Benedict, who seemed to be irritatingly knowledgeable about every instrument known to man, had also gained Gulliver a place in a local school of rock. The students were grouped according to their age and ability, and practised and even performed together as if they were in a real band. Gulliver played bass guitar, which Benedict said had helped greatly in getting him a place, the only less popular choice of rock instrument being the autoharp.
‘Name four great rock bands,’ Benedict had said to Aishe, when she’d risen to defend her son’s instrument of choice.
‘Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, U2,’ she’d reeled off.
‘Excellent,’ said Benedict. ‘Now name the bassist in each one.’
‘Bill Wyman!’ she’d later exclaimed.
‘Well done,’ he’d said. ‘And it only took you two days.’
No, Aishe knew she wasn’t a thicko. But sometimes the Lily-white Boy Hardy made her feel unpleasantly close to one, even with a subject as trivial as rock music. Aishe loathed feeling at a disadvantage with people. It made her feel vulnerable and that was not to be tolerated.
Her usual tactic to redress this was to unleash her weapon of choice — a frankness of such unexpurgated brutality that it could raise welts. It had not, over the years, made Aishe a lot of friends. But as she enjoyed the company of only two people — her son and herself — that suited her fine. Letting Benedict into their lives had stemmed from relucant necessity — he had been the only applicant she could afford. Now he was here, Aishe knew she had no choice but to suck it up. The alternative was to give in to Gulliver’s demands to attend regular school, and Aishe was not ready for that. Not yet.
But, by God, the wading bird grated on her! Aishe had no patience with introspection, but in the previous three weeks she’d found Benedict pushed so many of her buttons that she began to question whether she’d had a previous life as a Pearly Queen. His plummy accent, his faux cool, his too-clever-by-half turn of phrase — Aishe had met plenty of his type in bars around the world, and under that glib façade they had all proved to be whining, spineless Mummy’s boys. His type were not men. Certainly not men you could depend on.
What also galled her was that Gulliver and Benedict had clicked from the start. Another indication that Paleface was a boy, not a man, Aishe decided. Still, it was hard to see a stranger enjoy the kind of easy, laughter-filled relationship she had had with her son until only recently. These days, Aishe thought ruefully, all Gulliver and I seem to do is snipe at each other, about petty stuff like t-shirts. But then I am his mother, she reminded herself. I’m in this relationship for life. Whereas Benedict ‘Stick Insect’ Hardy is in it for a weekly payment in cash, and when this school year is over, he will leave.
Three weeks down, Aishe thought. Only another eight months to go.
‘Right, I’m off,’ she said to the pair. ‘There are dogs and cats that need to be separated from morons and reassigned to people with a clue. I’ll be back at six with tacos. Want one?’ she asked Benedict in a tone that would encourage a rapid answer in the negative from most people.
‘Thank you,’ he said with a smile. ‘Chicken, by preference.’
‘Of course.’ Aishe gave him a look. ‘God forbid you should eat any meat that bleeds.’
She grabbed her car key and aimed it like a weapon at the pile of t-shirts, untouched at the foot of the stairs.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Gulliver rolled his eyes.
Aishe bit back a snappish retort. Instead, she smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I appreciate the help.’
Suck on that, Paleface, she thought, as she shut the door behind her and headed to her car. No one implies Aishe Herne is a bad parent and gets away with it.
Back in the house, Benedict glanced at Gulliver. ‘I suggest an hour of mathematics, one of science and then a concerted attempt at completing ‘Long Night of Solace’ on Halo. If we’re focused, we should be finished in time to ensure the Xbox has cooled down before your mother puts her hand on it at six.’
Gulliver frowned. ‘Did she tell you she checks it?’
‘No, but we both know she does, don’t we?’
The boy shrugged. Benedict noted shoulder blades that seemed too big and bony for the grey t-shirt, which bore the somewhat obscure legend ‘Area Man’. Benedict remembered that stage well, where your body parts insisted on growing at different speeds, giving you no chance of looking or acting like anything but a complete spastic. At one time, his legs had been so long and skinny and his head so comparatively oversized and blond that he’d resembled, as one of his friends had kindly pointed out, a snooker cue about to pot the white.
‘I’ll get the laptop.’ Gulliver hopped back up the stairs.
While he was gone, Benedict went over to the bookshelf in the living room and started studying the collection of framed photographs on it.
‘Weren’t you cute?’ He smiled as Gulliver reappeared. ‘And in this one, so very, very naked.’
Gulliver flipped him a one-fingered salute.
‘And who are these little tykes?’ Benedict picked up a silver frame.
‘Mum and her brothers. And her sister.’
‘One aunt and three uncles,’ said Benedict. ‘Do you see them often? I assume they all live back in Blighty?’
‘I’ve never met any of them,’ Gulliver said. ‘Oh yeah, wait. I’ve met one of them. That one—’ He pointed at a small, dark boy, the only one of the children who wasn’t smiling. ‘But I don’t really remember him much. I was only six or seven.’
‘Why don’t you see them?’ Benedict asked. ‘Cost of travel?’
Gulliver shrugged. ‘I don’t think they like each other. When he came—’ he pointed again at the young Anselo, ‘—all they did was fight.’
‘Been there,’ Benedict murmured. He replaced the photo on the shelf and reached for another. ‘Christ, who’s this?’
‘Frank.’
‘And apart from being at least three hundred pounds of heavenly joy, Frank is—?’
‘Was. Mum’s husband. He died.’
Benedict had been well trained to repress the public display of any emotion, but this little revelation proved beyond him. He goggled openly at Gulliver.
‘I’m sorry? He was … he and she were … married?’
‘Yup.’
‘And he died?’
‘Yup. Want a soda?’
‘Anything stronger?’ Benedict muttered. He held the photo closer and then moved it further away, as if trying to bring into focus the idea of a union between small, slender Aishe Herne and this really quite extraordinarily large black man.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Gulliver was beside him again, holding out a can of Sprite.
‘Oh, I sincerely hope not …’
‘How did he and Mum get it on?’
‘No! Ouch!’ Benedict hastily replaced the photo on the shelf, then wiped his fingers on his shirt. ‘That is … Dear God, no! Wrong!’ He snatched the can of Sprite from Gulliver and chugged down a long, desperate mouthful. ‘Bad, bad child!’
‘You were the one thinking it,’ Gulliver said with an offhand shrug.
Benedict gave him a hard stare. ‘You do realise that if you are messing with me in any way, I will tell everyone you have a poster of Miley Cyrus over your bed.’
‘How do you know I don’t?’ said Gulliver.
‘Katy Perry, then.’
Gulliver glanced at the photo. ‘I was only three when he died but I sort of remember him. He was cool. Mum really liked him. A lot.’
‘How do you know if you were only a nipper?’
‘On their wedding anniversary, she gets out an old film called Show Boat and sits and watches it and drinks tequila and cries.’
‘Good God. Why Show Boat?’
‘Frank used to sing Old Man River. He had a real big, deep voice just like the film guy. Paul someone.’
‘Paul Robeson,’ murmured Benedict. ‘So that would be the 1936 version, not 1951.’
&n
bsp; ‘Yeah, whatever.’
‘How long were they married?’
‘Dunno. Two years? He choked to death on a peanut.’
‘A peanut?’ Benedict’s eyebrows rose. ‘The man looks as if he could swallow a wildebeest whole.’
‘Whatever. He was a good guy.’ Gulliver upended his Sprite to finish it, and then crushed the can in his fist.
‘Well, now,’ said Benedict, after a pause. ‘In the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, “Don’t I feel like the arsehole?”’
‘It’s “ass”, not “arrrse”, you Limey retarf,’ said Gulliver.
‘Retarf?’
‘It’s when you can’t even spell retard right.’
‘I see … Very well, young person. Prepare yourself for extra calculus, a recital of the entire periodic table and, on Halo, a sound and thorough kicking of your arf!’
Aishe set the handbrake of her 1976 two-door Volkswagen. Back in England, it would have been a Golf Mark I. Here, it was known as a Rabbit. Aishe still found the idea of parking a Rabbit outside the animal shelter mildly amusing. One day, she thought, it would break down for good and she’d have to abandon it here. Pity the towing company that had to sort that out.
She did a quick check of her face in the rear-view mirror. Lately, she’d found herself doing this a little too frequently for comfort, and it annoyed her that she wasn’t sure why. Aishe had become aware from an early age that she was beautiful. Probably too early, she suspected. Up until the age of ten, she’d looked a lot like Anselo — small, slight and dark. Friends of her two oldest brothers noticed her only if she banged into them running down a hallway in the Herne’s big, ramshackle North London house. They’d yell at her to slow down and she’d give them the finger. And then she’d keep on running, usually out the door and up the road to the park, where she’d do laps until it was time for dinner. Her father used to joke that Aishe had two settings: running or unconscious. There was no in between.
Aishe’s father died the day before she turned eleven. He never saw me as anything but a scrawny little scrap, she thought. And it was only a year later that I started to blossom.
By thirteen, Aishe was as dark and luscious as a young Elizabeth Taylor. Now she had quite a different effect on her oldest brothers’ friends, some of whom were no longer welcome in the Herne house as a result of the attention they insisted on paying her. Aishe’s brothers, Anselo included, took their roles as heads of the household very seriously now — and not just because Uncle Jenico had made it clear he expected it of them. Now completely streetwise and precocious, Aishe protested that this was outmoded sexist claptrap, and that she and her younger sister, Jenepher, needed those idiots to protect them about as much as they needed corsets and smelling salts. Uncle Jenico took her aside and quietly told her to back off and let her brothers take this opportunity to learn to be men. Quiet Uncle Jenico being exponentially more terrifying than Uncle Jenico with a raised voice, Aishe did as he asked.
And then I took my own opportunity, Aishe thought — to spend as little time at home as possible without actually going into foster care. Then I left for good.
Aishe had arrived in Europe on her seventeenth birthday with nothing but £50 and the knowledge that her looks would get her pretty much whatever she asked for. She’d spent the four years since she turned thirteen proving this — as well as discovering that some things were wiser to ask for than others. Her desire to physically run and run had sublimated into a general state of restlessness. Before moving to Marin, she’d never stayed more than a few months in one place, no matter who was begging her to stay.
Jonas might have begged her to stay. If he’d known about his son …
Aishe scowled at her reflection. Having got pregnant at nineteen, Aishe had become used to the usual reaction when she told people how old Gulliver was. ‘No!’ they said. ‘Come on! You cannot have a child that age.’
At least, that’s what they used to say. It didn’t happen so often these days. Was that because she was starting to look older? She was still only thirty-three, which was hardly old. But then, she had to admit, it wasn’t that young any more either. Gulliver was fourteen. In three or four years, he might be the one leaving home.
Aishe was in a foul mood when she entered the animal shelter where she volunteered three afternoons a week. She didn’t really know why she did it. The best she could come up with was that rescuing animals from danger and keeping them safe made her feel that safety was possible. I can’t stop them dying from disease or being run over, she thought, but I can make sure they’re no longer around people who want to hurt them. Or who might abandon them.
She was aware that her lack of patience with some of the people who came in to adopt a pet — the customers — was the reason she’d been quietly shifted from the front desk and asked to help out with the behavioural team. They were the ones who trained the animals — mostly dogs, but the odd cat and bird — so they could send them out into the world again knowing they wouldn’t bite, shit in shoes or swear in fluent Armenian.
Aishe had proved to be a talented trainer, but she knew that Nico, the shelter manager, was still keeping an eye on her. He had already told her that he did not consider her — in his words — ‘a team player’. It was because Aishe liked Nico that she’d bitten back the retort she’d made to the last person who’d told her that there was no ‘I’ in ‘team’. (Mr Warren, her high-school deputy principal.) ‘No,’ Aishe had said, ‘but there is a ‘U’ in c***.’ To this day, Aishe had no idea what her Uncle Jenico had said to prevent the school expelling her.
Nico’s office was just off reception, so he had a clear view of everyone going in and out. Everyone had a good view of him, too, and one glance at Nico was often all it took to make anyone intent on causing trouble, such as those who felt their animals had been unfairly confiscated, to pause and reflect — and, most usually, turn around in the doorway and go home again.
Nico had been brought up in one of the rougher parts of Oakland, the city across the harbour from San Francisco, perhaps best known for being the birthplace of the Hell’s Angels. Nico looked not unlike a Hell’s Angel. He was over six feet, with wrestler’s shoulders, arms like hams, a large pot belly and a black mullet that he wore tied back in a ponytail. He had tattoos all over — arms, neck, calves — many with blurred outlines which indicated they had been done nowhere near a professional studio.
Despite appearances, Nico had never been in trouble; he’d just spent plenty of time around it. He’d trained as a social worker but moved into animal welfare, having seen the clear link between domestic and animal abuse. He strongly believed that nailing people for animal cruelty was the best way to interrupt what would become an escalating and often vicious cycle of violence. Get the bastards who stubbed out cigarettes on puppies, and you’d get the same ones who’d back-hand a crying toddler across a room or break their girlfriend’s ribs for overcooking a steak. Nico had met men who’d done all those things, and he still wasn’t entirely sure if his decision to go after them legitimately was the best one. Sometimes Nico dreamed of finding himself alone with these men. Just him — and Mack, the pitbull he’d rescued and trained. Mack had been near dead when Nico found him and nursed him back to health. Now, the dog would do anything Nico asked. Anything …
As it was, the animal abusers and neglecters took one look at Nico and found their belligerent excuses dying in their mouths. His presence had the same effect as the low growl of a large predator: it bypassed their brains and raced straight to their primordial centre of fear, which for most seemed to be situated right around the muscle in charge of bladder control. So Nico had not yet had to resort to un-holstering Mack.
In fact, there were really very few people he felt ill equipped to handle. In fact, there was only one. And here she came now. With a face like a nuclear warning. Aishe Herne.
It wasn’t that Nico couldn’t handle her as such. When he made suggestions, she’d usually listen. When he moved her from the fron
t desk to the behavioural team, she’d rolled her eyes but hadn’t objected. No, Nico knew he could manage her. But still, she unnerved him more than anyone he’d met (including one actual, bona fide psychopath and a gang member wired on meth who took a chainsaw to his neighbour’s house). Why she unnerved him, Nico wasn’t sure. Maybe it was her outspokenness? Stuff came out of Aishe’s mouth that would never have passed through most common-decency filters, stuff that landed in conversations like canisters of hissing tear gas amid a shower of glass.
She didn’t speak like that to everyone, mind you. She was generally polite to those she respected. Like Nico. And Barbara, the head trainer. And … no, that was it.
Nico felt the usual internal struggle. Aishe was a talented and dedicated volunteer — and those were hard to come by. But she didn’t work well with others. Two other equally good volunteers had left because of Aishe.
Aishe was approaching the front desk, and Nico saw the two women on duty exchange a look and square their shoulders, preparing themselves. He stepped out of his office.
‘Aishe,’ he called.
She pulled up short and swivelled on her heels. ‘What?’ she snapped.
Nico silently counted to three, then smiled and beckoned her over.
‘I just wanted to let you know that the Brat’s adoption has been approved. His new owner is picking him up at four.’
Aishe’s lip was curling. ‘The woman wants to rename him Rusty Wallace. What the hell kind of name is that?’
‘He was a famous Nascar driver. She told me she chose the name because the Brat’s quick off the line but crashes a lot.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
The corner of Nico’s mouth rose. ‘If I were a half-blind dachshund, I’d rather be named after a famous car racer than a German sausage.’
‘She could have called him Dash,’ Aishe muttered. ‘At least that has some dignity.’
‘She’s a nice lady,’ said Nico quietly. ‘She’ll be a good owner.’
The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence Page 3
