Heartland

by Neil Cross

  Because Mum was confined to the back room, it was Caroline who registered me at Brislington Comprehensive. She’d been a pupil at the same school, in the days when she wore stripy socks, and liked to dress me up as a little girl then threaten me with Daleks. Now Gary and Wayne, my stepbrothers, were pupils there.

  I no longer required any surname but Gadd. The man whose name I had sometimes taken was long gone. But it was only then, when its use was an insult to myself and to everyone around me, that I decided Cross would be my name.

  On Sunday, I walked to Dad’s house and ate lunch with him and his family. Margaret was pleasant and relaxed, serving up roast beef and potatoes and peas. Perhaps it was safer, now I was just a visitor from down the road–and now my mother was no longer a fabled, absconded first wife, spoken of in whispers if at all, but a shrivelled wreck confined to the back room of a house that belonged to a daughter she had once abandoned.

  As for Dad, he’d always known that my mother would one day come home in fragments. Perhaps in the early days, he’d consoled himself with the thought of it. But by now he didn’t much care. That was his revenge.

  Over lunch, Gary and Wayne were keen to tell me about Brislington Comprehensive. They spent a long time detailing who was brick, which meant good at fighting.

  We went to the Fruit Market, which is where everyone bought their clothes. Dad bought me a green flying jacket, the kind that Madness wore, and some new jeans.

  Late in the afternoon, Dad offered to drive me home to Caroline’s. But it was a short and easy walk, downhill mostly. And if I walked, he wouldn’t have to risk glimpsing the remnants of his ex-wife through his daughter’s living-room window. So I walked.

  There was a short-cut to Brislington School, across the fields, but I didn’t want to take it: it would mean walking with hundreds of other kids who knew me for a stranger. And there was a school bus, but I didn’t want to take that either; I’d had enough of being a new kid on school buses. So I walked the long way, and on my first morning I was late.

  It was a big school–the biggest in the county of Avon–and by the time I got there it was silent. Even the stragglers had made it to registration. So I walked through the main doors. It smelled like all schools did.

  There were no surprises. I was big for my age and, unfashionably by early 1982, I was still a skinhead. So I attracted some of the usual new-kid attention, but not much. For a short while, I acquired the nickname Hamish. But it didn’t last. There was nothing Scottish about me.

  I was scared of Chrissy Thomas. He was an inordinately large, heroically stupid boy of whom even the teachers were wary. Several times, he cornered me and told me what a fucking prick I was. But he never did anything about it, and soon it became obvious that he never would.

  My form tutor, Mr Ashcroft, went to some effort to ensure I was settling in. He was the nicest teacher I ever met, and Brislington School was easy, Brislington School was a piece of piss. But I stopped going anyway.

  I sat on walls in car-parks and read books, or beneath a tree in the cold fields. Or I walked to Broadmead, the ugly shopping centre, and back again, just for something to do. I walked around, looking in shop windows, then walked home. I didn’t know Bristol well enough to do anything else.

  But one morning, I found inspiration. Above the front door of Caroline’s house projected a functional, concrete lintel. My bedroom window opened onto it.

  In the morning, I paused in the hallway and called out, ‘Bye.’ I closed the door behind me, then turned and jumped: I grabbed the edge of the lintel and hauled myself up onto it. Then I crawled through the open window and into my bedroom. I removed my tie, blazer and boots and got into bed.

  In the afternoon, I wriggled back onto the lintel and lowered myself to the ground. Then I walked round the side of the house and went in through the kitchen door, as usual.

  It lasted until the day I decided to re-read Eat Them Alive!. It was a book about giant preying mantises who ate human beings; they particularly liked to snip off and snack on women’s breasts. The word succulent was used a lot. Halfway through Eat Them Alive! I fell asleep.

  At first, it appeared to everyone downstairs that I was late back from school. Then it grew dark and Mum lurched from hazy indifference to frenetic torment. She assumed that another terrible thing had happened to her: that I had been raped and murdered.

  She and Caroline searched the house. They even looked in my bedroom. The room was dark and they didn’t see me asleep in it. They saw that the bed was disordered, but the bed was always disordered. My head was beneath the covers. I’d left only a small breathing hole to poke my nose through.

  I woke late and, blearily, slapped out into the hallway. I went downstairs, where Mum wept to see me alive and inviolate. She used the wailing, melodramatic language of suffering she had learned at church.

  She said, ‘Where have you been? Oh, where have you been?’

  She kept saying it. She looked mad. It was frightening.

  ‘I’ve been in my bedroom.’

  ‘Tell me where you’ve been.’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘We’ve been to your room. You weren’t there.’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me where you’ve been?’

  ‘Look,’ I said.

  I took Caroline by the shoulder and led her out the front door. I told her to wait. She stood there, crossing her arms and jiggling on the spot because it was cold, while I demonstrated how I jumped onto the lintel, then wriggled through my bedroom window.

  I came downstairs.

  I said, ‘See?’

  Caroline came in and closed the door.

  ‘I’ve been upstairs,’ I said. ‘I didn’t go to school. I do it all the time. I spend most of my week up there.’

  Mum pulled at the hair on her nape.

  She said, ‘Why can’t you just tell me where you’ve been?’

  It was the end of a good place. But its time had been ending anyway: the school had written home about my attendance.

  Mum couldn’t face the shame of meeting my teachers. So she stayed in her room, looking at the wall and Caroline went instead.

  She came home brisk and angry. She said, ‘Is someone bullying you?’

  Nobody had ever asked me that question.

  I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Because if they bloody are…’ said Caroline, and let the sentence hang. Her eyes were fierce.

  The school put me on report. It was a little book. I had to get it signed by every teacher at the end of every lesson. At the bottom of each page was a section marked ‘comments’, where the teacher was to summarize my behaviour.

  There was frequent use of the word ‘disruptive’, but I didn’t think myself disruptive, I just wanted to be left alone. If they didn’t hector me about homework we both knew I wasn’t going to do, or about getting to class on time; if they just let me sit quietly at the back and read a book, then we’d all have been a lot happier. That was their favourite sentence. If you would just do as you’re told, we’d all be a lot happier. But it wasn’t true.

  Because corporal punishment was illegal in England, putting me on report was one of the school’s sternest sanctions. But it didn’t do any good. After being on report, the next level of discipline was punitive suspension–they punished me for not going to school by not letting me go to school any more. I was awed by the logic of that.

  Mr Ashcroft asked to see me after school. He was slight, curly haired, greying a bit at the sides. His five o’clock shadow was heavy and he wore his shirtsleeves rolled. He was gentle and funny. I liked him, and I wished he’d leave me alone. He was a French teacher, and we sat on desks in the language lab.

  He said, ‘Mr Cross, Mr Cross. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re never here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And when you are here, you spend half your time in the corridor because you’ve been thrown out of class.
’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you’re a clever lad. Anyone can see that. And you seem happy enough. You’re always smiling.’

  I showed him my helpless palms.

  ‘So why do you hate school so much?’

  ‘I don’t hate it,’ I said. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. And I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t want to go.

  ‘Then why not give it a go,’ he said. ‘Just give it one proper go. See how you get on. You’ve only been here five minutes.’

  The school was quiet because everyone had gone.

  He said, ‘You’re going to get in real trouble if you carry on like this. You do know that.’

  Then he said, ‘What I don’t understand is, you always seem so cheerful.’

  I realized then: it was because I took after my Dad.

  The thought made me want to laugh. But I didn’t say anything to Mr Ashcroft, because it would have taken far too long to explain.

  Most afternoons, I walked home the long way. Usually, there weren’t many other kids around because I’d been in detention. The school couldn’t keep me for more than half an hour without prior notification, so I sat and did nothing until they were obliged to let me go. There was nothing else they could do. They could suspend me, but I’d welcome it. They could expel me: I’d have welcomed that, too. I’d be sent to another school, but all schools were the same. I wouldn’t be there long.

  All they could do was give me detentions, after which I wandered home, content to be alone. I walked round the back of Caroline’s house and let myself in through the kitchen door. I called out ‘hello’. The house was quiet. No TV. I hung my blazer on the banister and walked into the front room, to turn it on.

  In the front room sat Derek Cross. He was wearing fawn trousers and an army-style sweater. It had epaulettes on the shoulders and patches on the elbows.

  28

  He said, ‘Hello, Neil.’

  I said, ‘All right?’

  I was bigger than him. But he made me feel little. I thought of him sitting at my bedside, reading Kidnapped:

  …coming down from the top of the hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln

  I wanted to hit him.

  Mum was in the room, too. She was sitting next to him. But she was washed-out like a watercolour. She seemed less present than Derek.

  I looked out the window. Then back at them. There were Mum and Derek, sitting next to each other, in Caroline’s living room. The room seemed very small. All the perspectives were wrong.

  I said, ‘Where’s Caroline?’

  Mum said, ‘She’s upstairs.’

  I thought, This is Caroline’s house.

  Derek said, ‘Why don’t you sit down.’

  I wanted to tell him that I’d fucking well stand up if I wanted to. But my legs felt funny and I sat down.

  I said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come here to see you and your mother. I made a terrible, terrible mistake, Neil. An awful mistake.’

  He was more sorry than he could ever tell me. He looked at me to show me how sorry he was. He had his hands in his lap and he looked at them. He had very dainty feet.

  He said, ‘But I’ve come to take you home. If you’ll have me.’

  I said, ‘All right.’

  I began to cry.

  Derek reached out to squeeze Mum’s hand. For months, she had looked like something desiccated; like something you needed to add water to, to bring it magically to life. And now here he was. I thought of animals beneath the parched desert, scrabbling to the surface when the rains begin.

  The way the light fell, it made a lens of Derek’s eyes. I could see the room, reflected on their convex surface.

  I began to sob. I tried to stop it. But it was like there was a motor in my chest. It hurt, and I felt stupid, but I couldn’t stop.

  A bit later, I asked what the plan was. Derek always had a plan.

  He said, ‘Well. It’ll take a few days to organize things. But I expect we’ll be back in Edinburgh by next week.’

  I said, ‘Edinburgh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not Tarbrax.’

  ‘Not Tarbrax,’ he said. ‘No.’

  I thought about Tam. I thought about hanging round the dark stone streets with him, scraping our knuckles on rough walls, to make ourselves look hard.

  There was something grim in Mum’s relief to have Derek back, something hard and determined, like the exhalation that follows the first cigarette of the morning. And in the days that followed, I saw little of them. They took my room and spent their time in there, alone, with the door closed. Sometimes I heard them giggling. They were hatching plans. They were arranging the future. Erasing the past.

  I didn’t know if Derek was still Bishop, or even if he was still attending church. I thought probably not. I hoped not. I detested the idea that he might parade Mum and me before his betrayed congregation, a token of his power to repent. But it didn’t matter. I had nowhere else to go. If Derek wanted to drag me round the church, and if he wanted me to call him ‘Dad’ like a well-trained dog, then I’d do it.

  My teeth hurt. Even touching their surface with the tip of a finger was tormenting. I couldn’t eat. I drank cups of lukewarm tea.

  In the morning, I vomited. I had vomited almost every morning since I was seven years old. At first, it used to worry people. It was loud, because my belly was empty, and it sounded painful. But everyone soon got used to it. My guts squeezed up green bile and indeterminate, foamy liquid. I coughed until it was over. Then I went to clean my teeth.

  On the morning of the third day, Derek and I walked to the local shops. It was a ten minute walk: along Dutton Road then down onto Sturminster Road. It was a windy day. I wore a black woolly hat.

  We walked in silence for a bit. Then Derek said, ‘I can’t believe how much you’ve grown.’

  I grunted.

  ‘And in such a short time.’

  It didn’t feel like a short time. But I was content for him to acknowledge that I’d changed. There was silence again. We walked on.

  He said, ‘You’re a big lad, now. I’ll teach you how to shave properly.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We’ll get you a decent shaving brush. Proper badger hair.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And we’ll get you to a massage parlour,’ he said. ‘To sort out some of that tension.’

  He glanced at me. There was a squint of miscalculation at the corner of his eye.

  But I said, ‘All right, then,’ and I meant it.

  Even if we were still living together in Tarbrax, I knew he’d have made the same proposal. It would have been a secret between the bishop and his son. He’d have given me his lecture about the nature of female desire, about what women wanted and how they wanted it. And he’d tell me again about what men needed.

  I’d have gone with him, and I’d have been proud; more proud than ashamed. I’d have let him choose the woman for me, and when it was over I’d have discussed it with him. I’d have told him what I did to her and what she did to me. He’d tell me how to do it better next time.

  But we weren’t living in Tarbrax, and he wasn’t the bishop. He was just Derek Cross, offering me a hooker. I hated him for suggesting it and for knowing I’d say yes–just the way he’d known I’d hang the Kirby poster on my bedroom wall.

  We walked to the shops and bought some milk, some bread and a newspaper. And on the way back, he told me about the new job he was about to start, about all the money he’d be making. That meant pocket money for me, a nice house to live in.

  I nodded.

  It should have been spring, but it was still winter. The days were drawing out but there was ice on the edge of the air. I huddled in my coat and my feet, in the boots, were cold.

  Mum had some money in a building society. It had been left to her the year before, in a will. It wasn’t much. Bu
t it was everything she had.

  Nevertheless, we had to get ourselves and our things back to Scotland, and Derek didn’t want to travel back in shame. No more hired cars. Our return should have some dignity about it. It was a fresh start.

  The green Skoda had long gone. Derek had sold it. So he borrowed Mum’s money, to buy a new car. She went into town with him. She withdrew the money in cash and together they visited some showrooms. They chose a car together. And they drove home in the car, proud of it because it was red. I admired it, parked on the street outside my sister’s house. It was much better than the Skoda. It was a proper car.

  Derek took the car keys. He walked out, twirling them on his finger, whistling. He took the car and drove away, and I never set eyes on him again.

  29

  As soon as he asked for the money, Mum knew. But she wouldn’t acknowledge it, because he had begged her forgiveness. He had sobbed. He had shared her bed, had embraced her as they giggled together, projecting the bright future like a cine film onto the bedroom ceiling.

  That’s what she’d desired with the blind, heedless mania of the true addict. It’s what she had dreamed about, while sitting in the back room. It’s what she had conjured from her derangement and wretchedness. She had prayed for him to come: she had demanded it of God. And he had come, as unlikely as Christ on American shores. And he’d taken what little she had left, and he’d stolen it.

  Caroline said, ‘The fucking bastard. The fucking bastard.’

  But they weren’t the right words. I could feel the right words in my stomach and in my arms, and I can feel them now, but I don’t know what words they were. So I said nothing. And Mum shrivelled on this final impalement. She withered like a vampire. It was a kind of murder.

  We soon found out where he was. That night, I laced my boots and I put on my donkey-jacket. Caroline went down the road, to her boyfriend’s house. His name was Garry. He had blonde highlights in his hair and he wore baggy jeans. He drove a white Ford Capri, rusty round the rims.

  He drove us to Cottham, where Derek’s mother lived. It was the hilly part of central Bristol, the old part. It was late. The streets of Cottham were quiet. We soon found the red car. It was parked outside Helen Cross’s flat; Derek had run to his mother. His lover was staying there too. Derek hadn’t ended their relationship. He’d just suspended it for a few days. While he was with us, his lover had been a few miles away, enjoying the hospitality of a sweet-scented, obese old woman who thought it uppity of blacks to learn to read.