—Good, the psychiatrist says. She insists I call her by her first name, Kate. We are in a special room designed for one-to-one therapy sessions. It isn’t like the rest of the building. There is wallpaper on the walls and comfy furniture. There is a vase of flowers on a pine wood coffee table, but they aren’t real flowers. Next to the flowers is a box of tissues.
—The more back story you can create for Ashley the better. In order to grieve for him he has to be fully alive in your mind first. Do you want a break before we carry on?
—It’s ok, I say.
—Good, well let’s continue. Tell me what happens next.
I start again. —We’ve all been given a programme, like you get when you go and see a show, only this one has Ashley’s picture on. He looks really smart in his school uniform and he also looks really young. What he looks like is a sixteen-year-old boy, which is what he is. Then it says his full name, Ashley Daniel O’Keefe, and the year of birth and death. I guess you could say the ravens were persecuted. No one can withstand that level of persecution without showing some ill effects and there are limits to anyone’s resilience. I realise though, despite my sympathies, I am no longer fascinated by them. I’ve moved on, as they say.
—Good Paul, but your thoughts are wandering again.
I open the programme and there is a list of events. There’s this cockney bloke on stage and he has a mike. He cracks a few jokes which don’t go down too well. He is talking about his own childhood in the east end of London, he paints a rosy picture – but no one knows him and no one is here to listen to him waffle on about his childhood in London. His head starts to expand and form scars. He is turning into Smiler.
—Let’s focus on Ashley, Paul. Brian Smith was a real person. Let’s keep the two things separate. She tells me again about this Russian bloke. He was a professional memory man. He could memorise a phone book, he could memorise anything. Only he got so good at it that he lost the ability to forget. He couldn’t forget anything. It got so bad that he couldn’t recognise his own mother. When he saw her, she just seemed to be made up of still images. The eye is like a video camera, it takes a set of still pictures. It is only because we have the power to forget that we can understand these as a moving image. In the end, the only way this Russian memory man could be cured was for him to write words he wanted to forget on a piece of paper and burn them. That is what we are doing here. I’m burning the memory of Ashley.
We are here to talk about Ashley and then burn his corpse, polluting the air, as the Parsi would say. I don’t need to kill off Andy and Dave as they were a product of Ashley. Killing off Ashley will also kill off Dave and Andy.
Things at home are not good. I’ve been permanently excluded from school. There’s a sort of programme for excluded pupils the college runs, which I’m supposed to go to. It’s geared towards more vocational stuff. You can do catering or mechanics – a load of other stuff. But I’ve not been yet, I’ve got to stay in this place for a bit longer they say. Mum says as soon as I get better, they’ll let me out. This is part of me getting better, my doctor’s idea. The coroner reported accidental death in the end, which surprised a lot of people. We were told it would be a suspicious circumstances verdict. But an accidental death verdict is better for me.
Mum is moving out soon. Whether I go back to the old house or not will depend on when I get released. I don’t mind, we’ve not been there long enough for me to get attached to it.
—Come on Paul, you can do it. Focus.
Me and Kate have discussed this at length. It’s very common to have imaginary friends, she said, but it’s not so common for them to carry through to adolescence apparently. Imaginary friends, or imaginary companions, as some psychiatrists call them, are often invented as a form of protection. I extended that role. The thing about people who are there to protect you, is that they are potentially dangerous people. It’s like the men on the estate who buy those fighting dogs, pit bulls and rottweilers, and are then surprised when they chew off the face of their kids. Imaginary friends can be exactly like real people. The psychiatrist said that two thirds of school age children have an imaginary companion by the age of seven.
The only other funeral I’ve been to was my grandma’s. I’m basing a lot of Ashley’s funeral on that experience. The programme idea, for example. My granddad died before I was born and I don’t know about my grandparents on my dad’s side – they could be dead, they could be alive. Who knows? My grandma’s funeral only had about twenty-odd people, but she was quite old. My mum was the youngest and she’d had her at forty. I didn’t really like my grandma. Whenever she took me to the park and I’d talk about birds she’d say —Stop rabbiting on about birds, Paul. Why don’t you play football like normal boys?
Mum brought her girlfriend and she made a point of kissing her on the lips. —That’ll show the old cow, she said. I don’t think mum liked grandma either. She used to judge everyone, and everyone was guilty. She never smoked or had a drink. And she thought this made her better than everyone else.
Mum used to say that granddad died because he’d had enough of grandma. They didn’t get on. But they didn’t argue either, they just sort of ignored each other.
—Let’s get to the end Paul. Let’s get to the point we discussed, remember?
Someone has just given a speech and everyone is clapping. Even Dave and his gang clap, although Andy’s clap is sloppy due to all the blood on his hands. Ashley’s mum is sobbing uncontrollably now. His dad has his arm around her. All his brothers and sisters are also crying. And I notice that I’m crying as well.
When I came here from the police station, I wasn’t allowed to see mum for a few days, but when I did at last get to meet with her we had a big talk. She said that Tina had been worried about me, which surprised me, maybe she’s not that bad. She switched the telly off in my room, so I knew it was serious. She’d said I was in a lot of trouble, which is what the police kept saying to me, but I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. She told me she had spoken to the headmaster and he had no choice but to permanently exclude me. I’m not bothered about that, though, because I didn’t go to school very often anyway. I prefer the library. They’ve got better books and you don’t get distracted. You can actually learn something. It’s very easy to get books in here, you just ask for them and then a couple of days later, they’re here.
Ashley’s mum is wailing now. The cockney man introduces this Christian hymn. I don’t know the words but they are projected on a screen above him like in a karaoke bar. I got this idea from my grandma’s funeral as well. We all sing along, even me, even though I don’t like the song or want to sing along to it, I do, because it seems disrespectful not to. Even though Ashley would have hated the song and wouldn’t want me to sing it, it still feels disrespectful. Work that one out.
I’ve been to a lot of schools in my time and they all have one thing in common – they’re all rubbish. Three days after my arrest, Becky rang. She said she was sorry not to answer my texts or voicemail messages, but she had a lot of thinking to do. I explained everything, that I’d killed my imaginary friends off. She didn’t freak out like I was expecting. It turns out, she had three imaginary friends until she was about ten years old, and even now, when she thinks about them, they seem real, so it’s not that weird after all. It’s weird to my mum and to my sister, but to Kate and Becky, it’s normal. That’s the thing about being weird, you are only weird if people say you are.
Becky apologised about thinking I’d killed Brian Smith. She got carried away, she said. But that’s ok, I blamed Ashley, so we’re both guilty on that front. Some of the crags around Helvellyn are really dangerous, it’s really easy to lose your footing. I’ve still got my own scar on the side of my head to prove that. The police said Brian Smith was an accident waiting to happen. I can’t help thinking it was something to do with all the skunkweed he had smoked, which was my fault I suppose, but at the time I couldn’t see any other way of persuading him to let us stay. The police did
n’t think it was my fault. They said that if you drink that much beer and wander round some crags at night, there’s a good chance you’ll come a cropper. It’s no wonder the area is so popular with ravens.
Becky rang a few days after that and asked me to come up and see her in Kendal. So that’s what I’m going to do once I’ve got this funeral over with and they let me out of here. If it ever ends. It’s been over thirty minutes and there’s no exit sign yet. We’re only about two-thirds of the way down the list. There’s another hymn coming up, then a prayer, then another hymn and another speaker to get through yet.
Something about Kate is familiar. She’s quite old, probably late 30s, tall and thin and has reddish hair. She has her hair tied back but great big curls of the stuff spring free as she talks. She reminds me of a woman I met a long time ago. I was in the park, it was summer. I was with my sister and some of her friends. Mum had made her take me with her, they had shouted at each other a lot, but in the end my sister agreed. We were playing hide and seek. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. And I lost them. At first I thought they were hiding, but no, I couldn’t find them anywhere. I wasn’t that worried, I knew how to get home. I knew the road which would take me home, but I didn’t know how to get to the road. And there were a lot of trees, I couldn’t really see. I thought to myself, if I go to the edge of the park I’ll see the road, and if I see the road, I’ll be able to find my way home. So I went to the edge of the park.
It was the wrong road. I went back on to the park and I started to get a bit worried because it was getting late. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then I saw this woman and man. A tall, thin woman with wild reddish hair. I don’t remember the man. He had glasses on. I remember the glasses. They came up to me and they could see I looked worried. And they asked me what was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t really talk to strangers, because my mum had told me never to talk to strangers, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was lost. I was in the park by myself. So I told them. They told me not to worry.
The woman said to me, —Would you like an ice cream? And I thought, yeah, that’d be nice. So she got me an ice cream. It was a Screwball with a bubble gum in the bottom. I used to love that bubble gum at the bottom. I chose strawberry flavoured juice. I didn’t like chocolate juice, I liked chocolate, but not chocolate juice, but I did like strawberry juice. It was really nice. They said to me, —Come back to our house, we’ve got a map. We’ll get the map out, and we’ll find your house, and we’ll be able to get you home.
I started walking with them back to their house. I was holding the woman’s hand. But then something gripped me. It was fear. Something wasn’t right and I pulled my hand from her grasp and ran. They both shouted after me, but I kept running. I ran down the street. I don’t know how I found it but in the end, there it was, the road that led back to the estate.
When I come round, things seem to be progressing. We are on the last speaker. Another relative I think. Then we all have to sing another song. Then the cockney man asks us to be silent as the coffin moves along a conveyor belt. But you don’t see any flames or anything. As it disappears, I watch a pied wagtail fly past, a flicker of black and white and a sort of undulating flight pattern. It seems to be waving goodbye, though obviously it’s not waving goodbye because birds don’t understand the wave goodbye. I’m not sure I understand the wave goodbye. What does it mean? Are you shooing someone away? Perhaps we just need a signal that says this is the end. A wave goodbye, it’s like you are painting a great big invisible full stop in the sky. I don’t understand the wave goodbye but I understand why we need it.
—I know this wouldn’t happen in real life Paul, but I want you to see the coffin burn. It’s important you witness it.
I do what Kate says. The curtain is pulled back and there’s the coffin. Then the flames come from a pit underneath. The coffin catches fire at the corners and the pine-coloured wood darkens. Pretty soon the flames are alive, licking the sides of the box, flickering yellow and orange. The flames grow and darken. The box is consumed by them. It turns black and then starts to glow amber and red. The flames roar and the box crackles and spits. Then the flames die down leaving only embers. The coffin is reduced to just a few charcoal lumps. Even these die down and leave a smoking bed of blackened crumbs. We have burned the box. That’s it. Ashley is no more.
—Well done, Kate says. She pats my knee and smiles. She hands me the box of tissues.
The House Martin
I’m sitting in the front room. There are still boxes of unpacked items scattered around and loose strands of newspaper. The pictures still lean against the wall, waiting to be hung. I’m wondering when mum will get round to actually moving in, but then I think, there’s not much point as we are about to get re-housed. Somewhere safe, mum says. Perhaps that’s why mum always takes so long to move into a place, somewhere in her mind, she’s already getting ready to move out. Mum comes in from the kitchen carrying two cans of lager. She hands one to me.
—Here.
I take the can and open it. I drink from the can.
—How you feeling now? she asks me.
—Ok.
We don’t say anything for a while, just sit and drink. It feels like the final drink, like this is it for me and mum. I watch a house martin as it flies back and forward with mud in its mouth as it constructs its nest below the eaves of our house. We did have house martins when we lived on the estate with dad, although not when we had the flat in Ordsall because the eaves were twenty floors up. But the one under the eaves on the estate was quite a well-established nesting site. Only one day the nest fell to the ground with the young still inside. I was quite small at the time and I didn’t know what to do, but a neighbour got a pair of ladders and nailed an empty ice cream tub to where the nest had been. He put the damaged nest inside. Miraculously the baby birds weren’t injured.
The parents seemed to abandon the new nest, until the cries of the young brought them back. The thing was, mum didn’t like the nest. It was just above our door, and the droppings were a problem. She wanted to destroy the nest, but me and my sister protested and in the end she gave in to us. Shortly after that, a sparrow, for no good reason I could make out, damaged the nest. Not only that, it attacked both the adults and the young. Eventually it drove the martins away. And that was the end of that, they never came back, but we still had an empty ice cream tub nailed to the underside of the eaves of our house.
—What’s she like?
—Who?
—This girl.
—Becky? She’s lovely, mum. She’s really lovely.
I try and describe her, but it’s hard describing someone. They’re not like birds. You can’t just give a physical description followed by their habitat and call. You don’t really get a sense of a person that way.
—Paul?
—Yes?
—Is Becky real?
—Of course she is, mum.
She wants to know where I’ll stay. I tell her I’ll stay at Becky’s. Becky says her parents are alright about me staying for a few days even though they’ve never met me. They don’t know about the trouble I’ve been in with the police. They don’t watch television, which is good for me as they might think I was a ‘joy rider’ and what was that other word they used on the telly, a ‘delinquent’. I had to look that one up. Apparently it means someone who is ‘failing in or neglectful of a duty or obligation’. But I don’t have any duties or obligations, except for washing up and putting the bins out, and the only time I failed to do that was when I was in the Lakes. I got the all clear from the psychiatrist – neither a danger to others, or himself. That was her verdict.
I’ve always been quite happy to wash up. It’s a great opportunity to play my birdcall CDs – swot up on them. You need that, something really easy to do while you’re listening. I don’t mind putting the bins out either. It’s an excuse to have a look around. One thing though that I’ve got from my trip to the Lakes is that there’s more to life than birds.
Don’t get me wrong, I love birds. I love the way they look and I love the fact they can fly, but it doesn’t stop there. There are drugs for instance, some of them good, some of them not so good. I quite like smoking dope, and taking ecstasy is lovely, but I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to try ketamine again.
It’s funny, when I found the bag that day in the cloakroom at Roseway, I really wanted to try them, I’d read so much about them, seen them on the telly, but it was just easier to give someone else the responsibility. Ashley had appeared at a point of danger. I’d conjured him up to protect me. It seemed logical to have him to blame as well. It’s the same with stealing cars. I’d watched it so many times on The Met. It looked so exciting, like flying. It seemed to me that stealing a car was the closest I’d get to fly in Salford. So many times I’d played this video I found on YouTube teaching you how to hotwire a car, but when I actually got round to doing it, it was just easier to give someone else the job.
More than any of these things, though, is Becky. It’s another form of flying. You have to be brave. A fledgling swift gets one chance. You have to drop into the sky with your arms opened out. Then just trust. Trust the air to have substance. Trust the power of lift. Trust the thing you need, to be who you are. Trusting someone takes guts.
Mum tells me she’s got a moving date and she’s found out where they’re moving her to – The Cliff. She’s happy about it. Weaste is not that bad but The Cliff is much nicer, she says. I nod, but I’m more concerned about her use of the word ‘me’. She said moving ‘me’ not ‘us’, which is a bit disturbing. Already in her mind, she has moved me out. I try and lighten things up and talk about how she won’t have to pack any boxes as most of them are still packed up. She smiles and says, —Wait there. When she comes back she has a box in her hand.
King Crow Page 17
