‘Howzat!’ Cal screamed. It seemed an invitation from another world, the happy world. Come out to play! Half the summer’s gone. Go on, mate, come!
I stirred my Cheerios and started counting. I’d got to five when Sebastiano’s mum launched her teatime ‘Some Of Us Have To Work. Will You Please Keep The Noise Down’ routine.
No wonder Seb lived in the bushes.
‘Sardines or Heinz tomato soup,’ Pa said sadly as he got up from the cupboard. ‘With bread,’ he said, pushing up the bread bin lid. ‘Or, rather, not.’
I don’t know why he was so huffy. Bread or no bread, what difference did it make? Seemed Pa, the more he ate the skinnier he got. Must have a tape worm up his bum fat as an eel.
‘Sardines or soup or both,’ Pa told the cracked tile on the floor.
‘I’m full from lunch,’ Mo said, her voice as flat as ironing, her Irish ups and downs pressed out.
She glared at that wild Picasso picture, the scary one. He’d got a mad-eyed horse in there, gave it a dagger for a tongue.
‘You had no lunch,’ said Pa to the sardine can.
What was it about Daniel missing meant we couldn’t look at each other any more?
‘Ah, well,’ Mo said, still staring at the picture.
If I was her I’d get my eyes off that. There was a woman in it, screaming, hanging from one arm a baby, dead, most likely.
‘And he can’t live on Cheerios,’ Pa told the radio behind my head.
‘He seems thriving to me,’ Mo said, quietly.
I lined my fingers up, flat on the table, made the Star Trek sign all to myself.
No Pasaran, that’s what Grampy used to say. We’re just not having it. I’d look at Mo, right into her face and say, go on, Mo, how about the soup or something.
I clenched my fists for luck and got into position, breathed in deep, and looked.
And found a cold, hard glare that said, ‘You didn’t check, did you? You little shit. You didn’t check my darling Dan was on the coach.’
‘Howzat!’ Cal screamed.
I couldn’t take another second of it. Piggy at fat camp, Pete in Goa, me trapped inside with Mo and Pa and Daniel gone and the itch-itch-itching for something to do.
I rummaged in the downstairs loo for Geoffrey’s cricket bat. It was splintery and old, but it was mine. Not even all the big guys had a cricket bat.
‘Finish up your Cheerios,’ Pa told my back.
‘I’m playing cricket with the guys,’ I said. It sounded ordinary enough that I might actually dare to do it.
Pa said, ‘If Callum asks you back, come in and tell us first.’ Then, ‘Look after –’ and took a break so short you wouldn’t notice unless you knew how it was meant to go.
‘Look after each other,’ he was going to say.
‘Look after yourself,’ is what he said.
Mo pulled her dressing gown around her and went off up the stairs. Pa swung round, said, ‘Mo, where the – I’ve got the sardines open, ready. Shit!’
He must have dripped sardine slime on his self. I didn’t look.
Before their row could start I shut the door behind me and waited in the porch that me and Dan pretended was the air-lock of our battleship. You can’t leave both doors open or the ship gets trashed by weather and the sea. Not to mention chemical, biological and nuclear attack. This time it felt like all the badness was on the inside. If I could I’d leave it trapped in there forever and make a new life, on the outside, like a normal person.
If they’d let me.
Biffo said, ‘come on, Kid. You can do it! How scary can they be?’
I stepped out, closed the door, took two long breaths – in, out, in, out – and turned to face the square.
Geoffrey’s cat coughed up a fur-ball, gave me a one-eyed, who-do-you-think-you-are stare. I wasn’t going to let that bother me. Shy Geoffrey leaned on his trowel, looked up, gave me a crooked smile and mumbled something like Hello. My Hello back got mangled just like Geoffrey’s.
I opened the gate and strolled across the grass, headed for the barbecue bricks that was our wicket. Swung my cricket bat, nice and casual, like I’d had it all my life. The hot air made me thirsty. I was feeling kind of shaky. I should have had a drink and then a wee.
A lady with fat arms glanced up from her rug and nudged her friend and said something, most likely nasty. I felt like any second all the square would turn at once and spear me with their eyes and say, ‘So, you’re the boy.’
They didn’t, though.
I walked.
Mrs Gomez threw a wobbly because someone, and They’d Better Not Think She Didn’t Know Who They Were, had left the hosepipe running. Ben and Sebastiano wrestled in the bushes. Sunbathers lolled about, their clothes on now, thumbing through magazines and books and stuff. Speccy Bernstein played his Gameboy. And over by the wicket Milly’s dad got all steamed up at Callum while Milly yelled her happy head off.
In other words, life carried on out there exactly as before. Seemed nobody but Geoffrey, his cat and Mrs Fat-arms even saw me and maybe she was just admiring my cricket bat after all. I could pick my way around the square people like an invisible man or like a ghost.
I kept on walking.
The gay guys served out their sushi takeaway. Cal’s mum, in her deck chair, all alone, tipped up her bottle, got the last few drops of wine into her glass. Cal’s baby sister, Little P, trotted round and offered sweets to all the kids.
I made it to the wicket! I actually made it!
Straightaway I wished I hadn’t. Milly’s dad wagged his finger angrily at Cal who gripped in two tight hands a, oh, no, a black aluminium baseball bat. I tried to get my cricket bat behind me. You can imagine what a twat I felt.
‘Is this entirely safe?’ said Milly’s dad, who’s always asking questions when he already knows the answers on account of he’s a teacher.
Milly smiled and swung her legs under her stool and yelled, ‘I’m eatin my dinner outside, today!’
Milly’s mum said in her funny foreign accent, ‘I don’t sink ze holl skvare needs to know.’
Cal squinted up at Milly’s dad and said, ‘It’s very safe, actually. It’s the wooden ones that break on you.’
‘I’m havin eggs,’ yelled Milly.
The other end of the square, the fielders, Jamal and Hairy Zac, didn’t notice me. They kicked the grass and made the tosser sign at Milly’s dad.
‘It’s not the bat that concerns me,’ he banged on. ‘It’s the enormous velocity of the ball coming back at a multiple of the speed with which it’s thrown.’ He scratched his burnt bald patch. I’m glad that hurt.
Cal gave Milly’s dad his vacant look.
‘Cal,’ I said.
‘It’s a simple matter of basic physics.’
Cal looked like he’d never heard of that.
‘I’m havin eggs,’ yelled Milly.
‘Get on and av zem zen,’ said Milly’s mum.
Jamal and Hairy Zac mobbed Little P, took some of her lollies and muzzed her curly hair. Sunbathers rustled their pages and rolled over like they’d had just about enough of Milly’s parents. Cal’s mum cursed her corkscrew and started opening another bottle.
‘I think you’ll find that aluminium increases the velocity of the ball enormously,’ said Milly’s dad.
Pop, said the cork. Little P strolled over, smiled at Milly, held out her little bag.
Milly’s mum said, ‘No sank you, dalling, Milly’s eating now her ex.’
The smile on Little P turned soft and wobbly.
Milly said, ‘Lolly first. Eggs later,’ took one, gave Little P a happy grin.
‘I don’t expect she’ll vont her ex now. Tell your muzza sank you very much indeed,’ Milly’s mum told Little P in a hard, dry voice that meant the opposite of what it said.
Across the square Cal’s mum lit up a fag.
‘Let me have a look at that,’ said Milly’s dad, reaching out for Callum’s bat.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Cal said and snatched it clean away.
‘Cal,’ I said.
‘I need a pee!’ cried Milly.
‘You should play in the park, big boys like you.’
‘I’ll make a pee pee in the bushes,’ Milly said.
Milly’s dad swept round and snapped, ‘You’ll do it in the toilet, in the house, my girl.’
‘Cal.’
He made as if he hadn’t heard me and slipped off towards the fielders. I stood there like a spastic with my cricket bat.
Milly pulled her knickers down and said, ‘I want to do it in the bushes.’
‘Melissa, dogs and cats go in the bushes,’ said Milly’s dad.
Milly’s mum said, ‘Are you a dock?’ and pulled her knickers up again.
Cal and the big guys gathered up their stuff and headed off for Cal’s to play his drum machine or something cool, I bet.
‘I’m havin the accident,’ yelled Milly.
‘I don’t believe you are,’ said Milly’s dad.
The gay guys got the giggles.
‘I’m havin it! I’m havin it!’ yelled Milly.
‘Right Now My Girl Into The House,’ said Milly’s dad. He picked her up just like she was a rugby ball and ran her down the square like he was running for a try, weaving round the rumpled blankets of the sunbathers that rippled now with giggles spreading out from round the gay guys. Round the bushes, through their gate, and …
‘I’m havin it!’ cried Milly.
Touchdown!
‘Damn my trousers!’
Milly sobbed, ‘I want my lolly, now,’ and then their door slammed shut.
Milly’s mother glared across the sunbathers to Cal and Little P’s mum: ‘You see, ze trabble now viz zvates.’
Cal’s mum took one long drag on her cigarette, blew a smoke ring, then another one that plipped right through the first. She watched them rise and break, then lifted up her glass and did a bleary Cheers to Milly’s mum while all the time the one-eyed cat was sicking up on Milly’s eggs.
Daniel gone, and people still got all wound up at Callum’s bat and growing-food and pissing in the bushes. I hated them. I wanted to be one of them.
‘Harry,’ said a little voice. I looked around me. No-one there.
‘Harry,’ said the voice. Someone tugged my trousers. I looked down. Little P.
‘Yo-yi?’ she said. I put my hand into her bag but it was empty.
I took a lolly, anyway, an invisible lolly. She seemed glad. I gave the lolly a ghost of a lick and felt in her bag for another.
‘Here’s one for you,’ I said and muzzed her curly hair, then I strolled back, nice and casual, an invisible man with an invisible lolly. I swung my stupid splintery cricket bat and wondered how I’d get across the empty grave that stretched out wide and cold and lonely between me and my bed-time.
‘Hi, Harry.’ Speccy Bernstein by our gate.
‘Hi, Josh,’ I said and kept on moving. Speccy bloody Bernstein. I wasn’t completely desperate.