My Name Is Leon

by Kit de Waal

  Leon says nothing.

  “It’s just going to be me and you and a couple of my friends, Leon. It’s not much of a party, kid. You sure?”

  “Can I go out on my bike later?”

  “Again? After tea you can have another hour. What’s at the park anyway?”

  “Swings and slides. Some kids have got skateboards. I can go down the ramp on my bike.”

  “You can bring one of your friends back here sometime if you like, you know. You should have friends, Leon.”

  “Can I put the TV on?”

  “They’ll be here soon. Go and wash your hands. Put your bag away.”

  Leon gets more presents when Sylvia’s friends come. Felt pens, a car, three pound notes, and a soccer ball. And more cards as well. The sideboard is full up. He has chocolate cake and sweets and Pepsi Cola and an enormous bag of Revels all to himself.

  Sylvia’s friends talk about riots in another city and the Irishmen who are dying on a hunger strike.

  “I wouldn’t mind a bit of that,” says Sue with a piece of cake on her plate. “Don’t remember the last time I was hungry.”

  The others laugh and say she’s terrible. Rose stands by the door and shakes her head.

  “He’s got to be strong to go through with it. He’s a believer. Imagine believing in something so much that you kill yourself.”

  “They don’t just kill themselves though, do they?” says Sue through half a sandwich and then they all start arguing about the IRA and the bombs and why people fight each other and where it’s all going to end. While the argument is going on, he hears Sylvia talking in a whisper.

  “Not one single word from his mother. No, not a card, nothing. I had a hard time getting bloody Social Services to play ball. They promised him a photo from his brother, you know, the one that got adopted. Getting on for six months now. Would they get it done? No. Jerks, the lot of them. Anyway, me and Mo decided on a pincer movement. Her from her hospital bed, screaming blue murder, me from here, and eventually that Judy with the hair got it sorted. Yeah, got it this morning, thank God. Just in time. Cheered him up it has, little soldier.”

  Leon can feel their eyes on his back. He knows what their faces look like and how they feel sorry for him and how much they hate his mom. Why can’t they be quiet so he can watch the TV or play with his toys? Why can’t they all go to their own houses and feel sorry for him from there? He wishes that when he turned around he would be in his own house with his own toys. His mom would be sitting on the sofa with her furry frog slippers. Jake’s on her lap and she’s singing to him. Jake is wriggling because he always wants to be with Leon but his mom is saying, “Sssh, little monkey. Sssh.” And every time Leon moves his mom says something like, “Don’t, Leon. You know he won’t sleep if he can see you.” So Leon has to turn the TV down with no sound and lie on the carpet so Jake thinks he’s not there, keep as quiet as a mouse, playing with his toys until Jake is asleep, but always his mom falls asleep as well. Everything goes quiet and Leon sits down next to Jake and looks at his perfect lips and his perfect face.

  Leon gets into bed and keeps the light on until Sylvia comes to find him.

  “You still up?” she says, pushing the door open.

  “Where’s Dovedale Road?”

  “Dovedale? Across town. Main road, lots of shops and houses. Why?”

  “I heard it on the TV.”

  “Had a nice day? Look at him, eh?”

  She picks up the photograph of Jake and then holds it away from her face.

  “You can see the resemblance. You really can.”

  Leon says nothing. He reaches out for the photo and puts it back beside his bed.

  “Can I buy a map?”

  “A map of where?”

  “Just a map of the streets.”

  “You can buy what you like, love, it’s your money. I’m turning this light out now.”

  “Can I buy a compass?”

  “Whatever you like. Sleep time now.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Too excited, I bet. And too full of sugar.”

  “Can I have a story?”

  Sylvia switches off the light and sits on the edge of his bed.

  “Where were we?” she asks.

  “The rabbit was with the bear.”

  Sylvia laughs.

  “Yeah, I remember. All right, well now. The rabbit is covered in poo, isn’t he? The bear takes off because bears are like that. They don’t stay around when they’re needed. No. Bears think they’re the only ones who’ve ever had their hearts broken or had the stuffing knocked out of them. The rabbit might have needed a friend, but no, bears just think of themselves. You can’t reason with a bear. Not on your life. Bears are selfish and when they’ve had their fun, they barge their way back into the woods and disappear.”

  She stops like she’s trying to remember the rest of the story. She takes a very deep breath and starts again.

  “Anyway, the rabbit hops all over the wood, smelling bloody awful. He can smell himself, the other animals can smell him, the birds can smell him, and he’s desperate for a wash. Every time he goes up to an animal to ask where the river is, they hold their noses and run off. Eventually, after a long, long time, he stumbles across the river, flowing all lovely and blue through the woods. He runs up to it but there is a pig standing on the bank. The rabbit thinks the pig is going to run away but when he looks carefully, he sees the pig has a wooden leg. ‘Hello, pig,’ says the rabbit. ‘Oh, hello, rabbit,’ says the pig with the wooden leg. The pig sniffs the rabbit and says, ‘Oh dear, you better get in the river and get clean,’ so the rabbit does, but all the time he’s thinking to himself, why has that pig got a wooden leg? In the end, his curiosity gets the better of him and he asks the pig, ‘What happened to your leg, pig?’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said the pig. ‘My master lives on a farm and one night I noticed that the stables were on fire. So I shouted as loud as I could and woke the farmer, who rescued all the horses.’ The rabbit was amazed. ‘So did you get burned in the fire and lose your leg?’ ‘No,’ said the pig, ‘the fire spread to the chicken coop and I had to run into the stables and get the master.’ ‘So did something fall on your leg?’ said the rabbit. ‘Oh no, because then the fire spread to the farmhouse and I had to run in and wake the mistress and get all the children out. I ran to all the bedrooms and pulled them out one by one. I let the youngest one ride on my back until we were out in the garden and we were safe.’ ‘Wow,’ said the rabbit. ‘You must have got injured bringing them downstairs,’ said the rabbit. ‘No,’ replied the pig, ‘but the farmer said I was a very special pig and when you have a pig like that, you don’t eat it all at once.’”

  Leon decides he won’t ask Sylvia for any more stories and he turns over.

  “Night, love,” she says and closes the door.

  31

  The next day, Leon doesn’t get to his plot until after teatime. First of all, Sylvia takes him and another boy to the pictures to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. The boy is called Timmy and he is special. Timmy’s mom works at the supermarket with Sylvia and whenever they meet they keep saying how good Timmy is and saying “Bless him” and “Good as gold.” But Leon has to sit next to him in the cinema and he talks all through the film, turning around and jumping in his seat. And he spits. Everyone looks at Leon all the time and tells Timmy to be quiet. Then Sylvia gets angry and says that they should shut up and mind their own business. All the kids laugh and swear and Leon wants to go and sit on his own because people might think that Timmy is his brother.

  He has to say thank you to Timmy and let him play with his AT-AT, so by the time he gets to the allotment it isn’t exactly getting dark but it’s the time of the afternoon when everything looks exciting. He has his tools still in his bag and he pedals as fast as he can to the allotment and then wheels his bike to his plot.

 
Someone has taken all the weeds out of his raised bed. Someone has made all the paths nice and tidy and someone has put some wigwam canes up at the far end.

  Leon puts his hand deep into the crumbly soil. It’s cool and black underneath and he can squeeze it into a ball. The whole raised bed is just waiting for him to plant something. He can see specks of insects burrowing away from the light and a tiny black spider marching across a stone. Underneath him is a whole world of insect lives that nobody ever thinks about. Leon lies down on the earth and feels them marching and burrowing and finding their dinner and making their nests and bumping into each other. Hello, spider. Hello, beetle. He looks up at the pale blue suede sky and closes his eyes. He feels the roots of all the trees and the flowers mingling in with one another, making a giant web that sucks all the goodness and the rain up into their leaves so they can make apples and roses and all the strange vegetables that grow in the Asian shops. Leon’s going to have the best plot on the whole allotment. He’s going to grow the plant with the yellow flowers and baby peas and mangetout and Scarlet Emperor. And he’s going to need more seeds.

  Leon sits up and brushes the dirt out of his hair. Tufty isn’t around and his shed is always locked so Leon can’t go and have a look at his seeds, but Mr. Devlin’s halfway house has the door wide open so Leon walks over.

  Mr. Devlin is slumped in his armchair. He has a small blue glass in his hand and his eyes are closed. Leon tiptoes inside. The room smells of beer and old clothes. Every time Mr. Devlin breathes out, a small bubble of spit forms at the corner of his mouth. It goes big and small, big and small, as Mr. Devlin snores and blows, snores and blows. Sometimes, Mr. Devlin has the same old-lady smell as Sylvia, and Leon notices that he wears the same clothes every day, whether it’s sunny or it’s raining. His hair is gray and long, just like his face, and sometimes Leon thinks that Mr. Devlin might actually be a tramp.

  Leon walks quietly around the shed looking at more and more of Mr. Devlin’s special things. He sees there are bottles of drink in the corner by the door, whiskey and stuff that his dad used to like. Leon carefully picks one of the bottles up and unscrews the cap. The smell reminds him of his dad at Christmas and his black granny that he only met once, just before she died.

  His granny’s house was full of furniture and ornaments. All along the mantelpiece there were little china dogs and birds and a pink lady with an umbrella. There were pictures on every wall and a big map of Antigua in a silver frame. Every room smelled of spicy meat and it was so hot inside that Leon felt sick. The old lady sat in an armchair with a blanket over her knees. Leon’s dad told him that she had had her feet cut off because she had diabetes and wouldn’t stop eating cakes and Leon kept thinking of the stumps under the blanket and what they looked like.

  “This him, Byron?” said the old lady, looking at Leon.

  “Yes, Mommy,” said Leon’s dad and pushed Leon forward.

  The old lady held Leon’s wrist and brought him up close to her face. She had a dark, sunken face, sunken eyes with a dot of pure black at the center that darted from side to side. Tight plaits of cane row stuck out of her scalp like sharp white bones and Leon kept thinking where his feet were going in case he trod on her stumps.

  “He look like your father,” she said, turning Leon from side to side.

  She smiled at him.

  “Leon? That’s your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like your grandfather, Leon. He had your pretty face, same nose. You look like your father too. He just tell me now about you. Just last week. He knows I’m dying. I know I’m dying. So your father just tell me now he has a son. All these years I never knew about you. We could have been friends.”

  She spoke slowly, pushing her face up close; her moist breath smelled of medicine. She asked him lots of questions about school and his favorite programs and what he wanted to be when he grew up, so Leon said a fireman because he couldn’t think of anything else. But she wasn’t really listening and she kept closing her eyes.

  Then she started coughing and Leon’s dad had to get her some water. As soon as he left the room, Leon’s granny pulled him even closer.

  “You be a good boy for your mother. I never met your mother, so I don’t know her, but I know what a good son is. I know how a good son can make your life wonderful and a bad son can bring you heartache. So you be good for your mother. You look after her. Take care of her. I wish I didn’t have to leave you, Leon. I hope you remember me.”

  She let his wrist go and put a five-pound note in his hand. Leon walked backward away from her. His granny looked at his dad and shook her head.

  “Oh, Byron.”

  “Sorry, Mommy,” he said. Leon had never heard that voice before. He’d never heard his dad sound like a little boy.

  Leon had to have some rice and meat and then his dad took him home. Leon never saw his granny again. One day afterward, his dad told him that she’d died. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie. He was drunk. He kept saying the same thing over and over.

  “I got no one now. I got no one now. I got no one now.”

  He pulled Leon toward him and started crying until Carol told him to stop.

  “You’re scaring him, Byron,” she said. “Go and sleep it off.”

  Leon knows that Mr. Devlin is sleeping it off as well. He can smell it in the air.

  Leon listens carefully but there’s no one nearby. Mr. and Mrs. Atwal aren’t talking in their own language and the lady with the long skirt is nowhere around. Just Mr. Devlin breathing. Leon tiptoes up to where Mr. Devlin keeps all his knives. He can’t take the big knife, because Mr. Devlin uses it every day and he would notice if it was missing, but he could hold it and touch the very edge of the blade and see how it felt to swish it in the air. He has almost got his fingers on the handle when he feels Mr. Devlin’s hand on his neck.

  “Leave it.”

  Leon’s hand hovers in midair. He doesn’t move.

  Mr. Devlin drags him back away from the bench and pushes him down on to the floor.

  “Sit.”

  Leon sits cross-legged like he does at school assembly. Mr. Devlin sits up straight in his chair. He pours some drink into his blue glass and drinks it down in one gulp. His eyes are small and red.

  “Thought we were friends,” he says.

  “I just wanted to feel it.”

  “Sit still.”

  Mr. Devlin puts his glass down and feels across the bench for a small knife. His hand moves like a spider and all the time he carries on looking at Leon. His hand finds the small knife and a block of wood. He picks them both up and starts peeling the block of wood with the little knife, looking from the wood to Leon and from Leon back to the wood.

  “I used to be good at this,” he says. “You have yourself a wide forehead. I’ve been looking at you. I started this from memory, some weeks ago.”

  Little pieces of wood are flying onto Mr. Devlin’s lap and on to the brown rug. Leon picks one up.

  “Pine, I’m afraid. Just pine.” Mr. Devlin is squinting. “It’s too soft but then I’m old now. My whittling hands aren’t what they were. Can’t do what they once did.”

  He holds the piece of wood away from him and looks at Leon again.

  “I used to use walnut or mahogany or ziricote. I had some skill, used to have some skill. Look.”

  He gestures to the wall behind him and for the first time Leon notices lots of carved things, a lion and an elephant, a truck and the life-size head of a woman with plaits. And then, at the very front, little heads of children. All boys.

  “Miguel, Lorenzo, Gustavo, José, Enzo. And Gabriel,” he continues, but he has a different accent like he’s talking in another language.

  Mr. Devlin looks behind him and points at the different heads.

  “Pedro Gabriel Devlin. I wanted Gabriel. She wanted Pedro. Every ot
her child in Brazil is Pedro.”

  He laughs and Leon sees that he didn’t brush his teeth properly. Mr. Devlin carries on chipping away at the wood and Leon watches him. Mr. Devlin has to hurry up because it’s getting uncomfortable on the floor and Leon’s thirsty. Tufty always has a drink for him but Mr. Devlin doesn’t.

  “Are they your children?”

  Mr. Devlin begins to giggle. It starts in his belly and then goes up to his shoulders and then it’s in his throat and his nose and finally he starts to laugh so that he can’t carve anymore and his hands are shaking.

  “What? All of them? Forty-seven children?”

  “Why did you carve them?”

  “After school. I would take one or two of the boys. I had a workshop. Like this. I was loved. They loved me.”

  Mr. Devlin starts peeling the wood away. It comes clean away from the sharp blade.

  “Shuffle forward. Here, to me,” says Mr. Devlin and Leon does as he’s told.

  “Think you can do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here.”

  Mr. Devlin gives him the knife and the block of wood. Leon is just about to start when Mr. Devlin covers Leon’s small hand with his own. He guides it along the curve of the forehead.

  “Like this. Slowly. But firmly. Along the grain. Slowly.”

  A rind of wood curls away and falls on the ground.

  Leon looks up and Mr. Devlin grips his hand tighter.

  “I wouldn’t change a thing,” he says. “Better to have loved.”

  The wooden handle digs into Leon’s palm and the blade is pressing down on the wooden head, making a mark. Mr. Devlin grinds his teeth together and shouts.

  “Keep the fucking rules! Isn’t that what I said? Isn’t that what I told him? Isn’t it? Slow down, I said. Over and over, I said it.”

  He leans forward and covers Leon in a damp blanket of sourness.

  “Don’t run!”

  He stands up suddenly and Leon drops the knife and the wood on the floor. Mr. Devlin stumbles against the shelf and picks up one of the heads and holds it to his chest.