Eventually it started to get light out, and I looked across at the empty bed, where his pillows were standing to attention in that odd way that our Tommy liked to leave them. I heard Mam outside on the balcony, and then I listened to the noise of the key in the lock and the banging of her coming in and kicking off her shoes. I got out of bed and opened the bedroom door, and she looked at me as though it was somehow wrong of me to be seeing her like this. I just blurted it out, and she stood there for a minute, trying to take it in. Well, where is he then? She was asking me, as though I knew, but that was the whole point of telling her: I had no idea where he was. Wasn’t she supposed to be the mother? Get ready for school, she said, and then she went into her bedroom and closed in the door behind her.
When I came back that afternoon, Mam was sitting on the settee and two uniformed coppers were in the house. The woman one was sitting next to Mam and comforting her, and the bloke was standing up like he owned the place. Mam looked up at me and said that the bloke copper wanted to have a word, and then she started to cry again. The copper took me into the kitchen, and we sat at the table. He asked me if I was yearning for anything to eat, and I wanted to tell him that all we had was spaghetti hoops and toast, but I didn’t say anything, and I just shook my head. Then he started to ask me about Tommy’s friends, and if I’d noticed anything different about him in the past few days, and all sorts of stuff. No, I said. He seemed just the same, although he was a bit upset about having to play for Scott Hall Juniors, but who could blame him? I suppose he had kind of stopped talking, but I told the copper that this not talking lark went all the way back to Silverdale, where he’d had a particularly tough time. Did he make friends there? I shrugged my shoulders. How should I know, we were in different dormitories. But I didn’t say this. And these days, was he the kind of boy who liked to comb his hair differently once he’d left the flat? He got me with that one. Why would our Tommy want to do that? Then the woman copper came into the kitchen and said that I’d have to stay with social services for a day or two, as my mother had to go into hospital for a checkup. Then there was a knock on the front door, and the woman copper opened it and let in two ambulance men carrying a stretcher. She showed the pair of them into the living room, and then she closed in the door to the kitchen. I knew that Mam would be mad if I barged my way in to see what was going on, so I just kept sitting where I was, and I tried hard not to cry. I used my tongue to wet my lips and stared down at the chequerboard pattern on the lino. The bloke copper put his hand on my shoulder. You’d best go and pack a bag, he said. They’ll soon be here for you.
In the end it was a charmless, bearded man in a social services van who picked me up. The ambulance had long gone, and they’d waited until I was in my room before slipping Mam out of the front door, so I wouldn’t see her leaving. The woman copper went with her, and that left just me and the bloke copper waiting for social services. When the bearded man arrived and I stepped outside and looked over the balcony and saw “Social Services” scrawled in big letters on the side of his van, I was embarrassed, for I knew that everyone on the estate would know that I was going into care. I sat in the front of the van and didn’t even bother asking the man where he was taking me. When he pulled up outside of the big detached house on the corner of Manston Drive, I thought to myself: I pass this place every day on the bus, and I can see right into the garden from the top deck. It’s about halfway to town, so if I end up having to stay here, then my journey to school will take only fifteen minutes, plus the ten minutes walking through the market and the arcades. After he’d yanked up the hand brake, the social services man turned to face me and spoke for the first time. I’m not sure if this is an appropriate use of public resources, but it’s not up to me. But I can tell you, the Gilpins are a nice family, so do us all a favour and try to behave yourself. I didn’t say anything to him, but I’m sure he could tell what I was thinking by the way I was glowering at him. So he changed his tune. Well, come on then, let’s be having you. We don’t want to keep them waiting.
The Gilpins had two girls, Helen and Louise, who were a bit younger than me, and they both were kind of chunky and giggled too much for my liking. Their mother put on an educated voice and made some halfhearted effort to introduce me to her daughters, but I could see straight off that her whole life revolved around pleasing the two girls. Her husband, on the other hand, wanted to make friends, which was the wrong way to go about things. Maybe he’d been dying for a son or something, but I sensed that he was trying too hard. The social worker bloke said so long then, and shook hands with Mr. Gilpin, and then Mrs. Gilpin showed him to the door. The moron pretty much just dropped me off there like he was some kind of taxi driver and then he left, and that was it.
The two girls were going off to bed, so Mr. Gilpin took me into the kitchen and made us both a ham sandwich, and then he offered me a cup of stewed tea, which, after one sip, I had to leave as I knew I couldn’t stomach it. He asked me if I liked the Olympics, and I said I did. We took our sandwiches and sat in front of the telly on this really large, comfy settee, and we watched Kip Keino win the steeplechase. David Coleman was commentating and talking really fast, and I looked across at Mr. Gilpin, who kept nodding, and then smiling at me, and then looking back at the telly and nodding some more. I could tell that he also liked the Olympics, but I was now wondering about his clothes, for he had on fur-lined slippers, suit trousers with a crease, and a ratty-looking cardigan over a shirt with a grubby collar, all of which made him look about ten years older than he probably was. When his wife came in, he quickly got up and turned the volume down a bit. Mrs. Gilpin didn’t say anything, she just pulled the curtains, and then sat down and watched for a while, but you could tell that she wasn’t really following what was going on. Eventually she smiled at me and said, chop-chop, isn’t it about time for bed now? I didn’t stand up. Well, come on. Let’s not be having a falling-out about it. I wanted to remind her that we’d only just started back after the summer holidays. Hadn’t she ever heard of Alice Cooper? “School’s Out,” missus. It’s on the radio every day, and it still feels like the holidays, so why was this woman being so stroppy?
I rolled from one side of the bed to the other side, then back again, and realized that it was the sheets that were making me feel funny, for they were clingy and made an odd scratching noise when I moved about, like somebody needed to oil them. And then I remembered: the bag of newspapers would still be sitting next to the fence by the church. Tomorrow I’d have to go and tell the newsagent that he’d have to get somebody else. I wondered if I’d ever see the inside of our flat again, but I had a feeling that I might not. Of course, nobody explained anything to me: not the copper, not the social worker, not even Mr. Gilpin, although it’s possible that he was in the dark like me. I stared out of the window at the stars and wondered again about our Tommy. Where was he? Why wasn’t anybody telling me what was up with him? I wasn’t some kid, I was fourteen, and whichever way you looked at it, I had a right to know.
“Rock and Roll” (Parts 1 and 2)—Gary Glitter
After nearly a week at the Gilpins’, I went to see Mam in hospital, and I found her sitting by herself in a big room full of plastic chairs. She was staring out of the window like she was in her own world, and she didn’t even shift herself to turn around when I walked in, even though I know she must have heard me as my trainers made this horrible high-pitched squeal whenever they rubbed against a wooden floor. Mr. Gilpin pointed at her as though he reckoned he was helping me out, and then he whispered that he’d wait outside for me in the car. By now I knew that he’d have happily moved lock, stock, and barrel into his Austin Maxi if it meant he’d be able to get away from his wife and two roly-poly kids. After all, I was pretty sure that he cared more for the car than he did for them, and maybe fostering me was his way of finding somebody to talk to, for the three of them pretty much ignored him. I walked over to Mam and sat in the chair opposite her and said hello, all the while trying to hide the fact that the
place was making me feel all queasy inside. She looked directly at me, and as she recognized me, a kind of tired smile spread over her face. I’m sorry, she said. I suppose I should have kept a closer watch on both of you. Will you forgive me? She looked like all the life had been knocked out of her, and I wanted to say that it wasn’t her fault, but I just couldn’t get the words out. When I think about it now, I’m convinced that they must have had her drugged up on all sorts of medicine, but to me she just seemed like she was half asleep and not really making much of an effort to stay awake, and I wondered how long it was going to be before I could get back to Mr. Gilpin’s car. However, I knew I had to make the visit last a bit longer or it would be rude, but I didn’t have a clue what to say, and I knew that she wasn’t going to ask me anything about what I was up to. And so we sat together for nearly an hour, me itching to get up and leave and Mam with that vacant look on her face, and neither one of us able to talk about what had happened to my brother.
At school I decided to try harder because that’s all there was now. There was no Tommy, and I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, and so inevitably I soon discovered that I had no mates. I’d always been a bit of a clever clogs when it came to schoolwork, and the teachers often said if I continued to make an effort, I could do very well. I decided to swot up and try and come top in everything, except the science subjects, of course. It was my way of keeping my mind off the depressing reality that I’d been fostered out again, and this time it looked like Mam wasn’t coming to rescue me. Mr. Gilpin obviously felt a bit sorry for me, so he started to give me fifty pence pocket money every Saturday, and I could double it if I helped Mrs. Gilpin with some jobs around the house. The two girls didn’t have to do anything, and they still got more than me, but I wasn’t complaining, for the money gave me a reason to stop nicking things. Mr. Gilpin told me I could use the record player whenever I wanted, but Mrs. Gilpin let me know that she didn’t much care for my Gary Glitter single. Too much shouting, she said, which made me play it even louder in the hope that she might ask me to take it off. But she never did ask me to take it off, and eventually I realized that she never would, and so I started to play it quietly. I’d already worked out that Nancy Gilpin thought she was better than other folks, and she was deluded enough to think that her two girls were at the front of the line when they were handing out brains. I was shocked when, pointing out of the window, she told me that the next-door neighbour’s dog was allowed to do his business in the house, like I’d be interested in hearing this. When it became clear that I wasn’t—despite the additional information that they were proper Asians, for the wife had a big red spot on her forehead—I could tell that she immediately wrote me off and lumped me together with her scruffy husband. However, the sad fact was I now had no choice but to live with these people, and perhaps try and forget Mam.
After she gave me the silent treatment at the hospital, I didn’t hear from Mam for a while, and Mr. Gilpin must have sensed that things hadn’t gone that well, for he didn’t ask me anything, or suggest a return trip to see her. The truth is, Mam’s silence made me feel as though I’d done something wrong, as though it was me who had to explain myself, and the only way I could forget this whole hurtful nightmare was by concentrating on my schoolwork. At night I used to tell myself that maybe one day she’d be better and we could work everything out, but sometimes the feelings got so upsetting that I seriously thought about changing my name. And then Mam started with the phone calls and letters and postcards, and it must have been Mrs. Gilpin who said something to social services, for a posh woman in a fancy twinset came to see me and told me that Mam was disrupting the Gilpins’ household. I didn’t say anything, but the social worker woman gave me a fake smile and said that she’d be bringing Mam on Christmas Day, but Mam never showed up, and I spent most of the day by myself feeling dismal in my bedroom. Things got worse when Mam turned up outside of school, and the teachers wouldn’t let me out until she’d gone, and I just wanted the whole thing to end. Why couldn’t she just go somewhere and get better instead of all this? Why was she embarrassing me?
“Life on Mars?”—David Bowie
After a while I decided that Helen, the older one, wasn’t so bad. She was thirteen, and her little sister, Louise, was nearly eleven, but of late I’d noticed that Helen had lost a lot of weight and started to fill out upstairs. She’d also started to buy the New Musical Express, and every week she’d Sellotape the double-page posters up on her bedroom wall. It was mainly David Cassidy, and the Osmonds, and even the Bay City Rollers, but she also liked some okay music. After school she’d sometimes ask if she could borrow my records, and I told her that was alright as long as she didn’t scratch them. She’d started to write the names of her favourite singers on the covers of her exercise books in all sorts of psychedelic patterns, and it was Helen who brought up the idea that we go to the Rollarena, where David Bowie was doing his final tour as Ziggy Stardust. If you agree to come with me, then Dad will let me go; otherwise you know he’s just going to say that it’s crackers to waste your spending money on a bloke dressed up in aluminum foil, with a bog brush hairdo, and who looks like he’s good to his mam. Do you remember? That’s what Dad said when he saw him on Top of the Pops. He wanted to know if this David Bowie fellar was doing it for a dare. Although I was two years older than her, Helen talked to me like we were the same age. We’ll have to queue for tickets, I said. She shrugged her shoulders as though this was obvious, and so I agreed. Okay then, let’s go.
The concert was on a Thursday night, and I came back early from school to get changed, not that I had any glam gear to get into. Since I’d started studying really hard, I’d kind of lost all interest in clothes, which was just as well since even the hard cases and suedeheads were now starting to wear tie-dyed scoop-neck tee-shirts and glitter, and I didn’t want to be associated with them in any way. However, I knew that Helen would be going in for something flashy, and I was more than a bit curious about what she’d be wearing. She wasn’t back from school yet, so I nipped across the landing and snuck into her room. She had a smart dressing table mirror with three panels so you could adjust them and see what you looked like from the sides as well as the front. Before I knew what I was doing, I was fingering her cuddly toys, and then I started pulling open the drawers and touching her clothes. Steve Pamphlet was always boasting about going all the way with slags late at night in the shop doorways in town, but I’d never even touched a bra. Her underwear felt so soft and comfortable, and so I picked some up and smelled them and rubbed them against me a little, and then I could sense somebody standing behind me. I put the pile of panties back into the drawer and turned around and saw Mrs. Gilpin staring at me. She had on a headscarf, but I could see that her hair was in rollers, and I guessed that she must have been out in the back garden for she’d never be seen in the street with her hair in such a state. I’ll never forget that look on her face. She was glaring at me like she’d finally sized me up and found out who I really was and there was no hiding it now. I knew that we’d never recover from this moment, and I just wanted it to end, but Mrs. Gilpin seemed to glare at me forever. Then, as though nothing had ever happened, she slowly turned and walked out of the room, but she left the door wide open so I’d know that I was expected to follow. Immediately.
“Dat”—Pluto Shervington
I don’t take a good photograph, and as if to prove it, there’s a picture of me that was taken at one of those photo booths not long before I left the Gilpins’ house for university. After Mam died, it was my history teacher who kept chucking compliments in my direction, and I liked the attention, so I started to do extra lessons after school. That’s when he put me on the list for Oxford and Cambridge, but I could tell that he didn’t have much faith that I would do the work necessary to give myself a chance, although I was determined to prove him wrong. In the photograph I’m seventeen and staring into the camera, with my big, unshapely hair and my bulky black-rimmed specs, and I’m not smiling at al
l. I’m focused, and there’s not even a little hint of a smile. I’ve also got on the worst jumper in the world: a blue, round-necked polyester number, with two white hooped stripes. The truth is I look downcast, which is pretty much how I remember my time as a foster child in the Gilpins’ house. In my own mind, I reckoned that once Mam died the social services people must have told the Gilpins that the decent thing to do would be to see it through until I went off to university. It must have been agony for them because it was undeniable that Mrs. Gilpin hated me, and I didn’t exactly think much of her either. Right from the off, whenever she spoke to me, she’d always been a little abrupt, and then after the thing with Helen’s clothes she never stopped looking at me as though I’d somehow interfered with her precious daughter.
In the end I was there for nearly four years, during which time I continued to be interested in pop music, but I also began to watch a lot of films. Once I’d done enough work to pretty much guarantee high grades in my exams, I started to skive off school and go to the so-called independent cinema near the polytechnic, where I’d watch themed seasons of films by mainly American and French directors. I even bought a paperback book called The Film Director as Artist and decided that this is what I wanted to be—a film director—but only after I’d finished university. However, first of all, I had to get out of the Gilpins’ house, and the sooner the better, for the whole family more or less ignored me. Helen never asked to borrow any more records, and Louise made sure that she was never alone with me. Even Mr. Gilpin stopped trying to be friendly; he occasionally smiled in a kind of pitiful way, but his wife must have told him that I was some kind of deviant because, aside from the driving lessons that he got me as a seventeenth birthday present, he went out of his way to avoid me.
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