into the kitchen. His mother is sitting at the table, pushing her finger through a pile of spilt sugar.
‘Well, that’s that done with,’ she says, and sighs deeply. ‘Derek won’t be coming round any more.’
Garry doesn’t say anything. Christine draws a circle in the sugar, licks her finger and begins to push the grains into a pile.
‘Don’t be upset, love. It’s for the best.’
‘I’m not upset,’ Garry says. He opens the fridge, checks there’s milk, puts the kettle on to make her some coffee. There are dirty plates in the sink; clumps of scrambled egg and smears of brown sauce still clinging to them. He turns the tap on and washes them while he’s waiting for the kettle to click. He ignores Christine: sees her shoulders shaking and her head go down. He can hear her tears hit the table. He touches her arm and slides the mug over to her.
‘Silly, me going on like this.’ She sniffs, rubs at her eyes, inspects the mascara on her fingers. ‘He was no good anyway.’
‘No,’ Garry says. She starts playing with the sugar again. Garry wants to get the cloth and wipe it away. He can hear the grains scratching over the table, can see the way it is clinging to her fingernails.
She sighs again. ‘I don’t feel like cooking tonight. I think we need a treat. What do you think? A fish supper? Do you fancy that? Or a pie? A battered sausage?’
Garry thinks of the fat, of the cholesterol that is even now swimming around inside his mother’s veins. He thinks of it like little bombs, tiny yellow mines heading towards her heart and brain.
‘I can cook,’ Garry says, ‘I’m getting good at it. I learned quiche at school. Have we any eggs left?’
‘Oh no,’ Christine says, ‘I can’t be bothered with all that. Let’s have something nice.’ Her handbag is hanging off the back of the chair and Garry stands while she looks for the money.
‘Come straight back afterwards,’ she says, when he is standing at the back door. ‘There’s a film starting at seven. We can watch it together, can’t we?’
Garry nods, and goes out without putting his coat on.
There is a bus shelter outside the chip shop. It’s painted green–the same dark, dirty green as the doors in the toilets at school. Those three girls are there. He knew they would be. He walks past quickly, rubbing his fingers together in his pockets. He’s been at his matches again and the brainbox is nearly finished. The glue peels away from his skin, forms little balls. He pulls a hand out of his pocket and inspects them. Tiny grey balls, like pieces of snot. He rubs his hands together and goes inside the shop.
It stinks of grease and vinegar, and there is a queue. He takes his place at the back of it. There are glass cabinets along the counter–heated cases with lights inside, and a shiny metal trim. There’s battered cod and sausages, pies in silver cases, fragments of batter piled up like cornflakes. He looks at his reflection in the metal part of the cabinet. He looks at the girls in the bus shelter.
The same three, and always together. Two of them blonde, and the other one, who isn’t as good as the others. Her hair is a fuzzy kind of brown, and her bag isn’t as good as her friends’. There’s something grubby about her school shirts. When they swish past him in the corridor, he can smell them. The other two smell like Daz and Body Shop Dewberry and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. The other one, the one that isn’t as good–she smells like damp towels and cigarettes and Silverkin. He stares at them in the metal. One of the blonde ones has got a yo-yo. They’re laughing.
When it’s his turn, Garry buys a pudding with chips, a polystyrene pot of gravy and a can of Coke. He opens the can of Coke–it’s warm and the lid tastes like vinegar and dust.
‘Are you going to come over here?’
Garry isn’t sure whether they mean it in a nice way, or not. He stops. The bag is warm against his leg. The dark one stares at him.
‘Come on, then,’ she says. She doesn’t shout, but Garry can hear her anyway–clear against the fizz of the traffic passing. He goes.
‘What’s in the bag?’
Garry shrugs. ‘Just tea.’
‘Give us a chip, will you? We’re starving.’
Garry thinks about telling them the chips are for his mum, but stops himself just in time and hands the bag over. The tall one tears open the paper and half the chips scatter over the pavement.
‘You going out tonight?’ the dark-haired one says. Garry looks at her feet and shakes his head. She’s got jeans on, but the back of her knee is still there, rubbing against the denim. He feels his trousers get tight and watches the bag of chips go from hand to hand between them.
‘Why don’t you come out with us?’
Garry thinks about Christine. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, making a puddle on the Formica. She’s resting her forehead on the back of her fat hands.
‘I can’t,’ he says. It wasn’t a serious offer anyway. Best to say no. Safest. The matchsticks are waiting at home. There’s enough Silverkin to get him to sleep.
‘He can’t,’ the tall one says in her sarcastic voice, ‘he’s got to get home to his mummy, hasn’t he?’
Their laughter sounds like lots of little pieces of metal falling.
‘He’s got to go and suck on her titties, haven’t you, Garry?’
‘Garry, Garry, are you listening?’ The dark-haired one leans forward. Her hair is curling over her forehead. The neck of her T-shirt gapes and he can see the dark place between her chest and the material.
‘Listen,’ she says, and Garry looks at her, lost in the whirl of a green eye.
‘What?’ he asks. ‘She’s not well. She’s expecting me. That’s her tea you’re eating, you know.’
The dark-haired one grabs the bag, throws it at Garry.
‘Have it, then,’ she says mildly.
The pudding explodes against his chest. The gravy soaks through his T-shirt instantly and he jumps back, and holds the fabric away from his skin. It’s burning hot.
‘Get on, then,’ she says, and laughs again, ‘home to your mother.’
The tall one kicks at the chips and lumps of pudding on the pavement. The pieces skid over the tarmac to the kerb.
‘Pick it up, then. Can’t have her starving to death, can we?’
Garry shakes the pudding off him as he runs home. I’ll burn this shirt, he thinks, and tell her the chippy was closed.
He goes into Christine’s bedroom. The curtains are drawn, but it is still light outside. The room is filled with sticky, grey sunshine, and Garry can see Christine lying on the bed, her fat white feet hanging over the side. Her toenails are painted pink. She’s wearing a dress, a big flowery dress made out of nylon. It’s shiny where it’s pulled tight over her breasts and belly: the buttons down the front are crooked.
All of her dresses are the same: wash-and-wear nylon from the market, dried quickly, no ironing. He looks at her face. All fat people, he realises, look the same. They have soft, piggy faces like babies. The fat under her skin has softly wiped away his mother’s features, and now she is sleeping her mouth is slack, her hair stuck damply to her forehead. If it wasn’t for the dress, the signature dress, and the signature stink in her room of feet and cigarettes and Carling, he thinks he wouldn’t recognise her.
Yes. Garry steps into the room quietly, dodging shoes and crumpled clothing and teacups on his journey to the sagging bed. If this woman, he looks at her again, this specimen, and wonders how many colours the nylon dresses come in, if this
woman was lying just like this, but in a park, or in a hospital, or in an entirely different dress, he wouldn’t think they belonged to each other at all.
Garry lifts up his Silverkin, strikes the match and points the jet at his mother. There’s a satisfying woosh, and the smell of burning hair. He feels the heat in his hands, sees the feet jerk and scrabble against the sheets, hears high-pitched noises coming out of her mouth.
She goes up like a Christmas pudding.
Paint a Vulgar Picture
Scarlett Thomas
Well, here’s a little number about fame and what it can do tp people–and even dogs. I’ve been haunted by this song ever since I first heard it in my dingy bedroom, but one line particularly resonates: ‘You could have said no if you’d wanted to.’ But sometimes, of course, you don’t, or you just can’t.
‘No, the story’s about the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan…’
I’m sitting on a red plastic chair in a stock cupboard signing copies of my novel. Outside, in the main area of the bookshop, some kid won’t stop howling. I can’t see the kid, or its mother. I can hear the howling, and also rain hitting the thin roof of the shop like bitten fingernails on a desk.
The mother says to the kid, ‘It’s a nice story.’ The kid still howls.
My name has come out wrong on seven of the ten books so far and I don’t know what to do about it. On the next one I draw a sad smiley (i.e. not smiling) and write the words ‘Help me!’ Will this make the book more valuable? Less valuable? I’ve done them all in fountain pen, anyway.
Is this important to me at all? It was before I did it.
There was a story going around about this famous writer who signed her books and then added ‘Buy Pete’s book instead’. Pete must have been dicking her at every literary festival they went to together. When I first heard that story I didn’t really know what to make of it but later I realised that when I saw the picture in my head of the author signing her books, it was me doing it, not her, and I was covered in silver tinsel. I haven’t been invited to any literary festivals. My boyfriend William has been to a couple in the last few years, and I’ve tagged along. We went to one where members of the public had to wear red badges and authors wore green badges and every time I tried to speak to anyone they’d look at my red badge, then look over my shoulder and then walk off. William’s last book only sold two thousand copies, and his publishers look like they’re going to drop him, so his agent has sent his new novel around to everyone else, but no one’s said anything yet. So no literary festivals for us. It’s OK, though, because we’re going on holiday next week and we’re going to have our own literary festival with our dog, Oedipus Rex.