My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall)

by Stuart David

  And the funny thing is, I don’t even say no.

  29

  So all my dominoes fell, one by one, until Operation Naked Drew was back on again after all. Cyrus kept his promise to back up Harry’s claims, Harry took his story to Bailey, and Bailey bought it, wholesale, leaving Yatesy free and clear and with no other option but to keep his promise to me. Not that he appeared to have any intention of trying to back out of it. The whole thing seemed to be right up his street. So we set it up for the weekend. Yatesy took care of arranging it with Drew, and I settled the details with Elsie, online, so’s I wouldn’t have to put up with any of her madness. Then it was just a case of waiting it out.

  I spent the next few days wandering around the school feeling the love. Cyrus couldn’t get enough of me, Harry gave me the iPad back and told me I could do whatever I wanted with it, and even Drew came up to me at one point and thanked me for the idea.

  “What idea?” I asked him.

  “The idea about doing a painting,” he said. “For my girlfriend.”

  I almost had a stroke at first, wondering how he could possibly know it was my idea, and thinking it had all gone wrong somehow. But it turned out he’d been getting apprehensive about going through with the commission, so Yatesy had told him the idea was mine.

  “No one’s going to pass on a scheme when they know you’re behind it, Jackdaw,” Yatesy said. “When I told him it was one of yours, all his doubts evaporated.”

  Such is life.

  “We’re doing it on Saturday,” Drew told me. “Wish me luck, Jackdaw.”

  “You won’t need it,” I said. “Just make sure you look your best. Spruce yourself up like there’s no tomorrow, and make sure your hair’s on top form.”

  I even managed to make things up with Sandy Hammil, over and above everything else. We met up reluctantly to go over our stories in case our names made their way to Bailey in connection with the fight, and before we knew it we were laughing away again. I think Uncle Ray was right. I think the fight has made us get on even better together. A bit like my mum and dad after some Special Occasion Madness. Without the kissing.

  Speaking of which: It’s over! After one more night of insanity at Uncle Ray’s, the text message arrives while I’m sitting in geography: “You can come home now, Jack. Mum x.”

  The Special Occasion Madness has run its course! That afternoon, I go back straight after school, and I feel quite nervous when I’m unlocking the front door. The bonkers dream is still haunting me, I think, and I’m kind of expecting to find the place all desolate and empty inside, all broken up. Everything looks normal when I come in, though. There’s a crack in the bit of wood above the living room door that wasn’t there before, but that’s about it. All the walls are still standing, and the roof is still where the roof’s supposed to be. Only my mum is in the house, though. She comes out of the living room while I’m hanging my coat up, and for a minute she just stands there looking at me. She seems kind of unhappy, and quite quiet.

  “Have you lost any weight?” she asks me eventually. “You look like you might’ve lost a little bit.”

  “I don’t really know,” I tell her, and she just looks at me some more for a while.

  “Uncle Ray brought your suitcase back this afternoon,” she says. “We’ll have dinner in about an hour.”

  There are a few things I want to tell her, and a few things I want to ask her about, but she’s seeming kind of strange, so I just go upstairs to unpack my suitcase instead. I smile a little bit when I get into my kid room, though. Sometimes I thought I might never see it again, and I lie down on my kid bed and listen to the sound of Uncle Ray not banging any doors and not playing any televisions or radios as loud as they’ll go. It’s very quiet in here. And I enjoy not having Harry sitting at his chessboard all the time too.

  When I unpack my suitcase, I wonder for a little while what to do with the pouch full of golf balls. I consider going downstairs to ask Mum what she gave me them for in the first place, but then I decide against it, and when the suitcase is empty I just put them inside and zip it all up. Then I lie back down on the bed again, listening to the tiny kitchen noises and the no shouting or opera singing.

  Dad still isn’t here at dinnertime. It’s just Mum and me. There are no tiny cigarettes lying on the table, and there’s no plate or even a mat to put one on round at Dad’s chair. It’s good to be eating something I can recognize, though. Between the dinners at school and the food at Uncle Ray’s place, I’d forgotten that it is possible to actually know what you’re eating, and for it to be a thing.

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask after a while, and Mum starts muttering about him, mostly to herself. For a bit it seems like she’s not going to answer, but then she pulls this note out of her pocket and puts it down on the table next to my plate. It’s folded in half, with just her name written on the part of the paper I can see, and she waves her hand across the top of it, letting me know that this will answer my question.

  I don’t really want to read it. The bonkers dream starts to haunt me again, and I try to just focus on my food for a while. Then I can’t ignore the note any longer and I pick it up.

  “Unbelievable,” Mum says as I’m unfolding it and straightening it out.

  “Blame Ray,” it says. “It’s his fault I’m not there. I don’t know how to control him, Mary. He’s dragging me out to celebrate Harry getting suspended from school today. For fighting. I’ll try not to be too late, but you know what he’s like when he gets started.” Then he’s signed it, and Uncle Ray’s signed it too, just to prove it really is all his fault. I start to feel a lot better. This huge wave of relief surges over me. I thought, from the way Mum was behaving, they might not have sorted it out this time and that Dad might be gone. Now I see Mum’s only annoyed about him missing out on the reunion dinner, and all at once the bonkers dream evaporates and stops haunting me.

  “Did you know Harry had been in a fight at school?” Mum asks. “Did you know he’d been suspended?”

  “I knew a bit about it,” I say, and then leave it at that.

  But you probably don’t want to know too much about that stuff, anyway. That’s all just my own private beeswax. What you probably want to hear about is Operation Naked Drew. So I’ll tell you about that now.

  30

  It all starts out beautifully.

  I get to Yatesy’s place about an hour before Drew is due to arrive, and we start working on our plan.

  “I thought we could put Drew about here,” Yatesy says, and he drags a wooden chair into the middle of the room, facing the window. “That way there’s plenty of natural light on him. It’ll really help me to bring out the flesh tones. If I’m off to the side, I won’t cast any shadows, and then I should be able to get some really nice deep contrasts, just from the natural light and shade.”

  It occurs to me that Yatesy isn’t quite focused on the true purpose of the exercise, but I let it pass for the time being.

  “Help me drag the easel over here,” he says, and we pull it close to the wall. Then he tells me to go and sit in Drew’s seat.

  “Turn a bit more to the right,” he says. “Put that leg farther back.”

  Then he comes over and shifts the seat about, and we have to drag the easel a few more centimeters away from the wall. Then he seems happy.

  After that, we get to work on setting up the hiding place for Elsie. Yatesy has these wooden things for hanging his clothes on to dry, like three ladders joined together. He’s got two of them, and we arrange them into a shape so’s they’re like walls with a big space in the middle. Then we start hanging T-shirts and trousers and socks on the wooden bars, along with these big silk blankets he’s got, so’s you can’t see through to the space in the middle. And when that’s done, we hang a big sheet over the top, like a roof, so’s you can’t see in from above, either.

  “How does that look?” he asks me. “Natural enough?”

  “Not quite,” I say, and I pull a few things about a bit a
nd rearrange the sheet so that it looks as if it really is just hanging there to dry. “How about now?”

  “I’m liking it,” Yatesy says, and he crawls inside by pulling two of the walls apart, then draws them back together again once he’s in there. “Can you see me?” he asks, and I study the thing from all different bits of the room.

  “It seems fine,” I tell him. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Sit in Drew’s chair,” he says. “Let me arrange it so’s I can see you.”

  I do like I’m told and watch some pairs of socks moving around on one of the ladder rungs. If I look closely, I can see Yatesy’s eyes peering out at me, along with half his nose and part of a cheek.

  “How’s that?” he asks.

  “I can see you,” I say, and the socks start moving around again.

  “How about now?” he asks. “Any better?”

  “That’s fine,” I tell him. “I can’t see anything. Can you see me?”

  “Perfectly,” he says, and he asks me to pass in the wooden box from beside the armchair. “This’ll be more comfortable to sit on,” he says. “Pass me in one of those cushions, too.” And when he’s got it, he asks me if I think we should put some food in there for Elsie, in case she gets hungry.

  “She’s not going to be in there that long,” I tell him. “We only have to give her enough time to have a good look at Drew. Then you can send him away for a break and get her out of there.”

  He crawls out of the clothes-drier tent and struggles to his feet. “I’m just thinking ahead in case the painting starts to flow,” he says. “If I get caught up in the moment, it can carry me along for hours. Time doesn’t exist anymore. Not when I’m in the zone.”

  Bohemians.

  “We can’t have her in there for hours,” I say. “Drew can’t sit still for hours either—he’ll have to have a break.”

  “Just to stretch now and again,” Yatesy replies. “Just a minute or two at a time.”

  “Then you’ll have to get Elsie out during one of those breaks,” I tell him. “During the first one. Send Drew downstairs to the kitchen for something, or tell him to go to the toilet. Anything at all. The longer Elsie’s in there, the more likely it is to go wrong.”

  He doesn’t look happy with the idea, but he agrees to it. He keeps muttering something about his flow, and the dangers of making a shift to his left brain from the right for too long, but I keep on at him till he properly understands what it is we’re doing here, and eventually I start to get through to him.

  Half an hour in, Elsie arrives, just as planned. She’s really gone to town on her outfit for the occasion, even though she’s going to be hidden away. She’s wearing a green felt hat with a red jewel clipped on the side of it, and her sleeves are enormous. She’s got a purple waistcoat on, and a big pair of crazy boots, and something about the whole getup makes me wish I could draw a little black mustache on her top lip with a felt-tip pen.

  “Don’t look into my eyes, Jack,” she tells me. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  I don’t even know if I had looked into her eyes, but I focus more firmly on her top lip and try even harder to imagine the little mustache fixed in place.

  “Don’t look at me at all,” she says. “Allow yourself some mercy.”

  Then she turns to Yatesy.

  “Jack’s passionately in love with me,” she says.

  “So I’ve heard,” Yatesy replies, and I think he winks at me.

  “Where did you hear that?” I ask him irritably. “Sandy Hammil?”

  “Everybody knows about it,” he says.

  “You’re gazing at me again, Jack,” Elsie says. “Don’t torture yourself.”

  I try to put a halt to the craziness by showing her the tent we’ve set up for her. I show her the little seat in there, and she crawls in to have a shot of it. She seems to like it.

  “Can you see all right?” Yatesy asks her, and she tells him she can see perfectly. “Do you want me to put any water in there for you?” he asks. “Something to keep you hydrated?”

  She sticks her head outside and adjusts her hat. I realize I’m looking at her and quickly transfer my gaze to the carpet, just to make life easy on myself.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says. “The sight of Drew will be all the nourishment I need.”

  “Understood,” Yatesy says.

  It can be very draining interfacing with the mad, so I do what I can to move things along and coax Elsie into position, and then I close the tent up. After that, my work is pretty much done, and I get ready to make my excuses and leave.

  “Remember about the breaks,” I tell Yatesy. “Forget about your left brain until Elsie’s gone.”

  He nods and I pick up my jacket. Unfortunately, just at that moment there’s a knock at the door, and it turns out that Drew has arrived early.

  I try to slip out just as he’s coming in, but he seems delighted to find me here.

  “I’m just leaving,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about me.”

  But he’s not having any of it. “Stay for a bit longer, Jackdaw,” he says. “I want to get your advice on this. I want to make sure we get it right.”

  He seems quite nervous, so I agree to stay for a few more minutes. “Just as long as I don’t have to see you naked,” I joke, and he laughs a nervous little laugh.

  “I’ve spruced myself up,” he says. “Just like you told me to. Do I look all right?”

  I give him the once-over and realize he’s looking more polished than I’ve ever seen him before.

  “You’re looking sharp,” I tell him.

  He goes over to look at a painting that’s hanging on Yatesy’s wall, not very far from where Elsie’s tent is situated. I start to get pretty nervous myself, imagining I can hear Elsie breathing in there, and that I can hear the wooden box creaking whenever she moves. I’m terrified Drew is going to hear it too and the whole thing will blow up in our faces. But Drew is completely oblivious, just staring at the painting on the wall, and then he turns back to me.

  “Do you think I should look something like this?” he asks, and I nod.

  “That’s ideal,” I tell him, and he wanders about looking at some more pictures in different parts of the room.

  “Let’s get you into the hot seat,” Yatesy says eventually. “We’ll run you through a few poses and see what Jackdaw thinks, and then we’d better let him go. He’s a busy man, Drew.”

  Drew nods nervously and comes over toward the chair.

  “Should we move this over to the window?” he asks me. “Is this the best place for it?”

  “This is the best spot,” I tell him. “There’s plenty of daylight here. That’ll help Chris to bring out the flesh tones, and to get some natural contrasts.”

  He gulps a bit at the mention of flesh tones, then comes round in front of the chair and sits down. He crosses his legs one way, then the other, shifting about uncomfortably, and then, suddenly, there’s an almighty crash, like a bunch of fireworks going off. Drew almost has a heart attack and jumps back up off the seat immediately. Even Yatesy looks startled. I scan the room at about a million frames per second, trying to work out what’s going on. And what’s going on, it seems, is that all the ladder things with the fake wet clothes on them have come crashing to the floor, and the box Elsie was sitting on has been kicked backwards and smacked down onto its side. On top of all that, Elsie is tearing across the room toward us, her face blazing with anger, while Drew experiences a second near heart attack and flops back down onto the chair. Then he just sits there, with his eyes wide like saucers, staring up at Elsie, who’s screaming into his face.

  “What have you done?” she cries. “What crime of violence have you inflicted upon yourself?”

  Drew looks as if he’s about to start crying, and Elsie grabs the hair on both sides of his head, just beneath the ears, and demands to know where his tumbling locks have gone.

  “You were an angel made flesh,” she shouts. “Now you’re nothing but a ridiculous s
choolboy. This is awful. My love has flown.”

  It’s clear that Drew thinks he’s just having a dream now and that he’s probably expecting to wake up at any minute. He seems to have gone into some kind of state of hypershock, too.

  “Jackdaw told me to do it,” he manages to blurt out, amid his confusion. “He said it would make the painting look better.”

  Then Elsie turns on me, before I can even deny it.

  “You!” she shouts at an earsplitting volume. “Your jealousy is without limits. You’ve ruined everything. Again. Never ever talk to me again, and you can forget all about me working on any stupid projects with you.”

  And then she just screams for a while, very loudly, and when she’s finished she runs out of the room in tears and slams the door closed behind her.

  The three of us stand and stare at each other for a few minutes, no one saying anything, Drew bewildered beyond belief, Yatesy looking strangely impressed. Then I tell them I’d better go after Elsie and try to calm her down, but I don’t. When I reach the front step, I just close the door quietly behind me, and then I go home, leaving Yatesy to sort the whole thing out with Drew.

  And the worst of it is, it all started out so beautifully.

  31

  So there I am, halfway through Monday morning, sitting on the steps outside the old building with Sandy Hammil and telling him all about what happened at Yatesy’s place at the weekend. Sandy’s got a major crease on, choking on his bottle of water and generally making me wonder if someone who takes such delight in your misery can really be called a friend, when Yatesy’s sister comes along and stops in front of us. She just stands there looking at me, waiting for Sandy to stop laughing and choking, and then she says, “Are you The Jackdaw?”

  I’m not sure whether to say yes or no. I have the feeling that no good can come of me being who I really am. But before I can decide what to do, Sandy says, “That’s him,” and I can feel another deepening of our friendship coming on. I’m in for a surprise, though.