by Kevin Brooks
‘No.’
‘They had didgeridoos and everything.’
‘Why were they dressed up as Rolf Harris?’
‘I don’t know. For Christmas, I suppose.’
‘What’s Rolf Harris got to do with Christmas?’
‘They were singing carols.’
I looked at her. ‘A choir of Rolf Harrises?’
She shook her head, laughing. ‘It’s for charity.’
‘Oh well, that’s all right then.’
She looked away and waved at a girl across the street. I didn’t know who it was, just a girl. I rubbed the back of my neck. I was still sweating, but not so bad any more. The bus shelter stank. My sleeve was caked with frozen snot and my feet were getting more numb by the second. But despite all that, I felt OK. Just sitting there, chatting, doing nothing, watching the world go by—
‘Here’s the bus,’ Alex said, digging in her bag for her purse. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.’
‘OK.’
The bus pulled in, the doors pished open and Alex stepped on. ‘About ten?’ she called out over her shoulder.
‘OK.’
I watched her pay. I watched the bus driver click buttons on his ticket machine and I watched the bus ticket snicker out. I watched the way her eyes blinked slowly and I watched her mouth say Thank you and I watched the coal-black shine of her hair as she took the bus ticket and rolled it into a tube and stuck it in the corner of her mouth. I watched her hitch up the collar of her combat jacket and I saw the bright white flash of her T-shirt beneath the open folds of her jacket as she strolled gracefully to the back of the bus. And I watched and waited in vain for her to turn her head as the bus lurched out into the street, juddered up the road and disappeared around the corner.
She never looked back.
I first met Alex about two years ago when she and her mum moved into a rented house just down the road from us. I remember watching from my bedroom window as they unloaded all their stuff from a removal van, and I remember thinking to myself how nice she looked. Nice. She looked nice. Pretty. Kind of scruffy, with straggly black hair sticking out from a shapeless black hat. She wore battered old jeans and a long red jumper. I liked the way she walked, too. An easy lope.
What if ... I’d thought to myself. What if I went over and said hello? Hello, I’m Martyn, welcome to the street. Something like that. I could do that, couldn’t I? It wouldn’t be too hard. Hi! My name’s Martyn, how’s it going ...
Don’t be ridiculous. Not in a million years.
She was fifteen then, and I was fourteen. Nearly fourteen, anyway. All right, I was thirteen. She was a young woman, I was just a gawky-looking kid.
It was a ridiculous idea.
So I just watched from the window. I watched her as she climbed up into the back of the van. I watched her as she lugged the stuff out and passed it to her mum. I watched her jump down from the van and slap the dust from her jeans. I watched her as she bounced up the path carrying a big green vase in both hands, and I watched as she stumbled over a loose paving stone and the vase went flying into the air and landed on the doorstep with a big hollow smash. Now she’s going to get it, I thought. But when her mum came out they just stared at each other for a second, looked down at the shards of green glass strewn all over the place, and then started laughing. Just stood there giggling and hooting like a couple of mad people. I couldn’t believe it. If that was me, Dad would have screamed blue murder and thumped me on the back of the head.
When they eventually stopped laughing Alex’s mum started clearing up the broken glass, carefully picking up the big bits and putting them into a box. She was quite tall, for a woman. Sort of dumpy, too. Medium-tall and dumpy, if that makes any sense. Her hair was black, like Alex’s, but short. And her face was sort of grey and tired-looking, like her skin needed watering. She wore faded dungarees and a black T-shirt, long beady earrings, and bracelets on her wrists. As she hefted the box of broken glass and turned to go back into the house she glanced up in my direction. I looked away. When she came back out, carrying a dustpan and brush, she sneaked another look up at my window, then stooped down and started to sweep up the rest of the broken vase. She must have said something because, just as I was about to disappear from the window, Alex turned and flashed a big grin at me and waved.
‘Hey!’
I gave an embarrassed half-wave.
‘Are you busy?’ she shouted.
‘What?’
‘Are you busy?’ she repeated. ‘Come and give us a hand if you’re not.’
I stuck my thumb up and immediately regretted it. Dumb thing to do.
Forget it.
I quickly changed into a clean T-shirt then tiptoed down the stairs so as not to wake Dad, who was sleeping off his lunch in the front room, and went out into the street. Walking across the road towards the removal van my legs felt like rubber bands. I’d forgotten how to walk. I was a wobbling fool.
Alex smiled at me and my legs almost gave up.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello.’
‘Alexandra Freeman,’ she said, ‘Alex.’
‘Martyn,’ I said, nodding my head up and down like an imbecile. ‘Uh ... Martyn.’
‘This is my mum.’
‘Hello, Martyn,’ her mum said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Ditto,’ I said.
Alex giggled.
It felt all right.
Now, after Alex had left on the bus, I trudged across the road feeling even worse than I’d felt before. The OK feeling from the bus shelter had evaporated. Glum. That’s how I felt. I felt glum. Glum as a ... whatever. Something glum. I always felt bad when she was seeing Dean. Dean was her boyfriend. Dean West. He was eighteen, he worked in the Gadget Shop in town – computers, sound systems, electronic stuff. He was an idiot. Ponytail, long fingernails, bad skin. His face was all the same colour – lips, cheeks, eyes, nose – all rotten and white. He rode a motorbike and liked to think he was some kind of biker, but he wasn’t. He was just a pale white idiot.
I bumped into them once in town, Alex and Dean. In Boots. I was waiting for Dad’s prescription when I spotted them over by the Photo-Me machine. Dean in his usual black biker gear, pale face ugly and even whiter than usual beneath the cold shop lights, flicking his ponytail from side to side like a cow flicking at flies with its tail. Alex wore a leather jacket, too, which I’d never seen before. She looked good in it. She also looked a bit bored. When she smiled at Dean I could tell she didn’t really mean it. I liked that. They were waiting for their photos to come out. Dumb, jokey photos, no doubt. Funny faces, ha ha ha. I turned away, pretending to study packets of medicine in the pharmacy counter, hoping Dad’s prescription would hurry up so I could leave.
‘Martyn!’ It was Alex’s voice.
I turned and said hello with mock surprise. Dean had his arm around Alex’s shoulder.
‘This is Dean,’ Alex said.
I nodded.
‘Well,’ he drawled, looking me up and down, ‘the Pigman. At last we meet. I’ve heard all about you.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
‘Got the shits, have you?’ he said.
‘What?’
He nodded his head at the pharmacy counter. I looked at the packets I’d been studying: diarrhoea remedies.
I tried a smile. ‘No ... no, a prescription. I’m waiting for my dad’s prescription.’
‘Yeah,’ sneered Dean.
I looked at Alex, hoping for support. She looked away, embarrassed.
‘Come on,’ Dean said to Alex, pulling on her shoulder.
I’m sure she stiffened slightly at his touch, but they moved off anyway.
‘See you, Martyn,’ Alex called over her shoulder.
Dean, idiotically, winked at me.
It wasn’t that I was jealous. Well, I suppose I was a bit jealous. But not in a namby kind of way, you know, not in a snotty, pouty kind of way. No, that wasn’t it. Not really. That
wasn’t the reason I was glum. All right, it was partly the reason. But the main thing was – it was just wrong. All of it. Alex and Dean. Wrong. It stank. It was wrong for her to spend time with him. It was a waste. He was nothing. It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. She was too good for him.
The rain was turning to sleet as I pushed open the back gate and shuffled down the alleyway that led to the back of our house, stepping over dog turds and squashed cigarette ends and bin-liners full of empty beer cans.
What’s it got to do with you, anyway, I was thinking to myself. She can see who she wants. What’s it got to do with you what it’s got to do with me?
What?
I paused for a moment, wondering just who the hell I was arguing with, then shrugged and went in through the kitchen door.
‘About bloody time, too.’
Dad was standing at the back window in his multi-stained vest, swigging beer and smoking a cigarette and spraying shaving foam onto the kitchen window. I looked at him, said nothing, and put the shopping bags on the top of the fridge.
‘Change?’ he said, holding out his hand. I gave him whatever was left of the money. He sniffed at it, then put it in his pocket and went over to the shopping. ‘Did you get it all?’
‘I think so.’
‘You’d better more than bloody well think so,’ he said, dipping into one of the bags.
I didn’t have a clue what he meant. Neither did he, I expect. He grunted through a shopping bag, poking this and poking that, cigarette ash dropping all over the place, then he stopped and looked up at me and said, ‘Where’s the crackers?’
‘In the other bag,’ I told him.
‘Oh, right.’ He shrugged and turned to the window. ‘What do you think?’
Creamy-white shaving foam dripped all over the window, great globs of it sliding down the glass and piling up on the windowsill in little soapy mountains. At first I thought it was some kind of half-arsed attempt at cleaning, but that didn’t make sense because Dad never did any cleaning ... and then I got it. It was supposed to be snow. Christmas decorations.
‘Very nice, Dad,’ I said. ‘Good idea.’
‘Yeah, well ...’ he said, losing interest. ‘Best get that stuff put away before it rots.’
Did I hate him? He was a drunken slob and he treated me like dirt. What do you think? Of course I hated him. You would have hated him, too, if you’d ever met him. God knows why Mum ever married him. Probably for the same reason that Alex went out with Dean. Some kind of mental short circuit somewhere. Yeah, I hated him. I hated every inch of him. From his broken-veined, red-nosed face to his dirty, stinking feet. I hated his beery guts.
But I never meant to kill him.
Things don’t just happen, they have reasons. And the reasons have reasons. And the reasons for the reasons have reasons. And then the things that happen make other things happen, so they become reasons themselves. Nothing moves forward in a straight line, nothing is straightforward. Which is why, in a funny kind of way, it was The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes that killed my dad. If I hadn’t got The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes for my birthday then Dad would still be alive. Probably.
It was my tenth birthday, I think. Or maybe eleventh. Some time around then. I don’t remember who gave it to me. It couldn’t have been Mum, she was long since gone. And I know it wasn’t Dad, because he always forgot my birthday. The only thing he ever gave me was dirty washing and a sore head. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference who gave it to me as long as someone did. Which they did. The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. It was a whopping great thick book containing all the Sherlock Holmes stories and illustrated with the original drawings showing Sherlock as this gaunt and scary figure with mad, sunken eyes and a cruel mouth. I’d never read any mystery stories before and I probably wouldn’t have bothered then if I hadn’t been stuck in bed with a virus. I mean, it was a really thick book, nearly a thousand pages. That’s a lot of pages. It weighed a ton. But I got so bored just lying around in bed doing nothing, staring at the walls, listening to the sound of Dad clomping around in a drunken daze, cursing because he had to make his own dinner, I got so bored that I picked up this huge book one day and just started to read. And it was brilliant. I couldn’t put it down. I loved it, every single story. A thousand pages? Nowhere near enough. I was hooked. Mystery after mystery after mystery. I read the whole lot in two days. Then I read them all again.
And that’s how I came to love mystery stories. Murder mysteries, crime novels, whodunits, thrillers, detective stories, call them what you like, I love them.
After I’d put all the shopping away then tidied up a bit and done the washing-up and made Dad some cheese on toast, I went up to my room and lay on the bed and tried to read for a while. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. In case you don’t know, Raymond Chandler is the best detective writer ever. Philip Marlowe, that’s who he writes about. Marlowe, Private Investigator. Cool, tough, bitter and funny. A man of honour. Mean streets. Mean villains. Mean city. Bad girls, good girls, crazy girls. Good cops, bad cops. Snappy dialogue. Blackmail, murder, mystery and suspense. And a plot with more twists than a snake with bellyache. I’d read all the other Marlowe stories and I’d been looking forward to reading The Big Sleep for ages. It’s supposed to be his best. But when I opened it up and started to read, I just couldn’t get going. The words wouldn’t stick. I’d get to the bottom of the page then realise I couldn’t remember anything I’d just read. So I’d start again, concentrating, making sure I read every line, every word, one at a time, nice and slow, and then halfway through I’d lose it again. I don’t know. It was like I had no control over my thoughts, they’d just drift off somewhere without my knowing. So, I gave up on the book and just lay there on the bed, staring blindly at the ceiling.
I thought about Alex. I was looking forward to seeing her later that evening. She came round most evenings. Sometimes I’d go over to her place, but mostly she came to mine. We didn’t do anything, just sat around talking. I remember the very first time she came round, about a week after we’d first met, I didn’t know what to think. I was in a right state. Why was she coming? What did she want? Did she fancy me? What should I do? I was a quivering wreck. But when she showed up it was as if we’d known each other for years. No problem. No uneasiness. No awkward undertones. She didn’t even seem too bothered about Dad.
‘Is he always drunk?’ she’d asked, after he’d stumbled through the bedroom door, eyed her up, winked at me like a lecher then stumbled out again.
‘Just about.’
‘Mine was like that,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s why Mum got rid of him.’
Her mum was an actress. She’d had a part in a daytime soap about fifteen years ago. I don’t remember the name of it. It was something about a clothes shop, or a factory or something. Anyway, she was in it for about a year.
‘She was quite well known for a while,’ Alex told me. ‘Not famous, exactly, sort of semi-famous.’
‘Like what’s-her-name from thingy?’
‘Who?’
I smiled.
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Yeah, like that. People used to come up to her and say: You’re that one off the telly, aren’t you? You’re ... no, don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue ... don’t tell me ...’
‘And what was it?’
‘What?
‘Her name.’
‘Shirley Tucker!’ she laughed. ‘A sexy young blonde with a heart of gold. Mum had to wear this great big wig, you know, with loads of mak-eup, short skirts and everything. She looked great. Anyway, a couple of years after I was born Shirley and her boyfriend were tragically killed in a motorcycle accident ... and since then Mum’s found it really hard to find any steady work. She still gets the odd acting job now and then – local theatre, adverts, the occasional bit part on TV, that sort of thing – but it’s not enough to pay the rent, so she’s had to go back to part-time nursing. She hates it.’
‘Why did they kil
l off her character?’
‘I don’t know ... there was something ... a disagreement with the producers or something. Mum doesn’t like talking about it.’
Over the next few weeks we talked about everything. Alex told me all about herself, where she was from, what she thought about stuff, what she wanted to do.
‘I’m going to be an actress, too,’ she told me. ‘Mum was dead against it at first, she kept on telling me I ought to be a lawyer or something. “That’s where the money is, Alex, there’s no such thing as a poor lawyer, you know.” But once she realised I was serious about acting she changed her mind, and now she really helps me. She’s brilliant, Martyn, you ought to see her. She’s only got to raise an eyebrow and she becomes a different person. She can do anything: voices, the way people walk, their posture, anything. She’s brilliant.’
I thought of asking: if she’s so good, how come she can’t get a job? But I didn’t. I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere. And in any case, I was genuinely impressed. Even if she wasn’t semi-famous any more, at least Alex’s mum had done something. All right, so she was a has-been. But a has-been is better than a never-has-been-and-never-will-be, like Dad. And Alex was so proud of her. It was such an alien concept – being proud of someone – I couldn’t help but be impressed. But what impressed me most about Alex was her ambition. She had an ambition. She knew what she wanted to do, she wanted to be something. And she was good, too. A good actress, I mean. ‘Tell me what you want me to be and I’ll be it,’ she said once.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Anything,’ she said. ‘A situation, an emotion, a person ... anything.’ She flapped her arms in an elaborately dramatic gesture and put on an actory voice, ‘I will act for you.’
‘Anger,’ I suggested.
‘Can’t you think of anything better than that?’
‘Well, I ...’
Her rage disappeared and she grinned. ‘Acting, Martyn. I was acting. Anger.’
‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. ‘I knew that.’
‘No you didn’t. Give me another. A person.’
I thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘My dad.’
