“What’s dis all about?” was Dix’s reaction when he saw the changes to the boys’ room.
“It’s about showing that Joel and Toby have a decent place to live.”
“Who t’inks they don’t?”
“That Youth Offending woman.”
“Dat woman wiv the dogs? You t’ink she means to take Joel and Toby away?”
“Don’t know and don’t intend to wait round to see.”
“I thought she come here ’bout Toby and th’ learnin centre.”
“She came because she didn’t know there was a Toby. She came because she didn’t know there was anyone besides Ness living with me till she got called by the learning centre woman and…Look. What does it matter, Dix? I got to get a proper environment set up for those kids ’n case that woman wants to give me aggravation about having them living here. As it is, they’re looking too close at Toby, and can you imagine what that’ll do to Joel and Ness if he gets sent away? Or if they get separated ’s well? Or if…Hell, I don’t know.”
Dix thought about this as he watched Kendra straighten secondhand sheets and thirdhand blankets on old beds—an Oxfam find—whose pedigree was displayed in the cracks and gouges upon their headboards. With all the furniture in the room, there was barely space enough to move, just a narrow opening between the beds. The house was tiny, unintended for five people. The solution seemed obvious to Dix.
He said, “Ken, baby, you ever t’ink it’s all for the best?”
“What?”
“Wha’s going on.”
She straightened. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“I mean the fact dis woman shows up. The fact dat maybe she t’ink about changin where the kids’re livin. Truth is, dis place ain’t proper for dem. It’s too bloody small, and wiv dis woman makin a report, seems to me like it’s the proper time to t’ink about—”
“What the hell are you suggesting?” Kendra demanded. “That I send ’em off? That I let ’em be separated? That I let ’em get taken away without trying to do something to head that off? And then you and I can what, Dix? Shag like bunnies in every room in the house?”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. He didn’t reply at once, so Kendra was left listening to the emotional echo of her words.
He finally said quietly, “I was t’inkin time we got married, Kendra. I was t’inkin time I showed I c’n be a proper dad to dese kids. Mum and Dad been wantin me to learn the café business, and—”
“What about Mr. Universe? You give up your dreams as easy as that?”
“Sometimes t’ings come up dat make ’emselves bigger’n dreams. More important ’n dreams. You and I get married I c’n work a proper job. We c’n get a bigger place, we c’n have rooms for—”
“I like this place.” Kendra was aware that she sounded shrill, unreasonable, and unnervingly Nesslike, but she didn’t care. “I worked for it, I got a mortgage for it, I’m paying for it. None of it’s easy, but it’s mine.”
“Sure. But if we got a bigger place an’ we got married, den no social worker’s ever going to even suggest th’ kids need to be anywhere but wiv us, see. We’d be a proper family.”
“With you going off to work in the café every day? Coming home smelling like bacon grease? Watching your Arnold tape and eating up your insides because of what you gave up for…for what? And why?”
“Cos it’s the right t’ing to do,” he said.
She laughed. But the laugh broke on a note that was rising hysteria, a reaction that preceded panic. She said, “You’re twenty-three years old!”
“I figger I know how old I am.”
“Then you c’n also figger that these’re growing adolescents we’re talking about, troubled ones who’ve had a rough go of life so far, and you’re little more ’n adolescent yourself, so what makes you t’ink…think you can cope with ’em? An’ what makes you think that Fabia Bender woman would ever consider you able to cope with ’em? C’n you answer that?”
Again, Dix didn’t reply at once. He was developing an irritating habit of forcing Kendra to listen to herself, and this was maddening to her. More, his silence was demanding that she consider the reasons for her words, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to have a row with him.
Dix finally said, “Well, I’m willin, Ken. An’ Joel ’n Toby…They need a dad.”
She said shrewdly, “What about Ness? What does she need?”
Dix met her gaze, unflinching. Whatever she might suspect, Kendra didn’t know about his scene with Ness, and he had no intention of telling her. He said, “She need to see a man and woman lovin each other proper. I reckoned we could show her dat. Could be I was wrong.”
He pushed off from the doorjamb. When he left her alone, Kendra threw a pillow at the door.
DIX WAS NOT a man to shrink from a challenge. Had he been so, he wouldn’t have joined the world of competitive bodybuilding. As it was, he saw Kendra’s evaluation of him as akin to an Arnold mind game. She didn’t think he had the goods at his age to be a father to developing adolescents. He would prove to her otherwise.
He didn’t start with Ness, as he was wiser than that. Although he knew that his ruined copy of Pumping Iron was Ness’s form of a gauntlet, he also knew it was a dare whose conclusion was predetermined. Take it up and he would open himself to whatever fanciful charges Ness decided to hurl at him, which would take the form of all the reasons she had destroyed his tape, doubtless screamed in the presence of her aunt and coming directly from her own imagination. He wasn’t about to participate in that, so when he found the tape, he set about seeing to its repair. Could it not be fixed, so be it. Ness wanted a reaction. He would not give her one.
The boys were an easier matter. They were boys; so was he. After an outing to the gym, during which Toby and Joel watched awestruck from the sidelines as Dix bench-pressed superhuman weights, the next step seemed logical: He would take them to a competition. They would go with him to the YMCA at the Barbican, all the way across town. It wouldn’t be one of the huge competitions, but it would give them the flavour of what it had been like for poor Lou when he faced Arnold, always meeting with defeat at the hands of the wily Austrian.
They went by underground. Neither of the boys had ever been to this part of town, and as they followed Dix from the station to the YMCA, they gawked at the great coiling mass of grey concrete that comprised the many buildings of the Barbican, set in an incomprehensible maze of streets with traffic whizzing by and brown location signs pointing in every direction. To them, it was a labyrinth of structures: exhibition halls, concert halls, theatres, cinemas, conference centres, schools for drama and music. They were lost within moments, and they scurried to keep up with Dix who—to their great admiration—seemed to be completely at home in this place.
The YMCA was tucked into a housing estate that appeared to be part of the Barbican itself. Dix ushered Joel and Toby inside and led the way to an auditorium redolent of dust and sweat. He sat them in the front row and fished around in the pocket of his tracksuit. He gave the boys three pounds to buy themselves treats from the vending machines in the lobby and he told them not to leave the building. He himself, he said, would be hanging between the workout room and the locker room, psyching out the competition and mentally preparing himself to appear before the judges.
“Look good, Dix,” Joel said supportively. “No one goin to beat you, mon.”
Dix was pleased at this sign of Joel’s acceptance. He touched his fist to the boy’s forehead and was even more pleased to receive in return Joel’s happy grin. He said, “Hang cool here, blood,” and he added with a glance at Toby, “He goin to be okay wiv dis?”
“Sure,” Joel said.
But he was far from certain. Although Toby had followed cooperatively in Joel and Dix’s wake from North Kensington to this part of town, he’d done so lethargically. Not even a rare ride on the underground had stirred him to interest. He was listless and subdued. He looked flat of feature,
which was worrying. When Joel studied him, he tried to tell himself this was all due to Toby’s being made to leave his lava lamp at home, but he couldn’t convince himself of that. So when Dix left them, Joel asked Toby if he was all right. Toby said that his stomach felt dead peculiar. There was just enough time before the competition began for Joel to fetch him a Coke from the vending machine, using a pound coin to do so. “Meant to settle you,” was what he told his little brother, but after one sip, he couldn’t get Toby to take any more. Soon enough, he forgot to try.
The judges for the competition took their places at a long table to the right of the stage. Lights dimmed in the auditorium and the disembodied voice of an announcer informed them that the Barbican’s YMCA was proud to be staging the sixth annual Men’s Competitive Bodybuilding Competition, with a special under-sixteen exhibition to follow. After this, music began—Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” oddly enough—and into the spotlight upon the stage walked a man whose muscles had their own muscles. In the first round of posing, his job was to show off those muscles to their best advantage.
Joel had seen this sort of thing before, not only in Pumping Iron but also in his own home. He could not have lived in the same house as Dix D’Court and missed the sight of Dix oiled and practising in front of the bathroom mirror since Dix never stopped if anyone other than Ness had to use the facilities. He had to be smooth, he explained to whoever sat upon the toilet. Each pose had to flow into the next one. Your personality had to emerge as well. This was the reason that Arnold had been so much better than the rest of them. Clearly, he’d enjoyed what he was doing. He was a bloke with no self-doubt.
Joel could see that the first few competitors hadn’t got that idea. They had the body in spades, even in the semirelaxed round of posing, but they hadn’t the moves. They hadn’t the minds. They stood no chance in comparison with Dix.
After a few men had shown their stuff, Joel became aware of Toby getting restless. Eventually, Toby plucked at Joel’s sleeve, saying, “I got to go,” but when Joel glanced at his programme, he saw that Dix was due to come onstage quite soon, and there was consequently little enough time for him to search out a toilet for Toby.
He said, “Can’t you hold it, Tobe?”
“Ain’t dat,” Toby told him. “Joel, I gotta—”
“Hang on, okay?”
“But—”
“Look, he’s comin up in a minute. He’s right over there. You c’n see him waitin to the side, can’t you?”
“I’m just—”
“He brought us to see him, so we got to see him, Tobe.”
“Den…If I can…” But that was all Toby managed to say before he began to retch.
Joel hissed, “Shit!” and turned to Toby just as he began to vomit. Unfortunately, it was no ordinary moment of sickness. A foul stream fairly shot out of Toby’s mouth, a veritable showstopper as things turned out.
The stench was deadly. Toby was groaning, murmurs were rising all around the boys, and someone called for the lights to go on. In very short order, the music halted, leaving a bodybuilder on the stage, mid-pose. After this, the lights illuminated the audience and several of the judges rose from their places, craning their necks to see the source of the disturbance.
Joel said, “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” to anyone willing to listen to him.
As if in reply, Toby retched again. Vomit splashed down the front of him. Mercifully, it no longer projected although it soaked into the front of his jeans, which turned out to be worse.
“Get him out of here, lad,” someone said.
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” someone else muttered in disgust.
And, it was disgusting unless one had no olfactory capability. Further comments, questions, and advice accompanied the smell of Toby’s sickness, but Joel was deaf to all of it, utterly intent upon getting Toby to stand so that they could leave. Toby, however, was immobile. He clutched his stomach and began to cry.
Joel heard Dix speak into his ear, low and insistent. “Wha’s goin on. Wha’ happened, mon?”
Joel said, “He’s sick, is all. I need to get him to the toilet. I need to get him home. C’n we…?” He looked and saw that Dix was oiled and ready, bare to the bone except for his tiny red Speedo. It was inconceivable to Joel that he should ask Dix if they could all leave.
But Dix knew without the request being made. He was caught and conflicted. He said, “I’m up in five blokes. Dis whole t’ing counts towards…” He ran his hand back over his bare skull. He bent to Toby. He said, “You okay, bred? You get to the toilet okay ’f Joel shows you where it is?”
Toby continued to cry. His nose had begun to run. He was nothing short of a spectacle.
The rumble of something rolling towards them heralded the arrival of one of the YMCA custodians. Someone called out that “the mess is over there, Kevin” and someone else said, “Jaysus, git it cleaned ’fore we all sick up.” At that point, what had seemed to Joel to be a mass of looming faces dissipated, and a skinny old man with few teeth and less hair starting wielding a mop and a pungent solution around the floor.
Someone said, “Can’t you carry him out of here?”
“You want to? Little bastard’s got puke all over him,” was someone else’s reply.
Burning with shame, Joel said, “S’okay. I c’n get him…Come on, Tobe. You c’n walk, innit. Le’s go to the toilet.” And to Dix, “Where’s it at?”
He pulled Toby by the arm. Mercifully, the little boy rose, although he hung his head and continued to sob. Joel couldn’t blame him.
Dix shepherded them to the doorway of the auditorium. He told Joel the gents was just down the stairs from the lobby and along the corridor. He said, “C’n you…? I mean, you need me…?” with a backwards look at the stage.
That look was enough to tell Joel what his answer was supposed to be. He said, “Nah. We c’n cope. I got to take him home, though.”
“Okay,” Dix said. “You good to do dat on y’r own?” When Joel nodded, Dix squatted in front of Toby. He said, “Blood, you don’t worry ’bout dis. Shit happens to ever’one. You jus’ go on home. I’ll bring you summick on my way back.” Then he rose and said to Joel, “I got to go. I’m up in a couple minutes.”
“Dat’s cool,” Joel told him, and Dix left them at the auditorium door.
Joel led Toby out and down the stairs. Thankfully, they had the men’s toilet to themselves. There, Joel managed his first truly good look at his brother, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Mucous and vomit dirtied his face, and his T-shirt was streaked with sick, smelling like the floor of an upside-down, tumbling, fun-fair ride. Toby’s jeans were little better. He’d even managed to get vomit on his shoes.
If ever the ministrations of a consoling mother were called for, this was that moment. Joel took Toby to the basin and turned on the tap. He looked around for paper towels, but there was only a grimy pull-down roller of blue cotton that looped inextricably through a dispenser and hung wetly from there down to the floor. Joel saw, then, that his efforts would have to be limited to washing Toby’s face and hands. The rest of him would have to wait until their return to Edenham Estate.
Toby stood mutely through the application of a sliver of soap to his face and his hands. He accepted the toilet tissue pressed to his skin, and he didn’t say anything until Joel had done the best he could do with the soiled T-shirt and jeans. Then what he said would have surprised anyone who knew him less well than Joel, anyone who made assumptions about the world that he felt safe to inhabit. He said, “Joel, why i’n’t Mum comin home? Cos she i’n’t, eh?”
“Don’t say dat. You don’t know an’ neither do I.”
“She t’inks Dad’s at home.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Cos she can’t cope wiv t’inkin anything else.”
Toby considered this, his nose still dripping. Joel wiped it with another bit of tissue and took him by the hand. He led him back along the corridor and up the stairs, surrou
nded by the foul sick smell of him, so strong an odour that it seemed like a palpable presence. Joel told himself it would all be better when he got Toby outside. The air—even laden with the fumes of vehicles zipping by—would make the stench less foetid, surely.
They were out of the YMCA and heading vaguely in the direction from which Joel remembered them coming when he realised two things simultaneously. The first was that he didn’t know where the underground station was and the brown directional signs pointing every which way were not helping matters. The second was that finding the station was of no account anyway since he didn’t have enough money to buy them tickets. Dix had bought returns when they’d left Westbourne Park station, but he’d held on to them throughout the journey, and they were in his gym bag inside the YMCA locker room. It was inconceivable to Joel that he should go back there, taking Toby into that auditorium again and seeking out Dix to get to the tickets. It was also inconceivable to him that he should leave Toby alone outside while he did it. So there was nothing for it but to return to North Kensington by bus since he did have enough money to pay for a single ride for each of them.
The problem he faced with this plan, however, was that there was no single ride that would take them from the Barbican all the way across town. When, after twenty-two minutes of wandering around the maze of buildings, Joel finally found a bus stop that was more than merely a pole sticking up from the pavement, he studied the plan and saw that no less than three different bus routes were going to be necessary to get them home. He knew he could manage it. He would recognise Oxford Street, where the first change had to be made—who wouldn’t?—and even if he somehow didn’t recognise it from the swarm of trend-seeking shoppers on the pavements, the bus they needed to take from the Barbican terminated there anyway, so when it ground to a halt, they’d have to get off. The real problem was that they didn’t have enough money to make the necessary changes after the first ride. That meant for the second two rides he and Toby were going to have to sneak on and pray they weren’t noticed. Their best hope for that would be if two of the three buses they needed were of the old, open-backed double-decker type: utterly unsafe, completely convenient, and quintessentially London. These types offered entrance from the rear, a driver and a conductor, and crowded conditions. They also offered Joel the best chance of sneaking on unnoticed and getting home on the meagre funds they had.