Graffiti My Soul

by Niven Govinden

  ‘My father taught me how to play poker,’ says Casey. ‘When he left the army he was out of work for about a year, so we’d spend afternoons after school, kind of like you and me tonight, playing poker on the kitchen table. He’d tell me to close my eyes and imagine we were in one of those big casinos in Monaco.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We became frequent visitors to Monaco. He’d do some voices. Make it believable.’

  ‘He can’t have taught you very well, if you’ve got a fifteen-year-old beating your fruity behind.’

  ‘What have I told you about calling me that?’ he says, laughing so I know he’s not really annoyed. ‘Anyhow, I’m letting you beat me, that’s the point.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Case. Whatever you say.’

  I’m way happier talking about poker than I am hearing about grown-up sob stories. He should have dealt with that stuff ages ago, not left it smouldering to foist upon unsuspecting teenagers at a later date.

  ‘Why did you start running?’ I ask him on our fifth hand, when he’s as good as his word and thrashes me good and proper.

  I forget for a moment that I’m trying to act cool and uninterested.

  I’m expecting some poetic sub-Irish nonsense about the non-existent green hills of Wandsworth, of training in grotty back yards and pounding inner-city pavements. A glorious display of pure talent over poverty and all that bollocks. There’s none of that. I thought Casey’s buzzes might be the same as mine: enjoying the sudden drop you feel in your stomach as you arrive at the racetrack for a meet; breathing in that mixture of petrol, sweat and freshly cut grass at trackside (this being in Surrey means you’re never more than fifty yards away from the nearest car park); hearing the slightest of scuffles coming from behind when you first make it into the lead, as botched runners start to feel the power of the lion and strain to catch up; of positioning yourself in the starting blocks and waiting for that moment to descend when you cut out all the shit around you, disengage yourself from the people and the noise, and make yourself believe that you are the only winner on the track. That you’re not a loser who won’t amount to anything.

  All he says is, ‘Because I was good at it.’

  ‘That it? Because you were good at it?’

  ‘OK, Mr V-pen. And when I was on a run, and my legs were working, really working, so that I was ahead of everyone else, I felt fucking invincible. There’s no feeling that can beat that. Not that I know of, anyway. And believe me, I’ve been looking.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now nuthin,’ he goes, draining the last of the four-pack, the half Carling that I’ve left on the table for the past few minutes because it tastes like piss, and heading towards the kitchen. ‘I don’t run no more, so I’m never going to get those feelings back. What I can do, though, is help you sustain them. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘And is it enough for you? I mean, the Olympics . . .’

  ‘Ah, that was a long time ago. For the moment, this is fine.’

  And then, because I’ve had some beer and am feeling brave, and because alcohol can suddenly make you very clever, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were training someone else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The kid you’ve got. The one I saw you at Britney Spears with. You’re training him, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me about him?’

  ‘Because you didn’t ask.’

  ‘Very clever, fruit loop. But really, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because you didn’t ask! And I’ve told you about the cheek. Once more, and your mum can come and collect you. I mean it.’

  The reply comes sharper than before, the tone not what I was imagining. I know it’s not ’cos of the fruit thing, no matter what he says. He likes it, really.

  ‘Has Peter Platinum been talking to you?’ he asks. ‘He told me he’d told a couple of friends, other runners, but I didn’t think you’d be one of them. Fucking bigmouth, that kid. You know how little boys like to blab.’

  He laughs in a dirty way that I don’t like. Ordinarily I would have joined in with him, seen the joke, appreciated his rare display of irony, but alone with him on Pluto, I’m not in the mood.

  ‘Track talk, y’know,’ I go, wishing that I actually listened to track talk once in a while.

  ‘Ah, that windbag! Jesus! God forgive my taking your name in vain. Means that everyone knows if that fairy’s been talking. Christ!’

  Peter Platinum, a kid my age, is the gayest runner you’ll ever see. Runs like he’s in some fricking stage show. Eyes and teeth. Eyes and teeth. Hands swaying all over the place. Shame he’s faster than the wind. On a good day he can beat everyone. Pete hasn’t told anyone about the kid, apart from me; no one else knows, but it seems to satisfy Casey. The cupboard doors in the kitchen stop panic slamming.

  ‘Keep it to yourself, lad, same as Peter. This kid’s a good runner. I don’t want to ruin it for him by having gossip started.’

  ‘I wonder if you’re doing the same for me?’

  ‘What? Speak up, young Turk. What have I told you about mumbling?’

  I’m thankful for the kettle boiling and leave it. Now is not the time to be asking about my place in the world, where I fit in the scheme of things. I think for a minute.

  ‘What was your dad like?’ I call.

  ‘My dad . . .’

  ‘Did you get on with him? I hate mine, that’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Your dad’s your dad,’ he calls back.

  ‘That’s helpful.’

  ‘He’s the only dad you’ve got, so you have to lump it. Make the best of a bad situation.’

  ‘Don’t see the point.’

  ‘Well, maybe it’s time you should. My dad was the most sociable man you’d ever meet. Loved to talk to people. Big drinker. Never caused trouble or nothing, but he did like to have a drink.’

  ‘Was he what you’d call a good drunk?’ I go, thinking that it made me sound clever. I’d heard Mum use it before when she used to talk about one of her old patients.

  ‘Yeah, you could say that,’ is the reply that doesn’t make me any wiser.

  ‘Sounds like Jason,’ I go, trying to stop him from getting serious, but he’s not listening to me being a smartarse, he’s on a roll.

  ‘Loved my dad. Had some of my best times with my dad. Whether you drank with him or not, he always treated you good. Wasn’t the type of greedy bastard to sue a poor man ’til he has nothing. I think about him every day.’

  Cuckoo. Best not to ask about the mother. Hear she had a heart attack in her warden-assisted flat in Hackbridge when the Harrier news broke. It was one of Mum’s district nurse friends out on one of her rounds who found her. Last summer’s business, all twenty days of it, nearly finished the pair of them off.

  We bump into each other in the kitchen. He’s about to poke his head into the fridge, I’m taking my plate to the sink like a good boy. If I stay at that table one moment longer, he’s going to come over and hold my hand or something girly. Too much sincerity brings me out in a rash, but . . . what do I expect? I’m the one who asked him about the emotional stuff. I’m an idiot. A big one.

  ‘It’s not too late, you know. There’s no shame in having your dad as your best friend. Look how I turned out.’

  My head’s full of more steam than his poxy kettle. Him telling me off about something is preferable to hearing any more talk about dads. I smash his plate into the sink, reducing his crockery capacity by fifty per cent. The bollocking comes like a summer shower. It drowns out everything else.

  39

  Summer holidays. Mum working; not a district nurse yet, still at the hospital. Dad has the day off from the office and is babysitting.

  I’m eight years old, too old for babysitting, I tell him. I’m the tallest in my class. If you passed me in the street you’d think I was ten.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Jeya,’ Mum goes, ratty because she’s late and can’t find her keys, looking everywhere but in her pocket. ‘He can moan all he lik
es. He’s being looked after by his dad today and that’s final.’

  Yesterday, me and Jason were caught trying to pinch a Twix from the newsagent by the stupid old man that works there, who isn’t as slow as he seems. Bloody double mirrors. I don’t tell Mum that it was my idea, that I bullied Jason into it, almost having to knee him in the nuts to get over his wobbles, as we asked the old man to hunt in the back for a spare couple of cardboard boxes for our den. And we almost had it too. He popped back out just a microsecond into the crucial moment, when hand stashes gear into pocket. Next time we’ll know not to pansy around and be quicker.

  Mum has a different version of the story in her head, something related to Jason’s dad being investigated by the council for fraudulent accounting. Lumps the criminal minds together. The mammoth tongue-lashing I receive only stops when I agree to spend as little time with him as possible – hence Dad being here.

  Dad was looking at us funny last night. He doesn’t always seem used to how me and Mum go on at each other, snapping and moaning and nagging. Doesn’t realise that we don’t mean half of it. Some days it makes him fractious and prone to shout, especially when he comes home tired, but today, because he’s had a big fry-up and relaxed, he takes it all in his stride. Like Kindergarten Cop, he rolls his sleeves up, no nonsense.

  ‘I’m not babysitting you, my big grown-up Veerapen,’ he goes, quite seriously. ‘I’m just hanging out. Every dad needs to hang out with their son every once in a while.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I go, dropping the Godzilla and listening to what he’s got to say.

  He gives me a rundown of what he’s got planned, and the food we’re going to sneak into the house and eat, and he makes it sound good. Less babysitting, more day camp. It’s an excellent plan.

  Dad is always working, home really late, so it feels like I never see enough of him. His office at the chambers in town is like his second bedroom. If he’s worked late on a file and drunk a bottle or so of wine, he’s been known to sleep there. Been stopped drink driving once before, and too tight to take a taxi. If he’s not home and the phone rings around ten-thirty, you know where he’ll be kipping, in an office the size of the cupboard, on a sofa covered with a blue check blanket, which smells fuzzy, like how your mouth gets when you haven’t brushed your teeth for three days. And absence does funny things to my memory. The odd day goes by when I forget him completely.

  The day is a scorcher. One of those when I’ll be able to take my T-shirt off and still feel like I’m wrapped up like a roti in the oven. I already have my plans, to run wild around the garden like an Indian boy all day long – especially as Mum can’t do her hourly sunburn check. Examining my shoulders and back like a mortician, cool palm never leaving my forehead. But Dad’s plans come first. We’re hanging, those are the rules. Also, I am not allowed to use the garden because Dad laid turf at the weekend. If I’m found running over it between now and next weekend, I’ll get a bigger verbal than the one I received for the Twix. And a smacked bottom too, probably. Dad’s words, not mine.

  Mum has been shouting at him all summer to get the garden fixed. It had been OK last year, but winter had messed things up real good, and nothing had been done since. Mum and Dad have this deal – Mum will cook dinner every night if Dad does a spot of painting every once in a while, and more importantly, tends the garden. And what with Dad’s sleepovers, nothing has been done. It had all come to a head last Thursday. It was a beautiful day and Mum exploded, fixed her radar on Dad and let rip. Annoyed that she couldn’t sit outside because it looked so fucking ugly (her words, not mine). A couple of plates were smashed, nothing as bad as normal, but enough crashing about to create an atmosphere. I hid at Jason’s on the pretext of Playstation. In these situations home becomes how I imagine Mars to be: gassy and unbreathable. And usually I’m right. Two days and two sets of shattered glasses later, Mum gets her result: a stony, weedy plot levelled and transformed into parkland. It’s lush. All you can see is green. Thick, flat green that runs for miles – or so it seems.

  It feels too hot to be laying turf. It’s like saying that the best way to freeze an ice cream is by putting it into an oven. Too scared to tell this to Dad, though. He busts a gut with the clearing, cleaning and laying; huffing and puffing all the more because he isn’t sure about what he’s doing, and making me go on drink runs every ten minutes. By the time the day is out he’s gone through a five-litre water bottle, which takes me a long time to carry back and forth to the fridge because it’s so heavy, and ten tall bottles of Stella. That is some thirst.

  ‘I’m a working man, my Veerapen,’ he goes. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘But I’m tired.’

  He lets me have a sneaky sip of the Stella when Mum gets bored overseeing the makeover, and goes indoors.

  Now the garden is fixed, Dad waters his plot religiously morning and evening. On the nights when he doesn’t come home, Mum takes over. But none of this can stop the afternoon sun from doing its worst. The scorched patches that soon appear are first shrieked over, and then, when calmer, watered with more attention, and then, when that fails, discreetly ignored. By next weekend we’ll have a fully functional lawn all right, only charred to a crisp, with blades sharp enough to cut our legs to shreds.

  Once Mum is safely out of the way, Dad drives us to Sainsburys to stock up on junk. For me, that means Pringles, cheese string and all the Milky Bar buttons I can fit into the basket. Dad goes for all the spicy stuff Mum doesn’t let him have because it irritates his belly – jalapeno peppers, chorizo and a giant jar of Indian pickle, which he will feast on with one big spoon. The kind of mix that will keep him on the pot for the next three days, but neither of us care. Right now, the afternoon ahead is all about pleasure.

  I might be eight and look ten, but I’m not grown-up enough to stop holding Dad’s hand as we wander around the aisles, or too old for Funny Feet ice creams, which he tosses onto the conveyer at the last minute. There’s something nice and safe about holding Dad’s hand and swinging our arms as we walk back to the car; swinging and laughing over the thick girl at the checkout because she gave Dad change for a twenty instead of a ten. And Dad being Dad, he wasn’t going to pull her up about it.

  ‘I thought you’re supposed to be a lawyer,’ I say, once we’ve reached the far end of the car park, safely out of sight. ‘Honesty is the best policy, and all that?’

  ‘Course it is,’ he goes, ‘but you saw how stupid that girl was. If they’re going to employ a thicko, they can’t complain when the till doesn’t add up at the end of the day.’

  Dad has no time for shop people. It’s where him and Mum differ. She can happily talk to the woman behind the till all day, but then Mum’s a very chatty woman, when you catch her in the right mood. Dad, on the other hand, can barely hide his contempt and keeps all conversation to a minimum.

  ‘These shopworkers are too pushy these days, with their friendly-friendly “Call me by my first name” nonsense. All this pretending to be friends,’ he once complained to Mum after a particularly chatty session at Dickens and Jones when the pair of them went to look for a new hoover, and left an hour later. ‘Shop people should employ the same code as servants, as far as I’m concerned. Speak only when they’re spoken to.’

  ‘Says the man from Mauritius,’ laughs Mum, giving him a hug and ruffling his hair, which he hates. ‘Such snobbery! And where did you learn that? On your twenty-acre estate?’

  Dad tuts and disappears into his study (the dining room). He hates any reference to his poor childhood. If anyone asks, we’re landowners.

  I’m still worried about the checkout girl. Think about it for most of the ride home.

  ‘S’pose she gets into trouble?’

  ‘Suppose who gets into trouble? Speak properly, Veerapen!’

  ‘I’m supposing about the girl at the supermarket. Maybe we should give her the money back.’

  He gives this laugh, this loud hiccup thing that I hate. Goes on for ever. Means that I’m being a baby.

/>   ‘Forget it, my Veerapen! These big supermarkets can afford the odd loss here and there. In fact, they build a loss in. If we didn’t take this money, they might not reach their loss target, and then someone would really be out of a job.’

  ‘OK,’ I go. Taking his word for it, like I take his word for everything. He’s my dad. He’s the law.

  ‘But are we going to tell Mum?’

  He laughs again, like I’m suffering from insania.

  ‘Absolutely not!’

  We take out the ladder and climb onto the garage roof. It’s either hang out here or stay indoors, what with the garden, and I like the idea of having lunch on the roof. I bet Jason’s never done it. We can eat our naughty food and then lie on the black-gone-grey asphalt, prickly rather than scratchy when you first sit on it, and fry like eggs – Dad’s words, not mine. Getting the food up is tricky, as Dad insists on using a tray (Mum’s influence), meaning that I spill the drinks as he passes them to me at the top of the ladder and get shouted at. I want to cry, or sulk at least, but that only lasts for a minute. The weather’s too good, and it’s an afternoon of just me and my dad, and no irritating woman company.

  We sit over the door with our food, dangling our feet over the edge. Dicing with death. This must be what it feels like for people who jump out of buildings, except they probably don’t have cheese string and Funny Feet. Only tears. They probably aren’t wearing Buzz Lightyear flip-flops either. The flips themselves are kinda gay, but the Buzz picture on the soles are boss, that’s why I’m wearing them. Jason takes the piss every time he sees me wear them, which is every day, but he’s only jealous because I got them first. His feet have been sweating it out in a pair of Reebok all summer. They must stink.

  Dad is also sweating like a pig, but that may be because he’s eaten most of a microwaved chorizo and a jar of Indian pickle. He joins me on the Funny Feet. Him on his first, me on my second. I follow his moves, biting the big toe in one large chunk, and then nibbling the shorties; Dad making both of us laugh by pretending they’re Mum’s corny, bunioned feet.