The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair

by Lara Williamson

  Dearest son, I love you and although I had to go you’re not to be sad. And you don’t have to say goodbye…

  “But I do, Mum,” I whisper, my fingers tracing the shape of the bottle she’s holding. Last year at my old school, Mr Kipling asked us to write a message-in-a-bottle to someone we admired. I wrote to Alexander Fleming, who was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist and who accidentally discovered penicillin, which was the beginning of modern antibiotics. I wrote in my letter to Fleming that I was very grateful because when I had tonsillitis antibiotics made me feel better. Without him, my throat would have been very sore indeed. Others wrote about their mums and I felt bad when I heard their messages. I felt like I’d forgotten my mum. I got a gold star for Alexander Fleming. But I didn’t want it.

  With no one around to see me, I bring the photo to my mouth and kiss the glass and imagine I’m kissing Mum’s cheek. Carefully I set the photo back on Dad’s table and reach down for Dad’s wallet. I open it, looking for the three pounds. To be honest, I’m half expecting a load of moths to fly out, because lately Dad’s always saying we can’t spend too much. A scratchcard and a few pieces of paper fall out. They’re just receipts and, yes, I look at them. I haven’t given up on SNOOP completely.

  On the left of the wallet, Dad always had a photo of Billy, me and Pearl. But now he has neatly trimmed Pearl out of the photo. It looks wrong, as if Pearl was never even part of our lives. Another piece of paper flutters out of the wallet and I pick it up and read it. There is a woman’s name and telephone number on it. Camille. We don’t know anyone called Camille.

  Camille sounds fancier than a fondant fancy.

  Camille sounds more interesting than finding out the word “muscle” comes from the Latin term “little mouse” which is what Romans thought muscles looked like.

  Who is Camille?

  When I climb onto the school coach I can’t stop thinking that Pearl has Naked Man and now it seems like Dad has Camille, but the worst thing is that Billy and I have been told nothing. It feels like when you’re young, everyone thinks it’s better not to tell you stuff. But they should tell you, because being young doesn’t mean being stupid and I reckon we could handle being told the truth. Lies are the thing that hurt the most.

  Earlier, when I went back to the breakfast table, I tried to ask Dad about Camille but I kept bottling it and saying “camel” and Dad thought I had a new-found interest in beasts of the desert. When I snapped that I didn’t, Dad said I had the hump. It wasn’t even funny, although Billy laughed so much he was almost sitting in a yellow puddle of his own making.

  “Becket Rumsey, can you please take a seat on the coach?” says Mr Beagle. “We haven’t got all day.” We have, but I’m not going to be the one who says it.

  After a student headcount, Mr Beagle takes a seat at the front beside Mrs Dixon, Mimi’s mother. I overhear Mimi tell Nevaeh that her mum offered to come and help us. Mrs Dixon looks like she could be a model and when she starts chatting to Mr Beagle he laughs like a hyena reading a joke book. A small missile of saliva lands on Mrs Dixon’s shoulder and she looks horrified. He shuts up pretty quickly after that and signals to Sam Swiss, the school’s groundsman-doubling-as-driver to get going.

  Everyone cheers. It’s nine thirty and we’re on our way. At nine thirty-two it is obvious that we’re moving at the speed of a tortoise. Sam Swiss is muttering under his breath that the speed limit round here is thirty and you should never reach that point because then you might slip up and go thirty-one miles per hour and then you’d be breaking the law and you cannot break the law in front of children. Well, let me tell him, speed limits never bothered Ibiza Nana, because once when she found out there was a half-price sale at her favourite clothes shop, she strapped me into the car and we took off like a rocket.

  Half an hour later, when we’ve travelled the one mile to The Garden of Eden garden centre, a man with a goatee beard shaped like a goat welcomes us off the bus and says, “I thought you’d be here ages ago. Where did you come from, the Arctic?” Mrs Dixon looks at him like he’s something on the bottom of her shoe and he quickly smiles and says, “Welcome to The Garden of Eden, where you will find a paradise of plants.” He sniffs (I secretly diagnose hay fever) and takes us into a section where there are loads of small trees in pots and tiny tubs of star-shaped flowers in every colour of the rainbow. Goatee Guy tells us we can look around. I look around. It takes thirty seconds. Yep, I’m done looking around. Half the class are the same. They’ve already skived off and gone to the gift shop to buy pencils.

  “Out of the shop everyone!” shouts Mr Beagle, his face mottled like corned beef. “Plants first, pencils second, unless you’re already in the queue and then you might as well pay.”

  I’m next at the till and quickly buy myself one of the Garden of Eden pencils and I have enough money left over for a small notebook with a picture of frogspawn on the front (which looks like a dessert Ibiza Nana once made called tapioca and I refused to eat it because I didn’t eat tadpoles). When Mr Beagle drags us all out of the shop he plonks us in front of Goatee Guy again, who shows us a few plants called annuals with a wave of his hand. Donté Moffatt says he thought annuals were books no one wanted at Christmas.

  “They live fast and die young,” mutters Knuckles under his breath. I glance over at him and he flicks his eyes away. What’s his problem?

  “I want butterflies in my garden design,” announces Nevaeh, pulling up her blazer sleeve and showing me a drawing of a butterfly she’s done on her arm.

  “Butterflies are so boring.” Mimi’s eyeballs do a three-sixty and she smoothes down her school jumper. Mrs Dixon glances over at Mimi and smiles and Mimi smiles back and gives her mother a micro-wave with her fingers.

  Goatee Guy tries to hush everyone by saying he’s very grateful for all this interest in plants. He says we’re going to have to choose outdoor plants and some need certain types of soil. Knuckles is suddenly spouting on about acid and alkaline. Goatee Guy is clearly delighted and nodding his head. I nudge Knuckles and ask how he knows all this acid and alkaline stuff and his face falls faster than a yo-yo on the way down.

  “Stop talking about my dad,” hisses Knuckles, glaring at me. “I told you he’s gone.”

  Thing is, I wasn’t even talking about his dad.

  Mr Beagle, getting fed up with all the talking and shuffling about, says we all need to give our mouths a rest because there’s too much chatting and time-wasting. Instead we need to go and write notes about what plants we’d like to include in our garden design and, who knows, if we come up with some good ideas we might win. Mrs Dixon is off like a whippet looking at plants. Anyone would think she was designing the garden. Knuckles hurries off on his own and he’s checking the leaves of the plants and writing a little list. Goatee Guy looks impressed and is nodding his head in appreciation. Well, not to be outdone, I start checking leaves and writing a little list too. (It’s a mistake to check the cacti this way though.)

  “Ooh, get you, writing notes,” says Mimi, leaning over me, her plait dangling over my shoulder. I do a little shimmy to free myself and then I put my hand over my notebook because I don’t want her copying me. Mimi says she couldn’t care less what I’m writing. “Did you ask your mum about the mix-up? Because you said it was a mix-up even though it sounds like your mum is the one who’s mixed-up.” There’s a mean glint in her eyes.

  “It wasn’t my mum,” I mutter. “It was my dad’s girlfriend, Pearl.”

  “Weird,” says Mimi, clearly delighted that she’s discovered a bit of gossip.

  “Quiet, everyone, and gather around,” says Mr Beagle, splitting Mimi and me up. “This is a special project we’re doing here and it needs one hundred per cent commitment. It’s not an excuse to dodge class and chat. This is going to be the best project the school has ever undertaken.”

  “Better than the project we did on the Romans?” shouts Donté Moffatt.

  “Okay, maybe the garden can’t quite compete w
ith the Romans, but it is still important. We’re going to learn so much from it.” Donté Moffatt opens his mouth but Mr Beagle gets there first. “No, we’re not going to learn more from it than we learned from the Romans. Can we please forget about the Romans for a moment? This is entirely different. What ideas can you get from the garden centre? And what can you bring to the garden design?”

  “I can bring worms,” says Donté Moffatt.

  “We don’t need anyone to bring worms,” replies Mr Beagle. “The worms will bring themselves.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring chocolate,” adds Donté Moffatt. “My mum says gardens are for sitting in with a cup of tea and a chocolate bar. So if we’re bringing something to the garden, I’ll bring that.”

  “Right, we need to get away from the Romans and the chocolate bars,” sighs Mr Beagle. “This is about things growing, let’s remember that.” While all this is going on, Knuckles is still scribbling in his notebook and as I glance over his shoulder I can see what he’s doing. He’s drawing a little tree covered in apples and beside it he’s written DAD in bubble letters.

  Unable to resist, I ask, “You said your dad has gone. Has he gone to a better place?” I remember how Ibiza Nana always used to say Mum had gone to a better place when what she really meant was that Mum was dead. Once, when I was little, I said I wanted to go to the better place to be with Mum and Ibiza Nana said I couldn’t. I was furious. Why were they stopping me going to the better place?

  Knuckles glares at me and tightens his jaw and says his dad hasn’t gone to a better place. In fact, he’s gone to the worst place in the universe and if I’m mocking him I’m going to get a knuckle sandwich.

  I say I don’t want a knuckle sandwich, thank you, because I’ve already got a fish paste sandwich in my bag. As I walk away to look at the herbs, I know I’ve said something stupid but have no idea what it was.

  At midday Mr Beagle puts his hand in the air, indicating we’re done, and before he even says a word everyone starts charging to the coach as if they’re a herd of buffalo being chased by a tiger.

  Everyone scatters, taking seats here and there. I hear Sam Swiss holler about Health and Safety, namely his. He doesn’t want to be trampled by the stampede. By the time I get on the coach, there’s only two seats at the front for Mr Beagle and Mrs Dixon and one at the back beside Knuckles. When I look at him, he turns away. Normally this would be enough to make me scarper but there’s nowhere else to go, so I slope down the aisle and squeeze in beside him.

  Outside I see Goatee Guy sneezing into his hand. A few people wave at him and then Mrs Dixon and Mr Beagle appear by the coach. Mr Beagle shakes Goatee Guy’s hand. As Mr Beagle is looking at his soggy hand, everyone on the coach starts pointing and laughing. It’s total quality.

  Once Mr Beagle and Mrs Dixon are on board, Sam Swiss swings out of the garden centre’s gates and starts shouting that we should all have a sing-a-long. How about “One Hundred Green Bottles”? While everyone else starts singing, I pluck up the courage to tell Knuckles that I’m sorry if I said something wrong about his dad. Ibiza Nana used to say I spoke before I put my brain in gear, only you can’t put brains in gear anyway. Knuckles grunts and says he’s still not talking about his dad, so I can stop fishing.

  “My dad loves fishing,” I reply, hoping to strike up a conversation. But Knuckles isn’t having it; instead he turns away and presses his nose against the window. It leaves a greasy mark on the glass. “He delivers to all the local restaurants,” I continue. “I bet you’ve eaten his fish.”

  “Only if it’s frozen and comes in a box from the corner shop. We can’t afford to go to restaurants. It’s hard because Mum doesn’t have much money coming in, what with Dad…” The words trail off.

  “Oh,” I offer. “You could catch your own fish. I’ve done that before.” Once I’ve started talking about catching fish, it’s like I’m on a roller coaster and can’t get off, and I start saying how you need maggots and then how Dad always says you begin thinking you’ll catch fish from the head but really it’s from the heart and how that’s like life because you start off trying to figure everything out with your head but sometimes you should just let your heart talk.

  Knuckles turns around and asks me what I’m waffling on about. “Nothing,” I squeak and Knuckles snorts and for the rest of the journey he pretends to be asleep, but I swear I see the tiniest glitter of a tear in the corner of his closed eye. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. Was it because I talked about fish this time?

  The coach crawls through the streets of Eden and I stare out the window. Knuckles gives a tiny snore as we pass the arcades at the far end of town, their bulbs blinking and the sequined discs on the signs fluttering and catching the sunlight. The bus passes the big supermarket and then Beans Coffee Shop. I see sunlight glinting on a bald man’s head. After a double take, I realize it is sunlight glinting on my dad’s bald head. I’d recognize it anywhere, because I’ve had to look at it enough times and be reminded that when I get older that’ll be me too. Luckily Sam Swiss is crawling along so I can see everything in slow motion, like we’re in some action movie. Dad’s standing outside the coffee shop (looking nothing like someone in an action movie) talking to a tall pencil-thin woman with blonde candyfloss hair. She’s wearing this pale pink dress that looks like a small cake. They smile at each other and I feel like telling Sam Swiss to stop the bus, I want to get off.

  But I don’t. Instead, I just stare at the woman.

  I don’t recognize her.

  In her pink dress, she looks fancier than a fondant fancy.

  If The Garden of Eden hadn’t charged me a full three pounds for a pencil and notebook, I would have bet my last fifty pence that the lady doing the smiling was Camille.

  This is the apocalypse. Dad is meeting this Camille woman behind our backs. Sneaking out to Beans Coffee Shop and drinking frothy mocha-chocco-tino-lattes when we think he’s delivering haddocks. Billy doesn’t shut up the whole way through dinner, but I barely speak to Dad, and when he asks if I’m feeling okay I say “never better”, which is what I’ve heard grown-ups say when they’ve never felt worse. Ibiza Nana used to say it all the time when she had a headache from drinking too much sherry. Dad says I am looking a bit peaky and did my school trip go okay?

  “I learned a lot,” I mumble through Mr Wong’s prawn toast. “Some things I didn’t want to learn.” The toast does a circuit of my mouth before it reaches the palatine uvula.

  Oblivious, Dad says, “Learning is always a good thing.”

  “Even if it’s something bad?” I raise my eyebrows. Dad thinks for a second and says that we can’t sweep bad things under the carpet. Like in history, many bad things happened but we can’t pretend they didn’t. “Oh,” I mutter, wishing I could pretend seeing Dad and Camille together hadn’t happened. And Pearl and Naked Man. I wish I could pretend that hadn’t happened too. Dad asks if the food is okay. He says he won ten pounds on a scratchcard and thought we should have takeaway as a treat (although we still have takeaway every night so it’s not much of a treat). I bring a forkful of noodles up to my mouth and nod but I can’t even taste them. That’s how bad I’m feeling at this moment.

  My mood hasn’t improved much after dinner either. I’m sitting in our bedroom reading my book on healing herbs when Billy trots in, saying I have a face like a wet welly. When I tell Billy it’s a “wet weekend”, he shakes his head and says in his world it’s a wet welly. Next, he says he knows what will cheer me up, and he skips over to his box and brings out his robotic arm.

  “Fat lot of good that is,” I mumble sourly.

  When Billy explains that the robotic hand will help us on the next SNOOP mission, I repeat, “Fat lot of good that is.” Anyway, “We found Pearl yesterday,” I snap. “We just didn’t speak to her, so that means that SNOOP is doomed. We had the chance to complete our mission but we failed. What’s the point in finding Pearl if we don’t even talk to her? Spies have to complete their mission properly and then cl
ose the case.”

  Billy’s eyes widen. “Oh no, no, no. SNOOP is not doomed.” He waves the robotic hand in the air, narrowly missing the light bulb. “Once in SNOOP, always in SNOOP. We can’t give up on our second mum. Not ever. The case is still open.” Billy explains that it was his fault we didn’t talk to Pearl at the church hall. “I was very silly and got all cross because I thought the rudey-nudey man was Pearl’s boyfriend, but he wasn’t.”

  I’m listening now. “How do you know?” Perhaps Billy has discovered something new. Maybe Pearl hasn’t got a new boyfriend and Dad doesn’t have a new girlfriend and the world isn’t a complete mess with us in the middle of it.

  “Well…” Billy pauses, his eyes glittering. “They’re not a couple because the rudey-nudey man is an emperor.”

  Okay, I’ve stopped listening. This is another one of Billy’s crazy ideas. When I say to Billy that the Naked Man is not an emperor, Billy says he is and he’ll explain.

  “Please, don’t,” I reply. “No, really, please don’t.”

  Ignoring me, Billy begins. “The rudey-nudey man is an emperor because everyone knows that the emperor had these invisible clothes, and everyone also knows he was a horrible man and he thought everyone else was stupid. But really he was the stupid one. Anyway, Pearl wouldn’t have a boyfriend that was stupid. So, they’re not a couple.”

  Boom! Seven-year-old Billy’s logic is so far-fetched a dog would have to go to the moon to bring it back. Obviously, I tell him there’s no way I’m going back to the church to speak to Pearl. For Billy’s information, one sight of Naked Man is all my stomach will take. At this point I am tempted to tell Billy the truth about Pearl and Naked Man. They are a couple. I saw it with my own eyeballs.