Flip

by Martyn Bedford

Alex was lying on his side with someone squatting beside him. From that angle it looked like the figure had three gigantic knees, one with a face mask attached to it. The face’s expression said anxious.

  The mouth moved, smiled. “Back with us again?”

  How long had he lain there? An hour, for all he knew. A day. That would have been good, to curl up and sleep for twenty-four hours. The mouth spoke again and Alex registered that the voice, the knees, the face belonged to Mr. McQueen.

  By the time the teacher got him to the sick bay, Alex was less groggy, less spaced altogether. That nauseous feeling again, though. Had he thrown up? No, Mr. McQueen assured him; he’d fainted, that was all.

  “You went down like a felled tree.”

  No bones broken, the school nurse told him. No bump on the head. When she had finished frisking him with her pointy fingers, she sat him up on the bed, propped a pillow at his back and got him to take a few sips of water. Her forearms, he noticed, were as hairy as a man’s.

  “Are you prone to fainting, Philip?” she asked. When he told her he wasn’t, she asked how long it had been since he’d last eaten.

  “Breakfast.” Technically true, although he’d left most of it.

  “How long was he out?” she asked Mr. McQueen.

  “A minute or so. No more than that.”

  The religious studies teacher was holding Alex’s day pack by the scruff of the neck; it looked like a toy at the end of his long arm, like it belonged to a primary school kid. The nurse was peering into Alex’s eyes, shining a light into them with a torch as thin as a pencil. Her blue uniform made papery sounds whenever she moved. Was he diabetic? No. Then the inevitable question about drugs. Alex shook his head.

  “Solvents? Alcohol?”

  “Yes, please—if you have any going spare.”

  The nurse fixed him a look. “Your sense of humor’s intact, then.”

  She wanted to pack him off home, but Mrs. Garamond had the day off—one of her gardening days—and Alex couldn’t face another inquisition, or a resumption of the one from the night before (and again at the breakfast table). He was fine, he insisted.

  He didn’t mention the sudden splitting headache that had struck him down, or the shrieking, or the blinding lights that had flashed behind his eyelids.

  Alex’s vision was back to normal now, and the pain in his head had eased to a dull throbbing. But he was still shaky. And scared. The leakage between him and Philip had rarely been so palpable: he had been the one to pass out, but every part of Flip’s body, inside and out, was tremulous with the aftereffects. As for his head, the ache was real enough. At that moment the thinking and nonthinking parts seemed indistinguishable. There was brain tissue and what went on inside it, and Alex couldn’t have said just then where one ended and the other began.

  He wasn’t about to mention any of this to the nurse. He was tired, he repeated. It was stuffy in the staff-room corridor. He’d fainted. He was okay again, honest. She looked unconvinced but, in the end, agreed to let him return to his lessons.

  As Mr. McQueen escorted him along the corridor, Alex tried to make sense of what had happened: the nightmare, or fainting fit, or whatever it was that had left him in a heap at the religious studies teacher’s feet. Like a rupture. Like how he imagined a brain hemorrhage might be. In its wake had come some kind of a hallucination. He’d shared a spliff at a party one time, with David, and the effect had been similar: things going on all around him as though in slow motion—music playing; conversations; the snap and hiss of a beer can; kids laughing, dancing, drinking; David making moose antlers with his hands above his head … real stuff that appeared not to be real at all.

  Even though he’d been passed out at the time, the vision he’d had while he’d lain on the floor outside the staff room had been just as “real”: green curtain, shifting in a breeze. A plastic tube attached to a bag of fluid. His mother’s face peering down at him. Talking. Her lips out of sync with the words, like in a badly dubbed film. He was speaking, too—crying out to her, again and again—but there was no sign in Mum’s expression that she could hear him.

  “Philip?”

  Alex stopped. Mr. McQueen had come to a halt outside the art room, but Alex had just carried on walking, in a world of his own.

  They sent him home at lunchtime. By then, Alex’s headache had worsened so much that he raised no objection. As he let himself through the door at Tyrol Place, Flip’s mother took one look at him and packed him straight off to bed.

  “Just how much did you drink yesterday, Philip?”

  “It’s not that,” he said.

  She looked skeptical. But in the morning there was no doubting that he was ill. Sore throat, aching limbs and muscles, a hacking cough, high temperature, the works. And still, that headache. The slightest movement sent a spasm of pain through his skull that left him panting for breath. It was flu, or some other virus, according to the GP who visited. A possible touch of anemia, too, which made Alex think of the nightmare, the mice shredding his insides. The doctor left a prescription and spoke of rest and a regular intake of fluids and so on; but really, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to ride this one out, my lad.

  From Monday afternoon to Friday morning, apart from shuffling along to the bathroom, Alex didn’t leave his bed. Hour after hour, day after day, he slept or dozed or simply lay there, exhausted, too ill to read, to listen to music, to talk, or even to sit up. His mobile buzzed with incoming texts but he had no energy to reach for the phone and, in any case, couldn’t have focused to press the keys or read the words. It was as much as he could do to sip the water or homemade soup Flip’s mum brought.

  Alex felt like an old man. Like a dying old man.

  To think that as recently as Sunday, he’d been on such a high … The trip to the coast had been a revelation: he’d been full of strength and confidence, feeling (being made to feel) attractive, literally flexing his muscles … having a brilliant time. Rob had shown him—or helped Alex to see for himself—that it was possible, if not to become Flip, to strut his stuff as though he and Flip were one and the same. As his new friend had put it: You’re so busy enjoying yourself in Flip’s body you’ve forgotten it isn’t yours.

  Well, he wasn’t enjoying himself in Flip’s body now. Scarborough—that one day of exuberant Flip-ness, as he thought of it—now lay in the wreckage of what followed. The nightmare, the fainting fit, this sickness. It was as though, like those early pilots during their first attempts at flight, he had taken to the air for a few exhilarating beats of his wings … then come crashing back down to earth.

  With this had come the lowest, blackest of moods. Worse than when he’d been brought back to Litchbury after the disastrous trip to London. Of course, you became fed up when you were ill and stuck in bed for days; he knew that. But this was closer to how Alex imagined it might feel to be depressed. Properly depressed. Worst of all was the vision, or hallucination, or dream, or whatever it was that had come while he’d lain passed out at Mr. McQueen’s feet and had haunted him ever since.

  The image of Mum at his hospital bedside.

  I’ve been taught a lesson, he wrote in a text to Rob when he finally surfaced from his stinking duvet to explain why he had dropped off the radar for a few days.

  What lesson is that, mate?

  I am not Flip. I should not try to be Flip.

  Or even some hybrid Flip-and-Alex, like that same-but-different river Rob had spoken about. Me-ness, PEs called it. To them, an evacuee had to forget conventional ideas of “self”—my mind, in my body—and think instead of an identifiable “me” that transcended the physical. That lived on, reformed, in its new host body. The soul, they said, could be defined as what a person meant when he said “I.”

  Who are you then? came Rob’s reply.

  I am Alex. I am Alex. I am Alex.

  By Saturday, he was well enough to venture out of doors. Flip’s mother offered to go with him, in case you come over a bit funny, she said, but he wasn’
t having any of it.

  “I need to do this by myself,” he told her, as though he was setting off across the Antarctic rather than simply walking to the shops.

  He could do what he liked just then. If there was one consolation from his illness, it was this: the Garamonds had forgotten, or chosen to forget, the drunken episode which preceded it … and the fact that he was officially grounded. The mum was so relieved to see her son on the mend that she wasn’t going to sour things by resuming hostilities (even if the hallway did still smell faintly of vomit).

  Alex went into Litchbury. Slowly, a little shakily, but the fresh air revived him and it felt good to be using his—which is to say, Flip’s—legs again.

  First stop, the Halifax, to draw cash on Philip’s card (what was left of it after he’d been made to repay Mr. Garamond the cash he’d stolen from his wallet). Second stop, Strings ’n’ Things, the town’s music shop, to buy a clarinet.

  If he was Alex, then from now on he was going to do what Alex did.

  And Alex didn’t play cricket or basketball; Alex didn’t go skateboarding or ice-skating; Alex didn’t throw Frisbees on the beach or swim like an Olympic athlete; Alex didn’t kiss pretty girls. Alex played chess. He read books. He played clarinet.

  If the woman in the shop was curious about an unaccompanied fourteen-year-old wanting to buy something as expensive as a clarinet, she showed no sign. She was polite, friendly. The shop, small and cluttered, fronted on the busy road through Litchbury; its window hummed with each passing vehicle, as though the glass itself had musical inclinations. The place smelled of resin and dust. Choral music played softly in the background. Alex was the only customer, although it sounded like another member of staff was rummaging around out the back. Alex’s breath was still ragged after his walk from Tyrol Place. Eight minutes. Felt more like eighty.

  They had only a couple of clarinets in stock, the woman explained, leading him through a chicane of stacked-up sheet music to the woodwind section. He vaguely recognized her, though he didn’t recall where from. About Mum’s age. Slender and smiley, and her dark hair looked as though it wasn’t too keen on being trussed up in all those clips and spikes. Her face, her long bare arms were as white as paper.

  “Can I try it?” Alex asked as she removed one of the clarinets from its stand and passed it to him. She smiled. Of course he could.

  The last time he’d held a clarinet was in his bedroom in Crokeham Hill, when Mum had found him snooping among her son’s things. It had felt good to hold that one; it felt good to hold this.

  He licked his lips. Raised the instrument to his mouth. Moistened the reed.

  “Philip?”

  He looked round. It was Cherry. She’d appeared behind the counter at the back of the shop. Alex lowered the clarinet, looked at her a little sheepishly, as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He said hi.

  “I didn’t know you could play,” Cherry said, coming to join them. She looked different out of uniform. In new-looking jeans and a cap-sleeve yellow cotton top, her hair scrunchied into a ponytail, she might’ve been Teri’s age.

  Alex didn’t answer. Almost certainly, she would know that Flip couldn’t play.

  “Friend of yours from school?” the woman asked, smiling.

  Cherry looked at her. “What? Oh, er, yeah—Mum, Philip; Philip, Mum.”

  “My glamorous Saturday girl,” her mother said, resting a hand on Cherry’s shoulder. “Minimum wage, of course.”

  Now he knew where he’d seen the woman before: picking up her daughter, and cello, in the school car park that time when Cherry had witnessed him getting upset. Alex’s first day as Flip. His first sight of Cherry. “Hello, Mrs. Jones,” he said.

  She gestured at the clarinet, which Alex was holding down by his side like a stick he was about to throw for a dog. “So, are you going to play for us, Philip?”

  “Mum, I think Philip probably came here hoping to see me. ”

  “Ah.” The woman smiled, teasing him: “You must be the boy who leaves poetry in my daughter’s locker.”

  “Mum!”

  “Actually, I’d no idea you worked here,” Alex said, addressing Cherry.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Darling,” Mrs. Jones said, “the young man is a customer.” Then, “I’m so sorry, Philip. You just can’t get the staff these days.”

  “No, I really did come here to buy a clarinet.” He looked at Mrs. Jones, then at Cherry. For the second time, he raised the instrument. Composed himself. Could he play as Flip? With these lips, this mouth, these fingers? There was only one way to find out. With mother and daughter watching him intently, Alex moistened his lips again, took a deep breath … and played.

  That afternoon, they walked to the river. The three of them: Alex, Cherry and Beagle. Alex had meant for them to follow the riverside path into the woods, as he had done before, but by the time they reached the bridge, the dog was worn out. So they took the steps down to the bank and sat on a bench a short way along the track to let him rest.

  “He’s old, isn’t he?” Cherry said.

  “Old, overweight and asthmatic. Do dogs get asthma? How cruel would that be?” Alex said, laughing. “An asthmatic dog that’s allergic to itself.”

  She told him not to be mean, but she was laughing, too. Beagle, sprawled on the grass at their feet, lifted his head at Cherry’s voice.

  “Beags likes you,” Alex said.

  Alex and Beagle had been waiting outside the music shop at five-thirty, when it shut. Mrs. Jones looked pleased, if surprised; as for Cherry, Alex couldn’t read her reaction at all. As her mother pulled down the security shutters and locked up, Cherry had ignored Alex and squatted to make a fuss of Beagle. It was embarrassing asking a girl out in front of her mum, but Alex decided to come right out with it.

  “We’re going for a walk,” he’d said. “I wondered if you fancied coming along.”

  “I’ve got things to do at home,” Mrs. Jones said, with that making-fun-of-you-but-in-a-nice-way smile of hers. “But I’m sure Cherry would be happy to join you.”

  Cherry was nose to nose with Beagle, letting him lick her face. “And I’m sure Cherry has a mind of her own, Mum. I’m sure Cherry can answer for herself. ”

  She stood up, looking cross. Before she could say no, Alex gestured at the dog. “He’s in a bit of a grump with me, cos I’ve dragged him away from the tennis.”

  “Tennis?”

  “Beagle watches tennis on TV. He’s addicted to it, actually—although he’s not so keen on mixed doubles, for some reason.”

  Cherry cracked up laughing.

  And now here she was, sitting beside him on a bench overlooking the river.

  “How come he’s called Beagle,” she asked, “when he’s a golden retriever?”

  “No idea.”

  “You don’t know how your dog got its name?”

  “That’s what he was called when we got him from the rescue center.” A lie, of course. They came so easily to him these days it was disturbing.

  “Maybe it’s from HMS Beagle,” Cherry said. “You know, Darwin’s boat?”

  “There’s no way he’s the result of natural selection.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say.” Cherry leaned forward, covering the dog’s ears with her hands. “Don’t you listen to him, Beags.” When he was done with giving her some more licks, he lowered his chin onto his paws again and resumed wheezing.

  Alex would’ve been wheezing himself before. It was one of those polleny, hay-fevery summer days which—if he’d been in his old body, with his old lungs—was sure to trigger an asthma attack. As Flip, though, he was fine. A little tired from another walk on his first day of feeling well again, but that was all. Cherry asked about that: Why had he been off school all week? Was he better now? And wasn’t this the second week he’d had off just lately? Alex had almost forgotten about the first: when the “virus” had kept him at home the week after his London trip.

  “Do y
ou miss me, then, when I’m away?”

  “It’s tough,” Cherry said, deadpan, “but I find a way of coping.”

  The mobile pulsed in his pocket. He ignored it. It would be Donna, probably; she’d asked to see him that day but he had texted back to say he wasn’t feeling up to it.

  “How’s the clarinet?”

  “Yeah, great. I played for a bit this afternoon.” A “bit” being just half an hour, during the only part of the day when none of the other Garamonds were at home. He couldn’t face their inevitable questions about how much he’d spent on it … or how suddenly, miraculously—he could play the clarinet.

  “You’ve been playing for years, haven’t you?” Cherry said.

  Alex hesitated. “Since I was nine, yeah.”

  “You kept that quiet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Cherry nodded, gazing over the river. “You’re good. Like, very. ”

  “Nah, I was a bit rusty.”

  “Wow, Philip, if that was rusty …” She left the sentence unfinished.

  Ducks had gathered and were fussing at the water’s edge. Alex wished he had thought to bring some bread. On the opposite bank, a willow trailed its branches in the river like long green plaits, harboring great clouds of midges.

  “How come you always call me Philip, instead of Flip?” Alex asked.

  “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “I know, but everyone else at school calls me Flip. Except you.”

  Cherry took a while to answer. At last, she said, “If I think of you as Flip, it’s like … Oh, I dunno. I like you better as Philip; that’s all. I mean, yeah, sure, you’re the same whichever, but I see you differently as Philip.” She sighed. “Mouth to brain, can you read me? Please send further instructions.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, smiling. “I like it that you’re the only one who calls me Philip.”

  She shrugged. “I guess Flip is a bit too full of himself … and Philip isn’t.”

  It spooked him when she spoke like this. Cherry couldn’t have any idea how close she was to a truth way more bizarre than the one she’d struggled to explain. How easy, and how totally impossible, it would’ve been to tell her. Right there and then. Just spill the whole story and see what she made of it. It was a secret so huge you couldn’t bear to keep it to yourself … but you didn’t dare let it slip.