GodBomb!

by Kit Power

  Pause. Looking in the boy’s eyes.

  “To be honest, it still doesn’t.”

  Nothing.

  “Anyway. I was basically a good kid. Popular. Good at sport. Not that great in class. Didn’t much care for learning. Just wanted to hang out with my mates, really. Pretty normal.

  "My father died when I was twelve. Cancer. He smoked; mum smoked. He got sick quick, diagnosed late. Told me he had it, and three months later he was gone.

  "My dad, he was a big man, you know? Strong man. Plumber by trade, good with his hands. Cancer ate him from the inside. Ate the muscle right off his bones.

  "I remember visiting him in hospital, the day... the day he passed. He was dosed to the eyeballs, didn’t know we were there. I remember how thin he looked. You could see his skull through the skin of his face. You could... when I held his hand, I remember how his skin felt so dry. Like paper or something.

  "He passed on a Sunday. I woke up hearing my mum crying in the kitchen. She’d got the call and just fallen down in the kitchen, sobbing. When I went down there, I saw her sitting on the floor. I knew. I went and sat in her lap, and we cried together. I remember that she held me, but she couldn’t stop crying. I remember that her breath was bitter, bad. I remember it made me feel ill - her bitter breath in my face as she cried.

  "She never really stopped crying, I don’t think. Never stopped mourning him. She started drinking that day. Gin and tonics, as soon as she could stand again. Stayed drunk to the funeral. I remember when everyone else had left, it was just us standing at the grave. She was still crying. I wanted her to stop, to feel better. Wanted it more than I wanted him back, even. I knew he wasn’t coming back. So I said ‘Mummy, he’s in heaven now’.”

  Mike takes a breath here. None of this is easy, no matter how many times he tells it – but this part is the worst for him. He can’t tell it without feeling it again. The shame. The hurt.

  “She... She went very still. Then she squatted, so we were face to face. She looked me in the eyes. Then she hit me.”

  Mike swallows, somehow does not choke.

  “It was a proper wallop – my mum could pack a good one when she needed to. It hurt. I cried out in pain, I remember that. Then she grabbed my shoulders, squeezing really hard. ‘Don’t you ever talk that crap to me again. Don't! You! Ever!’ each time...”

  Mike mimes shaking a child.

  “... like this. She was so cross; she got spit on my face. I said sorry, and then she sat back and really started wailing. I tried to hug her, but she was just limp. I held on anyway.

  "She never hit me again. She just withdrew. From me, from everything. She stopped working. Kept drinking. Kept smoking too. I’d come home from school, see her sitting there on the sofa, watching soaps, smoke in one hand and G and T in the other. If I close my eyes...”

  He does so.

  “...I can still see her like that.”

  He opens his eyes again, his gaze settling on the face of the boy, but his sight has turned inward.

  “I stopped praying. In assembly, whenever we were supposed to bow our heads, I’d just stare at the teachers who were supposed to make sure we were doing it. They knew I’d lost my dad. They left me alone.

  "And I started smoking. Getting the fags was easy. Mum bought them by the box, so I’d just rob packs out of there whenever I wanted. I’d hear her swearing about it sometimes, muttering about how fast she was getting through them. Complaining about the price.

  "And I started drinking. Again, it was easy. She stopped getting up in the mornings, you see. Was always sleeping off the night before. I’d just take gin from the bottle she’d been on the previous evening. Put it in a juice bottle. Hide it under my bed. The smell made me feel sick, so I’d mix it up with lemonade to try and make it taste better.

  "The first time I did it, I had no idea about how much I should drink. How much was too much. I got really sick. I remember hugging the bowl of the toilet, really heaving my guts out. That really bitter taste you get when you can’t puke anymore, but you can’t stop. I could hear the sound of the TV coming through the floor. It sounded like a nightmare, all muffled and distorted. Horrible. Could smell the cigarette smoke too. I remember thinking ‘God, I want to die. Just let me die, God.’ I woke up in the early hours, asleep on the toilet floor. Had a towel for a blanket. Probably I just pulled it over myself. But I remember thinking that maybe Mum had done it. Seen me asleep on the floor and covered me.”

  Mike blinks rapidly, sending a single tear running down his cheek. He appears not to notice this.

  “Started getting in fights too, at school. Kids... kids smell weakness. Doesn’t matter how popular you are. If you look weak, act weak... Well, you know. They knew how to hurt me, and they did. Being a big kid, I hurt ‘em back. They’d say something about my dad, and I’d throw a fist. The first kid, I beat him so badly he had to be sent home, didn’t come back for a week. The teachers knew what the boy had said, so I didn’t get in big trouble, but they made it clear that I couldn’t keep lashing out.

  "But the taunts kept coming, and I couldn’t stop myself. And after a couple more fights, I started getting detentions. On the last day of term, during the afternoon break, it was one of the girls who started mouthing off. Saying she’d heard my dad died of syphilis, from being gay.”

  Pause.

  “People talk about the red mist, right? They say when you get that angry, you lose control. Stop thinking. It wasn’t like that for me. I knew exactly what I was doing. I looked around, saw Kenny with his cricket bat. I took it off him, pulled it out of his hands, pushed him over. He fell on his bum as I turned around. I didn’t feel anything. I walked up to the girl. She had that ‘what are you looking at’ face. And one of those angry smiles. Like when someone is glad they hurt you.

  "She was still smiling like that when the bat hit her jaw. I think she thought I was just threatening her; that I was going to pull it at the last minute. She didn’t want to show she was scared. Didn’t want to lose face.”

  Mike can’t help but laugh, even though he feels sick with shame.

  “Her lower jaw went sideways. I remember feeling the impact all the way up my arm as the end of the bat hit her face. It just went sideways. There was a crack, louder than the smack of the wood. I saw...”

  He swallows, does not retch.

  “...I saw a tooth come out her mouth. Blood and spit. I remember staring in her eyes. I remember her face frozen, total shock. I could hear footsteps across the gravel; someone running and yelling. But I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. I looked her in the eyes. Saw the tears welling, the total shock. And I smiled.

  "Then the teacher rugby tackled me hard enough that I was knocked out when my head hit the ground.

  “I was lucky on that score, at least. The concussion put me in hospital, so I didn’t end up going straight to the police station. I was out of it for a while. When I came around, my mum was in the room. She looked terrible. Really old. Like she’d been crying a lot, you know? Yeah. She said I was a disappointment, a disgrace. Said she didn’t want anything more to do with me. Said I disgusted her. She said...”

  As often happens at this part, Mike hesitates, and in his mind hears his father’s voice: ‘Tell it, son. Tell the truth and shame the devil’.

  He swallows.

  “She said my dad would be ashamed of me. Then she left me in the hospital. I think... I think she stuck around just to make sure I wasn’t going to die. Once she knew that, she didn’t care anymore.

  "I knew I had to run away. I mean, they were going to arrest me, put me in a borstal for all I knew. And even if they didn’t, I couldn’t go back to that school, or to that house. I didn’t have it in me. I was meant to be staying in one last night for observation, so I waited until the evening shift change, and I just snuck off.

  "Getting home was scary – I knew the route, but it was too far to walk, so I hitched. I got lucky, made it back to the house okay. I used the spare key, under the plant po
t. She was already passed out on the couch. I took a couple of changes of clothes, the carton of fags, two bottles of gin and all the cash in her purse, about forty quid. Never left a note. Just took what I needed and left.”

  Mike pauses, lost in the flow of memory, the pulls of the currents. He remembers so much when he talks like this, recalls things long past, buried. It’s not him, he knows, it’s God’s work, no question. He feels the power of the story. How much to tell? What matters?

  Let go and let God.

  “The cash got me to London. I knew that was where I wanted to go. I remember getting off the train, the crush of people. Totally overwhelming. I remember feeling scared then. Really scared. And... trapped. I had nowhere to go back to, and nowhere to go to either. It was horrible. I felt lost. I was lost. I thought about throwing myself under one of the trains. But I couldn’t. I was too scared of how much it would hurt.”

  Pause.

  “That was the first time I can remember thinking about killing myself. Thirteen years old at Euston train station.

  "Anyway. I didn’t die. Got good at begging, instead. There were a lot of homeless around the station. Lots of drunks, junkies. They took me in, basically. It helped that I had gin to share. And after a few days under the arches, I looked pitiful enough that people’d give me change.

  "That became my life, very quickly. Beg for money, money for booze and food, crash under the arches. It actually wasn’t so bad. No-one made fun of me or tried to make me angry. Nobody knew me. I remember people tried to rob me a couple of times, but I was strong enough to fight them off. I looked hard enough that most didn’t bother anyway.

  "Gradually, I found out about shelters, places I could get a free meal, a bed for the night. That gave me more money to spend on booze. And somewhere along the way...

  "No, I suppose I need to tell it, don’t I? There was a girl. Billy. She begged outside Kings Cross a lot. And she turned tricks too, when the money was tight. She took a bit of a shine to me. She was older. I don’t know how old – never did find out. She liked me. I think mainly because I was big. She thought I could protect her. Anyway. We became friends. Lovers. And she had been using heroin since she was twelve, so when she told me how it felt, how it made all the bad things go away...”

  It’s like he’s back at the NA meeting when he finally decided to share, the story pouring out of him like a flood. Not how he normally tells it with a church audience, but it feels right. In fact, it feels good. There’s a cleansing to it, laying bare all the scars for inspection. It all serves to make the Glory that much greater.

  “I wasn’t hard to convince. And I liked her too. Didn’t want to seem like a wimp. So I did it with her. And it was like... It was like falling in love. Really. All the love songs I’d heard suddenly made sense. This was the feeling. This stuff was love. It was pure. It took away all the pain, just like she said. It all went away.

  "Somewhere around here, we found ourselves a squat, so we had a base. It was cold in the winter, but it was year round dry, somewhere we could huddle up. Keep each other warm.

  "The heroin was better than the booze, but I’d been drunk every day since I ran away, and I’d been on the street by now almost a year. So I needed both. And of course, with smack, there’s really no such thing as enough.

  "So I begged, and occasionally shoplifted, and Billy went back to turning tricks.”

  It’s like having a bad road accident on a bike; he thinks. You end up with lumps of gravel under the skin.

  “I could tell you I tried to argue, or stop her. But I didn’t. The truth is I didn’t much care what she did, as long as she brought back the smack and as long as she shared. And she did. She always did. She got beaten up pretty badly a couple of times, I remember that. One time, I remember waking up next to her, it was the middle of the night I think, and seeing blood soaking into her pants, like she’d been cut. I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up, the blood was gone.

  "Time works different when you’re high all the time. There’s basically two types of time: gear time, and no gear time. Gear time is good, obviously, but it really flies by. If you’ve got a good supply, gear time can eat up days and weeks. Easy. When you’re out of gear and cash, though, when it’s been a few hours and you’ve got no money and you don’t know how you’re going to get some, that’s when every minute crawls by. Time slows down and down until you think you’re going to die, because of how long each breath takes. And you sort of don’t mind dying, really, except you think you’d miss getting high again, and that was always enough to keep me going.

  "We got moved on, of course. London’s always bulldozing and rebuilding. We managed to stay one step ahead of the bailiffs, find a new spot. And most of the time was gear time, and the months and seasons just fell away from me. I got to where I couldn’t tell you what day of the week, what month it was. I had a sense of the seasons thanks to the weather, but that’s as far as I could do with the passing of time. We stayed high; we stayed together, I begged and stole; she begged and turned tricks.

  "You’ve always got something to do; that’s the thing. Either getting to where you can score or getting high.”

  Mike smiles.

  “Busy, busy, busy.

  "Billy died in the winter of nineteen seventy nine. She’d gotten painfully thin by that point, and the tricks had turned cheaper and meaner. One of them broke her nose, and it didn’t set right, and that made working harder. It made her better for begging, but it was less reliable money, and we’d gotten used to how much she could bring in tricking. Gotten used to the amount of smack we could get through in a week. So when our earnings went down, it was bad. We both got sick that winter. Looking back, I couldn’t tell you where illness took off and withdrawal began.

  "Anyway. We got sick, which got us out less, which made the begging harder. Less money, less smack. Vicious circle. And then the snow came. We’d been through a cold one the year before, but this was something else. It just fell and fell and fell. The city pretty much ground to a halt. No-one going anywhere. I remember when we woke up and saw it, two feet deep and still falling, Billy just looked at it and back at me and burst into tears.

  "We cooked up everything we had left, loaded two spikes, and then cuddled up together, all our clothes on; blankets wrapped around us. We just huddled together in the corner and nodded off. I remember feeling her tremble under all the layers. I remember how I could see my breath, pulling a blanket up over my face. I remember nodding out. I remember thinking ‘I don’t care if I don’t wake up’.”

  Mike is lost now, completely swept away by the wave of memory. Mouth moving on automatic, mind turning pictures and feelings into words as best it can.

  “I did wake up, eventually. It was still cold. Bitter. The first thing I remember was I couldn’t feel the end of my nose. She was wrapped around me, like another layer of bedding. Not moving. We both had all our clothes on. I remember holding her tighter, trying to feel a breath. But her face was on my shoulder, and I couldn’t see her breath, couldn’t feel it on my skin.

  "She was still warm, on the side pressed against me. But I knew... I knew.

  "Couldn’t tell you how long I sat there. Couldn’t tell you. I tried to pretend it was a dream; then I tried pretending it was a game, that she was just holding her breath.

  "Then I tried pretending I was dead too. Held my breath a few times, feeling the world go grey, but I always came back. I wasn’t dead. She was.

  "Eventually, I managed to get up. She was dead weight, but so thin. It wasn’t hard to untangle myself. Standing was tougher, I remember that. Not sure how many days we’d been there, but my legs didn’t want to get under me. Eventually, they did. I just stood, leaning against the wall. I looked down and saw her, still hugging my legs, face resting on my boot.”

  Did he need to tell them that he saw her still, when he closed his eyes, in his dreams? He thinks not. He thinks they know. He thinks maybe they see her too, now.

  “Eventually I
left the squat. Never went back. Didn’t tell anyone. What could I say? I felt hollowed out, by the cold and the junk. Like there was nothing inside of me. Walked through the snow. Eventually found a church, lights on. I was cold to the bone by then, shivering really hard, teeth proper rattling in my head. I didn’t have a plan, but when I saw the light, I was just pulled in.

  "The church was busy, despite the snow. Maybe because, I don’t know. I sat at the back. There were heaters in the aisle, and I sat near one, ignoring the service and the hymns and all that, just letting the heat into me, trying to suck it up as best I could. By the time the service was over, I felt halfway alive again. It felt like what I’d just been through was melting along with my skin unfreezing.

  "At the end, people lined up to get out, shaking hands with the vicar. I stayed back, hanging around the heat and hoping I could avoid having to do that, but he stuck around, and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get away. So I shuffled past and shook his hand when he offered it. His grip was strong, and I looked up into his eyes. They seemed kind. I mumbled thank you, feeling ashamed. He asked if I was on the street. I said I was. He was still holding my hand, and I remember worrying he was going to start preaching at me or something, but instead he took a fiver out of the collection plate and gave it to me. ‘Go with God,' he said with a smile. I thanked him again. Even managed a smile. A real one.”

  Mike’s eyes lock onto the boy's, snapping back into focus from the long past to the bleeding present.

  “Because now I knew I’d be able to score.”

  Mike smiles, the same tight smile he had on that day, and he sees the boy’s face crinkle around the eyes, sees he is grinning back. He holds the moment, the smile, and the boy laughs, and as he does, so he lowers his head, shaking it, still chuckling. Mike’s gaze follows him down, then snaps into the congregation, stage left three rows down, aisle seat, and he locks onto the blazing eyes of the young woman with the short hair. His friend. He raises an eyebrow, just a fraction. Her face explodes with a grin that vanishes almost as soon as it’s appeared, warming his whole body. She inclines her head, raising her brow, and Mike allows his left hand to twitch down once, at his side.