by Kit de Waal
“Jake. His name is Jake.”
“You said—”
“It’s his dad’s middle name. Well, I changed Jack to Jake because I like it better. Do you, Leon?”
She kisses him before she turns off the light but Leon doesn’t kiss her back. She promised he could call the baby Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard. Bo’s got a red car and blond hair. His real name is Beauregard Duke and he’s the best one in the whole show. Jake-regard sounds stupid. Leon doesn’t know anyone at school called Jake and no one on TV called Jake. There is a shop on the other side of the highway called “Jake’s Bakes” where they sell pies and fries and when the baby goes to school he’s going to get teased about it. Leon wonders if he can get his mom to change her mind. Jake is the worst name he’s ever heard.
3
Leon has begun to notice the things that make his mom cry: when Jake makes a lot of noise; when she hasn’t got any money; when she comes back from the phone booth; when Leon asks too many questions; and when she’s staring at Jake.
It’s the third night that Leon and Jake are both sleeping at Tina’s. It keeps happening all the time. Carol takes them up to Tina’s and then she leaves them there for a few days. Last week it was two nights and before that it was three nights and sometimes it feels like they’re never going home. Jake’s basket goes next to Leon’s den bed. Leon watches Jake for a few minutes because he makes special whistling noises when he breathes out and he makes his little hands into fists like Muhammad Ali. Jake opens his eyes and doesn’t even cry. His eyes have become bright, zingy blue but the middle is still perfectly black, like a drop of ink in the sea. Leon and Jake like to just look at each other for a while and then Leon sings a baby song or whispers something.
“Are you all right, Jake? Sleepy time, sleepy time. Close your eyes. You’re all right, Jakey. It’s all right. Sleepy time, Jakey.”
It’s peaceful and cozy in the bedroom with Jake and Wobbly Bobby and the heavy weight of the coats. He watches the smear of light on the wall, listens to the babies breathing, hears the sizzling tires on the wet road outside.
The next day Carol comes to collect them from Tina’s. She sounds excited and happy and stays for ages in Tina’s kitchen, so Leon creeps into the hall.
“I found him. Yeah, I went to his mate’s house and I just kept knocking. I knew someone was in and I shouted through the letter box that I just wanted to give him a message. I kept on knocking and then he answered the door. Tony did. Just like that. I was really surprised. So was he. I told you he wasn’t avoiding me. He just didn’t realize I was due. I mean, I told him but he forgot. He said he was working away. And anyway, he’s not very good with dates.”
Tina isn’t asking questions like she usually does. So Carol just carries on.
“He said he couldn’t talk for long because he had to get home. He’s still living with that cow but I don’t know why he’s still with her. Neither does he. I told him he could move in with us. I know he wants to see Jake but he’s got to be careful cuz if she finds out she’ll stop him seeing his little girl and he dotes on her. She’s done it before, she just uses his daughter to keep him. I’d never do that.”
Tina offers Carol a biscuit. Tina’s biscuit tin is always crammed full. Sometimes if there are lots of broken ones, she lets Leon pick them all out and eat them.
“No, thanks. Anyway, he said he’s moving out. She doesn’t know and he’s not letting on until he’s got everything in place. At his age, he wants to settle down for good.”
“His age?”
“He’s thirty-nine. You’d never know it, though. He’s not old or anything.”
“He’s nearly forty.”
“Thirty-nine. Honest, he doesn’t look it. He looks our age.”
“Twenty-five?”
“Well, you know, early thirties, but anyway, yeah, he said it hasn’t been right for years between them. You know me, Tina. I never meant to hurt anyone but he wasn’t happy even before he met me. If he was, he wouldn’t have given me a second look, would he? He told me once he’s got family in Bristol and Wolverhampton, so he’s not sure where he’s going but when he gets there, it’s gonna be just me and him.”
“And the kids,” says Tina.
“Yeah, of course. That’s what he means. Me, him, and the kids.”
“What about his daughter?”
“She’ll come as well.”
“Right,” says Tina after a while. “And he told you that?”
“We only had a few minutes but yeah.”
Leon goes back into the living room to check on Jake in his basket. He’s nearly four months old and he’s getting too big for his basket. He keeps hitting himself on the side and trying to get out and then he gets angry and makes noises like a cat. Leon got told off for trying to help him stand up, so Leon just watches now and tells Jake about different things he thinks he should know, like who is the best soccer player. But he doesn’t feel like telling Jake about living with a girl and a cow in Bristol because Jake would probably start to cry.
4
Leon eats his toast sitting on the carpet by the patio doors. It’s supposed to be summertime but the sky is the same color as the garden slabs—dull and gray—like the road to school, the cut-through to the precinct, or the dirty lane between the tower blocks and maisonettes.
There’s a bundle of wood in one corner of the yard like someone was once going to repair the fence but forgot. Instead, the people in the maisonette next door have mended the hole with barbed wire because of their dog and the argument they had with Leon’s dad when he used to live with them. Leon’s dad stood in the garden, pointed his finger, and said (and Leon can remember it word for word), “If that fucking beast gets into this yard and bites my kid, I’ll rip its fucking heart out, all right, Phil?”
The dog is called Samson and it has no fur on its chest because of a fight. Instead, it has a bald circle of pink skin and Leon imagines its little dog heart beating underneath and his dad’s hands grabbing Samson’s front paws and tearing them apart until the dog howls.
Leon knows the sound of a howling dog and when he sees Samson in next-door’s garden, he stands and they look at each other through the rusty barbed-wire hole.
But today Samson isn’t in his yard and Leon sits with his old Action Man and his new Action Man on the back step. Carol bought the new Action Man for Leon’s birthday at the beginning of July and Tina bought the Action Man outfit. His dad sent him a card with some money in it, so Leon bought a better outfit with jackboots and a gun. When it’s Christmas Leon wants two more Action Men with army uniforms. That will make four altogether and if he keeps going he will have a whole Action Man army.
Leon hears the doorbell and a man’s voice. He picks up his new Action Man and they both crawl on their elbows, along the carpet, behind the sofa, and look through the gap in the door. A man is in the doorway letting cold air rush in. He’s chunky and tall, wearing a long, black leather coat with a suit on underneath like he’s the bad guy from James Bond. And from the way he has his hands in his pockets, he might also have a gun.
If he has got a gun and he tries to shoot, Leon will kick the door off the hinges and attack him before he can pull the trigger. Leon knows the moves people make before they shoot, like in westerns when they put their hands out to the side. Or, if Tina is in, Leon could rush past the man and ask her to come and help. Or call the police. Leon wishes he didn’t always need the toilet when he gets excited or frightened. He bunches his trousers at the front and squeezes his crotch into the carpet to stop the pee coming out. The man speaks slowly with his head to one side like his mom is a baby or she’s a bit slow.
“Don’t make this into something it ain’t, Carol.”
Carol’s crying and saying “Tony” all the time but the man isn’t listening.
“I’m married. Good as. I didn’t want another kid and I don’t want another
girlfriend. I don’t want someone calling the house all the time and I don’t want someone visiting my friends and making a fuss.”
Carol’s making gulping noises.
“Didn’t I say that already?” the man says, still with his head to one side and still with his hand on the invisible gun.
“Don’t pass messages to all my friends, either. It’s pissing me off. Just leave it, Carol.”
Carol starts speaking a few times but she can’t get her breath, so her words come out lumpy and wrong.
“You haven’t even laid eyes on him yet, Tony. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to think when you can’t even be bothered to buy him a rattle?”
“Come off it, love. You saying this is about money?”
Carol’s head shakes from side to side.
“No,” he continues, “this is about the crap you’ve been telling yourself to cover a couple of months screwing in the back of my car, isn’t it?”
Carol says nothing.
“I don’t know what it is about you, Carol. Even with snot on your face you’re a beautiful chick but you’ve got a brain like a rusty motor.”
The man takes one of his hands out of his pocket and taps the side of his head.
“Yeah, rusty. As in not working. No inspection sticker. Breaking down. Not getting you from A to B. Worse than that, it’s making A. Terrible. Fucking. Racket.”
Leon and Carol both hear it at the same time. They hear the man’s voice go from soft to hard. Leon can tell Carol hears it because she jerks her head like he’s slapped her. Leon stands up and holds his Action Man in both hands.
“Listen, I’m not a bastard. All right? But start behaving yourself, for fuck’s sake. No more of these bloody phone calls. Here.”
The man puts his hand inside his jacket pocket.
“Take this for the kid and get on with your life. Get yourself a nice boy that sells vacuums or used tires. Someone that finishes work at five thirty and takes you to bingo. All right? It’s not me, love. It’s just not me.”
He tries to give something to Carol but instead she runs into the living room, straight past Leon, picks Jake out of his basket, and dashes back to the front door.
“He’s yours, Tony, and you don’t even care. Can’t you even come in, for pity’s sake? Spend some time with him.”
The man takes a step to the side and, as he does, he sees Leon. He winks and makes two of his fingers into the barrel of a gun that he points at Action Man and goes, “Poof.” Leon smiles. Then the man puts his head to the side again.
“Stop it, Carol,” he says. “There’s nothing more to be said.”
He takes a step back and closes the door. Carol turns around and screams at Leon.
“What are you doing listening? If you hadn’t been sneaking around he would have come in and spent two minutes with his only son. Why are you so fucking nosy, Leon? Eh? You’re always creeping around, listening to things. Go to bed and stay there!”
Leon tiptoes upstairs into the bathroom and tries to be quiet by peeing on the side of the bowl. He doesn’t flush and he doesn’t wash his hands. He tries to count all the triangles on the wallpaper in his room but there are too many. He divides them up into dark blue and light blue triangles and makes a pattern in the shape of a tank by squeezing his eyes together and looking through his eyelashes. Carol used to say sorry when she shouted at him but she forgets all the time these days, so tomorrow he will take twenty pence out of her purse. Twenty pence will buy him a Twix on his way back from school and he will throw the paper on the ground because he doesn’t care.
Leon feels bad about smiling at the man who made Carol cry but if he comes back maybe they can both have pretend guns and shoot each other. Then again, he hopes that Jake won’t grow up to be like his dad and say dangerous things in a quiet voice. Leon only smiled because it was polite. If the man comes back, Leon won’t smile a second time. He will be on his guard and he’ll protect Carol and Jake and then he won’t get shouted at.
The next day his mom gets up early in the morning and says everything is going to be different. She says she’s really sorry and she’s going to try harder, so she makes a massive breakfast with pancakes and syrup like she saw in a recipe book. It doesn’t taste nice and she starts crying when Leon doesn’t eat it all. She mashes one up with some milk for Jake but as soon as she puts it in his mouth he’s sick all over his top. She makes Leon promise to go to school so he can be smart and not have a life like she has.
“I want better for my boys,” she says when Leon’s hugging her on the settee. “I want you both to have lovely lives and lots of beautiful things. I want you to live in a nice house with a proper garden and want you to always love each other. I don’t want any arguments. I’m so tired of arguments. And I want you to get out of this shithole. Get right out of it, far as you can. Don’t look back. So you have to learn things and get an education. Don’t be like me or your dad. You’re so clever, Leon. Promise me something, sweetheart?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Look after him and look after yourself. Get something more out of life.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Both of you. Do it for both of you.”
She squeezes Leon so tight he has to push her away a little bit because he can’t breathe.
“I’m going up now, love. Look after Jake for me.”
Some days Leon doesn’t go to school at all, just stays at home with Jake while their mom sleeps. But when he does go, Leon has to wake his mom up before he leaves to remind her about Jake. Sometimes she tells him to go away and he spends the whole day thinking about Jake’s dinner or Jake’s naptime. But other times, like when he’s playing soccer or something, he forgets all about what’s happening at home. Like when there was a new boy at school and the teacher told Leon to look after him at lunchtime. The new boy was much smaller than Leon and he looked scared. Leon told him where everything was and then they had to line up for their lunch. The new boy was called Adam and he had long hair. He said his dad was a teacher at another school. He said he had a dog.
“What sort of dog?” said Leon. “Is it an Alsatian or a Dobermann?”
“It’s a poodle,” he said. “It’s my mom’s. She calls it Candy.”
“Oh,” said Leon. “A poodle.”
“Yeah, but I’ve trained it to bite people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I could bring it into school and get it to bite everyone in the class.”
“Could you?”
“Yeah. If I wanted.”
They spent the whole afternoon telling each other about training dogs and how sharp dog’s teeth were and which dog was the best. Poodles didn’t come into the equation.
On the way home, Leon began to think about asking Carol for a dog that he could train. He could train it to bite Jake’s dad. He could train it to bite the old lady on the next floor who kept looking at him and shaking her head. He could train it to bite Tina’s boyfriend and the mailman. Then when Jake got older they could get famous for training dogs. The best dog trainers in the world.
5
As soon as the summer holidays start, things get jangled up at home. Leon can go to bed whenever he wants and sometimes he can even go to sleep on the sofa because his mom doesn’t notice. He can eat whatever he wants but if there’s nothing in the fridge and nothing in the cupboard it doesn’t really count. He has to look after Jake nearly every day and Carol keeps crying and going to the phone booth, leaving Leon in charge, and once when he picked Jake up, he wriggled so much that he fell on the carpet. He had stopped crying by the time Carol came back but it made Leon feel angry with her and he stole another twenty pence out of her purse. But he could have taken all the money because she doesn’t know what’s in there.
Early in the morning, just when it’s getting light, Jake starts crying and Leon gets up with him. His diaper is
always heavy and wet but as soon as Leon changes it, Jake starts smiling and laughing. Jake always wants the same thing for breakfast and now Leon has a good system. It took him a few weeks to get it just right but now he could tell anyone what to do to look after a baby in the mornings.
Change the diaper (remember to use the white cream or by the second morning the baby’s bum is sore). Feed the baby but be careful going downstairs because babies move around in your arms and sometimes they’re heavy; if you haven’t made the breakfast bottle quickly enough, the baby will start crying again. Put six scoops of baby milk powder in the bottle and fill it with warm water from the kettle. You better taste it to see if it’s not too hot. Sometimes if the baby is really hungry, you have to mix in some extra powder and a spoon of sugar. The worst thing is when the baby is sick. That makes a lot of mess and it can take forever to tidy up.
Even Carol doesn’t know about the best routine for Jake and sometimes she forgets about him when he’s in the high chair and Leon has to take him out. She goes to bed all the time, so Leon has to do everything. When he goes into her room, she’s always hidden under the blankets with her pills next to the bed, some in a white bottle and then pink ones that you have to press out of a silver card. He pressed one out once. It looked like a piece of candy but after he licked it he threw it down the toilet.
Then, other times, Carol goes out and leaves him to watch the TV. She puts Jake in the stroller and takes him out for hours and when she comes back she’s tired and Jake is crying. She leaves the stroller in the hall and just goes upstairs, talking to herself. Leon has to unfasten Jake’s straps and take his baby suit off and feed him and sometimes all the things he has to do make Leon so tired and angry.
It seems like Jake’s been crying for days. If he doesn’t stop, Leon will have to go and get some money from Tina. If Tina isn’t in then he will have to go to the lady next door who doesn’t like him. He’s already looked in Carol’s purse but there isn’t enough to buy some food for Jake, some diapers for Jake, and some candy for himself. There’s no money at all, just some receipts, an old photograph, and an earring. Leon’s tipped the whole purse upside down. He’s looked between the cushions in the sofa and in the drawers in the kitchen and in the pockets of Carol’s coat and everywhere else he can think of.
