by Neil Cross
When Derek had told me this story, I decided I would not go to bed for some time.
I said, ‘That’s not true.’
He strummed the ukulele. Gave me a look.
He said, ‘A lot of strange things happen in Africa. They’re primitive people. They have access to spirits and demons.’
‘Derek,’ said Mum.
He strummed the ukulele. He began to sing. It was ‘You Are My Sunshine’. It had become one of our favourites.
I sang with him for a while, but the shadows in the room were oppressive and the air seemed heavy, like the silence after a bell has been struck. Eventually, I was sent to clean my teeth. In the cold, narrow bathroom my legs shook and I dared not look in the mirror, in case the devil should be looking back at me: chop-licking, grinning.
Derek didn’t read to me that night. I was up too late. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed, smiling, and patted my knee. Then he said goodnight. He hesitated in the doorway. He asked if he should leave the door open, and I said no. I didn’t like to see the hallway at night. He closed the door, and he left the hallway light on.
In bed, I waited for the devil. I wondered if he was already inside me, like the presence in a haunted house, lingering before he showed himself.
The bedroom door snicked open.
I got out of bed and closed it. Then I went back to bed. I pulled the blankets over my head. My heart was loud. When I peeked out from under the blankets, the door was open again.
I didn’t stay for long in the little teacher’s class; perhaps a term and a half. The summer holiday came, an infinite stretch of six weeks. It began with my first return to Bristol.
Mum packed my suitcase and Derek inventoried the contents. He made a note that read: 5 × sox, 1 × kagoul, 3 × jeans. Then the suitcase was zipped shut, with the note inside.
We took a bus to the airport. My suitcase jostled on Derek’s knee. We passed the supermarket where he worked, in Corstorphine, and I pointed it out to him and he smiled.
I had never been to an airport. At the desk, the woman smiled and said: ‘Are you travelling by yourself?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
I was proud.
My suitcase jerked along the conveyor belt. Mum took me to one side and poked the ticket and boarding pass into my pocket. She told me not to lose them. I said goodbye at the gate. They stood there with their arms linked, smiling and waving.
On the other side, I was met by a woman with an orange face who smelled of perfume. She took my hand and led me to the front of the queue, so that I was first down the gangway. I was elated by the ascending whine of engines and the smell of aviation fuel. The aircraft was a Vickers Viscount. It had four propellers.
The woman took me to a seat in the front row and showed me how to use the seatbelt. I sat there, reading, while the other passengers boarded.
When the plane taxied to the runway, I lay the comic in my lap. The acceleration pressed me into my seat and made me laugh. I watched the ground slip away.
When she had served some drinks, the woman asked me to unlock my seatbelt and come with her. She held out her hand. Her nails were red. I stood. The plane shifted like a boat beneath me. She went to a heavy door at the front and rapped on it with her knuckles. Then she pushed the door open.
Behind it was the cockpit. The pilots wore shirts and hats. Clouds came at us through the windscreen.
One of the pilots turned in his big seat and smiled and offered his hand. I shook it. Derek had shown me how to shake hands properly. Nice and firm. Three times. Let go.
The pilot said, ‘Hello there.’
I said, ‘Hello.’
I smiled.
I said, ‘Who’s flying the plane?’
He pointed to something. ‘Right now, it’s the automatic pilot.’
I said, ‘Have you got bombs?’
He looked at the other pilot. They grinned.
‘Not on this plane, no.’
I pointed to something else. ‘Is this the ejector seat?’
He looked at where I was pointing.
‘We don’t have ejector seats on this kind of aeroplane.’
‘But what if it crashes?’
‘Well, we don’t have crashes.’
‘But what if it does?’
‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘This measures our airspeed. Do you see how fast we’re going?’
I looked. We were going fast. I could see the clouds being ripped apart.
The pilot said goodbye and turned again to face the front. The woman led me back to my seat. She gave me a small can of Coca-Cola and a little bag of peanuts. Later, she told me to hold my nose and blow if my ears started to hurt. I was still blowing when the wheels shrieked on the runway of Birmingham airport. There were no planes from Edinburgh to Bristol.
I was first off the plane. The woman led me down the steps on to the tarmac and she walked with me to the airport building. She held my hand. It was windy and she kept stooping and pressing her little hat on her head.
Before we reached the building, I spotted a group of smiling, waving figures: Gary, Wayne, Margaret and Dad. I waved back. I was embarrassed that the woman was holding my hand.
When we were inside, she let go. She said to Dad, ‘I assume this one’s for you?’ and Dad thanked her. She said goodbye and walked off.
It was strange, seeing Dad and Margaret in an airport. The bright lights made them seem not quite real.
Dad said, ‘Hello, Sonner.’
I said, ‘Hello, Dad.’
He said, ‘Who was that holding your hand, then?’
He looked at Margaret.
He said, ‘Who do you think that was, Marg, holding our Nipper’s hand? I reckon that was Miss Lushbody.’
He looked at me.
He said, ‘Nipper, was that Miss Lushbody?’
Everyone laughed, and I laughed too. Miss Lushbody was one of Dad’s jokes. All teachers were called Miss Lushbody, even the really old and ugly ones.
I wanted to tell him about meeting the pilot, but he was busy joking. I finally got to mention it when we were waiting at the luggage carousel. I stood next to Dad. I told him that I’d been taken into the cockpit and I’d met the pilot and I’d seen clouds coming at us at a hundred miles an hour.
He seemed distracted, concentrating on all the jostling suitcases. I realized that he thought I was lying.
I said, ‘Honest. They showed me the ejector seat and everything.’
He said, ‘That’s nice, Nip.’
We waited for the bags. My face burned.
I decided to wait until I got back to Edinburgh. Then I’d tell Derek about meeting the pilots. Derek would ask for the details. When I told him I’d seen the ejector seat, he would smile and say, ‘Well, it probably looked like an ejector seat, but I expect it was actually something else.’
Then he would tell me how impressive it was that I even knew what an ejector seat was, at seven years old. And all my disgrace would evaporate and I would be happy.
Outside, it was dark, and the sky was high with aircraft noise and lights and the smell of fuel, and everything was unfamiliar.
We walked to Dad’s car. It was a dark-blue Hillman Minx with canary yellow hubcaps. I called it the Yellow-Wheeled Speed.
We got in. Everyone had been excited, now everyone was tired. We drove off.
Lights pulsed overhead, like alien spacecraft in precise formation. Margaret turned in her seat. She asked me how I was, and how was Scotland, and how was my new school? I told her I was well, that Scotland was nice.
She turned again to face the front. She said, ‘Your Dad wishes you’d write more often, Nipper.’
I’d tried to write. But when finally I sat down to do it, Derek stood at my shoulder, hands in pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet. He dictated to me:
Dear dad how are you i am well my new school is nice we went to the zoo they have monkeys and there is a caslte. Wen it is sunnie we go to the hills we climb a long way i like to drink from bursn they are like
streams
He made me write our address in the top right-hand corner, which was stupid, because Dad knew where I lived. He sent me parcels.
It was boring, writing what I was told, and it felt dishonest and it took ages, and it made my hand ache.
Dad looked at me in the rear-view mirror.
He said, ‘Just a few words, Nip. Just to let us know how you are.’
Just a few words, is what he always asked for in his letters, before ending them: Love, Your Dad.
I said, ‘Sorry, Dad.’
I spent the rest of the journey in silence. I watched the darkness broken by the swelling headlamps of passing cars. Then I saw Bristol, multi-lit in its basin, like a landed UFO.
We arrived at 92 Bifield Road. The house seemed very big, and–when they turned on the light–too bright. We walked into the front room. There was the table and the swirly carpet. There was the big storage heater you sat on when it was cold: it made your bum feel nice and warm. There was the sofa on which Dad lay on for forty winks. He slept with the newspaper on his belly: if you tried to lift it off, ever so gently, he woke up and said ‘Get off with you’ shooing you away like a fly.
There was the double door that gave on to to the long, skinny garden. The smell of the house was familiar but different. I supposed it was just the old smell of it, with the smell of me taken away.
I was tired. Dad took my suitcase upstairs to my old bedroom. He put the suitcase on the bed and opened it for me, to get some pyjamas. Inside, he found Derek’s inventory. His face went blank, then dark, then jolly. I thought of the shadow of clouds, passing over the sunny city while I looked down from a high hill.
He showed me the piece of paper.
He said, ‘What’s this, then?’
I shrugged.
‘I don’t know.’
He said, ‘It’s a list of your bloody clothes. What does she think? That I want to keep them?’
I wanted to tell him it was Derek who wrote the list. But I knew that would make things worse. Seeing Dad looking at the list made me homesick. I felt like I was betraying someone. I was not sure who.
A bit later, we said good-night. I lay in bed. My old bedroom was washed in ambient light; there was a streetlight outside the window. It was different from the darkness of the little box room in the flat on Duff Street. I listened to the creaking of the house, a couple of late-night voices wandering by on the pavement outside. They spoke in an accent that was familiar and strange. It was an accent I’d never heard before leaving Bristol: I’d been surrounded by it, the way you’re surrounded by air.
The next day was Saturday. I had a fried breakfast with Gary and Wayne and Dad and Margaret. The light shone in. The radio was on. Margaret liked the radio. She was always listening to it, always singing. She liked a band called Showaddywaddy. She would do the vacuuming and sing ‘Three Steps to Heaven’, which was one of their hit singles. Sometimes Dad would take her arm and they’d waltz to it. It was their song. They had danced to it at their wedding. They sang:
Step one: You find a girl to love
Step two: She falls in love with you
Step three: You kiss and hold her tightly
Well it sure feels like heaven to me
And Margaret would say that Dad was a bloody nutcase, and I could see they were happy together.
I wondered if they knew about Eddie Cochran; that ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ was his song, and the last place he ever sang it was the Bristol Hippodrome, because that was the last place he ever sang anything.
I had a shower. Dad came in while I was drying off. He cleaned his teeth in warm water, then he stood at the toilet to have a wee. He seemed to wee for a long time. He weed and weed. I passed through the weird normality of it, then I went to get dressed.
Because the Scottish educational year was slightly different, Gary and Wayne had another week of school. On Monday morning, the house was frantic for half an hour. Then they were gone and so was Margaret and it was quiet.
Dad told me to go and get dressed and then we went out. In the morning sunshine, Stockwood didn’t seem real. The roads were wide and grey: the houses big and pale. They had front gardens, with bikes parked in them. It was so quiet, you could walk down the middle of the road.
We got into Dad’s car. I sat in the front seat.
He said, ‘Strapped in, Nip?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
He drove me to Stockwood Primary School. It looked very strange, sitting low and modern in its playground, with the same old apparatus out in front, by the gates.
I had a feeling in my belly that was like descending in a lift.
I said, ‘Where are we going?’
Dad yanked up the handbrake.
‘We’re just going to pop inside.’
My legs went funny.
I said, ‘Why?’
He looked at me. He’d already taken the keys from the ignition. They were in his hand.
He said, ‘Don’t you want to see your friends?’
I got out of the car and I followed him through the gates and through the doors and into the school. It seemed odd now, that classes gathered in different nooks down the length of one long room. As I followed Dad, children fell silent and looked at me.
We stopped when we found my old class. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with their backs to us. The teacher looked up. She saw Dad and me. She stopped talking.
She said, ‘Look who’s come to see us, everyone!’
The class turned its many heads.
I stood there.
Dad rubbed my crown.
He said, ‘Say hello, Nipper.’
I said, ‘Hello.’
Wayne was there, smiling. And so was Clive Petrie. But Clive Petrie didn’t want to look at me. He sat looking at his knees.
The teacher said, ‘Say hello, everyone.’
The class said, ‘Hello.’
Some of them started speaking earlier than others, making the word long and jumbled, like Amen at the end of the Lord’s Prayer.
The teacher said, ‘And how are you getting on?’
I said, ‘Fine, thank you.’
‘That’s nice. Are you still enjoying your reading?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Good.’
Dad stood there, playing with the hair on the crown of my head.
‘Well,’ said the teacher. ‘It’s ever so nice to see you.’
Dad said, ‘Say goodbye to everyone, Nipper.’
I said, ‘Bye.’
They looked at me.
The teacher said, ‘Say goodbye.’
They said, ‘Goodbye.’
Dad smiled at the teacher and said thanks. She smiled back. Then we turned and walked back down the corridor. It was very long. We walked into the sunshine and went back to the blue car with yellow wheels. We got in and put on our seatbelts.
Dad said, ‘So how was that, Nip?’
I said, ‘Good.’
‘Was it nice to see your friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘There you are, then.’
He drove us to the Top Shops. We went to the bakery (not the one where Mum used to work, it had shut down). We went inside and he asked what I wanted. I looked at all the cakes.
I said, ‘Can I have a jam doughnut?’
Dad laughed.
He said, ‘Are you sure? You can have a cream slice if you like.’
I said, ‘A doughnut’s okay.’
You couldn’t get proper jam doughnuts in Edinburgh. So Dad bought me two. The lady put them in a white paper bag with scalloping round the top.
She said, ‘Here you are, love,’ and passed the bag over the counter.
Dad took me to see my old class twice a year until I was ten years old. He wanted me to stay friends with everyone, in case one day I should come back to Bristol. It would be as if nothing had happened.
But eventually the silence and embarrassment that greeted our visits became intolerable to everyone involved
. Quietly, he gave up the idea.
He’d taken the week off work. I spent most of it at the edge of a bowling green. There were the same cheery exhortations, the soft echo of kissing balls. The same held pose, like a slowly deflating discuss thrower.
I dissected cigarette butts left piled in alfresco ashtrays. I peeled off the fake cork paper and unpacked the yellow wadding, staining my fingers and making them smell. I left the ashtray full of something that looked like chaff, something that might have blown from the boughs of a spring-laden tree. When all the butts were taken apart I took some matches and punished ants for my boredom.
Then, at the end of the first week, we went on holiday. The Yellow-Wheeled Speed cleaved to the slow lane. Even the dawdling cars behind lurched into the middle lane to pass before dumping themselves back down in front of us.
In my imagined commentary, the Yellow-Wheeled Speed was lapping everyone. Gary and Wayne’s own, louder narration seemed more disrespectful and hurtful. During it, they called my dad Alan, sometimes Al. Nobody ever called him that.
Margaret joined in, too. Her voice was joyous and hectoring and it set me on edge. She said, ‘Come on, Al, stop pissing around.’
Excited, Gary and Wayne described cars that went past: better cars, red cars, more expensive. Dad seemed unconcerned. But I was hurt on his behalf. I liked the Yellow-Wheeled Speed and I presumed that Dad liked it, too, because he’d kept it for so many years.
But he said nothing. Eventually, I realized that his feelings weren’t being hurt at all. He knew they were only joking and he didn’t mind. He might even have been enjoying it, all the happy noise in the car.
Clive and Linda and Caroline had gone. They were all married, with children of their own. And I was gone too. I lived in a flat he’d never seen in a city he’d never visited.
In my absence, Dad and Margaret and Gary and Wayne had become a proper new family. I still belonged to it, but only at a shallow and glancing angle. I was like a comet: orbiting the same sun, but in a distant, elliptical orbit.
Sometimes, when they were laughing together, Margaret looked at me through narrow eyes and I felt awkward and ashamed.
Because of me, they were on edge. I was a subject Margaret and her sons couldn’t discuss, like the meaning of a bad word. It passed between them, transmitted by eye-contact and small expressions of irritation. When I did something stupid, which was often–I fell down or forgot to bring my coat or asked if I could stay in to read while they went to play Crazy Golf–they made small, hateful faces that I was supposed to see but Dad was not, and never did.