What I Did (18 page)

— One more chance, please!

— But I've won.

— Another best of three.

Dad can make water squirt out of his hand when he wants to, and he wants to now because he squirts some at me. It goes in my eye. Luckily I'm not Casper in Mrs. Preddy's class because when you do that to him he screams.

— I wasn't playing my hardest, I say.

— Tough.

— And anyway I've got a better game. Paper, rock, scissors . . . Death Star. I put both of my hands together to show him what one looks like.

— What can a Death Star beat?

— Everything.

He laughs at me and shakes his head. — No. Escalation like that would upset the delicate balance of power.

— The what?

— The game wouldn't work.

— Yes it would.

— We'd destroy each other.

I can see what he means, nearly, so I concentrate on the bit I can't see; I did something similar when Tom at school explained about Father Christmas, and it worked, because he still came. And then I remember the bit at the end with the X wings and Red Five standing by and it makes everything more complicated.

— Actually there's Luke, too, I explain. — So you're even more wrong, because the Death Star
can
be destroyed.

But Dad's not concentrating. He's standing up pinching the water out of his eyes, muttering something else about escalators. And anyway I've got two hands of my own so I decide to have a go at the new version of the game by myself. Deep breaths. Down I go. Without his help I have to fight to keep the silvery wobbling water-lid high above my head. One, two, three: hand versus hand, victory. The sign for Luke is a finger pointing out like a light saver.

 

Later, in the showers, Dad thumb-pumps some green from the dip sensor thing into his hand and rubs it on my head, very like washing-up liquid; bubbles slipper off everywhere and down the drain, popping eventually. You have to keep pressing the water knob because otherwise idiots wouldn't know how to turn off the taps and everything would get wasted. It's tiring. I watch bubble scum drizzling in the drain gully, then look at Dad who has fur on his chest. Have you ever blown up a balloon? I have, nearly, and when I let it go the stretchiness breathed out, very hilarious and finally floppy. Dad's willy is pink and looks quite similar, unlike his arms and legs which have excellent knotted-towel muscles. Natural athlete, Son: don't worry, you're cut from the same cloth. If God existed, he would have an excellent pair of scissors. Thoughts are odd, like daffodils: the bulbs are inside you somewhere getting ready to pop up in your lawn brain from nowhere, and often they're shaped like questions, which jump out of your mouth in exactly the same way.

— At the end of wars do the losers congratulate the winners?

— What's that? says Dad. — Soap in my ears.

I repeat the question.

Dad half laughs. — Unfortunately not.

— But why? It's bad sport.

— Sportsmanship. Yes. But war isn't a game.

— There are winners and losers, though. So it's similar.

— Some winners, more losers. But no real rules. And yet . . . no. War isn't a sport, Billy. It's hell.

— But hell doesn't exist.

— Okay, it's the worst thing people can do to each other. It's people being horrific to other people on purpose. It's something we should avoid at all costs . . .

He trails off and I look at him out of my eye without water in it, and see him staring sadly at his red plastic-bag arm through the shower rain, shaking his head. With a bit more light we could have a rainbow in here.

— You know all that, he continues.

— Yes, I say. — And paper rock scissors Death Star isn't a real sport, either.

 

Instead of going home we walk to Cicely and Lizzie's house with a bag of food from the special small expensive shop, which I am allowed to carry. It's fine, not that heavy. Delicate essence. — Keep up now, says Dad, and I do, but every now and then I have to stop to check what Dad bought and by the time we get there I know: a pot of dirty green olives with little orange flickers in them; yes, they look like dragons' eyeballs. Some flappy bits of ham not even in a proper plastic box but paper instead, very folding. That big round crunchy crust loaf of bread without slices. And in this pot there's some humorous, which Dad doesn't normally like and I think is only medium so why did he buy it? But yes yes yes, there they are, there: two gingerbread men, I can see by their outline. Excellent!

Dad smoothes down his hair on the step. When Cicely opens the door he does a funny little bow which is quite embarrassing and says, — Sorry not to call.

Cicely touches her throat. — It's fine. Come on in.

— We've brought lunch, says Dad, pointing stupidly at the bag.

I explain exactly what's in it. You already know because I told you, so I'm not going to tell you again: use your memory.

— Where's Lizzie? I ask. Normally she's exactly behind Cicely's legs when the door opens, but not today, today she has evaporated.

— In her bedroom.

— Can I take it to her if we don't make crumbs?

— What's that?

Keep up at the back there, Cicely, lope! — Gingerbread man, I say slowly.

But Cicely is concentrating on Dad who is scraping his hand through his corn hair like perhaps he has nits. — I just needed to talk to you, he says. I should have rung ahead. But . . .

— Of course, Cicely says. — I'll put some coffee on.

And to me she quickly says, — She's doing a tea party for her animals. Crumb-free gingerbread men are definitely invited.

I jump the right-shaped package out of the bag and drop the rest on the floor and run off without coming back even when Dad says — Hey! because I can tell he doesn't really mean it, and anyway I have to go past the fish in their topical tank first to say, — Hello goldfish, remember me? But of course they don't because goldfish are not elephants and anyway Cicely was wrong: when I make it inside Lizzie's room I actually see that she is lying down on her back under a blanket in the middle of the floor with her eyes shut and a line of her animals spread out on either side of her as if she is the fuse large of an airplane and they are her wings.

— What are you doing? I ask.

She blinks at me.

Small children are interesting: it's not that possible to tell exactly what is going on inside their heads, and with Lizzie it is even harder because she still doesn't use words. Adults are also tricky to understand, but for the opposite reasons.

— Would you like a gingerbread man?

She knows what I'm talking about now. Good-bye wings and up she gets. I give the slightly-less-good-because-one-of-its-buttons-has-fallen-off-in-the-bag gingerbread man to her and hold mine up and take a bite which she unsurprisingly copies. But what's this? She's holding her headless man out to look at and here we go again: crumply mouth, melted plastic. I push the door shut with my foot because grown-ups will only make this situation worse and luckily I only bit the arm off mine.

— Here, I say, and I snap the head off my gingerbread man and put it down on the floor next to her feet. — You can have my head if you want. Lay your body next to it and he'll be whole again, almost.

Lizzie wipes biscuit muck on her dress sleeve and stops crying and does as I say.

— But really the point is to eat all of him. I snap the legs off mine one by one and do impressive eating and it works: eventually Lizzie breaks a foot off her man and then I take back my head and we sit in the middle of her quite strange line of animal toys eating the last bits up pretty happily.

After that I do some explaining about things to her, because if you talk honestly to a person, Son, they'll soon start talking honestly to you, or so the theory goes, and my mission is to be the first to hear Lizzie talk. I am mostly honest about animals because I know many interesting facts about them, including cetaceans, which include massively developed dolphins. Did you know that their sonar communications are so-phisticated that they make mankind's look like toys in a shop? Lizzie starts playing with her slightly babyish blocks of big Legos when I tell her this. Mine at home is technical because my fingers are nimbler. I help her anyway: we build a square thing with a hole in it for her bean cat to sit in, plus turrets. Then I tell her about silverback gorillas who also have posable thumbs and weigh up to four hundred pounds and are therefore earth's greatest prime-apes.

— Did you know that they avoid fighting each other by doing imposing poses instead? I ask, even though I know she won't answer, because it is called a one-way conversation.

— And my dad downstairs does the same thing, a bit. You don't have a dad here, but if you did he might avoid fighting with your mum by not making eye contact and being imposing nearby instead before walking off.

Lizzie breaks up some of my turrets and swaps them with ones of her own which do look better, in fact, because they are in a repeating-color pattern of red then white then green. I tell her about how countries have colored flags. White is a very boring color and means stop, I surrender. Lizzie tries to make a bridge thing on the front of the round thing and can't and starts to cry instead. I don't help her with it either because what she wants to make is actually impossible. It's gravity's fault, and other laws of nature, like the one about four-dot Lego bricks not fitting into three-dot spaces. I think about surrendering but go to the kitchen for reinforcements instead.

 

Have you ever built a hide? I don't mean the skin you slice off a dead animal, but a hide you can hide in? I built one with Dad once, using a lawn-mower box. It was as tall as me: huge! And when Dad took the lawn mower out of it there was nothing left inside so it was empty. Waste not want not, Son: what shall we make out of this? Easy: David Attenborough's hide! First Dad cut a letter-box slit in it with Stanley's knife, and then we stuck the box behind the big bush next to the compost heap. After that, I spent the whole afternoon camouflaging it with branches and leaves and twigs and mud and colored chalk and glitter and sellotape. Then I hid in it. I looked out at the garden for a long time, whispering what I was seeing to myself, just like David Attenborough.

— There he is: our cat Richard, appearing from over the wall! And yes, just to the side of him, some bees are buzzing around by that lavender plant. Is Richard going to try to catch one? No. He's walked off.

I knew I'd probably have seen those things anyway, but I tried not to be disappointed. Catching a glimpse of something rarer — a buzzard with strips of flesh for its young, perhaps, or some fox cubs digging a hole — would simply require better technology. David Attenborough often uses a mote control camera when he wants to film a rattlesnake striking a mouse in the middle of the night, so I asked Dad if we had a mote control camera I could use. But he just laughed and said, — No, which made me shiver angrily, nearly cry, and go back into the hide.

Half an hour later Dad's face appeared in the letter-box window slit. — The closest we have is your old baby monitor, Son. I've charged it up. Stick the microphone here in the garden and take the receiver up to your bedroom. You can spend the evening listening to the grass grow . . .

 

Dad and Cicely are sitting with their knees close together across the corner of the wobbly table. His head is in his hands and she is stroking his arm with her thumb. It's posable.

— You poor thing, Cicely says. — You have to let me speak to her.

It looks like Dad's hands are shaking his head. — No, no, no.

— Or at least tell Mum to butt out.

— You mustn't get involved. Dad looks up at her. — Can't you see?

— Of course, but . . . you can't do nothing.

I fizz forward then, saying, — I can't do anything about Lizzie's Lego tower thing either and she's crying about it quite hard.

Dad rocks back sharply in his chair and takes a big breath through his nose; Cicely gives his arm one last pat and pushes herself up from the table, which squeaks.

— I have been telling her about dolphin sonar, I say.

— Lovely. Cicely smiles and pats me on the head on her way past, then pauses to look back at Dad. — See, communication, Jim. That's what it's all about.

 

Have you ever tried not to laugh? I have, and it's incredibly hard not to laugh if you're having to try not to, but if you're not thinking about it it's easy because you probably don't laugh most of the time anyway.

It's quite like catching a ball.

Dad is fantastic at catching balls but sadly I am not, and when he last tried to teach me I noticed that the muscles in his jaw kept crumpling up. Crocodiles have the strongest bite in the animal kingdom, which you might guess, but I bet you don't know what comes next? Snapping turtles! Yes, a turtle. Its jaw pressure is bigger than a Great White's, and a lion's, and even a hyena's.

— Relax, Son, just keep your eye on the ball. Stop thinking. Let yourself catch it.

It's impossible to stop thinking, too, when somebody says stop thinking, so I don't even try; I do try to watch the ball, though, and there it is, looping up and dropping down with the bright yellow hedge and crooked fence behind it. Ready, hands, ready! But as the ball dips right down close, getting faster, my knee sort of jumps up a bit and my shoulder goes with it and my face decides to twist itself away slightly in case the ball hits it. Go, hands, go! Too late. The ball hits my cheek and the eye that's looking sees it hop-run off right under the thickest bit of hedge. Tennis balls are bright yellow as well and Dad's jaw muscles start showing off again.

— It will be a tricky customer to find, I say.

— Yes. Never mind. We'll get it later.

— Sorry.

— Forget about it. You're okay?