— My name is Sheila Hudson, Butterfly woman tells Mum. She takes a clipboard thing out of her bag. It is made out of the same stuff as jeans so don’t drag it along the pavement or you’ll get holes in its knees. Now she opens the folder and takes out a little card and gives it to Mum. We have a similar plastic card thing at school which we put in the right box. Here I am, our cards say, completely at school and ready for my packed lunches. Mum takes Sheila Hudson’s card and looks at it.
— Tessa Wright, says Mum, glancing at Dad. — How can we help?
— Ms. Hudson was just on her way out, Dad says.
— This is a delicate matter, Butterfly woman tells her jeans-pad thing. — I’m here because—
— Some busybody has been spreading malicious rumors, interrupts Dad. His voice has balloons in it, now. Watch they don’t pop! He goes on: — I’ve told Ms. Hudson there’s been a mistake, and she’s going.
— Rumors, Mum says. — What do you mean?
— I’ll explain in a minute.
Mum’s face has gone very still. It’s the same face she had when someone crashed into our car in the supermarket park. Let’s just drive slowly along here following the arrows shall we? But what’s this? Only a car jumping backward straight into our way. Crunch!
— Are you all right? Mum asked me.
— Yes thank you. We crashed!
— Yes. Carefully she took a pen from the glove box. Then out she got, but not in a rush, the opposite in fact, more like a Slow Loris eating an orange: I’ll peel this thing, and then I’ll eat it, all in good time, just you wait and see. — Can I have your insurance details please?
She blinks at the lady from the cow sill now and says, — Would you mind telling me exactly what is going on?
The knitted butterfly tries to flap free again as the woman takes another breath but it’s pointless. — Of course, she says. Then she glances from me to Mum and Dad, moving her head too much as she does it, like the rubbish puppet at Jacob’s birthday. All the puppet could do was nod and clap and when it walked it looked like it was going in reverse. Watch out behind there. Crash. Herbivores generally have eyes on the side of their head which would make them very accurate in car parks. Nobody says anything for an odd long second but Dad folds his arms and this makes Sheila Butterfly take another flightless breath. There are loads of birds in Madagascar which can’t fly at all because of the useless predators.
— I think it would be best if we three had a discussion in private, the woman suggests.
Dad stares at her. Then he walks over to the bin and says, — Snack time, Son. What do you fancy?
— Orange juice without bits in, I say very quickly. — And a chocolate chip biscuit.
— Coming up.
He opens the cupboard and takes out a glass. I stand on one leg because suddenly this is brilliant. But Dad is going underwater-slow. I can swim a width without breathing, nearly. Orca is another name for killer whale. Like peas, they come in pods. Come on, Dad, we’re all waiting here with baited hooks. But something isn’t right at all. Have you ever seen two strange cats on a wall? Well Mum and Butterfly remind me of that. They’re both standing way too still, watching each other, and waiting, waiting, waiting, while Dad makes a slow-motion snack. David Attenborough has a camera that he uses to catch the droplets polar bears shake off their top-predator necks. And Mum is chewing her lip. Don’t eat it, Mum, we have biscuits. But waiting for them to arrive is so boring I decide to stand on the other leg.
No, no, no! How can a highly intelligent human being do something so slowly and still get it wrong? That’s orange squash, not juice, and a very incorrect digestive biscuit. I open my mouth to say hold on hold on hold on that’s a mistake you’ve made there, Dad, but I don’t, because my instincts tell me that anything I say right now will be bad for the whole species.
Mum and Butterfly watch as Dad pours out the wrong drink and sits the wrong biscuit on a plate. Anyone would think he was doing fascinating experiments. It’s not even for them! At last he puts the snack down carefully on the kitchen table and pulls back a chair and gives me an odd smile. — There you go, he says with the balloon still in his voice. — There you go.
I take a bite of digestive. Chameleons aren’t just camouflage experts: they have killer tongues. And it’s not only the biscuit which tastes odd right now. Everything does.
— What’s going on, Jim? Mum asks again.
— Perhaps we could talk next door? says Butterfly.
Dad growls: — This is Billy’s house. You can say what you have to say in front of him.
I take a little sip of squash. It’s all right. I would have preferred proper juice though, even if it did have to have bits in.
But hold on, what’s this? Butterfly puts her jeans file down on the side quite firmly and stands a little bit straighter up and says, — No, that would not be appropriate.
And something about the way that she says it sends a cat message to Mum, because she jumps off the wall and sort of swoops down on me with a headlamp smile and picks up the plate and glass and swishes me past Dad — too slow, Dad! —through the door into the front room. — Tell you what, she says, — you can finish your snack in front of the TV.
How about that! Yes, yes, yes, truly excellent news.
I say, — Life of Mammals, please.
— Which one?
— Meat Eaters.
— Again?
— Yes please.
She sighs but I can tell she’s not going to argue and she immediately proves me right by saying, — Okay, coming up, and launching into highly effective mode. She whips the DVD out of its box and slots it into the little tray, thank you tray, red light, in you go, blue light, and zip zap yes, yes, yes, that’s the right episode. Swelly music. Zebra’s eye. Yes!
Do you like David Attenborough? Of course, because everyone does, and so do I. I like all of him. But if I had to pick the bit I like best it would be relatively easy: I like his voice more than his other bits. God does not exist. But if there was a God, which there isn’t, because of the evidence, which there isn’t enough of, Son, he would sound exactly like David Attenborough, and Dad agrees with that. He might even have noticed it first. I’ve watched the DVD of Meat Eaters so many times I know nearly all the words.
But even though I do the thing of saying what David Attenborough says exactly when he says it the voices from the kitchen interrupt me just after the first kill. Not all of the words make sense, especially mixed in with Meat Eaters, but some do.
— Calm down, Jim. Please.
Truly explosive pace.
— Something, something, child protection, something, duty.
The fastest of all land animals.
— Explain myself to a fucking stranger.
Keep its head still even at such speeds.
— Please calm down.
But the impala is no slouch.
— Assessment team, something, work closely, something, police.
Cubs look on.
— Something, silly something, ahead and call them.
Long tail acts as a counterbalance.
— Jim, please . . . Cup of tea . . . He’s not serious.
They go quiet for a while then and I get to watch the excellent sequence including the bit Dad calls the money-shot in peace and quiet, right up to the distended belly. It means fat.
But just after that, no, no, no, at the part with the cub with the bloody head from sticking it into the zebra’s insides, no, no, no, the DVD starts jumping. Not this again. The screen goes all flickery like Great-Grandma’s bad eye. Old people always go wrong in the end and in that way Dad says they are just like everything else. That’s the thing about everything, Son: it all falls apart in the end.
I wait.
The cheetah cub jabbers his face in and out of the stripy stomach a thousand tiny times.
Come on come on come on you can do it.
But no.
After a bit the cub stops trying to get to the next sc
ene altogether.
When I was vertically a baby I posted some crackers into the video slot and ever since then I am sadly not allowed to touch either it or the DVD machine.
So I slide off the sofa arm and go for help which is called summering reinforcements.
The kitchen door is shut.
They are still talking behind it.
Mum says, — Of course I believe you, Jim. That’s why I see no harm in letting Miss Hudson talk to him.
— What’s the point? hisses Dad. — He ran away . . . straight into a fucking road.
Imagine the stillest thing you can imagine. A swing with nobody on it perhaps, or a hammer that’s fallen down the back of a sofa. That’s how still I go when I hear him telling. It’s in the past. That’s what he said. He said what I did was forgotten.
— And if that’s the case, Mum begins.
— What do you mean if that’s the case? Are you doubting me now, too?
Another thing that stays very still is a bear when it is asleep and I’m glad I’m not a bear because they hibernate in caves from the autumn right through the winter and all the way to the spring and sleeping is very boring. You just lie there with your eyes shut waiting until the morning. But hold on, maybe I am not right about bears because in fact they only have to go to bed once for the whole winter and then they are asleep and it isn’t the bit when you are asleep that is bad, it is the bit when you have to go to bed and when you are lying there waiting, waiting, waiting, staring at the shadows on the floor and down one side of the picture, which aren’t moving. I have to do that every day.
— Of course not, says Mum. — But if this is the situation we find ourselves in we don’t have a choice. We’ve nothing to hide, for God’s sake.
Butterfly woman starts planting more daffodil bulbs after that and I don’t hear all of it, only the bit at the end where she says, — Consent of just one parent is sufficient. I can’t hear what other horrible thing Dad says about me in reply to that because he’s using very evil muttering, which is not nice, because that’s what Miss Hart says: It’s not nice to mutter.
I back away from the door and up the stairs to my step. But I’m so angry that he told on me, instead of keeping it forgotten like he promised, that I don’t walk normally, no, no, no: again my feet by instinct go stamp, stamp, stamp.
Rabbits signal warnings of distress in much the same way.
But before I’ve even sat down next to the banister he’s out through the kitchen door and after me and I immediately feel two things at once. Shall I tell you what they are? Okay then, I will. First, I am cross with my feet for doing stupid babyish stamping again, because I know it drives him to destruction, and I don’t want him to be angry with me again, because I suddenly remember the hot chocolate. And the second thing is the opposite, and it’s this. He made my feet stamp by lying and I don’t care about having hot chocolate near the carpet, or even the snack and juice which he got wrong anyway, idiot.
Sadly it’s the second thing I feel the most and to prove it I look straight up at him as he comes across the hall and I lift my feet and do one big vicious thump with both of them at once. Take that, stairs.
Dad stops.
He is three or four steps below me and our heads are on roughly the same level which is called staring your enemy eye to eye.
I am so angry that my anger clips his because among other things my hair feels like a billion tiny spikes sticking into my head.
Dad leans forward.
He is feeling something huge, too. It has made his eyes all narrow and watery as they look at me very hard.
He knows me.
I can tell this because how else would he know precisely what to do to infect maximum damage on me now? He reaches out and slowly brushes his hand backward through my hair and although it may look like he means it nicely in fact his hand just jabbers the billion spikes.
It is also two things at once: lovely and agony.
But before I have a chance to say either sorry or I hate you he’s gone up the rest of the stairs past me three at a time.
His bedroom-office door shuts.
Click.
Sometimes when I go to school I say I don’t want to go to school I don’t want to go to school I don’t want to go.
And in a way I wish I didn’t say it, but it’s exactly the same as when you shut your eyes instead of letting a fly fly into them. You can’t stop them blinking and they can’t stop it happening either, they just see the fly coming and whap, they shut. The word for this is reflux. Fly, whap! reflux. They’re shut.
Reflux is another instinct from the ancestors, like when salmons swim upstream to get back to where they came from. Or at least they try to incredibly. The journey is fought with difficulties. The salmons may know the way but they don’t know what might happen on the journey. Somebody else may have moved the river into a canal or put a dam in the way. Damn that dam. Damn isn’t a bad word but you can’t say it at school. Even if you get upstream to school, there might be a bear there fishing with its claws.
Sometimes when I say, — I don’t want to go to school, Dad says, — And I don’t want to work today but hey, off we go, and he says it out of the side of his mouth like it’s all a very annoying joke.
Or sometimes he sits down next to me and rubs my head like he did just then, and says, — Son, I understand but that’s just the way it is, we don’t have a choice here, you have to go. And the voice he uses then is more like we’re finishing up at the beach and everyone’s disappointed that we have to go home.
But sometimes his voice will go all bright like the sun you mustn’t look at directly and he’ll say something like, — Well hold on now but they have splendid toys there and there’s so much to do and you love it when you’re playing with . . . all the toys, and all those friends, yes with all your friends, you just love it, I know. And for a little bit we both know that he can’t think of the name of anybody at school until he tries hard and carries on. — There’s Toby, he says, — and Simon, or Nick, which one is it, your other special friend there? You like playing with him, don’t you, I know you do. And his voice is so brightly colored it’s not nice: he’s like a chameleon stuck on orange in a green rain forest when he says that. Bad camouflage.
Mum comes out of the kitchen next. She sees me on the stairs and says, — Oh, I thought you were watching—
— It stuck.
— I see. Well, never mind. I’ll put it back on after you’ve had a chat with the lady, Sheila. She’s come especially to see you. You can watch the rest later. That’s a promise. Okay?
— I want to watch the rest first.
— Well, she says, — You can’t. Not just now. Once you’ve had your chat, okay?
I do a small growl.
— What’s the matter?
I don’t really know so I don’t say anything. Mum takes my hand. Hers is cool like the other side of the pillow. Mum sits me on the sofa. She turns off the television with the mote control and squats in front of me.
— So Sheila will ask you some questions, and it’s nothing to be worried about, you just have to answer them truthfully, okay? She’s a very nice lady. You’ll be a good boy with her, won’t you?
— I want to watch Meat Eaters.
— After she’s spoken to you, I promise.
— Predators please, now.
— Billy.
— Now!
— No. I really need you to be good.
— My head feels electric.
— God, not now, Billy, please.
— But—
— You have to be sensible.
— But—
— You will be, won’t you?
Mum sounds extraordinarily pleasing now. Please, please, please.
I growl again a bit harder this time and kick my feet against the sofa to demonstrate superiority. Mum pinches her forehead for a second, squeezing as if she thinks that’s going to help her decide what’s next to say.
But then the shape of B
utterfly woman is in the front-room doorway. Too late, Mum! She stands up with her eyes begging for mercy which is brilliant, victory to me, and she backs away.
Butterfly sits down on the coffee table just in front of me. She puts her jeans folder down beside her and smoothes the front of her skirt out and does another smile.
— Hello again, she says.
It’s hard to look at her face because when you feel shy faces are like bad magnets, very repulsive, so I look at the woolly butterfly instead and say, — Hello, to it.
— What’s your name? she asks in a slow just-in-case-you-are-stupid voice. But I’m not the stupid one here! She is. They told her my name and she’s already forgotten it.
— Billy.
— Billy. That’s nice. I’m called Sheila.
Let’s all tell each other obvious things all day shall we? No, let’s not. It’s very boring. Never suffer fools, Son. But then again don’t be rude. It would be rude to say yes you keep telling us you’re called Sheila, don’t worry we’ve got it, I know. So I don’t say that. Instead I concentrate hard on saying something nice about her name, too, and this is what I come up with: — The she-lions do most of the work in a pride.
She laughs. — I know! That’s true. But how are you, today, Billy?
If she wants to talk like this I suppose we have to talk like this: — I’m fine, thank you, I say. — And how are you?
— I’m fine, too.
— Good, I say. — Tigers are bigger than lions.
The butterfly wiggles then and that’s because when you laugh your chest shakes. Good luck, butterfly. Your only chance of flying is if this lady here takes you to a space where they have zero gravity.
— And how is your day going? she asks.
— Normally, I say.
— Normally? What do you mean by that?
— It’s a normal day.
— I see. And what makes a normal day for you?
This is a strange question but don’t worry, I know the answer. —Twenty-four hours, I say.
The butterfly struggles pointlessly again. It’s easier to look at the woman’s face now. She’s doing more normal smiling.
— I thought you meant that there has been nothing unusual about today for you, she says.
What I Did Page 5