Chinaski

by Frances Vick

  There were older offerings too: notes mostly, and he could make out some words, ‘Love – miss – can’t believe,’ but the writing was too faded now to read. It had rained earlier.

  Crouching down, half drunk, Peter had a sudden urge to pick up all the flowers and take them back to his flat, back to somewhere safe. This estate, this whole area, was too harsh to host such poignancy. He imagined local youths pissing on the flowers, drunks stealing some to take home to their abused girlfriends. And then he had to smile at himself, even laugh, because he hadn’t changed, not in all these years. This place still intimidated him, he was still an outsider, there was still that gulf between Carl and him, and now it would never be bridged.

  9

  One Friday, Peter had contrived to walk with Carl after school, pretending to be so immersed in their conversation that he didn’t realise he was walking the wrong way until they were halfway to Carl’s door. Either Carl didn’t notice or had let him get away with it, because the third time it happened, Carl actually invited him in.

  Peter knew that his own parents were prosperous of course. He knew that the suburb he lived in wrote its own narrative: doctors and barristers lived there with their happy, intact families; gardens were bountiful but understated, tasteful. Bikes were unquestioningly taken into the garage at night, and meals were eaten as a family, with a salad on the side, and a glass of wine for the adults. He knew that how he lived wasn’t necessarily how others did too. He watched the news and had opinions on why people rioted; he’d seen housing estates when he’d accidentally taken the wrong bus home, and he’d grieved for the people that had to live there. His mother called him quite the little socialist.

  As they got closer and closer to Carl’s house, Peter tried to swallow the knot of anxiety in his throat, telling himself he was a snob. It wasn’t helped by Carl turning the subject to the routine muggings, theft and arson that were rife around here. When he pointed out an evil looking block of flats where a gang of rapists lived together, sharing tips on kidnapping and putting the finishing touches to their torture dungeon, Peter finally understood that he was joking. He must have noticed what Peter was trying desperately to conceal, and wanted to torment him. Punish him. Peter felt ashamed. By the time they reached Carl’s door they hadn’t spoken for a while. Carl looked preoccupied – probably he was regretting inviting him over, and Peter was uncomfortable, afraid that he’d offended his friend by simply being of a different class.

  Carl dug a key out of his pocket and opened the side door to the flat above. The first thing Peter noticed was the smell of air fresheners, and lurking below that, the dense musk of cigarettes. In the living room there was a vinyl sofa, its cracked arms taped over with black electrical tape. Dainty, dated glassware filled a teak cabinet. An incongruously large china dalmatian, stuck onto a piece of red perspex with mustard coloured glue, stood in the centre of the mantelpiece, alongside two plaster figures of the Virgin Mary, gazing at the ceiling with doe-eyed suffering. These were flanked by school photos of Carl, posed before beige or sky blue backgrounds, in a variety of school uniforms: Carl with gaps in his teeth, with startlingly short hair; with a yellow mark under his eye that looked like a stain on the photograph, but was actually the remains of a black eye. Peter sat down on the sofa, uncomfortable beneath the collective attention of Mary and the child Carl. The flat was quiet as death.

  When people visited Peter’s house, they were taken around on a tour, shown where the toilets were, asked to help themselves to anything in the kitchen. When he was younger, Peter would take friends to his room to play with Lego and Transformers. Now he was older he would take them to the converted basement – almost his own wing of the house – and they could play on the Sega Megadrive or mess about on his new drum kit. But Carl made no attempt to get off the sofa, speak to him, or even look in his direction. Peter must have really pissed him off.

  Eventually there was the scrape of a key in the door and Carl disappeared, while Peter hovered at the living room door. There was a murmured, indistinct conversation, and Peter heard a man apologising for something, heard him tripping on the top stair, and come forward to the living room. When he saw Peter, he extended his hand and pumped his arm with surprising force. When he opened his mouth to smile, a rolling mist of alcohol enveloped them both. “This man is drunk,” thought Peter as the arm pumping stopped and the man staggered a little as he let go. Carl had disappeared, leaving Peter with this drunken stranger, who now introduced himself as Bob, and when Peter looked blank, as Carl’s dad.

  “I thought Carl lived with his nan?”

  Bob supported himself against the wall, “She’s poorly. She’s in the hospital.” In the front bedroom Carl had turned the music on loud, so loud that Peter couldn’t make out what band it was. Bob stayed swaying in front of him, and so Peter did what would be done in his own home, and offered to take Bob’s coat, showed him into the living room and asked him if he wanted tea or coffee. He knew from films that drunks needed strong black coffee, but in the kitchen all he found were cans of braising steak, chicken soup and rice pudding. He finally found some Nescafe and some dusty china, put two teaspoons of powdered coffee in, and then, hesitating, another two.

  The music pounded on in the front bedroom. Peter brought Bob the coffee and, not knowing what else to do, sat beside him on the sofa and watched him drink it. There wasn’t much of Carl in his face. Bob was short, thick in the trunk and bandy-legged, pugnacious looking. His skin was leathery and brown and his hands were squat and powerful looking. The neat suit and trilby made him look like an extra from a Depression-era movie. His hands shook as he drank his coffee, the cup clattered against the saucer. He breathed noisily through his mouth.

  “You’re his friend then, from school?” Peter nodded. “Ah.” Bob sighed and closed his eyes. “Oh I’m in for it now, then.” The music stopped next door and then began again. Carl must have just turned the record over. “Oh yes, I’ll get it in the neck now.” He opened one eye, saw that Peter was still there, closed it again, and settled back.

  Peter felt he had to say something. “Do you live here as well?”

  “No. Just while Mum’s in the hospital. Keep an eye on him. I’ve got my own place,” he gestured vaguely to the right, “down the way there. House. He lives there too, meant to, but he likes his old nan.”

  The music became relentlessly loud and Peter couldn’t help but feel that it was a signal to him, pulling him in, chastising him for being with Bob. He was just edging off the sofa when Bob suddenly sprang up, knocking a picture off the wall as he lurched through the door towards Carl’s room. He’d locked the door, and Bob was bellowing for him to open up and turn that fucking noise off. Carl answered by kicking his side of the door and cranking up the volume even more. After a few seconds Bob had worn himself out shouting and came back to the living room. Ignoring Peter now, he turned on the TV and put it on full volume. For a while the two cacophonies warred with each other until a series of loud thumps on the floor from the flat below made Carl turn the music down. After a few more thumps, Bob noticed, turned the TV down and Peter took his chance to leave the living room.

  Carl made Peter wait until his timid knocks got a bit bolder, and when he opened the door Peter could tell that he had been crying. His hair was smoothed back from his face and there were little red blotches around his eyes. With the music still quite loud, Peter couldn’t make out what he was saying, but came in anyway, and they sat on the bed together, looking down at their knees. Carl rearranged the hair around his face, making sure it spilled into his eyes, and they listened to one whole side of an album before they spoke and even then it was only about what record to put on next. Some of the records in the pile were unfamiliar to Peter, and he slightly exaggerated his ignorance, knowing that feeling superior would help Carl calm down. Once or twice he even made him laugh, and they almost forgot the man in the front room, the grandmother in the hospital, the estate outside. When Peter’s stomach groaned, Carl told him abo
ut the best chip shop in the world, just around the corner, and Peter knew that this was his signal to leave.

  Passing the front room, they saw Bob asleep in the armchair, with the TV still on. On the way down the stairs Carl brushed his hair in his eyes again and Peter didn’t look at him until they were nearly at the corner. He bought them both chips, and Carl walked him to the bus stop, even resuscitating some of the horror stories about the estate, for laughs now, and they parted with a promise to swap tapes on Monday as usual. As the bus pulled off, Peter looked out of the back window at the receding figure of his best friend, hunched in his thin school blazer, sitting at the bus stop, throwing chips down the drain. Was he crying? Peter couldn’t tell.

  When he got off at his stop, he put his hand in his pocket and found a note written on a page ripped from a school jotter: ‘If things get bad can I rely on you? Can I stay at your house sometimes if I need to? If yes, don’t answer this note. Your friend Carl.’

  Later, months and years later, Peter knew the drill. If Carl asked you for a favour, then the favour should be bestowed, or not, with no further discussion. Most importantly, the actual asking of it should never ever be alluded to. But Peter hadn’t learned this yet, and so he went home that evening, countering his parents’ anxiety at his being late with the note and a breathless account of the afternoon. They wanted questions answered. Why was Carl staying at his grandmother’s? Was his father living there permanently? Why didn’t he see his mother? Were social services involved? Peter’s mother sat on a great many committees, surely there was something to do for this poor child? They weren’t that keen on having him stay, however. Peter worked on them for a few days, and then, filled with a sense of achievement, slightly stretched the truth and told Carl that he could stay whenever he wanted. Carl received the news in silence and was distant with him for a few days, then abruptly began showing up at the bus stop every Friday after school and staying at Peter’s house at the weekends.

  In a way it would have been easier for Peter’s parents if Carl had had an identifiably bad effect on their son. They had steeled themselves for slammed doors, raided fridges and open contempt, but Peter was nothing but his own sunny self. The only overt influence his new friend had had on him was actually positive: disappointed that Peter had let the guitar go, they were impressed by his diligence in drumming. They admitted to themselves that the time spent with Carl hadn’t affected Peter’s school work, his disposition, his confidence; but they couldn’t bring themselves to welcome Carl into their home as genuinely as they would have another friend. Anxiously they asked each other if it was his class that was the problem. His background? Oh God, had they really become those sort of people? No. No. After all, they had decided to place their son in a state school precisely for that reason – for him to live in the real world, with real people. It was a skill that Peter’s parents were proud of having painstakingly taught themselves, and they wanted their son to mix with all sorts of kids effortlessly and not have to learn how to do it later, as they had done. Naturally the majority of his peers were from the same background – there were a lot of children of lawyers, a few of doctors, and an MP’s daughter, but there was a very visible minority of other types too. Of course neither Peter’s mum or dad knew what it was that these other parents did, but whatever it was, it was real. It was representative.

  But Carl. They never learned to feel comfortable with him. They found him uncanny, fey, monosyllabic. A neglected boy, a poor boy, a boy to be pitied for sure, but they couldn’t like him. And Carl, as if knowing what he was up against from the start, never tried to win them round.

  At the dinner table he would fold up salad leaves with his bitten fingers and shove them onto the prongs of his fork; cucumber would skitter around his plate and land on his knees. Rice and spaghetti foxed him. Peter’s mother couldn’t restrain herself from teaching him how to eat properly, but what began as a light-hearted lesson ended abruptly when Carl just sat there like a puppet with its strings cut, refusing to cooperate. He forgot, or didn’t care about, saying please and thank you. He would dry the dishes in silence, his bruised looking mouth clamped shut, dodging questions, hiding from conversation. Peter’s parents joked that he was mute, but at night they heard his unfamiliar voice drifting out from the open window in the basement room and he never seemed to stop talking. They’d turn to each other with raised eyebrows, and say, “You see, he can talk,” but secretly they were perplexed, hurt. They gave this boy a home a great deal of the time, they gave him food, they gave him the gift of Peter, and what did they have to show for it?

  Before Carl imposed himself on the family, the Friday Night Feast was an event: three courses and Peter would be allowed a glass of wine. His dad would talk frankly and hilariously about his job in the city; his mum would talk frankly but sorrowfully about her various charities. The conversation would turn on its well-oiled axis towards the virtues of education, the duty of the more privileged towards the less fortunate. Mum would bring out the dessert and dad would always put on a mock northern accent and call it ‘pudding’. Peter was always given the biggest piece and his appetite was always favourably commented on. In fact, Peter associated eating too much with praise, and continued making himself uncomfortable at meal times until, much later, a journalist at Melody Maker referred to him as ‘the obligatory fat drummer’. Then he went on a diet.

  Once Carl began staking out his claim on Peter, though, the Friday Night Feast was curtailed to a modest one course in front of the TV, the participants cut from three to two. Peter had usually eaten by the time his parents came home, and was often already in the basement, either to meet Carl or to wait for him. Carl soon stopped taking the school bus with Peter and began arriving later in the evening, bypassing the front door and slipping down to the basement room via the stairs outside. If Peter wasn’t there, he would sit on the sill smoking until he arrived. Animals liked Carl, and he liked them too, in a distracted, careless way. Neighbourhood cats and the odd dog would trot over to keep him company while he waited and in the morning Peter’s mum would sweep up the cigarette butts and polish the greasy paw prints off the windows, her mouth set in a thin hard line.

  And so one ritual was replaced by another. Peter would race upstairs and change out of his school uniform, putting on the combats and shredded t-shirts that his mother despised. He’d go through the stuff he’d taped off the radio during the week and make a master tape of all the best tracks, to share with Carl later. Then he’d stand in front of the fridge eating until he sensed Carl was on his way, and bolt down the basement stairs to prepare.

  In his passively insistent way, Carl had made it known that he liked fresh air, so Peter made sure that the windows were open despite what the weather was. Carl preferred to sit facing the door, so Peter would clear any debris off the sofa and plump the cushions. Carl didn’t like strong light, so Peter had brought down one of the standard lamps from the dining room. If he was kept waiting for a long time, he would be thrown back into the same worried helplessness that he’d felt when Carl disappeared from school for that week; that confusing realisation that he didn’t know his best friend well enough to know where he was, what he was thinking, if he was ok. He felt the same later on, after Carl disappeared from school altogether. It was strange that he didn’t have the same feeling at the end, when Carl disappeared for the final time, when nobody thought to look for him at his nan’s.

  In Peter’s memory, those evenings in the basement had an elegiac quality. It was always dusk, it was always just cooling. Carl kept his guitar there and together they taught themselves their instruments, grimacing through mistakes, swearing through misunderstandings, grinning through sudden breakthroughs – two boys in a darkening room learning a skill that seemed to them eternally elusive and addictive. They poured all their dedication into learning, mastering, their instruments. The genuine delight one would take in the other’s progress, the approbation of your best friend, that happy, close communion made this the happiest time
of Peter’s life. And then it ended.

  10

  One day Carl wasn’t at school. There wasn’t anything unusual about that, but the day stretched into a week, and the week into two. Peter avoided Ms Clancey in the hallways and shrugged his way through questions from friends. Darren King trailed him like a threatening puppy and girls plagued him with their worry. Peter’s old friends, the preppy, rugby types he’d hung around with before Carl, stayed at a distance, uncertain about approaching him and letting him back into their set. They, too, were consumed with worry and curiosity about Carl; he was made to worry people, and everyone caught the fever. By the end of the second week, Peter was drowning in their anxiety, was anxious himself, but angry too, because for all their closeness, Carl had disappeared and hadn’t bothered to tell him where to or why. He had treated him with contempt, just as he did the others under his spell – the Darren Kings, the Ms Clanceys, the giggling 5th years, all of them. Once, after school, Peter had swallowed his pride enough to go round to Carl’s nan’s flat, but there was no answer when he rang the bell. A neighbour told him that the old lady was still in hospital and nobody had seen Bob. Peter took the bus back to the centre and drifted towards DiscKings, flicking through their 50p singles and keeping one eye on the door in case Carl came in, but he didn’t.

  After a long time, Carl began to recede in people’s thoughts. Peter pulled up his marks in science and thought about applying for medicine at university. In English, he put up with Ms Clancy’s pointed remarks about the value of friendship in group discussions on Of Mice and Men, and avoided her hurt glances. He drew closer to his old rugby friends. One of them was taking classical guitar lessons and Peter tried to get him to listen to John Peel, but it didn’t take. He kept up with the drums, going to lessons one evening a week. Eventually things got better, things became nearly normal. People stopped mentioning Carl, the graffiti in the girls’ toilets faded and something like the Friday Night Feast began again at home.