by Liam Livings
She cuffed me round the ear with one hand and poured our tea with the other. “Milk, sugar, Tony?”
Tony took his mug, and explained about the letter, and how Bruce was sorting it all out, making sure I had the very best, after their first mess up.
“Mess up? Mess up?” She stood. “I’ll give them bloody mess up.” She looked from side to side, trying to appeal to an imaginary audience for who to talk to. “Who do I talk to at that useless clinic? You wait and see, I’ll give them a piece of my mind.”
“There’s no point getting angry with them,” I said. “No point getting angry with anyone. Bruce will sort it, he promised. He said he’ll make sure they sort things out for me to carry on.”
Tony added, “For years and years, he said.”
“Did he?” I asked, frowning slightly.
Tony nodded. “I’m not gonna make it up, am I?”
After a few more pacing up and down, banging pots and pans moments, Mum rejoined us at the table, where we both explained there was no point going over what had happened, that was too late, we had to move onward, forwards, the only way to go.
After that, we sat in silence, the pot of tea long since gone cold.
Tony kissed us both goodbye, told Mum to look after me, and be kind to me, and told me to do the same for her, then he left.
For the first time ever, we sat in silence, and I could feel the awkwardness like a block of black ice between us, lumped on the kitchen table. I didn’t know what to do, whether to explain myself again, or whether to ask her for forgiveness, tell her it would all be all right, eventually, because I didn’t fully believe that, so trying to convince her that, would have been hard.
Instead, I opted for a kiss on her head as I walked past, towards the stairs, where I’d crouched a few hours earlier, hoping it would all pass without note. I walked up to my bedroom, shaking my head at what I’d done, not quite knowing how I would go on, how I would go onwards, upwards, move forward with my life. I decided to take it one day at a time, one hour at a time, like Bruce had said, and to not let this defeat or define me either.
Chapter Twenty-Two
AN ODD REACTION to not knowing how I’d go on was that although my death seemed imminent, I felt invincible, like nothing could touch me, like it didn’t matter what I did because, well, I wasn’t sticking around for much longer.
Shoplifting, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll nick some stuff from the chemist to prove to myself I can, because, well, it doesn’t matter if I got arrested, because I wouldn’t be around to serve the prison sentence.
I went to the big Boots the chemist in Salisbury, threw some cheap things in my basket—some bars of soap and a chocolate bar, in the meantime I put various expensive things in my pockets. I wore a pair of black combat trousers with lots of pockets, and a long black coat, with pockets in its lining. A dark purple lipstick went in my coat pocket and a stick of chewing gum in the basket. Then I put a supposedly nonsmudging mascara in my outside coat pocket, and a box of tissues in the basket. At the same time I was looking up and down the aisles subtly, trying to spot the shop detectives, who seemed to be helpfully dressed as store detectives, blue jumpers, blue trousers and the security firm’s logo on their breast pocket, topped off with hats almost like policemen’s hats, but not quite. They didn’t have the right amount of silver at the front, I noted as one got a bit too close for comfort after I’d held a dark blue eye shadow over my coat pocket for a bit too long, then replaced it on the shelf.
I lost him by leaving the makeup section and taking the long route to the men’s grooming section. There I picked up some razor blades and put them in my pocket, quickly grabbing some cheap shaving gel and throwing that in my basket.
I reached the tills and pretended to feel for my wallet in my pocket, then made a bit show of oh no, I’ve left it at home, checking the other pocket, then looked at my watch—for no other reason than it seemed like a good thing to do to continue the show I was putting on. Putting the basket down at the end of an aisle, I walked to the doors, allowing myself a small smile, as I felt the content of my pockets.
I reached the door as it opened, the cool air blew into my face. I smiled a bit more than before, relief flooded through me, I’d done it, I’d really done it, I’d shoplifted!
A security guard put his hand on my arm and stopped me leaving the shop. “Can you please come with me?”
Shit! This wasn’t meant to happen. “I’ve not bought anything. I’ve got to catch a bus, I’m meeting my friend, he’s not well…” I smiled weakly, trying to shrug off the hand.
The hand stayed firmly holding onto my arm. He led me to a small quiet room through a door I’d not noticed before out the back of the shop. “Can you empty your pockets please?”
“Dunno what you mean.” I shrugged.
“I saw you putting items in your pockets. You left the shop without paying for them.” He paused, no smile. “If you don’t do it, I will. So, which is it to be?”
I emptied my pockets, putting the items on the table next to where we stood. Now, they looked small, pathetic, ridiculous really, why would I have bothered nicking those? “I don’t want them now. Never did. Can I go, please? I’ve got to get on, you see, my friend, he’s not well.” I started to walk to the door.
The man blocked my path, his arms folded across his chest. “You left the shop without paying for these items you’d concealed about your person. Is that correct, sir?”
Sir? I hadn’t been sirred for a long time. I avoided eye contact, staring at the floor, screwing my hands in a ball behind my back. “It’s not my friend, who’s ill, it’s me. I’m dying you see. I thought it would be a laugh, but now…”
“We can call the police, or your parents, which would you like?”
“Mum please.” I felt about two feet tall and three years old, it took all my strength not to cry and call her Mummy. Shit, this wasn’t meant to happen. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t how it was meant to work out.
They called Mum and as we waited, staring at the items on the table, every minute making them look even more pathetic, I started to explain how I wasn’t well, how I’d got bad news and that I was…long pause…dying.
He said nothing, asked no questions, simply listened, told me Mum would be there soon, and we’d take it from there.
MUM ARRIVED, HUGGED me, then clipped me round the ear and looked at the things on the table. “This, you do this for these stupid things? I can buy you these things. You can buy yourself this stuff. Why do you do this? What is wrong with you?”
And then, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I started to cry. It wasn’t to get a reaction from Mum or the security guard, it was because everything suddenly became too much for me. The news, the idea of shoplifting how it had seemed such a good idea before, and now felt like the stupidest thing I could do, the realisation that although I didn’t feel like I had anything to live for, at this moment, now, I did seem to have some things to live for. And how despite all that, I’d managed to royally and totally fuck it all up. And how mum was there, picking up the pieces. All that, came together and I couldn’t keep a lid on it anymore, so I cried. Quiet, trying to keep them in, little sobs, which built and built, as Mum explained to the security guard what had happened to me lately and I’d not quite been myself.
“He’s had a lot on his plate, see. He’s not done this sort of thing before. If you check with the police, they won’t have heard of him. Promise.”
“We ran a check with the police, just out of interest, and you are right, Mrs. Harrison.”
“You got kids?” Mum asked.
He nodded.
“They ever do something wrong, something you had to come and sort out?”
“Not shoplifting, Mrs. Harrison.”
“How old are your kids?”
“Three. She’s three.”
“I should bloody well hope she’s not shoplifting then. But she might. Mightn’t she? You never know. If someone had told me mine woul
d get himself in this state with the disease, the AIDS, and now this, I wouldn’t have believed you. But then again, if someone had told me half the things he’s ever done, when he was a little baby, I wouldn’t have believed them. You never can know.”
He nodded slowly. “If he does it again, we’ll call the police. If he does it in another shop in town, it’s the police. We have this internal warning system, someone who’s tried it, all the shops keep a note of the person.”
“He won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” She looked at the pathetic pile of stuff on the table. “Do you want me to buy that, then can we say no more about it? Is that what you’re saying?”
“He said he didn’t want it. Can’t see myself why he’d want makeup, but anyway. Who knows why people shoplift, eh.”
“He’ll pay for it.”
He escorted us to the shop where Mum put it all in a basket, thanked the security guard for being so understanding, then turned to me and said, “You’re paying for all of it. And when you use it, I want you to think long and hard about why you have it, what you put me, and yourself through to get it. All right?”
“Do I have any choice, cos I think I’d prefer a different colour eye shadow.”
She shook her head. “What do you think, love?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
EVERY TIME I used that makeup I thought back to the little room at the back of Boots and Mum’s face when she’d arrived. I never shoplifted anything again. Mum had said, when we got home that evening, if I ever did something like that again, she’d not come to help me out and I would have to fend for myself in the prison as I’d be getting what I deserved.
It didn’t stop me moping about the house though. Oh no. I was well into the moping. Although I knew I wasn’t invincible as the shoplifting had proved, I still felt a general lack of interest in life, a grey fog had descended around me.
Since the letter and the overwhelming feeling of loss I now felt, I kept expecting other losses to line themselves up in front of me, queuing to unburden themselves at my feet. I expected Mum to get sick again and return to the hospital. I expected us to lose the house for a whole host of reasons, some rational, but most irrational.
I also started to wonder what artefacts I’d leave behind for everyone to remember of me. When I was a little boy, we had a cat that got run over, in the dead-end road where we lived, among lots of other cats who seemed to happily negotiate their way across the road, our grey short-haired cat, Smokey, had taken a wrong turn, made a wrong judgement and got hit. When I got back from school, Mum and Dad told me what had happened and explained he was wrapped in an old towel on the kitchen floor, and did I want to say goodbye to him before Dad buried him in the garden.
“Is there blood?” I asked, both fascinated by the thought of seeing a dead thing, and also terrified it would be too much to cope with.
“No,” Dad replied.
So, I walked to the kitchen, holding Mum’s hand and Dad pulled the towel back, to reveal a dead Smokey, lying on the towel, his mouth open, and his eyes staring into nowhere. There was, I was slightly disappointed to note, no blood. I said goodbye to him, stroking his fur, which felt the same, but different as he was cold.
We said a few words as Dad buried him in the back garden, wrapped in the same towel.
“Is it because he got blood on it?” I asked Mum, why she didn’t want the towel back, oddly focussing on strange things, but as a four-year-old, that had seemed the most important thing out of the whole mess of losing our family pet.
“No, love, it’s because we want to wrap him in it.”
But oddly, that wasn’t the worst bit of losing Smokey. After the few words and the burial, I thought it was all over, that would be it, but was struck by how upset I became at the smallest of things I noticed around the house reminding me of Smokey: his bowl Mum had washed and left in the draining rack; the old grey blanket he used to sit on under the radiator in the living room; some of the toys he used to play with. These all reduced me to tears, every time without fail.
For some inexplicable reason, I still can’t explain it now, the artefacts he left behind were more upsetting than seeing Smokey wrapped in the towel.
All this started me thinking about the artefacts I’d leave behind after I went. What things would Mum notice of mine as she walked around the house, which would reduce her to tears? I seemed to have moved on from the futile, no future mood to one of deep morbidity, only focussing on the end point I’d imagined in great detail and bright Technicolor.
Would it be my dressing gown, the thing I now spent most of the day wearing, lolling around the house? Or would it be one of the costumes Mum had helped me make? Or maybe my diary of bookings I’d made, or appearances I’d had to cancel because, well, because I wasn’t really in a “standing on stage with a big smile mood” anymore. What about my shoes? I had a large and varied shoe collection, and I’d read somewhere shoes were a very personal part of someone’s wardrobe, you could tell a lot about a person from their shoes. My shoes certainly told a story of their own: glass stilettos, platform trainers, the odd doctor Marten boot in a nod to one of the current more butch fashions I’d felt I should at least attempt to join in with.
I had taken to walking around the house in my dressing gown, slowly pointing out my things, and mumbling to Mum what she’d do with that after I’d gone.
Mum tried to shake me out of this deep, dark, morbid mood, but even an apology for making me pay for the things I’d tried to steal, didn’t help. She threatened to call Dad on me, said he’d soon knock me into shape, but that didn’t work either.
Tony tried, tempting me with a shopping trip to Southampton. “My treat, and I’ll throw in lunch too!”
But all I could think of was what would happen to the things I bought after I was gone, imagining Mum and Tony searching through my room, unpacking clothes I’d carefully wrapped in their bags, and packed at the bottom of my wardrobe. “What about my birthday cards? Maybe I should get rid of them now, so you don’t have to go through them, once I’m gone.”
“You’re not going anywhere, love. I told you before. You’re fine. You’re going on with this, don’t be so dramatic.”
“I don’t want to be here. Not now. Not now there’s no point. Not now I’ve got a number over my head, with my end date. I feel like I’m walking around with my tombstone above my head.”
“But you are here. You are here now.”
I shook my head, looking at the shoes in my wardrobe I’d not yet had chance to wear much, thinking about Mum pulling them out and looking at them after I’d gone. Like a few moments before, the tears started rolling down my cheeks, this time without any sobbing, any crying, only the water from my eyes rolling down like a waterfall of sadness. And no matter how much I took a deep breath and told myself it wasn’t true, there was nothing I could do to stop them continuing to fall down my cheeks.
Tony didn’t know what to say. He stared at me in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ONE MORNING, A few weeks after the diagnosis, I walked into the kitchen, my dressing gown gaping at the front where I’d not seen the point in pulling it back over my poor damaged body.
Bruce leant on the table, a smile on his face as he looked me up and down. “Not looking too clever, are we?”
“You look all right, but me, it’s not worth the bother is it?” I’d told Ian I couldn’t do any shows since I wasn’t going to be around for much longer. He hadn’t asked questions and had left me to my morbid thoughts.
“I’ve told your mum, I’ve told you, I’ve given you the brochures, the facts, and I’ll tell you again. You are not going anywhere, no time soon. You are hanging around, so we have to put up with your strops, your moods and your general fabulousness. You’re going to get your meds together, and regular blood tests to check what your CD4 and T-cell counts are and go from there. Live from there.”
“Maybe.” I half-heartedly leant against the work surface.
“Truthfull
y. You’ve not just been run over by a car. You’re not in critical care. You’re still standing, breathing right here in front of me. So, none of this moping about, feeling sorry for yourself. I won’t put up with it. I’ve got an appointment for you to talk to a lovely lady about all these feelings, thoughts you have swirling round your head. Barbara, she’s called. She’s an expert.”
“What about the artefacts? The things I’ll leave behind me when I’ve gone? It’s like they’re part of me. More part of me than my own body feels. That’s all you’ll all have to remember me by—some artefacts, some things I’ve bought, written in, tried on, all that stuff.”
Mum pulled her hand from her mouth. “Is he right? Is it months he’s got left?”
“Is that what he’s saying?” Bruce turned to me. “This is enough. I won’t tolerate any more of this. You are ill, yes, but not that ill. Something has switched in your head meaning you don’t hear all the real truth about the HIV you should be listening to. Instead it’s all clouded by what’s going on in here.” He tapped my head.
All I could manage was to shake my head slowly, wiping a tear from my cheek and walking upstairs, without a word, still shaking my head.
As I stood at the bottom of the stairs, Bruce said, “He’s not going anywhere anytime soon, Mrs. Harrison. We’re stuck with the dramatic, moody bastard—more’s the pity.”
She cried, then said, between breaths, “Are you sure?”
“We’re definitely stuck with him, all dramatic, moody bastard he is. This often happens, people get the diagnosis and the wheels fall off their life. His wheels have fallen off and he’s stuck in this artefacts thing, something about his childhood. I’m no counsellor, but that’s what I guess Barbara would say.”
“She’ll sort him out, will she?”
“It’s her job. She works for the clinic two days a week, to talk to guys like Kev. About exactly this.”
“Who knew.”