So I’m sat here, in the armchair, and my mum has just told me that my dad’s not my dad. I’m sat in my non-dad’s armchair. So I can’t live with him. Because he wouldn’t want me, would he, what with me not being his and all. And then I start thinking about me and the other two and how they’ve both got his nose and I haven’t. And I’m smaller than the rest of them; people can hardly believe it when I tell them I’m older than Andy. And anyway, Dad’s gone, so he can’t want us, leaving us here with this mad woman, while he sleeps peacefully alone every night in his bed-sit. All we get of him now is a measly two hours each Saturday.
“So who is my dad then?” I shout after her, down the hallway. She’s gone quiet, so I creep down the hall and stand in the kitchen doorway. Mum’s leaning on the sink, crying. In a really low voice, she mutters to herself. I don’t think she knows I’m there.
“Jimi Hendrix, for all I know, you poor little bugger. You’ll be a long time looking.”
She reaches for her Benson & Hedges off the window sill and takes a light from the gas. I tiptoe away, leaving my mum surrounded by dirty pots and pans, smoking and staring at the washing line out the window. The only Jimi Hendrix I’ve ever heard of is that dead guitar guy – and he’s black. I don’t think either of us really knew what she was on about. So I let it go.
When I get back from seeing Andy it’s quite late. I can see the bathroom light on from the street, and I’m dreading bumping into her again tonight. I’d rather just forget about it.
As I creep through the front door, I hear the bath water emptying out of the plug up in the bathroom, and the creak of the floorboards as Mum goes along the landing. I should check on her, but I don’t want to start anything up. I slip straight into the dark kitchen and stare out the window at the moonlit slabs of paving. The metal lid of the dustbin has blown off in the wind, and it rocks around on its handle, first this way, then back again. I should go and pick it up, or it’ll clatter about all night. Next door’s cat runs across the fence, pausing to look over his shoulder at me. It must be true what they say about cats having a sixth sense, how he knows I’m standing here in the dark. Miss Terry’s got a cat, she told us in class. It’s called Mr Mistoffelees. Mr Mistoffelees. I bet Mr Mistoffelees has a good life. I bet Miss Terry feeds him fresh salmon and lets him sit on her lap all night, being stroked and petted. It must be nice being Mr Mistoffelees.
Andy was playing Monopoly when I arrived at Sandy and Pete’s earlier tonight, and he had this massive stack of paper money, and loads of hotels. I don’t know if Pete was letting him win, but either way, Andy was chuffed with himself. Every time he got more money or a good Chance card, he punched the air, saying “Skill!” in his stupid voice. Whenever he plays with me I always tell him to shut up with the skill thing, or I’ll stop playing. Or I’ll give him a dead-leg. Obviously Pete doesn’t do either, which is probably why Andy was enjoying the game so much. When Sandy brought me a can of Coke I told her it was half term coming up, and she and Pete looked at each other across the room.
“How’s your mum doing?” she asked, and I said, “So-so,” and that was that.
I told them not to worry about half term, that I’d already got plans for me and Andy. That we might go to Aunt Rachel’s. Andy’s ears pricked up when I said this, so now I’ve got to get out of that one without sounding like a liar. Sandy and Pete tried to not look pleased, but I bet it’ll be a relief when we’re out of their hair.
Out in the back yard, an empty Hula Hoop packet whips over the fence and flattens against the window pane for a second, before dropping to the ground to dance about near the bin lid. Hula. I remember a film with Elvis in, and the girls on this island were wearing hula skirts. They all fell in love with him instantly, like they always do. It’s a good word. Hula. I don’t think Mum heard me come in, and I wonder if I can get away with putting the TV on quietly. As I turn to leave the kitchen, the door bell goes, making me jump. The noise cuts through the silence like a siren. It’s 9.30 p.m., too late for anyone to be calling at the door. Unless it’s an emergency. I instantly feel like I’ve done something wrong, and I’m not sure if I should answer the door. If I don’t answer it, whatever’s about to happen can’t happen. I can almost sense Mum upstairs in the hallway, holding her breath too. Maybe she feels like she’s done something wrong. The doorbell goes again.
When I hear the faint whining on the other side of the door, I know it’s Griffin.
I find Mr Horrocks on the doorstep, pale and shrunken. Griffin bundles into the house, sniffing at every corner, before bombing up the stairs into the darkness.
“I’m sorry to bother you, lad,” Mr Horrocks says with a shaky voice. His eyes look dark and hollow. “It’s Mrs Horrocks. Well, you know how it is, son.”
I stand with my hand still on the latch. It doesn’t even occur to me that I should ask him in. I just stare at him waiting for him to speak.
“Well, the thing is, son—” He can’t take his eyes off the dog lead folded up in his hand. He turns it over, rearranges it, refolds it. “Well, she’s gone. At lunchtime. I shut up shop, and went up to get her a sandwich, and she looked like she was asleep. But she wasn’t, and old Griffin was crying and nudging her with his nose, but I knew she was gone. It’d break your heart to see him pestering her like that, too late to help.”
I don’t know what to say. This is terrible. No wonder he looks so awful. I should get Mum, but she’d be no help. I’m about to offer him a cup of tea, when he thrusts the lead into my hands.
“Can you take him for a couple of days, lad? Just while I sort out the funeral business? He’s partial to you, son, so I know he’d be happier that way.”
I still just stand and stare at Mr Horrocks. I’m really pleased about Griffin, it’ll be like having my own dog. But I’m sad for Mr Horrocks and about Mrs Horrocks, and I don’t know how to say, yes, great, I’ll have him, without sounding too happy, like I don’t care about Mrs Horrocks dying. I nod.
“Good lad,” he says, looking me straight in the eye with his hand on my shoulder. “Good lad. Pick up his food and bowls when you come for the papers in the morning, son. He’s had his supper.”
As he leaves, he pulls his collar up against the cold wind, a shiver visibly running through him. He turns back as if to say something, then looks past me towards the stairs, and disappears into the dark street.
I push the door shut behind him, and stand for a moment with my hand still on the latch, wondering what it’s like to find someone dead like that. Dead, for ever. I turn, to go find Griffin, and there’s Mum right ahead of me, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs in a clean dressing gown, with a towel piled up on her head like a turban. Griffin is in her lap, rolling and licking and fussing all over her like a long lost friend. The colour is back in her scrubbed clean cheeks and the light has returned to her eyes.
“You are adorable!” she tells Griffin, cradling his scruffy face in her hands, rubbing her nose on his. She looks up at me with a shy little smile, and I know she’s back.
Mary, August 1970
It’s around nine when I reach home, and the August night sky is growing dim. As I enter the living room, I know I’ve never seen Billy so wounded. I had hoped for an argument, some way to clear the house of the heavy pressure that weighs down on everything. But Rachel is here, through the doorway, in my kitchen, boiling the kettle, making him a cup of tea. She looks up when she hears me drop my bag and keys and gives me a concerned frown. Billy sits at the little table in the living room. He doesn’t react to my entrance, but sits with his face down, turning his hands over, rubbing away at a callus.
“Rachel!” I throw my arms around her, and she hugs me, coolly. “I didn’t know you were planning a visit! If I’d known …”
Rachel shakes her head. “It wasn’t planned, Mary.” She lowers her voice, and turns back to the tea making. “I phoned, and when Billy told me you’d gone off I came down on the train to help out with Matthew. I didn’t know what else to do.”
/> I lean against the sink, and notice how tidy the kitchen is. She’s been cleaning up. The taps are sparkling.
“Aren’t you even going to say hello to him?” Rachel’s annoyed, nodding towards Billy.
I shrug. Rachel tuts, and starts to make me a tea.
“I don’t want one,” I say, opening the cupboard over the cooker.
“You haven’t even asked about Matthew. He’s upstairs sleeping. He missed you, Mary.” Rachel is trying to keep her voice down, but I know Billy is listening to everything. She looks into my face, squarely. “Where did you go, for God’s sake?”
“I’m bursting for the loo!” I snap the cupboard door shut and skip towards the stairs, tiptoeing along the landing so as not to wake Matthew. I peep in on my way back down, but decide not to kiss him, in case he wakes up.
Rachel still stands in the doorway to the kitchen, and Billy hasn’t moved. They’re staring at me as if I’m completely mad. I laugh.
“Well?” asks Rachel. “Don’t you think you should at least tell us where you’ve been?”
“The Isle of Wight,” I say, leaning on the back of the sofa to face them. “The festival, OK? Don’t look at me like that, Rach. If Billy can have a family and his freedom, Rachel, then so can I. Who was the one who told me about feminism, about the equal rights of men and women? Or don’t you live in that world now, Rach? Not cosy enough for you these days?”
“Equal rights?” Billy stands up so hard that the chair falls backwards with the force. “Equal rights is not running off in the middle of the night, leaving me with no idea if you’re alive or dead! I didn’t have a clue where you were, you selfish cow! Not a bloody clue!” Billy is mad with rage. His eyes are hooded and dark, and his face is flushed.
Rachel puts his tea down on the table and picks up his chair. He sits in it, and she stands behind him, with her hand resting on the chair back.
“He’s right, Mary. That wasn’t on.”
I stare at them for a moment, and the image brings to mind a Vermeer. Something in the composition. The room tips slightly as I watch them, and my heart shudders. I’m tired. I know they’re ganging up on me, the bastards. But I won’t bite.
“OK, OK. I screwed up. I’m sorry. OK? Look, why don’t I get us all a drink? Yes?”
Billy shakes his head, like a beaten man. Rachel stares at me like she doesn’t recognise me at all.
I laugh at them again, holding my palms upwards. “Oh my God, you two. Chill out, won’t you? Look, I went off for two nights, that’s all. No one got killed, did they? God, it’s like having my parents in the house! So, Rach, what’s your poison?”
Rachel gives in and sits in the seat opposite Billy. They both still have those stunned expressions.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” says Billy, seeming more exhausted than angry now.
I fetch glasses and a bottle of Scotch from the cupboard over the cooker. “Not really,” I say, half filling the three glasses on the table in front of them, spilling a splash of Scotch on the table top. “Ice,” I remember, going back into the kitchen to open the freezer compartment of the fridge. “Oh, Billy, there’s no ice! Why is it always me that has to fill up the ice tray?”
I pull up a chair to join them at the table, one to either side of me. Billy knocks his Scotch back, and Rachel watches him with concern. She turns her eyes on me, and I see she is tired too. The evening light has disappeared completely now, and darkness fills the room through the open curtains. We are lit up by the bulb from the kitchen, which pours across the table catching the amber liquid in its path.
“How was Matthew?” I ask, topping up the empty glasses.
“He’s fine,” says Rachel, when Billy doesn’t answer. “He’s grown, since I last saw him.”
I smile at her, glad of a kind word. Billy looks up at me, half broken.
“Look,” I say, taking the hand of each in mine. “Can we just forget this ever happened?”
Their eyes check with one another, and they both nod. I refill the glasses, and we drink into the night. Billy gives up his frosty silence, and tells me how Matthew struggles to pronounce Rachel’s name properly. Aunt Eyeball, he’s been calling her. Rachel is giggling after two drinks and I think I’m forgiven. It’s good to be home.
The next morning Rachel packs her bag and Billy drives her to the station. Just like that. Before I’ve even woken, she’s gone.
Part Two
Jake, March 1985
When we get into Classics today, Miss Terry is writing “The Lotus Eaters” across the blackboard.
Someone at the back starts singing, “The first picture of you, the first picture of summer …” until a whole bunch of them are joining in, drumming at the desk with their pencils and swaying their floppy fringes in rhythm.
Miss Terry claps her hands in fake applause, until the singing stops. “Contrary to what some of you may think, the Lotus Eaters are not just a New Romantic pop group,” she says to the back of the class, and taking a seat behind her desk. “OK, page forty-nine in your text books. Let’s see where your pop band got its inspiration from, shall we?” She looks at me in my front row seat, and raises her eyebrows with a smile.
I flinch, and quickly flick through to find the right page, bending my head to hide my burning face.
“So, you’ll remember Odysseus decided to leave Troy, to seek out his homeland of Ithaca. He filled twelve ships with his men, and set sail. But Zeus had other plans for him, and didn’t want him to reach Ithaca yet. A great storm blew up, tossing the ships across the sea until their sails were in tatters.”
The illustration in the book shows a ship being thrown high upon an enormous wave, as the men cling to the boat with fear.
“After many days, the ships landed on a strange island, far, far away from their destination. Odysseus now realised that he could not escape the ever watchful eyes of the mighty Zeus. Still, he decided to make the best of it, and sent off three of his men to explore and look for food. Meanwhile the rest of them stayed with the ships, trying to repair the damage inflicted by the fierce storms.
“A few hours later, Odysseus realised the men had not returned, and it was beginning to get dark. ‘This is not like my men,’ he thought, ‘I must go and look for them, to ensure that they are safe.’ He searched through the forests all night long, and just as the sun was rising, he came across the men, lying fast asleep, each holding a golden cup to his chest.” Miss Terry looks up at the class and smiles.
The class is completely silent, and I wonder if I’m the only one looking at her. Perhaps the others are all asleep, like the Lotus Eaters.
“Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? In the distance, Odysseus could hear the faint sounds of laughter, as if there were people hiding in the trees above. Odysseus did not know that the Lotus Eaters were the inhabitants of this island; a race of beautiful people who ate nothing but the juice of lotus flowers, which caused men to sleep and forget. When Odysseus finally woke his men and told them they must return to their families in Ithaca, they couldn’t remember a thing, and they fought him off, wishing only to stay on the island and drink the magic juice for the rest of their lives.”
“Was it like vodka, Miss?” someone calls out across the class.
“Yeah, vodka and Coke,” shouts another, “that’d make you forget!”
“Make you heave, more like,” says Debbie Sutcliffe, who sits along from me.
Miss Terry rolls her eyes and tells them to simmer down. “Actually, yes, it could be compared to alcohol, in that it has a soporific effect. The lotus flower juice had the power to make the men behave in ways they could never have imagined, taking away any sense of judgement. Imagine – they couldn’t even remember they had children and wives waiting for them back in Ithaca! It took all of Odysseus’ strength to drag the men, kicking and screaming, back to the boats to set sail again. Even then, the men were so addicted to the magic juice that they tried to throw themselves into the treacherous waters, to swim back to the shore. To them, no
thing was more important than the magic juice.” As she says this, she looks right at me, with a wide-eyed expression, and I’m struck by the sudden fear that she knows, that she knows that I lied to her about Mum’s flu all along. My chest tightens and my ears feel as if they’re filled with blood.
“Jake, are you alright?” she asks, bending down to my level. “You’ve gone awfully pale.” She puts her hand against my forehead. Her fingers are cool and dry.
I can’t look at her, and I can feel the eyes of the class burning into my back. There’s lots of whispering and sniggering. Somehow, I’m absolutely certain that they all know. I nod my head, but at the same time push my chair away from the desk.
“OK,” she says, leading me to the door with her arm around my shoulders. “Take yourself off to the nurse, Jake. I think you’d better sit this one out. Debbie, make sure he gets there in one piece.”
“Grrreat,” Debbie huffs as we get out the door, and she looks me up and down like a stray cat. She walks next to me, at corridor width distance, with her arms folded across her chest. We don’t speak a word all the way to the First Aid room. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get there. I could say I feel sick. I do feel sick. My eyes never leave the shiny corridor floor, resting every now and then on dried-in lumps of chewing gum or black shoe marks left by the morning rush. I can tell that Debbie isn’t happy that she was the one who had to take me. Well, I’d rather have gone alone, if I’d been given the choice. Maybe I should tell her, moody cow.
“See ya later,” Debbie says, when Mrs Truman opens the door. She saunters off down the corridor without looking back, in her short, short skirt and poodle perm.
“Right, what can I do for you, young man?” asks Mrs Truman, showing me in and pointing to an orange plastic chair. She doesn’t even know my name.
Glasshopper Page 12