Nick's Blues (2 page)

Working two jobs, the petrol station and some evenings behind the bar, his mum earned enough to put food on the table and pay the rent, keep Nick in basic clothes. Anything extra he had to earn for himself. And he had his heart set on a scooter, a Vespa or maybe even a Piaggio. For every pound he spent, there were three or four he saved.

“What time you leaving?”

Nick looked at the clock. “Soon.”

“Hang on then. There's something for you.”

When she came back into the room, she kissed him on the cheek. “Happy birthday.” The package in her hand was the size of a shoe box and at first Nick thought it was the trainers he'd been after, but when he picked it up the weight wasn't right and besides whatever was inside rattled.

“What is it?”

“Open it. Look for yourself.”

“What is it?” he repeated.

“I don't know.”

Nick narrowed his eyes. The box was wrapped in brown paper, a section of which had faded as though it had been left somewhere in the sun. Along the edges, the paper had been fastened down with Sellotape and for good measure the whole thing was tied around with string.

“Your dad left it for you. With a note. He wanted you to have it on your birthday. When you were sixteen.” She wasn't looking at him as she spoke.

“What note? What bloody note?”

“I burned it, threw it away, I can't remember.”

“You must remember.”

“All right. I burned it. That and everything else he left.”

The inside of Nick's chest felt hollow.

“Everything except that.”

Though there was no more than a mouthful of tea left in her cup and that was cold, she brought it to her lips.

Nick stared at the box: the way it rested on the table between them.

“I'm gonna be late for work,” Nick said, pushing back his chair. “I've got to change.”

His mother took her cup to the sink and rinsed it, went into the living room and turned up the sound on the TV. A few minutes later, she heard the front door open and then close.

Next morning Nick was late. Hurrying between the last stragglers, his rucksack bounced awkwardly against his back, first drops of rain fresh on his face. His mates had given him up and gone inside.

He caught up with Christopher on the way to maths mid-morning, the first class they shared.

“You okay?” Christopher asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Thought you'd decided to bunk off.”

“Then I wouldn't be here now, would I?”

Christopher decided to keep the rest of his questions to himself.

“What happened to you this morning?” Scott asked later. They were on their way, the three of them, to the café for their usual slice. The rain had eased off, but overhead the sky was still grey.

“What d'you mean, what happened?” Nick said. “Nothing happened. I was a few minutes late, that's all.”

“You're never late.”

“Yeah? Well, today I was, okay?”

Scott shrugged and spat at the ground.

Nick said nothing.

Outside the café Laura was waiting for them, takeout cappuccino in her hand — that and a couple of Marlboro Lights were all she normally had for lunch. Maybe a bite of Scott's pizza.

“I thought you weren't here,” she said, looking up at Nick.

“Jesus,” Nick said.

“Leave him,” Christopher said.

“Laying in bed thinking about Ellen,” Laura said with a grin. “Stunt your growth.”

“You can talk,” Scott said.

“That's cause I'm thinking about you.”

“You better be.”

“We gonna eat or what?” Nick said, and suddenly there she was, Ellen, right across the street. Walking with four or five other girls, not wearing her beret today, her streaked fair hair partly masking her face until, with a laugh, she shook it free.

Laura had followed the direction of Nick's gaze and was about to make another crack but something in his expression made her bite her tongue.

“What you having?” Christopher asked, digging Nick in the ribs. “Ham and cheese?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Why not?”

It was the cheapest they did.

***

Nick had been awake that morning since well before six, waking out of a dream that splintered the moment he rolled onto his side to look at the clock. Sweat matted his hair to his scalp. The water in a glass by the bed tasted stale. In the restaurant the night before, a party of eight had insisted on sitting around till way past twelve, ordering brandy after brandy and laughing at their own jokes. Eventually, Marcus, the manager, had tapped Nick on the shoulder.

“Cinderella, go home.”

“Nah, it's okay,” Nick had said. “I'll stay.”

“I can't afford overtime, I've told you before.”

“It doesn't matter.”

Marcus had thrown Nick's jacket at him by way of reply.

There had been no more than the usual selection of drunks on the street. Only the usual deals going down outside the all-night garage and the twenty-four hour corner store.

He could hear the faint wheeze of his mother's breathing as soon as he got inside, the door to her room ajar. Two years ago now, she'd cut down her smoking to five a day; this after a friend, early forties like herself, had just survived a cancer scare.

Nick had been on to her to quit altogether since a health education lecture they'd had at school, the pictures of smokers' lungs, shrivelled and blackened as burned-out shells. A lot of the other kids had been laughing as they left the hall, couldn't wait to light up as soon as they hit the street, but Nick believed what he saw, knew that it was real.

People dying.

The box was still where it had been left, at the centre of the kitchen table.

How long did it take to die?

Months, seconds, years?

Growing up, he had walked, some empty Saturday or Sunday afternoons, along the Archway Road until he was almost underneath the bridge and stood there staring up, and sometimes he would see a small wedge of colour amongst the bridge's grey, the face of someone peering down.

Sometimes he had tried to imagine his father's fall.

What had been in his mind.

Lifting the box, Nick held it to his ear and, much as he had believed, when younger, that if you held a sea shell to your ear you could hear the sea, what he heard now was the wind rushing past his father's body as he fell.

Nick dropped the box as if his fingers burned.

Awake early, he lay in bed, listening to his mother getting ready to leave, the bedroom door, the bathroom, kettle, radio, the bathroom door again, a few snatches of song. When she had gone, he hurried to the kitchen and brought the box back to his room.

The knots on the string were tight and small and it was all Nick could do to work first one corner and then another free; one tug at the tape and it peeled loose in a single strip. He began by folding the brown paper back then screwed it, impatiently, into a ball. He started counting beneath his breath and on five the lid lifted easily free.

The contents were loosely held inside a newspaper dated 1994.

Nick's first thought was that his father had tipped the contents of a drawer into the box with little reason. Scraps of paper, photographs, torn tickets, an audio cassette, guitar picks, what he thought was a capo, several spare guitar strings, a mouth organ in a torn green plastic case.

Nick's eyes went to the photographs first, shuffling them quickly through his fingers: his father on stage with other musicians or alone; smiling at the camera in what seemed to be a restaurant; a woman walking by the sea. His father again, out of doors somewhere, grass and trees, and in his arms — on one arm to be exact — a baby resting against his chest, eyes open, staring up. The look on his father's face as he gazed back down.

Seeing it, Nick's breath caught and a sob broke from his throat.

He wasn't going to let the bastard make him cry.

As Nick lay back down and pulled the covers over his head, the contents of the box scattered everywhere.

***

Instead of going to Christopher's after school that day, he went straight home. Not long in, still wearing her petrol station overall, his mother was talking to someone on the phone. Nick grunted and hurried to his room. Seeing the Hoover out in the hall, he thought she might have reneged on their deal, gone in and tidied up, moved things around, but no, everything was where he had left it, strewn across the bed, the floor.

Sitting, he tried the guitar picks on his fingers, fingers and thumb, the plastic hard against his skin; his dad must have had small hands, not small necessarily but long and thin. He looked at them in one of the photographs, his father seated on a stool playing, concentration tightening his face. The fingers of the left hand were pressed high against the strings, the others curled over the centre of the instrument in a blur, too fast for the camera to clearly catch.

His father's face was lean, his eyes were dark; in some pictures he was clean shaven, in others he had a beard, a small goatee. Carefully, Nick spread the photographs along the bed — six, seven, eight — searching them for some resemblance to himself.

“Nick? You all right in there?” His mother's voice from behind the door.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Want some tea? I've made some tea.”

“Okay.”

Only then did he realise that the young woman his father was sitting with in one of the photos was his mother. Taken later than the others, it must have been, his father older, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned to him while he looked out at the camera and smiled.

Cheese!

She was pretty then, his mum, Nick could see that, her hair pulled back into a pony tail. And young. Not so much older than the girls he sat with every day at school. How old could she have been? He had no idea. Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty-one?

Holding the photograph closer, he studied her expression and saw happiness, uncertainty.

“Nicky, this tea's getting stewed.”

“I'm coming, all right?”

Sliding the photographs together, he placed them carefully at the bottom of the box.

As well as the tea, there was a sponge cake on the table, jam and cream, icing sugar dusted across the top.

“No candles, I'm afraid.”

“And it's a day late.”

“Well, d'you want some or not?”

“Yeah, might as well.”

Nick was on his second piece before he felt able to ask.

“Why d'you want to know that?” his mother said, amused.

Nick shrugged.

“You've never asked before.”

“I'm asking now.”

“Is this something to do with whatever was in that box?”

“Just tell me.”

“Twenty. I was twenty, all right. Satisfied?”

“And my dad, how old was he?”

“When I met him? I don't know. Forty-three, forty-four.”

“Christ!”

“What?”

“He was old enough to be your father.”

“Well, he wasn't, was he? He was yours.”

From the pocket of her uniform, she took a packet of cigarettes.

“I thought you were giving up,” Nick said.

“I'll do what I want.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What's that mean?”

“Nothing.”

They stared at one another across the table, until his mother reached for her lighter and Nick pushed away his plate and cup and headed for the door.

“Nick. Nicky, don't. Come back.”

When the front door slammed, she sat back down with a sigh and drew the smoke from the cigarette down deep into her lungs.

Nick walked without really thinking where he was going. Down on to the main road and left instead of right: the opposite direction to school. In less than five minutes he'd drawn level with the place where he worked and hurried past, not wanting to be recognised. Then the church that had been taken over by hippies and crusties until the police moved them on; holy rollers in there now, Baptists or whatever, Nick had heard them clapping and singing Sunday mornings, the men in suits and ties, little girls in pink dresses, their hair in pigtails or braids.

He stopped to look at the posters outside the old cinema that was now a music venue. The Cult. Apocalyptica. The Long Blondes. Along with Christopher and Scott, he'd tried to blag his way into the club night a few times, Saturdays late, the queue stretching down the street. Once they'd succeeded in making it past the bouncers, twice been turned away. He remembered the music loud inside, the crack of plastic glasses being trodden underfoot, the smell of cannabis everywhere. Two blokes with folded arms blocking the entrance to the Gents: “You don't want to go in there.” Someone tapping him on the shoulder at the bar, trying to sell him a tab of E. Then this girl, half-pissed or more, launching herself at Scott with a giggle and pushing her tongue right down his throat.

“You could've had her,” Christopher said later, heading for the exit.

“So could anyone.”

They should try and go again, Nick thought. He felt warm and it wasn't simply that he'd been walking fast. In the Bull and Gate he ordered a pint of lager and when the barman challenged him for ID he tried to brazen it out and lost. Further along, he went into McDonald's and bought a cheeseburger and fries and sat near the window staring out.

Why had he lost his temper? What had all that been about?

His mum had married some bloke her own age, he'd still be around today? Who was he kidding? More than half the kids he knew at school were living with one parent instead of two. Scott got to see his old man three times a year if he was lucky. Christopher's mum had moved out a few years back and now his dad was shacked up with some Bulgarian slapper who used to be Chris's baby sitter.

He thought about his mother's expression in the photograph: she'd been happy, hadn't she?

He remembered when he'd been nine or ten and had a thing about McDonald's apple pies his mum would buy him one, a treat, Saturdays when they were out doing the shopping. He remembered how the apple, once he'd bitten through the brittle crust, had always been too hot and burned his tongue.