Now I’d got something to add to the list:
3. I’d made myself look stupid in front of the only decent-looking girl within tractor distance, so how was I going to approach her now?
In fact, this latest problem broke down into a whole subset of related problems:
(i) How was I going to find out her name?
(ii) How would I get talking to her, and when I did manage that, what the hell would I say?
(iii) How would I banish the eejit impression and make her see that I was in fact an extremely attractive, hugely interesting, incredibly talented and very cool person?
The toff and the cockney
There was no one in the kitchen, just the usual array of cakes. That was the only good thing about our move from Dublin: Mum had so much time, she cooked everyday. I usually had a choice of five or six different cakes. I could see meringues, chocolatey caramel stuff, a big cake with icing on top and Mum’s famous flapjacks. I threw down my wet things and had just started on a second meringue when I heard deep growling sounds. Nope, not my stomach – it was coming from upstairs. I stuffed another cake in my mouth: if that noise was what I thought it was, it could be a while before I got my proper tea.
‘Mum!’
I could hear her voice, sweet and cajoling, then nervous and hesitant.
‘David, in here!’
I followed her voice and found her in Helen’s bedroom on the first floor. Mum and I were silent as the growling continued. It went on so long, it began to sound like a purr. It meant only one thing! So, if you think you have more limbs than you need, you might be tempted to reach forward and pat the smallest, sweetest, cutest, most diabolical dog ever put on this planet. My last birthday present: a black-and-white, long-haired pedigree dog, no bigger than a cat, with round, dark eyes and huge ears, like a butterfly’s wings.
‘What now?’ Hearing my voice, he started to wag his tail, but stopped abruptly.
‘He’s got one of Helen’s hairbrushes caught in his tail. I can’t get near him,’ Mum explained. The growl deepened and Mum took a few paces back.
‘Right. This requires one hundred percent body armour.’ I kept my voice even, though I knew he had a sixth sense when we plotted against him. ‘Get me a wax jacket and leather gloves.’
Mum rushed away while my dog and I eyeballed each other. I wanted to make sure he didn’t slink away to hide under furniture because he could slip into the smallest spaces. When he was guarding a bone, one of us would walk by without seeing him and he’d suddenly shoot out from some hiding place and attack our feet.
Mum came back with my protective clothing. I put it on, making sure there was no gap between jacket and gloves that sharp little teeth could find. They all said this sort of thing was my job because he had been a present to me, but the real reason was that, with my rugby experience, I knew how to face fear head-on. I knew there was no point hesitating. Just go for it.
I threw myself on the dog before he saw me coming. I grabbed the brush and he yelped with pain. The long white hairs of his tail were tangled around it, but I kept on pulling. If I gave up, the second attempt would be more difficult because it would be without the element of surprise. He would go into hiding and it would take an army of vets to get the brush off. I felt it loosen and pulled again, even as he planted his teeth in the sleeve of the wax jacket. I tugged again and the brush finally came free. For a nanosecond he stopped, as if registering that the weight on his tail had gone, then, his eyes fierce, he bit into the jacket in a frenzy of indignation.
I plucked him off. ‘You are one crazy dog.’ As I put him down, he made a lunge for my feet, but I’d known better than to take off my school boots, so he gave up and retreated behind Helen’s dressing table, brooding.
Mum peeked from behind the door. ‘Thank goodness! He’s been like that for nearly two hours. Oh, David! Look at the mud you’ve brought in. I’ve asked you before to change into slippers as soon as you come in.’
‘If I’d done that, I’d be missing my toes by now! Hang on … did you say he’d been like that for two hours?’ I’d seen Helen departing less than half-an-hour earlier. Mum nodded.
‘So it happened while Helen was here? Why didn’t she do something about it? After all, it’s her hairbrush. If she hadn’t left it on the floor, he’d never have got it caught. He’s too small to climb up onto a dressing table.’
I already knew the answer – Helen avoided anything that might put a speck of dirt on her. Clothes and cosmetics were scattered about her room as if it had been ransacked, but Helen herself always looked immaculate.
‘She was rushing to get her hair done,’ said Mum, as if that counted as an emergency. Helen should wear one of those panic alarms old people have around their necks. A speck of dust has landed on my T-shirt – bleep! The wind has ruffled my hair – bleep! My mascara has run – bleep! bleep!
Mum started picking up Helen’s clothes from the bedroom floor. Helen’s untidiness had been one of the reasons Mum and Dad had experimented with us having two houses and living next door to each other, but now Mum was back to being her unpaid servant. ‘You okay, Mum?’ I noticed she was in her old dressing gown again.
‘Me? Oh, I’m fine, love.’
‘So why aren’t you dressed?’
‘Oh, I started cleaning this morning, thought I’d get dressed afterwards, then got into cooking. Nobody’s going to call in. It’s so quiet here! You know, if Ian wasn’t home from college, I wouldn’t have seen a soul today.’
‘Yeah, I told you being out here’s for the living dead. Bet you the countryside is full of daytime pyjama-wearers. Not worth it, if you ask me.’ Mum shot me a look. ‘Well, I’ve got the dog to walk.’
The magic word walk drew him from his hiding place, his tail wagging. ‘Come on.’ He drove me mad, but he was cute, loyal and mine. Also, he’s a pedigree, which is like a toff in the dog world. That’s why he doesn’t have some doggy name, like Rover. His name is registered with the Kennel Club. It’s Man Of Honour, though I usually call him M for short.
I got his lead and took him out for a walk, back down the narrow, winding lanes. I took the same route I’d been using the day before, wondering if maybe I’d see the girl with the red hair again. It was getting dark and cars sped around the bends and swerved away as we came into view. One didn’t bother, so we had to jump into the ditch. I was clambering back out when a familiar figure slouched into view.
‘Whatcha Bro!’
My brother Ian was carrying a couple of bags. He’d obviously been to the village shop, which was about as much excitement as the neighbourhood offered. All these people with time on their hands and me still with homework to do! We walked back to The Haven together, Ian talking and me trying to translate what he said into proper Dublin English. Back from London, where he was studying music, he’d acquired a fake cockney accent. The Young Musician of the Year sounded as if he’d been on the set of ‘Eastenders’. Last year, he’d abandoned his serious musical ambitions and joined a heavy metal band called The Oily Rags – which had been another reason for Mum and Dad opting for dual houses. Ian’s drumming had disturbed the neighbours and driven anyone without concrete in their ears entirely mad. Now he was back on track as Dad called it, playing piano and violin. Mum and Dad didn’t seem to have noticed the fake cockney accent. It was a mockery of a travesty of a farce, if you ask me. Sometimes he sounded so odd I wished for The Oily Rags days back again when he’d looked peculiar, but at least sounded close to normal.
By the time we arrived home, M looked like a mop dunked in a bucket of mud. He shook himself clean in the kitchen as we checked out what was for tea.
‘Ah, pukka grub,’ said Ian.
Mum had made a steak and kidney pie, and a potato and mushroom one for him. He’d become a vegetarian in London, too. Every time he came home to visit he had changed. The only constant was his absorption in music and his weedy body. Flimsy McFeeble. He holds St Joseph’s record for avoiding PE. They should have given him a
prize for it before he left. He had some good excuses, all the usual ones about his kit being in the wash, or forgetting it, but I particularly like, ‘I have a skin condition that means I must avoid mud,’ and, ‘My violin teacher insists I must rest my right elbow’. Though hopeless at sports and fighting, he was always winning prizes – the McBride piano trophy, the Edward Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Musical Accomplishment. You get the picture. Being the younger brother of Ian Stirling, he of the angelic voice who won a place at the Royal Academy of Music, sure took some living down. I’d been singing out of tune in Assembly for two years just to prove I wasn’t like him.
I get an idea
Why I must concentrate at all times
I must concentrate at all times because it is a good thing to concentrate. If I concentrate, then I will not miss important things that are happening. I dare say some of the most disastrous events in history could have been different if only people had been concentrating. If King Louis of France and Queen Marie Antoinette had been concentrating, they would have noticed that loads of French peasants did not have enough to eat. Then they could have done something about it and they would not have been beheaded by the guillotine. After that event, no way could they concentrate, so then they had a watertight excuse.
If you’ve got masses to do, it’s tough to concentrate all the time. If you live right near the school, then okay, you can get up when it’s light and just walk to school. Then you’re the one – ooh, look at him, he has phenomnenal exceptional powers of concentration.
No! He’s just got an easy life – not even a dog probably, that needs exercising everyday. A sister who gives him lifts in her car. A brother who talks proper English, not some weird accent so you have to concentrate just to make out what the words are.
David Stirling.
I got to Assembly the next morning by the skin of my teeth, having written my page for Sullivan as Dad and I moved at a snail’s pace along the Long Mile Road. I wasn’t too happy about the finished product, but it was too late now to change it. Unless I got a chance in French class. Otherwise, Sullivan would expect me to hand it in at the beginning of History class.
The headmaster was making some announcements when a weird thing happened. Maybe it was doing that whole page about concentrating, but suddenly I was actually listening to what he was saying! He was telling us that St Joseph’s golf team had lost the match they had played on Saturday. No surprise there. They never won. If there was a category worse than losing, they’d get into it. They were hopeless. But what I noticed was that the headmaster was beaming. If we lost at rugby, he got in a right strop. You’d think we’d done it on purpose to spoil his day. Now he was giving out these rubbish results and congratulating the whole golf team for ‘putting up a creditable performance’.
‘I want some of that,’ I whispered to Joe and Abbas. ‘Praise for losing.’ And it got me thinking. There was massive competition for places on the rugby teams, whereas all you had to do to get on the golf team was turn up with some golf clubs. Rugby is a tough, physical game; golf, on the other hand, is only a matter of thwacking a ball. No one is hurtling towards you. No one tackles. I’d never heard of a golf player getting an ear ripped off. Sure, even if it rains, the guys on the telly have a caddy holding an umbrella over them! And the ball they have to hit is stationary. How difficult can that be?
I kept thinking about this during French. With the golf course virtually next door, I could practice whenever I chose. And the girl with the red hair had been carrying golf clubs. If I started going up the range, I’d be bound to see her. I could find out her name and get talking to her. And, after a week or two’s practice, she was bound to be impressed by my golf. I could even give her a few tips. I’d have a chance to do that thing that happens in films, where a fella gets up close and personal by showing a girl how to hold a snooker cue, a tennis racket … or a golf club.
With French class taken up with a fine case of concentrating – okay, not on French – we got to History without me having a chance to rewrite ‘Why I must concentrate at all times’. Luckily, Sullivan took it without a word, flung it onto a pile of scripts and set about boring us senseless, so I was saved – at least for another day.
During lunch break I tried out my idea on Abbas. ‘I might take up golf.’
‘What?’ He dropped a chip. He played rugby too and was on the B team.
‘The school golf team could do with some help. You heard what the headmaster said this morning?’
‘No.’
‘They lost by, like, a million points and he congratulated them.’
‘Oh, that’s what you were on about in Assembly.’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think you should go back to missing Assembly.’
So, not exactly resounding enthusiasm from my best friend. When Mum and Dad moved us into two houses, we’d lived in Highfield Road, the same street as Abbas and his family. We’d even moved in with them for a while after Mum burned down the houses. Not deliberately. She’s not an arsonist. She was just too quick to clear out the grate and the hot cinders set a wooden fireguard alight. Of course, if it had been me, you could be sure I’d be visiting a psychiatrist by now and given pages to write on ‘Why I must be careful to avoid burning houses to the ground’.
My friends had come around a lot when I’d been living with Helen and Ian in Highfield Road. It was close to school, we had loads of satellite channels and there were no parents in the house. Perfect! Then, in a careless moment, a so-called responsible adult burned down two entire houses. By then the house Ian, Helen and I were occupying was so dirty that setting a match to it was the quickest way of getting it clean. They still talked about The Great Fire in Highfield Road, so when I went to Abbas’ for tea, I made sure I kept my hood up. The Stirlings are Highfield Road’s idea of the neighbours from Hell. They make programmes about neighbours like us. Honest, this is what I’m up against.
Even though Abbas wasn’t keen, I still liked the golf idea. It would give me another sport apart from rugby. Sullivan had nothing to do with selecting the golf team, so no one could accuse me of favouritism there. I hadn’t said anything about the girl to Abbas, but that was another good reason. I made up my mind to have a go. The first job would be to persuade Dad to buy me some golf clubs.
First nutty neighbour
Helen and Mum were in the kitchen when I got home. I’d seen Helen’s yellow Volkswagen parked outside. She was home early from the beauticians where she worked. Beautiful People it was called. Give me a break! Bet she spends her days trowelling make-up onto old bags and picking their spots. I tucked into the cakes Mum had put out. Helen groaned. ‘How come you can eat so much without getting fat? It’s not fair.’
‘I exercise. Pile it in, then burn it off,’ I explained cheerfully.
‘Mum,’ whined Helen, ‘I wish you didn’t bake all the time. It’s such a temptation. I want to get down to a size ten before … you know.’
I looked up sharply. Significant glances were being exchanged. Helen was doing the Big Sister this-is-none-of-your-concern routine.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s disgusting,’ Helen said.
‘And picking other people’s feet all day isn’t?’
‘I’ve told you before, I give pedicures. Pedicures. I’m not a chiropodist.’
‘Whatever. So … what’s up?’
Helen just looked at her nail polish, but Mum chilled me with her answer. ‘We were talking about Helen and Brendan’s future.’
‘You mean–’
A piece of Battenburg cake went down the wrong way as I realised what she meant. I nearly choked.
‘He hasn’t proposed yet,’ Helen said quickly, ‘so don’t say anything at school.’
As if! I might just as well send out invitations to stick my head down the toilet.
‘You mean they might get …’ I was trying to get out the word married when we heard M’s frenz
ied growl coming from the utility room next to the kitchen.
‘Not another hairbrush,’ sighed Mum.
I ran through, followed by Mum and Helen. M was nipping at something by the washing machine. I grabbed his lead from its hook on the wall. ‘M – walk!’ I shouted. He turned and it gave me the chance to grab what he had been nipping at. It was a tiny kitten, wide-eyed with fright. I put it on top of the washing machine. It raised a paw, spread its claws and hissed.
‘Poor little thing. It’s probably feral.’ The kitten backed off as Mum went to stroke it.
‘What’s feral?’ I asked.
‘Wild. There’s probably hundreds around here. Some would be farm cats. None of them neutered. This one’s probably been abandoned by its mother.’
‘Quick, David, get the poor thing some milk,’ said Helen.
‘Why don’t you get it?’
‘Oh, it’s so cuteee …’ Mum and Helen were obviously smitten.
‘It’s probably not hungry. It was eating out of M’s bowl. No wonder he went for it.’ I was glad to have an excuse for his behaviour. ‘I wouldn’t like it if someone was eating off my plate.’ M was restless. ‘I’d better take him for a walk.’ Mum was offering the kitten a saucer of milk and it was slowly edging towards her.
‘Great!’ I said to M as we left. ‘Now I’m going to be related to my rugby coach. Then absolutely nobody’ll believe I got my place fairly!’ If I had to jump into a ditch on this walk, I’d be tempted to stay there as the reality of being Sullivan’s brother-in-law sank in, so I took a different route, over the fields. It gave me a chance to thrash about with a stick and think. I had to get those golf clubs! Given the way things were going, I definitely needed a Plan B sport. There was every chance that my school rugby career was about to be kicked to touch. I mean, if Sullivan was this sadistic when he was my sister’s boyfriend, what was he going to be like when he was her fiancé? Plan B – golf!
My Nutty Neighbours Page 2
