Billy and Girl (6 page)

Even when Raj comes round she can’t stop talking about FreezerWorld. Billy and Girl and Raj drinking Coke and then crushing the cans.

‘What’s FreezerWorld?’ Raj always asks the important questions.

‘It’s a lovely world, Raj,’ Girl makes her voice soft.

Girl smoking the menthols Raj filched from his father’s shop. Inhaling snow on the tips of pine needles. Ice and clean cold wind burning up anger and hunger and memory.

‘There are beautiful announcements in FreezerWorld.’ Girl just won’t let go. ‘This voice announces things: “Have a safe journey home, don’t forget to check out the Adidas trainers on special discount for your boys.”’

‘Who’s the DJ then?’ Raj reckons he should tell his father about the whole concept. They could try it in the shop.

‘I think he’s the manager. He says, “When you cut a Freezerworld strawberry cheesecake, be sure to make a wish. Goodnight to all our loyal customers, may all your wishes come true.”’

Billy is genuinely moved.

‘Think I should say all that stuff?’ Raj glugs down the rest of his Coke. “When you buy our special-offer bleach, be sure to drink it slowly. That way you make it last longer. Safe journey home, folks. Hope you don’t fall under a bus.”’

Girl is smiling now. She want everyone to talk about FreezerWorld all the time.

“‘Patel Continental and English groceries is a lovely world.

Why buy fresh lemons when you can buy them half dead? Why are they so expensive? Because they are wise lemons. They have seen life all right.”’

‘I’ll tell you what.’ Girl is full of Raj-admiration energy. His interest in her kind of charges her up. She makes her voice casual, like what she’s going to say is of no importance, just an idea to pass time. ‘Let’s all go to FreezerWorld.
Now
!’

Raj thinks about how sometimes Girl’s black eyes look green. Green for
go
. Cross the road with mood in your shoulders, take your time, let the hooting vehicles know you’re far away in your mind and they just have to wait. Her eyes are green now and she’s stroking her fringe, agitating it with her fingers. He hands her his mobile to call a cab. Watching her punch in the numbers like she’s calling an ambulance.

‘I’ll stay here.’ Billy ignores Girl’s axe murderer’s stare. ‘You can tell me about it later.’

‘Billy, it’s important that you come with us.’

‘No. I got to bath.’

‘Do you remember what we were talking about?’

Of course her brother remembers what they were talking about. This morning he lay in bed imagining himself talking to a chat-show hostess with beautiful American teeth. He is saying, ‘My father loved your country. He loved Elvis. He knew all the songs.’

The hostess, who is called Niki, folds her arms and gives her famous cheeky twinkly look straight to camera. ‘Billy, would you like to show us all how your father sang “Love Me Tender” in the kitchen when you were a little boy?’

‘I’d like to be able to do that for you, Niki, but the thing is, he usually sang that particular song before he belted me, so I don’t really feel in the mood.’

‘Think that’s our car hooting.’ Raj puts his arm around Girl’s shoulder. ‘One day I’ll have my own car and drive you about.’

Girl opens the front door. Screws up her eyes. ‘That cab’s a lousy pile of shit.’

‘Why don’t you tell him?’

‘Cos he’ll only say, “Had a bad day?”’

Billy screeches. Not exactly a laugh. More like a cat with its tail stuck in a door.

Her brother knows the warning signs. It’s not like his sister is putting a message in a bottle and floating it out to sea. She’s crashing a hatchet with words engraved on it right into his skull. The words say, ‘We are going to
do
FreezerWorld.’

Billy

I hate the English weather. I don’t see the point of smiling about something so tragic. The English people stop me on the streets and say, ‘It’s a bit rainy, if you know what I mean?’ Well, I don’t know what they mean because sometimes it’s
not
raining. They say it even when the sun is shining. What the fuck are they talking about? Is it just always ‘a bit rainy’? Even when it’s not?

I’m young. My teenage bones need sun verbs, not damp. You buy a sausage, one hundred per cent heritage beef, and make tragic plans to barbeque the crazy fucker. It rains like they said it was going to. You retire indoors with a stoopid English smile on your face and your sausage is reciting from
Hamlet
. Look, I don’t want to run about in white shorts like an Australian and say to every bloke I meet, ‘See you around,’ like we all live on a beach or something. But I would like the English people to stop me on the street and say ‘It’s a bit sunny, if you know what I mean?’ God, it’s so fucking sad. Not to have language for better weather.

I’m telling you I spray aerosols (flea spray) up at the ozone and chant in Hindi, learned from Raj in exchange for teaching him the meaning of the word ‘mad’. Raj says if me and Girl ever achieve a car he will strip it down for us free. Practise for his mechanic course. The only thing I love about England is Raj. I can’t stand his father’s shop where I have to buy my aspirins and
skimmed milk, but Raj is good value. He has given me a piece of his mind free of charge. Respects my analytical skills. Even seeks them out. We have had many a breakthrough in the Pickled Newt. Raj buys me shandy and pretends it’s lager because he wants my best attention. Wants me to be sober and serious and I oblige, keeping an eye on my watch. Take the white boys who hid razor blades in the lid of his school desk. Raj wants to pulp ’em on tarmac when he gets his first Jag. I say, ‘Look, Raj, those razor blades are still inside your head. You got to take ’em out and slit your lousy dog’s throat with ’em.’ He’s got the grace to attempt a laugh (I know all about having to simulate mirth from the Grand-Dad episode) but he insists his mom likes to have the dog in the shop for protection. Even though the dog once chewed her knees under the sari. Five stitches and a tetanus. She needs another dog to protect her from this dog.

England is a nation of dogs. When the monarchy goes, it will be a republic of dogs. The Dog Coast. The United Church of Dog. Dog Mansions. The Dog Café. Dog University. Don’t know why the bulldog is supposed to represent my country. Frankly I would prefer a gonk. At least I could back-comb its blue hair, put it in curlers and tease it up with a bit of lacquer. A French pleat. A quiff. Gonk ponytails. Gonk plaits. Gonkery. Yep, I’ve coined a new word for the British people. The Gonkery Dental Practice. The British School of Gonkery. BA Hons in Gonkery specialising in a variety of hairstyles.

Look, my dad bashed me and no one cried except Girl and Mom. No one’s demonstrating outside Boots the Chemist from the Billy Rights Organisation, are they? There are citizens out there who would rather cry over dogs than me. Why? Cos dogs can’t talk back. They can’t say, Fuck off, you fat cunt, you know I hate meaty chunks. Back to the weather.

If the rain stops you get a weird flash of courage and hope. You think you will find a park to read the newspaper in, like they did in the early nineteenth century. Giggling when they fell off their penny farthings. You shiver under a tree whilst reading the paper (particularly the weather reports) because you want to believe this is a pleasurable experience. To believe this simple task has made you happy and emotionally stable. When you stand up you find you’ve been sitting in a pile of dog shit. Your new suede shoes are fucked. You stink. You’re damp. Your hands are shaking cos it’s cold. Your newspaper is the only thing you’ve got with you to wipe the dog shit off your chainstore clothes. You walk home staring at the sky with crazed, betrayed eyes. I want ozone to open wide and zap me with all it’s got. Cook me, hotness. Take my weedy little body and tan it. Give my white-boy face an unhealthy flush. C’mon, Big O! Gentle over the biceps and then pulp ’em. I can take it.

Yeah. Things are a bit rainy if you know what I mean. Mom. I dreamt her skin was dry. And I dreamt she died. Two glossy purring animals lie on her bed, surrounded by exotic plants with browning leaves. Under the Xmas tree are some presents wrapped up for her children. Mine is a chocolate stretch limousine. Girl hasn’t got anything in hers. It’s just wrapping paper. Sometimes I torment Girl, say hers is a chocolate minicab with three wheels. I am very sad about Mom’s absence in my dream. I remember her taking calcium pills to strengthen her bones. Painting her toenails. Teasing up her hair for her famous beehive style with a special comb. Sitting with her baby girl on her lap watching the weather on TV. I remember her perfume. It was called Moth. All I know is that moths smell blue. Like the night. I remember sweet complicity with Mom in cafés. She ate a full English breakfast and dunked her toast in the yolk for me.

It’s a bit rainy, if you know what I mean. Bitter filthy wet fucking rain. No. It’s not funny. All that scrambling to shelter under the shitty striped awnings of butcher shops. The giant turkey drumsticks piled up and covered in clingfilm. Blue and goose-pimpled. It’s raining. The sweating Dublin chops on special offer just about to pass their sell-by date in a big way. The sticky thick blood of livers and kidneys on silver trays, the second-rate eggs laid out on the counter, the pale rubbery slabs of Cheddar, the bundles of lard dripping in their wax wrappers – and it’s
still
raining. The clambering onto buses full of the insane mumbling upstairs and mothers screaming at their kids and fathers who’ve lost their kids cos they just haven’t been up to it and all the sad city dwellers queuing for fried chicken in crappy fast-food chain stores and hardware shops selling mops that don’t work to women who can’t afford them. Women with broken zips. Mom preferred buttons, like me.

This is not the Wonderland I’ve been put on earth for. The men in phone boxes with a suitcase between their legs. The boxes of strawberries with all the rotten ones at the bottom. The newsagents with tit mags crammed on the top shelf and little jars of instant coffee and bottles of bleach and lottery tickets and packets of stale factory biscuits.

It won’t do. It’s not worth having lungs to take breath for. It’s not worth waking up for. It’s not worth having the vote for. Just one big fucking spectacle of pain.

I remember Mom putting conditioner in her hair and combing it through to the ends. She was always complaining about split ends on account of all the teasing she had to do. Mom had the highest hair in the road. Planting sunflowers that never grew. Bending over to tuck me in. Trying to whistle but it never came out right. It can’t when you shop with the pain of thrift in your bones. Mouth. Eyes.

Soon we can have anything we want because we are going to
do
FreezerWorld with the help of Louise and her retard rage. I will be a citizen with big shopping potential, hmming along with the Muzak. Makes the shopper contemplative. Assists the shopper with his thorts. Here’s one. Nearly there. Thort coming up.

What’s the point of England?

There ain’t no empire or industry – not that I want to be a coal slave, as Girl would say, nor do I want to work in a gas showroom – I’ve seen through it and thru it. Mom wouldn’t have liked that for me. Naaa. She wouldn’t have liked to think of her clever boy on the shop floor twitching so she has to wash my clothes every day. I don’t want wages to starve in a civilized fashion:
SPECIAL OFFER
: 500
CHICKEN WINGLETS FOR £2.99 – THEY DIED TO FEED THE WORKING POOR
. Unless you’re just a high income chickaholic and can’t get enough of chicken in the form of winglets. Just crazee for the winglet experience,
BUSTING FOR A WINGLET
graffitied on all the toilet doors – Citizen Winglet fought a short but victorious war in order to defend his lifestyle. Battery birds. I earned ’em.

Billy the beastie in his English lair. The only self-defence is to lie on the straw and get introspective. Go into your self. Snuffle your head deep inside the straw and yawn till you feel strong enough to yawn again. To build something for yourself in your lonely wasted mind, put on a hard hat and enter the architecture on the lookout for wonder. In comparison with that adventure, does Billy want to ride a tank and conquer Haiti or what’s left of Russia?

Come off it. I’m not losing a drop of Billy blood for the nobs. Got enough to do, thanks. Fanks. What’s the point of England? There ain’t the weather like I’ve discussed with you in an easy-going manner. The only way Billy the beast is going
to crawl out of his pain lair is for a snack. I, Billy, fifteen years old, prime cut of English beef, a sirloin amongst boys and boyz, no fat on this lean dude kitted out in his grotty underpants – waist twenty-six inches and that’s only if I stick my stomach oot. Ooot for England.

Dad bashed me. That’s all. After he bashed me, something happened. But it’s gone. Gone to gonkery. Mom set fire to Dad and then she disappeared. Walked through the enchanted garden and out the other side. The wild heath where winds howl and owls shriek. Mom, in the form of her soul, has disappeared into me. I must take maternal care of Girl and make her better.

English pain has opened up a whole crack in the world for me. Cleanse me with swabs of cotton wool, please. Yeah. I’m ready for California. Ready to lie flat out on the blond American sand and become spiritual. Improve my inner being. Like chin implants to improve my profile. ’S long as I never have to wear a baseball cap the wrong way round. Better off with a little plastic chicken winglet around my neck on a chain.