First Love, Last Rites

  ‘See you tomorrow, then …’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow.’ We would go out drinking together when they were older, and I would learn to like beer. I stood up and began to walk slowly back the way I had come. I knew I would not be joining any football games. The opportunities are rare, like butterflies. You stretch your hand out and they are gone. I went along the street where they had been playing. It was deserted now and the stone I had stopped with my foot was still in the middle of the road. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, and then walked on to keep my appointment.

  Conversation

  with a Cupboard Man

  You ask me what I did when I saw this girl. Well, I’ll tell you. You see that cupboard there, it takes up most of the room. I ran all the way back here, climbed inside and tossed myself off. Don’t think I thought about the girl while I did it. No, I couldn’t bear that. I went back in my mind till I was three feet high. That made it come quicker. I can see you think I’m dirty and bent. Well, I washed my hands afterwards, which is more than some people. And I felt better too. Do you see what I mean, I unwound. The way things have been up here in this room what else is there? It’s all right for you. I bet you live in a clean house and your wife washes the sheets and the government pays you to find out about people. All right, I know you’re a … what is it? … a social worker and you’re trying to help, but you can do me no good except by listening. I won’t change now, I’ve been me too long. But it’s good to talk so I’ll just tell you about myself.

  I never saw my father because he died before I was born. I think problems started right there - it was my mother who brought me up and no one else. We lived in a huge house near Staines. She was twisted up, you know, that’s where I got it from. All she wanted was to have children but she wouldn’t think of getting married again so that left only me; I had to be all the children she had ever wanted. She tried to stop me growing up and for a long time she succeeded. Do you know, I didn’t learn to speak properly till I was eighteen. I got no schooling, she kept me home because she said it was a rough area. She had her arms round me day and night. She didn’t like it when I got too big for my cot so she went out and bought a crib bed from a hospital auction. That was the sort of thing she would do. Right up until I left I was still sleeping in that thing. I couldn’t go to sleep in an ordinary bed, I thought I was going to fall out and I could never get to sleep. When I was two inches taller than her she was still trying to tie a bib round my neck. She was insane. She got a hammer and nails and some pieces of wood and tried to make a kind of high chair for me to sit in, and that was when I was fourteen. Well, you can imagine, the thing just fell to bits as soon as I sat in it. But Christ! The mush she used to feed me on. That’s why I get these stomach troubles. She wouldn’t let me do anything for myself, even tried to stop me from being clean. I could hardly move without her, and she loved it, the bitch.

  Why didn’t I run off then when I was older? You might think there was nothing to stop me. But listen, it never occurred to me. I didn’t know any other life, I didn’t think I was different. Anyway, how could I run away when I would be shitting myself with terror before I got fifty yards down the street? And where’d I go? I could hardly tie my own shoelaces, let alone get a job. Do I sound bitter about it now? I’ll tell you a funny thing. I wasn’t unhappy, you know. She was all right really. She used to read me stories and that, and we used to make things out of cardboard. We had a kind of theatre we made ourselves out of a fruit box, and we made the people out of paper and card. No, I wasn’t unhappy till I found out what other people thought about me. I suppose I could have spent the whole of my life living my first two years over and over again and still not think I was unhappy. She was a good woman really, my mother. Just twisted, that’s all.

  How did I become an adult? I’ll tell you, I never did learn. I have to pretend. All the things you take for granted I have to do it all consciously. I’m always thinking about it, like I was on the stage. I’m sitting in this chair with my arms folded, that’s all right, but I’d rather be lying on the floor gurgling to myself than be talking to you. I can see you think I’m joking. It still takes me a long time to get dressed in the morning, and lately I haven’t bothered anyway. And you’ve seen how clumsy I am with a knife and fork. I’d rather someone came and patted me on the back and fed me with a spoon. Do you believe me? Do you think it’s disgusting? Well, I do. It’s the most disgusting thing I know. That’s why I spit on the memory of my mother because she made me this way.

  I’ll tell you how I came to learn to pretend to be an adult. When I was seventeen my mother was just thirty-eight. She was still an attractive woman and looked much younger. If it wasn’t for her obsession with me she could have got married as easy as that. But she was too busy trying to push me back up her womb to think of things like that. That was until she met this bloke, and then it all changed, just like that. Overnight she just swapped obsessions and all the sex she’d missed out on caught up with her. She went mad for this fellow, as if she wasn’t mad enough already. She wanted to bring him home but she didn’t dare in case he saw me, a seventeen-year-old baby. That’s why in two months I had a lifetime’s growing up to do. She started hitting me when I spilt food or pronounced words wrongly or even when I was just standing there watching her doing something. And then she started going out in the evenings, leaving me alone in the house. This intensive training really threw me. To have someone all over you for seventeen years and then find yourself at war. I started getting these headaches. And then the fits, especially when she was getting ready to go out in the evenings. My arms and legs would go right out of control, my tongue did things by itself as if it belonged to someone else. It was a nightmare. Then everything went as black as hell. When I came round my mother would have gone out anyway and I’d be lying there in my own shit in that dark house. It was a bad time.

  I think the fits became less frequent because one day she brought her man home. I was fairly presentable by that time. My mother passed me off as mentally subnormal, which I suppose I was. I can’t remember much about the bloke except that he was very large with long hair greased back. He always wore blue suits. He owned a garage in Clapham and because he was big and successful he hated me at first sight. You can imagine how I looked then, I had hardly been out of the house in my life. I was thin and bloodless, even thinner and weaker than I am now. I hated him too because he had taken my mother. First time he just nodded when my mother introduced me to him and after that he never said a word to me. He didn’t even notice me. He was so big and strong and full of himself I suppose he couldn’t bear to think that people like me existed.

  He came to our house pretty regularly, usually to take my mother out somewhere for the evening. I watched the telly. I got pretty lonely then. When the programmes had finished for the night I used to sit in the kitchen and wait up for my mother, and though I was seventeen I used to cry a lot. One morning I came down and found my mother’s boyfriend having his breakfast in his dressing-gown. He didn’t even look up at me when I came in the kitchen. When I looked at my mother she just pretended to be busy at the sink. After that his stays became more and more frequent till he was sleeping in our house every night. One afternoon they got dressed up smart and went out. When they came back they were laughing and falling about all over the place. They must have been drinking a lot. That night my mother told me they had got married and that I had to call him Father. That was the end. I had a fit, the worst one ever. I can’t explain how bad it really was, it seemed to last for days, though it was only an hour or so. When it finished I opened my eyes and saw the look on my mother’s face, complete disgust it was. You’ve no idea how much a person can change in such a short time. When I saw that look I realized she was as much a stranger to me as my father.

  I stayed with them three months before they found a home to put me into. They were too busy with each other to notice me. They hardly spoke to me at all and they never spoke to each other when I was in the room. You kno
w, I was pretty glad to get out of that place, even though it was my home, and I did cry a little when I left. But mostly I was glad to get away from them. And I suppose they were glad to see the last of me. It wasn’t bad at the home they took me to. I didn’t care where I was really. But they taught me to look after myself better and I even started to learn to read and write, though I’ve forgotten most of that now. I couldn’t read that form you sent me, could I? That was pretty stupid. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad life at this place. There were all kinds of weird people there and that made me feel more sure of myself. Three times a week they took me and a few others in a bus to a workshop place where we learned how to repair watches and clocks. The idea was that when I left I would be able to stand by myself and earn a living. I’ve never earned a penny from it yet. You go for a job and they ask you where you got your training. When you tell them they don’t want to know about it. One of the best things about the place was that I met Mr Smith. I know it doesn’t sound much of a name, and he looked pretty ordinary so you wouldn’t expect him to be anything special. But he was. He was in charge of the home and it was him who tried to teach me to read. I did all right. By the time I left I had just finished reading The Hobbit and I enjoyed that. But once I was outside I didn’t have much time for that sort of thing. Still, old Smith had a good try at teaching me. And he taught me a lot of other things. I was still slurring my words when I arrived there and he corrected me every time I spoke. Then I had to repeat it the way he said it. And then he used to say I needed more grace. Yes, grace! In his room he had this enormous record player and he would put on records and make me dance. I felt bloody stupid about that at first. He told me to forget where I was and relax my body and drift about to the feel of the music. So I pranced round the room waving my arms and kicking my legs and hoping that no one could see me through the window. And then I started to enjoy it. It was almost like having a fit, you know, except that it was pleasant. I mean I could really lose myself, if you can imagine that. Then the record stopped and I’d be standing there sweating and catching my breath, feeling a bit of a nutter. Old Smith didn’t mind, though. I danced for him twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. There were days when he played the piano instead of the records. I didn’t enjoy that so much but I never said a word because I could see from his face that he was enjoying it.

  And he started me on painting. Not ordinary painting, mind. Say, if you wanted to paint a tree you’d probably make a brown bit down and a green blob on the top. He said this was all wrong. There was a big garden at this place and one morning he took me out by some old trees. We stopped under one of them, a massive one it was. He said he wanted me to … what was it … I had to sense the tree and then re-create it. It was a long time before I saw what he was getting at. I went on painting in my own way. Then he showed me what he meant. He said suppose I wanted to paint that oak tree. What did I think of? Bigness, solidness, darkness. He painted thick black lines on the paper. I got the idea then and started painting things the way I felt about them. He told me to paint a picture of myself, and I painted these strange shapes in yellow and white. And after that my mother, and I made large red mouths all over the paper - that was her lipstick - and in the mouths I painted it black. That was because I hated her. Though I didn’t really. I’ve never done any painting since I left, there isn’t room for that sort of thing outside a place like that.

  If I’m boring you just say so, I know you have to see a lot of people. No reason why you should sit with me. All right then. It was one of the rules of the home that you had to leave when you were twenty-one. I remember they made me a cake by way of compensation, except that I don’t like cake so I gave it to the other kids. They gave me letters of introduction and the names and addresses of people to go and see. I didn’t want to know about that. I wanted to be on my own. It means a lot when you’ve had people looking after you all your life, even if they are good to you. So I came to London. I managed it at first, I felt strong in my mind, you know, I felt as though I could take on London. It was all new then and exciting for someone who had never been there in his life before. I found a room in Muswell Hill and started looking for a job. The only kind of jobs I came near to getting were lifting and carrying or digging. They’d take one look at me and tell me to forget it. Finally I found a job in a hotel, washing-up. It was a swanky place - the bit where the guests were, I mean. Deep red carpets and cut-glass chandeliers and a small orchestra playing in one corner of the hallway. I walked in the front bit by mistake on my first day. The kitchen wasn’t so fine. Christ, no, it was a filthy shit-hole. They must have been understaffed because I was the only one washing-up. Or perhaps they saw me coming. Whatever it was, I had to do it all by myself, twelve hours a day with forty-five minutes for lunch.

  I wouldn’t have minded the hours of the work, I was pleased to be earning my own living for the first time in my life. No, it was the chief cook who really got me. He paid the wages and he was always cutting me short. The money of course went straight into his own pocket. He was an ugly bastard too. You never saw such spots. Over his face and forehead, under his chin, round by his ears, even on his ear lobes. Great puffy spots and scabs, red and yellow ones, I don’t know why they let him near the food. Still, they didn’t care too much about that sort of thing in that kitchen. They would have cooked the cockroaches if they had known how to catch them. The chief cook really got me. He used to call me scarecrow, and that was a great joke. ‘Hey Scarecrow! Scared any more birds away?’ He was one to talk. There could be no woman who would go near all that pus. His head was full of pus because he was a dirty-minded bastard. Always slobbering over his magazines. He used to chase after the women who were meant to keep the kitchen clean. They were all hags, none of them were under sixty, most of them black and ugly. I can see him now, giggling and spitting and running his hands up their skirts. The women didn’t dare say anything because he could throw them out. You might say that at least he was normal. But I’d rather be me any day.

  Because I didn’t laugh at his jokes like the others, Pus-face started getting really nasty. He went out of his way to find me more work to do, all the dirty jobs were mine. I was getting sick of all the scarecrow jokes, too, so one day when he’d made me scour all the pots three times over I said, ‘Fuck off, Pus-face.’ That really stung him. No one ever called him that to his face before. He left me alone for the rest of that day. But first thing next morning he came over to me and said, ‘Get and clean the main oven.’ There was this enormous cast-iron oven, see, and it got cleaned once a year, I think. Its walls were covered with a thick black scum. To get it off you had to get inside with a bowl of water and a scraper. It smelled like rotten cats inside that oven. I got a bowl of water and some scourers and crawled inside. You couldn’t breath through your nose or you’d throw up. I had been in there ten minutes when the oven door shut. Pus-face had locked me in. I could just hear him laughing through the iron walls. He kept me in there five hours, till after my lunch break. Five hours in that stinking black oven, and after that he made me do the washing-up. You can imagine how furious I was. I wanted to keep my job so there was nothing I could say.

  The very next morning Pus-face came up to me as I was beginning to wash up the breakfast plates. ‘I thought I told you to clean that oven, Scarecrow.’ So once again I got my things and crawled inside. And as soon as I was in the door slammed. I went mad. I screamed every name I could think of at Pus-face, and I hammered on the walls till my hands were raw. But I couldn’t hear anything so after a while I calmed down and tried to get comfortable. I had to keep moving my legs so as not to get cramp. After I had been in there what seemed six hours I heard Pus-face laughing outside. Then it started to get hot. I couldn’t believe it at first, I thought I was imagining things. Pus-face had turned on the oven at its lowest marking. It soon got too hot to sit down and I had to crouch. I could feel it burning through my shoes, it was burning my face and up my nostrils. The sweat was running off me and every mouthful of air scorched my
throat. I couldn’t bang on the walls because they were too hot to touch. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t afford the air. I thought I was going to die because I knew Pus-face was capable of roasting me alive. In the late afternoon he let me out. I was almost unconscious but I heard him say, ‘Ah, Scarecrow, where’ve you been all day? I wanted you to clean out the oven.’ Then he laughed and the others joined in, only because they were scared of him. I got a taxi home and went to bed. I was in a real mess. The next morning I was worse. There were blisters on my feet and down my spine where I must have leaned against the oven wall. And I was throwing up. There was one thing I was sure of in my mind, and that was that I had to get to work to even up with Pus-face, if it meant dying in the attempt. It was torture to walk so I took another taxi. Somehow I managed to get through the first part of the morning until break. Pus-face left me alone. During the break he was sitting by himself reading one of his dirty magazines. Just before it was time I lit the gas under one of the chip pans. It held about four pints and when the oil was boiling I carried it over to where Pus-face was sitting. The pain in the soles of my feet made me want to cry out. My heart was thumping because I knew I was going to get Pus-face. I came up level with his chair. He glanced up and by the look on my face he knew exactly what was going to happen to him. But he didn’t have time to move. I let the oil fall right into his lap, and for the benefit of anyone watching I pretended to slip. Pus-face howled like a wild animal, I never heard a man make a noise like that. His clothes seemed to dissolve and I could see his balls red and swelling and then turning white. It was all down his legs. He was screaming for twenty-five minutes before the doctor came and gave him morphine. I found out later that Pus-face spent nine months in hospital while they picked out the bits of clothing from his flesh. That was how I sorted Pus-face out.