Grow Up

by Ben Brooks

You: disco

  Candywife: disco who

  You: disconnect

  I log off.

  It is 4:06 a.m. Fifty-four minutes until the point of no return.

  It would be best to work on my novel in the shed. In the shed, I will be able to feel the rapist’s motivations better.

  I slowly toe my way into the garden, wearing only boxer shorts and a duvet. I am worried that Keith will wake up and kill me with a spade or other blunt garden tool then bury me under the apple tree with Margaret Clamwell and any of his other victims I am yet to find out about. Margaret Clamwell will be undergoing putrefaction at present. This is the second stage of decomposition, characterised by the abdomen turning green due to bacterial activity and a build-up of gases that force liquids and faeces out of the body. I am not prepared for this to happen to me yet. If I see Keith, I will fight him. I will stab him in the eye with my Biro and I will click it repeatedly once I get it in. This is called ‘adding insult to injury’. My email to Abby Hall also falls into this bracket.

  Sat under the duvet in the shed, using my phone as a torch, I chew the end of my pen until it resembles roadkill. I can’t write. I try to remember and draw as many different Mr Men as I can. I score four. I fall asleep.

  24

  During the exam period, Mum makes me write revision timetables every day and put them on the fridge. Most days I wake up at lunchtime, watch the ceiling from bed for a while, then go downstairs. I eat Weetabix and smoke and write a timetable to make Mum happy. Usually I am still very tired so I just write:

  7:00 a.m. – wake up

  Entire Day – revise

  11:00 p.m. – sleep

  Next I shift magnetic words around on the fridge to make positive-sounding sentences that will make Mum feel optimistic about the future of her only son.

  me i am a happy love man tree and red

  man love

  happy tree man and me

  am i a man

  All of the exams are either in the early morning or mid-afternoon. For the afternoon exams I wake up at lunchtime and eat, then walk to school. For the morning exams I wake up at seven, then walk to school, then walk to Tenaya’s for tea. Sometimes while I am at her house she tries to make me revise in front of her. She folds her face into a strange shape and tells me that she wants me to do well. One day Tenaya will be a very good mother.

  At school my desk number is 86. This works out at being near the front. Oscar Chao sits next to me. Every time over the two-month period I see him sitting an exam, he wears the same socks. They are lilac with yellow thunderbolts on them. They are his lucky socks, I think. I don’t know why. Maybe he lost his virginity while wearing them to a girl that has done catalogue modelling.

  I do not have lucky socks. I have an overwhelming sense of impending failure.

 

  My relaxed, stress-free exam routine is only punctured once, by a phone call that goes like this:

  ‘Jasper?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Abby.’

  ‘Uh. Hi, Abby.’

  ‘My period is late by two weeks.’

  Pause.

  ‘My period is late by two weeks, Jasper.’

  ‘THEN FUCKING HURRY IT UP.’

  Tears (not mine).

  ‘I think I’m pregnant, Jasper.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.’

  ‘Jasper, please.’

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I think I’m pregnant, Jasper.’

  ‘THEN GET A FUCKING ABORTION, NOW.’

  I hang up.

  I am insensitive and cruel.

  I am scared.

  There is no fucking way Abby Hall is going to ruin The Georgia Plan with her weird little baby.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  25

  3:29 p.m. I am sat in Julia’s office, thinking of how I first came to see Julia. Trying not to think of babies or fatherhood. In my head, it is summer 2009. Memory is escape. Me and Tenaya are sat on a short brick wall down off the end of my road. We are rolling cigarettes. We are supposed to be revising for mock GCSEs.

  On one side of the wall is the front garden of number 46 Chestnut Crescent. On the other side is a river of pavement that meets Ivythorne Road.

  We are looking at the sun.

  ‘Jasper?’ Tenaya asks.

  ‘Yea.’

  ‘One day we will be old.’

  We look at the sun some more. It melts and forms lakes over the concrete, grass and brick.

  ‘Yea, I guess so. Unless we get murdered or we contract AIDS or we get run over by buses or we choose to end our lives because of unbearable emotional turmoil.’

  ‘But statistically, we will probably get old.’

  ‘Yea,’ I say. ‘We will.’

  ‘That means being married and having children.’

  ‘Statistically.’

  ‘Yea, but I don’t want children.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I will probably want children when I’m old, right?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  She throws her cigarette into the garden and rests her head in a cradle made from her hands.

  ‘Does that mean I will be a different person?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘But I will think differently.’

  ‘People are fickle.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a different person.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I pinch her.

  ‘There,’ I say, ‘Now you are a—’

  Mum comes strolling round the corner, speaking to someone angrily through her blue plastic handsfree thing. She doesn’t see us straight away because her eyes are sprawled across the new gypsy-laid driveway of number 32. Tenaya pulls me by the collar, off the wall and onto the garden of number 46.

  That was when I fell onto the cat.

  It takes a remarkably long amount of time before either of us realises what has happened. The cat is doing a sort of breathless screaming. It is really flat below me, as though we are in a scene from Tom and Jerry.

  I have to stay lying on the cat until Mum has disappeared round the corner. During this time it has few muscles left intact with which to form a resistance. Then me and Tenaya stand up around the cat and look down over it, a pair of inexperienced and slightly queasy young gods.

  ‘Fucking kill it,’ Tenaya says.

  She always expects me to be the pro-active one because I am a boy.

  ‘I don’t want to kill it, you kill it.’

  ‘You’re the one that crushed it.’

  ‘You’re the one that likes cats,’ I say, not entirely convinced of my defence.

  ‘What?!’

  I look down at the cat. Its eyes have been forced forward out of its tiny skull. It is convulsing in spasms like an epileptic. I wonder how aware it is.

  ‘Fucking kill it!’ Tenaya shouts.

  Because of panic and an aggressive sense of conscience, I opt for a regretfully crude form of euthanasia. I kick the cat’s head against the wall – hard. This results in the wide blooming of a corduroy firework composed of brain and blood. My right foot in particular is heavily redecorated.

  Because Time has been around for a long time, it often gets bored. In order to briefly relieve its boredom, Time enjoys constructing massively unlikely series of events. If these events are of the romantic kind, they are called Fate; and if they are of the negative kind, we call them Unfortunate Coincidence.

  An Unfortunate Coincidence occurs next, because the bald, liver-spotted man from number 46 wanders out of his house immediately after I have dealt his cat the de
ath-blow with my boot. There are still brains on it.

  We panic.

  We run, even though it is no use because he knows my mum. I think we wanted to avoid the confrontation. There was still confrontation with my mum, but not with Keith. Keith tends to avoid confrontation. If the potential for debate ever arises, he says, ‘Let’s agree to disagree.’ I wonder how he will argue his case in court. Probably using a shotgun that fires crocodile tears and a tie that screams ‘Good Christian man’.

  In the end Mum said, ‘You are a heartless psycho,’ and I said, ‘It was an accident,’ and Keith said, ‘Let’s agree to disagree,’ and then I got Julia. Which is where I am now.

  Julia has a brighter face today. Maybe someone has decided that they love her. Maybe she has a boyfriend who runs marathons and calls her Jillybean. Maybe they sit together in the evenings drinking cheap wine and watching films with Hugh Grant in them.

  I think about trying to get advice about Abby Hall’s baby out of Julia. Julia will probably try to convince me to become a Father. I will meet Abby’s ugly child every weekend in a motorway McDonald’s because I will be too embarrassed to meet it at a McDonald’s in town. The child will try to get me to give it money. I will tell it to please leave me alone.

  The light in Julia’s room today is like a morning sea seen by sad sailors. That is a bad metaphor that means there is light but it does not feel warm. It is a greywhite that falls in stretched shapes across the carpet. Julia is clicking her pen and looking at me expectantly. She has just asked about Tabitha Mowai.

  ‘It made me feel sad,’ I say.

  I remember that Julia thinks I am racist. Sometimes, if you tell enough lies, they gang together and do this type of bullying where one crouches down behind you and the other one pushes you over them. This is what my lies are doing now.

  ‘It did?’ Julia asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am not really a racist. Sorry.’

  Julia smiles. ‘I know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know that you are not a racist, Jasper. You are a good kid. You just let your imagination carry you away a little sometimes.’ That is called a cliché.

  I stare open-mouthed at Julia for a while. I am wondering whether she has performed some sort of clever psychological trick on me by pretending to be moronic during our time together. Maybe she is an extremely clever female who could provide me with a foolproof arsenal of seduction techniques.

  ‘Um,’ I say.

  ‘What counts,’ Julia explains, ‘is that you are growing out of it. It seemed likely that you would and you are. Your mum just wanted you to come here so that we could be sure.’

  ‘But I am definitely gay,’ I say. ‘And Sebastian is definitely real.’

  Julia smiles again.

  She stands up and walks around the desk and bends down to embrace me in a small hug. Her hair rubs against my face. It smells of mango.

  ‘I think this will be the last time we need to see each other,’ Julia says.

  And it is.

  Part 3

  Rains and Cattle

  26

  00:52 a.m. I’m in bed. Radio 4 is on. I am listening to the shipping forecast. The shipping forecast is an extremely comfortable duvet. If they had played the shipping forecast during the Somme then everyone would have dropped their guns and crawled into their sleeping bags and talked about the make-up of stars until morning.

  Viking North Utshire South Utshire Southeast

  Before the shipping forecast they play ‘Sailing By’; afterwards they play the national anthem. Sometimes, when I am drunk, I like to sit up in bed and sing along with the national anthem and try to imagine what it would be like to genuinely believe that being born in a certain place at a certain time is something to be proud of. Doing sex with a girl for over seven minutes is something to be proud of. Being British is not.

  Four or five, increasing six or seven, veering South four or five later

  British people watch charity pleas for Ethiopian AIDS orphans on television and tell each other it makes them feel sad. They call it a shame that some people starve to death. Sometimes they pick up the phone and arrange for three pounds to leave their bank accounts every month.

  Occasional rain, good

  Nobody asks for Ethiopian AIDS orphans to all be allowed into Britain, though. The country is ours. And the televisions. And the shoes. And the roast dinners. I don’t think we would act that way if we were all Ethiopians. I don’t think we would say, ‘Nobody is allowed into this country. It is ours. And the dirty water. And the bloated bellies. And the AIDS.’

  With fog patches, becoming moderate or poor

  I look at the ceiling. My head is filled with sailors on a huge oil tanker, huddled around their radio, swigging Captain Morgan’s. They are alone in the middle of a black sea. Clouds of fog drift across the reflection of a dandelion moon. Later, in their hammocks, they talk about missing their wives and children. They will sway in their sleeps with the six or seven wind.

  I am sleepy. I am trying only to think about sailors and not about Abby Hall’s foetus. I have decided not to tell anyone about the baby. I have decided not to think about the baby. I have decided that, if necessary, I will use blackmail to get her to abort it.

  Get an abortion, Abby, or else I will poison your dog.

  Go to sleep. Do not think about Abby Hall’s baby. If you do not think about it then it will go away. Abby Hall is a slut. The baby is not yours. What baby? Exactly.

  My phone vibrates. Tenaya. Jasper, I’m drunk and I’m alone and I want to speak to you. I think about Tenaya standing in the kitchen with teasteam rising from between her hands and a pile of paracetamol on the table. I text back bridge, 15 mins. I will sacrifice my sleep for her arms.

  Mum and Keith went to sleep at ten. They will be lost in the dull suburban forests of their dreams by now. I pull on jeans and a grey hoodie. I take some money from the Doctor Who moneybox by my bed, push it into my pocket and toe down the stairs like a ninja. The door is on my side. It closes very quietly behind me.

  The night outside is cold and distant. It is a huge blanket. It covers me, and Tenaya, and Abby Hall, her foetus, and the sailors in their hammocks, and their missing wives, and the ocean they have started to hate. I power-walk along our street, past the rows of sycamores planted into holes in the pavement and hidden by the night. Silhouettes sex in window frames.

  At the Happy Shopper I flatten my hair, breathe in and step inside. A woman with sad eyes is reading a pink paperback at the counter. I stride up to the till. Confidence is the key to success.

  ‘Two bottles of your cheapest white wine,’ I say.

  She looks me up and down. She takes two bottles off the shelf behind her and places them on the counter.

  ‘You got ID?’ she says.

  ‘ID?’ I shout. ‘ID?’ Getting louder. ‘I’m twenty-five years old, for fuck’s sake. I’ve got a fucking five-year-old child and everything.’ I feel sick, in five years’ time, this might be true. I feel guilty also, but I need to save Tenaya.

  She sighs. ‘Okay,’ she says, taking my money. ‘You aren’t something to do with the police?’

  ‘I’m absolutely not,’ I say, taking a wine bottle in each hand. ‘But I am very sorry for shouting.’

  I run with the bottles up to the motorway bridge. Tenaya is already sat at the highest point, crosslegged, facing away from town. I drop down beside her and pass her a bottle. She breathes an arm of smoke out into the night.

  ‘Thanks, Jasper,’ she says.

  I light a cigarette.

  ‘It’s okay. Are you fine?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It can’t last for ever.’

  ‘I know.’

  I look down below us at the strips of headlights and taillights; rivers red and whit
e. The streetlight overhead covers our legs with orange glow. We are out of the currents. I feel as though I am stood shoulder to shoulder with Tenaya at the edge of the world, looking down at everything.

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘what did you want to speak about?’

  ‘I didn’t want to speak about anything.’

  ‘You said you wanted to talk to me.’

  Tenaya rests her head on my shoulder. I swig from the wine. I do not understand her. I understand that she is upset and that I want to help. I am not equipped with the tools necessary to fix emotional imbalance.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ she says. ‘We can just sit.’

  I will not tell Tenaya about the thing in Abby Hall’s womb. I do not want to burden her with my baby. My baby. Baby. I am definitely not going to be a Dad.

  Get an abortion, Abby, or else I will tell Hello! magazine that you are Michael Jackson’s secret daughter.

  A man pulls into the side of the road. He steps out of his car. He is pressing a mobile phone against his ear. He holds it there, stuck between his shoulder and cheek, then puts a cigarette into his mouth and lights it. Tenaya quietly burps. The man paces and makes frantic hand gestures while talking into the phone. He is Tony Blair. His hands are weapons.

  ‘He’s talking to his wife,’ Tenaya says. ‘He’s telling her that he’s had enough and he’s not coming back.’

  ‘He’s talking to his boss,’ I say. ‘He’s told him he’s a bastard and that he can go and fuck himself.’

  ‘He’s answering a newspaper advert for casual homosexual sex.’

  ‘He’s telling his daughter he wants to fuck her.’

  ‘Nice, Jasper.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  We both stand up and lean over the railings. The man is holding his phone in an outstretched hand. He is staring at it as though it is a dismembered anus.

  ‘Looks like he’s been told someone’s dead or something,’ Tenaya says.

  ‘Yea.’

  ‘Seems sad.’

  ‘If you died, I would set something big on fire. The school, or the cathedral.’