I thought of going round to his home and seeing him, imagining that I would tell him everything I felt, reaching out to hold him, feeling his arms close around me. I wanted to cry because the truth scared me. I wanted to rest in his arms and hear him telling me everything was all right, his fingertips stroking my face, assuring me he understood.
Mum found me in the front room, sitting at the table lost in my thoughts.
I turned and faced her. Her dark eyes widened as she saw the intensity of feeling bright in my eyes. Too late, I tried to hide behind a mask, creasing my face with a nervous smile. The openness of my emotion seemed to appall her and she walked stiffly to the window, playing with the curtains that were already pulled back as far as they could go.
“I’m going to see Nan tonight,” she said at last. “Do you want to come?”
I hesitated and her light voice went on, but I could tell she was aware of something, the deliberate effort to sound calm, to keep the anxious, questioning tone out of her voice.
“Dad’s staying here,” she went on, too quickly. “You can stay with him if you like, you don’t have to come … ”
Her voice trailed off and I could sense her spirit quivering like the heart of a small frightened bird. She knew something was wrong, had seen the shadows in my eyes like dark clouds gathering before the storm.
I wanted to show her the letter from Richard, tell her what I felt for him, explain to her as gently and as honestly as possible that I thought I was in love with another man.
I didn’t want to hurt her. I simply wanted to give her the truth because I loved her and it caused me pain to lie to her, to pretend.
“Mum … ” I began, but the strain cracked my voice and I faltered. Though, I think, she had no idea what I was trying to say, she could hear the import of my words in my struggle to speak.
Afraid of what I would say, she cut me short.
“You don’t have to come to Nan’s,” she said, as flatly as she could. “You can stay with Dad if you like.”
And then the moment passed, and all the words I so desperately wanted to give her fell apart in my brain like the scattered pieces of an upturned puzzle. I no longer had any hope she’d understand, that my truth could give her anything but pain. For a brief minute I hated her and bitterness twisted my mouth, turned my eyes into dull stones that gave her no hope of affection.
“Martin … ”
I recognised the fear in her voice, saw the lines cut sharply into her forehead and my own pain seemed nothing compared to hers. I moved to her, enfolding her in my arms, hugging her close, and for once she did not glance at me reproachfully or pull away. She rested against me, her face pressed against my chest while her fears were translated into conscious thoughts. Suddenly she drew away and looked straight up into my face, gripping my arms.
“You can tell me, Martin,” she said, and I shook my head.
“Martin,” she said again, “If you’re in trouble, we can help … ”
I was silent.
“Is it a girl, Martin?” she said gently, unaware of the hurt she caused me then, her voice framing thoughts that seemed to have been drawn from Dad’s head. “Is she … in trouble, Martin? We understand.”
We.
I looked at her and shook my head again, seeing only her and Dad with no room for me as I was inside.
“The police, then … ”
“No, no, Mum. It’s nothing like that.”
There was a silence and I could see the look of relief in her face, and then her worries returned making her tremble.
“What is it?” she said. “You don’t have to go to college if you don’t want to. Not just for us. It’s your life, not ours.”
I felt as if she were pushing me even further away, setting me free in a boat of my own, leaving me to drift.
“I’ll go to college,” I said. “And anyway… it’s not that, not really. It’s worries and everything. I have to pass these exams, don’t I? They’re less than seven weeks away now.”
“Oh, Martin.” Mum smiled then. “You worry too much. You’ll be all right. I know it.”
I nodded my head, wanting her to go away, afraid that if she said anything more,we’d be lost to each other for ever. Mum squeezed my hand.
“We’ll have a cup of tea,” she said, as if that would cure everything.
“Right.”
I forced the word out and turned my back to her, looking out of the window, knowing for certain then that nothing would ever be the same. The house which had been my home for years seemed like a badly made toy of no use to me now, and my mother and father were two ill-matched puppets with foolish eyes and painted smiles, to be left discarded in a box.
And in the glass I seemed to see my own reflection, only it was changed from what it had been before. The awkwardness of my broad shoulders and the stooping nature of my heavy build seemed to drop away and then return, only now in the way I stood, the way I held my head, and most of all in the way I felt deep inside, I knew I was the stranger.
The young man Mum, Dad, Steve, and even Linda saw as Jumbo no longer existed. It was as if I’d shed a skin in order to know myself better, only in the knowledge I’d grown old.
6
Then, what I dreaded most of all happened. I was being a good boy doing some last minute late-night shopping for Mum, wandering along the aisles of Sainsbury’s with one of those awful yellow string shopping-bags that mothers sometimes have.
Finally, loaded up with all the yoghurts, bread and sausages I needed, I found myself stuck at the end of a queue for the check-out. I fumbled in my pocket for the shopping list to make sure I’d remembered everything, while the old dear behind me kept banging me in the leg with her basket. I turned and gave her a look and she put the basket down, all apologies. I was wondering about my bruised calves when I turned back and saw who was standing two queues along from me, stacking all his goods onto the black conveyer belt.
Richard.
I felt the blood run to my face. Just like when I’d spilled coffee over his carpet, I wished I could disappear into thin air. I was flooded by feelings that confused me: at the same time, I wanted to reach out and hold him.
But he didn’t even see me. It was like one of those nightmares when you press your face against the glass, but no one hears you scream. I could feel the perspiration run down my back.
As he reached into his back pocket for his wallet he turned and saw me. I watched the surprise turn into the warmest smile and he said my name.
And then I did the cruellest thing. I turned my head and ignored him. I could hear the lady on the desk ask twice for his money. I began laying out my yoghurts and cereal to be costed. A mixture of anguish and desire welled within me, but it was the very strength of my feelings that bewildered me and kept me silent.
Keeping my face averted, I heard the clatter of the till and his small voice saying “Thank you”. I wanted him to curse me for the selfish shit I was, but he was silent. I kept on stacking my shopping until I was sure he’d gone away.
The lady on the cash desk, oblivious to the confusion inside me, asked me for my money and I handed her two notes and waited for my change. She helped me put the goods away in the yellow string bag and I nodded thank you.
At last, I had to look up to see my way to the exit. I was shaking as I pushed my way through the swing doors, but once on the street I was unable to stop myself looking for him amongst the shopping crowd. He was nowhere to be seen.
After that I had to talk to someone. I’m not sure why I picked on Tom. Perhaps as trainer of the rugby team, he’d always been something of a father figure. We all regarded him as a benign, understanding man, and always listened to whatever he said to us in his quiet, slightly uncertain voice. If any of the team were in trouble we’d turn to him and, even if he could do nothing, he would listen, nodding his head from time to time as if he was taking it all in.
When I’d broken Stuart Hill’s nose and Mr and Mrs Hill were outraged, Tom had gone al
ong to the Headmaster and gently explained that I was a passive lad, never one to cause trouble on the rugby field. To be so inflamed to violence, Tom had said, I must have been unduly provoked. I knew this because he’d recited his speech to me in the corridor before going in to see the Head. He’d written it out on paper first, and learned it by heart.
I’d been moved by his efforts, surprised that anyone would go to so much trouble to help me, but when I’d tried to thank him, he’d looked away and patted my shoulder. “Anytime you’re in a spot of bother,’’ he said, “just you come to me and we’ll sort it out.”
And so, years later, I stood outside 116 Breecher’s Terrace and tried to summon the courage to walk up the narrow path and rap on the front door. I had no clear idea what I was going to say, but I needed to talk to someone, and I felt sure he’d understand.
When Tom at last opened the door I was shocked to find he was wearing a shabby grey dressing-gown over blue pyjamas. It was just after half-past four in the afternoon and I wondered if he was ill. Then I smelled the alcohol on his breath.
For a moment he looked at me, as if trying to focus his eyes, and then he grinned broadly and stretching out his arm dragged me inside and shut the door.
“Jumbo,” he said. “It’s you.” Then he realised what he was wearing. “I’ve been ill,” he told me, and I was sorry he felt he had to lie. By an armchair in his sitting-room was a half-full bottle of whisky and an empty glass. The television was on so loud that either the people next door were all deaf or they’d given up banging on the wall and had called the police.
Panicked by the noise I turned the television down. I could hardly believe that the unshaven man in front of me was the trim, grey-haired trainer we’d joyfully paraded around the changing-room on the Saturday of the last match of the season. I think he must have read my thoughts because he mumbled again that he was ill and traipsed round me, taking an old newspaper and two empty beer cans off the companion armchair.
“Sit down,” he said, avoiding my glance. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I settled down, still shaken by what was happening, noticing new signs of decay all the time; the thick grime over what part of the window was showing, the layer of grey dust over the cupboards and the mantelpiece. A glass had rolled under the television and been left there. The room was in a curious half-darkness, though it was still afternoon, because the curtains were only partly open.
The air smelled stale and I wanted to open a window and draw the curtains to let some more light in.
“Would you like something to drink?” Tom said, turning guiltily away from the whisky bottle. “Tea, or anything?”
“Tea would be grand.”
I stood up to help him, but he waved me away and shuffled off into the kitchen in his slippers.
It must have been twenty minutes before he returned carrying two mugs of tea and two digestive biscuits on a tin tray. He’d combed his greying hair, washed his face and re-tied the knot on his dressing-gown so it didn’t flap open and show his stained pyjamas.
I wanted to cry when I saw him, only I wasn’t Jumbo any more, I was someone older, someone more hurt and frightened. I felt that if I started crying I’d never stop, so I silenced the fear and sadness that stretched inside me like the arm of a drowning man. The words inside me slipped away, and were lost in the silent despair that filled the room and the two human vessels crouched there, trying to make conversation.
“Why did you come here?” Tom asked me suddenly, and the vulnerability in his eyes unnerved me. I think he suspected the neighbours, tired of the blaring television of the drunk next door, had somehow contacted me.
“I just called in to see how you were,” I said, trying to smile.
There was a silence and then he rested back in his chair, closing his eyes like a worn-out toy, the wheels inside him too rickety to turn any more.
“I don’t get many visitors,” Tom said, after he’d been quiet for nearly five minutes. “No one calls.”
“I came around,” I said, unable to think of anything else to give him.
He smiled at me, then shook his head and began to laugh creakily. I was scared he was going to cry. As if he no longer cared what I thought, he moved unsteadily out of his chair and picked up the whisky bottle and refilled the empty glass. He sat down again, drinking a third of the whisky in the tumbler like it was water. He screwed his face up, and again I dreaded tears.
“Know what I did today,” he said, in a wavering voice. “Know what I did this last week? Do you?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“I’ve drank and drank … They think I’m sick.”
“Tom, don’t … ”
“You know why?” he said, his voice beginning to crack. “I haven’t anything else to do, not anything. I haven’t any friends. When school’s over I’ve nothing, nothing to take home with me. No one at home waiting for me. There’s the lads in the pub, of course. The Wellsey. I go there regular. Know the barman and the old boys that toddle along there for a pint. We chat about nothing, nothing that’s alive and living and breathing. It’s what happened in the past, and that’s dead isn’t it, it doesn’t mean a bloody thing does it?”
“You can remember … ” I said stumbling over my words. “You can remember the good times you’ve had.”
“But what’s the bloody point? Every year I get to know new boys at the school and every year I see the old boys go, leave me just when you’ve got them together as a good team, just when there’s some feeling there, they go away … So what’s the fucking point? You go away and soon after that I can’t remember your faces. I get your names muddled. And you might write, a little letter from the college you’re at or about the new job you’ve started, but that’s all. I never see you. You have your own lives to live. I can’t share in that. I can’t share in anything. There’s just the pub and the old men there and I’m one of them, an old windbag with nothing much to talk about. I’m in my forties, but I’m dead. No family. No wife, no children, nothing.”
I couldn’t say anything then, could only wait for him to stop. But somehow my presence had opened the floodgates to all the thoughts that had been swimming crazily in his head these last lonely days.
“I used to be good with girls,” he said. “They used to go for me. In the three years I was at college there were eight girls. Eight. That’s all I remember, the sodding number and the odd name. But that’s all. No faces, no faces at all. Just a number. Just a good screw. Part of the game you play when you’re young and you think you’re doing so well. I never married. I had the chance, but I was scared. Women scared me so I screwed them and thought it was all they were good for. They frighten me now. They look inside me and see a shabby old man.”
Tom’s voice trailed off and he stared at me, and leant forward as if all his words had disappeared into a black silence, and now was the time for his confession.
“I haven’t had a woman for five years now. I can’t even get excited at the thought. The whisky helps. A little anyway. And there’s school. The holidays will be over in ten days time, ten days. I’ll have somewhere to go again, people to see. You see there’s life there in the school. Not in the staffroom, not in the studies and the books and the classrooms, but in the kids. You see it shining out of their faces and their eyes. The things you kids do. Play around like anything, so loud and so scared and so pleased with yourselves because you know there’s life inside you, know you’ve got it all to do.
“I see them larking about in the changing-rooms, the noise and the scuttling about, ducking the cold showers, trying to avoid the road runs, flicking mud at each other, showing off their new kit. And all the time they sparkle and you see them grow up and change and perhaps some of the sparkle’s lost, but then others pick it up, quiet boys you never thought would really shine, but they do and I watch them, I watch them all before they go away.”
“We’ll keep in touch, Tom. The lads will I’m sure.” Tom nodded his head an
d then closed his eyes and rested back in his chair.
“You all say that,” he said. “Every one of you. But you’re all dead. The moment you leave those school gates you’re dead to me. You can never go back.”
He took a quick breath and then there was silence. For a long time I sat there, stuck in the armchair as if I was under some kind of spell. Then I realised he was asleep.
I picked up the tray with the tea neither of us had touched and went into the kitchen which was in a terrible state. Plates covered with grease stains were heaped in the sink. An open tin of baked beans had been knocked over, spilling its load like vomit over a dirty table-cloth. A piece of toast, with a buttered knife close by, lay on the table as if waiting for the ghost’s supper.
I stood there looking around at everything for a long time. Then I pushed the kitchen door to so as not to disturb Tom, and began to clear the table, stacking the plates onto the side ready to be washed. I wrapped everything that needed to be thrown away in the pages of an old News of the World and put the whole lot in the dustbin outside the back door. Rolling up my sleeves, I filled a bowl with hot water and soap from the squeegee bottle and began to wash up.
When I arrived home it was just after seven o’clock. The house was quiet and empty. Then I remembered that Mum had gone out to see her younger sister, Sandra. For once she must have persuaded Dad to go with her because there was no sign of anyone about. Slipping off my shoes I padded quietly upstairs to my room.
Halfway up the stairs I thought I could hear something. I listened on the landing, could hear the sound of strained breathing coming from Mum and Dad’s bedroom. I was horrified at the thought of discovering my parents making love.
I stumbled quickly into my bedroom. The cardboard envelope that held the girlie calendar was lying empty on my bedside table. I realised what was happening then. Mum was at Sandra’s. Dad, thinking he was alone in the house, lay masturbating on his bed, watched over by the glossy, lifeless form of the buxom Miss July.
Who Lies Inside Page 7