by James Rice
I put half a teaspoon of T-Rex Bleach in your father’s tea. Mum uses bleach to keep her mugs white and I know from experience that it’s only after a few sips the burning taste is noticeable and you realise you should have washed the cup more. I’m guessing T-Rex Bleach is stronger than the spray Mum uses. It says I N D U S T R I A L across it. The lid is childproof, with a black and yellow X on it. I can’t help but wonder why, if they didn’t want children to play with it, they put a T-rex on the front of the bottle.
Your father was over at the mincer, one hand shovelling hunks of steak down the funnel, the other covering the plate where the mince worms out. It’s important to cover the mince as it worms out or else it can pop and splatter the walls. I placed his tea on the block. I waited for him to notice me, so I could point to the mug. Eventually he did and I pointed and he nodded and pushed the big red STOP button and lifted the mug with his enormous mince-covered hand and slurped in the newfound silence. He coughed. He slurped again. Then he sat the mug back on the block and the whirr of the mincer started up again. He didn’t look up so I went back to my kitchen.
In An Inspector Calls there’s a character called Eva Smith who kills herself by drinking bleach. I think you’d have to drink a lot of bleach to kill yourself. If you brewed a tea bag in bleach and added milk and sugar and heated it in the microwave till it was steaming and gulped it down, that might kill you. I doubt half a teaspoon of T-Rex Bleach could kill anyone. Especially not someone as big as your father.
It was only after I’d delivered the tea that I remembered my first day at Hampton’s – your father showing me the racks at the back where the cleaning stuff’s kept, pointing to a white plastic dish containing green, plastic-looking pellets on the floor right at the back and telling me never to touch it, telling me it was rat poison. How many teaspoons of rat poison would it take to kill someone? How many to just make them really sick?
Your father didn’t ask for another cup of tea.
06/12
Today I walked down to the canal. I needed to be somewhere I could think. I took some bread because all last week as I waited for our bus the ducks came venturing over the ice to peck at my feet. I guess when the canal’s frozen they don’t eat. They went crazy at the sight of bread. I only had four slices (all that was left in the bread bin) and they gobbled it up in no time. Then they stood there, glaring at me. It was kind of awkward, like they were weighing up my edibility.
At 15:15 I heard mumblings from above. I recognised the voices: Ian and Goose. Their feet were hanging over the mouth of the bridge. Ian wears these black trainers with luminous shoelaces and they glowed like green dangling worms. The ducks waddled out, staring up at them. I guess they thought they were food.
Ian was talking but I couldn’t hear what about. The usual stuff, probably. Girls. Parties. At one point he flicked a cigarette butt down onto the ice and the ducks went crazy again, swarming and pecking to the squeals of Goose’s high-pitched laughter.
I huddled into my warm-position and waited. I figured they’d leave soon and I could be alone with the ducks. Be alone to think. Only the longer I sat there the less I could think about anything other than Them. It was different, with Ian and Goose there – I couldn’t seem to summon the usual safety-and-solitude feeling of under the bridge. Instead I was very aware that I was under a bridge – that normally that’d be the kind of place that would terrify me. That there was a very real chance one or more of Them were above me, in the darkness, waiting to descend. I began to panic. I thought I might even have one of my attacks. I tried to picture you, but each time I’d see that eye of yours, all black and swollen.
After ten minutes or so Ian and Goose left and I was able to climb up to the carriageway and head home. I don’t think either of them saw me.
I got home just as Mum was serving dinner. My father wasn’t there. I didn’t ask where he was but I assume the answer would have been that he was working. Who has breast augmentation on a Sunday afternoon? We ate our salmon in silence. Then Sarah and I went up to our rooms. Sarah was dancing to that song again. ‘Ooo you got me screamin’ boy …’
I waited till 21:30, then crept down to my father’s study. Sometimes at night I sneak down there for internet research. Mum’s always had an issue with closed spaces and locked doors (she pretty much knocked down half the house under Dr Filburn’s guidance to make it ‘an open and honest place to live’), so she definitely has a problem with my father’s locked study. I don’t know what upsets her more, the thousands of photos of women’s breasts he has stashed away in there or the fact that she can’t get in to polish the woodwork, but each time my father clicks that lock Mum’s lip does some serious twitching. It’s as if, for a split-second, the left half of her mouth is trying to out-smile the right.
I happen to know that my father has little of interest inside his study. There’s a desk, a filing cabinet, a black leather chair and a bookcase. The bookcase contains six shelves of breast augmentation journals and one shelf of Baywatch videos. The filing cabinet’s scattered with plastic models of different-sized and -shaped breasts. There is a large poster of Pamela Anderson pinned over the desk. My father says Pamela Anderson is an icon of his generation. He says it’s a shame that all our generation has in the way of a strong female role model is Katie Price.
It’s the click of the study door unlocking that I always think will wake Mum. Occasionally her sleeping face twitches but that’s it. Mum’s an expert napper. She can nap through anything. Her usual nap-place was the couch but, as we’re still waiting on the white Italian leather couch, we’re now in a transitional period couch-wise, and so Mum has taken to napping on the lounge carpet instead, her body horizontal across the floor, her head vertical against the white-painted wall. Tonight I stood outside my father’s study for a few minutes, just watching the light of the television flicker across her, sometimes lighting her legs, sometimes the rise and fall of her chest beneath her dressing gown, sometimes the sag of her cocked, unsmiling head. Mum never smiles when she sleeps.
Tonight’s internet research was a regular of mine: Finners Island. Finners Island’s a dot on the map just off the southern coast of England. We used to go there when I was little. Half the island’s wetland and my father was a big fan of its constant photo opportunities. There were all sorts of beautiful birds there. There were a lot of ducks, too, but my father rarely took photos of them. There was a bald eagle there, somewhere, according to legend. My father never managed to get a photo of the bald eagle, which to him was proof enough of its non-existence. But Nan and I knew better. We saw it.
I’ve tried to find the Finners Island photos many times over the years, but I think Mum must have thrown them out. She doesn’t want to be reminded of it – of what happened to Sarah. Now I use the internet for photos. Of course none of the internet photos of Finners Island include Mum or Nan or Sarah and I (or the bald eagle – even Finners Island’s official website seems to doubt its existence) but there are some of the ducks and the woods and the beach. It’s nice, clicking through the photos. Finners Island has always been a place I can go to when Skipdale gets too much, and it’s nice seeing that there’s this one little part of the world that never changes.
Mum was still in her nap-position when I relocked the study, the light of BBC News 24 washing over her. It was 22:10. The earliest my father’s arrived home from work in the past six months is 23:07. By then I’m always well out of his study and up in my room and Sarah’s thudding has usually stopped and all he has to do is unplug the TV and fireman’s-lift Mum upstairs to bed. Some nights my father doesn’t arrive home from work at all. He’s a very important man. Mum says that Burke’s Clinic wouldn’t be half as successful if it weren’t for my father’s mix of long hours and surgical expertise. My father’s patients are more like friends than clients.
I crouched there with Mum for a while. The lounge seems so empty, couchless. So cold. The whole house seems cold since she had it open-planned. I sipped her glass of wine. I�
��m not meant to drink, really, because of my medication, but I thought I’d try a sip. I wish I hadn’t – I can still taste it now. Wine tastes like blackcurrant and perfume.
BBC News 24 was all about this winter and how it’s going to be the coldest in thirty years. It showed footage of Scotland covered in snow, kids sliding down hills on bin bags, a woman falling over in the street while people carefully hurried by. Mum likes to keep up to date with the news for when the Hamptons discuss current affairs. Ken Hampton reads the Guardian. I don’t think Mum’s ever watched a full report before drifting off.
I put down the wine and unplugged the TV. I left Mum laid out on the lounge carpet, ready for when my father gets home.
07/12
Today you still weren’t in school so I had to catch the bus alone and walk to your house alone and climb in through the back hedge. Your father was drinking in the TV light again. Scraps was snoring in the shed. I knelt till I could make out his sleeping head through the missing-plank gap. I whistled. He raised an ear but the rest of him stayed asleep. I whistled again and tapped the side of the shed and he yawned and turned to me. He scrambled to his feet to bark but before he had the chance I reached in with a bag of leftovers: yesterday’s blackened salmon. He stopped and sniffed and trotted towards me, as far as his chain would allow. He picked the salmon from my hand and carried it to his corner.
It was a tight squeeze through the missing-plank gap. The shed shuddered so much I thought it might collapse. Scraps tilted his head to watch me. I told him ‘there-there’. I tickled his ear. He whined and carried on eating. The shed smelt of metal. The only light came from a shaft of moonlight, spilling through a gap in the ceiling. Various rusted garden tools hung from various nails, their shadows dancing up the walls.
We used to have a shed. Nan called it ‘Herb’s pigeon coop’ but I never saw any pigeons (and besides the Herb I knew didn’t go near the shed – he spent the whole time in his chair). I used to have nightmares about that shed – the webs in the corner, scattered with dead flies and egg sacs and Them. My father called it ‘The Lair’.
Of course your shed was a lair too. I could feel Them – their many eyes watching from the top shelves, where the moonlight doesn’t shine. But I concentrated on you. I sat on the tool chest by the window. I could hear Them, their usual whispers. I just ignored Them. The window was stained and murky but I could still make out the glow of your bedroom.
Scraps finished eating and lay beside me, head on my lap. He sniffed at my pocket. I apologised, I didn’t have any more salmon. I imagined Scraps sitting there, every night, staring up at your room. I rubbed his head the way you did, dragging his eyelids back. I didn’t rub his belly because it was all black and bruised.
There was a tool hanging by the window, the size and shape of a gun only with a cartridge at the bottom, packed with nails. I remember Miss Hayes once saying that a gun is an omen. If there’s ever a gun somewhere in a story then by the end one of the characters will be dead. I don’t know if this applies to nail guns. I unhooked the gun and held it on my lap. Your father lay, flat out, on his couch. His bottle slipped to the carpet, rocking in the cradle of his hand.
I wrapped my arm round Scraps, hugging his head to my chest. It’s usually hard to see stars in the Pitt because of the light pollution but tonight it was so clear we could make out each and every one. I pointed them out to Scraps. His mouth opened and for a moment I thought he was awestruck but then he closed his eyes and sneezed on my hand.
We watched and waited. Your curtains remained shut. At one point I thought I saw a shadow pass over them but it didn’t pass again. I thought Scraps might have kept me warm but he turned out to be even colder than I was. I’d have been better off hugging the tool chest. I began to tremble and eventually he stood and stumbled away, curling in the corner, just to get some rest.
When it reached 21:00 I hung the nail gun back in its place and crawled over to the plank gap. I promised Scraps I’d be back, I’d bring him more blackened salmon. When I reached the hedge I looked back one last time. Your father was spread across the floor in the lounge. His bottle had rolled to the other side of the room.
On the bus back I thought about your father. I thought about you, up in your room, waiting to make your escape. I thought about Finners Island. I’d always planned to live on Finners Island. I never thought what I’d actually do there – there are only six or seven people who live on the island and they all work for the National Trust. I don’t think I’d be very good at working for the National Trust. You would – you like animals (well, you like Scraps). You could paint, too – there are plenty of picturesque landscapes. Perhaps I could work on the mainland. Become an English teacher. We could walk Scraps in the woods.
When I got home Mum was asleep on the lounge floor. I heard voices coming from Sarah’s room. A girl said, ‘You just need to curve your back more, pretend you’re liquid.’ Sarah said, ‘OK.’
Sarah’s door was ajar. I could see her reflection in the large ceiling-mirror, her and one of her Vulture friends. It could have been one of the Vultures from work, there’s no way of knowing. They were both in their Dance Fantastical leotards, a violent glittering red against the orange of their skin. My sister reached for the remote. Music burst from the TV.
I stepped closer till I could make out the reflection of the screen. There was a music video playing. The singer was scrawny. Blond hair swayed around her body as she moved. It was that song again: ‘Ooo you got me screamin’ boy …’ The singer’s legs were sliding about in black latex trousers, skintight, glistening like oil. On the line, ‘Butt in the air boy’, she crawled onto her knees, sliding her rear up towards the camera. The air was warm and sweet like cherries.
The song finished. My sister and the Vulture were staring at me. My sister told me to get the fuck out of her room.
08/12
Miss Hayes has a new theory. She hasn’t told me it yet, but she has a brand new set of questions, mostly about my relationship with my parents. She asked if I think I’m a good son. I didn’t really know what to tell her. I don’t smoke. On the other hand I don’t do the washing-up (I’m too scared of breaking the china). I can’t be a bad son because I don’t really do anything. I’m a nothing son. It’s like in Chemistry when we studied acids and alkalis, dipping those purple strips of litmus paper into beakers of vinegar and lemon juice to determine their pH level. I am the tap water. I am pH7. Neutral. I remain purple.
In the end I couldn’t decide what to say and too much silence had passed to say anything, so I said nothing.
I didn’t go to the bus stop afterwards. I couldn’t face the ride without you so I just walked home. Mum was on the floor in the living room, reciting a shopping list she was writing in permanent marker on the back of an old House Proud Magazine. The list consisted of more salmon and more mango and more rice and more chipotle and more butternut squash and more of pretty much everything else needed for the Hamptons’ meal. The big night’s getting closer and not only is Mum’s starter not quite perfect but the new couch still hasn’t arrived. I’m not sure if Mum invites the Hamptons over because she’s decorated or if she decorates because they’re coming over. I don’t think even she knows.
I didn’t like the thought of Mum having to cart all that rice and mango and fish around Waitrose alone so I collected the reusable bags and waited in the car. I used to go shopping with Mum when I was little. We’d go to the outlet store. They had jars of mayonnaise the size of my head. I haven’t gone with her the past few years because she always goes to Waitrose and it’s so cold in Waitrose. It’s like every aisle’s the frozen aisle.
It was another ten minutes or so before Mum tottered across the driveway. Her heels caught in the cobbles and she had to keep reaching out to maintain her balance. Mum says a girl should always wear heels because she never knows who she might run into. (Mum can’t run anywhere in heels.) I think Mum got a bit of a fright when she noticed me, sitting there in the passenger seat. She gave
me a glance of The Eyebrow. ‘No after-school classes tonight?’ I shook my head. She sighed and pressed the start-engine button and Elvis swooned into life with ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ Mum skipped to ‘Suspicious Minds’. ‘Suspicious Minds’ is Mum’s favourite. It’s the only time I know for a fact that her smile’s genuine – when Elvis announces he’s ‘caught in a trap’. Halfway down the avenue Mum got all bouncy and turned the volume knob, round and round, again and again, even when it said VOLUME MAX. By the time we reached Derby Lane Elvis was roaring and Mum was singing along, aiming too high and holding the notes for as long as she could, which didn’t really suit ‘Suspicious Minds’. I’m not too big a fan of Elvis myself but I like his effect on Mum. Ken and Ursula listen to slow jazz covers of ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ and ‘Feeling Good’. They’d never listen to Elvis.
Waitrose is always the same level of busy: not very busy at all. Mum says that’s why she likes it. She says high food prices are worth the exclusive shopping experience. This is why Mum hates the Waitrose Essentials range. She says Waitrose shouldn’t down-market their produce to people who can’t afford to shop there. My problem with the Waitrose Essentials range is that it includes stuff like couscous. I don’t think couscous is very essential.
Mum set about replacing the food for her dinner party. Mum shops in the order in which her food will be served and a good dinner party always starts with nibbly bits, which are the far side of the shop. Salted chilli almonds, marinated onions, bean dip with crudités. Waitrose is nibbly-bit heaven. It has its own olive bar – tray after tray of rubbery black grapes that taste like the sea. Mum says appetisers are imperative. A guest should be greeted with something to eat so that they’re not just standing there, having to talk to each other. Nibbles are foreplay.
