Shining On (5 page)

She looked up at me as if I'd hit her. “What did you do that for, Laurence?” she exclaimed.

I shrugged. “I dunno.” Well, I didn't know … I just did it.

She scowled; she was really furious. She stood up and yelled in my face, “You're not to do that to me again. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, sure, so what?”

Then she stamped off out of the room. I was really angry. It was just a joke. It didn't mean anything, it was a joke. Maybe I did it harder than I'd meant to. I thought she should be grateful to me, really. I could have said something if I'd wanted. I thought, what would happen if I told my dad?

It was at dinner. Dad always says, “The family that eats together stays together.” He's done nearly all the cooking ever since he went part-time at the school where he teaches. He used to be Head of English, but it was too much work for him. Now he thinks how lucky we all are because we can have home-cooked food three or four times during the week and not just at weekends. Sometimes he even bakes bread. The bread's nice, and sometimes he does nice meals, but I prefer meals out of a packet.

Someone said my name.

“What?”

“Pass the sauce, deafo,” said Gill.

“Sorry.”

I had this plan about making loads of money by blackmailing my mum. I could threaten to tell my dad unless she gave me loads of money. I could make her write her will out in my favor. I could make her give me tenners whenever I wanted. Then Gill would always be saying, “Where did you get all that?” and I'd just go, “Ah ha! Nothing for noses,” like she does to me whenever I ask her anything.

“Laurence!”

“What?”

“Not what—pardon.”

“What?”

“Christ. Do you want more fish pie?”

“No, thanks.”

“You're in a dream.”

I
was
in a dream. I could make a fortune. Out of Nigel Turner, too. He was married. I think he and his wife had even come to dinner sometime. I could blackmail both of them. I'd be the richest kid in the school. I could have any-thing I liked. It would be great.

Mum and Dad started bickering. Dad wanted Mum to go part-time, like him. He was saying it was too much stress working full-time at a school these days. He was saying how bad-tempered and distant she was. He was always going on about all these other teachers who were having nervous breakdowns and falling to bits, and that she should get out and go part-time before it happened to her and he was left having to pay all the bills on half a wage and run the house all on his own.

“We could have days out. We could walk or visit places. Look … I can do anything I want on Mondays, Tuesdays and Friday afternoons. You could do it with me,” he said.

“But I
like
working full-time,” she said.

“Well, I think it's selfish of you,” said my dad. “Life's to enjoy, not to work yourself into the ground.”

“I'm not working myself into the ground.”

“Then why are you so distant? If you're married with a
family, you ought to be prepared to spend a bit of time with them.”

Gill said he only went on like that because he couldn't bear Mum being better at work than he was. She said, “He can't take it. Men are weaker than women, really.” Well, I dunno. Dad used to be good at everything. He never had to work hard, it always came out right for him.

The other really great thing about Mum having an affair was that I had it in my hands like a time bomb or a grenade or something. I could pull the pin and let it go. I could blow up the family! Or I could quietly sit on it, show it to my mum … and make my fortune. It was like a weapon. I'd never really thought before about knowledge as being dangerous like that. When you know certain kinds of things, it's like power. It lets you do things you could never have done before. I started thinking about how to ask Mum to put my pocket money up. It would be a start.

“What's wrong with you?” yelled my dad. I think I heard him, but I assumed he was talking to my mum. There was a pause. He got really cross and he bawled, “I said, what's the matter with you, Laurence?” When he said my name I almost jumped out of my chair.

“What?”

“What? Is that the only word you know? Get a grip, will you? What's the matter?”

I looked at my mum. She blushed. She blushed! It was suddenly like it was all out in the open.
I
blushed. My dad
was staring at me, scowling away. Then he noticed my mum as red as a tomato and all his anger went and he looked shocked.

Then I started acting stupid. I don't know what was going through my head. I was fed up with keeping it a secret, I wanted to tell someone and it suddenly occurred to me that it didn't matter if I did. I mean, so what? People have affairs all the time. It was a joke!

I leaned across to my mum and I said, “Give us a kiss, Sandra.” And I blew her a kiss and winked. It was the wink that did it. It was a long, slow lecherous wink and it served her right.

I didn't mean to. Maybe I was getting messed up with the game and real life, because although I liked thinking about making all that money, it was like the other ways I've had of getting rich—they never work in the end. Listen, she should have had one of her little talks with me. She should have said something. She just left it up to me, and I'm a child still, right? And … she shouldn't have hit me.

Suddenly my mum swung forward and slapped me round my face as hard as she could. It went … crack! It really hurt. I put my hand to my cheek and it felt red-hot and smooth.

I didn't actually tell, even then. I just said, “You shouldn't have done that,” like it was a threat.

Dad jumped up. He was really angry. “Or what?” he yelled. “Or what?”

I ignored him and I said to my mum, “I didn't tell. So
what did you hit me for?” and I nodded at Dad, just so it was clear who I hadn't told.

Everything was very quiet. I could see my dad licking his lips. Then Mum said, “You and Gill better go upstairs. Your dad and I need to talk.”

Gill said, “But we haven't finished.”

“Just go upstairs for half an hour. Both of you. Go on.”

Gill tutted and groaned, but we got up to go. Mum looked at me and said, “Happy?”

We got upstairs, and I made to go into my room, but Gill grabbed hold of me and said, “What's going on? What's
wrong
with you?” I didn't want to, but she made me tell her everything. Afterwards, she thought I was the most stupid person in the whole world. She started to shout at me, which was a bit much after I'd told her everything. It made me incredibly angry, it was so unfair. I screamed and shouted, I was so angry, and I threw her out of my room. Afterwards, I could hear her crying next door.

Of course, I got the little talk
then.
Then she was right up the stairs, my mum, telling me how it wasn't my fault, but it was all too late then, wasn't it? Anyway, she was only saying that, she never believed it. Gill thought it was my fault all right, she never stopped going on about it. Mum and Dad were always saying how it wasn't my fault at all, but even they say I should have spoken to Mum about it first. But I never let it out, did I? I didn't actually say anything about it.

They were down there for ages. We never did get our pudding. After a while, they started shouting. It went on for ages, and then the next night and the next … it just kept on.

The thing that gets me is the way it all just fell to pieces. I don't think they even tried. My dad had it coming, actu-ally. He's always been the smart one, the good-looking one, the clever one. He's one of those people, everything they do is perfect … it makes you sick. And then when things do go wrong he can't take it! And he's had affairs… he admitted it. Can you believe that? Gill heard them talking about it. You know what he said to Gill when she accused him of being a hypocrite? He said, “Yes, but that was just mucking about. Your mother is
in love.”

The day she left he was working in the garden. All along the bottom of the garden there's a long row of poplar trees. He's been on about them for years. He says poplar trees have robbing roots, which is why nothing grows well in our garden—they steal all the goodness out of the soil. You can find the roots just under the surface almost any-where in our garden. So on this day, the day she left, he started to dig a trench right across the end of the garden to cut through all the roots growing our way.

Mum said she really wanted to stay, but they had to split up, so she gave him the choice and he chose to stay on at the family home. She said it made more sense because he was the one who was going to be spending more time at home, so he was better able to look after us. Gill said he
should have stayed away while Mum was moving her stuff out, but instead of doing that he went into the back garden straight after breakfast. He spent the whole day there, digging this trench. Mum was popping in and out with boxes.

You know what? She made me and Gill help. Well, she tried, anyway. Gill just said no and went into town. I did a couple of boxes, and then I went into my room and sat by the window watching Dad dig his trench. He just worked and worked. Gradually he went deeper into the ground.

About lunchtime I opened the window and shouted out at the top of my voice so everyone could hear, “Why don't you do something? Why don't you
stop
her?” I saw him lift his head up and stare at me, but then he just went back on with his spade. By late afternoon you could just see his head poking out of the top, bobbing up and down as he dug.

Mum went about teatime. She said she'd see us tomorrow at her new place for tea.

“It's just up the road, we can see each other whenever we want,” she said. Then she drove off to Nigel. Later, Gill came home and we went out to the garden to see Dad. He stood at the bottom of this trench. It was amazing; it was so deep. I hung around by the shed while she put her hand out to him.

“Coming in, Dad?” she said.

“Has she gone?”

“She's gone.”

He ignored her hand and pulled himself up a ladder he had down at one end of the trench. He was all streaked
with mud. He looked hopeless. Pathetic. I'd have liked to push him back in the bloody trench and fill the earth in on top of him, he was so useless. Me and Gill stood there looking at him.

“Right. Coped with that pretty well, then, didn't I?” Gill snorted and suddenly all three of us started laughing. He coped! At the bottom of a trench, I mean. Then he put his arms around our backs and we sort of led him back into the house. He looked shattered. Me and Gill made him some tea and then we all watched telly for a while be-fore we went to bed.

H
ow did I tell them? How does anybody tell them? It was a mixture of chance, and being up to here with the sheer awfulness of them not having a clue. (I'm not kidding. I don't think it had even crossed their minds.) I was a wreck from walking through our back door every day after school, practically expecting to see their pale, shocked faces raised to mine. Sooner or later, one of life's meddlers was going to take a swing at them with the old wet sock of truth, and come out with a helpful little “I really thought it was time someone told you.” After all, most of my friends knew. And after Mr. Heffer had soft-soled his way up behind me at the newsstand while I was flicking through something pretty dubious, I was pretty sure all the staff at school were in on it (and half the dinner ladies, if that strange rumor about
Mr. Heffer has any truth to it). I even reckoned Mr. Faroy, the grocer, had guessed, and I'm not sure he even knows quite what we're talking about. So that just left them, really. Mum and Dad.

Like everyone else, though, I kept putting it off. Not just from cowardice, but from not being sure quite what was driving me towards the dread day of reckoning. I wouldn't be surprised if axe murderers have the same problem. They escape undetected from the scene of the crime, and then each knock, each phone ring, causes such a rush of stomach-clenching fear that in the end they realize one day soon they're going to walk into some police station—any police station—and give themselves up, just to be able to stretch out on their hard prison bed, and breathe in peace. Not the best reason for confessing, perhaps. But good enough. And better than some of the others, like wanting to stop your parents making their tired old jokes about gay presenters on the telly, or simply upset them out of childish spite.

And I certainly didn't want to upset mine. I'm very fond of them, I really am. (Go on. Have a good laugh. I'll wait till you're ready.) I think they're both softies, if you want to know. And I'm the light of Mum's life. Even at my age, they're still checking on me all the time. “All right, are you, son?” “Good day at school, sweetheart?” That sort of thing. Not that I'm actually looking for chances to whinge about that animal Parker hurling my sandwiches into the art room clay bin, or Lucy Prescott stalking me down corridors. But, if I wanted to, I could.

But I couldn't tell them this. Each time I geared myself up, I'd get some horror-show vision in my head of how they might take it. You only need half an ear hanging off one side of your head to know how some parents react. Flora knows someone whose mum wailed on for weeks about it all being
her
fault, then threw herself under a bus. That's something nice for Flora's friend to think about all her life. George has a neighbor whose son was banished. Banished! It sounds medieval, but it happened only last year. And I've just read a novel where the father got drunk and cut the little circle of his son's face out of every single family photo-graph, and dropped the whole lot down the toilet. The poor boy pads along to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and finds a little whirlpool of his own unflushed faces staring up at him. Maybe the author made that story up. I certainly hope so.