by Terry Ronald
‘No,’ Aunt Val says. ‘Your father went off in his cab to pick up some boxes of cheap brandy or something from someone in Dartford, and your mum jumped in for the ride. They’ll be at the school by now though, David, for your parents’ evening.’
I’d forgotten it was bloody parents’ evening. Jesus Christ, another thing to fret about. I’m all too horribly aware of the fact that of late, what with the school musical and my near-constant starry-eyed daydreaming, my once fiercely conscientious schoolwork ethic has gone right out of the bastard window. While I’m quietly confident that Mr Peacock and Miss Jibbs and the like will be fairly benign when chatting to Mum and Dad about my evident lack of progress, other members of staff, perhaps more disgruntled by half a term of my lackadaisical approach, will be out for revenge, and no doubt stick the boot in. That’s all I need with Dad in the mood he’s been in for the last couple of weeks, I can tell you.
‘Oh yes,’ I mutter. ‘I’d forgotten about that, what with the play an’ all.’
‘They’ll be back in a tick anyway,’ Nan says. ‘So finish up and let me get rid of those dirty plates.’
By the time Mum and Dad finally do arrive back from parents’ evening, we’re well into the second half of News at Ten, and Nan is snoozing in the armchair. Dad’s face is quite white when he walks in, and his lips are pulled in, skinny. Mother’s skin seems to bear the same vaporous pallor as she follows him into the living room in her smart pink work suit and drops her handbag. They both look bloody terrible. Surely the reports from my teachers couldn’t have been that fucking awful. Something in Dad’s uncivilized stare, though, tells me that they must have been. Really awful!
‘Chrissy, get upstairs,’ Dad barely mumbles. ‘You’d better get home, Squirrel.’
Now I’m really worried. What on earth is going on?
‘What’s wrong, Kath?’ Aunt Val says in a rather shrill tone. ‘You’re sheet-white!’
Nan wakes up with a start.
‘It’s him again, that’s what’s up,’ Eddie says, glaring at me. ‘You stupid little—’
‘Eddie, calm down,’ Mum interrupts, and I feel my fingers and neck sweating.
‘What?’ I squeak, jumping up.
‘Sit down!’
Dad is somehow screaming through gritted teeth, which, prior to this moment, I would not have thought possible.
‘What?’ I say again, only quieter this time. ‘What have I done?’
‘I’ve had some boy’s mother and father calling me all sorts because of you, you little bastard. It was like a fucking circus up at that school tonight.’
‘It was bad,’ Mum says softly. ‘It was really bad.’
All at once, a white horror falls upon me. I thought everything seemed a little too good to be true. I should have recognized it as a dreadful omen earlier this evening when, instead of Kate Bush actually appearing on Top of the Pops as advertised, they’d featured the abysmal Legs & Co. dancing to ‘Them Heavy People’ in cream negligees instead.
‘Somebody’s mother and father?’ I gulp.
Dad opens his mouth to yell again, but Mum holds up her hand with a mad stare like some kind of demented lollipop lady stopping traffic.
‘Let me tell him,’ she demands. ‘You’ll fuckin’ explode, Eddie, if you’re not careful.’
‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ I hear Nan mumble from the corner.
I suddenly feel slightly otherworldly, so I sit down next to Aunt Val, with Mum and Dad standing over me. Dad is now almost a faultless shade of beetroot; and Mum is speaking in a soft but clipped tone.
‘We were talking to your drama teacher, Mr McClarnon, and he was telling us how well you’re doing in drama and music. He really likes you, David, he does …’
I nod, wide-eyed.
‘When all of a sudden, this other bald teacher comes over with some other parents: Mr and Mrs Boswell. Your friend Maxie’s mum and dad, right?’
I nod again, small pieces of a terrifying jigsaw falling into place.
‘What other teacher?’ I ask meekly, as if I didn’t know.
‘Mr Lord!’ Dad pipes up, jerking his head forward and spitting the words.
My heart somersaults.
‘Oh! And what did he say?’ I ask, tasting disgust in the back of my throat.
‘Not very much, really, at first,’ Mum says. ‘But this Mrs Boswell, she just stormed straight up to our table and demanded to know if our son was a … if you were …’
‘“Is it true that your son is a homosexual?” That’s what she said,’ Dad sing-songed, flopping down on to the sofa that Chrissy and Squirrel had swiftly vacated minutes earlier. ‘“According to Mr Lord your son is a homosexual, and he is, how shall I put it, trying to lead my son up a bad path.” That is what Mrs fucking Boswell said, David.’
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Fuck!
I look at Mum. I look at Aunt Val. I look at Reginald Bosanquet, who is animate but mute on the TV screen. Mum continues quietly, as Dad’s face falls into his hands.
‘Mrs Boswell says that “her little Maxie” has been acting differently in the past few weeks: secretive and distant. He stayed out all night the other Sunday – she’s no clue where – and he’s started watching cookery shows. Mr Lord says—’
‘Oh, that wanker!’ I interrupt, snarling.
‘Mr Lord says that this boy, your friend Max Boswell, is letting his sports go to rack and ruin: skipping football practice to hang out with you and a coloured girl.’
‘Black!’ I snap. ‘She’s not coloured, she’s black.’
‘Is that Frances?’ Aunt Val asks gingerly, putting a hand on mine.
‘Yes.’
I’m furious and terrified all at the same time now, but Mum continues calmly.
‘Mr Lord reckons that you are influencing Maxie: trying to make him more like you. More … more …’
‘Fashionable?’ I suggest. ‘Worldly? Unblinkered? Remarkable?’
‘Shut up!’ Dad warns.
‘Why?’ I scream.
And then I jump up, probably unwisely, in an attempt to preserve what is left of my apparently fast-waning honour.
‘Bob Lord is a fucking bigot, and you are just like him.’
I gesticulate madly towards my father, who in turn leaps to his feet, teeth still gritted, pointing.
‘Shut your fucking mouth! I knew this was coming, didn’t I? I fucking knew it!’
‘Eddie, Eddie!’ Nan joins in now. ‘Calm down!’
Dad, however, has misfired with his prodding index finger and jabbed me hard in the eye. With my right eye covered by my hand, and streaming, the floodgates are open and I find myself yelling and sobbing all at once.
‘Just because we’re friends! Just because we’re fucking friends! Just because Maxie skipped a couple of poxy football games, Bob fucking born-again Lord thinks I’m giving it to him behind the bike shed.’
‘Oh my Gawd,’ Nan says, with her hand over her mouth.
But I’m really in my stride now: tears, snot, profanity – the lot. Dad is still yelling, but I’m not hearing him any more.
‘What makes them think I’m a queer anyway? Who the fuck told them that? Can’t two blokes be friends, for fuck’s sake? Jesus Christ, we’re just friends, Mum, we’re friends!’
I’m intent on defiance. No one can prove any of this, anyway. It’s merely the speculation of a Christian-cum-Nazi on Bob Lord’s part, and overprotective paranoia from Maxie’s mum and dad. I can beat this, I can. I pause for a moment to collect myself, and there is a lull in the hysteria.
‘I said that,’ Mum says softly.
‘What?’
‘We said that,’ Dad confirms in a slightly more composed tone. ‘We said, they’re just close mates, David and Maxie: friends.’
‘And?’
‘And Mr Lord said that he had at first considered that, until he saw you … and Maxie … together, yesterday … in the drama cupboard … kissing.’
Shit!
‘Kissing?’ Nan says.
Dad nods and puts his hand over his mouth as though he is about to burst into tears, or perhaps vomit.
‘I can’t believe my son is really gay,’ he says, voice trembling – rather absurdly, I feel. ‘I really can’t bloody believe it.’
Aunt Val stands up, looking somewhat vexed.
‘Of course he’s fucking gay, Eddie,’ she shouts. ‘I’ve known that since he was knee-high to a tortoise.’
‘Did you?’ Mum says, surprised. ‘Did you know that, Val?’
‘Well, how many other six-year-old boys do you know that can do all Dusty’s hand movements to “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”, Kath? Be honest!’
Mum nods in defeated concurrence.
‘And he knew where to find the eyelash glue,’ Nan smiles.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ is all Dad can manage, getting all irate again. ‘I’m gonna go round and see Marty at the club, see if he wants a late drink. I can’t fucking do this now.’
That’s Eddie’s answer for everything – a late drink. And off he goes.
* * *
‘Then your Mr McClarnon and Mr Lord had a terrible row, right in the middle of the parents’ evening,’ Mum says. ‘Mr McClarnon said that Mr Lord had no right to say the things he said to Mr and Mrs Boswell, and that he was pure evil. Mr Lord said that the Boswells had a right to know that a known homosexual was corrupting their son. A known homosexual! I couldn’t believe it; I nearly fucking died.’
There is at least calm now, after Dad has stormed out. Mum has changed out of her work clothes and she, Aunt Val and Nan are all sitting protectively around me on the couch. Aunt Val is holding my hand.
‘Anyway, I told her, that Mrs Boswell,’ Mum continues. ‘Anyone who gets my David as a friend should count himself sodding lucky.’
And she lights up a cigarette, her hands trembling slightly.
‘What did she say to that?’ Nan asks, handing me a Kleenex from her pinny – I’ve been a bit sniffy.
‘She fainted,’ Mum says.
‘She never!’ Val stifles a chuckle.
‘She did. Silly tart!’
It’s long past midnight by the time I’ve finished unburdening my befuddled teenage heart to the three women. I even come clean about that Sunday night at Moira’s – despite my nan’s now well-worn cry of ‘Ooh my good Gawd’ – and I attempt to impress upon them how much I love Maxie, and how certain I am that now, more than ever, we are meant to be together.
‘Well,’ Mum sighs at the end of my starry-eyed discourse. ‘If Mr and Mrs Boswell insist you give their precious Maxie a wide berth, then that’s what you’re gonna have to do, love.’
‘I won’t!’
‘Yes, David, you will!’ Mum stands up, and she seems a little annoyed. ‘Or you’ll be expelled. That’s what Mr Lord said, expelled! He’s already had words with the headmaster and you know what a fucking nutty Bible-basher he is. There’s nothing else you can do; just leave the boy alone, David. Do you hear me?’
The world swirls about me as Nan and Aunt Val gather up their cardigans and head back to their house. Surely life cannot be this ghastly. Surely the gods could not permit me to taste that sweet nectar from a golden chalice, only to seize it away from me not a jiffy later, replacing it with a brass bucket of cold piss. Could they?
Mum appears again, drinking Blue Nun and smoking another fag.
‘What about the play?’ I mutter.
‘Oh! Yes … I forgot,’ Mum says, sitting beside me. ‘I heard Mrs Boswell tell Mr McClarnon that Maxie can only take part in the production if he’s in the chorus. He’s not allowed to play Bill Sikes any more, David. He can’t have any scenes with you. That way he’ll have more time for his football practice. Sorry, love.’
‘But who’ll play Bill?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ Mum says. ‘I’m just saying what I heard, now let it go.’
Now I’m really distraught; this is really happening.
‘But the chorus are all the orphans, Mum. They’re all first-year boys: Maxie is nearly sixteen!’
‘Well, he’ll play a fuckin’ tall orphan, then, I expect,’ Mum says jadedly, and she sips her wine as demurely as one can from a pewter tankard.
‘Now let it drop, David. I don’t really want to talk about it any more tonight.’
We both sit quietly for a very long time, staring at the television, but there’s nothing on except a fuzzy white screen, because ITV has finished for the night, national anthem an’ all. Mum looks terribly sad, though.
‘Your dad told me,’ she eventually says, and she’s shaking her head slowly. ‘In the car on the way home from parents’ evening, he told me what happened the other week.’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ she says, ‘when he came home from work early and almost caught you and Maxie …’
‘Oh.’
‘And now I find out you’ve been stopping over at Moira’s flat with him as well,’ she says, still hypnotized by the dancing white snow of the TV. ‘I didn’t peg you for deceitful, David, I must say.’
I let my head drop, and I can’t look at her. I adore my mum and I can’t stand to see her like this, she looks broken by it all.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I was scared to tell you.’
‘Scared?’ she says.
‘I didn’t know what you’d think … about me being gay. What do you think, Mum?’
She stands up and switches off the TV, and her heavy charm bracelet bangs against the coffee table as she picks up her cigarette packet and her lighter, and then heads for the door. When she reaches it she turns back to me.
‘I don’t know what I think, David,’ she says. ‘I just don’t know.’
Sixteen
Go Up West, Young Man
I seem to be out on the wily, windy moors. It’s blackboard dark and sleet slams on me in gusts every few seconds. Thank heavens I’ve got my duffle on.
‘Take my hand, David,’ Kate Bush whispers to me with a marvellous puffy pout. ‘We’ll go down together.’
I grasp Kate’s hand and peer at the lit windows of the tiny house down the hill, far below us. She’ll never make it down there, I’m thinking: no shoes and not so much as a poncho. Kate Bush will surely be dead from cold by the time we reach the house.
‘Will he be there?’ I ask her as we drive ourselves bravely against the gale that’s tearing across the peaks and furrows of the moor.
‘He will be there, David. He will,’ says Kate.
‘But how can you be sure?’ I say. ‘How can you know for certain after all that’s happened?’
It appears, however, that Kate Bush is a creature of rather meagre banter, and she just waves her arm across her face dramatically, letting the long draping sleeve of her white dress brush over my frozen nose.
When we reach the stone cottage, with its old walls strangled in the clutches of thick twisting ivy, Kate Bush leads me to the big window.
‘Here!’ she says.
And rubbing frost from the windowpane with her hand, she peers in momentarily, and then steps away slowly.
‘Is he there?’ I ask.
Kate Bush points at the window and nods, rather like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, and says, ‘He is here, David.’
I move forward delicately, and stand on tiptoe so I might reach the clear pane, but inside all I see is blood. Blood. Everywhere blood – crimson and disgusting: the bed, the walls, the floor all covered and awash. I turn to Kate in panic.
‘He is here,’ she says grimly, ‘but you are too late, David.’
I spin around, terrified, glaring back into the room, and it is then that I see him: Maxie, lying at the foot of the bed, throat slashed and open. Dead!
After last night’s hideous confrontation with Mum and Dad and the unqualified catastrophe that had been parents’ evening, I’d been utterly shaken, and my nightmare of a ripped and slaughtered Maxie hadn’t exactly helped matters, either. The thing that was irking – nay, distressing me – the mo
st was the reaction of Mum. I had been so very certain, perhaps overly so, that she of all people would superbly and deftly rise to the occasion when the truth about my sexuality came tumbling out, that her vagueness and diffidence last night had completely knocked me for six. I wasn’t expecting it. My alarm was compounded further this morning when, at breakfast time, Mum scarcely uttered a word to me, unless you count ‘We’ve run out of Frosties’, which I don’t, as it happens, but that’s by the by. The main thing is that, as unprepared for this truly vile turn of events and my mother’s evident confusion as I was, what happened next astonished me even more.
It began this morning with a ring on the doorbell after Mum had left for work just after half past eight. A rather dazed Chrissy had opened the door to discover Maxie wringing his hands in our porch, sans school uniform and dressed in grey Farahs and a baby-blue V-neck. As soon as I saw him, I dashed up the passage towards the front door.
‘Maxie!’
‘Hi, David,’ he said solemnly.
He looked wonderfully handsome, but cheerless and fatigued too.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Your mum and dad ain’t in, are they?’
‘No, they’ve left already, why?’
Chrissy was hovering with intent, so I shooed her back down the passage and then went out front with Maxie, pulling the porch door to behind me.
‘Why aren’t you in your uniform?’ was the first thing I said. ‘Aren’t you going to school?’
Maxie shook his head.
‘After what happened last night?’ he said. ‘Are you fucking nuts – no way! Oh, I fuckin’ hate Mr Lord. How could he do that to me? He’s supposed to like me, ain’t he? What an evil bastard. What a fucking mess.’
He was quite hysterical and it was then that I noticed the Gola bag sitting at his feet, and my heart jumped into my mouth.
‘You’re not running away from home, are you?’ I whispered urgently. ‘Did your parents go mad? They didn’t thrash you, did they?’
‘Of course they didn’t bloody thrash me,’ Maxie said. ‘The only thing my mother ever beats is her precious Chinese rugs.’
And he sat himself down on the window ledge, so I followed suit.