by Nick Hornby
‘Really.’
‘Maybe it is best if he doesn’t see you.’
Will said nothing. He had learnt something from the previous day’s conversation, anyway.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think. I don’t think anything. You’re his mother. You make the decisions.’
‘But you’re involved now. He keeps coming round to your house. You take him out to buy shoes. He’s living this whole life I can’t control, which means you have to.’
‘I’m not going to control anything.’
‘In which case, it’s best that he doesn’t see you.’
‘We’ve been here before. What do you want me to do if he rings on the bell?’
‘Don’t let him in.’
‘Fine.’
‘I mean, if you’re not prepared to think about how to help me, then keep out.’
‘Right.’
‘God, you’re a selfish bastard.’
‘But I’m on my own. There’s just me. I’m not putting myself first, because there isn’t anybody else.’
‘Well, he’s there too now. You can’t just shut life out, you know.’
She was wrong, he was almost positive. You could shut life out. If you didn’t answer the door to it, how was it going to get in?
nineteen
Marcus didn’t like the idea of his mum talking to Will. A while ago he would have got excited about it, but he no longer thought that he and his mum and Will and Ned and another baby perhaps were going to live together in Will’s flat. For a start, Ned didn’t exist, and for another start, if you could have two starts, Fiona and Will didn’t like each other very much, and anyway Will’s flat was nowhere near big enough for them all, even though there weren’t as many of them as he had originally thought.
But now everyone knew too much, and there were too many things that he didn’t want the two of them to talk about without him. He didn’t want Will to talk to his mum about the hospital, in case it made her go funny again; and he didn’t want Will to tell her about how he’d tried to blackmail Will into going out with her; and he didn’t want his mum to talk about how much telly he was allowed to watch, in case Will started turning it off when he went round… As far as he could tell, every possible topic of conversation meant trouble of some sort.
She was only gone for a couple of hours after tea time, so they didn’t have to find a baby-sitter; he put the chain on the door, did his homework, watched a bit of TV, played on the computer and waited. At five past nine she buzzed the special buzz on the doorbell. He let her in, and stared at her face to try to work out just how angry or depressed she was, but she seemed OK.
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘It was OK.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s not a very nice man, is he?’
‘I think he is. He bought me those trainers.’
‘Well, you’re not to go round any more.’
‘You can’t stop me.’
‘No, but he’s not going to answer the door, so it’s a waste of time.’
‘How do you know he’s not going to answer the door?’
‘Because he told me he wouldn’t.’
Marcus could just hear Will saying that, but it didn’t worry him. He knew how loud the buzzer was inside the flat, and he had the time to ring it and ring it and ring it.
Marcus had to go and see the headmistress about his trainers. His mum had made a complaint to the school, even though Marcus had told her, begged her, not to. They’d spent so long arguing about it that he ended up having to go days after the event. So now he had a choice: he could lie to the headmistress, tell her that he had no idea who had stolen his shoes, and make himself look stupid; or he could tell her and lose his shoes, jacket, shirt, trousers, underpants and probably an eye or a piece of ear on the way home. He couldn’t see that he’d lose much sleep worrying about what to do.
He went at the beginning of lunch break, the time his form teacher had told him to go, but Mrs Morrison wasn’t ready for him; he could hear her through the door, shouting at someone. He was on his own at first, but then Ellie McCrae, this sulky, scruffy girl from year ten who hacked off her own hair and wore black lipstick, sat down on the far end of the row of chairs outside the office. Ellie was famous. She was always in trouble for something or other, usually something quite bad.
They sat in silence for a bit, and then Marcus thought he’d try to talk to her; his mum was always on at him to talk to people at school.
‘Hello, Ellie,’ he said. She looked at him and laughed once under her breath, shook her head bitterly and then turned her face away. Marcus didn’t mind. In fact, he almost laughed. He wished he had a video camera. He’d love to show his mum what happened when you tried to talk to another kid at school, especially an older kid, especially a girl. He wouldn’t bother trying again.
‘How come every squitty little shitty snotty bastard knows my name?’
Marcus couldn’t believe she was talking to him, and when he looked at her it seemed as though he was right to be doubtful, because she was still looking the other way. He decided to ignore her.
‘Oi, I’m talking to you. Don’t be so fucking rude.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t think you were talking to me.’
‘I don’t see any other squitty little shitty bastards here, do you?’
‘No,’ Marcus admitted.
‘So. How come you know my name? I haven’t got a bloody clue who you are.’
‘You’re famous.’ He knew that was a mistake as soon as he had said it.
‘What am I famous for?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Yes you do. I’m famous because I’m always in trouble.’
‘Yes.’
‘Fucking hell.’
They sat there for a while longer. Marcus didn’t feel like breaking the silence; if saying ‘Hello, Ellie’ caused that much trouble, then he wasn’t about to ask her whether she’d had a nice weekend.
‘I’m always in trouble, and I’ve never done anything wrong,’ she said eventually.
‘No.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because you just said so.’ Marcus thought that was a good answer. If Ellie McCrae said she hadn’t done anything wrong, then she hadn’t.
‘If you’re being cheeky, you’ll get a slap.’
Marcus wished Mrs Morrison would hurry up. Even though he was prepared to believe that Ellie had never done anything wrong, ever, he could see why some people might think she had.
‘Do you know what I’ve done wrong this time?’
‘Nothing,’ Marcus said firmly.
‘OK, do you know what I’m supposed to have done wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ This was his line, and he was sticking to it.
‘Well, they must think I’ve done something wrong, or I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?’
‘No.’
‘It’s this sweatshirt. They don’t want me to wear it, and I’m not going to take it off. So there’s going to be a row.’
He looked at it. They were all supposed to wear sweatshirts with the school logo on them, but Ellie’s showed a bloke with scraggy hair and half a beard. He had big eyes and looked a little bit like Jesus, except more modern and with bleached hair.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked politely.
‘You must know.’
‘Ummm… Oh, yes.’
‘So who is it?’
‘Ummm… Forgotten.’
‘You never knew it.’
‘No.’
‘That’s incredible. That’s like not knowing the name of the prime minister or something.’
‘Yeah.’ Marcus gave a little laugh, to show her that at least he knew how stupid he was, even if he didn’t know anything else. ‘Who is it, then?’
‘Kirk O’Bane.’
‘Oh, yes.’
He’d never heard of Kirk O’Bane, but h
e’d never heard of anybody.
‘What does he do?’
‘He plays for Manchester United.’
Marcus looked at the picture on the sweatshirt again, even though that meant sort of looking at Ellie’s tits. He hoped she understood that he wasn’t interested in her tits, only in the picture.
‘Does he?’ He looked much more like a singer than a footballer. Footballers weren’t sad, usually, and this man looked sad. He wouldn’t have thought that Ellie would be the sort of person who liked football, anyway.
‘Yeah. He scored five goals for them last Saturday.’
‘Wow,’ said Marcus.
Mrs Morrison’s door opened and two white-faced year sevens came out. ‘Come in, Marcus,’ said Mrs Morrison.
‘Bye, Ellie,’ said Marcus. Ellie went through her head-shaking routine again, still apparently bitter that her reputation had gone before her. Marcus wasn’t looking forward to seeing Mrs Morrison, but if the alternative was sitting out in the corridor with Ellie, then he’d take the head’s office any day of the week.
He lost his temper with Mrs Morrison. Bad idea, he could see afterwards, losing your temper with the headmistress of your new school, but he couldn’t help it. She was being so thick that in the end he just had to shout. They started off OK: no, he’d never had any trouble from the shoe-stealers before, no, he didn’t know who they were and no, he wasn’t very happy at school (only one lie there). But then she started talking about what she called ‘survival strategies’, and that was when he got cross.
‘I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but couldn’t you just try keeping out of their way?’
Did they all think he was thick? Did they reckon that he woke up every morning thinking, I must find the people who call me names and give me shit and want to steal my trainers, so that they can do more things to me?
‘I have tried.’ That was all he could say for the moment. He was too frustrated to say any more.
‘Maybe you haven’t tried hard enough.’
That did it. She had said this not because she wanted to be helpful, but because she didn’t like him. Nobody at this school liked him and he didn’t understand why. He’d had enough, and he stood up to go.
‘Sit down, Marcus. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
‘I’ve finished with you.’
He didn’t know he was going to say that, and he was amazed when he had. He had never been cheeky to a teacher before, mostly because there hadn’t been a need for it. Now he could see that he hadn’t started in a great place. If you were going to get yourself into trouble, maybe it was best to work up to it slowly, get some practice in first. He had started right at the top, which was probably a mistake.
‘SIT down.’
But he didn’t. He just walked out the way he had come in, and kept on walking.
As soon as he left Mrs Morrison’s office he felt different, better, as if he’d let go and he was now falling through space. It was an exciting feeling, really, and it was much better than the feeling of hanging on that he’d had before. He wouldn’t have been able to describe it as ‘hanging on’ until just now, but that was definitely what it was. He’d been pretending that everything was normal – difficult, yes, but normal – but now he’d let go he could see it had been everything but normal. You don’t get your shoes stolen normally. Your English teacher doesn’t make out you’re a nutter normally. You don’t get boiled sweets thrown at your head normally. And that was just the school stuff.
And now he was a truant. He was walking down Holloway Road while everyone else at school was… actually, they were eating their lunch, but he wasn’t going back. Soon he’d be walking down Holloway Road (well, not Holloway Road, probably, because he was almost at the end of it already, and lunch would go on for another thirty minutes yet) during history, and then he’d be a proper truant. He wondered whether all truants started like that, whether there was always a Mrs Morrison moment which made them blow their top and leave. He supposed there had to be. He’d always presumed that truants were different sort of people entirely, not like him at all, that they’d been born truants, sort of thing, but he was obviously wrong. In May, before they moved to London, when he was in his last term at his old school, he wasn’t a truant kind of person in any way whatsoever. He turned up at school, listened to what people said, did his homework, took part. But six months later that had all changed, bit by bit.
It was probably like that for tramps, too, he realized. They walked out of their house one evening and thought, I’ll sleep in this shop doorway tonight, and when you’d done it once, something changed in you, and you became a tramp, rather than someone who didn’t have anywhere to sleep for one night. And the same with criminals! And drug addicts! And… He decided to stop thinking about it all then. If he carried on, walking out of Mrs Morrison’s office might begin to look like the moment his whole life changed, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. He wasn’t someone who wanted to become a truant or a tramp or a murderer or a drug addict. He was just someone who was fed up with Mrs Morrison. There had to be a difference.
twenty
Will loved driving around London. He loved the traffic, which allowed him to believe he was a man in a hurry and offered him rare opportunities for frustration and anger (other people did things to let off steam, but Will had to do things to build it up); he loved knowing his way around; he loved being swallowed up in the flow of the city’s life. You didn’t need a job or a family to drive around London; you only needed a car, and Will had a car. Sometimes he just drove for the hell of it, and sometimes he drove because he liked to hear music played at a volume that would not be possible in the flat without a furious knock on the door or the wall or the ceiling.
Today he had convinced himself that he had to drive to Waitrose, but if he was honest the real reason for the trip was that he wanted to sing along to ‘Nevermind’ at the top of his voice, and he couldn’t do that at home. He loved Nirvana, but at his age they were kind of a guilty pleasure. All that rage and pain and self-hatred! Will got a bit… fed up sometimes, but he couldn’t pretend it was anything stronger than that. So now he used loud angry rock music as a replacement for real feelings, rather than as an expression of them, and he didn’t even mind very much. What good were real feelings anyway?
The cassette had just turned itself over when he saw Marcus ambling down Upper Street. He hadn’t seen him since the day of the trainers, nor had he wanted to see him particularly, but he suddenly felt a little surge of affection for him. Marcus was so locked into himself, so oblivious to everyone and everything, that affection seemed to be the only possible response: the boy somehow seemed to be asking for absolutely nothing and absolutely everything all at the same time.
The affection that Will felt was not acute enough to make him want to stop the car, or even toot: he had discovered that it was much easier to sustain one’s fondness for Marcus if one just kept one’s foot down, literally and metaphorically. But it was funny, seeing him out in the street in broad daylight, wandering aimlessly… Something nagged at him. Why was it funny? Because Will had never really seen Marcus in broad daylight before. He had only previously seen him in the gloom of a winter afternoon. And why had he only seen him in the gloom of a winter afternoon? Because Marcus only came round after school. But it was just after two o’clock. Marcus should be in school now. Bollocks.
Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn’t hear a squeak out of it. Why should he care if Marcus went to school or not? OK, wrong question. He knew very well why he should care whether Marcus went to school. Try a different question: how much did he care whether Marcus went to school or not? Answer: not a lot. That was better. He drove home.
At exactly 4.15, right in the middle of Countdown, the buzzer went. If Will hadn’t seen Marcus bunking off this afternoon, the precision of the timing would have escaped his notice, but now it just seemed transparently obvious: Marcus had clearly decided
that arriving at the flat before 4.15 would arouse suspicion, so he’d timed it to the second. It didn’t matter, however; he wasn’t going to answer the door.
Marcus buzzed again; Will ignored him again. On the third buzz he turned Countdown off and put In Utero on, in the hope that Nirvana might block out the sound more effectively than Carol Vorderman. By the time he got to ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, the eighth or ninth track, he’d had enough of listening to Kurt Cobain and Marcus: Marcus could obviously hear the music through the door, and was providing his own accompaniment by buzzing in time. Will gave up.
‘You’re not supposed to be here.’
‘I came to ask you a favour.’ Nothing in Marcus’s face or voice suggested that he had been the least bit inconvenienced or bored during his thirty-odd minutes of buzzing.
They had a brief bout of leg-wrestling: Will was standing in Marcus’s way, but Marcus managed to force his way into the flat regardless.
‘Oh no, Countdown’s finished. Did that fat bloke get knocked out?’
‘What favour do you want to ask me?’
‘I want you to take me and a friend to football.’
‘Your mum can take you.’
‘She doesn’t like football’
‘Neither do you.’
‘I do now. I like Manchester United.’
‘Why?’
‘I like O’Bane.’
‘Who the hell’s O’Bane?’
‘He scored five goals for them last Saturday.’
‘They drew nil – nil at Leeds.’
‘It was probably the Saturday before, then.’
‘Marcus, there isn’t a player called O’Bane.’
‘I might have got it wrong. Something that sounds like that. He’s got bleached hair and a beard and he looks like Jesus. Can I have a Coke?’
‘No. There’s nobody who plays for Man United with bleached hair and a beard who looks like Jesus.’
‘Tell me some of their names.’
‘Hughes? Cantona? Giggs? Sharpe? Robson?’
‘No. O’Bane.’
‘O’Kane?’
Marcus’s face lit up. ‘That must be it!’
