What I Did (22 page)

The problem was that we needed a proper tank like Lizzie has now, with filtered bubbles in it, not just the little round glass bowl Dad bought secondhand. I heard Mum telling Dad so. But he didn't agree.

He said, — Let's not add financial insult to injury, eh. If it's good enough for Tom and Jerry it's good enough for me.

— It's not you I'm worried about, it's Billy.

I didn't understand that — I wasn't going to swim in the bowl. I wouldn't have fitted in and anyway I couldn't swim yet because when you're three you aren't developed enough to swim properly or even move your body carefully, never mind think sensible thoughts, and that's why I thought it would be a good idea to take Orangey out of his bowl with no filtered bubbles in it: he probably needed some air. I know now of course that fish use their gills to eat oxygen from water, because I've seen
The Blue Planet
, but I hadn't seen that then. I didn't even know that wet fish are slippery customers. That's why I let Orangey flip between my fingers onto the floor and, when I tried to pick him up, I accidentally knelt on him.

 

Normally I go to school for the whole week but guess what? One morning before we've even arrived at the weekend Mum puts out ordinary clothes for me to wear instead of my uniform. I check my book bag: sometimes there's a piece of paper in it saying something like
No school uniform tomorrow, just pay a pound to keep earthquakes in Africa
, but not today, which is so great it makes me practice my sea-eagle swoops on the stairs. First I run up to the top on a thermal, then I glide back down to the fourth or fifth step from the bottom very stealthy, using my softest feet, then I leap-dive down incredibly banging loud on my imaginary un-expecting prey. I manage three swoop-dives like this before Mum appears saying, — Stop it, stop it, stop it: for God's sake stop it!

— But I don't have to go to school. It's a day off.

— Not really, Billy. Come here.

I do as I'm told and sit down next to Mum on the top stair. She is holding her dressing gown tight into her throat and has red eyes. Jenna in my class can make her whole face go pink if she wants. Don't strangle yourself, Mum!

— Today is a serious day, she says in a very serious voice. — We have to go to an important meeting. You, me, and Grandma Lynne. The ladies from the Council will be there, and the doctor you went to see the other day, and there'll be more people, too. They're going to want to talk to me and they may well also want to speak to you.

I do some serious nodding back. — What about?

She twists the dressing-gown collar tighter, bites her lips, and looks away for a long time. It's quite boring waiting, so I ask what's for breakfast, which makes her say, — Just tell the truth about . . . how much . . . you love your dad . . . and how much . . . he . . . But she doesn't finish this quite easy-to-end sentence-question because she needs the toilet very intensively instead, which isn't really a problem, because Grandma Lynne is already downstairs and she lets me have Saturdays-only chocolate spread on toast.

 

Have you ever been to a pantomime? I went once, and my trip to the meeting with Grandma Lynne and Mum is reasonably similar in two ways. First, because Grandma Lynne and Mum took me to the pantomime on a bus without Dad as well (— Slapstick isn't really my thing, Son, you'll have a much better time without me) and second, because they both wore stuff on their lips for that trip, too. Apart from those similarities it's different. Less happens; this meeting is quite a lot more boring.

 

When I knelt on Orangey I was sad. He stopped wriggling and became much less fiddly to pick up and I knew what had happened: he was dead because I had killed him. I still hoped Dad might be able to mend him because I was only three or four and an idiot at the time, so I took Orangey up to the bedroom-study and asked Dad to help me make him better. When he said he couldn't I got quite angrily upset and he had to calm me down by putting Orangey on his mouse mat and bear-hugging me. In a bear hug you can't kick or struggle because everything is wrapped up tightly. I know it's unrealistic: bears don't really kill prey that way: they scoop Alaskan salmon out of rivers in slow motion with incredibly nimble claws.

— But why can't you make him alive again? I asked when the bear hug stopped.

— Because it's impossible, nobody can. That's what dead means. Gone for good.

— Gone where?

— Nowhere.

— But if I don't go anywhere I'm still here. He's still here. Look. He's on your mouse mat.

— That's just his body. The Orangey part of Orangey has gone.

— But where?

— I . . . He trailed off. I did not know it then but now I've been to school I think he was thinking about Jesus and God, because they own the heaven where Christians think people go after life has ended if they've either been totally good, or bad-and-said-sorry. But sadly we are not Christians or even members of other less good religions. All of them have something like heaven, too, but we don't, so when our pets die that's it, they're gone, and we don't know where. End of story. Put the book back on the shelf and lock the library door, Son.

— I wish I could tell you, Billy, is what Dad said about dead Orangey eventually. — I wish I believed something nice that I could tell you to make it easier. But the honest truth is this: I don't. Orangey is gone forever.

After that we put Orangey's body in one of Dad's work envelopes. It had a little plastic window. If he'd been alive he could have looked out, and even though he wasn't and couldn't we could still see his body by looking in, right up until we buried the envelope not deeply enough in the garden and somebody, probably our cat Richard, dug it up and ate it. I didn't mind. He was dead anyway.

 

Here's what happens at the important pantomime meeting.

First of all, we take the bus and arrive at the big building early so we go for a walk to a shop instead. Inside the shop there is a rack of chocolate bars which I don't ask about and yes, yes, yes, Mum buys us all Kit Kats anyway. That's right: a whole one each, no split-it-three-ways sharing! Better still, she then spots some sticker activity books on a shelf, and there's even one on the animals of the Arctic, and when I don't ask for that either she buys it plus a brand-new pack of colored pencils because, she says, they may well come in handy, too.

And then we arrive at the meeting in a room with a lovely carpet which you can see the joins in because it's not one big piece but a whole chessboard of little squares, gray and brown, like in the hospital, only there it wasn't carpet, excellent. I decide to move like a knight and I manage one dogleg forward and another sideways before Mum says, — No, please come here, Billy, in a mouse-hole voice.

Here's a timid mouse peeping out.

Zip, back it goes in again.

I do as I'm told, very reassuring.

There are some other people in the room and Mum wants me to say hello to them. I recognize Butterfly and her cow sill friend, Giraffe.

— Hello, I say to them, because I am polite.

Giraffe does her long-head-sideways-blinking thing with her Hello back, and yes, yes, yes, Butterfly actually has her butterfly roach thing on again today, perched on her chest. It still looks too woolly-heavy to fly, but I'm pleased to see it all the same, and she's pleased to see me as well because she says, — Well hello, Billy! How are you today?

— I'm fine.

— That's a good boy.

I
am
a good boy, it's true: I've eaten a whole Kit Kat on my own to prove it, and I've been polite, but I'd be an even better boy if I could do a long bishop diagonal move from that corner of the room beside the letter-box bin thing right through the gaps between the tables with plastic bottles of water lined up like soldiers on them, over to that droopy plant in a pot with pebbles around its roots on the far side of the board.

It's good to give your bishops an angle of attack early on, Son, because they're commanding.

But I can't, because somebody else is in the way now: the doctor! He is wearing a very white shirt with the sleeves rolled up showing his excellent black arms and the supershiny big wristwatch. When he smiles at me his teeth glisten like his watch, and he also has some silver pen-clip things in his top pocket. Black and white and shiny: a magpie. They are intelligent, which makes sense, because to be a doctor you have to know exactly where the bones are in everybody's body. And he unfolds a serious-big-newspaper as he sits down to prove it!

And it's very funny thinking of magpies and chess because over in that corner sitting down there's a policewoman in a black-and-white uniform, holding a hat on the table in front of her. It's a chess hat! Look, proper black and white squares, even better than the gray-brown carpet tiles!

What we should really be doing here is setting up a pawn pyramid of defense, but we can't, because somebody is arriving late. The doors are like the ones we have in school: they have big pushy metal rod things on the top to shut them with a squeak after you've come in or gone out, which therefore must be nice for Miss Hart because it will remind her of her own habitat.

Miss Hart?

Oh no, no, no!

She's here! And she's seen me! Which means she definitely knows I'm not at school or ill! My ears are hot because I feel very intensively guilty and embarrassed.

Miss Hart looks straight at me as she walks over and does that thing she sometimes does if somebody is upset in class or doesn't understand the thing on the board: she goes down on one knee and looks at me super gently and says what she has to say in a lovely quiet voice.

— Don't you worry, Billy. Everybody's here to make things better.

— It wasn't my idea, Miss Hart, I'm sorry.

— Idea about what?

— Coming! And it was my turn to count the tadpoles! I really don't want to miss . . .

Miss Hart does a smile-glance at Mum then gives my hand a pat.

— Don't you worry. The tadpoles can wait.

But she's wrong! They can't wait. They will develop whether they like it or not because of metamorphosis which isn't evolution. But I don't have a chance to tell Miss Hart these things because she's already standing up to say something else to Mum instead.

And now Grandma Lynne is chatting to a small woman who looks like a starling because she has speckles on her face and flecks in her jacket and she even pecks her nose forward a bit when she speaks. She must be Grandma Lynne's friend, who is going to help Grandma Lynne with something, because Grandma Lynne beckons me over and says, — Remember I told you about Jean, my friend, who is going to help.

— Yes.

— Well this is Jean. She's going to help.

I still don't really know what that means but it's obvious from the way Grandma Lynne is speaking what I'm supposed to say so I say it anyway.

— Thank you very much.

The lady, Jean, pecks her nose at me and says, — You're most welcome. But no, there are no clues about what I'm welcome to do: she just pecks back at Grandma Lynne and says, — No Jim then?

— Perhaps it's for the best.

Starling Jean shrugs her wing shoulders and starts unpacking her briefcase. It's large. Extremely! I spot Butterfly watching from across the tabletops. She must be quite upset: her own briefcase is miniature compared with that! Still, she digs some papers out of it for Giraffe, who thanks her sideways as usual.

But there's something more interesting going on behind Giraffe's long head: a big yellow crane arm is moving in an arc above the half-built next-door building top. It's taller than a real giraffe even, way taller! And there's a chain hanging down, very black and tight, so something is probably on the hooky end, but although I stand on tiptoes I can't see what it is, so I do a few almost invisibly small steps forward to see if I can see it then, but Mum still notices, because very quietly she says, — Billy!

I have to stop. It's frustrating! I really want to know what's on the end!

And it's strange because normally I'd just ask Mum if I could go and have a look out of the window, and Mum is not Dad so she's much more likely to say yes if you must even if she would really prefer me not to, but today it feels as if asking to look out of the window would be like asking to open Christmas presents early, which means even Mum is bound to say No way, don't even think about it, so there's no point in asking, so I don't.

The crane cranks round a little nearer anyway. And everybody in the room is pretending they're busy with something because they don't really want to talk to each other until the thing they're all waiting for happens, so nobody talks until the silence feels like the deep end of the swimming pool. Magpie doctor jumps in first. He shows his paper to Giraffe and says something about pointless posturing and the new clear capabilities. She can't believe the Government will use force without conclusive evidence either, and Butterfly leans in to have a look at the pictures. I decide to keep an eye on the crane because it's less boring than everything else and the thing on the end may come up on its own anyway.

Then everyone jumps up for an orangutan!

Not a real one of course. The orangutan is actually a man who comes through the door bum-first because he's holding a massive coffee cup in one hand and a folder of papers under the other arm. Squeak goes the hinge. He has a circle of messy orange hair round the back of his head with only a few wisps on top, and when he turns round I see that the circle joins up with an orange beard, almost exactly like King Louis's from
The Jungle Book
. I want to be a man, man cub, and walk right into town. Well done, you've succeeded!

The orangutan apologizes for being late, but he doesn't sound sorry; he sounds cheerful instead. He plonks his papers down and takes a big slurp of coffee and a deep what-have-we-here breath, then tells us all he's called Bill Pearson twice, and works his way around the room saying hello to everyone with lots of nodding and smiling, calling people by their name at least twice, too.