Your Fault, page 14
Nadia, you gather, has a new boyfriend. But always with Nadia there is a new boyfriend, or something gone wrong with the old one. This boyfriend, she says, is a bit of a big-head. He is a know-it-all, and your mother would not like him. He is only little, she adds, lowering her voice; but he fights me. In bed, he fights me. He is rough with me.
Your mother replies, too quiet to hear.
But I like it! exclaims Nadia; I fight him back. I am bigger!
She laughs, and your mother laughs too.
He satisfies me, confirms Nadia.
You are lucky, says your mother.
For you?
The same, she says. He is suffocating.
What will you do?
What can I do?
Another martini? suggests Nadia.
Another man, sighs your mother, and again they are laughing. Nadia shrieks; she is drunk. You suppose your mother is, too.
What about Sidney? asks Nadia then.
Sometimes, answers your mother. Yes, sometimes, still.
He is satisfying?
He is a man.
You hear your sister approaching along the side of the house, and as she leads Ana into the kitchen, both of them garlanded with daisies, you push the last piece of bread in your mouth and step away from the living room. You assume an innocent expression and casually open the pantry.
Lorraine frowns at you. What’s wrong with your face?
You shake your head, your mouth too full to speak, your mind too crowded with pictures of your mother, and Sidney Goldman, and Nadia’s legs in her nylons.
You have abandoned your cricket game; you are no longer interested.
It is an afternoon in late July, 1971. You are eleven and a half, soon to start Senior School, and you are good at football and cricket, drawing, writing and climbing. Like your father, you are unafraid of high places, including the electricity sub-station behind Mattishall Crescent, a plain red-brick building without any windows. If you were to scale the drainpipe you would be able to get onto the roof.
Woody Woods dares you, and manfully you consider the task, your hands on your hips. The brackets will provide footholds, and there is just enough space behind the pipe for your fingers.
Okay, you say.
The drainpipe is sturdy, painted dark green, and connects at the top with an iron trough where you can rest your arms and pause for a moment to gather your strength. You dare not look down. A raised rim of brick encloses the roof space, and the next stage is to hoist your leg over the coping stone, then roll onto the concrete and stand and move away from the edge.
You graze your forearm on the coping stone, and clunk your knee as you land, but it is easily done. The roof is flat, almost level with the eaves of the houses around it. A warm breeze blows. A dry leaf skitters into a corner, and you hold your arms out to each side of you and turn slowly around. Brendan O’Neil comes next, and does the same thing. When Woody joins you he yodels.
From here you can see into the Shrubberies, which appears to be drowsing. To the rear and right of the sub-station you look down on potting sheds and flower beds, cold frames and washing lines, a motorcycle under a tarpaulin. Then you notice a woman in a green-and-black swimsuit, kneeling in the shade of a sycamore. The shadow is splotched with sunlight. A small child sits in a paddling pool. The woman is Mrs Mulgrew. She lifts her sunglasses and looks at you steadily. Peter, be careful, she says.
I will, you reply.
No, I think you should come down from there.
I will, you repeat.
The furthest horizon is the one you can see from your living room, the Lingwood Road shops. Only the angles are different. The sub-station is silent. You lie flat with one ear to the warm concrete, listening closely, then stand and approach the ledge at the front. You grip the rim with both hands and straddle the coping, your right leg dangling outside, your left knee on the roof.
You know you could not jump safely from here. Even if you were to hang from the rim by your fingers, then drop to the pavement, you would likely break a leg, perhaps even your neck. The contemplation of this possibility causes a thrill in your tummy; your perineum too. Still gripping the rim you ease yourself upright. You stand as though poised on a tightrope, your arms a few inches out from your sides. Slowly you shuffle around and stand perfectly still, facing the roofline of the houses directly across from you, nursing the tingling sensation in your fingers and toes. The breeze ripples your tee-shirt.
What are you doing? says Brendan.
Malty, you’re mental, says Woody.
They are scared now, more scared than you are. But high places don’t bother you.
Peter? calls Mrs Mulgrew, her voice seeming far distant.
It’s okay, you insist, and lower your gaze to the pavement on the other side of the road, then draw back your eye-line, bring it back over the road, until you can see the paving directly below you. Blurrily you register the toes of your trainers projecting from the edge of the sub-station. You hear the breeze, and the pulse in your ears. You feel your heart muscle pumping. You might so easily tip forwards and fall. You might so easily jump.
Peter, please! calls Mrs Mulgrew; don’t do anything silly.
Why would I? you say.
At the steelworks your father climbs chimneys and gasholders, all the high places. So does Uncle Sidney, who isn’t really your uncle. Danger does not deter them; jeopardy comes with the job. They work different shifts; one clocks on as the other clocks off. Sometimes, still, your mother shags Sidney Goldman.
How long do you stand there, being your father?
For many years afterwards you will remember this moment, and the urge to tip forwards, to plunge head-first to the pavement as Mrs Mulgrew pleads with you not to. That urge will not leave you, or the sensation of falling, the hard pavement rushing to meet you. Many times it will wake you.
1972
this is how your world is arranged
It is 1972 and here you are in your exercise book, describing yourself to yourself, unaware of your older self, who will one day come back here to find you:
I am Peter, known as Malty to my friends, which is short for Malteser, not because you can eat me but because my Mum comes from Malta. I have dark brown hair, brown eyes and olive coloured skin. For distinguishing features I have two small scars, one on my forehead and one on my lip. They are the result of a holiday accident. Two of my front teeth are chipped. I am small for my age which is twelve and a half. The half is important. For passtimes I enjoy reading, especially spy stories like James Bond and school comedies by Anthony Buckeridge. I enjoy football and cricket both of which I play for the school at. I am good at climbing. I have one sister younger than me and no brothers. She used to annoy me but now she’s OK. I don’t have any pets. We had a puppy but it died of distemper. My favorate thing at school is the four o’clock bell and the worst is everything else. With friends I sometimes act the fool. They say I am mental but I never care what other people say. My ambition is to be a multimillionaire with a fleet of Rolls Royce’s. My Dad wants me to be an apprentice in the steelworks but I don’t agree. I don’t know what my Mum wants. She keeps changing her mind, which is a women’s perogative.
The exercise is headed Pen Portrait and dated 12th July 1972, a Wednesday. You have reached the end of your first year in Seniors, and this is the last thing you will write for Miss Cosby, who will not correct your spelling or give you a mark; she may not even read it. The following pages are blank.
You spend your last session in English composing this report, and when the bell sounds at four o’clock you cap your fountain pen and shove the exercise book in your stiff leather satchel and join the throng of other boys on the dark stairwell. In your recollection, they will all be boys. You won’t remember the smell of them, the piping din of so many young voices. You won’t recall any girls. Five more hours of sunlight remain in this day and you are impatient to be free of the building so you can get home and get changed and go out again. You are twelve and a half, still small for your age, and constantly active, forever sprinting, chasing and catching.
It is the twelfth of July, a Wednesday, and your mother is working till five, your father till ten, which means you must let yourself in to your house. There is a small window beside the back door, the metal latch left unhooked, and though the window appears to be closed it could be opened by anyone. The key sits inside on the ledge, just above the height of your head, and you can locate it quite easily. Lorraine would need to stand on the house-brick that is kept by the bin in the garden. But Lorraine is a dawdler. If this were any other day she would not get home before you.
On any other day you would let yourself in to your house and kick off your shoes, tug off your tie. Clammy from running, you would drink a glass of water and pour another, then forage in the fridge and cupboards for food, which you would eat as you climbed the stairs to your bedroom. Perhaps you would sit on your bed while you finished your tea; perhaps you would daydream. Often you daydream. Then you would change into your jeans, your trainers and tee-shirt, and go to the toilet – remember to flush; wash your hands afterwards – and hurry downstairs. You would leave the house by the back door, carrying your cricket bat, your County Special cricket ball, and there would be no need to knock on the doors of your friends, since they would be coming out, too. Woody Woods would be bringing his stumps. Brendan O’Neil, who goes to St Xavier’s, would be bringing his pair of old pads that you take turns to strap on, one pad for each batsman.
Your older self, remembering this, may come to exaggerate how often it happens, but most days after school you will gather on Seething Green to play cricket, should the weather permit it. This has been the routine since the start of the Ashes, and usually there are enough boys for five or six on each side, sometimes seven or eight. You are the captain of one team, Brendan O’Neil of the other, since you are the best batsman and he is the best bowler.
The games may last until dusk, until it is too dark to see, and in the misty gloom of those warm summer evenings you will find yourself free of your home, your parents, their shouting and silences, and you will not want to stop playing, even as the other boys start drifting away. In your head you are Basil D’Oliveira, Geoffrey Boycott, Dennis Lillie, Keith Stackpole. England are drawing one-all with Australia, and the third test is about to begin at Trent Bridge. You don’t mind which side you are on, so long as you can keep sprinting, chasing and catching.
But this afternoon as you hurry from school you encounter a clamour of other children at the school gates and the stirring, cacophonous sound of a fife and drum marching band. A procession of banners and flags blazes by in the sunshine, passing over the heads of the crowd. You recognize the Union Jack, and the flags of Northern Ireland and Scotland, and glimpse the words Dauntless Few, but you cannot see what is happening, what this is about. There are too many other children blocking your way, and most are bigger than you, the fifth-formers like adults, like grown women and men, despite their school ties and their blazers.
You press through to the front. A policeman strides by you, followed by two columns of men in bowler hats and white gloves, each sporting an orange sash, not one of them smiling. Across the street a window flashes open and a man in a vest leans out, casually spits in his garden. An elderly woman comes to stand at her front gate, her arms crossly folded.
You count five bands in the parade, two already gone by, three still to come, and they make you think of toy soldiers, except for the men’s paunches, thin sloping shoulders, long hair. The third troop is dressed in pale blue livery, white swags of rope slung from their epaulettes, white frogging on their tunics. Marching four abreast, they are led by a line of drummers drilling a tinny rat-a-tat-tat on their snares, then a stocky, flush-faced man with a big bass drum on his belly, who skips nimbly left and right, swinging his sticks, ducking and rearing. The fifers are piping a tune that you think you might know, perhaps one that your sister is learning to play on her Pixiano piano, her present from your father last birthday.
But it isn’t all men. Ahead of the next band comes a group of women in hats and fancy frocks, dressed as if for a wedding. They at least appear to be cheerful, while the men behind them have an air of annoyance, though you cannot think why since they don’t come from your estate, may not even come from your town, and have no reason to come and parade here. The tasselled banner before them reads Loyal Orange Institution, which ought to mean more than it does – you are twelve and a half – but doesn’t, not yet. History happens elsewhere; it is happening always.
As the next band approaches, you step from the kerb and walk alongside them. The music is rousing; so too is the spectacle, and many people have come out to watch them, many people you recognize. They are clustered on doorsteps, front lawns and street corners, including Brendan O’Neil and one of his brothers, who live at the turn for Bawdeswell Avenue, which is where, laughing, you pretend to be a piper too, lifting your knees and swinging your shoulders, and cannot at first comprehend what has happened to you, how you come to find yourself on your back on the pavement. You are mental, and sometimes act the fool. But you have been pushed to the ground, and kicked, and now one of the pipers is fighting with Jonjo O’Neil, grappling with him on the grass in front of the houses.
Others are rushing to join in, policemen running to stop them. The bands have come to a halt, marching on the spot, still playing. Cymbals are crashing. The drums are much louder. People are shouting. You scramble to your feet with your satchel and look towards Brendan, your friend. You assemble your face as if there were stars and squiggles and exclamation marks encircling your head. But Brendan isn’t smiling.
Stupid Orange cunt, he calls you.
Of course this is how your world is arranged; you ought to know that by now, you have no excuses. You support Leeds United; your friends are Chelsea, Man United, Arsenal. Your father smokes Embassy Tipped; other men smoke Player’s No.6. Your father has bought a dark blue Ford Escort; Sidney Goldman now drives a red Vauxhall Viva. The sequence of doors in your stretch of the street runs burgundy and green, burgundy and green, and your door is a green one.
There are these differences, and others; they make sense of your life. But in your town, too, there is English and Scottish, since the steelworks was built by a Scottish company, as were the first houses. Several thousands of men came down from Scotland, a few hundred also from Ireland, Wales, the industrial North, in search of work, a new beginning to things. Others came from other countries: Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia. The people in your town came from all over, but mainly they are English and Scottish, and if they are Scottish they must be Protestant or Catholic, which on your estate means Bawdeswell Infants or St Christopher’s, Bawdeswell Seniors or St Xavier’s.
If the Catholics have a different cast to them, a different accent or smell, this isn’t something you’ve noticed. Whatever distinguishes a Catholic from a Protestant isn’t something you can hear or smell or see. It cannot be that they have more children than they can care for. Your own mother has only two children; Mrs McIllaney has only Bernie and Mary. On the question of religion your father has been determined: you were not to be brought up in a faith; you were not to go to a church. And if your mother is different from other women this isn’t to be explained by her religion. If she is so exotic, so alluring to other men, that’s because she comes from Malta, which explains her complexion, her accent, her temper. And if your father cannot satisfy her, that’s not because he is Scottish, or a Protestant. They may have come from different countries and different religions, but that is not why they argue. Their unhappiness does not begin with God and prayers and priests – and nor will it end there.
Today is the twelfth of July, a Wednesday, and the Loyal Orange Institution has chosen to parade through your neighbourhood. Your friend has called you an Orange cunt, and his brother has pushed you to the pavement. There has been a brawl in the street, to the accompaniment of a mock-military band. Any of this might give you cause to remember this day. But for your future self, looking back on these events, it is the next thing to happen that will fix it in your memory; it is the surprise of the immediate future that will make your past memorable.
Shaken by what has occurred, and afraid you might cry, you walk quickly home. The back door is open: today your sister has got in before you. Then you notice your father. He is standing in the kitchen, facing Lorraine, whose expression is fearful.
You dump your satchel on the yellow-topped table. You smell your father’s sweat, his Teacher’s Scotch Whisky. Why aren’t you at work? you ask him.
His eyes are rheumy, his shoulders hunched. A cigarette burns in his cupped hand. He wears an old brown sweater with no shirt underneath. His hair is uncombed and he needs to have a shave. His stubble is white.
Is he wearing his slippers? He seems an inch or two smaller.
Only recently, standing here in this kitchen, exactly as you are now, you said something you shouldn’t have. Whatever it was – cheeking your father – the sudden blow to the side of your head caused you to forget it entirely. You fell to the floor by the fridge, and would not get up when he told you to. You curled into yourself, and he grabbed you by your arm and forced you to stand. He pushed you towards the living room, but this time he didn’t come after you and didn’t hit you again. Once was enough. Your ear throbbed, the side of your face. You were crying. Now it is his turn.
I didn’t go in today, he says, and rubs the back of his neck. Your mum and me had things to talk about.
