‘Really? You think so?’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
I’ve always thought of Vaughn’s relationship as, in many ways, idyllic – someone living in another house, who would occasionally turn up for companionship, intelligent conversation and, far more importantly, sex. And who would then clean up after themselves and go back home again. But it doesn’t appear to be fulfilling after all, at least not to Vaughn, who no doubt needs more emotional sustenance from a woman than I do. I have no need of it at all.
I was hoping Vaughn wouldn’t put forward a series of reasoned counter-proposals because I am very poorly equipped to deal with them, but in the event I need not have concerned myself. He was beaming, the wide Cheshire-cat grin of the suddenly enlightened.
‘That’s what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll propose. Of course! How could I have been such an idiot?’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. Idiocy is not something I usually miss, but in Vaughn’s case I prefer to think of him as merely confused.
‘She’s been hinting,’ he said eagerly. ‘Her sister got married last year and ever since then she’s been making jokes about being on the shelf, being too old to worry about it, but it must be what she’s wanted all along!’
He drank the last of his pint with unseemly haste, considering I had paid for it, and stood up, wrapping his scarf around his neck.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get a ring, dear chap!’ Only Vaughn could use the phrase ‘dear chap’ and not sound like a pompous oaf. ‘I’ve half an hour left before I need to be back at work, I need to go and find a jeweller!’
Gaviston Comprehensive, Grove Road. I went there when I was thirteen, seven months away from my fourteenth birthday. Recovered by then from the initial shock of bereavement, I had settled into a phase that could best be described as sullen. I had no wish to meet anyone, talk to anyone or engage in activity of any kind, educational or social, so in that environment, of course, I fitted in very well.
On my third day, two boys from another class cornered me in the cloakrooms.
‘You’re new,’ one of them said. He was a pale kid, with one of those stupid haircuts they had back then, shaved at the sides, mouse-coloured and spiky on top, a ridiculous rat’s tail plaited down his back. Next to him his companion was less muscular than corpulent, but still at least a foot taller than I was – it would be another two years until the growth spurt that took me up to six foot and a bit beyond.
‘Yes,’ I said, already wary of speaking too much and giving away an accent that didn’t match theirs.
‘Where you come from,’ the other one offered. Was it supposed to be a question? It hadn’t sounded like one and therefore I didn’t feel the need to answer.
I went to leave but they were blocking my way. The smaller of the two said, ‘You a bit weird, or summink? Bit funny in the ’ead?’ The fat one snorted and moved closer, close enough to grant me the scent of his armpits.
I don’t even suppose they were being particularly threatening; I certainly wasn’t afraid of them. But they were in my way and I had no desire to hang around in this stinking, graffitied hole any longer.
I think the primary advantage I have over people is surprise. I move quickly, I don’t hesitate, and I don’t give anything away.
I kicked the fat one in the groin and he doubled over and fell to the floor, shrieking with a noise that sounded far too girlish and shrill for one so large. The smaller one looked at me, his eyes widening. He was about the same size as I was, and my guess was that he’d never been challenged, never had to get physical with anyone without the assistance of his chum.
He took a step backwards and went to let me pass. I thought about it, really I did, but the fat shit was still rolling around on the floor crying, and for the first time in months I felt something stirring inside me, something unfamiliar. It felt good. I was having fun.
And it was all too, too easy. I grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around and slammed him into the wall. He was saying ‘no, I’m sorry, we didn’t mean it, you’re alright, really, let me go’ in a jumble, his voice rising to the same pre-pubescent wail as that of his friend, as though shock and fear had emasculated them both.
It was all just too tempting. Holding him against the wall with the weight of my body and with a fist pushing into the space between his shoulderblades, I wound the stupid rat’s tail around my hand twice and with surprisingly little effort – though maybe the intent behind it fuelled my strength – ripped it off. So then there were two of them squirming in pain, and the smaller one took up the shrieking where the other one had now stilled to a shuddering whimper. For a moment I looked at them, thinking what a lot of noise was coming out of them and whether what had happened had entirely justified it, then I looked at the rat’s tail in my hand. A small patch of bright white skin had come away with it. The other end still secured neatly with an elastic band.
The smaller one was clutching the back of his head with both his hands as though he was under arrest for something, eyeballing me with an expression I couldn’t define, his eyebrows furrowed, tears pouring from his eyes, cheeks bright red. He was glaring at me, and I was looking casually back. Blood was seeping through his interlaced fingers, their knuckles white with effort.
I shook the stupid rat’s tail from my hand and it fell to the floor. ‘Goodnight, ladies,’ I said, leaving them to their sobs.
I was suspended for a week, but not expelled. The two boys were notorious bullies, although of course I’d had no idea about that. When I was sent to see the head teacher (not a master, here, although male – he was a middle-aged homosexual who encouraged liberal attitudes towards teaching and hoped by doing so to have a supportive following amongst the staff) – he all but thanked me. He certainly wasn’t angry.
‘It’s not the way we do things,’ he said, ‘causing injury to your fellow students; it’s not the right thing to do, is it? Not the right choice to make?’
‘I suppose not,’ I said.
‘What were they doing?’
I considered what to reply. In truth, they hadn’t been doing very much at all. ‘Standing in the way.’
‘Did they say anything?’
‘Not that I remember.’
‘Were you afraid of them, is that what it was?’
‘I’m not afraid of anyone.’
‘That’s good, Colin. That’s the right way to be.’
‘Aren’t you going to cane me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I prefer not to. And I think you’re sorry for what you did, aren’t you?’
I didn’t answer that one. He wouldn’t have liked the response and I wasn’t prepared to lie: I was neither sorry, nor ashamed of myself. In fact I’d rather enjoyed the encounter; it had relieved the boredom of the day.
‘Well, in any case, you realise I will have to suspend you.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said.
‘A week?’ As though he was asking me rather than telling. If I give you a week, will you promise to behave afterwards?
‘Alright,’ I said.
‘I’ll write a letter for your mother. I did speak to her on the phone earlier, I asked her to come in, but… anyway. Go and collect your bag and coat, and then come back to the office to collect the letter.’
I turned to go.
‘Colin?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t do it again.’
I didn’t do it again, at least not on school property, because in a strange sort of way I liked the head teacher. He wasn’t as weak as he appeared; he was a fair man who was trying to do the right thing in very difficult circumstances, and I wanted him to like me. Besides, by then my mother, who had been through what she later described to anyone who’d listen as ‘a very trying time’, was starting to recover. Whilst the head teacher seemed incapable of genuine anger, my mother was not.
My mother had spent a good couple of years in a semi-official state of mourning after my father’s death. It was the sort of person she was. Eventually she’d realised that people had stopped paying attention when she had a tantrum and so she’d decided it was time to be brave and move on. She had never been a patient woman, however, and now it was just the two of us she was even less so. Her friends, my father’s family, even her sister, had all reached the point of wanting nothing more to do with her, therefore I was the only person who was still available to whom she could direct her frustrations and her ire. She stopped taking the antidepressants and moved on purposefully to medicating herself with alcohol.
We hated each other with a fury that was as powerful as it was unspoken. She was violent until the point when she realised I was big enough to fight back, and then her bitterness was restricted to verbal assaults that were in many ways just as damaging.
‘You killed your father,’ she said one evening. ‘You know that? I always knew it. It was the stress you put him under, always answering us back, never doing as you were told.’
We were both sitting in the living room, having had dinner together in silence. This happened with increasing frequency – civility giving way to hostility with no apparent warning. She’d had wine with dinner, gin before it, sherry before that, but, even so, she was not what anyone would describe as drunk. The television was on in the background, and, because we’d disagreed over what to watch, the tension in the room had risen. She blamed me utterly for my father’s death, just as I blamed her. It passed the time.
‘You killed him, you little piece of shit. He was so happy with me until you came along.’
I searched for a suitable weapon to use in response, and settled on Kafka.
‘“To die would mean nothing else than to surrender a nothing to a nothing.”’
‘Kafka again?’ she said. ‘What a load of codswallop.’
‘Kafka was a nihilist,’ I said. ‘And if you take his views on board, whether either of us is to blame for his death is rather beside the point.’
‘I wish you’d never been born,’ she answered coldly.
‘So do I,’ I said.
Sometimes these exchanges were even funnier. She was so easy to respond to. The more she hated me, the more amusing she was. And yet we carried on living together in the same house, even after I left school. She cooked dinner, sometimes, when she wasn’t too drunk to stay upright. I did most of the washing and cleaning. She did the shopping, so that she could buy alcohol. We had a strange, symbiotic and oppositional relationship that served a purpose for both of us.
I usually find myself thinking of my mother on a Wednesday evening, and occasionally I used to wonder why this was, until I realised that of course, with Wednesday being my laundry and housekeeping evening, doing these menial tasks reminds me of our time in the house together after my father died.
The woman from the nursing home rang again half an hour ago. My mother needs a new dressing gown, apparently, and she has been asking after me. This last I know to be a lie. Why are they so keen for me to visit? I have nothing to say to her, and, if by some miracle she were to be compos mentis at the moment I chose to arrive, the chances of her having something of consequence to say to me are very slim indeed.
One of these days I will shout something down the phone at the Matron, or whatever she is. I will be driven to madness, to fury by her lack of sensitivity.
The woman abused me,
I shall cry.
She ruined my childhood and has therefore made it impossible for me to form a functioning adult relationship with a woman. I don’t want to see her. May she rot quietly and stinkingly in her wing-backed armchair
…
See how quickly she rings back after that, shall we?
In the meantime, whilst I am terribly distracted at the thought of the next edition of the newspaper and what delicious details it may contain, I am also very aware of the fact that at the moment I only have two on the go, and it is becoming my custom to have three. Three is manageable, a beautiful, stylish and balanced number. When one of them finally goes, then I always find a replacement. I’m getting so good at spotting when they are close. Sadly, however, I have been a bit distracted of late and I had to hurry the last one on a bit.
So – where to next? Back to the university? That place has been especially productive; I met three of them there. Who would have thought that the foyer of a university building would attract such a high proportion of depressives? The doctor’s surgery – I had several from there. But that is a dangerous place… any more and they will see the pattern. The supermarket is always a good bet, and there are so many of them that the chances are no link between them would be made. There’s a trick to it, and it’s the time of day. Between half-past six and nine at night is when they come out.
You can spot them too. Discard the harassed parents escaping to the shop once the partner is home from work to do the kids’ bedtime – in the trolley: nappies, ready meals, colic drops. The executives, single maybe, but they will have good jobs – quality meat, small packs of exotic vegetables, stir-fry sauce, still wearing a suit and tie.
The ones you want are those who look as if they are wearing the clothes they wore to bed last night. The ones who come out at night because they can’t bear the crowds. They don’t shop during the daytime because they think the noise of babies yelling might burst their eardrums, and it makes them want to cry themselves. They shop at night, when it’s quiet and dark and nobody will stare at them, nobody will notice them, nobody will give them a second glance. They work their way around the supermarket as if they are invisible because that’s how they feel. In their trollies will be frozen food, mostly, because they’ll only shop once a month, if that. They will have a list, because they don’t want to have to come back if they’ve forgotten something. They will not make eye contact. They will not talk to anyone.
Thinking about the supermarket reminds me of the one I saw earlier in the week. She looked almost ready. I might go back there to see if I can find her. Cat food, though – that was a problem. Cats have a habit of drawing attention to themselves if they don’t get fed. Dogs are worse, of course, since they will bark if they have to. But cats… they add an element of risk, and risk is something I try to eliminate at all costs.