I didn’t know how my dad would react to Jon’s presence. He wasn’t used to having someone with him when he worked and me and Mum had always just left him to get on with it. If the door was closed, he was working. Maybe Jon disarmed him, like he had me. After a couple of days, I dared to look in, to see what was going on. I saw my dad showing Jon some simple techniques: sanding, cutting and shaping.
There were quite a few breakages, snapped pieces of wood and cut fingers and blisters, but then, after a few days, it seemed to click. There wasn’t the usual Jon chatter. He was quiet and concentrating and it was the only time I saw him relax. His eyes stopped darting, his shoulders dropped and he was absorbed. And he was good, it came as easily to him as painting came to me. Within a few days he was attempting the racing cars that my dad made and I wondered how such an awkward body could produce such smooth and controlled pieces. I watched them one afternoon and they seemed happy in their silence, hunched over their wood, sanding and shaping. I didn’t feel left out. I went to paint my rocks and stones on the fell and at the end of the afternoon we would meet up back in the kitchen. Me with paint-flecked hands, them with wood shavings in their hair.
Lollop
A lot of things I took for granted were new to Jon and I was almost jealous; it was like every day was Christmas Day for him. I remember the night we got fish and chips. It was a Saturday and Dad had been selling toys at a market all day. He’d had a good day and sold loads of stock and on the way back he stopped off at the chippy. He’d bought three lots knowing that Jon was most likely round. We sat down and Dad passed out the three warm bundles and the tangy scent of warm, salty chips and vinegar filled the room. We didn’t bother with plates or knives and forks; Dad just dumped some kitchen roll in the middle of the table and we got stuck in. Jon seemed unsure what to do. He watched Dad and me unwrap our food and start scooping it into our mouths. Dad looked across the table at Jon sitting watchful and silent. He nodded towards Jon’s food and told him to go ahead. Jon unfolded the bundle like he was opening a present and might want to use the paper again. Still looking unsure, he selected a chip, held it in front of him, looked it over suspiciously and sniffed it before putting it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, paused, chewed a bit more and swallowed, and smiled. He selected another one and this one went down a bit faster. Eventually he picked up speed and there was less selection and hesitation and more chewing and swallowing. We all finished and sat there for a while, full and fat and satisfied. After a couple of minutes Dad started to grab all the paper together, as he leant across Jon to get his rubbish he asked, ‘Good?’ Jon nodded firmly, and said, ‘Yeah, it was, thanks.’ He was as sure as I’d seen him.
He didn’t take to everything as easily. Whenever he was around and I put the TV on I could see his restlessness increase. He would normally last about five minutes before he wandered off. It was the opposite with his books: put one of those in front of him and he was transformed, shovelling the information from the page into his brain and filing it away. I made the mistake of trying to play a computer game with him once. He was useless, worse than me, even worse than Dad. I tried to be patient and showed him the buttons to press to do the moves he would need. And I put it on the easiest setting, but I could have beaten him blindfolded. It wasn’t any fun and I could see he wasn’t enjoying it so I turned the screen off and we didn’t play again. He was quite happy reading a book or messing around in the workroom as my dad got on with his carving. When he turned up at our door early in the morning I was pleased to see him. He was absorbed seamlessly into the daily routine and he fitted well. It was good to have him around. It seemed to me that two people alone in a house sometimes don’t have to see each other all day. They can follow different routes to different rooms at different times and schedules need never overlap. But with a third person to-ing and fro-ing there is a bit more rhythm somehow, a bit more connection, and a bit more life.
I dreamt about you last night
and fell out of bed twice
I found a small piece of map in the car the other day – ‘Cleobury Mortimer’, wherever that is – and laughed at a memory of her for the first time since she died. I know where the ripped piece came from; it was from when we went on holiday a year ago and we were in the car and lost and had been lost for a long time. I was sat in the back and I could feel the tension pouring off both of them. I tried to ignore it and kept my head down trying to duck under the argument-ready air. Dad kept glancing at the unfolded map sitting lazily on Mum’s knee and eventually snapped. He couldn’t hold it in any more. He shouted: she had the map and it was her job to direct, he had to concentrate on the driving. She could at least open the thing and make an effort. All she had to do was one bloody thing and she wasn’t bloody doing it. Typical. He finished. Silenced exploded in the car and he was already looking sorry for what he’d said. He stole a glance to see Mum’s reaction. She had been expecting the blame, I could tell, but not at this force or this volume. She looked straight ahead, hands resting on her knees. She was assessing the situation and planning her retaliation. After a few seconds she’d decided her move and acted. She lifted the map up in front of her, made a show of slowly unfolding it, and held it out wide between her hands like she was holding up a bed sheet. She tore it right down the middle and then ripped neatly and tidily until the map was a pile of tiny pieces. She gathered them together into one fist, taking her time, and then threw them into the back of the car. Dad’s gaze had been quickly alternating between the contours of the unknown road and Mum’s tearing hands. I could see that he wanted to protest, to tell her to stop, but somehow the words didn’t come. There was furious silence for about half a minute until Dad found his voice again and told her that now she was just being a bloody lunatic, we were in a strange part of the country without a map. Bloody brilliant. Bloody well done. I thought the shouting was really going to get going now and braced myself but before he got to the end of the sentence he started laughing. Mum sat with her arms crossed, staring straight ahead as he laughed and spluttered and apologised and tried to kiss her cheek and still drive the car along an unknown road. He had to cajole her for ages before she forgave him. She made him accept full responsibility for being lost and made him buy us an ice-cream each. Not for him, just me and her. She wasn’t really mad any more now either, it was just pretend mad, but she kept it up for a while anyway, so Dad knew that he was still on probation. He didn’t care, he was just happy to be forgiven. For months afterwards, even after Dad had cleaned out the car, we would still find tiny pieces of ripped map, stuck between seats or in corners of footwells. Mum said that we should have saved each piece as we found them and made a new road map of the United Kingdom and Dad said, after she’d left the room, that the way she read maps it probably wouldn’t make any difference.
I saved the piece of map in the back of my wallet. It was good to remember her and I thought about her all the time. I was scared I would forget what she looked like, how she moved and spoke and smelt. Sometimes it felt like her face was disappearing from my memory, like the images of her I held in my head were dissolving. To try and counter this I looked at photographs of her, but she was one of those people who look different in almost every picture ever taken and none of them were quite how I remembered her anyway.
The dreams of her though, they were the opposite; they were too real I suppose. They were worse than the nightmares and almost stopped me going to bed. When I was awake I missed her badly and it hurt, of course it did, but at least I knew the truth. The dreams muddled everything up. They gave me her back for a few minutes. My normal dreams have always been silly, colourful and weird, just like everyone’s dreams. I remember when I was a little kid and I dreamt that the school had been taken over by bright-red robots. We tried to fight them but we couldn’t win and someone said that it was pointless, a waste of time, so we made friends with them instead. Some of the robots became teachers and some of the smaller ones were pupils like the rest of us. I can still see it now; it’s
stayed with me all these years. When I got older I would sometimes dream I was being chased down black streets by wild dogs and men with guns or that I was naked on the school playing field, desperately trying to hide from pointing fingers and laughing faces. I would toss and turn myself awake and after a second relief would flood through me and I would find a cool patch of pillow and fall back into sleep.
When I dreamt about Mum it was different. It would be simple everyday things. We would be walking through town on a Saturday morning, on our way to the butcher’s, or we would be in the supermarket and I would try and sneak more chocolate into the trolley and she would catch me and make me put it back on the shelf. Every last dull detail, every sound rang true, everything exactly as it was a few months before. That’s what made the mornings so horrible. If anyone ever invented a drug where you dreamt like that without ever having to wake up, it would sell faster than chocolate, heroin or booze.
Are you ready?
It was a Wednesday in the middle of the summer holidays when I decided to go and see Jon. He had stopped visiting us. He’d been strange for a few days, even twitchier than usual. He’d spoken less and stayed for a shorter amount of time. Even my dad had noticed. ‘Do you think Jon is all right?’ he asked. I shrugged, ‘It’s hard to tell.’ He nodded and went to his workroom. I did miss him though. The days dragged without his chatter. He broke the static and silence.
I was bored and a bit concerned. But mainly bored. And starting to get jumpy about school. It wasn’t too far off now and I needed to occupy myself. If Jon could just turn up here first thing every morning without an invite, surely I could visit him. He lived in the next house down the fell and I could just about see it through the trees from my bedroom window. It wouldn’t take long.
It did take long. I fell in a stream, I got stung by nettles and I ripped my trousers and skin on a rusty old nail as I climbed over a fence. And it was as hot as hell. I sweated into every corner of my clothes and my throat was as dry as the Atacama Desert, which is in Chile and, Jon told me, is the driest desert in the world. And when I rounded the final corner it looked like it had been a waste of time. The house standing in front of me looked like a ruin. Even compared to our ruin. The windows were cracked and loose and covered by yellowing newspapers on the inside and the roof looked about ready to avalanche its way into the front garden. I would have to fight through the undergrowth to get to the front door and there were tractor tyres and rusty engine parts scattered everywhere, like traps set to snap at ankles. Nobody lived here surely? I was about to turn away and reluctantly push my way back up the hill when I noticed the smoke, slowly spiralling out of the shaky-looking chimney. Somebody had a fire going on a hot morning in August. Somebody was home.
Dry heave
I can’t forget the smell. It still hits me sometimes. Like it’s stuck in my nostrils.
I clambered through the garden, wrestling with trees and bushes, easing my way past rusty obstacles. I pushed through the final overhanging branches and almost fell into the front door. With a sense of victory I knocked and waited but nobody came. I knocked again, a bit louder, hoping the decrepit door would withstand the contact and the vibrations wouldn’t shake any roof slates into a slide but there was still no response. I pushed my way round to the back of the house and tried again on the back door. There was no sound of feet approaching, no sound of anyone being home at all. I looked up again to check that I hadn’t imagined the smoke, and sure enough there it was, still lazily drifting out of the chimney and out into the hot fell air.
Eventually, reluctantly, I gave up. I resigned myself to the long hot climb, and started to force my way back through the tangle of shrubbery. Halfway down the path, just as I was negotiating my way past a vicious-looking exhaust pipe, I heard the front door pull open. I got my balance and turned to see a worried Jon peering out from behind the door. He saw it was me and his shoulders dropped a little. I smiled. I shouted, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘I don’t know.’
I laughed. ‘Why not?’
He looked unsure but then he waved me back towards the house.
He pulled the door back a couple of inches and I asked what the problem was.
‘They don’t like visitors … they don’t like strangers.’
‘Well, I’m not a stranger, am I? And I’m dying for a drink, I think I’m about to pass out.’
‘OK, but I’ll have to show you to them, they heard you knocking.’
He pulled the door back further so I could just about squeeze in and I pushed myself through the gap. Jon closed the door behind and we were engulfed in darkness. My eyes adjusted and I could that see we were in a cluttered, dirty hallway. We were stood very close; there was nowhere else to stand, junk piled everywhere. I could feel his breath on my neck as we stood still behind the closed door. And then I was hit by the smell. It was like the house had taken a deep breath and exhaled. It stank. A mixture of mould and damp and decay. I covered my nose and started to breathe through my mouth. Jon gave me a second to compose myself, pushed past me and led me halfway down the hall and through a door on the left.
I followed him into the room and nearly fell over a heap of newspapers. They weren’t just covering the windows, they were piled high in paper mountains throughout the room and scattered across the floor. Most had turned yellow but some were new: fresh white backgrounds with inky black print. The room was bursting with headlines: ‘Violent Crime Doubles’; ‘Street Knife Attack Terror’; ‘Karaoke Granddad Wins Top Prize’. And then I saw the cats. They glared at me and scurried into corners. I could see at least four straight away and it smelt like there must be more and it smelt like they used the room as a toilet.
It was a few seconds before I noticed the reason Jon had brought me into the room in the first place and I hope I didn’t gasp when I clocked them sat there but I can’t be sure that I didn’t. Just below my eyeline, right in the middle of the room, sat two small old people. Hunched over in chairs, dressed in bedclothes, with bright eyes, clear and staring. Jon coughed and shuffled his feet and said, ‘These are my grandparents.’
Upchuck
They didn’t speak. They just stared. White hands riddled with green and blue veins and blotched with dark spots gripped their chair arms. Their skin looked like cheap tissue paper, like it would dissolve in the rain. Jon’s grandma rocked backwards and forwards in her seat like she was trying to push her chair closer to me. His granddad held his chin high in the air and to the left, keeping his fierce watery gaze trained on me. Either he nodded at me or his old head wobbled of its own accord. I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want to stare, so I offered a quick nod in his direction. I didn’t really want to look at either of them at all so I ended up looking at my feet. I hadn’t done that for years. Nobody spoke. A confident cat rubbed up against the back of my legs and I wanted to run. Jon wasn’t any help; he remained silent and I had no idea what to do. Thankfully, eventually, Jon started to walk out of the room and I followed, closer than his shadow. We turned left and walked further down the hallway, stepping over piles of clothes and rubbish and through into the kitchen. Plates were piled high in and around the sink and I couldn’t work out if there were more cats here or if the cats from the other room had followed us. Something fast and black darted across the floor and out of sight in a second. I was tired and hot and wanted to escape but there was no clear route to a door. The sweet rotten smell hung heavily in the air and my stomach lurched. I pushed through past the mess and clutter, flung the back door open just in time and was sick.
We hunched down at the bottom of the back garden. It was still hot, but a relief to be outside. Jon asked if I wanted that drink but I said no thanks, I was all right now. My mouth was dry and I could taste sick when I swallowed but I wouldn’t be able to drink from anything in that house. I had a lot of questions to ask but I knew to take my time. If it wasn’t general knowledge learnt from a book you couldn�
�t rush Jon.
I slowly asked my questions, and slowly got some answers. They had been offered help many times and his grandparents had been threatened with care homes for years. He had been threatened with being taken into care himself a few times. They had dealt with it by not opening the door or reading any post. ‘Like my dad,’ I told him. That was why it had taken so long for Jon to answer the door: he wasn’t supposed to. Jon did his bit, always turning up at school and keeping out of trouble, keeping his head down and doing his work. I asked what they did for money and Jon said they had some from when his grandparents sold their land when they retired from farming. He was given a few pounds each week for food and made it stretch. He looked worried. He said he thought it was starting to get low. He tore up a clump of grass and and let it fall back to the ground.
Luke and Jon Page 4
