HERE WE GO. I CAN’T LISTEN TO ANY MORE OF THIS. I’M OFF TO DO SOME TINKERING BACK HERE. LET ME KNOW WHEN SHE’S SHUT HER HOLE.
There was almost a click as Jack closed himself down. Good riddance.
“. . . back to when, to when I had you. Well, things didn’t go the way I hoped. I mean for me, and for peace, and for the world. And I became depressed. In those days they didn’t know the dangers of giving you things. I mean the tablets they give you. I went to the doctor, and he prescribed Valium. Do you know what Valium is?”
I nodded. Course I knew what Valium was. I’d seen the pills on her bedside table when I was looking for stuff. And one of the kids at school once brought some in from his mum’s stash to sell, saying it was better than dope, but nobody believed him.
“Well, that’s what he gave me, and I’ll never forgive him. But it seemed to help for a while. Helped me to cope with some of the things . . . the things I had to cope with. And it was quite nice. It makes you feel . . . better. Less angry. Less sad. And you don’t notice what’s happening to you. What’s happening to the people around you.”
“But, Mum . . .”
This kind of thing was always embarrassing. You don’t want your mum or dad talking like that. It’s not fair.
Plus I was all jittery about what I was going to have to do next with Jack and Uma, and I wanted to get it out of the way, because I always find that humiliation is less daunting when you’re safely on the far side, and all you have to do is cringe and whimper at it, than when it’s lying before you, a big mouth of shame waiting to eat you up and you have to gird your loins and walk into it.
“Let me finish, Hector. I got hooked on the stuff. More than ten years of my life. Just a mist. Gone. Your life. I wasn’t there for it. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Mum. You didn’t miss much.”
And Mum laughed at that, a sort of choking, snorting laugh, and some stuff came out of her nose, so I got her a tissue and put my arm around her.
“But now you’re . . . ill . . . I don’t mean ill, I mean, whatever it is you’ve got . . . I know I can’t be in a fog anymore, I have to be here. So I’ve thrown them away. I went to see the doctor, the new doctor, the lady one that you went to see when you first started to feel ill . . .”
“Yeah, she was nice.”
Dr. Merchant, she was called. I was worried about the possibility of a rectal probe as soon as I saw her, but luckily it never materialized. Some people might say I have an irrational fear of rectal probes, but I’d say that fear is entirely justified, and that anyone who isn’t afraid of an attractive lady doctor sticking her fingers up their bum needs their head examined. Or their rectums. Suppose that should be rectum, really. Unless you happen to be one of the fortunate few polyrectals.
“And she told me that it was going to be hard, and that I’d get worse before I got better, and that I’d be anxious and snappy, and that I’d need help.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with my face during this, so I left it vacant.
“And so I’ve asked Aunty Clytemnestra to come and stay.”
That got rid of the vacancy and replaced it with (although, of course, I couldn’t see my own face and I have to speculate here somewhat) a mixture of dismay and rage.
“No!”
“Look, I know Clyte can be a bit—”
Mental, unbalanced, deranged, unstable. I didn’t say that, but it’s what I thought. What I said was: “Mum, does she have to come?”
“Yes, she does,” replied Mum, in a way you’d have to describe as snappy. Then she took a couple of deep breaths and continued in a calmer voice. “She’s the last friend I have left from the old days, from before . . . She can help us. She’ll help around the place, help me to help you. Help me get through this. If I’m to be a real mother to you again . . . if I’m to become myself again . . . then, yes, she has to come.”
Clytemnestra was no more my aunt than she was my uncle. And she wasn’t even called Clytemnestra. Mum told me that she changed her name at the peace camp and picked a famous ancient Greek heroine. It was years later when I was reading my book of Greek myths retold for children that I found out that Clytemnestra was only a heroine in the sense of having murdered her husband, which I always think of as one of the weaker senses of being a heroine. Not exactly Hawkgirl. She was probably called Wendy or something like that before. Actually, Mum said they all took special names at the camp, and hers had been Gaia, who was an earth goddess, but that name had been very popular among the peace-camp women, so they had a Gaia 1, Gaia 2, etc., but then they decided that that was too hierarchical, so they became things like Gaia Moon and Gaia Oak Tree, but by then it had turned silly, and in the end Mum just went back to being Mum. Or rather Christabel, which is her name.
LET’S GET GOING. WE’VE WORK TO DO. THE WORK OF LIFE.
“Yeah, you said.”
“What was that, Hector?”
“Nothing. Just . . . I’m going out, Mum.”
She looked up at me through the green haze from her mint tea.
“But you’re not well. You shouldn’t go out. You might—”
“The doctor said it was all right. And, well, I’m seeing someone and, I don’t know . . .”
I left it hovering there—the idea that there might not be too many more chances for me to do this: to go out, to see people.
“Oh, okay, it was just that I thought we could be together tonight. Have something to eat. Talk . . .”
“I won’t be late. And I’ll grab some chips while I’m out.”
YEAH, CHIPS.
“Okay.” And then she focused, and smiled. “Who are you seeing? Is it a . . .? I like your hair. It looks cool.”
She smiled some more, and it was a nice smile, but as I left I heard her sniff, and I’m not sure if it meant she had started to cry again, or if it was that she’d just noticed the heady aroma of Old Tramp and thought there was a gas leak or trouble with the drains.
The Chip Wars
I don’t know if I looked any good as I walked the scruffy streets of our neighborhood on the way to the Upshaws’ chip shop. I was wearing all my new stuff and I was conscious of my gelled hair cutting through the atmosphere, more shark than Hoxton Fin. My honest guess is that I looked pretty fine, by my standards, but then my standards were undeniably low.
Some people were definitely staring: a man washing the thirty-year-old Ford Capri he never drove, a lady at her net curtains, some shaven children picking their lice scabs and eating chewing gum off the pavement.
I remember reading a poem in school—I can’t remember who wrote it—but it was called “The Donkey,” I think, and it was certainly about one, and this donkey was despised for having the usual donkey bits—big ears, ugly voice, all that—but then suddenly all these people were cheering it and laying down palm leaves for it to walk on. And, in case you haven’t got it, they weren’t really cheering the donkey, but Jesus who was riding into town, but the donkey thought it was all for him. And my point is that so maybe I was just the donkey.
I’m now going to have to tell you the story of the two fish and chip shops. If you live around here you either go to Upshaw’s or to what people still call “the new place,” although it’s really called Fry Me to the Moon (or at least that’s what the sign outside says) and has been there for years, although not as long as Upshaw’s.
Upshaw’s has always been Upshaw’s, but there was a time when Fry Me to the Moon was a cake shop, and then after that it was a Chinese takeaway. Then it became a chippie, run by two men who called it Fry Me to the Moon. Because the two men lived together over the chippie, they were generally taken to be gay, even though they didn’t seem very gay, and nobody went there because they sold gay fish and chips and if you ate them it meant that you were gay too, or might become gay, so the men sold it to a hard-faced couple called Doyle, who kept the name and some of the fancy gay things, like frying in sunflower oil rather than lard, but they brought back the traditional jar of pic
kled eggs and otherwise ran it like a standard, nongay chip-pie.
The Doyles may or may not have been of gypsy stock, so Fry Me to the Moon was also sometimes called the “gyppo chippo,” or sometimes the “gyppy chippie,” as well as “the new place.”
When it was a Chinese, and when the fish and chips were gay, there was no proper competition and the Upshaws could revel in the luxury of knowing they were the only real option if fried seafood and root vegetable was what you were after. But the Doyles knew their chips, and soon they were winning customers from Upshaw’s, and that’s when it all turned nasty. About once a fortnight the window of FMTTM would be bricked, and that happened about six times before they put in special glass. Then burning paper was put in through the letter-box, but that just melted a patch on the lino. Then the smear campaign kicked in, and rumors were spread about people finding rats, bats, and bits of cats in the frying vats.
Things became nastier and nastier until finally there was a brawl, with the supporters of the two fish and chip empires slugging it out with baseball bats and chip scoops and pickled eggs that had overstayed their welcome.
Now it’s well-known that if you get in a scrap with gypsy folk, then you’re gonna get whupped, but Mr. Upshaw, whose first name was Les, was not someone to be trifled with. He was at least three meters tall and as wide as a garbage truck, and he often rested his huge beer belly on the top of the metal counter in the chip shop, despite the fact that it was hot enough to melt lead. In the end the field of battle (the parking lot at the Spleen and Marrow pub) was strewn with bodies and dismembered pickled eggs, and only Mr. Doyle and Les Upshaw were left standing, swaying and panting, but still resolute, like two champions from the days of yore. After an age, something unspoken passed between them, and they turned slowly away.
After that, Upshaw’s opened on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and FMTTM on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and they both opened on Fridays, when there were enough customers to go around.
So, you see that Les Upshaw was a thug, but no mug. The fish and chip business had treated him well and he drove around in a BMW with a personalized number plate that read CHIP1, although he still lived in the neighborhood so that he could keep in touch with his roots, or rather rub in the fact that he was the richest man around.
Uma’s mother, Eve Upshaw, was superficially as formidable as her husband. Her fingers were heavy with enormous rings and she was always perfectly, or at least heavily, made up, with her hair frozen in a state of hair-sprayed shock even when she was behind the counter. She was sharp-tongued and intolerant of those who wavered in their orders, uncertain perhaps whether to plump for the haddock or the cod, or whether tonight was the night to try a black-pudding fritter. And she’d been known to go for any floozy she caught casting a randy glance on Les’s magnificent beer gut. But undermining all that, there was something desperate and fragile about Eve. Halfway into a busy shift her makeup would begin to run, showing through to the orange perma-tan beneath, and her hair would collapse into a greasy tangle and her whole body would seem to sink in on itself, like a star caught in the act of collapsing into a black hole.
Despite that, you could still see that she had once been a nice-looking woman, and what most helped you to see that was Uma.
Smoke and
Mirrors
Okay, so now the panic was rising like tsunami floodwaters. Suddenly the twitching curtains seemed to indicate not admiration for my new look, but rather the fact everyone inside knew that I was on a lurve mission, and that I’d had a silly haircut in a vain attempt to impress my girl, and that I was going to be rejected like one of Les Upshaw’s moldy spuds.
And maybe people were also staring because I was sort of flapping and flailing around, trying to get the air to carry away the stench of Old Tramp.
TACTICS.
What?
I SAID “TACTICS.”
Yeah, that’s what I need, tactics. Um, what do you mean?
A PLAN.
Plan. That’s it. Tell me what to do. And don’t just say “be yourself.”
“Be yourself” is rubbish advice. Myself is a useless nerd who’s afraid of girls. I need to be someone else.
FIRST OF ALL, COOL IT, CHILLAX, AS I BELIEVE YOU CRAZY KIDS SAY. SCREW YOUR COURAGE TO THE STICKING PLACE, AS I’D PREFER TO PUT IT. FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR MAID, AND WINNING FAIR MAID IS WHAT WE’RE ALL ABOUT. AND I WASN’T GOING TO SAY “BE YOURSELF.” WHAT KIND OF CLICHÉ-SPOUTER DO YOU TAKE ME FOR? WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE?
The Flash was always good with girls, in a slightly cheesy way.
The Flash was regularly mocked by the other Justice Leaguers for his frivolity. Too often he’d be chatting up a couple of girls in a bar when he should be saving the universe. But he usually got there in the end, saving-the-universe-wise.
SO, THINK LIKE THE FLASH. REMEMBER, GIRLS LOVE CONFIDENCE. THEY WANT TO FEEL THAT THEY’VE LANDED A BIG FISH, THAT THEY’VE GOT THE GUY ALL THE OTHER GIRLS WANT. YOU’RE GOD’S GIFT, AND YOU KNOW IT.
So much for his avoidance of cliché. But I didn’t say anything about it. No sense hurting his feelings. Not now, at least, when I needed him on my team. If I was going to be the Flash, he was J’onn J’onzz, great in both age and wisdom, a mind reader, oozing empathy, but powerful also in attack and resolute in defense. And, er, green.
But that’s just what I don’t know. Nobody wants me. And Uma knows that. I mean, she knows that I don’t know that I’m God’s gift. If you follow me.
SMOKE AND MIRRORS.
What?
IT’S ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS. ILLUSION. CREATE THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU’RE A SEX GOD, AND SHE’LL SEE YOU AS A SEX GOD.
And how do I do that?
BY BELIEVING IT.
But I told you, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it because it’s not true.
Pause. Tumor thinking.
WELL, I CAN FIX THAT.
How?
GIVE ME A SECOND.
Another pause, and then it all went a bit mental. I felt Jack T. begin to rummage around. It was almost as if he was looking for a magazine or a book left in an untidy bedroom. I even heard him curse to himself, as if he’d stubbed his toe or barked his shins.
Whatever it was he was looking for, he found it.
OH YES. YES INDEEDY-DO.
With a jolt like a slap in the face, the world came into sharper focus. Colors were brighter, the air clearer. I could hear things that I shouldn’t have been able to hear—far-off things, silent things. Ideas came into my head, calculations, equations, bits of poetry. Things I’d learned and forgotten years ago all ran together in a mass like a dream or a nightmare: toseetheuniverse inagrainofsandontogenyrecapitulatesphylogenyaspecteris hauntingeuropeifihaveseenfurtherthanyouitisbystandingonthe shouldersofgiantsobravenewworldthathassuchpeopleinitnega tivenumbershavenosquarerootbecauseifyoumultiplytwonegative numbersyougetapositive.
I tried to slow the thought stream, but it kept coming, kept fizzing, so then I tried to put it back, hiding it, covering it, and that worked, sort of, and the thought became a hum, like electric wires.
I was walking more quickly, almost skipping (but not skip-ping—that wouldn’t have done at all), and I sniffed, and my fingers drummed, and I ground my teeth together to some mad rhythm, maybe a rumba or a salsa or something from the jazz age or from the future. And if all that sounds bad, then it shouldn’t because I felt great; great isn’t the word, the word should be, well there isn’t a word, so I’ll call it ofdnz;cljkf9eklgh’dpigfoijfl and you can make your own mind up about it.
But the best thing was that I knew that it was all going to be fine with Uma Upshaw. How could it not be? Wasn’t I gorgeous? Wasn’t I as cool as a human boy could be, cool as a penguin sucking an ice pop? And wouldn’t Uma melt into my arms like caramel on a tongue? But melt isn’t right because I was cool, like the penguin, remember, but it doesn’t matter because you understand. Up until this point I’d still kept alive the idea that I might maybe just perhaps be going
to Uma’s to tell her that Smurf fancied her. Well, now that idea died. Now I had but one idea.
What have you done? I asked wonderingly, fizzingly, frantically.
LIKE IT?
Yeah, it’s fantastic, it’s ofdnz;cljkf9eklgh’dpigfoijfl. But what is it? What have you done done done done?
DOPAMINE.
Dopamine . . .? That’s a . . . brain . . . thing, right?
OH YES.
What does it do?
WELL, ALL THE THINGS YOU’RE FEELING NOW. IT MAKES YOU FEEL CONFIDENT AND HAPPY, AND GIVES YOU AN ENERGY HIT. IT MAKES EVERYTHING CONNECT. IT’S ABSOLUTELY MY FAVORITE BRAIN CHEMICAL.
And you just told my brain to make some?
SORT OF. YOUR BRAIN MAKES IT ALL THE TIME. BUT IT ALSO SUCKS IT BACK IN AGAIN. I BLOCKED THE SUCKING-BACK-IN BIT, SO YOU’VE GOT MORE OF IT SLOSHING AROUND. COOL, EH?
Pretty cool, yeah.
AND ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?
You bet. Rock. Yes, let’s rock.
GOOD, BECAUSE WE’RE HERE.
There’s a Girl
works Down the
Chip ShOP
And so we were. Right outside Upshaw’s. I could see three or four people in there, queuing, big coats hunched along the counter. And behind the counter were Mrs. Upshaw and, Holy of Holies, Uma. She was wearing a pale green-and-white-checked coat-thing that entirely concealed the wondrous spread of her bosombas, and a little paper hat not unlike a nurse’s hat. She was shoveling chips into a bag. Two full scoops, then a flick. Nice action. Then she put a battered fillet of what deduction told me was likely to be cod on top of the chips and dextrously wrapped the combo in white paper. She worked neatly, quickly, but with a hint of anger in the whiteness of her knuckles, and the grim set of her mouth.
Watching her work, I felt some of the chemical effervescence begin to fizzle out.
NOW OR NEVER.
What’s the downside of never?
JUST MOVE IT.
So I opened the door and went in. I was dazzled by the harsh neon light, fogged with the smell of old chip fat. The blessed chip fat—surely, if anything could, that would block out the Old Tramp.
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