Thor’s Day, 6th November 2008
It turned out that Ben’s mother’s arrival had been planned by Mum as a kind of birthday surprise. I don’t think Ben much likes surprises, and you’d have thought his mum would have known that, frankly. Anyway. Getting Ben’s mother to come and visit (and not just for the day – she’s bloody staying until the end of the week, which is awful) is just the kind of thing that my mother would think of. Mum is the Year 8 Parent Rep and likes doing showy-offy things like ordering cupcakes personalised with initials and edible glitter and getting celebrities to come in and do workshops. I can just imagine her doing her Bountiful Lady of the Manor thing down the phone, all ‘Oh but you absolutely must come for a few days … No, we don’t dress for dinner, don’t be silly … Ben will be so thrilled’ etc etc.
I’m not too sure Ben is that thrilled. In his house, all last week, you could really feel it when his mother was around. She was kind of suffocating, like a really hot sleeping bag. The way she stared at him sometimes when he was bending over his laptop, murmuring to himself. Like she wanted to eat him. The more I think about it, the less strange I find it that she smashed the goldfish bowl. No wonder he’s always thinking about the Otherlife. No wonder he has it on the wall. He must want to really live there, I reckon, to get away from the way she looks at him.
Of course she wanted a detailed update from Jason and Rebecca and insisted on being shown all the work we’d done so far. I mean, obviously first she hugged Ben and gave him a present of a new laptop case and begrudgingly showed him an email from his father that she’d received earlier this morning saying happy birthday, and then she practically frogmarched both tutors into the dining room for a full-on Progress Report.
She was suspicious of Rebecca.
‘Really? You’re an actress? Did you study drama?’ she was asking in the manner of a courtroom judge, oblivious to the fact that she’s not the one paying £200 per tutor, per day, so she could just shut up and be grateful Rebecca wasn’t a lunatic/paedophile/Communist.
‘No, Classics,’ smiled Rebecca, her earrings dancing.
‘Where?’
‘Oxford.’
Ben’s mother seemed appeased. Then she cross-examined Jason about whether he had access to the mark schemes for the Maths and Science papers.
‘Well,’ he explained, ‘the schools don’t tend to release their marking criteria. With Scholarship it’s often about looking for a kind of brilliance, displayed in a certain way.’
‘I don’t understand. Are you saying Ben isn’t brilliant?’
Like Rebecca, Jason was very patient. He must be used to it, I guess.
Ben and I looked at each other and crept out of the room.
We raced out of the house, crossing the courtyard, climbing over the gate behind the guesthouses and then running through the old paddock where Zara used to ride. Then we charged up the hill and into the woods. It was a really crisp afternoon, already almost getting dark, the trees loaded with red and gold. The edge of the forest is where I normally turn back if I’ve just left the house to stretch my legs and have a smoke or whatever, but Ben dived into the woods and I could tell that he was being Skǫll again, without the wolf suit this time, and I thought, What the hell, and ran after him.
Twigs and dying leaves crunched under our feet as we careered in and out of the trees, baying crazily in the setting sun. The air was thick with the smells of wet earth and decay and pine bark. Ben threw himself to the ground and started rolling around in the leaves and I thought it was amazing how he can just become Skǫll like that. I still feel like I’m pretending to be a wolf. Pretending to be Hati. I wish I believed everything the way Ben does. I didn’t want to roll around on the ground because I was wearing these new really expensive trousers.
‘Ben,’ I said, ‘teach me some more Norse.’
He unrolled to his feet and shook his fringe.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, aiming a kick at a low-hanging branch to see if I could break it. ‘Like a verb or something. Like être or whatever.’
‘Ek em, þú ert, hann er, vér erum, þér eruð, þeir eru.'
‘Jesus! Slow down. Again.’
He recited the verb once more and I did my best to repeat it back to him while we walked on into the middle of the forest. (Later I checked, so I could copy it down properly, with all the accents and everything.) How does Ben have time to learn this stuff? You’d think we had our hands full enough with Scholarship work. I breathed in cold air and closed my eyes as I walked and tried to imagine that we weren’t in the middle of England at all, and that it wasn’t 2008 any longer. It was hard. Normally when I close my eyes I see random shapes and holographic lights, imprints from computer games. I see menus, rows of sandwiches in Pret a Manger, set out like library books. I hear gunfire. I think about what I want people to give me. I think about Rugby. But I tried, I really tried. I realised I’d never heard the proper sounds of the forest before, but now that I was listening I could hear the swoosh swoosh of the wind in the branches and the chatter of birds, the noise of twigs breaking. Everything was alive. I squinted at Ben and he had his eyes sort of closed too. I knew that he could see the Otherlife. I knew that it was inside him and he was inside it.
I opened my eyes and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Berserks were here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Imagine a line of them coming out into that clearing—’
‘And another one on that side—’
‘Dressed as wolves—’
‘Painted—’
‘With Odin watching—’
We looked at each other. I could almost feel it in my bones. Why couldn’t it be real? Why couldn’t I see what Ben could see? After Halloween, he told me that when we robbed the little kids and were racing away down the road, before the Great Steak Heist, he actually saw part of Naglfar, the awesome ship made of dead men’s nails. Just sort of sailing down Westbourne Grove.
Yggdrasil was waiting for us. At its base was this crop of mushrooms, a perfect cloud of them with white helmets. Quite big too – bigger than puffballs. I fell on them immediately.
‘Awesome! We can pick them and eat them.’
One of my favourite starters is smoked mozzarella with mushrooms and Parma ham, which I always order if we go to our local Italian restaurant. I was already fumbling in my pocket for a Kleenex or something to wrap them up in.
Ben said dreamily, ‘Some people think the Berserks ate hallucinogenic mushrooms before they went into battle. They think that’s why they were so frenzied and fearless.’
‘What do you mean, hallucinogenic?’
‘The mushrooms sent them into a trance. They had visions.’
I breathed out. Even more awesome.
I reached out my hand to break off a mushroom at the base of the stem. Ben opened his eyes.
‘Wait, Hobie. No.’
‘Why not?’
‘They could be poisonous.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ben. Either they’re food or they’ll send us into a psycho Berserk state. Which’d be amazing.’
‘They could be poisonous,’ he repeated obstinately. ‘You need to check.’
Then, to my surprise, Ben took a running leap and began to climb. I hesitated, then followed. I’m much better at gym and sports so I should have been leading the way really. The tree was sticky with yellowy moss, and pieces of bark peeled away as we scrabbled for hand and footholds. Ivy covered the surface like a fur wrap, and sprigs of white berries clung here and there. It was harder than a climbing wall, but much more interesting. Ben laid his head against the tree.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Listening to it breathing.’
We got to the top and crouched together in the nest of branches, peering down into the hollow, which was spectacularly black like a ghost-train tunnel. Anything could’ve been down there: a roosting owl, a monster of some kind, the skeletons of long-dead cats. I wasn’t about to suggest that we should climb down into it, but I could tell that Ben wasn’t going to be persuaded not to. He turned round and slithered backwards and then jumped and I heard him land with a muffled crunch.
‘Are you OK?’ I yelled.
‘Fine. Come down!’ he yelled back.
‘Can you get back up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Watch out then.’ And I dropped into the hole.
It was weird, like being inside the stomach of a strange beast. I flicked my wolf lighter and Ben’s skin leaped out like a pale flash against the black walls. His pupils were huge and he was grinning. Ben really loves secret places.
‘I wish we could stay here,’ he said, ‘in the tree. I could live in a tree.’
Well, I bloody couldn’t. Breathing was a bit difficult, for a start. I crouched down and craned my neck to catch a glimpse of purple sky, crisscrossed with branches like one of Mrs Ottoboni’s woodcuts. It made me feel like there was definitely some oxygen coming from somewhere, which was a relief. I wished I’d brought a snack, even just a Fruit Roll-Up or something. It was definitely getting on for teatime. And it was cold. On the other hand, I liked being down there with Ben. Away from the grown-ups. Away from Zara. No books and no papers. Just Norse words and being wolves and the Otherlife.
‘Tell me a story,’ I said. For a weird, scary moment I really wanted to hold his hand. I didn’t though, of course.
So he told me about the World Tree, and how it was watered by maidens called Fate and Being and Necessity, and preyed on by animals like the serpent that was curled at the root along with hundreds of other snakes. And a squirrel called Ratatoskr scurried up and down the tree carrying insults back and forth from the serpent to this huge eagle that sat at the top.
‘What kind of tree was it?’ I asked. I was beginning to feel sleepy, like the cold was slowing my bones.
‘An ash tree.’ His voice echoed slightly.
‘Like this one?’
‘Nah. This is an oak.’
Shit! Suddenly I remembered about the wolf cakes. It was a special tea and we were going to be late. We climbed back out of the tree, which was seriously quite frightening at certain points, but luckily there were a few knobbly things to hold on to and the prospect of eating my own bodyweight in cupcakes (and maybe some hot buttered toast – I don’t know why but I always want a lot of hot buttered toast when I’m in the country) propelled me to the top. I helped Ben get up too and then we fairly hurtled out of the woods and down the lanes while the sky grew darker overhead.
‘What’s the massive rush all of a sudden?’ he panted as we scrambled over the gate.
‘It’s your birthday, you moron. You can’t miss your own birthday tea, can you?’
We clattered into the house just as Clothilde was setting the teapots and cups and things in front of the fire. ‘Where have you been?’ she cried. ‘Your mothers were inquiètes.’
Dad came wandering into the sitting room, looking much more comfortable in his chunky knitted sweater than he ever does in his office suits.
‘Hey, boys,’ he said. ‘How was your hike? Did you find anything interesting?’
We shrugged and piled onto the rug in front of the hearth like the wolves we still were on the inside, huddling as close to the fire as we could.
Mum came in. She was wearing a dark green dress and a pink cardigan which I thought was a silly combination. Her face looked sort of twitchy and I found out later that she’d been weighing Zara, which had ended up with both of them screaming at each other. Zara had gained half a kilo and had gone into this massive panic despite Mum and Rebecca telling her it was a good thing, and apparently Zara shouted at Mum that it was all her fault for putting her on a diet in the first place and she hated her and she hated herself and she was going to fail the 11+ no matter what happened. It was lucky Rebecca was there because she succeeded in talking Zara out of the bathroom (Zara had locked the door) and now she’d taken Zara to the guesthouse to watch The Princess Diaries.
When she saw me and Ben on the (admittedly white, probably expensive) rug, Mum let out a small scream not unlike the one she’d emitted when she found me in the act of tattooing myself.
‘Boys! You are covered in mud. Go and change. Now. No, Hobie, not after tea. Right now.’
Then she turned on Dad. ‘Didn’t you notice the state of them?’
‘Relax, Elsie,’ he said, not looking up from the enormous book he was reading about the life of some dead American president. ‘It’s Ben’s birthday and he’s a guest. Ben and Hobie, why don’t you just change into some other trousers?’
We went and changed. I kept really wanting Ben to see the wolf cakes now. Like it really couldn’t come quickly enough. I’d never managed to keep a secret for an entire day before.
When we got back Ben’s mother was curled up on the huge L-shaped sofa. She’s all spindly like a spider and she didn’t really take up a lot of space. You could tell she found the house intimidating because she’d lost all her money and stuff and was probably annoyed that she didn’t have a house remotely like it any more. I’ve seen that jealous look loads of times on grown-ups’ faces.
‘Hey, Mum,’ said Ben.
She reached out for him like he was a special pet that’d been trained to sit on her lap and he dutifully went and sat with her. It looked like every nerve in his body was on standby. She stroked his hair.
‘How are you, my darling? Did you boys manage to get any work done this afternoon?’ She cast an acid glance in the direction of the corner, where Jason was nursing a pile of textbooks and marking. He looked up and did an embarrassed cough.
‘I think they went on an adventure,’ said Dad mildly.
‘Sure, but since you have tutors here—’
‘Once in a while can’t hurt.’ Dad stretched his legs out and I suddenly felt really strongly that it was crazy that we didn’t have a dog, something wild and messy and waggy-tailed, to roll around at his feet. Why the hell didn’t we have a dog? And also, why couldn’t Dad be here more often? He’s in America and Europe and Japan so much that I sometimes forget he’s a real person.
And then the lights went out and the fizz of miniature sparklers could be heard advancing into the room.
Rebecca and Zara and Clothilde brought in the cakes on big silver trays and we all sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’ and even though you could tell Zara had been crying she was smiling at Ben as if she was genuinely excited that it was his birthday. I suppose Zara is quite wet and emotional and can be relied upon for that kind of thing. I couldn’t take my eyes off Ben. Would he like the wolf cakes? I didn’t think they would count as a bad surprise. I was really hoping that he’d be pleased.
He didn’t say much, but he really looked chuffed with all of them, the wolf cupcakes with their marshmallow snouts and the Black Forest one which I have to say really did look awesome. He was incredulous that I’d got up to bake them, with a bit of help from others, while he was still asleep. And Mum took loads of pictures and Dad led a round of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ and Jason was looking almost as hungry as I was and surreptitiously edging a bit closer to the smoked salmon sandwiches with wedges of cucumber that someone – maybe Anna or Clothilde – had made with bread baked in our bread machine, and Rebecca hugged Ben and I wished it was my birthday too.
Ben blew out the candles on the Black Forest cake and Zara said, ‘Make a wish.’
He looked really old suddenly, with that dark look in his eyes. His Otherlife look. I wanted to know what he was wishing for. Maybe for his parents to get back together. Maybe to get a Scholarship. Maybe that he could live in the Otherlife instead of London. That would be just like Ben.
I really, really wanted to know.
And then I realised I had a wish too.
I wished that Ben could come and live with me. Not just for this week. All the time.
If it had been my birthday, I would have wished for that.
I’m starting to really hate that Ben’s mum is here. She has this really annoying way of coming into the kitchen while people are cooking and talking and generally milling about and she leans backwards against the rail of the Aga like she’s on a cruise ship and posing for a snapshot. Plus, she has taken to ‘sitting in’ on our sessions with Jason and Rebecca, and although they’re really good-natured about it I can tell that they feel like she’s checking up on them to make sure they’re as good as my parents think they are.
Or she comes bursting through the dining-room doors and pounces.
‘What was that word you just said?’
‘Um, heterochromatic.’
‘Which is what exactly?’
‘Well, it means that two things might be different coloured, such as irises.’
‘You mean people’s eyes?’
And Ben will be twitching silently and staring out of the window and I’ll be looking at Mrs Holloway like she’s an absolute retard and Rebecca will be like, ‘Yes, exactly, and I thought Ben and Hobie might be able to use it somewhere in their creative writing.’ And Ben’s mother will scrabble through our notebooks with her skinny white fingers, ablaze with the desire to find mistakes. All this time I thought I didn’t have any allergies (Zara has loads, such as sesame oil and oysters and penicillin, and even Jason’s allergic to something bizarre, he told me once, like grass seed or dandelions or something) but I think I was wrong. I think I might actually be allergic to Ben’s mother.
And now my mother, inspired by Ben’s, has also taken to barging in on our sessions. I think she feels like she’s losing Mummy Points by not taking a frenzied interest like Ben’s mother. It’s not enough to produce a fat cheque at the end of the week. No, now she has to be there too. It’s getting more and more like a police interview or something. Except neither of them wants to be the Good Cop.
Today, just as we were tidying up (well, I say we, but I mean Ben and Jason were tidying up while I fashioned darts out of scrap paper and chucked them at their heads), both mothers came in like Valkyries on the hunt for dying warriors. They opened our completed Maths papers and scanned them for the red biro marks that signalled Jason’s assistance or correction. They whispered. They traded looks of excitement/consternation. They were unbelievably annoying about the whole thing.
‘84% – is that good? That’s good, isn’t it?’ said Ben’s mother, pretending not to notice it was 13 more per cent than I’d got.
‘Oh, is 71% all right?’ my mother was saying. That’s one thing she hadn’t reckoned on with the joint tutoring: seeing someone do better than me.
Ben and I and Jason made for the door, leaving them to feast like vultures on the carcasses of our work. We were all three of us looking forward to supper, which was pheasant with red cabbage and parmesan mash and an autumn trifle for pudding.
Ben’s mother hovered, arms outstretched.
‘Well done, darling,’ she said, making an awkward grab at his neck for some kind of cuddle. He flinched. ‘You’re making such fantastic progress.’
We were halfway down the stone passage that leads from the dining room to the hall when I heard a voice that can only be described as wrought from steel and sheer ice summoning me back again.
‘HOBIE! HOBART DUVALLE!’
What? I thought irritably, trotting back again like a gundog. What was it this time? I couldn’t think of anything that I’d done recently. I let Zara help with the stupid cake. I hadn’t played Lose Zara in the Maze even once, and we’d been here nearly a whole week. The clown suit, although a bit tactless maybe, could totally be explained as a cross between a joke and a spontaneous gift. There were no cigarettes knocking about as far as I knew, and if there were I’d blame them on Jason. Oh. The clothes. Had she found out about the clothes that I sold? Did she have ELSIE DUVALLE nametapes on the things? I thought I’d checked, but …
My mother was standing like some sort of accusatory statue in the middle of the dining room. One hand rested on the back of a mahogany chair for support. The other held a piece of paper. Uncrumpled, smoothed out. Jagged-edged.
Shit. Shit.
Why the hell did I hang on to it? Perhaps it was just forgetfulness. I don’t know. I hadn’t been expecting her to go through my rucksack. But then, this is the woman that keeps tabs on her children with state-of-the-art hidden cameras, so it was doubly stupid of me not to throw the thing away. Frantically I tried to string together a lie, a lie good enough to explain what it was doing in my bag.
But it wasn’t any use.
There, in her manicured hand, was the original ‘Cannibal Ate My Mum with Ketchup and Peas’, in all its lurid glory. The chocolate smears on the edges were further (unnecessary) proof that it was mine.