There didn’t seem to be any particular reason why we should, but it was one of those things that you say when you are desperate to walk away and not look back but some ill-defined human feeling tugs at your conscience and urges an acknowledgement of finality and of death and of the darkness that might be coming into their lives or your own.
Gary had no such compunctions.
“Goin’ out,” he muttered to Dad.
“’Bye then,” said Sarah, his sister.
“Yeah,” he said and left, banging the front door behind him.
Only my father ever saw that Gary again. The Gary I saw next was vastly different.
As he left, Vi arrived, tripping past the netted picture windows on two-inch platforms, wearing a polka dot shirt and a micro mini skirt. Mum shrank into her chair and Dad got up to answer the door. Vi stamped back past the picture window with a face like thunder. Thwarted again.
“So, when are you going then, Mum?” Sarah asked.
“Next…,” Mum stumbled over her words and looked towards Dad. “Next week, I fink. That’s what you said weren’t it? When the flat in Marbella will be ready for me?”
He nodded, and Sarah bounced enthusiastically.
“Great! Time to do some real shopping before you go then? First thing I am going to do is get a whole new wardrobe for me. Nothing I’ve got fits since the baby and I’m going to be thin. It’ll be easy to get thin now.”
Sarah determinedly clung to many delusions even in the face of direct contradiction backed by incontrovertible truth, so believing that all rich people were thin simply by virtue of being rich was just…Sarah.
She stood up. “I’ll call you tomorrow, we could go shopping together. I’m going to go and pick up the baby and then go to a hotel for a couple of nights. No point in dragging it out. Barry’ll get over it soon enough.”
Poor Barry.
“Now, you two sort yourselves out,” she wagged a finger playfully at my Mum and Dad. “You know you both love each other really.”
And with that absurdity, she was gone.
Dad stood by the door looking moodily at his own feet. Mum waited a moment and when he remained unmoving she let out a sigh of exasperation, stood up and pushing past him ran up the stairs.
“Dad,” I ventured. He closed the door and sat down near to me.
“What is it, Michael?” I gaped open-mouthed. He had never called me that before.
“I don’t want to go…” I said firmly. This was my one chance. For the first time in my life, I wanted him to enfold me in those big hairy arms and promise to keep me safe. I wanted to whimper miserably and beg him to put everything back the way it was before. We had all been happy. At least I thought we had. I had been very happy with my little life in little Canvey Island and I did not want the big empty life that had been created out of nothing and was to be thrust upon me. I couldn’t articulate all that even if I had really understood it, but he must have known for he rested a hand on my head for the merest moment and sighed.
“It’s going to be hard for you, son, I know. And if I didn’t think it was the best thing for you, I wouldn’t let it happen. You know that.”
“No, I don’t,” I denied. “I can stay here with you and Gary. I’ll go to school here. I’ll go every day if you want me to. I’ll be good. Let me stay here. I won’t be happy there, I know I won’t.”
“Maybe not at first…”
“Not ever,” I moaned. “Not ever, ever. Anyway, I won’t stay. I’ll run away, or I’ll do something to get meself kicked out and then I’ll ‘ave to come back ‘ere. You’ll all ‘ave to come back ‘ere.”
“Don’t do that, Mikey,” he stood up suddenly. “Don’t threaten me. You will go. You will behave yourself as you are told to. You will not run away, and you will not embarrass me. You’ll make something of yourself. I don’t care what…you will be able to choose. Most of us can’t. You will be something…better. You will take this chance you have been given. It is too late for us. You are a bright boy, I can see that. We can’t change, and the money won’t change us, but you, you can make it all worthwhile son, you can make even my life mean something.”
After that, there was a long silence. He stood looking down at me. He wasn’t a man who spoke much or often, and his features rarely expressed emotion and did not do so now. Still, there was something immense and compelling in the moment, and when he turned away I found myself whispering “Okay, Dad,” before he left the room.
Several hours later I had taken refuge in my room and was blotting out my past and my future by immersing myself in the imaginary world of Tolkien when Mum slipped in through the door. She stood looking around as if surprised at the chaos that confronted her. The beds hadn’t been made in months. The wardrobe was empty, but the floor was full and there was vastly more culture in the bowls of half-eaten breakfast cereal and milk than there was even on my bookshelf.
“This room is a bloody tip!” she exclaimed as she picked her way over the discarded jeans, t-shirts, y-fronts and chocolate packets to the end of my bed.
“It’s Gary.” I disclaimed all responsibility whilst struggling with my own surprise. She never came into our room. “’E never picks anything up.”
“P’raps they’ll ‘ave someone at your new school’ll pick up after you. Uvverwise you’ll ‘ave ter do it for yerself, Mikey.”
“Yeah,” I agreed glumly. She pushed a pile of my books onto the floor and perched on the end of the bed.
“Well, I just wanted to…” I waited whilst she cast about for words. It was too late for affection. Way, way too late. She didn’t know how to offer it anymore and I didn’t know how to invite it or receive it. “I just…I dunno, Mikey, you know ‘ow it is.”
I nodded. I knew.
“You be a good boy, Mikey. Don’t give them none of your shit. But don’t take none neither. Just do as you’re told and learn what you can, and I fink you’ll be all right.”
I nodded again. This was goodbye.
“Okay,” she stood up and cast about for a clear path to the door. There was none but as she took her first step I heard a sudden intake of breath and I followed her gaze to the small table next to my bed which was piled with the jumbled detritus of my passing enthusiasms. Some particularly fine cockle shells, an American nickel, chewing gum, a glass of solidified milk, the arm of a broken pair of glasses, a magnifying glass inadvertently laid over a crumpled matchbook from Bernie’s Bar and an old exercise book that I wrote stuff in that I liked, snatches of verse, pithy sayings and crude jokes. The exercise book was open, and I thought she might have glimpsed one of the nude ladies I had decorated it with but if she had she decided that my burgeoning sexuality was no longer her concern. She squared her shoulders, said, “Goodbye, Mikey,” and left the room without looking back.
Goodbye. Not goodnight. I waited hunched on the end of my bed with my chin on the windowsill until the small hours. It was gone two o’clock in the morning when I heard the whisper of the bedroom door on the carpet and the soft tread of unshod feet on the landing. A few moments later the front door below me opened and closed quietly and my mother, a small suitcase in hand, left the house forever.
I watched her walk briskly away and let the baby tears course freely down my cheeks for the first time in years. She did not look back. Not once.
She turned the corner and was lost to sight and I became aware that Dad was standing behind me, watching too. I let the curtain fall, lay down and pulled the blankets over my head. I was ashamed to shed my tears in front of him and, if he ever shed tears, he wouldn’t shed them in front of me. We both suffered that night and, in varying degrees and in varying ways, for many months to come.
14
But to go to school on a summer morn
Oh, it drives all joy away
Under a cruel eye outworn
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay
William Blake
Sarah and Gary made no comment in my hearing about their step mother’s sudden defection. In fact, I suspect that for several days, they didn’t notice, so caught up were they in their new wealth and the numerous possibilities it offered. Sarah, predictably, threw herself into shopping for clothes and houses. She returned her newborn baby to his paternal grandparents whenever the shops were open. I don’t think that she was ever the archetypal loving mother but, to give Sarah her due, she always looked after her possessions well and she would do no less for her baby. After a couple of weeks one of her old school friends, a mousy girl with glasses who looked as if she was a bit of a swot but on further acquaintance proved herself to be irredeemably dim, was inveigled into acting as a nanny and general factotum. This proved itself to be an on-going arrangement that was never formalised. Sarah treated her like dirt when she wanted to and like her best friend when the mood took her but offered stability, an occasional random wage packet, luxurious living arrangements and an object to worship. All in all, the mousy girl did very well out of the arrangement when you consider that the alternatives for a very ordinary girl with very ordinary abilities and no intellect were not varied back then. And still aren’t, I suspect.
Gary went out and bought himself a Triumph Stag to celebrate the recent return of his licence. All the excitement did not lighten his mood though. He drove the red beast too fast, except when cruising along the seafront when he would hang one arm out of the window and laconically look every girl up and down, making no secret of the fact that he considered the choice to be his should he choose to make it. Some of them, inevitably, were young enough or stupid enough or just downright shallow enough to find this contemptuous male arrogance appealing and fell into the back seat of the car with the naïve belief that Gary was a catch and that having sex with him would somehow make them happier, prettier and superior to their friends who hadn’t been chosen…yet. Well, Gary wasn’t any different to most young men of his age and the money he could splash around meant that he could live his small fantasies wildly, without thought and seemingly without consequence.
The extent of his wealth didn’t seem to have struck him at all. He rented a small flat and a couple of garages on the island and otherwise kept close to home. He suddenly had a lot of friends but never having had many before he regarded them all, not suspiciously but with surprise as if he wasn’t quite sure who they were. He probably wasn’t. He was generous with them all in that he bought them drinks, drugs and ferried them around to various nightclubs and brothels but refused to buy them champagne or to wear anything himself but jeans. He liked what he knew and was comfortable with and saw no reason to become something that he wasn’t. I quite admired him for that.
Dad disappeared up to London the morning after Mum left. My Mum’s obedient agreement to go to Spain where she could be under the watchful eye of Dad’s friends had been a feint on her part and now Dad needed to find out where in the world she had gone.
I went to school on the first day after Mum left more for something to do in the long hours that stretched ahead than anything else, but the arrival of the money had changed everything, and it was as if I had already left and was going back after a long absence to find everyone changed. I was unhappy, and I couldn’t remember ever having been unhappy before. I think now that the change was probably in me, not in them, and it was just that my old mates and adversaries, the teachers and the gruff librarian didn’t recognise this new, sullen Mikey who would be leaving soon anyway. Miss Aimes, who had been taught by Mr. Freeman, tried to talk to me about my wonderful new opportunity (not that state-funded education wasn’t just as good as private she added hastily) but I just got up and left. She didn’t bother again, and I took refuge in the school library from the hated maths lesson that I saw no reason to attend. The gruff librarian gave me an angry look when I crept in and then ignored me. I worked out much later why this would be. She was an enthusiastic and committed socialist to whom private education was anathema. It was a little harsh that she should visit her political wrath on my innocent shoulders, but I think she saw only the plummy capitalist I would inevitably become and not the lost, frightened boy that I was.
But even books could not distract me and so I turned my back on the safe walls and small chairs of the little school and escaped to roam on the salt flats once more. Spring was on its way, but the sky was overcast and as grey as the mud that clung to my light plimsolls and stained my legs. Neither cold nor rain nor hunger could drag me from my lonely ramblings, and I spent the next few days wandering the marshes and shunning human contact. For a few days I even successfully avoided Bones, or it may have been that he sensed my mood and left me to the solitude I craved. But on the last day, as I was making my way landwards just ahead of the creeping tide, jumping the ditches as the frothy sea water seeped towards me, I spotted him standing on a pile of tar spattered rock. He was waiting for me and with the sea streaming through the criss-cross of meandering streams beneath my feet it was either go to him or drown. I can’t say that I didn’t fleetingly consider the second option.
“Wotcha,” I said wearily as I leaped reluctantly towards him.
“Yer Dad’s lookin’ fer ya, no kiddin,’” he replied flatly.
“Wot does ‘e want?”
“You.”
“What for?”
“I dunno.” Of course, he wouldn’t know.
“When did ‘e get back?”
“I dunno.”
“Is…is my Mum wiv ‘im?”
“I dunno, I don’t fink so.”
“I’m busy.”
I turned my back on him and hunching my shoulders against the sharpness of the cold wind I climbed the seawall and turned onto the walkway. Bones fell into step beside me and we shambled on without speaking for several minutes.
“That bald man is with your dad,” Bones eventually muttered. He knew it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I fink he’s come for you.”
“No kiddin’,” I said drily, then I took a run at the seawall and kicked it hard. I tried a punch too but that hurt like hell and caused blood to spurt from my knuckles.
“Wotcha gonna do?” Bones asked when I had stopped swearing.
“I dunno. What’s the use? Ain’t no point in nothing.”
There was a long silence after that as the grey sea crept closer and the sky lowered. I squatted against the cold slab wall and nursed my mashed hand against my thin chest. Bones squinted up at the sky and chewed his lip.
“Wanna come to my house?” he asked at length.
I’d been there once. His parents hadn’t liked me and had been at pains to make sure I knew it. I shook my head.
“You could go to Lunnon, find a job or somefink.”
Poor Bones, he was trying to be helpful.
“He’d find me,” I muttered.
Bones sighed and nodded. My father was possessed of superhuman powers as far as Bones was concerned, although I think that might have been my fault. I had rather exaggerated some of his abilities and built him up into some sort of criminal mastermind when relating to him and other cronies my father’s (imagined) exploits in the city.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean they can’t kill ya, can they?”
I gave him a filthy look.
“I wish they would. I’m goin’ to be bloody miserable.”
“Yeah,” agreed Bones.
He had even more reason than me to hate school, not being what you would call academic. In fact, he could barely read.
“But you’ll still be the, y’know, like the leader, the boss. Like you are ‘ere, y’know.”
I began to see a chink of light in my bleak future. I think I said once before that Bones was sometimes inciteful. It was instinctive though, not intellectual.
I thought for a few more cold minutes, absently kickin
g the wall whilst I sucked the blood from my filthy knuckles. Then I stood up with the return of my accustomed swagger. I shrugged my shoulders at my friend and we sloped off together, back towards my home and my future.
15
The roots of education are bitter,
but the fruits are sweet.
Aristotle.
I was sent to a private school in Buckinghamshire, for boys only, and the fact that we were all boys was really the only thing we had in common. If you want a simile of how I felt when at length I found myself alone with the twenty odd boys in my dorm room then I can do no better than describe myself as a rat, a filthy disease-ridden, scruffy, defensive, vicious looking rodent that had somehow found itself released in a showcase of pedigreed house pets.
However, quite a lot happened before I reached the depths described above.
After our long walk home Bones said ‘Bye,’ and disappeared even before I could turn around to reply but that was just as well because I find that sort of goodbye embarrassing. I mean the sort of goodbye where you probably won’t see each other for a really long time, maybe never.
I went in through the kitchen because that door was never locked but Dad and Baldy must have heard me coming with some relief because they were both standing in the front room looking at the door through which I entered. They had been waiting for a long time and it must have been an awkward wait even though they were both men blessed with more than a modicum of self-possession. I can’t imagine that either bothered with small talk. All this might well have contributed to their almighty rush to pack me up and get me out of the door for, with little or no further explanation, I was bundled upstairs to pack a small bag of ‘personal things’. When I looked blankly at Baldy, he explained.
“We will buy you all the clothes, toiletries, books et cetera that you will need. Perhaps there are some other items of personal meaning to yourself that you would like to have with you? Photographs, or a favourite toy maybe?”
A Patient Man Page 13