It's About Love

by Steven Camden

  His face is pure sarcasm. Zia’s dad doesn’t even like us in the house, let alone giving his only son career advice. Tommy looks round the room. “Yo. Your sister about?”

  Zia digs his arm. “Shut up, yeah? It’s not funny.”

  “What? I’m just saying.”

  “What are you just saying, Tom?”

  Tommy blinks slowly. “I’m just saying, that I think Famida is a rare beauty and I’d like to make her my wife.”

  I laugh. Zia stares at Tommy. Tommy carries on. “My older, foxy wife.” He closes his eyes and smiles like he’s just tasted the best ice cream in the world. Zia goes for him and they’re in a two-man rugby scrum. I watch their reflection in the TV.

  Zia joined our school in Year Five, but he really came into his own when we moved up to secondary. He was the kid who always said the cool thing at just the right time. Some of the one-liners he rocked to teachers were incredible. Like the time when Mr Chopping was laying into us in chemistry and shouted, “Do you think I enjoy spending my time with immature young boys?” and without even blinking, Zia was like, “I don’t know sir, I’d have to browse your internet history.” Brilliant.

  I punch them both and they stop wrestling. Tommy cracks his neck and takes out a cigarette. Zia cuts him a look. “Don’t even joke you idiot, come on, let’s go.”

  “Where we going, anyway?” I say.

  Tommy puts his cigarette back and shrugs. Zia puts his hands on our shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. We got wheels!”

  INT. CAR – DAY

  Close-up: A pine tree air-freshener swings from the rear-view mirror to the sounds of boys laughing.

  We don’t have anywhere to go and Tommy’s happy just driving around, so that’s what we do. I get shotgun and Zia’s in the back behind me. There’s no stereo in the car, but it doesn’t matter cos just driving with no sound feels good. Like a music video on mute.

  Then I have an idea.

  We drive round to old Mr Malcom’s house and nick apples from the tree in his front garden, then park outside our old school. It’s only been a summer since we left, but it feels like forever. The black metal front gates are locked and it looks kinda small.

  “Shithole,” says Tommy.

  Zia nods. “Load up.”

  Standing in a line in front of the gates, we cock our arms back and try to hit the technology block windows.

  I’m the only one to reach, my apple exploding on the thick double-glazed glass. “Eat that, Mr Nelson.”

  We stop by West Smethwick park and watch the second half of an under-twelves game. It’s Yellows vs Reds. Within minutes, Tommy’s shouting instructions to the Yellows’ defence.

  Some of the parents stare.

  The Yellows win 5:1.

  At about four we stop at Neelam’s on the high road and get masala fish and ginger beers, then park up near the bus stop and eat in the car. Heat from our food steams up the windows.

  “We could go anywhere,” says Zia through a mouthful of naan just as I was thinking the exact same thing; how we could just choose a direction and drive. All we’d need is petrol money. Tommy nods and I wonder what places they’re both imagining. London. Manchester. Paris.

  “Wolverhampton,” says Tommy.

  “What?”

  He looks at me. “We could drive to Wolverhampton.”

  I stare at him. “Wolverhampton? That’s where you wanna go?”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” He takes a big bite of his naan. “Jamie says wolves girls are well up for it.”

  Zia leans forward in between our seats. “I never went to Blackpool.”

  Tommy scoffs. “What the hell’s in Blackpool?”

  “What the hell’s in Wolverhampton?” says Zia. “At least Blackpool’s got a rollercoaster.”

  Tommy thinks about it. “Oh yeah, the Pepsi Max one, eh?”

  Zia’s nodding. “Exactly. The Big One.”

  Tommy nods back. “Yeah, sick. I’d go Blackpool. We should go to Blackpool. What you saying, Lukey? Blackpool road trip soon?”

  The two of them look at me, chewing in sync, and it feels like they’re on one side and I’m on the other.

  I shrug. “Yeah, Blackpool. Wicked.”

  Zia said: My life is my scrapbook.

  INT. PUB – NIGHT

  The cackle of old man laughter.

  I step out of the toilet into the noise of The Goose. It’s already pretty full and I can’t see across the room, but I can hear Dad’s deep laugh from the corner. I weave between bodies, tensing my shoulders the whole time in case I’m bumped.

  Most people in here know each other, or at least they know of each other. I’m Little Lukey, Big Joe Henry’s kid, to the older ones, and to everyone else, Marc Henry’s little brother. I’ve been getting served at the bar since I was fifteen.

  As I pass the bar, Donna smiles at me. My brain sends mixed messages to my face and I half smile, half grimace. What the hell was that, you idiot?

  The flatscreen TV up on the wall shows Sky Sports News and it looks out of place, like a rectangular piece of future pasted into an old photograph. Don’t start with that stuff. Not here.

  Dad’s sitting in the corner on the leather bench with two workmates from the garage on either side of him, all five of them still in their dark blue overalls, like some old boy band with Dad as the lead singer. The wall behind them’s deep burgundy and holds cheaply framed pictures of the local area from like a hundred years ago.

  Whenever I see Dad with other men, even now, his size still hits me. He’s another half bigger in every direction than the closest guy to him. I think of kids looking up at him when we’re in town, their eyes wide, like they’ve discovered Big Foot.

  “You OK, son?” He’s looking at me as I sit down on my stool across the circular table.

  “I’m fine, Dad. Just déjà vu.”

  Dad’s mate Lenny sticks out his bottom lip as he looks at me. “Catching your old man up, aren’t you, college boy?” He bends his arms like he’s a posing body builder and I turn in my seat.

  “He’ll be bigger than me,” says Dad, smiling proud and nodding at me. I sit up straight and look at him. His square face is tired and scuffed with oil, but his eyes sparkle. I think of him driving me to pick up my GCSE results and the pair of us sitting in silence in the car after I opened them and got what I needed.

  Lenny points at me. “Just don’t forget us when you’re rich and famous, eh?”

  He nudges Dad. Dad does his polite laugh and I watch the little fans of wrinkles spread from the outside corners of his eyes.

  “What’s on your mind, Lukey?” His voice is like thick gravy and everything about him has that calm that comes from knowing that nobody can really mess with him. It makes you feel safe. Mum used to call him her ‘handsome Shrek’. He knows what I’m thinking about. Him asking me what’s on my mind is his way of letting me know that he knows, and that now isn’t the time or the place to talk about Marc coming home.

  It’s never the time or the place.

  I shrug and shake my head and he carries on his conversation about fan belts. I sip from my half of Guinness, letting the metal taste swim around my teeth, and watch him, turning the volume down in my head so the scene goes silent. I try to picture him my age, nearly seventeen and unsure of himself, or scared, or confused or even slightly nervous, but I can’t. Dad’s emotions only seem to do the primary colours; happy, sad or angry. I know that can’t be true, all the other shades must live underneath his skin.

  I look round the room of mostly men. A collage of weathered faces from different generations and I think about how each face has a life attached to it. A string of details that stretches out of the door, along local roads to where they sleep. A wife, a kid, an old sofa, an empty fridge. The spaces they own, somewhere else. How they choose to come here, and how people like to keep the different parts of their lives separate.

  “Stop thinking will you, Lukey?” Dad’s frowning. I stare back at him, trying to let him kn
ow how stupid his statement is, but I know what he means, and sometimes I wish I could.

  Dad finishes his pint and sighs. “You know where too much thinking gets you.”

  By the time Tommy shows up with Micky, Dad and his mates are telling the same story for the seventh time, with slurred edges. Micky rubs his knuckles over my head. “And how’s Mr College?” I look at Tommy as Micky grabs my shoulders. “Shame some of your brains couldn’t rub off on this one.” He points at Tommy with his thumb, then sits down and gets immediately absorbed into the group of grown-ups. Tommy doesn’t say anything. Dad sends me to the bar and Tommy takes my seat to go through the same customary greeting and piss-taking from each tipsy mechanic in turn that I got an hour and a half ago.

  Donna’s changing a vodka bottle from the spirit rack. She smiles as I place my empty glass on the rubber beer mat.

  “Same again, Lukey?” Her voice is a beam of light cutting through the coarse bush of testosterone. What the hell are you talking about?

  I look down.

  “Two pints and two halves please. Micky and Tommy are here.”

  Donna puts the vodka bottle down and starts to pour the drinks. I’m watching her as she moves, like she’s operating a machine she’s known forever and, like I do most times I speak to her, I get a flash of lying on my side on our living room floor under my duvet. I’m ten years old and pretending to be asleep while her and Marc fool around on the sofa behind me. Getting a sneaky glimpse of her black bra.

  “So how’s college?” She places two halves on the bar and starts on the pints.

  “All right, yeah,” I say, and even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I know they’re too quiet.

  “What? I can’t hear you, babe, speak up.” She just called you babe.

  I punch out my words to cut through the pub noise, just as things fall quiet. “It’s all right. Just started this week.”

  My stomach drops as people turn to look at me. My head goes down as I wait for them to stop staring. Donna puts a full pint next to the two halves and they look like a single parent Guinness family. I stop myself saying it out loud. She’s laughing.

  “That’s good. Knew you were the one with the brains.”

  Her eyes lift my head up and I’m looking at her. Her black hair cut short like only some girls can do, her chocolatey eyes, the warmth in her smooth face. Her mum’s Italian and you can tell. I crack a smile and feel the skin of my cheek, and I want to say sorry. Sorry for what happened.

  “Be uni next, eh?” she says.

  I hold out the tenner Dad gave me. “Dunno about that.”

  Donna holds my hand as she takes the money. Her thin fingers are strong.

  “You get out of here first chance you get.” And she’s smiling, but there’s something else in her face, and she knows I see it. I look down again and she lets go.

  “You do what you want, handsome. Ignore us bitter old ones.”

  I take my change and feel Marc’s name crawling up my throat. I know she’s been counting days too, walking around under the same cloud of my big brother. Handsome?

  I swallow, then look back at Donna. “You’re not old.”

  Donna leans forward on the bar, her thin arms pushing her boobs forward. I try not to stare.

  “Just the bitter I need to work on then.”

  And then she’s gone, down the bar to serve an old man.

  She called you handsome.

  And I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I feel warm, and I’m wondering if this is how Marc felt every time he was with her.

  Some old timer leans over the bar and stares at Donna’s body. I feel my muscles tensing as I look at his cracked blotchy face. Then he’s looking back at me, staring with cloudy eyes and he nods the nod, the one that lets me know that just like everyone else in here, he respects what Marc did.

  Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm.

  It sounded like something from an ITV courtroom drama.

  ABH, with greater harm and higher culpability.

  One year and six months.

  I remember I had to look at Dad to see whether that was better or worse than they’d expected. Dad’s face didn’t move. Mum was already crying. I was wearing my funeral suit, my eyes trying to find somewhere to settle that didn’t feel wrong.

  The room was four different shades of beige and the wooden gate that separated Marc from everyone else was so low it didn’t make any sense. The magistrate gave a little speech about Marc’s disregard for another human life. How Craig Miller could’ve died and how, by driving round looking for Craig, unashamedly asking people where he was, Marc had demonstrated a premeditated intent to cause harm. Nothing about Craig’s history of terrorising people since I could remember.

  The charge, combined with Marc’s record of minor charges for affray and violent conduct, led the magistrate to extend the sentence to twenty months.

  Mum wailed, like twenty months was so much worse than eighteen. Dad’s face still didn’t move. I stared at Marc, standing firm in his white T-shirt, his chin up, like he was posing for a photograph, and I wanted to shout at the judge. To explain. Make it better.

  But I didn’t. I just stood there, next to Dad, watching my older brother as the magistrate spoke.

  The hammer banged. Dad held Mum as she cried and reached out towards the stand. Marc sighed and shook his head. “It’s OK, Mum. I’ll be all right.”

  Then he looked at me, as the two officers led him away, and he smiled.

  Marc Henry. The convicted hero. Wrong to the law, but right to anyone from round our way who knew Craig Miller, the nastiest piece of work around. Marc Henry. Local superstar. Guardian angel. Completely oblivious to the dead space he was about to leave behind.

  “She is so fit!”

  Tommy’s voice is almost angry as he speaks, the smoke flowing out of his mouth like exhaust fumes. We’re standing outside the pub. He shakes his head. “I swear down, your brother, man. Lucky bastard.”

  I cut him a look.

  “What? I’m just saying, prison or no prison, Donna’s amazing. I’d … man, I don’t even know what I’d do.”

  “Shut up, Tom.”

  He’s right though. Donna would look sexy dressed as a chicken, and Marc was lucky to be with her. I rub my arms and feel my biceps tighten. Tommy takes another drag of his cigarette and the pair of us watch a wide smoke ring float up in front of us.

  “Will you have a party? I mean, when he comes out?” he says, and I see a shot of me, wearing a shiny party hat, limp party blower hanging from my mouth, staring out.

  “He’ll probably be even more hench, eh?” says Tommy, holding his thin arms in front of himself like a gorilla. I shrug. “No idea.”

  “Course he will.” Tommy grabs my shoulders. “He’ll get a shock when he sees you though, eh? People’s champion.” He shakes me back and forth, like I just won a title fight. I shrug him off and then a car moves past and I recognise the driver.

  “Noah?”

  I watch the car drive past the chippy and turn up Barns Road.

  “Who’s Noah?” Tommy’s squinting at me, and I’m not sure if it really was him, or if I just thought it was.

  “Who’s Noah, Luke?”

  “In the car. I thought I saw someone, from college.”

  “Round here?”

  “I dunno, probably wasn’t him. He’s a teacher.” I feel myself shiver from the cold as I try to picture Noah standing at the front of the class, but all I see is Leia, pointing her gun fingers.

  Tommy snorts and spits a greeny. “No teachers round here, Lukey.”

  I stare along the empty road and try to imagine where Leia is right now, what she’s doing.

  “What’s your favourite film, Tom?” I turn to him. His shoulders are up by his ears, trying to hide from the cold.

  “Dunno,” he says. “Don’t really have a favourite.”

  “I know it depends on the mood and that, but if you had to say one, like now, what would you pick?”
r />   And I watch him think, picturing shelves of DVDs stretching out either side of him, like Neo choosing weapons in The Matrix.

  “Die Hard II.”

  “What?”

  “Die Hard II. Die Harder.” He’s smiling proudly.

  I frown. “Die Hard II? That’s your favourite film?”

  Tommy nods. “Right now, yeah.”

  “What about the first one?”

  Tommy lifts his hand like he was expecting me to ask.

  “Number two is the same but with aeroplanes, so it’s better. The bit when he lights up the runway with the petrol from the plane and it blows up … that is so sick!”

  I picture the scene, Bruce Willis lying bloodied on the snowy runway, throwing his lighter and watching the trail of flames jump up into the air, making the plane full of bad guys explode.

  So many of our favourite things are passed down. It’s the younger brother template. The first Die Hard films were made years before we were even born, but through older brothers and our dads, we’ve taken them on as our own. We have that in common.

  Tommy mimes flicking a cigarette – “Yippee Kayaaaay!” – then pulls open the door. Noise from inside spills out over us and, just for a second, I get the feeling we’re being watched.

  Dad was actually on TV.

  He never went to drama school or anything. He was in town with Uncle Chris and some agent spotted him. He was training to be a mechanic.

  I know the story well.

  Straight away, the agent got him a walk-on part in a science fiction series called Babylon 5. He told Dad it would be his big break. They flew him to California to film it and everything.

  ‘Big Alien Pilot’ was his character. His scene happened in the space station bar. He starts a fight with one of the main characters and gets beaten up, even though he’s twice the size of the other guy. We used to sit around as a family and watch it on video, Dad doing live commentary from the sofa. I reckon I’ve seen it a hundred times.

  When you’re seven and you watch your dad on TV in blue skin make-up, a pair of prosthetic horns and a leather waistcoat, looking bigger than everyone else, it’s pretty cool. That’s my dad! type thing.