My Name Is Leon

by Kit de Waal

  “Is this the right place?” Maureen asks. She looks at her watch again. “Must be.”

  They sit on a bench by a concrete building so Maureen can catch her breath. She opens a Tupperware container of sandwiches.

  “Here you go, ham and cheese.”

  Leon can see in her bag. She’s bought chocolate and potato chips and two cans of Coke, so they are going to be here for some time. Maureen isn’t eating anything. Says she’s not hungry.

  “Go and stand over there and have a look at the river. Go on. It’s lovely.”

  She pushes him in his neck-back and Leon walks off. He leans on a low wall at the river’s edge. Some of the gray-and-white seagulls bounce on the waves while others swoop up and away, losing themselves in camouflage against the low cloud. A scruffy barge, wide as a house, slugs through the water carrying hundreds of yellow containers stacked up like gigantic Legos. On another boat with lots of windows, people stand on the deck pointing at buildings and taking pictures, but compared to the battleship, everything else on the river looks like a toy. It has masts and flags, and huge guns, chimneys and chains, and two massive antennas sticking out of the smokestacks. Every sailor must have his own TV.

  If he was a sailor, Leon would live on that battleship and sleep in a hammock suspended from the ceiling. He would have an anchor tattooed on his arm and wear a white vest tucked into his pants, and when the battleship went to war he would be in charge of loading the weapons. He saw it in a film. First of all the torpedo drops down from a rack, then you slide it along to the next person and he loads it into the firing cylinder. Then you have to trap it in so it doesn’t come backward and kill you and then you have to press a button and count down from five. But there are two of you to do this, because it’s important you don’t make a mistake. Leon sees himself, sweaty, covered in black oil in the belly of the boat. Then you open the loading cylinder again and repeat this until the enemy submarine is destroyed. You know it’s destroyed when the captain sees it on the radar or looks at it through the periscope. Leon closes one eye and brings the periscope down. He holds his fists either side of his head. He sees the grid of the sight and the blinking green smudge of light of the German U-boat. Then, pow, nothing. The green light disappears and up on the waterline metal debris bursts up into the air. Hoorah! In the engine room and in the torpedo room and in the control room and everywhere, all the sailors cheer and cheer and the other men slap Leon on the back because they are safe.

  When he opens his eyes, Maureen’s standing next to him.

  “Someone here to see you, love.”

  She moves out of the way and Leon sees his mom sitting on a bench. He looks at Maureen and she licks her finger and wipes something off his face.

  “She’s waiting for you. Go on.”

  He runs. It takes him four seconds. He runs and stands in front of her.

  “God,” she says, “look at you.”

  Carol stubs her cigarette out and gets to her feet. “You’re taller than me.”

  She measures them both, waving across the top of their heads.

  “Like my dad. That’s where you get it from.”

  She takes his hand and squeezes it but as soon as they sit down, she puts both hands flat on the bench next to her. She starts to stroke the wood with her yellow fingers, picking out splinters and smoothing them down again. Her arms are skinnier than before; so are her legs, her face, her ponytail. Wispy fronds of hair stand up all around her head like the seeds of a dandelion. And she has freckles, brown marks on her face he’s never seen before.

  “Are you all right, Mom?” he asks.

  “Me? Great. Yeah. Course I am. Anyway, it’s me that should be asking how you are.”

  “We’re going on that battleship later.”

  “Good,” she says. “How’s school?”

  “It’s summer vacation.”

  “Did you have a nice birthday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. I remembered on the day, you know. Woke up and remembered straightaway. Told my friend, ‘It’s my son’s birthday today,’ and I got you something but I forgot to bring it. I’ll have to put it in the mail.”

  Leon sees Maureen trying not to watch. Carol notices as well.

  “Is she nice to you?”

  “She went into the hospital but she’s better now. We have to live with Sylvia, that’s her sister, until she’s back to how she was. Or even better.”

  “I never come here,” Carol says. “Rivers make me think about dying. It’s always cold if you live by the sea. Or by a river. Water makes you cold. Did you know that? A few degrees colder.”

  While Carol is talking, Leon takes her hand again. Sometimes, squeezing fingers is easier than talking.

  “Leon,” says his mom, “I want to tell you something.”

  He squeezes her hand but she doesn’t squeeze back. Her voice becomes muffled and scratchy.

  “I can’t look after you properly, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I really don’t know, Leon. Please. I just can’t.”

  Carol has gotten smaller since he last saw her. No one is looking after her and he wonders why she doesn’t come and live with him and Sylvia and Maureen. She could share his room and have loads of dinner and have some sleep and get better. Maureen could wash her clothes and show her how to look better. Maybe Sylvia would lend her some makeup. He knows he shouldn’t say it but it just comes out.

  “Me? With her?” She jerks her head back and pokes herself in the chest. “Me? Live with her?”

  “And me,” says Leon. “She wouldn’t mind.”

  “Kids have foster parents, Leon, not adults. I don’t need a foster family. Is that what you think, that I need to go into care or go into a hospital, is that what you think, that I’m sick or something or incapable, is that what people say about me?”

  Her head is shaking and wobbly and her shoulders are jerking up and down.

  “I mean we can live together. That’s all. You and me.”

  Maureen walks over.

  “Everything all right? You all right, Carol?”

  Carol tucks her hands under her legs and rocks forward and back three times.

  “I’m great,” she says.

  Maureen smiles and pats Carol on her back. Carol clears her throat.

  “I was just telling him I can’t look after him. I told him what we agreed. You get it, don’t you, Leon? So, you’re not to go running away, all right? Cuz you can’t live with me but the lady says you can come and see me whenever you like. If you give me enough warning, I can meet you here another day. All right?”

  Carol stands up and looks around quickly like she’s lost.

  “I’ve got to get back,” she says.

  She puts her hand out and Maureen shakes it.

  “Thank you, Carol,” she says. “It means a lot. I’ll be in touch.”

  Carol bends down and kisses Leon on the cheek. She smells of cigarettes and the house they used to live in where Leon had to leave some of his toys. He’s too old for them now but he still wants them, just to see if they are like he remembers.

  He watches her walk away and he stays sitting down. He watches her pull her handbag onto her shoulder and he stays sitting down. All over the concrete walkway, there are white splotches of chewing gum stuck to the ground and Leon wonders if Maureen will let them have some on the way home, because she usually does when something important happens. He loses sight of his mother for a few seconds and he stays sitting down and then he runs and runs, grabs her from behind and holds onto her so she can’t turn around, can’t see him crying. She doesn’t speak but she stops dead. She seems to go from hard to soft without moving a
muscle. And then Leon asks her, finally.

  “Do you know where he is, Mom?”

  “No, love. I don’t.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  She says nothing but he feels a little gasp of air leave her body. She peels his arms from her waist and turns around.

  “And you,” she whispers. “I still love you.”

  She smiles then like she used to and scrabbles her fingers on his chest. She kisses him and walks backward for a few yards. She gives a little curtsy like he’s a king and she’s a servant. She turns and is gone.

  After the battleship, Maureen buys two ice creams and they walk a long way through loads of people, get on a bus and off by the train station. They’re much too early for their train so they have to wait on another bench until it comes. Eventually, they’re sitting opposite each other in the carriage, a beige plastic table between them, jutting into Maureen’s belly.

  “Snack?” says Maureen, pulling out a bar of chocolate. She breaks off two small pieces and pushes the rest across the table. Leon can’t believe how many treats she brought with her and how she isn’t telling him off for eating them. He’s had a toothache all day and the sweets make it worse but he still takes the chocolate. As it melts, he presses his tongue against the molar at the back and the pain becomes nice pain and slinks off to the back of his mind with all the things he doesn’t want to remember.

  “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” says Maureen.

  Leon looks out of the window. They’re passing the backs of houses, graffiti on walls, skinny trees growing out of concrete, underwear and vests strung up in gardens, paddling pools, abandoned fridges, scrubland, old factories, houses again. He wonders what it would be like to live so close to a train station or a train track and, if he lived in one of those tall, narrow houses, whether or not he could run to the end of the garden, climb over the fence, and jump on to the train as it sped past, and he thinks again about running away, riding on the roofs of the carriages with his backpack.

  “You listening?” she says.

  Leon nods and Maureen leans forward.

  “You are not going anywhere,” she says and she says it slowly, like he’s five years old.

  “You’re staying with me,” she repeats, with her heavy chest flat on the table.

  “At the seaside?”

  “Leon,” says Maureen with a little shake of her head, “I’ll tell you what the danger is in hearing half a conversation.”

  She waits for him to say something so he says, “Yes.”

  “You’re likely to jump to conclusions. Know what that means?”

  “Being wrong.”

  “Exactly. I’m not going to the seaside. Sylvia’s not going to the seaside. You’re not going to the seaside. I’m not getting a bloody dog. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, for the tenth time, we are not going to the seaside. Except for a day trip maybe.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know when.”

  She leans back in her seat and goes quiet. Leon sees right inside her head. He sees her thinking of what to say to him and it’s going to be something bad, because she looks like she’s going to cry again, and he’s sick of ladies crying all the time. He only cries when things are bad but they cry all the time, sometimes for ages, and their lips go fat and their faces go blotchy. But this time, Maureen’s tears don’t come out. Instead she looks at him and winks.

  “When I was your age, well, fifteen actually, I broke my arm and I had it in plaster for the longest time. It was summer vacation. We had the school playing fields at the bottom of our garden and I used to be a bit of a tomboy—yes, use your imagination, Leon. I would climb over the railings, kick the sand out of the box where they did the long jump, bend the branches off the trees, and try to break in. Couldn’t wait to get out the place when it was open. I was always on my own, up to no good. Anyway, I broke my arm swinging from a tree, fell over, landed funny. God, it was bloody itchy in the heat. I used to get my mom’s knitting needles and shove it down the gap and scratch it but I couldn’t quite get the right spot. Know what I mean? I couldn’t quite reach the right place and I would squirm and wriggle, trying to get a bit of relief. Sylvia used to have to help—sometimes she would knock on the plaster but that would hurt as well. Used to make me cry sometimes with the frustration of it and the pain and the way I was trapped in this bloody plaster of paris and I couldn’t go out exploring and, oh, I know it seems like nothing to you but I was so unhappy. I hated that summer. Hated it.”

  “Yes,” says Leon.

  “What I’m trying to say is this, Leon. And that was a bad example but never mind. This isn’t the whole of your life, love. This is a bit of your life. It all seems bloody awful, I know, with your mom and Jake and . . .”

  She takes a tissue out of her handbag and puts it in his hand. She undoes a family bag of Mint Imperials and tips a handful on the table and they roll all over the place.

  “The thing is this and you have to believe me. I’ve made arrangements with the Social. I’ve been working on this for weeks but I didn’t want to tell you until it was official. It’s taken forever to get it all organized. So, the point is, you’ll be with me until you leave school and even after, if you like. I get you. You get me. That’s the deal. But it’s got strings attached. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “It’s got to be tied up.”

  “No. Well, yes. It means that to tie the deal up, to make it a proper thing that you can’t undo, you have to make a promise to me. And if you make the promise you can’t go back on it. Two promises, actually, Leon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wipe your face.”

  She sniffs and holds two fingers up but not the swearing ones.

  “One,” she says, “you have to tell me when something’s wrong. Don’t matter what it is and it don’t matter if it’s me that’s done it. And I’m not saying I can fix it, because I can’t fix everything. I’m not a magician, am I?”

  “No.”

  “Second, don’t run away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good. That’s a deal then.”

  “Yes.”

  “No more sweets for a week. Not for me and not for you. We’ve gone overboard today and I get weighed tomorrow.”

  She pinches the fat on the top of her arms.

  “Shit.”

  42

  On the day of the Royal Wedding, Mr. Devlin comes by really early in the morning. He rings the bell before Sylvia and Maureen are out of bed, so Leon has to run to the door.

  “Good,” he says, “someone’s awake at least.”

  He walks in and puts the kettle on.

  “Sylvia said come early,” says Mr. Devlin and Leon runs and knocks on Sylvia’s door, opens it an inch.

  “Sylvia,” he says, “he’s here.”

  “Victor? Shit, shit, shit . . .” she hisses. “Ten minutes.”

  Leon runs back to the kitchen.

  “So,” Mr. Devlin says. “We’ve got a lot to do for your party.”

  “It’s not my party,” says Leon.

  “It’s not mine, either,” he replies. “She is not my queen, he is not my prince. I don’t believe in royal anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s a long and complicated explanation and I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

  Leon takes a mug out of the cupboard and shows Mr. Devlin where the coffee is. Sylvia always makes Mr. Devlin’s coffee, so she won’t mind. Leon takes a bowl for himself and sprinkles his cornflakes in.

  “Is your queen in Ireland?” he asks.

  Leon needs to be at the sugar stage before Sylvia comes into the kitchen and catches him. Mr.
Devlin leans on the kitchen counter and folds his arms.

  “There are no kings or queens, Leon. There are people. This marriage is a marriage between two people, a man and a woman, nothing more. Maybe they love each other, maybe they don’t, but it is not a fairy tale. It is a wedding. And today we’re making a wedding party, a celebration for people who believe in witches and wizards and princesses rescued from towers.”

  “Are you still coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was invited,” he says and nods at Sylvia, who is standing in the doorway pulling the belt on her dressing gown.

  “Morning, Vic,” she says. “Bit early, isn’t it?”

  Sylvia has creases on her face and she keeps fluffing up her hair at the sides. She looks like she’s still asleep. Mr. Devlin stands up straight.

  “I’m sorry, I thought I’d make an early start. I can come back later.”

  “Make me a coffee and I’ll think about it.”

  She brushes past him and opens the back door. She lights a cigarette and blows the smoke up the garden path.

  “Don’t say anything,” she shouts behind her. “I’m not having that conversation again. I have to have one first thing.”

  “The worst one is the one you can’t do without,” Mr. Devlin says.

  “That apply to men?” she answers and he laughs.

  Mr. Devlin is clean these days and he’s found some other clothes. Leon has seen him washing his hands in the water barrel by his shed before he comes to see Sylvia.

  While no one is looking, Leon sprinkles extra sugar on his cornflakes. Mr. Devlin won’t notice anyway, because all he does these days is look at Sylvia, and she keeps saying what he thinks about things, like, “Victor thinks there’ll be more riots,” or, “Victor thinks Northern Ireland is merely a symptom of a greater disease.” And Maureen always winks at Leon and raises her eyes to the ceiling. Sylvia saw a leather jacket on TV and she said she was going to buy it for Mr. Devlin so he didn’t have to wear his army coat anymore but Leon thinks he will look silly in it, like he’s borrowed it from Tufty.

  Mr. Devlin finishes his coffee and puts the mug on the side.