Butterfly: — I understand.
There are lots of shotgun rules. Dad made them up quite quickly on the barbecue day when he bought it. I was looking at it in the huge supermarket we went to for charcoal and beer. There was a whole wall of water toys and Dad saw me looking at them and said, — Cheer up, it may never happen.
— What won’t?
— I don’t know. But in case it does, we should probably be armed.
— What’s armed?
— Tooled up.
— What’s—
— Never mind. Look . . . He leaned into the trolley, took out a box of beer, and put it on the floor. — Choose one, he said. — I’ve made room.
— That didn’t make sense because there was enough room anyway, but I didn’t argue. I chose the orange one nearest me very quickly instead.
Giraffe: — But the next step may well be out of our hands. We have a duty to report what’s happened, just as we must let the team know about Billy’s accident. These things are material.
— What does material mean? Dad asks quietly.
Mum, loud: — For Christ’s sake, Jim. What do you think it means? I told you. Ignore the child protection plan and they’ll get a court order to stop you seeing him entirely.
— That may not happen, says Butterfly swiftly.
Dad, almost too quietly to hear: — May not?
Dad put a hand on my shoulder when I chose the orange water pistol and said, — Are you sure?
— Yes.
— You’ll be filling it up faster than you can shoot it, though.
— What?
— Look at this one.
— But it’s . . . massive!
— So what? I’ve made room in the trolley.
We bought the big one. I was pleased and so was Dad, and Mum thought it was excessive, too.
— What Sheila is saying is technically correct, Giraffe begins, — but—
Mum: — But it may not matter. Christ, they spelled it out in the meeting. If you’d only deigned to come . . .
Dad: — I’ve done nothing wrong.
Mum: — Oh my God.
— Nothing, Dad repeats.
Mum: — The broken record again. It. Doesn’t. Matter. What part of that don’t you understand? Forget them banning you from seeing him; now you’ve fucked this up they’re likely to take him away entirely. But that’s probably what you wanted you selfish—
— Tessa! says Grandma Lynne.
Mum, still loud: — Well I just don’t know anymore. It’s probably true.
By the time the barbecue started, Dad was less massively happy about my shotgun. It fires a jet of water as thick as a reasonably fat carrot, and when it hits you it makes you immediately completely wet.
I hit Dad in the back when he was setting up the charcoal and he yelled, — Jesus! quite loudly which made Mum laugh.
By the time he’d changed his shirt he was smiling again, but he still said, — Okay. We need some rules for that thing.
— Come on now, says Grandma Lynne. — Tessa’s exhausted. We’re all very, very upset. Listen, Ms. Godwin — Rommi —what can we do to minimize the impact of this . . . unfortunate . . . setback?
— Well, I—
Dad: — I—
Have you ever tried to talk when you’re just about to be sick? I did, once. I’d gone all gray and shivery and Mum kept saying What’s the matter, and I didn’t want to say anything at all but in the end she was sounding so worried that I forced myself to say I think I’m going to be sick and then Whoa! I was sick. Dad sounds similar now.
— I’ll go.
Grandma Lynne: — Jim, be careful what you—
— No. I’ll go. Tessa’s right. It’s . . . all I can do. I’ll go, and I’ll stay away until everyone’s convinced I . . . until I can come back.
Grandma Lynne: — Don’t offer what you’re not willing to—
— I am willing. She says they might take him away. If it’s the only way of stopping that, I’ll go.
By the time the burgers were done I was not allowed to fire the shotgun indoors or at the windows or at cars or over the neighbors’ walls or our cat Richard or at people wearing clothes or anyone who said stop or looked annoyed. Mum laughed at Dad when he made up that last rule and said, — Lighten up. What did you expect?
— Okay, okay. Why not shoot . . . insects . . . off the plants, Dad suggested.
I did. It was excellent, until I decided to have a go at a bee on the lavender even though I didn’t really want to because I like them. I was so cross I’d squirted it I did it some more.
The bee drowned.
Butterfly: — Hold on, hold on. Nobody’s asking anyone to make decisions here and now.
After a pause, Dad replies, — No, but what’s the point of delaying the inevitable?
Butterfly: — Nothing is inevitable.
— Will they or will they not take Billy away from us?
— Nobody has said that’s going to happen. What we want . . . what everybody concerned wants, is what’s best for Billy. That is all we’ve said all along, and it hasn’t changed.
— But it’s a possibility, isn’t it?
Mum, sobbing: — It was a possibility from the moment you belted him!
Pause.
— It’s one of a number of possibilities, says Giraffe. — But it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.
Butterfly: — By no means at all. There are many avenues open to us. And if you’re willing to help with the process now, and we can demonstrate that, then despite this setback, the prognosis will be so much better.
After I drowned the bee I was angry so I walked up to Dad and blasted his back at point-plank range, soaking another shirt. This one was checkered, with rolled-up sleeves. He didn’t say anything. He just spun around and ripped the gun from my hands quite harshly in front of everyone and threw it on top of the shed. Then he asked if anyone wanted another drink. I could have got it down if I wanted to, because of the branch on the tree at the back, but I didn’t. I went inside instead.
At bedtime that night he brought the gun up to my room with a many-beer sad grin. — Look, I’m sorry. I was a prick.
— What’s a—
— I wasn’t nice. I was nice to buy the damned . . . blunderbuss, but I didn’t think it through. Then I wasn’t nice.
— It’s a pump-action water shotgun. I like it.
— I know you do. And I like that you like . . . Anyway, what shall we do with it?
— Not fire it.
— Not for now, no. But tell you what. Next hot day we have, we’ll have a proper shoot-out. I’ll use the hose. Unlimited bullets.
— Can I keep it, then?
— Of course.
— Where?
He scratched his iron-filings chin. — There’s only one place to keep a shotgun, he said.
There are scraping-chair noises from the kitchen. My scaldy leg aches and my sock is wet. The hand muffling it round the gun barrel has already started dripping. I need a wee. I need a wee and I know what they said in there. I know what I’ll go means. I mustn’t fire the water shotgun inside, but Son, rules are there to be broken. The difficult thing is knowing when and where to break them. You mustn’t wee in the street, for example, but it’s okay to wee if you’re desperate . . . behind a car in the street. I grip the door handle. I could charge in and wet Giraffe and Butterfly. Drenching is the same as soaking. They would have to leave to fetch dry clothes, and then we could not let them back in again. It’s a rubbish plan, I know, because I’ve only got water. If I had time I could empty out the water and wee into the shotgun instead, and then they really would have to leave because of germs. But I don’t have time. Butterfly is going on about nobody jumping to conclusions or taking brash decisions, and saying how great it is that everybody will be keeping in touch, and there are more footsteps, and sooner or later somebody is going to open the door and find me there.
No they won’t.
The boring thing about En
id Blyton is that everything in her stories turns out like you expect. Dad doesn’t like reading them to me because of that. But confusingly if there’s a shotgun up against the wall in act one, Son, it better go off by the end. Unless that’s one of the rules it’s okay to break.
The door handle quivers.
De-frying expectations, I run upstairs and slide the shotgun back under the bed.
And I lie on the bed well after the grown-ups have walked about downstairs opening and shutting doors and eventually saying good bye. It takes ages. I wait for somebody to come up and see me afterward, but nobody does, only our cat Richard, and even he hasn’t brought anything interesting to show me. Nothing dead or wounded. Just his normal belly fur, which is at least quite warm if you stick your fingers into it when he’s lying purring on his side. I stroke him quite carefully for a bit. Not backward.
Then I jump up, fetch my swimming bag from the hook on the bathroom door, empty it out in the corner, and pack it again. Not with the same stuff. More useful things. My ammonite, some pants, a jumper with a hood and a pocket your hands can feel each other in, four pieces of paper for drawing on, a sharp pencil, and my snow leopard, Philip. When it’s full I hide the bag in my bed. It’s quite bulgy, but when I runkle up the duvet the bed looks almost normal.
If he’s going, I’m going with him. To help cope.
And he definitely is going. I know, because when I go downstairs he is making tea quite slowly and when he’s made it he gives a cup to Mum and a cup to Grandma Lynne, saying, —Here you are, I’ve made us all a cup of tea. But we’ve all been watching, Dad! It’s not news. And even though we all knew what he was doing because we saw it happen ever — so — slowly, Grandma Lynne still says, — Great. That hits the spot. A cup of tea!
It’s so obvious, I nearly ask, — When are you off, then? But Mum is fetching the biscuit tin so I don’t, in case it stops her offering me one.
I needn’t have worried. The rest of today is not just normal, it’s especially nicely normal, right from the have-another-biscuit snack through to no-need-for-a-bath-tonight bedtime. Mum reads me two extra chapters of my Blade the Stallion book before I go up. It isn’t particularly realistic because the baddies could just have hobbled Blade when they caught him after the brushfire, and then he wouldn’t have been able to escape by gnawing through the rope, but it’s still a good enough story, especially when Mum reads the suspension bits in a hushing voice, very slow. I almost don’t have to do any reading myself after that, but when Dad comes in to say good night he sits down on the edge of my bed and whaps my schoolbook on the duvet like usual.
— Where were we? he asks.
— Can’t remember.
— Right then. The start it is.
It’s an extremely boring book about twins who go to a fair. One gets frightened by the ghost train. The other one doesn’t. The frightened one takes flight. Then the not-frightened one goes around again and this time he looks up high and has a fright, too. Finally the one who was frightened first comes back and stops them both being frightened by turning on a bright flashlight. After that they both sigh happily. There’s no real reason for the story: it’s just an excuse to write “igh” in a lot of words. But Dad listens very carefully as I’m reading, looking at me rather than the words. It’s like I’m a chess puzzle on the computer. If Dad just stares hard enough at me, he’s thinking, he’ll work out the right move.
I shut the book and neither of us says anything for quite a long time.
Then he leans over — nearly putting his hand on my swimming bag, which I’ve sort of half got my leg on under the covers for lumpy camouflage — and kisses the top of my head. It’s normal. But he’s not fooling me, particularly when he forgets to say anything at all to me after he turns out the light, because that’s not normal, not normal at all.
Have you ever counted sheep? It’s supposed to put you to sleep. Even though horses are better at jumping fences, and dogs are, too, there’s no point counting them because they don’t rhyme. Sleep. Leap. Sheep. Actually, there’s not much point counting sheep, either. Not for me at least. You’re supposed to count one after another again and again until you get bored enough to make your brain think, Christ I’ve had enough of this I’m going to switch off for a bit, but my sheep aren’t in fact properly boring, because I can’t make them jump over the fence normally. Some of them will, but every now and then one does a backflip or trips up or says bugger off I’m not jumping that and sits down instead or explodes. It’s not fascinating, but it’s interesting enough to keep me wondering what’s going to happen next, and if you’re wondering that then you’re not actually sleeping because you’re staying awake to find out what’s going to happen next instead . . . which I do.
A very long time is called a neon.
After Dad says good night I count sheep for at least a neon, probably two.
It helps me keep awake as I listen to the mumbly conversations downstairs, and the dishwasher chuntering away, and the feet back and forth across floorboards and that rug, the one with the pattern that looks like a dragon upside down grinning in the hall. Then there’s the voice from the television, and hundreds of people laughing on and off in a biscuit tin, and louder advert music, all buy some toilet ducks now now!
Ducks for your toilet: very strange. We keep mine in the bath.
I lie on my good-leg side with an arm looped through the strap of my swimming bag, one eye shut for the sheep, the other open watching the landing slice through the gap in my door. And yes! I was right! Because there’s Dad now, gathering up clothes from the airing cupboard. Why? To put in a bag of his own, of course. A couple of sheep trip up. He goes in and out of his bedroom with things in his hand, including a towel, and there’s no way I’m going to sleep now. Backflip. I’m just not. Somersault. And I’m not jumping over that, either. Explosion. No way, no! Explosion. No way. Explosion. No.
I wriggle nearer the bed edge and stick a foot out, then pull it back, then grab the bag tighter, and watch, watch, watch, as nothing much new happens for a while, either out on the landing or in the sheep field. Gray carpet. Green grass. Dad. Naughty sheep. Everything in modern nations, Son, because even exciting things get boring after a while.
Explosion.
Ex pollution.
Expel lotion.
Ex pillow shin.
Ex plow shone.
Ex pull low shun.
Ex. Pull. Low. Shun.
Ex. Pull. Low.
Ex. Pull.
Ex.
Boom! I’m suddenly awake in the dark with something wet on my face. Sweat. No, tears. Tears because he said he’d go and I saw him packing an invisible suitcase before I fell asleep and now he must have gone. The landing light is off and so is the TV. My room is blackly dark, except for some streetlamp glow by the window, and it’s totally quiet except for some tire hum over there. Which means it’s middle-of-the-night normal. So he’s left. I sit up in bed and take a deep breath. Human infants scream when they’re terrifically upset, and timber wolves howl to bring back the moon. I take a huge breath.
But before the howl comes: whap!
There’s a hand over my mouth and — Shhh! in my ears.
I freeze.
The — Shhh! goes soft to a whisper.
My duvet lifts itself off me, the hand comes away from my mouth, and two rustly arms bundle me up.
But something’s dragging me back.
— Swimming bag, I say.
— What? Not now, Dad whispers, working to untangle the straps. One of my cheeks presses against his normal sharp chin, the other feels cool against his gore tricks coat. — An adventure, though, he goes on. — Just keep quiet until we’re in the car. I’ll explain.
— But I packed. It’s all inside my bag.
— We’re not going swimming, Son.
— But my bag.
— Christ! Okay. Just . . . shh!
The hand works its way up over my mouth again as Dad cat-foots to the head of the stairs. It
means going quietly. A horse will never tread on you if it can help it and even elephants can walk softly when they want to. Down we go, with a question I manage not to ask out loud using incredible powers of concentration. It’s there, though, bubbling up as he swings a rucksack onto his other shoulder in the hall, and it nearly asks itself while he checks his coat pockets, and slides back the lightning bolt, and hushes us through the door. The streetlamp has an excellent halo. Ask, it says. I’m about to, but the — Shhh! purrs softly in my ear again. Dad strides us down the pavement past the skip. Skips. I don’t know why they call them that, but I do know that you can fill them fuller if you put big flat things up the sides and in the ends. Planks of wood or old doors. Don’t try with plasterboard: it goes soggy in the rain. And anyway, here’s the roof of the car full of wet reflections. Dad sits me on it all the same. Then I’m in my excellent padded seat with a damp pajama bum and his coat over my chest and our bags down there in the footwell. There’s no bucket. Dad even clumps the doors shut gently, like he’s closing egg-box lids. Hand-breaks are to stop you running into obstacles and breaking things, your hands included. That’s ours, there: down it creaks when Dad does it and here comes the question as the engine flutters us off up the road.
— Where’s Mum?
No answer.
— Where is she?
— Go back to sleep, Son.
— Isn’t she coming, too?
— We’ll chat about it in the morning.
— I want—
— Sleep, Billy.
— Mum.
— Sleep.
We drive for a long time and even though he’s told me to go to sleep I don’t. Not immediately, anyway. I watch instead. To begin with streetlamps do slow jellyfish pulsing in the car, all tangerine. Then their orange bits flicker faster across the back of Dad’s headrest, like flames. Eventually they flutter out entirely. The car goes nice and black except for the dashboard lights which are excellent light-saver green. Feel the Force, Dad. It will guide you to a rebel spaceship where they may finally take off your plaster cast revealing a brand-new hand! That will be good because right now the cast is obviously annoying him: the fingers of his good hand keep digging into the stinky crevasses while the bad hand steers. Crevasse is another word for a crease so big you have to stick a V in it. Did you know that an itch is like a yawn? It’s true: they’re both catching. Dad scratches so hard my eyes need rubbing, too. They’re very heavy and puffy, like Lizzie’s pull-ups first thing in the morning. I shut them. It’s easiest. The road hums. I don’t know where we’re going, but wherever it is it’s at the end of the longest-ever torn-off Cheerios-box lid.
What I Did Page 22