What I Did (32 page)

— We're not really on safari, are we, Dad?

He shakes his head.

— We're the prey instead.

A bigger wave hits the pebbly beach below us, and the sound of it,
whump
, drifts up.

— We're the prey, and Butterfly and Giraffe, the orang-utan, all of the cow sill people, they're the hunters, aren't they?

He drops to one knee and reaches out toward me. I won't let him have my hand yet, though, because I won't.

— Why are they hunting us?

— Billy, he says, and shakes his head. — Just come—

— Why?

Maybe it's the wind, but his voice sounds small and scratchy, like a mouse in an egg box. — Please. Come here. They think I hurt you, Son. That's what this is about.

— Why?

— They want to keep me away from you, to prevent it happening again.

He's on his hands and knees now, reaching out, his hand an inch from my arm. That's about two centimeters. My bad leg throbs. He won't grab for me, though. Because if I jerk back . . .

— Pretend what's happening?

— Not pretend. Prevent. Stop. They want to stop me hurting you.

— You're not hurting me.

— No, and I'm not going to. I promise . . . I wasn't about . . . I won't. But they think I did. They think I hit you with something. They think I—

I drift my arm into his grip, which shuts ever so gently. Puppies again. It's fine. He's talking. It worked.

— I just can't bear it, Son.

— But you did hit me.

— No I didn't.

— Yes you did.

— I smacked you.

— It's the same.

— No. It's not. At least . . . not like they think. Christ, they think I hurt you with something.

— You did.

— What?

— With a brick. A wall brick. You were chasing me so I jumped over a wall to get away and the brick bit me. It was your fault. And mine, too, slightly. Then there was a road and you smacked me incredibly hard for that as well.

— Is that what you said to them?

— I was cross that you told on me. You said it was behind us, but you lied. So I said it all to them.

— That I hurt you with a brick?

— Hurt. Bit. Maybe. I can't remember. But anyway. What did
you
tell them?

Dad's face is the same flat gray as the sky, which has no edges. It's just one big lump of cloud rushing along behind him, or maybe we're moving and the cloud is staying still. The world is like a basketball on God's finger, Son, if only he existed.

— Nothing, Dad says.

— What?

— I told them . . . nothing.

— Why?

— Because . . . it's not their business, Son.

— I don't understand.

He gentles me closer to him. It's called drawing but not the kind that has to do with sketches, more like a string in the neck of a bag. One arm-loop tightens round me, pulls me down onto the grass tufts, the wetness of his face pressing into my forehead. Normally my snot tears do it to him, in reverse.

— We are nothing to do with them, he says.

— But you told me something different. You said
just tell the truth.

— I know.

— So why don't
you
just tell the truth, too?

— I—

— Tell them the truth.

— I—

— Tell them the truth. All of it. Explain about the crack and the light and everything being all right because it has some wrong. When they know it they'll say thank you. They'll go away and leave us alone. It's incredibly obvious. Just do what you told me to do!
Tell them the truth
.

— It's not always so simple. The truth doesn't always work.

I pull away from him. Not far, not back toward the edge drop, just so that I can see his face. — Not always doesn't mean never.

 

This is the last bit and shall I tell you why? Because it comes at the end. But don't worry, it's not like most last bits. In most last bits everything finishes, and normally it finishes happily, and if it's a book for children it normally finishes with everybody going to bed. Stock trick, Son. End of story, lights-out, bed.

But I'm not finished.

Neither are the fish in Lizzie's topical tank. They're still swimming round and round and round and round. Well done, fish. They must have been at it ever since I was last here, but does a tree fall over in the forest if you're not there to see it crash down? Yes, of course, obviously! Look, there it is, on its barky side, all smashed up. That fish just did two back-and-forths in different directions, which equals a figure of eight.

Through the tank a bendy version of Lizzie is lying on her belly making a garage for her cars out of wooden bricks. It's never going to work because the bottom bit is wobbly and it's not just the glassy water's fault. I decide to help her. Together we put some bigger bricks down first which is called laying foundations. We build a pretty good wall, but small children are incredibly clumsy. It doesn't matter: I explain how all houses have roots in the ground except for the ones which fall over because of hurricanes in Africa. Hurricanes have names. Watch out, here comes Lizzie. End of garage. She stares at the ruins.

— Not to worry, I tell her. — We can build a new one.

Sometimes, Son, there's nothing for it but to start again.

The adults are talking in the kitchen. Cicely is there, and that's normal: it's her house. Mum, too: not so normal; even though they're sisters I hardly ever used to come here with just Mum. And there's also the new horse man. He's a new man because he's new, so he's not yet normal, not at all. He is definitely a horse, though, very long-faced with a stringy mane and polished wet eyes. Even his talking is horselike: he sort of whinnies in between whatever Cicely or Mum says.

Everything changes, Son, apart from that fact.

And to prove it's true I'll give you an example: my shoes, the ones which flash, don't fit me anymore. My feet grew because everything changes. The little heel lights still go wink, wink, wink when I whack the shoes on the bottom step, though, and my feet are still here, so it's more complicated than that, Dad: everything changes, yes, but nothing goes totally away.

It's obvious Cicely likes the new horse man. She kept patting his arm when she introduced him to Mum and me in the kitchen, and do you know what her other hand was doing? I'll tell you: its long fingers were winding themselves round the necklace which came in that blue-velvety box. The one Lizzie unwrapped. Well done, horse man, good gift! Cicely likes it nearly as much as Lizzie enjoyed tearing off the paper. Time for another whinny!

And Lizzie likes the horse man, too. Some birds perch on water buffaloes, and there's even a type called a plover which pulls strips of rotting meat out of the gaps between crocodile teeth. I've never heard of an owl sitting on a horse before, though. But while we had our healthy boring snack Lizzie sat on his lap, very contented, using her slow owl blinks. Like Dad, I'm not a huge fan of humorous, particularly not with strange knobbly crackers. But I ate the snack up so that Lizzie and I could go and play because everything changes and I wanted to see whether my experiment might finally have worked.

And it had!

I said to Lizzie: — Isn't it strange. Normally when I'm here I have a dad with a lap to sit on, not you.

And she looked at me and slow-blinked and said: — Yes.

Yes! She spoke!

She didn't stop there. She asked: — Where's yours gone?

And even though I think I may have heard her saying something behind the front door before Cicely let us in, it still feels like Lizzie's started speaking because of me, which means all the running comment trees I did for her helped. So I do some more.

I explain that Dad isn't here today because he's copulating. He's been doing it for a while now, ever since we came back from the white cliffs.

— It's called jumping before you're pushed, Son. They can't order me out of my own house if I've already upped and gone.

Everyone was very pleased with him for taking this wise precaution. Even Giraffe. She told Mum, — Despite the recent setback, so clear a signal of Jim's new constructive attitude toward the process can only be favorably interpreted, which sounded nice, whatever it meant.

Either she or Butterfly comes round for a chat quite often. Last time it was Butterfly and we watched
Life in Cold Blood
—
The Dragons of the Dry
episode — together. I drew a picture of two skinks fighting. She liked it a lot: in fact she said it was really very helpful, so I gave it to her. I didn't mind: the legs were wrong anyway.

This second block garage is much better than the first one. While Lizzie keeps on adding new bricks willy-nilly I'm doing very careful adjustments here and there to keep the balance without her noticing. It's called using subtlety, and while I'm using it I carry on telling her everything, not just about how it might be better to use what we're making as a zoo for plastic animals rather than a boring car park, but also explaining about Grandma Lynne, who left our house when Dad did, but only so she could make up her own spare-room bed for him to sleep in until he found his feet. He's still there. They're on the ends of your legs, Dad! It's all right, though: I can go round to see him more often there because Grandma Lynne is allowed to use her super vision on us both, just until we're able to put this whole sorry episode behind us, Son, okay?

I stop.

Lizzie's heels squash out pinkly as she sits back on them. She smiles because she's pleased with what we've built. It's okay. We do nothing for a moment. There are normal car Cheerio noises outside and the smell of coffee from across in the kitchen pushes a feeling of Dad into me. The doctors took off his plaster cast the other day, so neither of his arms is warning-red anymore. His bad hand is still oddly thin. I try to pass Lizzie one last brick. She lets it skiddle between her knees and sits there blinking from me to the garage-zoo with her marmalade eyes. Bicycles also have spokes. Mine sparkle in the sun when I'm riding magnificently along the pavement behind Dad without even nearly falling off.

I'm Billy Wright.

I'm six, not finished.

Here is the real ending.

About the Author

Christopher Wakling
grew up in California and England. He won a scholarship to Oxford University and has since worked as a travel writer, farm hand, and litigator. He now lives in Bristol, England, with his wife and children.
What I Did
is his sixth book.

 

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PRAISE FOR
WHAT I DID

“This is family life today at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging, and above all, self-conscious.
What I Did
is every parent's nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too.”

—Emma Donoghue, author of
Room

“Gripping, hilarious, tender and a whole lot more, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year.”

—
Daily Mail
(London)

“A powerful, poignant and funny novel perched on the precarious line between protecting children and destroying families.”

—
Melbourne Age

“Amusing and unsettling . . .
What I Did
lets us into the mind of a child who is comically literal and utterly at sea in the world of adults.”

—
The Guardian
(London)

“Horribly plausible . . . [
What I Did
] brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw.”

—
The Independent
(London)

“Wakling creates believable conflict from the everyday facts of a child going just too far and a parent losing it. . . . The novel is a strong depiction of a family in crisis.”

—
Sunday Age
(Melbourne)

“A powerful parable of twenty-first-century society . . . a fine, challenging novel.”

—
Mail on Sunday
(London)

“I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good.”

—Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of
Ralph's Party

“Hugely impressive, gripping, funny, and thought provoking.”

—Emily Barr, bestselling author of
Backpack

“Excellent. . . . Dark but uplifting.”

—Alex Preston, author of
This Bleeding City

Also by Christopher Wakling

The Devil's Mask

The Undertow

Beneath the Diamond Sky

On Cape Three Points

Towards the Sun

Credit

Cover design and illustration by James Iacobelli

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 

WHAT I DID
. Copyright © 2011 by Christopher Wakling. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

 

FIRST U.S. EDITION

 

ISBN 978-0-06-212169-1
Epub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062121707

 

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