Boy A Read online

  A and his father were both looking for blame in the other’s face, when the TV provided the answer.

  ‘Because it’s Mother’s Day today,’ the excitable blond presenter said, ‘we’re going to show a wildlife special, on how different creatures care for their young.’ The camera panned in on an audience section of hand-picked cool-kids, who erupted into spontaneous cheers.

  A’s dad started tiptoeing to the front door, and motioned A to follow him. They eased their way out, into a cold May morning. Co-conspirators, in matching brown, Christmas present slippers. Closing the front door with the stealth of spies, and hurrying along a frosted pavement as fast as their footwear allowed them to run.

  Their out-of-breath mouths bellowed steam by the time they reached the corner shop. But they both allowed themselves to smile. And A felt close to his dad in their crime of kindness. A fellowship he had only ever found with B before.

  His dad paid for a card from A, and the last bunch of paper-wrapped pink flowers from himself. He borrowed a biro, so that A could write a message in his careful print before leaving the shop. The paper-shop man grinned too, because he was in on a plan.

  When she got out of the bath, A’s mum was sat down and presented with a tray. The flowers were in a vase, and the card was propped up against barely browned toast and fresh tea.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ and A’s dad slipped him a wink.

  B’s mother hadn’t lived with them for years. She had left a pound for a bag of chips each, and a note, that B’s brother said meant he was in charge. No one disputed it now. Their father was a drunkard, who had been made a coward by the booze. Once he must have been strong, fearless, ferocious. He was a Glaswegian, a man who’d fought in razor wars. Who had clawed his way out of that gutter. Into this one. He had arrived in England with nothing but a bag of burgled gear, and a desperate need to disappear. Stopped in Stonelee, when he discovered it was as far South as they still sold Buckfast. And stayed when he married B’s mother.

  The wedding photo still sat on the mantelpiece. Showing that he was not always this shrivelled, sausage-skin of a person. Cowering in the corner of his own lounge. Cooking for a monster of his own creation. B’s brother. The great provider. Who would chuck his dad a tenner at night, to get food on the table. But would usually be gone before the lion’s share was spent on Buckfast, or Special Brew. Whisky and Irn-Bru on dole day.

  None of them knew where B’s mum had gone. But on Mothering Sundays, it seemed, she wondered about them too. Within a few days they would always have a postcard from her. The only one of the year. Nothing for birthdays or Christmas. B’s dad slurred that it proved the slag thought only of herself. It was when she wanted attention she contacted them. The cards came from all over England, one from Wales. They contained nothing traceable. Nothing factual about her life. And also no emotion. They said nothing at all, in fact. Except that she was alive, somewhere. But still they held the family fascinated. Each of them would pour over the words when the others weren’t there. Even B, who could only read a part of it.

  So Mother’s Day meant anticipation. It marked the start of a short wait for something they all pretended not to care about. From someone who clearly didn’t care about them. But then, when any one of them looked at the other two, they could see her point in not giving a shit. Which made them hate and miss her all the more.

  A’s mother was the daughter of a miner. This led her to believe that she knew what she was doing when she married a rigger. She thought that she could handle the months apart, and the needling, nagging worry. Always wondering where he was and what he was doing. At least she knew he wasn’t being unfaithful, not out in the North Sea. Mostly she could handle the rest, too. But sometimes, in the heart of winter, she’d felt alone. Rattling round a cold house that it didn’t seem right to heat just for one. And when it got dark so early, when the streets were so silent, she could believe there was no one left in the world but her.

  Him working on the rig, though, it had made the times they had together more valuable. Every instant anticipated, enjoyed to its utmost and then lingered over for weeks. They cheated time in their way. Made it last threefold, by revelling in the expectation and the memory, as much as the moment. She used to plan every hour of his visits, long before he came. Had to be careful to leave space just to be together. But she did, because this was the best part of all: when they did nothing but hold each other.

  She hadn’t made any preparations, the weekend their son was conceived. Her husband wasn’t supposed to be back for months. But someone had been injured on the rig, and he’d cadged a lift in the chopper. Just appeared at the door, still in his denims. Like he’d bust out of a jail to see her. They made love on the stairs, didn’t even make it to the bedroom. He smelled of oil and tasted of grit and made her forget about the sharp, carpeted edges in her back.

  That weekend was the last time she would ever feel his passion as such an unabatable force. Something changed not long after. Perhaps when he stopped working on the rig, time became less precious. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Or the death of his father: their final family link severed. What ever the cause, his feelings dwindled in its aftermath. Not disappearing altogether, not something you divorced over, especially with a baby boy. But his love changed, it became dutiful rather than wonderful. They had to make time pass, instead of savouring every second. There was a blockage between them. Something they never talked about. That still lingered in every conversation.

  ‘We aren’t what we once were,’ she wanted to say. ‘Why? Why aren’t we? What is it?’ But she never did. And he never gave her enough cause to argue, so she could shout it at him. Which she knew was the only way to get it out.

  So they went on, from hour to day to year, until the baby was a boy. A boy, she knew, who imagined everything was all right. Who couldn’t feel the tension that was sometimes in the house. They had a lot to be grateful for, more than most in Stonelee. And it’s easy enough to ignore a little, when you have so much.

  It just seemed better to play along, and hope that everything would turn out for the best. That’s what she’d always done. That’s why she pretended not to see the damp and street-dirt on their slippers, as they handed her the tray for Mother’s Day. And those years of practice helped her to carry on as normal, when the CCTV images were on the nightly news. She washed up, and cleaned and made packed lunches for five days. While inside she shrieked and screamed and wept. Until, at last, the detectives came to the door. They didn’t say what the call was about, they didn’t have to. After she’d asked them in, she went upstairs to fetch her son. Then, holding hands, on trembling legs, they came down together; and a second boy was created, on the same steps as the first.

  N is for Newspaper.

  Negatives and Neckerchieves.

  They’re going to Alton Towers. Chris and Steve the mechanic are discussing the merits of the new A50 dual carriageway, on which they have sped from the M6. Jack is listening in the middle. It’s odd to be in the van on a Saturday. The windows are open, and he can smell the dust and dirt, whose scents have been awakened by an earlier light rain. Chris is taking it slowly now they’re on these little country lanes. It’s only days since the accident. It’s still on Jack’s mind too. But the air is fresh out here. The skies are clear. The sun is shining through the trees, scattering strip-lights on the road before them. And they’re going to Alton Towers.

  They pull in, past the big purple billboards, along the park’s road. Which has a single unbroken dividing line, to show you are in a different world now. Chris continues straight on, when the way splits, to the branch marked ‘hotel’ not ‘entrance’. Jack waits a moment or two before he says anything. Hoping that Chris or Steve the mechanic will notice they’ve gone wrong. He doesn’t like to point out mistakes in others, particularly in Chris, who rarely takes a bad route. But there is no getting round it, they have certainly missed their turning.

  ‘Chris,’ he says, ‘I think we mi
ght have gone past the entry back there.’

  Chris laughs, ‘Don’t worry, Bruiser, we’ve got a special way in. I told you we could do this on the cheap, didn’t I?’

  Jack suffers a slight sinking feeling, but the unstressed grins on Chris and Steve the mechanic’s faces tell him there is nothing to worry about.

  ‘It’s mostly public footpath where we’re going,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘It was there before the rides.’

  There’s a big brass statue of a flying machine in front of the building. Jack would quite like to look at it, but Chris swings the van into a parking space beside a gleaming people-carrier, almost hidden from the hotel. They walk together down the gently inclined field that flows down the left-hand side. Steve the mechanic says the slope reminds him of a hill he used to go sledging on, when he was little. But the field is too lushly green for Jack to picture it covered in white, and he tries but fails to remember the crunch of snow under his feet. Here the ground bounces with the thickness of the grass. At the pasture bottom there is a barbed-wire fence. Jack finds barbed wire repellent. He saw someone trying to climb razor wire once. He’ll never forget that.

  Over a stile they go, into a wood. Sure enough there is a small green sign that says ‘Public Footpath’ and points along a beaten hard mud path, which they follow. It’s quite beautiful in the woods. He wishes Michelle was here. Jack feels close to nature somehow along this path, with trees all around. Like a woodsman. Like Davy Crockett. His dad took him to see the film once. When the other boys had played cowboys and Indians he had often played Davy Crockett on his own. Watching the cavalry and the Comanches fight, out of sight, not quite one thing or the other. Living on the frontier.

  The path ends abruptly at a border of green mesh fence, though Jack can see it continues on the other side.

  ‘What now?’ he asks.

  ‘A quick shimmy, and we’re in,’ Chris says. He pulls at a section of the fence, by the bottom of the post nearest the path. It lifts to produce a gap just bigger than required to squeeze under.

  ‘They keep trying to fix it,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘You can see the new wire, but it’s always been cut again when I’ve come here.’

  ‘I reckon they figure that not enough people know about it to matter. They must make millions anyway. Go on then, get in there, Steve.’

  While Chris holds up the fence, Steve the mechanic drops down to a press-up position, and pushes one leg through the gap. Then, careful not to get dirt on his clothes, he eases his whole body past it.

  ‘Come on, Bruiser, your turn.’

  Jack can’t see what else he can do. He can’t get home without them. Is this illegal anyway? They’re only going under a fence. Other people made the hole. The sign said public footpath. Fuck it.

  It’s only when Jack and Steve the mechanic are holding up the mesh from the far side that they see the spying camera mounted behind a tree above them.

  ‘Bugger,’ Steve the mechanic says. ‘That wasn’t there last time I came. Hurry up, Chris.’

  Chris gets up, and sees what they’re looking at.

  ‘It’s probably for catching the guys doing the cutting. But we’d still better get lost in the crowds pretty quick.’

  And that’s it. They’re all belting along the path. Jumping over logs and puddles. Arms raised to knock branches out of their way. Running for it once more. Jack tells himself that he’s never going out with these two again. But he knows that he will. He has to, they’re his only friends. Chris runs ahead of him, sure-footed like an Indian scout. From behind him he hears Steve the mechanic let out a rebel yell, as he clears a fallen tree. And Jack finds that he’s laughing. How could he not go out with them again? It would be like never seeing Shell again. He couldn’t bear that.

  The trees finish and the three of them drop to a trot on concrete, among ornamental gardens. There are no security guards to be seen, but they file into the midst of the largest group of people, and keep pace with them up to a ride of giant, swirling, chintzy-china teacups. It looks about as adrenalin-packed as a cup of tea. But there is no queue, so the three climb aboard a blue and white cuppa to keep their heads down and get their breath back.

  An hour later and they have forgotten all about caution. They are in the heart of the park, in the throng of thousands, indistinguishable from any other group of jean-clad lads. They ride the Black Hole first. Chris and Steve the mechanic talking about how they used to be scared of a ride that seems so tame now. Jack is not as complacent. Even the astronaut on the way up is unnerving: hanging there, suspended in the emptiness of space. Where’s his ship? Is his lifeline severed? Is he just floating, waiting for his oxygen to end? When the ride has wound itself to the top, it plunges. Whirling downwards with bewildering speed and the clatter of rickety-sounding steel wheels. Like hundred of ambulance trolleys.

  As they go out, they look at their photos, digitally delivered to the exit to entice. Chris and Steve the mechanic are laughing, in the picture; Jack looks pale like a ghost, like his own negative. He’s glad he was a carriage back from the other two.

  Three is a bad number for the park. One is always odd. Jack tries to be that one, so the others won’t see his reactions, but sometimes Chris or Steve the mechanic volunteer. The rides get easier anyway. Quickly Jack finds that he enjoys the sense of fear that they provoke. It is foundationless fear, after all. And it leaves no space inside him for the very real fears with which he normally has to contend. He understands why people love these rides. There is something liberating about being terrified and still safe. Chris says that amusement parks are like drugs: they give highs to people who will never feel them through achievement; they give lows, without the need for real danger or despair.

  ‘Imagine coming to Alton Towers on acid, then,’ Steve the mechanic says.

  Jack doesn’t want to.

  The Oblivion ride is as close as he wants to go. This is what it’s like to fall, to finish. This is what it’s like in his darkest hours, and in his dreams of release. They are in the front row as the car rolls forwards on its gleaming twin tracks. It tilts towards the brink, and over it. But stops. Holds them there. People are screaming all around. Even Chris shudders. But Jack feels utterly calm. This is what it’s like in mid air.

  The drop, when it comes, is a true drop. A vertical, terminal velocity plummet into a void. A smoking black pit that looks like a wall. Looks like the end. But you don’t end. Even though your body screams that you must. Even though evolution tells you, you are dead. Genes produced by billions of successful breeds say that you have failed. You haven’t. Not yet. The pit catches you, changes you and sends you somewhere else. Takes you to the end of the line. Jack is smiling when the ride is over. No more than two minutes from when it started. He is alive. It’s everyone else who looks like ghosts.

  Sunday is spent in bed. Except when they get up to have a bath. The water sloshes over the side with their two bodies’ movement. She looks perfect to him like that, with soap suds not quite concealing the pink of her nipples. When he tells her this she says: ‘You can take a photo if you like.’

  Jack laughs.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘There’s a camera in the top drawer of the dressing table; I’ll give you the shot when I get it developed. But I keep the negatives.’

  Jack hesitates before he gets out of the water. Slick with oil and coated in soap suds, he drips to the drawer. He feels more naked when she is not. Embarrassed, even though she has explored every nook of him. The camera is where she said, next to a teddy bear worn eyeless with love and two books: Demystified Accounting and The One-Minute Manager. Before he touches the camera, he dries his fingers on his T-shirt, lying where it was thrown, at the bed’s end. Incongruous in the neat room. He has noticed that all clothing migrates to the bed’s end, part of some law of motion. Jack studies the camera, trying to familiarize himself with its workings. It’s a disposable; there’s only a winder, flash on/off and the button for taking the picture. Long-termers, like
himself, were allowed to have two pictures a year taken by the screws, to send to friends or relatives. He usually didn’t bother, thought it safer the fewer shots there were of him. Once he sent one to his dad, and one to Terry. Terry still has it in his wallet, Jack’s seen it. Who knows what his dad did with his one. Probably threw it away. He never got a reply to the letter.

  ‘Come on, Jack. What are you doing?’

  He slides back, flat-footed, so as not to slip on the wet wood-laminate flooring of her bedroom.

  ‘So how d’you want me?’ She giggles.

  ‘Just like you are.’ He raises the Kodak to his eye.

  ‘You don’t want these in it then?’ She lifts her breasts out of the water, holds them together like the calendar models’.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just take it, Jack. I’m saying I trust you not to show it to those little boys at work. Or don’t you think it’s sexy?’

  He uses up the rest of the film on her. He can see that she enjoys it. She’s a natural actually, a lens pleaser, she is Monroe. Or maybe Madonna in her Monroe phase. She takes Jack in her lips for the last shot. Gazes up wide-eyed while he looks down at her through the steamy plastic viewfinder. He tells her to smile, and she bares her teeth around him. Like an animal showing it can bite. She says something. It sounds like ‘trust me,’ but could be ‘fuck me,’ it’s hard to tell with her mouth full.

  Jack’s Monday-morning-tired. It’s raining. Raining so hard the wipers don’t ever clear it.

  ‘’Bout time too,’ Chris says. ‘You haven’t had a proper taste of Manchester weather yet. It’s been practically tropical since you’ve been here.’ But he swears a lot on the way to the base, and peers through the windscreen like an old lady.

  Jack always calls it the ‘base’ now. ‘Unit’ feels like it needs ‘secure’ to be whole; ‘yard’ smacks of ‘exercise’. ‘Base’ is cool; it’s got a military feel, it makes their missions important. The crack DV Deliveries team, with their precious cargoes of chocolate and charcoal.