Billy and Girl (2 page)

A few weeks after Dad set fire to himself at the petrol station, Mom took me on a coach trip somewhere near Newcastle to meet my grandfather. That’s my mother’s father. She packed tuna sandwiches and a flask of tea and sat me on her knee in the coach even though I was ten years old, so she wouldn’t have to pay for another ticket. I swear I could smell rubber on the tarmac of the motorway and the lacquer in Mom’s hair and when we arrived we heard a fat man in a pub sing, ‘England! Awake! Awake! Awake!’ I sat under the little tartan blanket and scratched my eyelids, all the time remembering my dad whispering, ‘Hell-oo, babykins, it’s your father here, over and out,’ scratch scratch, and Mom catching my fingers tight in her hands. Grand-Dad talked in whispers to Mom, sometimes leaning over me with his watery eyes and beery breath, checking me out and looking away again.

I swear by the time he had cracked three bad jokes, I thought, Jeez, I really need a fag.

‘You are my balaclava angel,’ Girl whispers to me as I hold up the mirror for her while she trims her fringe. No, I’m not. I’m a
broken-hearted bastard. I want to be the bloke in the Haägen Dasz ads, with good-looking girls in their underwear pouring ice cream all over my big beautiful body. Instead I’m poor, white and stupid. I take my knife into cinemas and stab the velvet seats in the dark. That is my silent broadcast to the British nation. Pain is like lager and Elastoplast. It has made me who I am. There is a history to my pain. It is an experience in search of an explanation but I can’t remember what the experience was. There ain’t no ointments, surgery or insurance form going to heal my nerves and neurotransmitters. The making and unmaking of pain. Grief is like pain. Sometimes it’s hard to experience them apart. I still feel it along the pulses. You can excite pain by touching the parts that hurt. That is what we are going to do.

At night I hide in small gardens outside here and count the TV aerials. I click the heels of my new red trainers three times, take a deep breath, hold my nose, and wait for the wind to take me somewhere better than this.

Girl

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because its mom disappeared and its dad set fire to himself. What that skunk Billy doesn’t understand is that pain is not a riddle. It’s a mystery because we lack crucial information. Billy’s skin is blue. In all weathers. Indoors and outdoors. Blue like the soil on Jupiter probably is. If they ever put Billy into a spaceship and spin him up to the planets, I know he’ll feel at home so long as he can take the TV and a stash of popcorn with him. I bought him a cowboy shirt to keep him warm. It’s got pearl buttons and an extra one sewn inside the cuff in case. Billy always checks the emergency button is still there when he puts it on. It comforts him just about more than anything else. He wants an emergency button for everything: to get out of nightmares, to call for help when the lift gets stuck, to get out of boring conversations.

Got a tattoo inked into his scrawny upper arm. An old-fashioned one like some virgin boy sailor who called men ‘sir’ and choked over his first Lucky Strike in a foreign bar full of hookers. I mean, I can’t believe he had that dopey tattoo done like all the other fat blokes in the world. It’s an anchor entwined with roses and doves. It says Mother, of course.

I don’t know why my mother called me Girl.

Sometimes I think she was just too lazy or too depressed to
bother calling me by my proper name, Louise. So there are two of me: one is named, the other unnamed. Louise is a secret. No one knows about the Louise part of me. Girl stuck and that’s how it’s always been. Louise is England’s invisible citizen and when I read statistics about how many people live in this country, I always add one more: Louise.

When I was seven, instead of learning the times tables off by heart I learnt the name of every single cleaning product. My mother didn’t want a daughter, she wanted a slave girl. Instead of running through parks in little black patent shiny shoes and green ribbons on the end of my plaits like girls do in storybooks, I ran about the house in my knickers with a dustpan and brush. My hands were always in bowls of dirty water washing plates or tying knots in black bin liners full of rubbish. The day I sat my art O level at school all the other kids brought in bowls of fruit and vases of flowers to sketch in charcoal for the still-life exam. I brought in a J Cloth and an aerosol of furniture cleaner and signed my drawing ‘Girl’.

Billy never had to lift a finger. Not only was my brother given a name, but my mother used to dab lavender behind his ears even though he looked like a cocky little evangelist from the day they tore him out of her body at the hospital. Listen, I am no slave girl. I want to be a love diva.

Thing is, no one has ever taught me how to kiss.

Louise is waiting for her prince. He will find her, and gallop towards her on a horse. Every single horse in England must be counted so that Louise will recognise the steed when it comes towards her; she will point and say, ‘Of course I knew it was going to be that one, the fine white stallion I saw in Kent from the car window.’ They spoke silently to each other through the glass of the window and Louise knew she had chosen him
and he was destined to find her. Girl says, ‘You really make me puke lizards, Louise. I’m going to cut your long hair with nail scissors. I’m going to cut the horse into steaks and eat it raw. I’m going to carve
DANGER
into your arm with glass. Listen: the spirit of the Horse and Prince have got into the hollow tubes of your nervous system. It’s a conspiracy. It’s a bacillus like tuberculosis, wheeze and cough it out of your body now!’ But Louise doesn’t listen. She’s waiting for the big day. The prince is Dad.

Dad topped himself. He was a lorry driver and used to show me the big teddy bear he’d hung up in the cabin for good luck. After he died we had to throw away his clothes. The sleeves of his favourite Elvis-style shirt spread out like Christ on the cross. A hero. A saviour. A king. I’ve forgotten how he died. Oh God. Bring my father back to me, safe and sound. Give him back his face. Give him a salary so he can do a weekly shop. Let him buy me a snooker table for Christmas. Give him spirit (hope) so I might catch some of it. Give him electricity (light) so I might see him. Give him words so he might speak to me in my hour of need. Give him another chance so that he can spread honey on my white-bread sandwiches. Give him back with a brand-new skin cleansed of pain, but mostly give him back with a wad of tenners in his back pocket, because that will make him happiest and he can drink a pint without fear in his heart. A poor man is wrapped in pain.

After Dad got burnt, my mother took Billy to visit Grand-Dad in Newcastle. ‘He’s got a glare in his eye, your boy,’ the old clown wheezed when he caught Billy’s stare and found himself trembling. My mother just stroked his forehead like she always did, mad about her boy. She cried over his bruises. Dad said he’d never hit his son again. But
it was like Billy encouraged him. Even when he was a baby he was doing pain research. Crazy for Billy. When Mom disappeared, Grand-Dad was supposed to come and look after us. He did for a while. And then, all of twelve years old, I told him to go. We couldn’t stand his jokes. Ever been to Ducksworth? How much are you worth? It was more than I could bear. Knock knock. Who’s there? You. You who? Yooohoooo! A month of that sort of grief I suggested he go home, which is what he secretly wanted to do – and just send us money instead. We did not want our young minds damaged by Grand-Dad humour. ‘What’s the point of having shampoo when you can have real poo?’ It’s a good thing Grand-Dad left sharpish. Better to have his cash every week and draw him little pictures on thank-you paper.

I love my brother. He is a crippled angel, flying and falling seven days a week. This boy is a genetic engineer because ever since our mother disappeared, he invents a new mom to love him every night. Read his beautiful lips. Ready steady go!

Yeah. Horrible, isn’t it?

Billy smells of Colgate and chips. Sometimes he burns a cork and draws a little moustache on his upper lip. This is his manliness. I mean, who is he supposed to have learnt how to be a man from? Not Dad, that’s for sure. But Billy, who might never become a man, only a play man, a parody of a man, is going to win me and him a new world. A world without pain. Is that possible? Christ, sometimes I wish I had rheumatoid arthritis and a sweet young nurse would explain it was a chronic degenerative condition and send me to physiotherapy twice a week. Pain is the suburb of knowledge we grew
up in. Little houses crowded together, narrow streets and dodgy lampposts. Pain has unanchored us, sent us raging down the nerve pathway to Patel’s English and Continental Groceries for chocolate bars.

‘Why’re you so hung up on this pain thing, man?’ Raj often has to stop himself creasing up at Billy. The boy’s small for a fifteen-year-old, comes up to Raj’s waist, close enough to admire the buckle on his belt. Raj is convinced Billy is going to be famous for something, he’s just got that look about him. Like he’s grooming himself for fame.

‘I’m telling you, Raj, my sister’s not the only one who gets upset around here. Do you know that word, Raj?
Mad
?’

Now that Raj is doing a part-time mechanics course he only works three days a week in his father’s shop, Patel’s English and Continental Groceries. Billy likes a good chat to Raj. For a start, the shop is just a short walk to the end of his road and Raj is a trapped audience. He can’t walk out when he’s bored.

‘How come you know the word “Whiskas”, Raj, but you don’t know the word
Mad
? Pain is an event that demands interpretation. That’s why I go on about it. I’m writing a book, as I’ve told you many a time in the Pickled Newt.’

‘Yeah?’ Raj looks genuinely impressed. Sometimes he takes Billy for a half at the Pickled Newt and gives him a problem to solve. The boy likes to think of himself as an expert on the human mind and it’s true he’s always got his nose stuck in a book. He stretches his hand out to the biscuit shelf and opens a packet of Jaffa Cakes. Better feed Billy England up, then. He hasn’t got a mum to cook for him, has he? ‘What’s it called?’

‘
Billy England’s Book of Pain
.’

Raj methodically chews all the chocolate off his Jaffa, waving the packet in Billy’s direction. The boy shakes his head, deep in thought.

‘I should have gone to university when I was six. The study of the mind is my life’s work. I should have read books in libraries, not been stuck at home making milkshakes for Girl. Made notes in the margins. Underlined sentences with my little pencil stub. I should have gone on dates with girlfriends.’

Raj wants to shut the shop and go for a pint. It’s been a long day, especially as Stupid Club, that being the local neighbourhood community, have used the shop to debate their topics all day. They stand in a huddle by the fridge pretending to buy a packet of sugar, discussing why it is that some people wash dishes and then don’t think to rinse them. So when you make yourself a sandwich, right, and you put it on a side plate that hasn’t been rinsed, the bread tastes of the washing-up liquid. This is just one of the many topics debated by Stupid Club on a daily basis. Raj’s father once tried to freeze the club out of his shop by turning off all the heating. His family went down with a strain of killer flu and Stupid Club rose to the occasion. Shuffled into the shop wrapped in extra woollies and hats, slapping the tops of their arms, united and cheerful, while his children and wife shivered in bed on antibiotics.

‘I’ve missed out, Raj! I should have been nervous when I had a haircut case my girlfriend didn’t like it. We should have gone to the movies together and shared a packet of chocolate raisins. We could have gone to Phuket for a fortnight! Instead I’m holed up here with my crazy bitch sister.’

Raj is interested in the crazy sister. Not many good-looking seventeen-year-olds in the street. ‘Don’t forget her menthols.’ He slaps down a pack of ten cigarettes with pictures of
eucalyptus trees laden with snow on the box. ‘A present from me. Tell her to pop in, I haven’t seen her for a while.’

‘Shall I tell you where she is?’ Billy knows that Raj is always interested to know where Girl is.

‘Where?’

‘Doing a Mom check.’

‘What’s a Mom check?’

Billy decides to chew on a Jaffa after all. ‘It’s where she knocks on the door of a house and pretends that any woman who comes to the door is our mother.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Sad.’ Billy guffaws.

‘Why do you say “Mom”? That’s American, isn’t it?’

‘Watching telly. We like American sitcom moms.’

Raj nods, bewildered. It’s quite nice to feel bewildered, makes a change from Stupid Club reading out loud the nutrition information on plastic tubs of margarine.

The A27 is a circular road that goes around London. A three-lane carriageway. The sky is grey and the tarmac is grey. Girl asks the cab driver to stop for a while so she can look at the 1930s houses built on the shore of the highway. Pebble dash. Old-fashioned flowers growing in the front drive. Tall purple gladioli and trimmed bushes of honeysuckle. Latticed windows. A shining car parked in each well-swept drive.

‘Thinking of buying a property then?’ The cab driver smirks behind his hand.

When Girl winds down the window the lever falls off. Foam stuffing oozes out of the back seat. Rusting springs poke into Girl’s hips. ‘Your car’s a fucking lousy pile of shit.’

The driver can’t decide whether she’s a rock star or a psycho. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, just to be on the safe side.

‘I won’t.’ Girl suddenly opens the door of the cab and a rush of dust flies into her face.

‘Mad cunt.’ The driver leans towards her trying to keep his hands on the wheel as the door comes off its beaten-up hinges. It drags down on the tarmac and Girl jumps out, skipping between the traffic until she makes it to the other side. The Other Side is important to Girl. She always wants to make it to there.

Girl strides in her silver loafers right up to the driveway of the biggest house in the street and thumps on the door with her fists. Then she rings the bell. While she waits she takes out a
pack of menthol cigarettes and lights up. Her face is pale. It always is, but today it is especially pale. Every now and again she bends her knees and peers through the brass letterbox. Girl takes a deep drag of menthol. As far as she’s concerned, menthol is a painkiller. A painkiller with a bit of glamour. She pushes away her peroxide-blond fringe and straightens up. Someone coming. God, she’s so slow. Come
on
!