About a Boy

by Nick Hornby

  ‘I wish I could dance like that,’ said Marcus.

  Ellie made a face. ‘Anyone can dance like that. All you need is no brain and crap music’

  ‘I think she looks great. She’s enjoying herself.’

  ‘Who cares whether she’s enjoying herself? The point is she looks like a total cretin.’

  ‘Don’t you like your mum, then?’

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘He’s all right. They don’t live together.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No. Sometimes. Don’t want to talk about it. So, Marcus, have you had a good nineteen ninety-three?’

  Marcus thought for a moment about 1993, and a moment was all it took to decide that 1993 hadn’t been a very good year at all. He only had ten or eleven others to compare it with, and three or four of them he couldn’t remember much about, but as far as he could see nobody would have enjoyed the twelve months he’d had. Moving schools, the hospital stuff, the other kids at school… It had been totally useless.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need a drink,’ said Ellie. ‘What do you want? I’ll get you a drink and you can tell me all about it. I might get bored and wander off, though. I do that.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So, what are you drinking?’

  ‘Coke.’

  ‘You’ve got to have a proper drink.’

  ‘I’m not allowed.’

  ‘You’re allowed by me. In fact, if you’re going to be my date for the evening, I insist that you have a proper drink. I’ll put something in the Coke, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Ellie disappeared, and Marcus looked round for his mum: she was talking to a man he didn’t know and laughing a lot. He was pleased, because he had been worried about tonight. Will had told him to watch out for his mum on New Year’s Eve, and though he didn’t explain why, Marcus could guess: a lot of people who weren’t happy killed themselves then. He had seen it somewhere, Casualty, maybe, and as a consequence the night had been hanging over him. He thought he’d be watching her all evening, looking for something in her eyes or her voice or her words that would tell him she was thinking about trying it again, but it wasn’t like that: she was getting drunk and laughing, like everyone else. Had anyone ever killed themselves a couple of hours after laughing a lot? Probably not, he reckoned. You were miles away, if you were laughing, and he did now think of it all in terms of distance. Ever since the Dead Duck Day he had imagined his mother’s suicide to be something like the edge of a cliff: sometimes, on days when she seemed sad or distracted, he felt as though they were a little too close for comfort, and other days, like Christmas Day or today, they seemed to be a long way away, in the middle lane of a motorway and cruising. On the Dead Duck Day it had been way too close, two wheels over the edge and lots of terrible skidding noises.

  Ellie came back with a plastic beaker containing something which looked like Coke but smelt like trifle.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Sherry.’

  ‘Is that what people drink? Coke and sherry?’ He took a cautious sip. It was nice, sweet and thick and warming.

  ‘So why has it been such a shit year?’ Ellie asked. ‘You can tell me. Auntie Ellie will understand.’

  ‘Just… I dunno. Horrible things happened.’ He didn’t really want to tell Ellie what they were, because he didn’t know whether they were friends or not. It could go either way with her: he might go into her form room one morning and she’d shout it all out to anyone who would listen, or she might be really nice. It wasn’t worth taking the risk.

  ‘Your mum tried to kill herself, didn’t she?’

  Marcus looked at her, took a big gulp of Coke and trifle, and was nearly sick all over her feet.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, when he had finished coughing and swallowed the sick back down.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Not positive.’ He knew how stupid that sounded and he started to blush, but then Ellie burst into peals of laughter. He had forgotten that he made Ellie laugh so much and he was grateful.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus. I know it’s serious, but you are funny.’

  He started to laugh too, then, little uncontrollable giggles that tasted of puke and sherry.

  Marcus had never had a proper talk with someone of his own age before. He had had proper talks with his mum, of course, and his dad, and Will, kind of, but you expected to have proper talks with people like that and, anyway, you still had to watch what you said. It was different, much easier, with Ellie, even though she was a) a girl, b) older than him, and c) scary.

  It turned out she’d known for ages: she’d overheard a conversation between her mum and Suzie just after it happened, but didn’t make the connection until much later.

  ‘And do you know what I thought? I feel terrible about it now, but I was like, why shouldn’t she kill herself if she wants to?’

  ‘But she’s got me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you then.’

  ‘No, but I mean, how would you like it if your mum killed herself?’

  Ellie smiled. ‘How would I like it? I wouldn’t like it. Because I like my mum. But, you know. It’s her life.’

  Marcus thought about that. He didn’t know whether it was his mum’s life or not.

  ‘What about if you have kids? Then it’s not your life any more, is it?’

  ‘Your dad’s around, isn’t he? He would’ve looked after you.’

  ‘Yeah, but…’ Something wasn’t right with what Ellie was saying. She was talking as if his mum might go down with flu, so his dad would have to take him swimming.

  ‘See, if your dad killed himself, nobody would say, you know, oh, he’s got a son to look after. But when women do it, people get all upset. It’s not fair.’

  ‘That’s because I’m living with my mum. If I was living with my dad, I’d think it wasn’t his life either.’

  ‘But you aren’t living with your dad, are you? How many of us are? At our school, there’s about a million kids whose parents have split. And none of them are living with their dads.’

  ‘Stephen Wood is.’

  ‘Yeah, right, Stephen Wood. You win.’

  Even though what they were talking about was miserable, Marcus was enjoying the conversation. It seemed big, as though you could walk round it and see different things, and that never happened when you talked to kids normally. ‘Did you see Top of the Pops last night?’ There wasn’t much to think about in that, was there? You said yes or no and it was over. He could see now why his mum chose friends, instead of just putting up with anyone she happened to bump into, or sticking with people who supported the same football team, or wore the same clothes, which was pretty much what happened at school; his mum must have conversations like this with Suzie, conversations which moved, conversations where each thing the other person said seemed to lead you on somewhere.

  He wanted to keep it going but he didn’t know how, because Ellie was the one who said the things that got them started. He was OK at coming up with the answers, he reckoned, but he doubted if he’d ever be clever enough to make Ellie think in the way she made him think, and that panicked him a little: he wished they were equally clever, but they weren’t, and they probably never would be, because Ellie would always be older than him. Maybe when he was thirty-two and she was thirty-five it wouldn’t matter so much, but it felt to him that unless he said something really smart in the next few minutes, then she wouldn’t hang around for the rest of the evening, let alone for the next twenty years. Suddenly he remembered the thing boys were supposed to ask girls at parties. He didn’t want to ask, because he knew he was hopeless at it, but the alternative – to let Ellie wander away and talk to somebody else – was just too horrible.

  ‘Would you like to dance, Ellie?’

  Ellie stared at him, her eyes wide with surprise.

  ‘Marcus!’ She started laughing again, really hard. ‘You’re so funny. Of cou
rse I wouldn’t like to dance! I couldn’t think of anything worse!’

  He knew then that he should have thought of another proper question, something about Kurt Cobain or politics, because Ellie disappeared off somewhere for a smoke, and he had to go and find his mum. But Ellie came looking for him at midnight and gave him a hug, so he knew that even though he’d been stupid, he hadn’t been unforgivably stupid.

  ‘Happy New Year, darling,’ she said, and he blushed.

  ‘Thank you. Happy New Year to you.’

  ‘And I hope nineteen ninety-four is better for all of us than nineteen ninety-three was. Hey, do you want to see something really disgusting?’

  Marcus wasn’t at all sure that he did, but he was given no choice in the matter. Ellie grabbed his arm and took him through the back door to the garden. He tried to ask her where they were going, but she shushed him.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered. Marcus peered into the darkness. He could just make out two human shapes kissing with frantic energy; the man was pressing the woman against the garden shed and his hands were all over her.

  ‘Who is it?’ Marcus asked Ellie.

  ‘My mum. My mum and a guy called Tim Porter. She’s drunk. They do this every year, and I don’t know why they bother. Every New Year’s Day she wakes up and says, “My God, I think I went outside with Tim Porter last night.” Pathetic. PATHETIC!’ She shouted out the last word so that she’d be heard, and Marcus saw Ellie’s mum push the man away and look in their direction.

  ‘Ellie? Is that you?’

  ‘You said you weren’t going to do that this year.’

  ‘It’s none of your business what I do. Go back inside.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do as you’re told.’

  ‘No. You’re disgusting. Forty-three years old and you’re snogging against a garden shed.’

  ‘One night of the year I get to behave nearly as badly as you do on the other three hundred and sixty-four, and you stand there giving me a hard time. Go away.’

  ‘Come on, Marcus. Let’s leave the SAD OLD TART to get on with it.’

  Marcus followed Ellie back into the house. He hadn’t seen his mum do anything like that, and he couldn’t imagine that she ever would, but he could see how it might happen to other people’s mums.

  ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ he asked Ellie when they were inside.

  ‘Nah. It doesn’t mean anything, does it? It’s just her having some fun. She doesn’t get much, really.’

  Even though it didn’t seem to bother Ellie, it bothered Marcus. It was just too odd for words. It wouldn’t have happened in Cambridge, he didn’t think, but what he couldn’t work out was whether Cambridge was different because it wasn’t London, or because it was where his parents had lived together, and where, therefore, life was simpler – no snogging with strange people in front of your kid, and no yelling rude words at your mum. There were no rules here, and he was old enough to know that when you went to a place, or a time, with no rules then things were bound to be more complicated.

  twenty-six

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Marcus. He and Will had walked down to an amusement arcade at the Angel to play on the video machines, and the Angel Funhouse, with its epileptic lights and sirens and explosions and tramps, turned out to be a suitably nightmarish setting for the difficult conversation Will knew they were going to have. It was, in a way, a grotesque version of popping the question. He had chosen the setting, somewhere that would soften Marcus up and make him more likely to say yes, and all he had to do was spit it out.

  ‘There’s nothing to get,’ said Will blithely. It wasn’t true, of course. There was a lot to get, from Marcus’s point of view, and Will could quite see why he wasn’t getting it.

  ‘But why did you tell her you were my dad?’

  ‘I didn’t tell her. She just sort of got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘So why didn’t you just say, you know, “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick”? She probably wouldn’t have minded. Why would she care whether you were my dad or not?’

  ‘Don’t you ever have conversations where someone took a wrong turn at some point, and then it goes on and on and it becomes too late to put things right? Say someone thought your name was Mark, not Marcus, and every time they saw you they said, “Hello, Mark”, and you’re going to yourself, Oh, no, I can’t tell him now, ‘cos he’ll be really embarrassed that he’s been calling me Mark for the last six months.’

  ‘Six months!’

  ‘Or however long it is.’

  ‘I’d just tell him the first time he got it wrong.’

  ‘It’s not always possible to do that.’

  ‘How can it not be possible to tell someone they’ve got your name wrong?’

  ‘Because…’ Will knew that sometimes it was not possible through personal experience. One of his neighbours opposite, a nice old guy with a stoop and a horrible little Yorkshire terrier, called him Bill – always had done and presumably always would, right up till the day he died. It actually irritated Will, who was not, he felt, by any stretch of the imagination, a Bill. Bill wouldn’t smoke spliffs and listen to Nirvana. So why had he allowed this misapprehension to continue? Why hadn’t he just said, four years ago, ‘Actually my name’s Will’? Marcus was right, of course, but being right was no use if the rest of the world was wrong.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, in a brisk let’s-cut-the-crap tone. ‘The point is, this woman thinks you’re my son.’

  ‘So tell her I’m not.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re going round and round in circles here, Marcus. Why can’t you just accept the facts?’

  ‘I’ll tell her, if you like. I don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Marcus, but that wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Because she has this rare disease, and if she believes something that’s not right and you tell her the truth, her brain will boil in her head and she’ll die.’

  ‘How old do you think I am? Shit. You’ve made me lose a life now.’

  Will was beginning to come to the conclusion that he was not, as he had always previously thought, a good liar. He was an enthusiastic liar, certainly, but enthusiasm was not the same thing as efficacy, and he was now constantly finding himself in a situation whereby, having lied through his teeth for minutes or days or weeks, he was obliged to articulate the humiliating truth. Good liars would never do that. Good liars would have persuaded Marcus ages ago that there were hundreds of good reasons why he should pretend to be Will’s son, but Will could only think of one.

  ‘Marcus, listen. I’m really interested in this woman, and the only thing I could think of that might make her interested in me was to let her believe you were my son. So I did. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you straight out.’

  Marcus stared at the video screen – he’d just been exploded by a cross between Robocop and Godzilla – and took a long pull on his can of Coke.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, and burped ostentatiously.

  ‘Oh, come on, Marcus. We’ve been here before.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’re really interested in her? Why is she so interesting?’

  ‘I mean…’ He groaned with despair. ‘Leave me with just one scrap of dignity, Marcus. That’s all I’m asking. Just a little tiny, tatty piece.’

  Marcus looked at him as if he had suddenly started speaking in Urdu.

  ‘What’s dignity got to do with her being interesting?’

  ‘OK. Forget dignity. I don’t deserve any. I fancy this woman, Marcus. I want to go out with her. I’d like her to be my girlfriend.’

  Finally, Marcus swivelled his eyes away from the TV screen, and Will could see they were shining with fascination and pleasure.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’ Really, really. He had thought of almost nothing else since New Year’s Eve (not that he had much t
o think about, apart from the word Rachel, a vague recollection of lots of long dark hair and a lot of foolish fantasies involving picnics and babies and tearfully devoted mothers-in-law and huge hotel beds) and it was a relief to be able to bring Rachel out into the light, even though it was only Marcus who was up there to inspect her, and even though the words he had had to use did not, he felt, do her justice. He wanted Rachel to be his wife, his lover, the centre of his whole world; a girlfriend implied that he would see her from time to time, that she would have some kind of independent existence away from him, and he didn’t want that at all.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Yeah. How do you know you want her to be your girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel it in my guts.’ That was exactly where he felt it. He wasn’t feeling it in his heart, or his head, or even his groin; it was his guts, which had immediately tensed up and allowed for the ingestion of nothing more calorific than cigarette smoke. If he went on ingesting only cigarette smoke he might lose some weight.

  ‘You just met her the once? On New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that was enough? You knew you wanted her to be your girlfriend straight away? Can I have another fifty pence?’

  Will gave him a pound coin abstractedly. It was true that something had happened in him immediately, but what had pushed him over the edge into the land of permanent daydream was a remark Robert had made a couple of days later, when Will had phoned to thank him for the party. ‘Rachel liked you,’ he said, and though it wasn’t much to build a whole future on, it was all Will had needed. Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination.

  ‘What is this? How long should I have known her for, according to you?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t really describe myself as an expert.’ Will laughed at Marcus’s turn of phrase, and the furrowed brow which both accompanied it and seemed to contradict it: anyone who could look that professional while talking about the minutiae of dating was clearly a twelve-year-old Doctor Love. ‘But I didn’t know when I met Ellie the first time that I wanted her to be my girlfriend. It took a while to develop.’