by S. L. Powell
How long was it, Gil wondered, before he turned eighteen and could go and live up a tree in a park if he wanted to? He did a quick calculation. Nearly fifteen hundred days. It was a life sentence.
Dad produced his list of punishments first thing on Saturday morning. He’d typed the list up on the computer so there was no excuse for forgetting anything, and as Gil skim-read the page he quickly saw there was very little that Dad had missed.
No friends home after school or at weekends. No visits to friends’ houses. No pocket money – well, that was obvious. No tuck shop money either. No ice-skating on Saturday mornings. No swimming. No going to school or coming home independently – it seemed as if Dad planned to reorganise his entire diary so that he could drive Gil to school and pick him up again at the end of the day. No Nintendo, no MP3 player – they were locked away immediately in one of the drawers in Dad’s study. No sweets. No crisps. No favourite treats, like bacon sandwiches when Gil came home from school. A long list of chores to be fitted in around supper and homework. No going anywhere, even to the library round the corner, except with a parent. No television, no DVDs, no computer and no internet access unless Gil needed something for a piece of homework he was doing, and then Dad would have to supervise it.
‘These punishments will last for two weeks,’ said Dad. ‘After that time, if you can prove to us that you are capable of behaving responsibly, you can expect to win back some of your privileges.’
Gil stared at the list in his hands and felt as if there was something very heavy pressing down on his shoulders. It was even worse than he’d expected. He’d never had a punishment as big as this before, and he wondered what he was being punished for. Was it because he’d nearly got arrested, or because he’d had a go at Mum and Dad for making him an only child?
‘On the other hand,’ Dad added, ‘if we find you have broken any of these conditions, or if you manage to get yourself into any more trouble . . .’
He left the threat hanging in the air.
‘We’ again, Gil thought, even though Mum wasn’t there to be included. She hadn’t even got up yet.
Gil got a bowl of cornflakes from the kitchen and took it up to his room. He was still in his pyjamas, but it was pointless getting dressed if he wasn’t going skating. While he sat and ate the cornflakes he read Dad’s list of punishments again, until it occurred to him that this was a bit like going up a level in a computer game. You always ended the previous level on a real high because you’d got unbelievably good at whatever it was you needed to do to beat the enemy. And then you were faced with a new scenario that needed a totally different set of skills, and for a while you were out of your depth. Dad had just pushed the game up to a new level of difficulty, and it looked seriously daunting.
But as Gil read and re-read Dad’s list, slowly his mind cleared and settled. Some of the punishments were things he didn’t care about anyway. He only ever went to Louis’ house these days, and he could do without Louis for two weeks, no problem, especially if Louis was going to insist on hanging around with Ben. Skating was something he did with Louis too, but recently it had begun to feel less and less of a challenge. There were always too many people at the rink to try anything really adventurous. Gil thought he could probably manage without pocket money; he wasn’t allowed to go into town to spend it in any case. It wouldn’t kill him to give up his MP3 player for a couple of weeks, and he was bored with most of his Nintendo games, so that wasn’t a great loss either when it came down to it.
OK, thought Gil. What if he just made a conscious decision not to care about any of the other punishments? So Dad was going to be waiting for him at the school gates every day – so what? The morons in his year could say what they liked. No sweets, no crisps, no television – well, he wasn’t addicted to them, was he? It would be good discipline to prove that he could do without them. Gil’s mind drifted away again to Jude in his tree. Jude was probably living on bread and water. He wouldn’t waste time longing for a packet of prawn cocktail crisps or wondering what was happening in EastEnders. He had more important things to do.
Gil traced over the pattern on his duvet cover while he considered his strategy. There must be something he could do to piss Dad off without actually breaking any of his rules. Something that would make a tiny crack in the solid wall that Mum and Dad put up in front of him. Right now Gil couldn’t think of anything, but he knew when he did it would be like finding the secret power that makes your enemy crumble into a pile of dust. And meanwhile he would make a really good job of doing exactly what Dad wanted so that when he finally found the thing that was going to drive Dad crazy, Dad would be completely unprepared.
‘Don’t forget to look for your school bag,’ said Dad as they drove off for school on Monday morning.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Gil said, and then pulled himself up short. ‘I mean yes, sure.’ He was going to have to make an effort, otherwise he’d blow it before they got as far as the school gates. He rubbed his ear. It was hard, sitting this close to Dad without any possibility of escape. At home he could at least find an excuse to leave the room if Dad started to bug him, but he couldn’t exactly throw himself from the car if Dad went off on one of those ‘you-have-to-believe-that-we-are-acting-in-your-best-interests’ speeches. Fortunately Dad seemed to feel in control, and he just talked about last week’s maths homework and how early the cherry blossom was again this year. Gil didn’t get the urge to put his fingers in his ears once. He felt pretty pleased with himself, especially as he’d managed to blag another three pounds off Mum for lunch without having to confess to losing his wallet.
‘See you later, then,’ said Dad as Gil climbed out of the car. ‘Have a good day.’
Gil spotted Louis immediately, standing by the school gates. Even from a distance Gil could read all kinds of things in his face – relief, worry, curiosity. Louis was hopping from foot to foot as if he couldn’t wait to ask what had been going on.
‘Hi,’ Gil said, as if it was just a normal Monday. ‘Good weekend?’
‘Yes. No. Gil, what happened to you on Friday? Your mum phoned and she sounded terrible. And then I never heard anything. You weren’t at skating, and I phoned you on Sunday morning but your dad just said you weren’t available.’
‘I didn’t know you’d phoned. Dad didn’t tell me.’
But would he have bothered to phone back, Gil wondered, even if Dad had given him permission? He hadn’t really thought about Louis at all over the weekend. Louis had become just another item on Dad’s list, one of the many things he was no longer allowed.
‘So . . .?’ said Louis eagerly, making a hurry up gesture with his hand.
‘So what?’
‘What happened on Friday?’
‘Oh, that,’ Gil said. ‘I went into town, I did some stuff, I was about to come home and then . . .’
He waited a split second before finishing, to create the maximum impact.
‘ . . . the police nearly arrested me, just for dropping a plastic bottle.’
Louis’ eyebrows shot up in horror. ‘The police? You’re joking!’
‘It wasn’t a big deal.’ Gil grinned, enjoying Louis’ reaction, until he remembered the smell in the police car, the smell of other people’s bodies, and he had to swallow quickly to stop himself feeling sick.
‘What do you mean, it wasn’t a big deal?’ Louis peered at him closely. ‘I’d have been cacking it.’
‘Yeah, that’s because you’re such a wuss. Anyway, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so they couldn’t arrest me. They took me home in a police car, though, just to try and scare me.’
Louis stopped in the playground with his mouth open.
‘You can guess what Dad said,’ Gil went on.
‘I told you it was a bad idea, didn’t I?’ said Louis.
‘Oh, wow, what a surprise. I so didn’t expect you to say that. And by the way, thanks a lot for dumping me in it when my mum phoned to see if I was at your house. That was really helpful.’
> ‘What was I supposed to tell her? You told me you didn’t care what I said,’ Louis fired back at once. ‘You know I’m rubbish at lying. You should have given me something to say if you wanted me to cover for you. Anyway, as soon as the police brought you home it would have been pretty obvious I wasn’t telling the truth. Then I’d have got a load of grief for lying, wouldn’t I?’
‘God, Louis, what are you getting so angry about?’
‘What am I angry about?’ Louis was starting to sound squeaky.‘You’re the angry one. You’ve been getting worse and worse for ages now. It just sort of leaks out of you all the time. It’s like sitting next to a bloody nuclear meltdown sometimes. You never laugh about anything any more. And now you’re showing off about nearly getting arrested!’
‘I’m not showing off!’
‘You are! It’s so stupid! You never used to be like this!’
‘Yeah? Well, you know what, Louis? I can do without a lecture from you. I get enough of that kind of crap at home.’
Gil spun round and walked off in the opposite direction.
‘You’re doing it again!’ Louis yelled after him.
Gil stopped and turned back, very slowly, as if he was having second thoughts. He stood gazing at Louis until the anger left Louis’ face and was replaced by a look of complete uncertainty.
‘Maybe you’d like to come over to my house sometime this week,’ Gil said.
‘Um . . . yes, I would,’ Louis said. ‘I haven’t been for ages.’
‘So you’d really like to come, would you?’
‘Yes, sure. Look, I’m sorry I got annoyed. It’s just that sometimes . . .’ Louis looked down, and Gil didn’t wait for him to finish.
‘Well, tough,’ Gil said.
Louis’ head snapped back up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you can’t come to my house. I’m grounded. I’m not allowed to see anyone. And you know something else? I don’t care. I don’t want to see you anyway, so it’s not exactly a punishment, is it? The joke’s on Dad for once. And you.’ Louis opened his mouth but nothing came out. Gil walked away rapidly, and when it became obvious that Louis was going to spend the rest of the day avoiding him Gil made no effort to try and approach him again. Louis was a prat. He was a moron like Ben, like all the other morons at school. The only surprise, Gil thought, was that it had taken him so long to notice it.
‘Bag?’
Dad was standing inside the school gates, waiting.
‘What?’
‘Where’s your bag? Did you even look for it?’
‘Uh – no, I didn’t.’
That was true, anyway, Gil thought. There was no point looking for it at school when he knew he’d left it under Jude’s tree.
Dad wrinkled his nose in disapproval. ‘Well, you’ll have to look tomorrow. I haven’t got time to hang about now. I need to get back to work.’
When the car pulled up outside the house, Dad didn’t get out. He waited just long enough to see Gil walk up the path and Mum open the front door, and then he was off again.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Mum.
As usual, the way Mum said Hello, darling made Gil’s heart sink. She made it sound as if Gil had been away for weeks instead of hours, and she looked so happy to see him he could hardly stand it. Mum was always at home these days. Not for the first time, Gil remembered how he’d spent all those years at primary school going to an after-school club he hated because Mum was at work full-time, and just at the point where he was finally looking forward to getting a front door key so he could come home to an empty house, Mum had suddenly given up her job and announced that she’d be there for him. Every day. It was like walking into a house where the central heating was up way too high.
‘Hi,’ Gil said, squeezing past Mum. He went straight into the front room, fell on the sofa and was just picking up the remote to flick on the television when he heard Mum behind him.
‘Gil . . .’
She was hovering in the doorway.
‘Oh.’ Gil suddenly realised. ‘I’m not allowed, am I?’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I’m afraid not.’
The house was so quiet that Gil could hear the pulse in his ears. If he couldn’t watch television, what was he going to do to fill the silence?
‘Did you have a good day?’ asked Mum. She didn’t quite come into the room.
‘Um – not bad.’
Silence.
‘How about you?’ Gil said.
Mum stared. ‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Oh. Yes. Thanks. I didn’t do much really. Just pottering, you know.’
Pottering. That was what old people did, Gil thought. Pottering in the garden. Pottering in the kitchen. There was something about it that didn’t feel right. Surely Mum had never spent so much time doing so little? She’d always wanted to be out and doing things. And now – pottering. Doing nothing. Hanging about the house waiting for Gil to come home. Why didn’t she get a job again, like other people’s mums, and get off his back?
Gil couldn’t think of anything else to say to Mum, except all the things he knew he mustn’t say. Did you go and see Granny again? How is she? What’s wrong with her? Is there something wrong with you, too? Is that why Dad’s started to treat you as if you were about to break any minute, like a bubble? Is that why you spent most of the weekend in bed? Is that why Dad’s the one picking me up from school, even though he hasn’t got time and it puts him in a bad mood?
‘How about a bacon sandwich?’ said Mum. ‘You’re probably hungry.’ Then her face fell. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘That’s on the list too, isn’t it?’ Gil said.
‘Yes.’ Mum looked uncomfortable. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I won’t tell Dad if you don’t.’
‘Oh no, I really think . . .’
You really think I deserve to be punished like this, Gil nearly said, but he stopped, because Mum was looking as if it was just as much of a punishment for her.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll have some cereal,’ he said instead.
Mum went ahead into the kitchen and quickly got out a bowl and the milk. Gil always preferred taking his after-school snack up to his room, but today he sat and ate the cereal at the kitchen table, wondering if it was too late to say sorry for Friday. The problem was that he didn’t really know what to say sorry for, and he couldn’t think of a way to apologise without risking upsetting Mum again. He gave up. It was safer to leave it as it was.
‘How’s Louis?’ asked Mum.
‘Oh – fine.’
The conversation crashed again. It was too complicated to talk about what had happened with Louis, and anyway Mum would only give herself a hard time for phoning Louis in a panic on Friday.
Slowly the week staggered past. Now and again Mum would remind Gil about something he wasn’t allowed to do, but always really gently. Dad did the school run every morning and afternoon, his head so full of work he barely spoke. Louis carried on avoiding Gil, and Gil went on obeying every single item on Dad’s list of punishments. The only thing that mattered for now was staying in control.
On Wednesday evening Gil came down to get a dictionary from the front room. Dad was watching the news, and Gil hadn’t seen any television for days. The story was something boring to do with banks, but he looked at it anyway while he pretended to leaf through the dictionary. After the news there was two minutes of sport, and then the jingle that started the local news programme.
‘And there were angry scenes in the city centre today as environmental protesters clashed with police over plans to cut down trees in Stanmore Park,’ said the presenter cheerfully.
The camera panned over the little park with the two big trees, and Gil suddenly started to pay attention. There was a shot of Jude’s hammock flapping in the branches, and then a mass of bobbing heads and waving placards, and a screaming woman being dragged away feet first by two policemen. Gil’s heart thumped as Jude’s face filled the screen, h
is hair blowing wildly in the wind. He looked magnificent, like the hero of a disaster movie.
‘There has been no consultation of any kind about this redevelopment,’ he said. ‘We want to draw people’s attention to the council’s total hypocrisy on environmental matters. It is appalling that these trees —’
Dad flicked the button on the remote and the television pinged off.
Turn it back on, Gil wanted to shout. I want to see Jude.
‘Is that where the police picked you up, then?’ said Dad, glancing round.
‘What? I wasn’t watching,’ Gil said. ‘How do you spell Palaeolithic?’
‘Ah,’ said Dad. ‘Early Stone Age. Interesting. What did you want to know?’
‘Just the spelling, Dad, thanks.’ Gil was tempted to add I know you were born in the Stone Age, Dad, but I really don’t need you to tell me all about it. He thought better of it.
After Gil had managed to escape back to his room, he went over and over the tiny bit of news he’d seen. Jude had looked smooth, polished, powerful. He wasn’t just a bloke up a tree, smoking a roll-up. He was a leader. He was in charge. He was the one the television cameras focused on, the one everybody wanted to interview, and Gil longed to be there in that crowd of pushing shouting people, linking arms with Jude as the bulldozers roared towards them.
The next day at school, Gil’s bag reappeared. It arrived in the classroom without any explanation. There was nothing missing. Even Gil’s wallet was still inside, holding the cash that Gil hadn’t managed to spend in town.
If it was Jude who brought it back, Gil thought, then it means the police didn’t get him. He’s free.
He searched the bag for some trace of Jude – a twig, a cigarette end, anything to prove that it had passed through his hands. The bag did smell a bit of smoke, which was something. But it was only when Gil got home and pulled everything out of his wallet that he found the note, folded up neatly and slipped in behind a five pound note.
