Repeat that, repeat …
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, Fragment 146
When we were twelve, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen, the house acquired a constant beat. Will you turn that down! There was always music coming from somewhere and we stole music from one another as we stole clothes, cigarettes and friends. Will someone answer the door! Oh look, a centre parting! You’ll be wanting the hippy. He’s in the brown room at the top of the stairs listening to that nonsense about flying teapots. Someone answer the door! Are you her boyfriend? She’s got a boyfriend! Come in … No? You want to wait out there? I can tell you now she’s going nowhere till she gives me back my raincoat. There she is and look, my raincoat. I know it’s Dad’s, technically, but he hasn’t worn it for about thirty years and I took it first. No, Mum, I will not take fucking turns. It’s mine. She copies everything. Look at her. Why can’t we be in the living room? I’m entertaining, aren’t I? Tell him to turn his music down too! It’s coming through the walls at us – Dark Side of the fucking Moon. Blame him. Why didn’t you knock? You should knock. No, we don’t want to go to the pub with a bunch of hippies. I mean we might go, but not with you. If you don’t turn that down right now I will rip the wires out of it.
My sister was early-morning radio, my little brother after-school television, my big brother whale song and guitar. They were to become an immunologist, an astrophysicist, and a marine biologist turned engineer, picking up on the other kind of music we grew up with. He’s had twenty-five broken bones. Osteogenesis imperfecta. As a baby, he couldn’t digest anything. Blocked pyloric sphincter. Why do you have blue eyes when I have green? Heterozygous genes. She’s resting. Supraventricular tachycardia. The heart is diastole or systole. I am ulna and radius, neurone and lymph, ileum and cerebellum. I exsanguinate.
I told you to turn it down! I can’t believe she’s done that! Can you mend it? I’ll buy you a drink. Yes, I know that means I’ll have to go to the pub with you. Mum! We’re going to the pub. If you’re all going, you must take your little brother. He’s twelve years old! Take him.