Life, Interrupted

by Damian Kelleher

  ‘Well, at least you won’t have to worry about getting sunburnt,’ I point out.

  Heidi whacks another ball straight at the bowler, Andrew Shelby, who instinctively holds up his arm and catches her out in an incredible display of hand/eye coordination.

  ‘Howzat!’ shouts someone.

  ‘Do you know, until this term, I never knew people actually said that?’ says Freya. ‘It’s quaint, isn’t it?’

  Mr Berry’s arm shoots up.

  ‘Out!’

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever actually have to bat this term?’ says Jack as Ethan Todd strides up to the crease.

  ‘No, not today, anyway,’ says Freya, brightly. ‘Look there’s only fifteen minutes to lunch now.’ She holds up her watch triumphantly. She wears this big old bloke’s watch from the Seventies that she bought in a jumble sale a few years ago. It’s all shiny chrome – ‘a design classic’, she calls it. ‘So it’s the final, on Saturday? Jesse’s getting all keyed up about that. He’s training really hard. You coming, Jack?’

  ‘This Saturday?’ He’s sucking on a blade of grass. ‘Yeah, why not?’

  ‘You’ll be there?’ she says to me.

  ‘Of course I’ll be there,’ I say. ‘I don’t have much choice.’

  ‘You’ll love it really,’ Freya enthuses. ‘They’re expecting a big crowd, Jesse says. And I know exactly what I’m going to wear . . .’

  At the end of history, our last lesson of the day, I’m ready to make a quick getaway. I shove my books in my bag and make a dash for the library. I just need somewhere quiet to think things through, and I know on a Friday it’ll be deserted. I won’t be disturbed in here. There are two studious Year Eights doing their homework, and the school librarian, Mrs Curren, is looking at something on screen as I go in, and gives me a smile as I take a seat in the far corner by the nonfiction. It’s normally dead at this time of day and I figure that’s just what I need to sort my head out.

  I’m running through stuff in my own mind, trying to work it out – what I saw, what it means, what I’ll say to Stu – when I look up and I see Mrs Curren watching me out of the corner of her eye. I fish out some homework from my bag just to make it look more convincing.

  I like her, Mrs Curren. I remember when I was in Year Seven we were told we had to bring a book in for private reading every week. Some kids already had books, but a few of us didn’t, so I went along to the library. We stood around, about five of us, looking gormless and acting like we knew what we were doing. She took it in turns to have a chat with us all, get to know our names, ask us what we were interested in. Then she sat us down at the big table in the middle and brought a pile of books along. We all looked at the covers and chatted a bit, and bit by bit, we’d pick up a book that she’d talked about and I could see she was match-making us. She pushed a book called Holes in my direction, and told me a little bit about it – not too much, so I wouldn’t need to read it, but just enough to get the interest levels up. I got so into it that I read it in a couple of days.

  ‘Gosh, that was quick,’ she said when I brought it back. ‘What do you fancy next?’

  I look up now, and there she is, standing right in front of me. She’s wearing blue jeans and a green cardigan, with a row of pearls, and she’s got a very snazzy bob. Very elegant, Mrs Curren. Bit of classic, bit of modern.

  ‘Not reading today, Luke?’ she asks in her sing-song voice. I always thought libraries were places that were meant to be pin-drop quiet, with heels squeaking on the polished flooring, but Mrs Curren says, ‘Speak up, it’s a library not a cemetery’ when people start whispering at her. She told me once that she was a bit deaf, and she couldn’t hear when people whispered, but I think that’s just a pretence. ‘I like to keep a lively library,’ she says.

  ‘No, Mrs Curren. Just some homework.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear the news about your mother, Luke.’ She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘How are things at home?’

  ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘My uncle lives with us now.’

  I’m thinking I could do without this, but she sits down next to me and I can hardly tell her to bog off (which I wouldn’t do anyway, because I like her).

  ‘How’s that going? You and your brother getting on okay with him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say truthfully. ‘I think so. It’s different. He’s never had kids before so I suppose it takes a bit of getting used to. And he’s moved down from Manchester to look after us.’

  ‘Manchester?’ she says. ‘That’s quite a change of scenery for your uncle. He must care very much about you and your brother to uproot himself like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, realising I’ve never thought about this before. ‘Yes, I think he does.’

  ‘You’ve had a lot of upheaval in your lives recently,’ says Mrs Curren. ‘But it’s good to hear you’re sorting yourselves out.’ She looks straight at me, as though she can see exactly what’s going on in my head. How does she do that?

  ‘It’s early days, Luke,’ says Mrs Curren. ‘Getting to know each other takes time. These things always do, you know. As long as you keep talking, you’ll find a way through.’ She stands up and starts moving back towards her desk. ‘And don’t neglect your reading, either,’ she throws over her shoulder. ‘Books can make sense of all sorts of things life chucks at us, believe me. I’d never have got through my divorce without Marian Keyes.’

  chapter twenty-nine

  I slam the front door behind me with my usual vigour, yell ‘I’m back!’ and dump my bag in the hall. In my head I can hear some kind of echo, Mum barking ‘Don’t leave that there!’, so I pick it up off the carpet where I’d left it and lug it up to my bedroom. When I come back down, Stu calls out, ‘I’m in the kitchen’ and I find him chopping vegetables.

  ‘Jesse at football practice again?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, shoving two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘He’s bricking it. They announce the final squad for tomorrow at training this afternoon.’

  Stu nods.

  ‘That’s going to be one very disappointed kid if he doesn’t get picked for the big match,’ he says. He’s laying into a green pepper as though he has a personal grudge against it. ‘Don’t fill yourself up on toast,’ he warns. ‘I’m doing a stir-fry.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll eat that, too,’ I reassure him. ‘I’m a growing teenager, remember?’

  ‘Yes, you start chewing furniture if you haven’t eaten anything for more than five minutes,’ he says.

  ‘Tea?’ I hold up the kettle and he nods.

  ‘Yeah, why not?’

  There’s a little pause here while I fill it up – and while I’m plucking up the courage to say something, he nips in there first.

  ‘Luke,’ he begins, ‘I’m glad Jesse’s not here. I wanted to have a quiet word.’

  Oh-oh, this sounds ominous. ‘Quiet word’ in my experience means a no-nonsense, stop-beating-around-the-bush bollocking. I can practically see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, and my pulse starts racing. I concentrate very hard on buttering two slices of wholemeal toast.

  ‘Last night,’ he carries on, speaking quite slowly and deliberately as though he’s being very picky in his choice of words, ‘I got a lift home from a friend who came in for a drink.’

  I throw a couple of teabags in two mugs as nonchalantly as I can manage and start pouring on boiling water.

  ‘And when my friend left, I think you were still up, weren’t you?’ He’s still chopping, but I figure it’s just so he doesn’t have to look me in the eye. His knife motion isn’t quite so energetic now.

  ‘I wasn’t still up,’ I explain, putting my toast down on the plate. ‘I had gone to bed when you told me to. But it’s just that Jesse got a bit upset, so I went to see what was wrong with him.’

  ‘But you were watching from upstairs, weren’t you?’

  ‘No . . . well, yes. I mean, I wasn’t spying . . .’

  ‘But you did see me saying goodbye to my frie
nd?’ says Stu.

  ‘Yes, I saw you saying goodbye to Luiz.’ I figure it’s time for one of us to come clean.

  ‘Ah, right,’ he says, looking a bit sheepish. ‘I thought I saw something moving on the landing out of the corner of my eye.’ He stops chopping and puts down the knife as I pass him his tea.

  ‘Are you angry?’ I ask.

  ‘No, not with you.’ He shakes his head in a resigned way. ‘Only with myself.’

  There’s a pause. I know I have to say something.

  ‘It’s not a crime to be gay, you know. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  Stu takes a deep breath. ‘Oh, it wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it. I had. But you and Jesse both had so much to contend with, what with Patty and her illness. The last thing I wanted to do was drag you through another emotional minefield.’

  He motions to the kitchen table, the veg chopping abandoned for the time being, and we both sit down with our tea and what’s left of my toast.

  ‘But why did you keep it secret? You could have just told me, you know.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be a secret,’ he protests. ‘I’m not ashamed about being gay. It’s hard to explain really. I’d never wanted to hide it, but I’d never found the right time to tell you. I know it was a cop-out, but I suppose I was afraid how you might react.’

  ‘Did Mum know?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he gives a little wry smile. ‘She’s always known. She used to joke that she knew before I did! I don’t know why she never mentioned it. Once a Catholic, I suppose. And then she had so many other things to worry about – her illness, what the consequences might be, what the future would be like for you two if she died. Me being gay wasn’t really top of her agenda.’

  ‘You mean it didn’t really matter?’ I ask him.

  ‘I suppose so. It never bothered her so I suppose she didn’t think it was an issue.’ He stops and takes a sip of his tea.

  ‘It’s not,’ I say.

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘An issue,’ I tell him. ‘It doesn’t matter. Why should it? What happened to Mum has mucked your life up as much as ours – more in fact. Jesse and I are still at the same school, with the same friends, living in the same house, thanks to you. You’re the one who’s given everything up for us.’

  Stu puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a little pat. Without wishing to sound like a total dishcloth (wet and very sloppy), he’s given me a few hugs since Mum died, and I can’t deny it’s helped. I reckon now is as good a time as any for me to return the favour. I can see he’s a bit choked up – his eyes look glassy and he’s quiet for a moment afterwards and then he takes a big gulp of tea.

  ‘Look,’ he says softly, ‘I didn’t have to do this, look after you two. It’s my choice. It’s what I want, to be here with you and Jesse. We’re family, and that’s what families do – they help each other. They depend on each other. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d reached a point in my life where I needed a new start. I even needed some responsibility. There was stuff that was wrong in my life, that I needed to change, and I’m sorting that now. But what I can’t change is what I am, who I am.’

  ‘You don’t have to change, that’s what I’m saying,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t want you to change and I bet Jesse doesn’t either.’

  He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. ‘Really?’ He picks up a piece of my toast and steals a crafty bite.

  ‘Yeah, really. Except maybe those trainers.’

  Stu looks down at his feet. He’s wearing these dodgy all-white trainers that are totally spotless and horribly naff. They look as though he’s just sauntered straight out of Nasty Trainers R Us.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘What’s right with them?’ I tell him. ‘Next time you go trainer shopping, I’d better come along too.’

  ‘What are you, the fashion police?’ He laughs and goes back to chopping his vegetables.

  ‘I’m only being honest,’ I say. ‘It’s the best policy, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I think I got the message,’ says Stu. ‘By the way, you didn’t mention anything to Jesse about . . . about last night and Luiz did you?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him truthfully. ‘I avoid Jesse like the plague at school – it’s bad enough seeing him at home every day.’

  ‘Well, make yourself scarce after supper and I’ll tell him tonight,’ he says. ‘No point in hanging about, is there?’

  ‘Not wearing those trainers, no,’ I say, and race out of the kitchen as he hurls a rather large carrot at my head.

  When Jesse gets home, it’s good news. He stands on the doorstep ringing the bell and screaming through the letterbox, ‘I’m in! I’m in!’ like some kind of demented postman, so we somehow manage to work out that Jesse has indeed been selected to play for Joan of Arc comprehensive in the Inter-County Schools Under-16s Challenge Final tomorrow. Stu and I are in a good mood too. We’ve cleared the air now and it feels better, and I never thought I’d admit it but I’m getting excited at the prospect of the big match. Once we’ve wolfed down the chicken stir-fry (we like), I start getting up from the table.

  ‘It’s your turn to do the washing up, Luke,’ says Jesse.

  Before I can tell him where to stick his rubber gloves, Stu says, ‘No, I’m on washing-up duty tonight, Jesse, and you’re going to help me. I want the full lowdown on tomorrow’s match. Now, what are Thurston like in midfield . . .?’

  So while Stu starts buttering up Jesse for his heart-to-heart, I nip off upstairs to phone Freya and admit that, as usual, she’s right and I was wrong. The thing about Freya is, she’s not one of those ‘told you so’ merchants. After I relate the afternoon’s conversation, she says, ‘I’m really proud of you, Luke,’ and that makes me feel even better because Freya never says stuff she doesn’t mean.

  ‘How’s Jesse taking it?’ she asks.

  ‘Doesn’t know yet. Well, at least he might do by now. Stu’s telling him, while they wash up.’

  ‘Ooh, the night before the big match,’ she says. ‘It’s not going to upset him, is it?’

  ‘Ah, I never thought of that,’ I admit, ‘and I don’t think Stu did either. Well, he must have told him by now. I’d better go and find out how it’s gone down. What time are we meeting tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll be there fifteen minutes before the match,’ says Freya.

  ‘You don’t want to come round here first? We can give you a lift.’

  ‘No, I’ve got some finishing touches to put to my outfit,’ she says. ‘I’m having a few problems with the chicken wire.’

  When I get downstairs, Jesse is lolling all over the sofa watching more football on the box. No sign of Stu, but as I look out through the window, I can see he’s in the garden on his mobile to someone.

  ‘Feet,’ I say as I go to sit down, and Jesse grudgingly gives up half the sofa space to me.

  ‘Help Stu with the washing up, did you?’ I ask.

  Jesse is totally engrossed by the game.

  ‘What? Oh yeah,’ he says. Totally vacant, as usual.

  ‘Did you have a little chat?’

  He looks at me, puzzled. ‘Chat?’

  ‘You know – did he say anything to you?’

  He bottled it, I’m thinking. Stu didn’t have the guts to tell him after all.

  ‘What, you mean that’s he’s gay?’ says Jesse, still riveted to all the little players bombing around the pitch after the ball.

  ‘Oh. He did tell you then?’

  Jesse throws me another perplexed look.

  ‘Yeah.’ He turns his head back to the TV. ‘I don’t mind,’ says Jesse, picking up the remote and bumping up the volume a couple of notches. ‘Why, does it bother you?’

  ‘Me – no,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t tell us before. Bit silly keeping it quiet. Sometimes I wonder about Mum, you know.’

  ‘What? She wasn’t gay was she?’ says Jesse, his mouth dropping open. />
  ‘No, you prat. I mean, she never mentioned boyfriends, did she? Dad ran off and got a new life with a new wife and kids, but Mum never had anyone else after Dad.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ says Jesse. ‘But I don’t think she did. She would have said.’

  ‘I suppose we took up all her time. Well, us and work. I wish she had had boyfriends,’ I say. ‘I wish she’d had more fun while she was alive.’

  ‘Stu’s got a boyfriend,’ says Jesse, smirking. ‘He told me. And I know who it is!’

  ‘Yes, so do I,’ I say. ‘It’s Luiz, isn’t it? The nurse from the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, you knew,’ he says slightly disappointed. ‘Ah, but I bet you didn’t know that he might be coming tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I say. ‘Where? Here?’

  ‘You know Luiz is from Brazil and he always used to talk to me about the footie because he’s such a big fan too? Well, Stu’s going to ask him if he wants to come to the match tomorrow.’

  Right on cue, Stu bursts into the room, waving the phone.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got a big, bald, noisy Brazilian to cheer Joan of Arc along. Luiz is on lates tomorrow so he can come to the match.’

  He looks at me and asks, ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I smile back. ‘I like Luiz. And anyway, Jesse and his mates are going to need all the support they can get.’

  chapter thirty

  It’s not just an army that marches on its stomach, says Stu. He reckons a team plays on it too, so on Saturday morning he’s up bright and early, armed with his trusty wok, and he’s frying bacon, sausages, mushrooms and anything else he can find in the fridge that’s not past its sell-by date, including an aubergine. The smell of sizzling bacon is better than any alarm clock and, even though Jesse claims he’s not hungry and can’t even begin to think about food, he sits down anyway and we all get stuck in to the kind of breakfast that Mum called ‘a heart attack on a plate’ and reserved solely for Christmases, birthdays and other special occasions.

  ‘This is a special occasion,’ Stu replies, when I point this out. ‘Not every day is it that my nephew gets through to the Inter-State . . . erm, what is it again, Jesse?’