The Boy with Two Heads

Rikki was asleep still, and he couldn’t remember how he’d got home. It was happening more and more: their sleeping patterns were changing, and he could shut down sometimes out of sheer exhaustion. His diary was open between his hands. Small, spidery writing filled the page:

Richard no longer has the upper hand, and Dr Warren knows it. Richard can’t keep up, and he is the one going down. He has to, for his own good – he is the weaker, and he is losing strength. It is going to be sad to see him go, because I’ve got fond of his dweeby ways, and I can understand that he is a baby still. But his time is coming, and we have to cut away from all that slushy sentimental stuff.

He is not strong.

In the great evolutionary struggle, he is going to be crushed like a bug. Already, he is trying to be like me, but he will only ever be a poor substitute. He is the one cutting us, out of fear and desperation. I intend to start cutting him back.

He is the one prepared to destroy us both: I am the survivor.

Next time we see Dr Warren I am going to have to tell the truth: Richard is haunted, night and day. He sees Grandad everywhere, and it’s getting too much. There can be no progress until Richard is restrained . . .

He turned to the mirror, where his own face stared back at him. He had his grandad’s eyes, for sure, and there they were, unblinking and steady as a pilot’s. Rikki leaned against him, dozing.

Richard clenched his fist, and swallowed. Then he punched Rikki hard, in the left eye. The head jolted back, but stayed asleep. Richard wondered if he should do the right eye too, which would be a more difficult blow. He was still thinking about it, when his other arm flashed up and he was dealt a savage slap, right across his own cheek. Then his own fist jabbed him in the nose, and he had tears in his eyes.

Richard had a nosebleed. He looked down and let the blood drip onto the diary. Then he put both heads in his hands, balancing them – elbows on the table – and sighed.

Richard didn’t know what to do, or what to think. There was no textbook, because Mr Barlow didn’t teach this particular subject. There was no friend now, because Jeff had gone, and Eric was hardly in school. Mark was nervous about his work all the time, Salome ignored him and Aparna just turned her back.

On top of all that, the one man who could have helped had died, while the grandson he trusted and loved had sat helpless, trying to keep him warm. Saying things – saying foolish things that his grandad couldn’t answer, because he was too busy dying. An artery blocked, and a muscle failing – an organ that had grown old and had never been replaced. That heart had pumped successfully for so many years, in cockpits, as Grandad flew in out of the sun and screamed to a halt under impossible pressure. On runways, in mess halls and out there in the garden, walking to school, watching from the touchline. And then one day it had stopped. The whole body had been left without an engine.

Richard had answered a question about blood in last week’s test, and now he watched it drip.

‘It’s all right,’ he’d said to Grandad. He had said it again and again. ‘It’s all right, Danda – they’re coming. Don’t worry.’

But his grandad had lain there, trying to breathe, and the old lips had gone blue. He was in a collar and tie as usual, and Richard had the tie, still, in his wardrobe – it was one of the things he’d kept, thinking one day he might wear it. The other clothes were too big, so they’d been folded and disposed of. Shoes, as well. Grandad had owned seven pairs of bright, shiny shoes, and they had been shaped to his feet: nobody else’s feet would ever fit so snug. They had emptied out his sock-drawer, and in the one below that they’d found shirts still in their wrappers, because people had been buying him shirts every Christmas and there were some he’d never got round to opening.

Richard stood up, and crept along the landing. Three steps up, and the door stood open. The sound of television floated up from the lounge, and he could detect the scent of hot milk. He stepped across the threshold and turned on the light – the new desk sprang into focus, under the window, where Grandad’s sideboard had been. Instead of the wardrobe there were the two filing cabinets. The pictures were absolutely gone.

There had been seven suits, and Richard had sat among them in the wardrobe. He’d let the jackets conceal him, breathing in the smell. A few days later he’d found the wardrobe empty, and the clothes were in a box in the car. His mother had cried, and he’d cried too, but they’d agreed to be sensible, and they’d taken them together to the charity shop on the High Street and even told the woman there a little about the old man who’d once worn them. To know that they still existed was good – they’d fit somebody, and they were far too well made to be thrown away or turned into rags. Somebody would buy them. Some grown-up might be wearing one of the regimental blazers now, as Grandad had on the last Armistice Day, at the war memorial with the Scouts, cadets, Brownies, St John’s ambulance . . . Richard remembered him trying to march – trying to keep pace with the younger men in the town square as the wreaths were laid . . . trying to stand straight and tall when his back wouldn’t let him.

Good clothes had to be recycled, even if they ended up as fancy dress – Richard knew that. And anyway, he had taken the things that he wanted – he’d been allowed everything and anything. He had his grandad’s books on his shelves, and he had his spectacles case, and the silliest ornament too – a pair of Dutch clogs under a little toy windmill. The old man had bought it with the grandma Richard had never met, when they had honeymooned years ago, in Amsterdam. They had hung it on the wall, on the hook that now held the very modern clock.

The woodwork had all been repainted. He had helped his father sandpaper it smooth.

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an old leather wallet. He didn’t take it to school, but he’d slip it into his jeans sometimes, because it had his grandad’s smell. It had a picture of him – Richard – in the side panel, eight years old with the most appalling haircut, which had made Rikki laugh and laugh. The wallet gave up its scent, but it had no money in it any more. He had vowed he would never spend the banknotes he’d found in it – because they were Grandad’s last. But he had. Of all the things he was ashamed of, that came back: the fact that he had taken Grandad’s last ten pounds and spent it on some trash that he didn’t need. But what did he need?

Grandad wouldn’t have minded. Grandad would stop and search his pockets for the gift of that two-pound coin, or a five-pound note.

The wallet had a hearing-aid battery in it. Grandad had been deaf without his aid, and he had owned a dental plate too – translucent with little wires. There were the photos in the album downstairs, which they had all organized together:

Photos of a slim pilot in immaculate uniform, from a world of black and white . . .

Grandad older and in colour, with a baby in his arms – and the baby, somehow, being a little, tiny Richard that had now grown and morphed and monstered into a boy with two heads . . .

No photos of the funeral, of course – people didn’t get their cameras out at funerals. So there was no record of the trip to the crematorium, and the slight delay as the preceding funeral finished and cleared. A white shirt, bought specially, because his school shirts were blue and inappropriate – the collar too big for Richard’s neck, and the sleeves too long. No record of this, except in memory – and nobody needing to hear about it.

That was where the armchair had been. The old man might have looked up from it. ‘You off to bed?’

The smell of whisky, always. Strong, when he kissed his cheek. The hand squeezing his shoulder, just enough to hurt.

Rikki spoke, close into his ear. ‘Is there a knife? To cut out what you’re feeling?’

‘I just want to sleep without dreaming,’ said Richard. ‘Every time I dream, and then wake up—’

‘It’s like, just for a moment, I forget. Not every day. But it’s when we forget, and then remember – that’s the worst. I can’t stand that, Rikki. I just can’t stand that.’

He felt inside the wallet again and found the book of matches. It was small and green, from the pub down the road. Grandad had gone there one or two nights a week, and smoked in the back courtyard. The cardboard was bent, and the matches broken, but it was still possible to break one off and hold the red phosphate clear for striking. You had to rub it against the paper, and when the flame flared it burned his fingers, and he dropped it at once. It fell, like a little comet.

Richard turned Rikki round and pulled a sheet of paper at random from one of his father’s filing trays. Rikki adjusted it, so the corner projected. This time, when they lit a match, they took the flame straight to the paper, and the paper caught. It was easy then to draw the paper free and lay it on the desk. It was easy to take another sheet and feed the flames. The papers writhed and opened in flowers of black and orange, and the smoke rose up into their faces.

Rikki coughed and laughed. He pulled open a drawer, and they scooped the flames into it, and there they blazed more fiercely now that they had a nest. More and more smoke – it was amazing how much smoke a few papers made, and how much ash. There were more papers everywhere: reports and files – his father worked at home one day a week and was forever bringing more paper into the house. Rikki crumpled them, and Richard stuffed them into the drawer. The wooden sides were blackening now and there was real heat. The room became foggy so fast, and Richard’s eyes were streaming with tears. Smoke was rolling up over the ceiling, and the inferno was beginning to breathe and crackle, coming alive. They added more fuel. They tore a cardboard folder into pieces and the smoke was black. The drawer itself was on fire now, for it was cheap chipboard: the desk was burning. Somewhere out on the landing, an alarm started to chirp: an urgent, anxious cry.

Richard closed the drawer knowing it was now like a bomb, the temperature rising higher and higher. It would all go up, with the curtains and the window frame, and then – if he was lucky – the house itself, from floorboards to roof. The drawer was cremating itself and would burst any moment: he could hear roaring. He was coughing, and so was Rikki: the heat was wonderful. Rikki was laughing too, and there was ash rising around them in curious slow motion.

Then, under it all, came the inevitable thump, thump, thump of feet on the stairs and there were shouting voices. There was a scream, and the door crashed open, and someone was there, hazy in the fog, waving his arms. The figure bounded forward, and still someone screamed – the smoke alarm was frantic now. Richard saw his father’s face, the horror and fear – such a wild, twisted mask. He felt his father’s arms around him and he was hauled from the room, and the shouting and the screaming beat like wings, upstairs and down.

Their father had a fire extinguisher. Dad was always organized, Dad was sensible, and the flames were dying. In a moment, the windows were open, and it was only boiling smoke. It was just mess, and stink – and then, for the first time in a long time, Richard knew his dad was going to hit him. It was almost a joy to feel a strength he couldn’t fight lift him up and shake him, and take him back along the landing. A joy to hear the shouting louder than ever, and to feel a hand smacking down, so he didn’t even protect himself. His mother was crying out, and his father was punctuating every blow with the words: ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’

He was on his bed. Smack, across his shoulder. Smack, across his head – his mother screaming, ‘No, Frank – no! Stop it!’ Richard didn’t want it to stop. He was putting his face up, and so was Rikki – they both leaned into the blows, aching to be hurt. When the door slammed shut, and he found himself alone, with his flesh on fire, it was a relief. It was as if something had been silenced. The boy with two heads wept properly, then, until his mother came, and then he wept in her arms, and was rocked gently to sleep.

Their father had gone out and their mother made breakfast, trying so hard to be normal. The whole house stank of burning, and her hands were shaking. Richard and Rikki were bruised all over and the shirt they wore could not conceal the marks. They sat at the table in unbreakable silence.

CHAPTER ELEVEN