The orchid looked funny sitting there. Aside from bacteria, his flat looked like a stranger to botanicals.
‘That’s very generous of your mother, on top of everything else. Very posh. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Save it for later, mate. You can write her a note or something. Here’s mine. Happy returns and that.’
Jase had bought an Odour Eaters three-pack. One size fits all.
‘And mine.’
Moon produced an olive oil and balsamic vinegar set, looking rather similar to the gift boxes The RottweilerTM kept in the dining room cupboard for emergencies. Just saying. His grip of this was clumsier than with the orchid. He looked suspiciously at the bottle of balsamic like he didn’t know what the hell to do with it. If anything, he was happiest with the Odour Eaters.
Then I got out my present, which made Casey’s eyes fill with tears, and made the disbelievers think that I’d gone too far.
44
‘Friends are friends, right? They tell each other everything?’
‘Course, son. Unless you’re a mass murderer, in which case I’d rather you keep it to yourself.’
‘But you should be able to share everything with them, right? Even things they don’t want to hear?’
‘Even things they don’t want to hear.’
This is the kind of phone call that Jase likes to make at one a.m.: mashed up, just back from hanging with one of the older college dudes from Produce, and wanting to right wrongs. These were the kind of calls I was used to, where he’d show his regret for giving beatings to whichever muppet had crossed his path that day, or be wondering why no girl at school was ever interested in him. My job wasn’t to say anything, it was just a case of being there, listening. If Mum hadn’t been out on an emergency visit, another old girl who needed an urgent check-in at the nearest NHS hotel, she would have wrung my neck to be up so late, as well as Jase’s.
Also, what’s spoken down the phone stays down the phone. There is never any mention of this stuff at school the next day. It’s like we were both imagining it.
‘I’ve done something I shouldn’t.’
‘We’ve all done something we shouldn’t have, Jase.’
‘Are you just going to repeat everything I say? I’m phoning you for a reason.’
‘All I’m saying is that we’re meant to get off the programme once in a while. Don’t give yourself such a hard time over it. If everyone just does what’s expected of them, things are bound to get boring. Tonight, your stray dog is Stella, three cans, possibly four.’
It’s not that I don’t have the patience to be a good mate, just that Casey’s party has given me the warmest feeling that I want to carry into sleep. I don’t get this often enough, the comfort zone, so want to hold onto it for as long as possible. My own stray dog, I guess, #645.
‘I thought I was being really clever. I was acting so smug this afternoon, didn’t you notice?’
‘I just put that down to your natural exuberance, bra.’
‘And I just feel dumb about it now, ’cos I know I’ve done a really nasty thing.’
He says Casey’s name, and it’s like stray dog #645 has been killed instantly in a hit and run. The warmth, everything I’d been holding onto since I got home, evaporates.
‘I was going to his house, V. You were taking me to his freakin’ house. The temptation was too great.’
‘What the fuck have you done?’
‘I left pictures, V.’
‘What d’you mean, you left some pictures?’
‘If you don’t stop repeating me like some fucking parrot, I’m going to hang up, I swear.’
‘OK. OK. Just tell me what you did.’
‘Like I said, I was in his house. The temptation to leave a souvenir was far too great to pass up. It’s not like I was gonna get another invite, was it?’
‘I still don’t understand. What pictures?’
‘I guessed Casey might be feeling a little lonely in his new place. Without the old comforts of home, if you see what I mean. I just thought I’d leave him a few things. So he could take a stroll down memory lane whenever he liked.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I left five. All about twelve years old, eleven. All starkers. No sex poses or anything. Just nekkid. Thought that’d do the trick.’
‘What were you trying to prove? Can’t you see that there’s nothing wrong with him? That all that shit was made up?’
‘Well, yeah. Now I can. I mean, there’s no way you’ll ever really know, but he does seem all right once you’ve spent a few hours with him.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling you all this time!’
It’s a minute or two before one of us speaks, both of us lying there listening to the other’s breathing. If this were any other time, I’d be thinking something else about Jase and his breathing, not the anger that is wringing my guts inside out. I clamp my jaw so tight my teeth feel like they’re about to shatter. I feel wired and gritty, like those people on the ECT tables, when they’re being tortured for wanting to hold everything in.
‘Why would you want to hurt someone good? What possible satisfaction can you get from it?’
‘We bus’ people up all the time, V. I never hear you say anything then.’
‘But not people that mean something to us! There’s got to be a line. Otherwise . . .’
‘Otherwise?’
‘Otherwise . . . we’re animals. We’re council-house-and-violent. We’re nothing.’
‘We’re not nothing. We’re not worth nothing.’
‘Where the hell do you get pictures of naked twelve-year-olds? It’s not like you’ve joined one of those Camera Clubs.’
‘The guy in the photo department. He has to hand over any dodgy pictures he develops to the police. Always manages to make a few copies first, though.’
‘What a sick fucker. And you think Casey’s weirder than that?’
‘He said I could do what I wanted with them, so long as I didn’t post them on the web.’
There’s another pause for more breathing space. Jase’s pulse is fast and shallow, either because of the panic or because he’s looking for a way out. I keep my breathing even and deep, breathing techniques designed to help through anything. Lion power. Have to focus on summat, else I go round Jase’s and bash his head in with a lead stick.
‘I didn’t leave them in his face, so there’s a chance he might not have even seen them yet.’
‘Don’t give me hope like that, ’cos if it isn’t true I’m liable to start throwing things.’
‘Put it this way, I didn’t put them some place he’d find straight away.’
‘This isn’t the time to be talking in riddles, Jase. If he ain’t seen them, I want to get them out of there.’
‘He can’t have seen them. He could have called you, wouldn’t he? He would have said something.’
‘S’true. He’s never one for holding anything back when it’s on his mind.’
‘His bedroom.’
‘What?’
‘I left them under the mattress.’
‘Jesus, Jase. You’re all for originality.’
‘I thought it was a good place. Funny. He’ll see them when he changes the sheets.’
‘He never changes the sheets. I mean, didn’t you see the state of the place? He’s a pig.’
‘But he’s your pig.’
‘Yeah. I guess he is.’
You can only make statements like this at one a.m. when the person on the other end is mashed and unlikely to remember your blatant sentimentality.
45
It’s hard to make a loaded call sound casual when it’s been playing on your mind for most of the night.
‘What are you talking about? It’s Sunday morning. Haven’t we seen enough of each other so far this weekend?’
Even though it was early, I’d made it down to the kitchen and had the TV on, trying to keep everything sounding up and laid-back. If he even sniffed the mechanics
behind every hey, yay and yeah, I’d be done for.
‘It’s out of the question, young Turk. I have church, and then I’m giving a talk to the youth group.’
‘Your church has a youth group? How many kids are in it that aren’t disabled?’
‘If you got your head out your arse every once in a while, Jesus pardon my language, you’d see that the church is an active and vibrant place to be a teenager.’
‘That still doesn’t tell me how many kids you’ve actually got there.’
‘We’ve got enough.’
‘More than ten? Less than ten?’
‘I haven’t got time to have this conversation, young sir. I’ve got to get ready.’
Casey’s tone wasn’t so much busy as exasperated. Most mornings you couldn’t get anything out of him until I’d run at least 800m. Why should Sunday be any different?
There needed to be a window, day, evening, anything. The subsidence of the rot I was feeling in my guts hinged on me getting in there and performing my magic spook trick: thirty-second wonder. Blink and you’d never know I was there, in your room and hunting under your bed.
Casey hemmed and hawed for infinity. Off the track, where indecision rules, he could be a champ at it; greater than anything he ever achieved on the field. He was sensitive about being spied upon, but that couldn’t be helped. He could be in the most secure and non-judgmental environment ever and still feel the paralysis of paranoia. We could discuss the pitfalls of the Surveillance Nation we have become until we were both blue in the face, and he still wouldn’t accept my argument, that the cameras actually give you more freedom rather than repress you. He wouldn’t have any of it. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to spend his old age living off tins in a nuclear bunker somewhere.
My voice crackled with an enthusiasm I wasn’t feeling, cranked up to warp speed like some kids’ TV presenter who’s spent half the night hopped on coke but still manages to turn it on once he sees the red light. Anything for Casey to think that I was in need of his mentoring presence. Hell, I was even prepared to sell Mum down the river if I thought that would do the trick.
I didn’t have to. He gave in once I started going on about how I thought that whilst church was probably a good thing, what was really important was the church that people carried within them in their everyday lives. He laughed for a full five minutes over that one.
‘You’re full of shit, young sir. You know that, right?’
‘You’re not the first person to have come to that conclusion.’
He said he could spare me some time late afternoon, a period of around an hour or so, before heading over to his evening session, Café Worship.
‘What the hell’s Café Worship? Do they make a devilishly good cappuccino?’
‘It’s the informal setting for our evening services, boy. And let me tell you, the coffee’s pretty good. You’re welcome to tag along to that too, if you like.’
I assured Casey that I’d spoken all the church I was liable to for one day, if not for ever.
I felt so relieved I could have smoked a fag. I rang Jase’s mobile about five hundred times before he rose from his Produce-influenced coma. There was no point calling the house phone, neither he nor Billie would answer it. He isn’t good on details generally, so that time on a Sunday morning, with weed buds performing all manner of power-tool excavations in his head, his directions were woolly and to be taken with an unhealthy pinch of salt.
Much of what we argue about, then and later, will stem from Jase’s inability to distinguish between top, middle and bottom.
‘It’s under the mattress, man. Who gives a shit about the exact location?’
‘I’ll be bothered when I’m having to dive into Casey’s room under the pretext of going to the bog.’
‘It’s a small bed, cousin. It’ll take you less than twenty seconds to find them.’
‘I might not have twenty seconds, dumbass. It’s a secret mission. Every second can be crucial.’
Jase offers to come with me to provide diversion services, but I knock it on the head. Casey’ll take one look at his face and clock that something’s up.
I shouldn’t get complacent, but I do. After the calls have been wrapped up, I get my feet on the sofa and keep the blueberries on tap. MTV Base on blast, with some X Box to vary the mood. I sleep a little. I could keep my mind clear until I got to Casey’s at four. He was out all day, so there was next to no chance of him finding something he shouldn’t have. Where’s the fire? It comes at just after one when Casey phones to blow me out.
‘You won’t believe it, kiddo, but my church buddies hadn’t forgotten my birthday after all. They’re throwing me a party!’
‘You’re getting two parties, at your age? How spoilt are you?’
‘So we’re going to have to take a rain-check on our coffee later, unless you’d like to come to the church hall, and meet my friends.’
‘I’ve already told you, I’m not setting foot anywhere near that place.’
‘Suit yourself, young sir, but I know everyone would love to meet you.’
What I experience is the battle of extremes, a very real panic over the prospect of not getting into that flat, versus a flush of pride that he wants the church goons to meet me. You wouldn’t make an offer like that unless you really meant it.
I sweat out a third anxiety: the possibility that I have a more permanent place in Casey’s family-free family.
‘There’s got to be some time when we can hook up later, kick back. I could come round after your café thingy, if you like. Watch Match of the Day.’
‘The only time I’ve got is at this party, Mr Prendrapen. What a whirlwind social life! Check me out!’
‘But I . . .’
‘What’s the big deal with you wanting to come by my place, kiddo? Anyone would think you were desperate to get into that dump.’
It wasn’t the muted laughter in the background that told me he was making a big show for his church goons, more to do with him calling me kiddo all the time, like he was some big carefree guy who never worried about anything.
I’m at a loss. I have no idea what to do, short of coming clean and dropping Jason in it.
‘A church rave sounds great. I’ll see you there.’
46
Casey lives in a big fat circle. He starts and ends with the crucifix. Everything else is gaseous, insubstantial. Inside the circle he’s as safe as anything, paranoia banished and fears displaced. He becomes the person he always wanted to be, if you push aside the tracks and the medals: impenetrable, an example, so long as he stays in the circle.
His sense of humour is reborn. It’s like I’m witnessing the fucking resurrection, God pardon my language and blatant blaspheming.
The church hall rave sounded like it was going to be stuffed with a busload of spastics, but they turn out to be a really racy lot. Women outnumber men by 3:1. Single women outnumber men by 2:1. No one dresses like Lil’ Kim or anything, but there are calves on display, and cleavage, drop earrings and plenty of big hair. I ask Casey if they are like this because of the party, but he tells me that they look like this pretty much all the time.
The men give me discreet cups of punch and tell me to keep it under my hat. About five of them do it, so I’m near pissed within an hour. The women take me outside whenever it gets too stuffy and slip me contraband cigarettes. Everyone asks me whether I have a girlfriend.
Inside the circle, Casey is the bloody funniest person to have ever walked the streets of North East Surrey. The way the men and women laugh at him, you’d think he was channelling one of the old boys like Tommy Cooper or Eric Morecambe. Put the exact same act in a different kind of church and it would have been like a one-man séance.
I call the numbers for the raffle. I dance with the married ladies to S Club. I am the perfect guest of the guest of honour.
I am seduced by the wisdom of the circle. I share their joy-without-agenda, putting aside the J-word, and the crosses that decorate every
available wall space. I forget I am here with an agenda of my own. I forget the anxiety that filled me as I ran to the hall. Too many hugs from smiling Christian strangers. I see the fellowship. Makes me wonder what the hell I was worrying about.
It’s a different story when the punch runs out. My buzz, alcoholic and spiritual, evaporates, and I remember the reason why I’m here: to create my own lull, a Jew–Tamil special, my own homegrown illusion of security. It’s a case of flattering my bollocks off – the women, some of the men, Casey. Anyone within my line of vision gets it. If you were looking in, you’d think I was the most polite and charming young man in the world. That the future would be safe if all the young people were as centred and loving as me. They wouldn’t believe that I could be the King of the Switcheroo, leaving the party early and breaking into Casey’s flat and pulling the pictures from the bed.
The only person in that room who’d believe it would be Casey, and he was all for acting upon his beliefs. He catches me as I’m trashing the place in a bid to make it look authentic. He only looks at the first picture in my hand. He doesn’t wait to hear about the rest.
PART 5
47
Three things.
He thinks of manners before himself. Casey pops a note through the door, getting his arse out of bed extra early, as I find it on the mat before I leave the house for training. I wasn’t expecting him to be there, but I was getting ready anyway. I can’t stop training just because I think he’s gonna be a no-show. Who knows what’s gonna happen to me? I may have to go through twenty more trainers before I reach Olympic level. The note tells me to go back to Harriers. The C scrawled at the bottom is so wispy and random, it’s like the note isn’t really signed at all, the C itself looking like a scribble someone does to check whether there’s any ink left in the Biro. Left-handed, careless business. Block lettering, brown envelope. It could have been a Paki Go Home note if I hadn’t read it properly, or if we were in the 1980s.
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