Smack

  “You did it,” Lily said.

  “Did I? What?”

  “They were trying to turn you into an animal but you broke out. You got away!”

  “Yeah?” I said. I felt like an idiot. I was standing there staring at the candles wondering what was going on.

  “You’re the bloody Titanium Man! Yeah…Tar, the Titanium Man!” yelled Lily suddenly. She grabbed hold of my arm and stuck it up in the air. I tried to pull it down but she just pushed it back up and started to dance around me.

  “Yeah, that’s right, man, you got away,” said Rob, grinning and nodding.

  “She means it, Tar, you did the most amazing thing. You did it, you did it…” Gemma was yelling.

  “I don’t know how you could be so strong, you really did it, man. And here you are and the rest of your life is gonna be so GREAT! And you’re so sexy and I love you, man, I love you, mmmmmm, yeah, I don’t know how anyone can resist you, you’re so GREAT!” And she grabbed hold of me and pulled my head down and started kissing me and pushing into me like I was a pop star or something. I didn’t know what to do…I mean, she was wearing nothing and Rob was right there. But he was cheering and Gemma was cheering too. So I kissed her back and rubbed my hands all over her and made the most of it…

  “Mmm, mmm, you’re so SEXY, you’re so STRONG, you’re the Titanium Man,” goes Lily.

  And I thought, Yeah…Because I did do it, didn’t I? I used to think I’d never have the strength. I used to think like that. And then I felt so guilty and weak and like I was running away, but…I mean, no wonder. Getting out was hard, it nearly wrecked me. But I’d done it. I got away. I’d done it…

  “I DID it!” I said. “I did it…” I was amazed. I hadn’t realised it before. “I did it. I got away…”

  “YEAH!”

  Rob

  It was the weekend, not that I care what day it is. A day’s a day. We got out of bed maybe one o’clock. I had a bit of business later on, but till then it was okay sitting around, listening to music, people-watching. That’s half my life. Gemma got up and she was darting all over till she got the feel of the place. Then she curled her toes under her on the settee and smiled. Lily put the music on. I went and gave Gemma a big kiss and I said, “Have you told him?”

  She said, “No, no, I couldn’t, not yet. I’ll tell him later on.”

  We’d stayed up after Tar went to bed the night before, and Gems was telling us all about it—him and her. How he loved her but she didn’t love him, but she didn’t want to hurt him because she liked him so much, all that stuff.

  Basically, Gems was feeling a bit tied down. I could see what she meant. Tar’d had a hard time. He’d had enough surprises for the time being, he wanted to lie low for a while. But Gems—she wanted to take the place by storm. She was fond of him and she didn’t want to let him down—she didn’t know how much she’d miss him…

  We stayed up half the night talking about whether she should give him the elbow or not.

  And then at some point Lily said, “Come and live here.”

  Gemma looked at me.

  I said, “Yeah, why not?”

  “Do you mean that, do you really mean that? I’d love to live here. I’d love to live with you.” And it felt just right, you know. As soon as the idea was floated we all knew it was right. We started jumping about and we got into this big clinch, bouncing on the sofa and hugging each other.

  “Welcome home, Gems,” I said. And I rolled an enormous ten-skinner to celebrate.

  So, it was sorted. Tar’d go back to Richard and Vonny and the squat, Gems would stay here.

  “He can still come and visit me,” she said. But the feeling I got was, that was that.

  When Tar got up that morning he sat next to Gems on the settee holding his tea between his hands, blowing on it, eyeing us up. I was thinking about all that Titanium Man stuff Lily had been doing, and how good it had made him feel last night, and I thought, Now what?

  I liked him, you know? He wasn’t a comfy sort of person; he didn’t just fall into place like Gems did, but I liked him. He just needed to come on a bit slow.

  It was all a bit awkward. Lils and Gems were at it right away, rabbiting away. They were soul sisters right from the start. Poor old Tar was sitting there not knowing what was going on, looking really left out. Well, he was left out, wasn’t he? I’m a quiet sort of bloke meself. Sitting there with Lil and Gems once they get into it, bloody Jesus would feel left out. I could see Gems was getting a bit peeved, like he was in the way or something, so I thought, Yeah. And I got my coat.

  “Coming?” I said.

  Tar said, “Where to?” and he glanced at Gems.

  Gemma snapped, “It’s all right, you can go with him, I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  Lily gave me a little glance and I nodded. Business, you know? He got his coat and we headed off down the road.

  He was just a little kid. I mean, he felt like that. Like, he was brought up on the riverbank and I’d been brought up in the wild woods.

  He started talking about Lily. He said, “She’s…” and then he ground to a halt, which was perfectly reasonable. How do you describe Lily?

  “Yeah, no one’s found the right word for Lils yet,” I said. He smiled and nodded. “But what about Gems?” I said. “You’d think they’d been friends for about a thousand years.” And I laughed, because maybe they have…

  “Yeah…” He sounded pretty miserable, which wasn’t surprising because Gems hadn’t glanced at him since she met Lils. I said, “They’re a ’mazing pair of girls, right?” And I stopped and grinned at him because, you know, we were going out with them. So what did that make us? I thumped him on the back. It made us, like, blood brothers. He smiled back, a bit shy. Yeah, I think he cheered up a little after that.

  I had a bit of a time. I just wanted to show him what was what. We found a skip and I started digging about for wood. It was coming up for summer; it was warm enough, but maybe we could have a fire in the garden later on if the weather was okay. We were pulling out bits of wood and stuff. Then I found these pictures. It was a couple of plates out of an old book. Paintings—you know the sort of thing, little bits of tissue paper over each drawing. It must have been a real showpiece once upon a time. He was eyeing it up so I held it out.

  “Do you like it? You can have it.”

  He started leafing through it. There were maybe three drawings left, these little paintings of flowers from somewhere alpine, I think. They could have been photos, they were so lifelike. He got really enthusiastic about them. He got going about painting and flowers and how he liked to paint. Then he started getting worried about the book.

  “Someone must have thrown it out by accident,” he said. “It might be worth something. We better knock on the door…”

  I just laughed. He didn’t know about skips. He didn’t know about the kind of things people throw out. You can find anything in a skip. Carpets, clothes, books, radios, all sorts of stuff. You know—Granny dies and out it all goes because it’s old, or because Granny was an old bag and so everyone thinks anything she had is as useless as she was.

  You can get anything in a skip. He was all goggle-eyed. He couldn’t believe that anyone thought of those piccies as rubbish.

  I told him, maybe the rest of the book was in there. He looked at that skip like it was a treasure chest, which it was, really. And I thought, Ah, a convert. So we really got stuck in. He was keen. He ended up making a tunnel under an old door so he could mine his way right into it. He had his feet sticking out over the edge while I kept watch. It was great. We didn’t find the rest of that book but we found some other quite nice books, including one with plates in—just a few—drawings of hillsides and stuff. He was so made up about it.

  “This is crazy, fancy chucking this out,” he kept saying. I just grinned. Those things didn’t mean anything to me, I’d have chucked them out myself. I’d rather have found a decent spanner or some cable. But he was thrilled.

/>   When we’d found all the books, we cleared out a load of wood and carried it back to the house and dumped it in the garden. See? Free fuel. We heated the whole house over the winter out of skips and it never cost a penny.

  Tar was beginning to get the idea. He was talking about how his dad used to go on and on about the cost of heating, when all the time he could have gone out and helped himself.

  Of course his dad never would. People are ashamed to get things for free. If roast pigs were running about the street they’d let ’em go because of the social stigma.

  That’s how bad they had his old man. “But not you, eh?” I said. And he smiled.

  Tar went in for a bit to show the books to Gemma. I started chopping up some of the wood for later on.

  Wood isn’t the only thing you can get from skips, but do you know, the amazing thing is, it’s still stealing? Someone even owns the rubbish! I was in a skip digging about—not for wood, someone had dumped a load of nuts and bolts and sheet metal in this one. I’ve got a whole workshop out of skips. Anyway, I turn round and there’s this policeman walking over, looking all important like he’s caught me kicking old ladies.

  He nods at the stuff. “That’s someone’s property,” he tells me, going for his notepad.

  “It’s been chucked out.”

  “That’s the owner’s business.” He waves the notebook at me. “Name, please, sonny.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “They don’t want it, that’s why they’re throwing it away,” I pointed out.

  “In that case it belongs to the Council who will be disposing of it,” he goes. “Now I’d like your name and address.”

  “The Council have to pay to get rid of it,” I said.

  “Don’t argue with me, son.” And he holds his pencil in the air and waits.

  I mean, what can you do with people like that? I was telling Lily about it afterwards and she was furious; she started kicking things all around the room. She just couldn’t bear the thought of people like that wandering about causing trouble.

  “Bastard thought police!” she growled, and kicked a hole in the door.

  There was no point arguing with him. He would have had those books as landfill.

  I gave him my name all right.

  “Mouse…that’s M-O-U-S-E…” I pronounced it Mowse.

  “I can spell, I can spell,” grumbled the copper.

  “Michael,” I said, climbing out of the skip. That copper was so thick he never clicked till I was halfway through my address. “Six, Mousehole Road, Disneyland.”

  The last thing this copper wanted was to turn up at the station with a kid on a charge of nicking from skips. He was just throwing his weight around, having a bit of fun, see.

  “Now listen here, sonny…” he goes.

  I says, “Right, let’s go round the station and you can arrest me in front of all your mates, okay? What’s the charge—unlawful possession of rubbish?”

  There was this pause while the policeman looked at me, a real nasty look, like I was a piece of dog shit. They don’t like being sussed. The thing to remember is, not to mind being arrested. What have they got then?

  “Clever little git, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Cleverer than you,” I said, which was true, but no compliment to me. Then I legged it. He went after me but he stopped pretty quick.

  “Pity your brain isn’t as big as your gob,” I yelled. He just turned away and pretended nothing was happening. He was scared he’d look a prat chasing me. He did already.

  After we dumped the wood we went round to my mate Dev’s place. We sat and had a few joints. I slid out the back with Dev to do business and have a chase. When we came back out, Tar was sitting there going on to Sals about skips and how ’mazing it was what people threw out and all that. He was so full of himself, so I thought, Right, lesson number two.

  Actually we should have gone back to see Lils. She’d be feeling a bit ragged by now. But I was having a good time, I liked the guy and…well, Lils is pretty tough ’n all. So I took him downtown and we had a look in the shops.

  I was going to go straight round to Marks and Spencer’s and show him how to liberate the food, but on the way we passed by an Allen’s bookshop.

  Inside they had this absurd book on display. It was enormous, about half a metre tall—one of those art photograph books—black-and-white piccies. Naked women but not rude. Well, some of them were pretty rude, actually, but art rude, you know? The sort of stuff you’re allowed to look at.

  Old Tar loved all that. He kept going through it and discovering pictures even more wonderful than the last one. Look at this, wow, look at that one. He really went for it. That sort of thing doesn’t do anything for me. I mean, I liked the rude ones, but he actually liked them for other reasons. My favourite thing about that book was the price. Sixty quid! For a book! Christ. That was a work of art, whoever thought that up ought to get a grant. I don’t think anyone was meant to buy it, it was there as a kind of advertisement. You know, see what an amazing bookshop we are, we have books so expensive that no one can even afford them!

  He said, “Someone’ll really buy it and it’ll be theirs then.”

  “I should coco,” I said.

  “It’d be like owning the sky or something,” said Tar.

  I was getting to really like him.

  I was half thinking of lifting a few books but the shop assistants were taking an interest so I figured we’d better move on.

  Marks and Spencer’s. I was having a good time and I thought, It’s time for a celebration…us meeting them and them meeting us…and because Gemma was coming to live with us, although he didn’t now that yet.

  We were standing by the meat section. I said, “Are you two veggies?”

  “No.”

  I stuffed a couple of fat packets of steak in the basket.

  “Look, I don’t have any money,” said Tar, looking all nervous.

  “Neither have I.”

  We walked down the aisle. I didn’t let him see when I tucked it under my coat. He just suddenly noticed that the basket was empty. I saw him out of the corner of my eye looking at the floor behind him to see if I’d dropped the stuff.

  Then it clicked.

  Poor old Tar! His face nearly fell off. I got a couple of cans of beans to buy and we stood in the queue. I was getting nervous myself by this time, despite the chase I’d done earlier. Tar was so scared and twitchy, he was looking round all over the place to see if anyone was watching us. I thought someone would be bound to notice but those women at the checkout are so bored you could wheel out an elephant and they’d never notice.

  He was full of it once we were clear. He was dancing around me, beaming away. He gets really carried away, Tar. One minute you think he’s really quiet and then suddenly he starts bouncing like that.

  “Let’s go back in and have another go,” he says.

  I just shook my head. “Next time,” I told him. He didn’t know how to look. You have to look like someone boringly buying something for a boring tea. Tar was putting on this desperado face. But on the way home we had to call in at the offie for some beer, and when we came out he showed me what he had under his coat. A bottle of wine and I’d never even noticed.

  I banged him on the back and grinned, and he beamed at me like I’d just given him a hundred thousand pounds. Well, I had. He could have anything he wanted after that. See?

  He was as high as a kite on the way back. Gemma took one look at him and said, “What’s got into you?” Lils was all ready to be pissed off because I’d been so long, but when she saw how I’d spent the time with Tar she was okay about it. Me and her went into the back and did a chase. We were doing too much, really, but we’d been bingeing that weekend and it’s important to come down slowly.

  Tar was sitting on the floor showing Gems that book he’d got from the skip, and telling her about the book in Allen’s and all the rest of it. Gems was treating him like a bit of a divvy and that annoyed me. I mean, just becau
se she was leaving him behind. I’d like to see her cope with all the stuff he had.

  I looked at Lily. She was craning over Gemma to have a look at that book and Tar started telling her about how he wanted to paint. She was interested, Lily. And I thought, It doesn’t have to be messy. It doesn’t have to hurt. Maybe we could find a way of bringing him in with the rest of us instead of just elbowing him out like that.

  We had a big meal. Steak, wine, the lot. Lily really got into eating meat, we hadn’t had any for weeks. Then we got a big fire going in the garden.

  We’ve got a brilliant garden. You’d love it. There’s a big tree at the end of it that hangs right over the road. There’s a little bed with flowers and a few veggies in it that we’d planted earlier in the spring but we’d never done anything more with them and the weeds were coming back. I got inspired that night and started digging but the spade broke.

  There were dandelions in the grass. Tar was going on about the dandelion he’d painted and how he wanted to do a really big, bright one some time with the pastels Gems’d bought him.

  It was a beautiful evening. Gems was lying there with Tar in her arms. They looked so happy together. I wanted her to change her mind. We were going to get our bags and sleep out, but later on the rain started so we all went to bed.

  In the morning I looked out of the window. The bonfire was wet but part of it was still smouldering away. It was a damp day. I’ve got this picture very clear in my mind, because it wasn’t something you see every day. Tar was sitting there on a milk crate by the bonfire staring up at the tree. He was crying. I thought at first it was the rain on his face, but it was tears all right. I just thought, Shit.

  I gave Lily a rub to wake her up so she could have a look.

  We both leaned against the window, quietly, half behind the curtains so he couldn’t see us. It was early.

  “Ahhhh…” Lils leaned her arms on the windowsill and watched him weeping there by the fire.