I wasn’t at all surprised to see Trotsky John was there. I was sitting on the sofa talking to Mummy when he came in and said ‘Hi there, Ben,’ and ruffled my hair which I completely hate. Mummy didn’t say anything about it of course, because she knows I don’t like him.
I never found out how many people were there because some of them were just staying in their rooms. Sometimes I heard the floorboards creaking, records playing, and the odd bit of coughing. Nobody spoke to me. Not even Mummy, really. Not properly. I sat trying to read my book in the sitting room with Mummy and Trotsky John and a lady with short blonde-hair and bony fingers with rings on who kept sniffing and wiping her nose on her sleeve. A man who was her boyfriend, with a droopy moustache and curly hair nearly as long as Mummy’s, was rolling up big white cigarettes on the cover of a Led Zeppelin LP. He was passing them round the room and everyone was having a go of it. When the blonde-haired lady pretended to pass one to me everyone had a laugh about it. I didn’t smoke any of it, of course, because I’m far too young. Mummy wasn’t smoking the cigarettes, either. She was just having her wine which she kept going to the kitchen for, though she never got so terribly wobbly with it like I’ve seen her sometimes; she was just a bit not alright all the time, in fact.
The worst thing of all was that she just wasn’t really talking to me. That was the very reason I’d come to see her, to talk to her all day long and have a lovely time with her.
In the evening, Trotsky John went out and came back with fish and chips for everyone. I went to the kitchen to see if I could make Mummy a cup of tea to have with it, although she’d said she didn’t want one. ‘I’ll stick to my wine, Only One, thank you.’ Anyway, there wasn’t any tea at all in the kitchen that I could find.
I didn’t like it there. Not one little bit. I think that everybody in that house just thought it was one big nuisance that I was there, so all I was doing in the end was sitting in the kitchen reading my book and wondering if the mouse would come back. Later on, when I was going back into the room where they all were, Trotsky John shouted at the lady with the blonde hair ‘Not in front of the nipper, Skegs,’ and she shouted back at him ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck’s he doing here anyway? This is no place for a kid,’ and then she was pushing something under the sofa so that I couldn’t see it.
When it was nighttime, I was awake way past my usual bedtime and actually beginning to fall asleep on the carpet. After a very, very long time of no one talking, they all got up and went out of the room. It must have been the middle of the night by that time. Then Mummy came back with a quilt and a pillow. She did kiss me goodnight though, and then I wrapped the quilt round myself and tried to fall asleep on the sofa, but something hard was poking through the cushions, and I was freezing cold although I had all my clothes on. I took all the cushions off the sofa and made a small bed in front of the fire that was just about going out, and then I found a newspaper that I scrunched up and put onto the last red bits of the coal to keep the warm going a bit longer. When the room was in complete blackness and cold, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t brushed my teeth, so I had to get up and feel for the light switch by the door so that I could look in the bag my dad had packed for me. I thought my toothbrush might be underneath my pajamas that I wasn’t wearing on account of perhaps someone coming in while I was undressing and it being too cold anyway. That’s when I discovered that he’d completely forgotten to put it in, and anyway, when I went in the dark to the bathroom up the stairs and past the landing, there was not so much as any toothpaste in there to put on my finger even, and just then I really, really wanted so much to go home and felt right on the edge of crying about it.
In the morning of the next day—which was actually New Year’s Eve—I asked Mummy if I could go out to the shops for a bar of chocolate. I went straight to a telephone box to phone up my dad. I prayed and prayed that he’d just this once pick up the phone and could hardly believe it when he did.
‘I just need to come home, Dad.’
‘Is everything alright?’
‘Yes, but I just need to come home. I think I really need to concentrate on a little bit more of my homework before next term, and I’ve forgotten to bring my books with me.’
‘Are you sure you’re…’
‘Please, Dad. Please, please. I need to come home. I really need to come home. Can you come and get me today…?’
Then I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen with my bag ready and my coat on, just looking along the hallway to where the front door was, trying to see through a broken bit of glass ready to catch sight of his brown coat when he got there.
It didn’t take him very long, actually. When I saw there was somebody outside, I rushed along the corridor and opened the door and threw my arms around him because it was so great that he’d arrived at last. After just the littlest bit of time when he wasn’t sure what to do about it, he put his arms around me, and pulled me to him really tight and put his cheek by my ear.
‘It’s alright, Ben. Everything’s going to be alright. We’re going home. We’re going home…’ That’s what he kept on saying while he was stroking my hair.
Mummy stood at the doorway as we were driving away with Trotsky John behind her in the gloominess of that horrid house. I can’t remember for absolute sure, but I don’t think I said goodbye to her. I actually don’t think I ever did say goodbye to her.
Q
The taxi’ll be here any second now. I hope it’s not going to be late, but in fact we’ve still got plenty of time. I just wish Swedish Lena wasn’t coming with me. I’m better going on my own. My dad will be meeting me as usual under the clock at Waterloo, and that’s not necessary either, because I know how to go on the Bakerloo underground line. I know how to get all the way to the right platform at Paddington just as much as him, in fact, but he’s insisting on coming too.
It might be only me, Fisheye, and Giles Webster catching the train this term. Nick Gower’s going in his father’s Jaguar car, I think.
I don’t want to see Webster’s mum. I’m embarrassed about it, on account of her asking me to look after him and then me not being alright during the summer and forgetting all about him. Perhaps it’s best not to say the slightest thing about it if she’s there.
It might be Mr. Burston who’s coming to get us, or just as likely Miss Carson now that Miss Newman’s left.
It would have been Mr. England if he wasn’t dead. In the old days, it would have been him coming to see us back to school.
I dream about him. Sometimes just daydreaming while I’m looking out of the window at school when I should be concentrating on my work, or upstairs in my bedroom here at home lying on my bed, reading a book and suddenly not seeing the words anymore because he’s there instead. Very often, he’s in my actual dreams during the night, too. Mostly it’s the same story over and over again, the story of what really happened that we all now know about at school but have to pretend that we don’t.
The usual dream is of him in his Mini, which is a wrong thing, of course, because it had been completely ruined in the car crash with the-not-looking-properly lady. But that’s what I see, and it never changes. I haven’t told anyone about it in case they think I’m all upset still, and there’s just no point because I’m better now. I’m quite alright again. Mummy’s not here and neither is Mr. England, and we’ve all just got to get used to it.
In the dream, he drives over the Cotswold Hills, through Reading, passing by quite close to our house here, and then he gets to the City of London and goes past the banks which are all shut up with no one in the streets on account of it being the very middle of the night. Then he crosses Tower Bridge, drives along the river past the Cutty Sark, up the hill in Greenwich Park, and through the countryside of Kent. He clutches the steering wheel tightly with no expression on his face as he looks at the road in front of him. He gets to the Cathedral at Canterbury and then carries right on until he reaches wher
e he used to live as a little boy with his mum and dad before they sold their house there, right by the English Channel. He parks his car next to the pebbles on the beach, and while he sits there in the silence with the engine off, doing nothing at all but staring at the waves, he sees the light beginning to come up because it’s a new day.
He gets out of the car, locks the door very carefully, and goes onto the beach. Very slowly he takes all his clothes off apart from his underpants and folds everything ever so neatly before putting them in a pile on the pebbles with the car keys and his watch right on the very top. After that he climbs up to the top of the pebbles even though it hurts his feet, stops for a tiny bit, and breathes deeply, trying to be brave. Then he rushes forward just like those men you see pictures of in the First World War when they’re going over the top of the trenches, and he’s down the slope and splashing into the sea and just for a bit goes right under. When he comes up again, with his yellow hair flat against his head, he swims, and swims, and swims without ever stopping or looking back at the beach in case he suddenly loses his bravery. He keeps on going until his head is the tiniest white dot, far out to sea. And slowly by slowly, when he’s about halfway to France, never once thinking of coming back, he gets sleepier and sleepier and begins to sink down farther into the waves until at last, he disappears forever.
Q
I’ve still got the little prayer that he wrote down on the piece of paper for me. It’s folded up in the front of my Bible. I don’t have to look at it anymore because I know it off by heart now.
‘Remember not the sins and offences of my youth; but according to thy mercy, think thou upon me, Oh Lord, for thy forgiveness…’
I say it to him, out loud if I’m all alone and silently in my head if it’s in the middle of the night. I know it’s a prayer about forgiving people. But he doesn’t need forgiveness because he never ever did anything wrong, which I know for certain is the absolute truth. But he gave it to me, and I say it just for him. Wherever he is now, I hope he might be able to hear my voice in the far off distance.
VI.
Whitchurch School, September, 1973
‘Travels! Get your head down and do some work!’
Bloody Portman, throwing his weight around just because he’s been made prep prefect. It’s none of his business whether I’m working or looking out of the window, and it drives me nuts being called ‘Travels.’ I can’t stand it, but everyone’s picked it up now. It’s going to stick, I know it. A nickname always does if it’s been used for a whole term or more.
I sort of asked for it, though. It’s the stupidest thing ever. I’d be laughing about it too if it had happened to someone else, that’s for sure.
It all started because I’m so in love with my stamps. For the last one or two years I’ve been completely obsessed with them—even down to dreaming about them. Big ones, small ones, triangular ones, first day covers, Penny Blacks, British Guiana 1c magentas; last week, I had an incredibly real dream about finding a US Graf Zeppelin in a bag of assorted stamps from Woolworths that only cost 25p. Can you imagine?
If I close my eyes right now I can smell that stamp shop on The Strand in London—all the musty old catalogues, the stamp glue, and the owner’s cigars mixed up with his assistant’s awful BO. My most recent dream was just last night, in fact, about managing to get hold of a whole sheet of England Winners, unfranked, in totally mint condition from the World Cup Final in 1966 from someone who hadn’t a clue that he was selling something special. Bit of a laugh that I can’t bear football but would murder to get hold of those! I think stamp collecting’s absolutely the best hobby ever, but I suppose it’s really hard for most people to understand that. It’s probably something to do with the fact I like modern history so much. Perhaps it’s the other way round, though—if you get to know about a country’s stamps, you automatically know about its politics, and then it’s just like being hooked on The Archers or Coronation Street, because you just have to know what’s going to happen next. It was my stamps that got me so interested in what’s going on in the world. I suppose I’m a bit of a freak, really. I dream about stamps while everybody else in the dorm dreams about tits and fannies and listens to Jimmy Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie being Ziggy Stardust.
Anyway, this whole bloody nickname thing began last term when Sheldrake and Mossiman told me that a stamp dealing shop had opened up on the Monmouth Road, and I should get along there quick because there were a couple of absolute bargains going. That was silly enough by itself, because I’d never talked to those two about stamps before. I know perfectly well they’re not collectors, so I should have known straightaway that something was up, but I suppose I just got overexcited about it. I think they’d heard me saying to Hillman, who’s a collector from Dyfed House, that I was especially interested in stamps of the boy kings from the Balkans—King Michael of Romania, King Simeon of Bulgaria, and King Peter of Yugoslavia. Mossiman started by telling me all about this new place when we were going over to Friday breakfast, and once he could see I’d got really excited about it, he said, ‘Did I hear you saying something to Hillman about Michael of Ruritania?’
‘You mean Michael of Romania?’
‘Yea, that’s the one.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, they’ve got a whole lot of stamps of him.’
‘Really? Are you sure? They’re quite rare, you know.’
‘Yep. Seen them myself.’
So the next day, Saturday after games, I walked all along the Monmouth Road right into the country following exactly the directions Sheldrake had written down. Eventually I came to a track with a big sign saying ‘Malpas Farm’ and just by the side of it, right in the middle of the field, was this big hut which was what the piece of paper said was the stamp place. I went across the field, which was incredibly muddy and boggy and opened the door with a shove. Inside there was a terrific noise of saws cutting planks, with inches and inches of wood shavings on the floor and stuff. When the two men in there stopped the machines and took off their masks to see what I wanted, I asked in the silence, ‘Is this the stamp shop?’ and they looked at each other and then one of them said, ‘Piss off, you twat.’
Just as I got back to the gate, wondering about what had happened, bloody Mossiman and Sheldrake and Charlton jumped out from behind a hedge and started laughing so much they were actually bending over and holding their stomachs. Then all the way back to school they were hitting the back of my head and throwing my cap around, calling me names, and telling me that I’m the most gullible person in the school. That’s when the ‘Travels’ business started, right then, and they’ve told absolutely everybody. First it was ‘Gullible.’ That changed to ‘Gully’ quite quickly. Then it went to ‘Gulliver’ for a while, and now it’s ‘Travels’ because of Gulliver’s Travels. ‘Travels Teasdale.’ That’s my full blooming name now. Even some of the masters are saying it in class. I’ll just have to put up with it, I suppose. But really, how stupid could I get? A stamp shop in the middle of a field, for God’s sake…
But it’s the business of Mummy’s letters that’s really getting to me at the moment. I’m so worried about it I can hardly concentrate on breathing in and out, let alone doing the bloody homework we’ve been set for tomorrow, and there’s literally hours of work to do. I haven’t even started, and we’re already nearly halfway through prep. It’ll be cocoa break in a minute, and I’ve done sod all so far. Typical that the most difficult night of prep we’ve had for yonks is when I’m feeling this bad. I just can’t concentrate on anything; I’m daydreaming, looking out the window, thinking about my own stuff, worrying myself into a frenzy. Everyone else is hunched over their desks, writing away like mad, and I’m staring out of the window at the starlings clattering around in the trees getting ready to fly away for the winter. I haven’t got a hope in hell of finishing what’s been set. That’s a horrible vicious circle, because I can already feel mysel
f getting worried about time rushing by, let alone the panic about the letters. And still I’m not getting on with it.
Wittenberg. That’s the name of the place where Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the church. Wittenberg. But can I remember it—get it into my thick skull for the test tomorrow afternoon? No, however much I blooming-well try. So half an hour ago I took a break from the The Reformation text book to see if the French translation old Miller set us might come a bit easier. That’s for tomorrow morning, and I’m the sucker who’s meant to be reading it out in class. I’ve got to translate the first scene of the second act of Les Mains Sales by Sartre. It’s only two pages, but it starts with some chap called Ivan saying ‘Dis!’ That’s his first word! What the hell does ‘Dis’ mean? It’s not even in the dictionary for God’s sake… Actually, I think Miller’s losing it; I really do. I think it’s possible he’s set an ‘A’ level test for his ‘O’ level class. I bet Les Mains Sales is part of the ‘A’ level syllabus for this year, and the silly old bugger has got it all mixed up. It’s way beyond our level. We’ve just moved up from the fourth to the fifth form for God’s sake, and we’re only three weeks into the new year.
Nothing’s going to be alright until I solve the problem of the letters, but the plain fact is I can’t do anything about it until I go home at half term, and it’s not even certain that I can get there then. Pa hasn’t said yes to it yet, anyway. I’ve told him I want to go to a meeting in Red Lion Square about the coup in Chile, and it is true that I really need to be there, but the absolute priority is to put the letters back in the suitcase. The thing is, I don’t even know for sure there is a Chile meeting the weekend of half term, but that’s the excuse I’m going to use. He knows how passionate I am about what happened, so I really think he might let me go home if I tell him there’s some sort of meeting going on. He laughs at me a bit about my being so interested in all my political stuff, but he likes it really. He likes it that I know more about it than he does now, so he’ll probably say yes as long as he’s not doing one of his foreign trips that weekend. Please, God, he lets me go home and doesn’t do a search of the attic before I get there.
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