Boy A Read online

  Jonathan Trigell was born in Welwyn Garden City in 1974. In 2002 he completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester University.

  His first novel, Boy A, won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best work in the Commonwealth by an author under thirty-five, and also the Waverton Award, for best first novel of 2004. It has now been made into a film by Channel 4.

  His second novel, Cham, has also been published by Serpent’s Tail.

  Praise for Boy A

  ‘A compelling narrative, a beautifully structured piece of writing, and a thought-provoking novel of ideas’ Sarah Waters, Chair of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Judges

  ‘A fine and moving debut novel…Harrowing at times, this compulsively readable novel is more optimistic than it sounds…a rare treat’ Independent

  ‘A thought-provoking commentary on human nature…A gripping and disturbing read, Boy A is a carefully cultivated work that challenges readers while also being entirely gripping’ Good Book Guide

  ‘The book bristles with issues of personal responsibility, social justice and the reformative value of prison life. It would give reading groups much to ponder over’ New Books Mag

  ‘This debut by Trigell is ultra-stylish and just dark enough, dealing with a difficult subject without plastering on the rose-tint. Boy A deserves recognition as a formidable and engrossing read’ BookMunch

  ‘This modern day immorality tale about the attempted rehabilitation of a child implicated in murder…[is] delivered with a horrific sense of foreboding’ Arena

  Dad and Mum

  Acknowledgements:

  Anna Davis

  Suzannah Dunn

  David O’Malley

  Pete Ayrton

  Elena Lappin

  The whole team at Serpent’s Tail

  Boy A

  Jonathan Trigell

  A complete catalogue record for this book can

  be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Jonathan Trigell to be identified as theauthor

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 2004 Jonathan Trigell

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive,

  is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by

  any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

  or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in 2004 by Serpent’s Tail

  Published in this edition in 2007 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  website: www.serpentstail.com

  ISBN 978 1 84668 662 7

  Designed and typeset at Neuadd Bwll, Llanwrtyd Wells

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd,

  Croydon, Surrey, CR0 4TD

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  A is for Apple.

  A Bad Apple.

  B is for Boy.

  A Boy named B.

  C is for Coast.

  Can You See the Sea?

  D is for Dungeon.

  Dark and Deep.

  E is for Elephant.

  White Elephant.

  F is for Family, Fathers, Fidelity.

  G is for Garden.

  Garden Party.

  H is for Home.

  Home Help.

  I is for Insects.

  As Flies to Wanton Boys.

  J is for Jonah.

  Just Jinxed.

  K is for Kangaroo.

  L is for Letters.

  Love Letters.

  M is for Mother.

  Mothering Sunday.

  N is for Newspaper.

  Negatives and Neckerchieves.

  O is for

  Once Upon a Time.

  P is for Pictures.

  Past and Present.

  Q is for Queen.

  Pleasuring Her Majesty.

  R is for Rocket.

  Reward and Resolve.

  S is for Sand.

  Sand Castles.

  T is for Time.

  Teacher and Trainers.

  U is for Uncle.

  Uncle Terry.

  V is for Vanish.

  Find the Lady.

  W is for Worm.

  The Worm in the Apple.

  X is for Xmas.

  X Marks the Spot Where God Used to be.

  Y is for Why?

  Z is for Zero.

  A is for Apple.

  A Bad Apple.

  He’s seen noses broken over less: the fag butts on the pavement have been carelessly tossed, five drags left in them.

  Jack’s his name. He chose it himself. Few people choose their own names. He’s seen a lot try, adopting hard or suave AKAs, but those snide-nicks never stick. Jack picked his name from a book, The Big Book of Boys’ Names, a good place to start. Normal but cool, that’s why he likes it. Jack of all trades, Jack of hearts, Jack the lad, Jack in the box, car Jack, union Jack, bowling Jack, lumber Jack, steeple Jack, Cracker Jack. Always the childish pursues him: denied his own childhood, denier of another. Also Jack the Ripper, he didn’t spot that until later.

  Beside him walks Terry. As they’ve walked together a thousand times, though always before in corridors; never in the splendour of this new unroofed world. Even with Terry there, Jack’s nervous. For all the promise of the sun and the baby-blue sky, he’s cold. Terry smiles at him and he can see the excitement there; he tries to look calm and happy. Maybe this is Terry’s moment, not his. Terry’s spent fifteen years working for this, waiting to see Jack striding down a sunny street.

  Terry knew Jack when he wasn’t called that. Terry knows his birth name, the name he shed. Now lying like a sloughed snakeskin, in a file, in a cabinet, in a vinyl-tiled office in Solihull. Terry met Jack when he was called simply A, a letter for his name. Child A, a court name, to distinguish from a second child, B. Friend, accomplice, instigator, nemesis perhaps to Jack; now dead, no matter. Found hanged in cell, suicide presumed. ‘Good Riddance’, said the Sun, and a nation cheered. Jack felt nothing but a numbness when he heard the news. He alone now knew what had happened that day, and that even he knew less with each week that passed. But he also felt a fear that his cover was blown, and considered a spell with the fraggles, seeking sanctuary with the sick.

  Jack’s feet feel light in the box-fresh, bright white trainers that Terry gave him to wear. They cushion and bounce him, lift him up. Terry says that his son wears them, that they’re the height of fashion. Jack’s seen the new lads coming in with them for a while now, but he’s still pleased with them. They’ve set the seal on his day. New and radiant and airy, that’s how it feels; there’s so much space around him. He could run in any direction in his new Nikes and nothing would stop him. He knows he could outrun Terry easily. Terry’s old enough to be his dad. He looks at him: the soft smoke curls in his grey sideburns, gentle eyes, brown like his Sierra. Jack used to wish he was his dad, used to think that none of it would have happened if he had been. He could never outrun Terry, because he’d stop when called. Jack could never let Terry down.

  ‘How’re you feeling, son?’ Terry asks. ‘What do you think of the wide world?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He always feels childish around Terry. A chance to let down barriers and bravado. ‘It’s big.’

  He realizes ‘wide world’ is not just an expression. Streets are broad, houses high, horizons unimagin
ably vast, even corner shops are commodious. Big dens of pop and videos, fags and beer. The trees are greener close up, the walls are redder, the windows more see-through. He wants to tell Terry all of this, and more. He wants to tell him how great wheely bins are, how every house should have a name like the one back there did, how telephone wires drape like bunting. He wants to shake Terry’s hand with thanks and hug him with excitement and have Terry hold him tight to quell the fear.

  But he only says: ‘It’s big.’

  They pass a skip painted dazzling sunflower-yellow. Jack remembers skips as full of shit and bricks, but this one’s empty except for a cocoa armchair. He wonders if only Stonelee skips were full of shit; but the flies wafting above the chair must believe it’s on its way.

  It was Terry who suggested they walk the last few terraced streets to Jack’s new home. Their driver is waiting outside, in a biro-blue Camry, with a stick-on taxi sign. The letters of its number plate spell ‘PAX’. Jack thinks this is a good omen, like they used to say when they were kids. Before ‘the incident’, as his assigned psychologist called it. Pax meant you made up, that the past was forgotten, a truce and amnesty declared, begin afresh.

  The Camry is the third car that Jack and Terry have been in today, weaving a false trail, even though apparently unfollowed. The press knows that he’s being released; even the liberal papers called for a working committee. The Sun said ‘Tell The Public Where He’s Going And Let Them Sort Him Out’. Terry says they’re just being sensationalist, that most people believe he’s served his time. Terry reminds him that they haven’t got a photo taken since puberty. That he’s a special case, not going on the offenders’ register, untraceable. Even Jack didn’t know where he was going until an hour ago.

  ‘It’s a city,’ is all Terry would let on. ‘Plenty of new faces around, specially with all the students, no one’ll notice you, and no one’d think to look anyway.’

  Terry explained there may have been better situations than this one, more controlled environments for Jack to move into. But they went for anonymity, and for speed. If Jack had stayed in prison while extended plans and preparations went on, there might have been a change of heart, a change of Home Secretary. He could easily have ended up inside for another ten years.

  The car is outside tan-bricked number 10. Two suitcases in its boot contain a manufactured life. The life belonging to Jack Burridge. Jack Burridge has just finished the last of several short stints for taking and driving away. His Uncle Terry has found him a room and a job. Jack Burridge has no connection to the fuss in the papers. Jack Burridge feels like a caterpillar, about to embark upon a second life, a phase he didn’t know, didn’t even dare hope, existed.

  The driver is a policeman, special protection squad. He’s a professional; if he’s disgusted his thoughts don’t show. He nods granite-faced to Terry, who leads Jack up to the door with a broad-leafed hand on his back. Jack feels like his legs will collapse but for the strength pouring into him from those fingers. Terry is his parole contact, his only true friend, and now his uncle. He might just as well be God. Once, as a boy, though he can’t now remember it, Jack thought that he might be. Terry’s hand is the hand of redemption certainly, the hand that reached out to save a drowning child, the hand that raps three times on a door that’s painted a garish granny-smith green.

  ‘Hiya,’ says Terry with artificial exuberance to the woman that opens the door. ‘This is my nephew, Jack. Jack, this is Mrs Whalley.’ He pronounces it like ‘Wall’.

  She says, ‘Kelly,’ as she shakes Jack’s hand, her own a little too slim for her fullish form. Legacy perhaps of a slighter youth. Not that she’s old, somewhere in a make-up blur of thirties, two to five. Her eyes, blue themselves, are shadowed in a brighter tone, so that the blue inside them looks like green. They flick unconsciously to Jack’s crotch as she asks them in.

  ‘You must excuse the mess,’ she says, though none is in evidence. ‘I’m working nights this week, I’ve only just got up, really.’

  The lounge they sit in is small but seemly: pink walls, pine polished floor, framed pictures of parents and holidays; and a large print of a famously obscure couple kissing in Paris.

  ‘Cup of tea, Jack?’ Kelly asks.

  He looks hesitant.

  ‘Lovely,’ Terry answers for them both.

  Kelly gets busy in an interconnected kitchen while Jack and Terry get the cases from the car. The policeman-taxi drives away. Two more are watching from the windows of a guesthouse over the road. Terry will also stay there tonight. Just in case. Though Jack has a panic button, state of the art, disguised as a pager, that goes straight through to Terry at any time. Cuts to the protection squad if Terry doesn’t take it. He should never be out of reach of safety.

  Kelly knows none of this, only that she has a new lodger. She probably thinks he looks young for the twenty-two she’s been told, though really he is two years older. His skin is doughish pale, and she’d be right if she thinks there’s a kind of awe and innocence in the way he looks around him.

  She moves her uniform from the back of the sofa to let Terry sit down. It is a sensible nurse navy, not the short curvy white worn by strippers and schoolboy fantasies.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Jack, as he takes the tea from her. Not a trace of the broad accent of his youth remains. Long years spent trying to fit in at Brentwood then Feltham have removed every taint. He sounds more rough South East than anything. Jack Burridge comes from Luton.

  The tea is too sweet, which makes it extravagant somehow, and Jack savours it.

  ‘Which hospital do you work at?’ asks Terry.

  Kelly’s reply vaguely washes over Jack’s ears, but he watches her face: round, kind, wilful, helpful.

  Then she asks him a question, something about the weather or the journey. It takes a moment for the words to achieve significance in a mind still reeling in new sensation. Sensing his stumbling, she redirects it to Terry.

  A cat slides easily through the kitchen flap, and saunters into the room, while the three of them are still engaged in this two-way conversation. It’s a slate-grey tabby which, with narrowed eyes, selects Jack for its favours: rubbing against his leg, before settling on his lap to cajole a tickle. Its bones feel frail like chicken, but the fur is warm and soft, and it purrs pleasure.

  ‘There, I knew you were all right, Jack,’ his new landlady winks. ‘He’s a good judge of character, is Marble. Aren’t you, Marble?’

  She gets up to give the cat’s back a quick tousle, and Jack can smell her hair. Vigorous, green-meadowed Alberto Balsam adverts.

  ‘Marble, this is Jack. He’s our new lodger.’

  She addresses the cat as if it’s a child, not a baby, but one that starts to be a companion.

  The small-talk continues, though it’s not small for Jack. Terry nods a smile with anything that Jack utters. He chose Manchester, he found the house and Kelly; and against any and all the doubters, he is sure that this boy, his boy, will make good. The fact that Mrs Whalley, whom he likes, so clearly likes Jack, confirms to him that he is right to like them both.

  Even Terry can need reminding that it’s OK to like Jack.

  Kelly shows them around her home with enjoyable pride. She gives operating instructions on the washing machine and dishwasher, and the other white wonders of the kitchen. Jack is impressed with his room. Terry had deliberately talked it down so he would be. It’s a box-room, small, with a low sloping roof, but recently decorated. The wardrobe and desk share a flat-pack freshness that the allan-key on the window sill confirms. Clean newness seems to reverberate. The exception is a slightly battered portable telly, which sits on the desk’s corner, so that it’s watchable from in bed.

  ‘It’ll not get ITV for some reason, Jack,’ Kelly says, ‘but there’s nothing but rot on that channel anyway. Try not to have it on too loud if I’m on nights. House rules here are just common sense and courtesy. I can see that you’ve plenty of both, so I’m sure there’ll not be any bother.’

&
nbsp; After another cup of tea Kelly confides that she has promised to eat with a friend before they both start work. The daylight has already dimmed through the lace curtains. She comes back down the stairs wearing her uniform, and with it an equally functional black cardigan. She offers to let Terry stay the night, and when he refuses, begs a promise to come back soon. She shouts final friendly commands as she leaves the doorway.

  ‘I’ve left a key in the pot on the kitchen table, but it’s the spare I usually leave with the neighbour, so I’ll have to get one cut as soon as I can. I’ll not be back till the morning, so make yourselves at home. There’s plenty of videos if there’s nothing on the box, and any amount of fast food places at the end of the road. You’ll have seen them as you came. But if you just want a sandwich or something then help yourself to the fridge. There’s not much in there, I’m afraid. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack. Bye Terry, see you soon.’

  And the door slams to a still house.

  ‘She can’t half talk, heh?’

  ‘She’s nice, Terry. Thank you.’

  ‘Ah, c’mon.’ Terry must have noticed the tear in Jack’s eye.

  But it’s quickly blinked away. Terry probably wishes he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t said anything. Though it doesn’t matter and he’s seen far worse.

  Later they kick back in the spiced-fat comfort of a doner kebab. Chilli sauce burning into cans of apple Tango, almost too slippery to hold. Jack has never had a kebab, which one of his cellmates professed to miss more than his family. The Styrofoam box reminds him of something. He stares at it, pooled juices already congealing into waxy solid. It is McDonalds, only they used to come in these boxes. McDonalds was the stuff of childhood treats, another good omen. Jack is a great believer in omens. The mundanity of prison focuses the mind, tuning recognition of pattern and difference. A black grain in puffed rice at breakfast can mean a bad day, seven matchsticks left a good one. Primitive societies set great store by these things. Prison is primitive.

  Together they study the Sunday night football round-up. Terry tests on players and form. Jack Burridge supports Luton Town of course: ‘Luton Airport who are you?’, ‘The Hatters, the Hatters and we’re all fucking nutters’. The odds of finding a fellow fan up here are remote, but he must demonstrate a knowledge of his team. Actually Jack has never had any real interest in football, but he can talk a good game. He’s shared a cell with a Celtic Casual, a Chelsea Headhunter and a middle-aged Notts County trainspotter called Trevor who was doing five months for getting his thirteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant.