The Boy Who Fell to Earth (24 page)

‘It’s not an isolated example either,’ the headmaster interrupted. ‘Commenting on people’s height, weight, looks or sexuality is a civil wrong.’

I came up for air, spluttering about how kids with Asperger’s don’t have a psychological filter nor the cognitive ability to defend themselves. I pointed out how the other kids know they can coax a reaction, so goad Merlin by calling him names, sneaking up behind him and poking him like a dog then running off. ‘Yet it’s always my son who is punished.’

The headmaster’s response was to ask me what I thought was the appropriate action for Merlin’s disruptive behaviour. I suggested towing the local education authority out to sea on a decommissioned naval frigate then sinking it in the deepest, darkest part of the Arctic ocean. The headmaster preferred exclusion.

The word ‘exclusion’ hit me like a 100-watt shock. Merlin was still wearing his Sphinx-like smile, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. ‘I am pleading for my son’s life here,’ I begged. ‘You hold it in your hands. If you exclude him, what’s he to do? Leave school with no qualifications? Or get shut away in a Pupil Referral Unit – otherwise known as “Losers Anonymous”? And what kind of education will he get there? Unspecialized teachers trying to control feral, violent kids … That unit is a stepping stone to prison. The government’s just announced 3,000 fewer prison places, so I’d better hurry and get my son’s name down for one!’ I said sarcastically. ‘Do you know what kind of career that unit will prepare Merlin for? Licence-plate making. With tutorials on how to pick up the soap in the shower without bending over,’ I ranted.

‘Then your son can test out his cell theory,’ came the headmaster’s cold reply.

Surely clobbering such a man into unconsciousness with a hardback copy of
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
would only be a Class B misdemeanour?

Walking back to my car, Merlin said in a tiny voice, ‘Mum, it must be so hard when you have a son you don’t think is amounting to anything.’

‘It’s your school that doesn’t amount to anything,’ I griped, driving home at break-neck speed. I checked my watch. With only ten minutes till the end of my own lunch break, I didn’t even have time to stop the car. I just flung Merlin on to the pavement outside our house, like a mailbag, so I could dash back to work before my own headmaster noticed my absence and put
me
on exclusion. I’d had so many notes of chastisement this term, I’d taken to calling my boss Captain Memo.

Cutting the engine in my allotted space in the school car
park,
I sat for a moment and watched other mothers chatting at the gates. They seemed totally unaware that they were the lucky winners in the genetic lottery. I thought of Merlin trying to fend for himself in the disorienting, dizzying school environment, unsupervised at lunch and unprotected at play. I could hear the staccato of mocking laughter he suffered every day. What was my child’s future? Given the six Fs and three ‘Unmarkables’ on his last GCSE school report, and a CV on which playing air guitar in my living room was the high point, I had a vague suspicion that the answer was Fuck All. The chances of my eccentric son surviving one hour in a dreaded Pupil Referral Unit were as likely as a spelling bee at the Playboy mansion. It was then that I suddenly found myself dialling Jeremy’s mobile phone.

‘Re: lunch,’ I said abruptly. ‘Okay, we’ll come. But only if your mother can keep her foot out of her mouth for long enough to apologize to her only grandson for the way she’s treated him.’

Even though I had told Archie that I was looking forward to the excursion only slightly more than a visit to the gynaecologist for a cervical smear, I was aware of a gruesome, voyeuristic desire to see Jeremy again; a masochistic curiosity to know what had happened in his life. Yes, I had told Jeremy that he was dead to me. But in some weird way, over the last few weeks my interest in him had kept growing … like the toenails on a corpse.

When I told Merlin we were going to his father’s house for Saturday lunch, he gave me a look fizzing with joy. All the way to Cheltenham, purring along in Jeremy’s sleek black Mercedes, my happy son swooped from thought to thought like a monkey through the treetops. As he chatted excitedly from the back seat about spin bowlers and the nature of time,
I
noticed how he had started mirroring his father’s behaviour and language. Eager to please, he was laughing over-loudly at Jeremy’s every comment, a technique he’d cultivated to cover his confusion when he was in situations that overwhelmed him. I sat in silence, sending my ex-husband slit-eyed glances of distrust. Jeremy wanted me to believe he’d changed. Sure, I mused sarcastically, and Britney Spears is actually a painfully shy recluse who will go to any extremes to avoid media attention.

Even though Archie thought of the English countryside as a cold, drizzly place where rabbits and deer hop around uncooked, he had offered to speed down deep into gin-and-jags territory to pick us up in my car at the slightest hint of unpleasantness. I had his number on my SOS speed dial. ‘Time may heal a broken heart,’ Archie had texted pro tectively, ‘but not a heart which has had a stake driven right through it. Which is what will happen if that flash bastard upsets you or Merlin in any bloody way.’

The gravel on the Beaufort drive was loose and wet and crunched under the tyres of Jeremy’s car, which gave a low growl as it turned into the forecourt. Two-hundred-year-old hedges all topiaried into fanciful shapes of tigers, and peacocks loomed in a sinister and predatory way in the encroaching mist. Climbing out of his Mercedes, I looked at the statues of Merlin’s long-forgotten ancestors, their feet in inky water, cold as ice on this wet October day.

The Tudor roofbeams of Jeremy’s familial mansion arched above us like the blackened ribcage of a whale. I felt I’d been swallowed whole. And then, I really was being devoured. Not only were the Beaufort hounds leaping and licking at my legs, but Veronica was also suddenly suctioned on to my arm. She deposited an out-of-character kiss on my startled cheek.

‘Welcome back into the family, Lucy,’ my ex-mother-in-law said grandly. She dabbed at a wet eye with a lace hanky. ‘And Merlin! Oh my dear boy. How you’ve grown!’

Her reunion speech was interrupted by a melodious fart. ‘Why does hot air come out of my arse?’ Merlin enquired of her cheerily. ‘Does hot air come out of your arse too?’

To conceal her embarrassment, Veronica threw her arms around her grandson. Rolls of fat encircled her wrists like ivory bracelets. Merlin stood statue-still. Finally realizing that he wasn’t going to hug her back, she unshackled herself and tried not to appear humiliated. A life-long mastery of her emotions had given Veronica an air of supercilious calm. But to my surprise, she didn’t give her usual soliloquy disguised as conversation but tried to engage Merlin in chit-chat about his latest obsessions. She didn’t even flinch or nostril flare when he asked her over lunch why men had nipples and God had invented lesbians. What had happened to the woman, I marvelled. Had she been abducted by aliens and replaced by a Pod Person? Jeremy’s mother had become so sweet, half an hour in her company and we’d all have diabetes.

When Jeremy took Merlin out to the court for a game of tennis, Veronica moved her chair closer to me, settled down companionably and took my hand in hers.

‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have Jeremy back. When Derek died’ – her lips, a slash of glossy crimson, turned down and quivered with a rare display of emotion, which she struggled to control – ‘well, obviously, an opening came up in the local party. A safe seat. Jeremy has always wanted to go into politics. I presumed he’d take his father’s place. And it was a bit of a shock when … But he’s his own man.’ She shrugged. ‘Needless to say, the local Lib Dems snapped him up immediately.’

Yes, I thought to myself, with the family money to bolster his campaign, I bet they snapped him up faster than a condom at a chlamydia convention. As Veronica spoke I looked at the familiar sporting trophies marching across the mantelpiece. This was a family obsessed with achievement.

‘And there’s no doubt he’ll be a huge success in politics,’ Veronica continued, trying to conceal the smug note of certainty in her voice. ‘He’s getting a lot of press attention already. He’s very busy, doing the rounds, knocking on doors, holding public meetings … But Merlin’s his priority. He wants to make it up to both of you. He’s a changed man. His father’s death …’ There was a crack in her Formica face and she took another moment to dab at her eyes again. ‘Well, it’s made him question his values in life. And me mine. I was wrong to judge you so harshly,’ she said tightly, ‘and I want to make amends. Oh, how I rue the day I welcomed Audrey into this family!’

Satin blouse creaking irritably, she went on to talk in agricultural terms about her initial delight in Audrey’s ‘good stock’ but then gradual dismay at her refusal to ‘breed’. She poked absent-mindedly at the cashews curled up in their dish like pale little foetuses. ‘As a TV personality, she didn’t want to ruin her figure. I mean,
really
!’

Of course she wouldn’t, I thought to myself. Having sold yourself as a Ferrari, you have to maintain yourself like one. Starting by not stretching your vagina the customary five kilometres and getting
National Geographic
boobs from breastfeeding. Veronica went on to complain bitterly about how Audrey forced Jeremy to live in ‘that soulless city’ while she waited for her ‘big break’ and then, as soon as she got the prime-time cooking programme she’d always coveted, ran off with her male co-presenter. ‘She calls him her
gastronomic
love god, apparently,’ she shuddered. ‘How
common
.’

I flashed back to the devastation I’d felt when Jeremy traded me in all those years ago. Unable to bear the pain of all that remembering, I leapt at my mobile when it shrilled.

‘How’s it goin’, sweet-cheeks?’ It was Archie’s voice, reassuring, solid. ‘Why doan I drive down and save youse from that old witch. At least I know where to go when I want my warts cleared up.’

I laughed. ‘We’ll be home soon, Archie. And thanks for the call,
darling
,’ I added for the old witch’s benefit.

Jolted by Archie from my sad reverie, I glanced pointedly at my watch. ‘Well, it was nice to see you again, Veronica,’ I platituded. ‘And yes, Merlin would love to take up your very kind educational offer. But as it’s a long way back to town …’

‘No! Why don’t you both stay the night? It’s so lonely rattling around this big, empty house.’ She looked old all of a sudden. Shrunken. Like a once-formidable battleship about to be scuttled. The ancient mansion gave off a supercilious, haughty air. It felt cold in the big dining room, as if the sun had never stolen in. ‘With Jeremy back and you three joyfully reunited, we can make it a happy family home once more.’

That
would put the ‘fun’ into dysfunctional, I thought sarcastically. Veronica was delicately conveying a piece of cake to her mouth on the tines of a silver fork. ‘That was my boyfriend on the phone.’ I waited till the fork was just near her mouth before adding, ‘You remember him … The man who asked you for a French kiss, but down under.’

The cake wobbled precariously and then cascaded carpet-wards in a shower of crumbs. Veronica’s face fell along with it, but before she could locate her vocal chords, Merlin and Jeremy tumbled into the dining room, all sweaty bonhomie.
Jeremy
switched on a great constellation of chandeliers and standard lamps. Merlin bounced into a chair. One skinny leg wrapped itself around the other about seven times, an elbow plonked on to a knee and then his face landed on a waiting hand. My son was trying so hard to be likable he was going for gold in the Fixed Smile Event. My protective love caught me off guard. His awkward eagerness to please his father tore at my heart.

After cake and scones, Veronica announced that she was taking her grandson on a tour of the house. Jeremy caught my eye as his stout mother wrestled with the sleeves of her cardigan. She looked like a Doberman trying to get through a cat flap. As we both tried not to titter, Jeremy handed me a clinking glass of gin and tonic and, in unison, we said, ‘Mother’s little helper.’ I felt a half-smile twitch at my lips. I’d forgotten that there had been good times.

As soon as they’d left to look at heirlooms and artifacts, an activity which Merlin would find as interesting as watching hair recede, I swigged down the whole glass of gin. Alcoholically fortified, I then rounded gleefully on my ex.

‘So Audrey dumped you for her co-presenter. Ha! Just as well she didn’t ever co-star with Willy the Whale. Or Mickey Mouse.
Oh, I just couldn’t resist his animal magnetism
.’

‘Why do you always begin a conversation as though we’re in the middle of an argument?’

‘Because we are.’ I thrust out my glass for a top-up. And then downed that in one go, too.

Jeremy sighed deeply. ‘Shall we take a stroll?’

No way, I thought, but found my legs moving out on to the billiard-baize lawns, which meant that the rest of me was forced to follow.

‘Are you ever going to forgive me, Lucy?’ Vast swathes of
grass
stretched down to an artificial lake dotted with architectural follies. The soft scent of wet soil wafted up from freshly turned beds. ‘I’ve grovelled so much I’ve got gravel rash of the knees.’

‘It’s just that you turning up out of the blue like that … well, it opened up old wounds. Actually, the wounds have never healed. You broke my heart, you bastard. At least now you know what that feels like.’

‘My heart’s not broken over Audrey. It’s broken because I left the only woman I’ve ever truly loved … I guess it was the shock, the depression, the grieving for the child I thought we’d brought into the world, alongside the crushing realization that all the old certainties in one’s life are no more … Yet you refused to accept Merlin’s diagnosis, running around from doctor to doctor … I felt as though you’d shut me out. And then I met Audrey, who seemed so bubbly and luminous. And our life was so dark at the time … I realize now that my attraction to her was nothing more that a case of arrested development. Some pubescent fantasy. When she turned thirty we had a secret birthday party, as nobody was allowed to know. Can you believe that? I suspect that when Audrey was born, even her mother kept it a secret from her.’