Suddenly Beth turned into a side street. The tyres screeched as the car came to a halt. Beth was crying. She turned the engine off.
I listened to her sob for a while.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly.
‘No you’re not,’ she said. ‘You might think you are. But you’re not.’ She wiped tears from her face. ‘All I wanted was a Saturday night out. But not you. Oh no. Everything’s like a test with you. I feel I have to prove myself all the time.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘I’m not exaggerating. I know what you think of me. You think I’m stupid because I don’t know the names of film directors and stuff like that. You’re always asking my opinion about things. What did I think of such and such a film? What did I think of such and such an actor? But you never ask me anything about me. You know more about the bloody film we’ve just seen than you know about me. Well, I’ll tell you this: I might not know what set-pieces are, but I do know one thing. That film was about communication. That’s what those aliens were trying to do. Communicate! Trying to find a way of making . . . making one heart speak . . . to another. But you . . . you . . .’
I put my arm round her.
She shrugged it off. ‘All this because I didn’t like the film. It’s not a crime, you know.’
‘You’re right,’ I found myself saying. ‘It’s not a crime. It’s a sin.’
‘Oh, get out!’ she yelled, pushing me. ‘Get out! I don’t want to see you again!’
‘Don’t, Beth . . .’
‘Fuck off! Now!’
I opened the car door and got out.
The night air was cold and it had started to rain.
The engine started and the car pulled away.
Suddenly, I was chasing after it. Running as fast as I could down Threadneedle Street.
‘Beth!’ I screamed. ‘Stop! Please! Please!’
The car pulled up at some traffic lights.
Beth rolled down the window.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I forgot my programme,’ I said.
She grabbed the programme and flung it at me. ‘Bastard!’
I watched the car drive away, then started to walk home. It was raining quite heavily now. I felt a tightening in my chest that told me an asthma attack was on the way. By the time I reached Bethnal Green Road I could barely breathe. I had to rest after every few steps.
By the time I opened the front door I was so short of oxygen I felt faint. I fell to my knees in the hallway, the programme a soggy mush in my fist.
Mum, who could tell if there was something wrong just by the way I put the key in the lock, came rushing down the stairs in her night-dress. Before she even saw me she was asking, ‘Where’s your inhaler?’
I didn’t have enough breath to answer.
‘Take your time,’ she said. ‘Calm down.’
Finally I managed, ‘Bedside cabinet.’
Mum ran upstairs, got the inhaler, then quickly woke Dad. They rushed down the stairs together. Mum gave me the Ventolin inhaler. I had a few puffs. Breathing immediately became easier.
Dad picked me up and carried me upstairs.
My brother was standing on the landing.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine,’ replied Dad. ‘Go back to sleep.’
Dad put me on my bed.
Mum propped the pillows behind me.
‘You can go,’ Mum said to Dad, softly. ‘Go on.’
Dad nodded, then left.
‘I told you to take the inhaler with you,’ Mum said to me, annoyed now the worst was over. She got a towel from the bathroom and started to dry my hair. ‘Did you have an argument?’
‘ . . . Yes.’
‘Didn’t Beth like the film?’
‘ . . . No.’
My hair dry – or, at least, drier – Mum put the towel down.
‘You expect too much from people,’ she said.
‘But the film was a work of art, Mum. I don’t understand how anyone could not like it.’
‘You don’t have to understand the people you love,’ Mum said, stroking my hair. ‘You just have to . . . love them.’
My heart was beating very fast from the Ventolin.
Mum lay her hand on my chest. ‘You feeling okay?’
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Do you want anything? A drink? Sandwich?’
‘No. I just want . . . I . . .’ My voice trailed away.
‘What, darling? Tell me.’
‘ . . . They met the aliens at a place called Devil’s Tower,’ I said. ‘They sang to each other. It was beautiful, Mum.’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m sure it was.’
She kissed me, turned the light off and left.
I stared at the ceiling for a while. Then I got up and looked out of the window. It had stopped raining by now and the night was clear.
My face was reflected in the window. It stared down at me from the night sky, larger than any spacecraft. A petrified face, full of moonlight and brittle with stars.
Alien, I thought.
TOWERS OF BELIEF
When I was eleven years old our school was visited by a survivor of Auschwitz. We assembled in the main hall to hear her speak. She was very old and sat in a wheelchair. The headmaster stood beside her, wearing a dark suit and looking very solemn.
‘We are honoured to have Mrs Heller with us,’ he said. ‘She is going to tell us what happened to her when she was sent to a concentration camp during the Second World War. Now, some of you might have seen documentaries about this subject on television. Or read books. But this is different. Mrs Heller is going to tell us her own, very personal story.’ He looked at the old woman. ‘Mrs Heller,’ he said, and took a step back.
‘My eyes are blind,’ Mrs Heller said, ‘but once they could see. And when they saw, they saw terrible things. Things so terrible, there are some people now who don’t believe what I saw. They tell me it never happened. And so I tell my story over and over. Because what I saw did happen! I am the living proof!’
As she spoke, she stared sightlessly around the hall. Her voice was scratchy and precise. ‘I was born in Berlin,’ she said. ‘Years ago. Before any of you were born. Before your parents were born. My father was a doctor. I had two brothers, Rudi and Erik. They were both older than me and were married. Rudi had married Marta, and Erik had married Inga. Rudi and Marta had one child. A girl called Tovah. I had just got married to a man named Hans. He was a doctor like my father. I tell you this so you will realize what I lost. Because all my family – my mother, my father, Rudi, Marta, Erik, Inga, Tovah, Hans – all of them were murdered in Auschwitz.’
I don’t know why I started to giggle.
I bit my bottom lip, trying to stop myself.
The old woman continued to tell us how the soldiers in Auschwitz shaved her head, made her walk around naked, hit her and kicked her, made her work all day and fed her scraps. And the more I listened to this endless succession of horrors, the more I wanted to laugh.
‘I saw people being led into the showers,’ Mrs Heller said. ‘Only they weren’t showers. They were gas chambers. The people were gassed to death. I could hear them screaming. When they were dead, their bodies were dragged out and put into ovens. Children were gassed and put into ovens. Children like you were – ’
I laughed out loud.
Very loudly out loud.
I’m in the living room, fighting with Kyle.
The rack of CDs has been knocked over and they’re scattered across the (newly laminated) floor. One of the more valuable Art Nouveau vases (Kyle collects Art Nouveau glass) has been knocked off the (bespoke) console table but, miraculously, hasn’t been damaged. A framed photograph of me and Kyle, however, has fallen and smashed. When I shove Kyle in the chest, he staggers back onto the shards.
‘Stop!’ he says. ‘Jesus!’
He’s not wearing shoes.
We’ve been at ea
ch other’s throats (literally) for about ten minutes, hence the damage to the room. We’ve argued and fought before. But this has been the worst by far.
‘You see what you’ve fucking done?!’ Kyle indicates his foot. ‘I’m bleeding! Bleeding!’
‘Good!’ I say. ‘You deserve it!’
‘Get me a plaster. And antiseptic.’
‘Get it yourself!’
‘I don’t want to walk blood through the – ’
‘I don’t fucking care!’
‘You’re crazy!’ he says, heading for the bathroom. ‘You know that?’
‘Yeah? Well, at least I’m not a cheat!’
The headmaster said to my Dad, ‘I’ve never been so ashamed of a pupil. It was disgraceful behaviour.’
We were in the headmaster’s office.
‘He’s still grieving for his mum,’ Dad said. ‘He’s taken it very bad. He won’t talk about her death. He hasn’t cried.’
‘Yes, I’m aware of all that,’ the headmaster said. ‘Which is why I’m not expelling him. But he is suspended for a week.’ He looked at me. ‘The loss you’ve experienced is terrible. All our hearts go out to you and your family. But you cannot let your own suffering be an excuse to be unfeeling towards others. Do you understand?’
One year earlier. Me and Dad were waiting for Mum to get home from work. It was a cold, windy evening. Mum was late. Dad was getting worried.
Mum had a job in Kall Kwick, a design and printing shop off Tottenham Court Road in the West End of London. She finished at five-thirty and was always home by seven at the latest. It was now nearly nine.
‘Traffic,’ Dad said. ‘That’s what it is.’
‘It must be,’ I said.
Half an hour later Mum arrived.
She was breathless and trembling.
‘Where’ve you bloody been?’ Dad yelled.
‘Don’t shout at me,’ Mum said. ‘Is it on the telly yet?’
‘What?’
‘Turn the news on. Quick!’
Dad switched channels. There was a news report from outside King’s Cross Station. There had been a fire. People had been hurt.
‘Jesus!’ Dad said. ‘No wonder you’re late. Half of London must be shut down.’ Dad looked at me. ‘I told you it’d be traffic.’
‘I was there,’ Mum said, pointing at the screen.
‘Where?’
‘King’s Cross.’
‘But you come home by bus.’
‘I went out for a quick drink with a couple of the girls. I caught the tube from Warren Street. As we approached King’s Cross . . . I could smell smoke. The train I was on . . . it didn’t stop at the station. It slowed down, but it didn’t . . . There were people on the platform. Lots of them. They were . . . they were . . .’ She kicked off her shoes. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’ She went upstairs
There was more footage from the fire on television now: smoke billowing from a station entrance, firemen looking confused and helpless, blankets covering dead bodies.
‘Those poor people,’ Dad said.
In the morning Mum woke me. She pulled the curtains and said I’d be late for school. She was dressed and about to leave for work.
‘You feeling better?’ I asked.
‘Of course I am. It was just the shock. It’s all worn off now.’
‘So what did you see, Mum?’
‘Oh . . . nothing really.’
The headmaster made me promise to visit Mrs Heller. I had to apologize for ‘my total lack of both respect and empathy’. I asked him what ‘empathy’ meant. He said, ‘Feeling sad when you see someone else feeling sad.’
Mrs Heller lived in a tower block called Keeling House. Dad had made me buy a bunch of flowers with my week’s pocket money.
‘Be nice to her,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Tell her about Mum. Say that’s why you laughed.’
‘But it wasn’t,’ I said.
The lift wasn’t working so I had to walk up the stairs. There were sixteen floors and Mrs Heller lived on the sixteenth. The stairs were dark, very cold and smelt of piss. By the time I reached the top I was exhausted. I knocked on Mrs Heller’s door. A middle-aged woman opened it. She was wearing pink, washing-up gloves.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I’ve come to see Mrs Heller.’
‘You must be the boy who laughed.’
I nodded.
‘Come in.’
I went inside. The woman closed the door behind me. The flat smelt of bleach and boiling vegetables.
‘This way,’ the woman said.
I followed her to a dimly lit bedroom.
Mrs Heller was propped up in bed, stroking a cat.
‘It’s the boy who laughed,’ the woman said. ‘He’s brought you some flowers.’
‘I can smell them,’ Mrs Heller said. ‘What are they?’
The woman nudged my shoulder. ‘Tell Mrs Heller what they are.’
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I said.
‘They’re peonies,’ the woman told Mrs Heller. She nudged my shoulder again. ‘Give them to me, Boy Who Laughed. I’ll put them in some water.’
I gave her the flowers and she went to the kitchen.
‘You see where I live?’ Mrs Heller said to me. ‘They’ve decided that I haven’t suffered enough. So what does the council do? They put me on the top floor of the tallest building in East London, then they make sure the lift only works five days a year. They think it will kill me. They think it will stop me talking. But if the Nazis couldn’t stop me telling the truth, I’m pretty sure the London Borough of Tower Hamlets can’t. The trouble is, when I do tell the truth, people laugh.’
I shuffled uneasily.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘You’ll have to come closer. I can barely hear you over there. Why does everyone whisper?’
I walked closer to her, my knees now touching the side of her bed.
‘They forced you to come here, did they?’ Mrs Heller said. ‘Forced you against your will to come here and apologize?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I wanted to come.’
‘He’s a liar as well!’ Mrs Heller said, as the woman wearing pink gloves returned with the flowers in a vase. ‘He laughs at human misery and he lies!’
‘He should run for Parliament,’ the woman said, putting the flowers on Mrs Heller’s bedside cabinet. She looked at me. ‘Would you like something to drink, Boy Who Laughed and Told Lies? We’ve got lemonade. Not the fizzy type.’
‘No.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘No, thank you.’
The woman said to Mrs Heller, ‘You going to be okay? I’ve still got the balcony to mop.’
‘Yes, yes, leave him with me. We’ll be fine.’
The woman left, closing the door behind her.
‘That’s a good neighbour of mine. Her uncle died in Buchenwald. Another concentration camp.’
The cat got off her lap and snuggled against me.
It started purring.
‘It likes you,’ Mrs Heller said.
I can hear Kyle turn the tap on in the bathroom, and open the medicine cabinet.
‘Who was it this time?’ I yelled. ‘Another spaced-out whizz-kid you picked up at the bar?’
I’d met Kyle three years ago. He came to see my year’s graduation show at St Martin’s School of Art. Kyle was known as one of the ‘new generation’ of private collectors. He liked investing in ‘stars of the future’. He owned – or so I’d been told – a very successful cocktail bar, near Bank tube station, called The Mint Leaf Lounge, and he was about to open another one, just off Leicester Square.
I introduced myself and showed him my work. It consisted of sequences of oil paintings – in the style of various film genres (thriller, horror, science fiction, film noir) – all of which tell a story. My tutors referred to them as ‘fine art storyboards’. It wasn’t meant as a compliment. Kyle, however, said the work was ‘thrilling and ravis
hing’ and bought the entire show.
The following week he asked me out for dinner. A month later we went to the Riviera for a few days. While we were on his yacht he told me that he loved me. I told him I felt the same. I moved in with him the following week.
I thumped my fist on the bathroom door. ‘This is the last time you fucking do this to me, Kyle! I mean it!’
I’d gone to Brighton for the private view of an exhibition I was taking part in called ‘The New Narrative’. Kyle couldn’t come – even though the gallery was owned by one of his ‘best ever’ friends – due to ‘staff problems’ at the bar. I had intended to stay in Brighton for two days (to do some press and other things), but decided to come home early the next morning. Why? Because what I suspected I’d find in our bedroom is pretty much what I did find. Kyle in bed, if not still actually with another man, then certainly still with the ‘residue’ of the encounter: the stained sheets, the smell, the used tube of KY, the condoms on the floor.
Kyle comes out of the bathroom, foot bandaged, limping.
‘Oh, that’s it!’ I said. ‘Play for sympathy now, you fucking hypocrite.’
‘It’s not me that’s the hypocrite!’ he says. ‘It’s you!’
‘Me?! What have I fucking done?’
The day after the fire at King’s Cross I got home from school to find Mum laying on the sofa. She still had her coat and shoes on.
‘Mum?’ I said. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I had to come home from work early and . . . Oh, take my shoes off for me.’
I took them off.
‘People were on the platform at King’s Cross,’ she said. ‘They were screaming and thumping on the windows of the train. “Help us! Let us in!” But the train kept moving. It didn’t stop.’
When I got back from visiting Mrs Heller, Dad asked me how it went. I said Mrs Heller accepted my apology.
‘Did you tell her about Mum?’ he asked.
‘Mum’s got nothing to do with it,’ I said.
A few weeks after the fire Mum went missing. It was a Saturday morning. She went to get some shopping from the corner shop and she didn’t come back. Me and Dad got in the car and searched the streets.
‘This is beyond a joke,’ Dad said. ‘She’s got to pull herself together.’
Flamingoes in Orbit Page 16
