What I Did (16 page)

Then the kitchen door swings open and even the pan spattering on the cooker goes shhh. Hello Dad. His hair is up in blades and he's got gray skin to go with the iron filings sprinkled up his throat and round his bunchy jaw. He stops in the doorway and sways there a second and blinks at Grandma Lynne like he's forgotten who she is.

— Morning, he mutters. — I need—

— Pancakes! I shout.

— No, Son. His teeth bite down. — Not just now—

— But there's loads of mixture left. I've had three and Grandma Lynne has had four at least.

— Great. But I'll start with a coffee.

His mouth is having a good go at smiling but his eyes are dandelion roots again, or better still, radishes, radishes somebody cross has stamped into the mud.

— We were just making Billy some cheer-up pancakes, says Grandma Lynne.

Dad's smile twitches wider. — So I see.

— Why don't you go back to bed? says Mum.

Dad shakes his head a tiny bit and moves into coffee mode, unscrewing this and washing out that and tapping the black stuff out of this into that after filling the other bit with water and screwing it all back into one piece with the flame going and setting it down on top. Normal. He sloshes some milk in a mug. Pauses. Then he looks like he's remembered a birthday and says, — Anyone else like a cup?

— Yes please, replies Grandma Lynne unusually quickly.

— I'm all right, says Mum at exactly the same time.

And after that there's just Dad fiddling super slowly with mugs and milk on the suddenly noisy kitchen worktop in the long-lasting otherwise silence.

 

Being quiet is tricky. Even when you want to be silent, somehow noises happen. Either your foot slips out from under you and hits the table leg or you say something like, — What about broken promises you never told anybody about, do they still count? . . . The words just come straight out before you've even thought them. In class Miss Hart often makes us all sit still quietly just to have a think about what we've learned and even when that happens it's hard not to say Hey I've learned this or that or whatever it is. Leo is worse at silence than me because he has a special teacher called Mrs. Cassidy just to help him with it. But I don't have her and if it wasn't for Leo I'd definitely be the worst! Leo hates oranges and is allergic to sand, crayons, and PE, too.

 

And did you know another thing, about bells?

It's obvious: they're normally noisy.

We have them at school to tell everybody what to do next, only they don't really work. When the bell goes off I know it's time to stop what I'm doing so that something else can happen, but I always have to say Hey, there's the bell, what's happening next?

Dad likes bells.

Actually that's not true.

He likes a song about bells, though, bells you have to ring unless you don't do it because you've forgotten your perfect offering.

I don't know what that means, but it rhymes.

And so does the next bit in the song, the important bit about there being a crack in everything.

Which isn't really true.

Don't worry though, because it's only a song. And songs are like stories, Son. They may not be factually true, but it doesn't matter because something inside them is probably truer.

Shall I tell you what's inside?

Okay I will. Light!

That's what the song says, anyway. The cracks in all the bells and songs and stories are there for a reason, to let the light get in. So we can see how everything broken is excellent.

Dad explained it. He said — Everything falls apart, Son. And that's okay, that's how it's supposed to be. We're all imperfect. You included, and even, believe it or not, me! But don't worry. Our faults make us who we are. The cracks are illuminating.

And I understood that, I actually did. Because it made sense. Once I even had a Lego cat figure with ears that swivelled until I dropped it and one of them chipped off, making it non-symmetrical and therefore rubbish. We couldn't even glue it. Don't worry, it's just
flawed
, Son: that makes it more realistic. I wasn't allowed to throw it away. Instead I still had to like it because Dad told me I had to, so I tried, and it worked, sort of. And that's what the song about cracked bells means: if you drop things, including bells and Lego cats, they will break, because most of them have cracks anyway, because that's just the way things are. It all makes perfect sense. Sort of.

 

Anyway, it is quiet in the kitchen for a long time. We don't have anymore pancakes because Mum turns the knob down on the cooker. Gas lives in the gas pipe and oxygen is a gas that lives in pipes, too: windpipes. If broccoli goes down the wrong pipe it can be fatal, even though broccoli looks like lungs. It also looks like trees. Brocco-lung, brocco-tree. Leaves do quivering in the wind and Dad's good hand is quivering when he picks up the spoon to stir his coffee. He could use that spoon to dig out his dandelion-root radish eyes, but of course he doesn't. It would hurt.

— Why not take that back to bed, Jim, Mum says.

The quiet gets louder.

— You might as well just sleep it off.

Dad smiles hard enough to show off the pointy yellowish teeth at the sides of his mouth when Mum says that. He shakes his head and says nothing more loudly still.

— What shall
we
do today, anyway? Grandma Lynne asks me. — How about a trip to the Zoo?

This is excellent news, so excellent I sadly can't help what happens next. But it happens. I sort of throw my arms backward and push out with my legs to signal yes I'm excited and my chair tips swiftly up onto two legs. Too swiftly. It goes past the edge of balance utterly. One minute I'm there sitting at the table, the next I'm on the tiles incredibly noisily.

Everybody panics.

Me because I've hit my shoulder and elbow on the floor impressively loudly, and Mum because she's my mum and emergency go-go-go she needs to get across the kitchen to help-help-help, and Grandma Lynne because she's Grandma Lynne and she wants to be involving, too. Dad snaps upright as well. I see him there at the edge jerking back from the kitchen surface with coffee all over his shirt. And I'm rolling onto my side and Mum is there above me and Grandma Lynne is behind her with her crow's-wings hair flapping, but Dad is already between them bending over me, his eyes as red as the plaster cast, a hand under my back, hauling me up.

Everybody speaks at once.

— Are you—

— Jesus, Billy—

— The poor little—

— What have I told you—

— Thing.

— About swinging back on the—

— Okay?

— Bastard chair!

And Dad's chin is sharp-edged on my face for a while, wet with something, and Mum keeps pulling at his arm, and it really didn't hurt that much, but there's no space to say anything, none at all, because Mum is saying, — Give him here! and Dad is going, — No, no, no! and Grandma Lynne is begging, — Please! and I am too busy trying to breathe.

And that's when the bell goes off.

The doorbell.

Ringer-dinger-ding, a crack in everything.

Grandma Lynne steps backward. Dad's got me tight on his knee, so tight it's actually making it tricky for me to connect my windpipe to the oxygen supply efficiently. And Mum has one hand on her hip and the other in my hair. They're both going — You're okay, you're okay.

— I am, I am. Sorry, sorry, I say.

The bellringer dings again.

— That's the doorbell, I explain.

At least Grandma Lynne's got the idea; she's halfway out of the room and across the hall.

— Leave it, Lynne, says Dad. But she doesn't seem to hear him because she prefers what Mum says instead, and that's the actual — No, answer it, opposite.

Grandma Lynne made Mum in her room. Not her bedroom, but the room next to her stomach. All female mammals have one. And all babies start out from there with stretchy umbrella cords. Sadly there is no cord between Mum and Grandma Lynne anymore, but they're still more connected than Grandma Lynne and Dad, and that's probably why Grandma Lynne finds it easier to understand Mum's instructions. She smoothes her hair wings and goes to open the door.

Mum follows her. I hear some normal hello-do-come-in stuff and there's some slow shuffling-through-there noises and then the kitchen door widens and Mum and Grandma Lynne come back in with the Butterfly lady behind. She has somebody else with her as well. A giraffe.

Dad breathes out hard through his nose and I can smell too-old-oranges and drain. A man came with a whizzy thing to unblock ours once, but sadly the whizzy thing got stuck so he had to get another one.

Dad keeps hold of me. The Giraffe is quite interesting because of her extremely reaching neck and narrow shoulders and stretched long arms. She is holding a black boxy briefcase in one hand. Perhaps there are bricks in it and that's why her shoulder is sloping down so hard. No, because the other one is doing it as well. She looks round the room over everyone's heads while Butterfly gets herself all ready for a speech. It's a kitchen, Giraffe; no acacia leaves here, no matter how high you look. No, not even up above the clock, we're very sorry.

Grandma Lynne is fiddling around behind the wicker chair, looking for something. What is it? Her bag. She takes it to the far side of the kitchen table and sits down very quietly. Don't mind me, she means, I'm completely out of the way: I do the same thing when there are crisps in a bowl and I want some but know they'll say no if I just take them. And Mum has backed up against the units to give the visitors space. Sadly it looks a little bit like she's scared of them. Don't be, Mum. Prairie dogs have nothing to fear from giraffes so long as they keep away from their highly kicking legs. And butterflies aren't a problem either. Unless . . . I don't know, so I ask, — Dad, are any butterflies poisonous?

— Probably, he replies very quietly.

— So, says Mum.

Butterfly clears her throat. — This is my colleague, Rommi Godwin. She's also on the ChildSafe team.

Giraffe does a strange sideways-nod thing. Her hair is cut in an excellent wedge shape into the back of her neck which makes it look even longer. She reminds me a bit of the blue things in the film, minus a plug-tail. And Grandma is fiddling with something inside the mouth of her bag, and squinting at it like a very obvious spy which means it must be her phone.

— What are you here for? Dad says, low and cross.

Butterfly fights back with a smile. — As I explained to your wife yesterday . . . she looks at Mum like they're very good friends . . . — our visit to Dr. Adebayo has progressed us to the next stage in this process. That's what we're here to explain, in person. And we're here to reassure you, as well, that we have Billy's best interests at heart. We really do want to find a constructive solution to this difficulty.

— Progressed us to the next stage? spits Dad. — Solution to this difficulty? Speak English.

— Jim! says Mum.

— No, no, it's all right. Butterfly fiddles with her hair halo. — You're right. I just think, as before . . . she smiles at me . . . — it might be best if we discuss the detail without Billy present. It's really a Mum-and-Dad chat, this.

Dad shifts under me. Did you know the world is made up of plates? Not like the plates you eat off and then have to wash up, no, much bigger ones. They float about on fiery lakes of larvae with buildings on top; Big Ben for example. Every now and then one of the plates knocks into another and probably breaks and that's when the larvae squirts through. Stand back, stand back! It's gonna blow. Dad breathes hard through his nostrils again, straight down my neck, hot ticklish, and says, — He's going nowhere.

Butterfly's lips do her straight-line smile. She looks at Mum, but there's no help from her because she's caught in some headlights. Quick. Don't just stand there. Get out of the way! There's a horrible bit in a film called
Crocodile Done Deeds
which I was allowed to watch once, where idiots shoot kangaroos with flashlights on trucks, until one of them isn't a kangaroo in fact but is Mick Done Deeds with a gun instead, shooting the idiots back which is excellent. But where's Mick now? He's hiding . . . in Grandma Lynne!

— I think perhaps it would be wise to do as the lady asks, Jim, she says.

— And I think perhaps it's my decision, Dad says back, very friendly, very calm. But it's all camouflage! He's actually vibrating a bit in his seat: I can feel it through my back. And everybody else is a grown-up so they should surely understand better than me that it's time to stand very well back and turn off the searchlights and put your giraffe head in an emu hole. Here's more evidence: low growly Dad words with unusual gaps in them: — Whatever you have to say . . . about me and my son . . . you can say . . . to me and my son.

Now Giraffe does another of her strange sideways head-jerk things and her eyes go blinkety-blink, and she says — We can't force you to exclude Billy from this conversation, but not doing so may well have an impact.

Mum's crept round the units to us and now she puts her fingers on Dad's shoulder. They slide down his arm and stop on his hand, which clenches tighter around my own wrist. — Please, Mum whispers. — Please.

— Impact, says Grandma Lynne. — What do you mean?

— It won't be considered appropriate parenting.

Dad snorts.

— Please, Jim, says Mum again.

—
Nowhere
, Dad hisses.

Grandma Lynne's hands are clutching and de-clutching on the kitchen table; scratch-scratch goes one of her rings against the wooden top. It doesn't matter because the table is old. I'm even allowed to paint on it and last week on
Blue Peter
they showed how to milk a cow. Gently squeeze its udders. Scratch, scratch. — Tell you what, says Grandma Lynne. — Why don't I make a pot of tea and you can explain where this is all going?