The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  Your dad’s mental.

  ‘You tread on my dreams!’ Toby Clore imitates Jack’s father, pointing his finger at Jack and not smiling, which makes it not a joke. ‘You tread on my dreams!’

  I don’t care, Jack says. Not my problem. Oh no, says Toby, not your problem having a dad who’s mental. Not your problem until they take him away to the funny farm.

  All through the first two periods of the day Jack tormented himself in silence, paralysed by humiliation. Why did he do it? Why make a scene in public over something nobody cares about? Why say things like ‘You tread on my dreams’ so that Angus Critchell can hear and say it back to him in a funny voice?

  Dimly Jack is aware that if he were Toby Clore and it was Toby Clore’s father who had said ‘You tread on my dreams’ to Mr Strachan in the hall, he would find a way to turn it to his advantage. He would say, See, my dad’s mental, and everyone would envy him and want their dads to be mental too. But this trick is beyond Jack’s reach. All he can do is lie low for the morning and hope that the memory of the shaming incident will fade.

  After lunch he risks tagging along with Angus, who when asked he names as his best friend. Angus doesn’t actually tell him to get lost. When Toby Clore and Richard Adderley show up, Toby says, We don’t want mental people in our club, and Jack doesn’t say, I’m not mental, or even, What club?, he says, Why not? Richard Adderley says, Because you’re mental. Jack thanks him silently for his copy-cat scorn, knowing that now Toby will respond differently, just to be different. And Toby does look at him with his head on one side, the way he does. So you’re mental, Jacko? Probably. Jack is beyond resistance. Richard and Angus laugh. Jacko’s mental. But Toby isn’t laughing so they stop. People who are mental, says Toby slowly, can do things normal people can’t do, because they just don’t care. Perhaps Jacko’s like that. Are you like that, Jacko? Probably, says Jack softly. So if we have him in the club, says Toby, he’ll do the things we can’t do. He’ll do anything. He just won’t care. Not his problem.

  In this way Jack is let into the club, which is the Dogman Fan Club. The Dogman Fan Club has come into being to record, publish and glorify the sayings of the Dogman.

  ‘He’s like Jesus,’ explains Toby Clore. ‘We’re like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It’s the Gospel according to Dogman.’

  The way Toby Clore says this, without smiling, as if he really means it, makes the parody even more sophisticated in Jack’s eyes. However, as Toby points out, they are only at the very beginning of their enterprise. They have one sentence recorded, one authentic utterance of the prophet: ‘We don’t need any more bloody stockbrokers.’ They must record more, much more. However, the prophet is quick to anger, and carries a gun.

  ‘Jacko can go. He’ll do anything. He’s mental.’

  In this way, by a process he did not intend but finds himself unable to stop, Jack is on his way to intercept the Dogman, and to cause him to shout out some more holy words. Of course, he thinks, as he crouches in the derelict barn, I could always just make something up. I could pretend I saw the Dogman and he chased me and shouted something, and they’d never know. Except he can’t think of anything to make up, and Toby would know. Somehow he just would. So Jack understands that he must wait for a decent interval and hope that the Dogman doesn’t show up.

  He peeps over the pile of tumbled flints that was once a wall. The sheep are grazing quietly in the steep-sided Downland hollow. Jack looks at his watch. 3.09pm THU 18.5.00. In fifteen minutes the bell will go for prep after games. He’ll stay ten minutes at the most.

  The watch is too big for his wrist, and has ten functions. It tells the time in two time zones, and the day, date and year. It’s a calculator, a calendar, a phone number store, and it has three games. There’s a button that turns on a little light at night. He begged for it and was bought it not even on his birthday or for Christmas, on the grounds that it was a necessity and more or less educational. It cost £25. He gloried in it for one day. Then Richard Adderley came to school with a watch that did everything Jack’s did and was a radio. After that it wasn’t the same any more. He goes on wearing it even though it hurts his wrist a little because he feels guilty about making his mother buy it. But he only uses it to tell the time.

  Toby Clore doesn’t even have a watch. ‘If I want to know the time, you’ll tell me, won’t you, Adders? But actually I don’t want to know the time.’

  Jack ponders the mystery of Toby Clore. Toby’s not exactly Jack’s friend, and he doesn’t exactly make Jack happy. So why do I hang around him? Why do I want more than anything to hear Toby say, Come with us, Jacko. Why am I here, cold and frightened, breaking the rules, risking being shot, just so that Toby Clore will look at me and say, Good for you, Jacko? It’s not as if there aren’t others I could go round with. He pictures them in his mind. There’s fat Daniel Chamberlain. There’s barmy Will Guest. There’s always someone no one else wants to be with who’d be glad, more than glad, honoured, by Jack’s friendship. But the thought alone makes Jack shudder with dread. If he had to go round with Dan Chamberlain or Will Guest he’d be finished. His life would be as good as over. Better to brave the terrors of the Dogman, if by doing so he retains his precarious foothold on the higher terraces where Toby Clore’s slightest word is law.

  He hears the distant barking of a dog. Looking out between tall nettles, he sees the sheep begin to move, slowly at first, then in a gathering panicky stampede. They lumber towards the track, where a barbed-wire fence hems them in, and here, caught between the dog and the wire, they surge and cry, while the barking bounces round them.

  Jack stands up. Still unable to see, he clambers onto one of the remaining sections of wall. The dog is a small white poodle. It isn’t doing anything to the sheep, it’s just running round and round and yapping at them, as if calling them out to play.

  Then Jack hears a vehicle coming down the track, and sees the Dogman’s mud-streaked Landrover. The vehicle stops by the fence and the Dogman is out, a stick in his hand, shouting at the white poodle.

  ‘Scram! Shoo!’ he shouts.

  The poodle becomes even more excited, and yapping shrilly, bounds at the terrified sheep.

  ‘Down! Get out! Get lost!’

  The Dogman pushes through the mass of sheep towards the poodle, his shouts rising in fury. The poodle responds with an ecstasy of yapping. To Jack, it’s all clear. The poodle thinks it’s a game. The more the sheep cry and the Dogman shouts, the more he responds in kind.

  The Dogman gets through the sheep and swipes his stick at the poodle.

  ‘Get away! Get away!’

  The poodle jumps up at the stick, yapping, trying to seize it in his jaws. The Dogman kicks and misses, swipes with his stick and misses.

  ‘You little shit! Get away!’

  Yap-yap-yap-yap-yap! The poodle has limitless powers of noise creation. Just when you think the note can go no higher it jumps in pitch and becomes even more maddening. The Dogman is maddened. Even at this distance Jack can see that. Jack is happy enough: he has something to report to the club, and he hasn’t had to show himself.

  Then it gets much better.

  ‘You dirty little brute!’ shrieks the Dogman, and swiping his stick in a ferocious downward swipe, he makes full contact with the poodle’s upward-leaping head. The barking stops. Too far away to see what has become of the dog. The Dogman bends down to check. His mobile phone starts to ring. Jack hears him answer it.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m on my way.’

  He returns to the Landrover at a run. He jumps in and drives away, very fast.

  The sheep, no longer harried, drift apart and resume their quiet grazing. The poodle lies hidden by the meadow grass. Jack checks his Casio watch. 3.14pm THU 18.5.00. He makes his way back towards the school playing fields, filled with the import of what he has witnessed, and the status it will give him in Toby’s eyes.

  The Dogman killed a dog.

  The poodle is dead, he’s sure of it. Well, almost sure. The way the
barking stopped. The way the Dogman just left it there after his phone rang. If the dog had been just stunned he would have picked it up so he could take it to a vet. Or hit it again, to finish it off.

  The Dogman is a kind of god. The poodle is a living sacrifice to his power. Toby will like that. Jack hurries faster across the park.

  From somewhere behind him he hears a thin high distant voice, like a bird. Pee-wee. Pee-wee. He looks back and sees an old lady, walking slowly, far away by the lake’s side. Her bird-like call follows a cycle, first plaintive, then imperious, then angry.

  ‘Pee-wee! Pee-wee! PEE-WEE!’

  27

  Keep looking down only one more shoe-lace to tie then out of here. Such a special smell the changing room, not stinky like the boys but still sick-making. Should have had a shower but the others always get in there first and it’s not as if I get sweaty, not at rounders, not the way I play. Just run, Alice. Never hit the ball, just wave the bat in the air and run. What’s the point? They call it games but it’s not a game it’s a test, everyone’s watching, and you miss and they all groan and shout, Just run, Alice.

  ‘What’s this? Something in my way.’

  Sit still, head down. Chloe thinks she’s funny. Go somewhere else. On a train with Mum going to Fishguard.

  ‘It’s a pile of old clothes.’

  ‘It’s Alice.’

  Victoria isn’t part of the game, she doesn’t get it. I get it, I’m part of the game. Couldn’t play it without me.

  ‘Oh, Victoria, you utter retard.’ Chloe never shouts. She just makes her voice sound like she’s laughing. She’ll be doing her big blue eyes thing where she stares like she can’t believe what you just said. ‘Everyone knows Alice ran away to join a circus.’

  No, please, not the circus one. Now they’re all giggling which makes her worse. Lie down on Mum’s lap. Maybe we’ll see the baby seals this year.

  ‘Is this a circus, Victoria? Are there elephants here?’

  ‘You’re nuts, Chloe.’ Victoria doesn’t get it. But Chloe doesn’t do it to Victoria, I wish she would, that’s mean to Victoria, but why does it always have to be me?

  ‘Anyway it can’t be Alice. It doesn’t speak.’

  If I had a knife I’d stick it in her face. In her mouth. I’d stab a knife in her mouth, right in deep.

  ‘Say something, Alice.’

  ‘There’s nothing there, Victoria.’

  Ready to go. Chloe wants me to bump into her so she can go on with her game. I should bang her down and stamp on her head except I won’t. Just run, Alice.

  ‘Can you feel something, Emma? A sort of pushy something?’

  ‘Must be a puff of wind.’

  ‘A poof of wind. A gay fart.’

  Go round the other way while they’re laughing. Chloe with that did-I-say-anything? look she puts on when she gets a result. Out of here any second now, home soon or is Granny coming to get me? Don’t look don’t listen just run.

  Outside is safe there’s everyone standing about and cars rolling up with mothers calling out of car windows and even if Chloe and Emma go on with their game I can’t hear them. Outside I can move away always a little further away. Outside is okay even if it’s cold, even if it’s raining. Inside is where you have to not look and not hear and go somewhere else in your head.

  I’m on a train with Mum. We like trains. We sit side by side not facing and sometimes I lie down on her if I’m sleepy my head on her lap and she strokes my hair. She says maybe we’ll see the baby seals this year if we go very quietly along the cliff path. But the train is the best because you don’t have to do anything at all but something is happening. It’s just you and Mum being together and nothing else to think about and no one gets bored or says God look at the time. The time just rolls along in this beautiful empty way so that you’d almost think it could go on for ever.

  ‘No one come for you yet, Alice.’

  ‘No, Mrs Kilmartin, but I don’t mind.’

  That’s what I’m good at, not minding, because if I started minding I’d die or maybe kill someone. Nothing matters really things just happen and the trick is not to mind. That way they lose because they want you to be unhappy but if you don’t mind you’re never unhappy you’re just nothing. Which is fine.

  Everyone mostly gone now. Granny not usually so late. Even Will Guest has gone and his mother’s always the last because she’s always on the phone, even when she opens the car door for Will to get in she’s on the phone. Chloe and Emma long gone. But tomorrow it all starts again.

  ‘Alice? What are you doing here still?’

  Oh God not Mr Strachan.

  ‘My granny’s picking me up, sir. She must have got late.’

  ‘Do you have a phone number for her? I think I should make sure everything’s all right.’

  He has such funny hair Mr Strachan like it’s trying to get away from him. He presses the keys on his phone slowly like he’s not sure which is which. He’s wearing a red tie. That’s supposed to mean something isn’t it?

  ‘No answer. We’d better call your mother, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh no sir. You don’t have to do that. I’m fine waiting.’

  Don’t call Mum it’ll make her think she’s done something wrong and she hasn’t.

  ‘Just in case there’s a problem with your granny.’

  He makes the call but when it’s ringing he hands over the phone which is really unusual so no one else has said anything before her.

  ‘Hello Mum it’s me and I’m fine, sorry to bother you. Mr Strachan said I should call you as Granny’s late.’

  ‘Isn’t she there yet, darling? My God, she is late! Have you tried calling her?’

  ‘Mr Strachan did and there’s no answer. But I don’t mind waiting at all.’

  ‘Oh God, oh God. I’ll come as quick as I can. Let me have a word with Mr Strachan, darling.’

  Now Mr Strachan’s saying no problem, not to worry, no trouble at all, I’ve got a heap of essays to mark, and he’s talking in an ordinary voice just like it’s no big deal and I could kiss him. All I want is Mum not to be worried not to feel she’s done anything wrong which she hasn’t ever.

  Mum on the phone.

  ‘Darling, stay at school till I get there. Mr Strachan says he’ll look after you. I’m so sorry, I can’t think what’s happened to Granny. You’d better read a book or something.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. I’ll do my French vocab, that way I don’t have to do it later. Honest, no problem. Don’t rush. I’m fine.’

  So now we’re in the empty English classroom which is spookily quiet but okay really and Mr Strachan’s doing his marking and I’m doing French vocab. The clock over the white board actually has a tick which I never heard before. Mr Strachan nods his head while he’s reading as if he’s having this silent conversation with the handwriting, but instead of saying something he jumps out his pen and goes scribble scribble. Just like he did on my composition. Funny to think he was doing it to all those other compositions too. You kind of have the feeling yours is the only one the teacher has ever thought about. Maybe he writes the same stuff on everyone’s paper.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘What? Yes.’

  ‘I bet you’re hungry.’

  I look at the clock. It’s almost six. I am hungry. He’s got this secret drawer and out comes can you believe it a packet of custard creams.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he says.

  Not chocolate but almost better because of the hard dry outside and then suddenly the soft sweet centre all mixed up with it. But Mr Strachan is breaking his biscuits apart, he gets it so one half has no cream and the other half has all the cream.

  ‘Usually they crumble when you do that,’ he says. ‘It’s harder than it looks.’

  It is too. It just crumbles into bits.

  ‘Now,’ he says, ‘I can lick the raw cream.’

  He does it. This is totally amazing. A teacher with a best way of eating biscuits.

 
‘Go on. Have as many as you want.’

  It’s an orgy. This is so amazing. Not just having biscuits, the whole thing. Mr Strachan’s careful fingers pushing in, then a quick snap and he’s got it apart without losing a crumb. That’s an art.

  ‘You’re having a bad time, aren’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean in school.’

  Now he’s looking at me and his wavy hair is waving at me.

  ‘No sir. I’m fine.’

  ‘You said that four times when you were calling your mum.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘It’s Chloe Redknapp, isn’t it? She’s a disturbed child. There’ll be problems at home, you can bet your life. Don’t say I said so.’

  I do bet my life. Every day I bet my life. Look down, say nothing. Dangerous talk. Chloe Redknapp is a disturbed child. There is a God.

  ‘Father likes the ladies. Mother likes a drink or two. Something along those lines.’

  Heaven. Sing choirs of angels, sing in exultation. I love his red tie.

  ‘So little miss blue-eyes has to take it out on somebody. Which is no excuse, of course. She should be ritually disembowelled.’

  What’s that when it’s at home? Like being made to sit on the lavatory till you’re dead? Don’t laugh. Mustn’t laugh. Oh God he’s nodding at me and all that funny hair and Chloe pooing herself to death and who cares anyway?

  He’s laughing too but not out loud, sort of shaking.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ he says.

  ‘Oh no, nothing, please, you mustn’t!’

  ‘Fear of reprisals. Very understandable. But think about it, Alice. If we kill Chloe Redknapp she can’t cause any more trouble ever.’

  Unbelievable. I’m in a dream. This is not happening.

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Going too far? Maybe you’re right. But she must be stopped. She’s a menace.’

  ‘She doesn’t realize. She thinks it’s just a joke.’