The war hots up/Homecoming/Drowning in familiarity
Opening night was upon us before I knew it. Right up to the time that we opened the house, I was convinced we'd never pull it off. Aziz's beloved White Whale had packed in the day before, leaving us without wheels with which to move in the last of the goods. Instead, we ferried massive armloads of junk down to the cinema on the buses in enormous black rubbish sacks, getting filthy looks from the other riders. Without the White Whale, we couldn't erect our temporary hoardings and we didn't have our hi-viz vests and safety hat disguises, so we just scurried through the door and hoped that no one called the filth. We got away with it, though no one left again until it was truly the middle of the night.
But Aziz came through with new transmission gubbins for his van -- it turned out he had two more vans just like it up on blocks that he cannibalized for parts, drafting us all as unskilled manual labor. So we were able to ferry our audience down to the Sewer Cinema entrance in groups of twelve, picking them up at pre-arranged spots all over town, sticking them in the back of the van (we'd papered over the windows so that no one could see where we were going), then pulling right up to the hoarding and ushering them out in hi-viz and helmets that we stripped off and tossed back into the van so it could go for the next ferryload of passengers.
I'd left Jem in charge of making people feel welcome while we filled up. Most of the at- tendees knew one another from Confusing Peach parties or other social events, but we'd asked our friends to put the word out to their friends and friends-of-friends and had got a rush of RSVPs in the last few minutes. The Honey Roasted Landlords played three sets, Chester and Dog tended bar -- we set out a donation cup to cover the drink we'd brought in, and plenty of people showed up with bottles of something or other that went into the communal pool -- Cora and 26 made sure nobody fell into the open sewer.
Aziz and I dropped off the last load at 11:00 P.M., four hours after we'd started, exhausted but grinning like holy fools. Aziz revealed two musty, wrinkled tuxedos he'd dredged up from one of his boxes and we both changed. Mine was way too big, but I rolled up the sleeves and turned up the trousers, then shrugged into my hi-viz and helmet and ducked inside to the most roaring, exciting, ridiculous, outrageous party I'd ever seen.
As I took it all in from the doorway, nervousness took possession of my belly, gnawing at my guts. The tux was redonkulous in the extreme, I looked like an idiot, my film was stupid, they were all going to hate it and me, I'd dragged them all into a sewer --
I knew that I had to grab the mic and start talking right then or I never would. So I did. “Erm, hullo?” I said, holding the mic in a death-grip. “Hello?” No one seemed to notice my amplified voice around the edges of the conversation-blast.
Jem grabbed the mic from me and pointed it into the nearest amplifier. Immediately, a feedback squeal that rattled my teeth. All conversation ceased instantly, as people shouted and clapped their hands over their ears. Jem handed me back the mic and said, “You're welcome.”
“Thanks,” I said, my amplified voice loud in the sudden silence. I'd had a whole flowery speech worked out, thanking people for coming and introducing our project and so on, but I couldn't think of any of it just then. All those faces turned toward me, all those eyes staring. The whispers.
“Erm,” I said. “My name's Cecil B. DeVil. My friends and I made some films. Let's watch them, okay?”
Of course, 26 wasn't expecting this, so she wasn't ready, and the lights stayed on and no films played on the screen. Everyone was still staring. Someone giggled. “Well,” I said, “Well. Erm, while we're waiting, erm.” I felt for something to say. Then, the words came. “You know TIP, right? Theft of Intellectual Property Act?” People booed good-naturedly. My heart thudded and my fingertips tingled. “The thing is --” The words were right there, tip of my tongue. Faces stared at me. Smiling, nodding, wanting to hear what I had to say. Twenty was frowning at her screen, trying to get the beamer working.
“I left home a year ago, when they took away my family's Internet access because I wouldn't stop downloading. I couldn't stop downloading. I know that sounds stupid, but I was making films, and to make films, I had to download films. I don't use a camera. I use other films and editing software. But I think my films are good.” I swallowed. “Forget that. I don't care if my films are good or not. They're mine. They say something I want and need to say. And I don't hurt anyone when I say it. They say we have a free country, and in a free country, you should be able to say what's in your heart, even if you have to use other peoples' words to say it.” The words were tumbling out now. “We all use other peoples' words! We didn't invent English, we inherited it! All the shots ever shot were shot before. All the dialog ever written is inspired by other peoples' dialog. I make new words out of them, my words, but they're not like, mine-mine, not like my underpants are mine! They're mine, but they're yours to make into your words, too!
“So they took away my family's Internet, and my Mum couldn't sign on for benefits anymore, and Dad couldn't work on the phone-bank anymore, and my sister --” A lump rose in my throat as I looked at Cora. I swallowed hard and looked away, but my voice was breaking now. “My little sister couldn't do her schoolwork anymore. It destroyed my family. I haven't spoken to my parents for a year. I --” I swallowed again. “I miss them.”
I had to stop and swallow several times. The room was dead quiet, every face on me, solemn. “Now they've passed this new law, and kids like me are going to jail for creating things in a way that the big media companies don't like. They passed this law even though no one wanted it, even though it will destroy more families.
“It's got to stop. It's got to stop. We have to stop being ashamed of downloading. We have to stop letting them call us thieves and crooks. What we do is creative and has at least as much right to exist as D'Artagnan's Blood-Oath!” People chuckled. “So let's do it. Me and my mates made these films. Some of you make films. Some of you have films inside you, waiting to get out. Just make them! Sod the law, sod the corporate bullies. They can't put us all in jail. Let's tell them what we do, go public with it. It's time to stop hiding and spit right in their eyes.”
The beamers sprang to life and blinding light hit me in the face. 26 was ready to show the films. I shielded my eyes and looked at the faces behind the swimming blobs of light that oozed across my blinded eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Looks like we're ready. I hope you like our films. Thanks for coming.”
The applause was so loud in the bricked-in vault that it made my ears ring, and as I stepped off the little stage, people started to shake my hand and hug me, strangers and friends, faces I couldn't make out behind the tears that wouldn't stop leaking out of my eyes. Finally I was holding Cora and Cora was holding me, and we were both crying like we hadn't done since we were little kids.
Behind us, the film had started, and we dried our eyes and watched along, watched the audience watching the films, laughing, gasping, nudging each other and whispering. I don't think I'd ever felt prouder in my life. It swelled me up like a balloon in my chest and the big, stupid grin on my face was so wide it made my cheeks ache, but I couldn't stop it.
They applauded even louder when my film finished, and 26 kept the final frame paused until the applause died down before starting Chester's film. We had an hour's worth of footage lined up, and hundreds of strangers and friends watched with rapt attention, right to the last second, and then there were drinks and dozens of shouted, indistinct conversations. Ev- eryone had something to say, something they loved, something they wanted to make, and it all blurred into a jumble of hands pounding my shoulders, lips shouting encouragement in my ears while the Honey Roasted Landlords played through the night.
Our Leicester Square caper had taken weeks to be noticed by the rest of the world. But Sewer Cinema was an instant hit. It turned out that there were reporters from Time Out and The Guardian in the audience, and we were on the front door of both websites the next morning -- including a close-up photo of my face. Dozens of reviews of our films appeared, mostly very complimentary (though some people hated them, but even those people were taking them seriously enough to write long rants about why they were rubbish, and I found that even these made me proud).
The Guardian mentioned that all the video was up for download on ZeroKTube and the comment sections on the download page filled up with hundreds of messages from all over the world, sometimes with links to other mixes of the same footage that other people had made, seemingly overnight. Just a few hours before, I'd felt all alone in the world, an idiot kid fighting a stupid war. Now I felt like I was part of a whole world of people who knew what I knew, felt what I felt. It was the best feeling in the world.
Everyone at the Zeroday was in a fantastic mood. Jem made us coffee that was the strongest, most delicious thing to come out of his kitchen yet. Chester and Rabid Dog announced that they were making breakfast and disappeared into the kitchen. I trailed after them and they put me to work as sous-chef, chopping this, stirring that, googling recipes and scrubbing pots and rooting through our larder for ingredients.
We brought out breakfast to a round of applause that intensified as Chester announced each dish: buckwheat porridge baked in milk with black currants and honey; grilled mush- rooms with dill; buttered scones with raspberry jam; streaky bacon and wild boar sausage; and more. It was all the bounty of various skips around town. Chester turned out to have a real passion for them, and had just lucked into a load of half-frozen organic meat that a Waitrose chucked out when its freezer broke down. Knowing the food had all come for free and been prepared with our own hands made it all the more delicious.
And so did Rabid Dog's special home-made chili sauce, which he had made and put up in little jars the month before, filling the house with choking, pepper-spray clouds made from the lethal Scotch Bonnet seeds he'd minced and flash-cooked before pickling them with spice and tomato puree. We sat there, stuffing our gobs and marveling at our own cleverness. After a year in London, I had found a home, a community, and a purpose in life. I was only seventeen years old, but I'd already made more of a mark on the world than either of my parents, already found something extraordinary to be and do. I felt like a god, or at least a godling.
So, of course, that's just when it all went to shit.
After breakfast, we did the washing up and drifted away to our laptops. It was gone two in the afternoon, and we'd wrangled two more days' use of the van out of Aziz to clear out the best junk from Sewer Cinema so that we could store it in the Zeroday for our next performance, whenever that was. But we couldn't do that until after dark, and so we drifted off to our laptops and began to read the reviews and that.
I lay down for a nap, my arms and legs leaden with food and hangover, Jem's coffee having lifted me up and then dropped me like a sack of potatoes. But I'd hardly closed my eyes when someone knocked at my door. I swam up from sleep, trying to make sense of the knocking and my surroundings.
“I'm sleeping,” I grunted at the shut door and whomever was behind it.
“It's Cora.” She sounded upset.
I groaned. “Come in,” I said, and sat up, gathering my quilt around me.
Cora flicked on the light when she came in and I shielded my eyes against the glare. When they adjusted, I saw that she was grim-faced and starey. Uh-oh.
She moved a pile of dirty clothes and magazines and assorted junk off my edit-suite chair and perched on it. “I just spoke to Mum and Dad.” I facepalmed myself and groaned again. Mum and Dad didn't read The Guardian -- they didn't read any newspapers, but The Guardian was a paper they especially didn't read. But now that I'd given it two seconds' thought, I realized that someone would have passed the paper onto them.
“They're upset?”
She sighed. “No. Yes. Sort of. I think they finally believe me now about you not being some kind of junkie prostitute rent-boy.”
“Well, that's a relief.”
She glared at me. “You should be relieved. They've been beside themselves since you left, convinced you'd be dead before they ever saw you again. They've been mourning you. Now they're just pissed at you.”
I sighed. “That's an improvement, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “They'll forgive you. You're the number one son, Trent. One night I came home late from the library and I heard Mum and Dad talking in the sitting room -- they didn't know I was still awake -- and they were talking about how clever you were, how you'd always been so creative and how they'd always thought you'd go so far.”
I shook my head. “Cora, what the hell are you talking about? I was the family cock-up artist! Oh, sure, I know they loved me, but they weren't stupid enough to think I'd ever amount to anything. I know that much.”
“You are pretty stupid for such a clever person, Trent.” She sighed again. “I don't want to argue about it. The only person who thought you were a cock-up artist was you. The rest of us thought you were pretty good. And Mum and Dad thought the sun shone out your arse. Believe it or not, but it's true.
“I even think they're a bit proud.” She looked at the floor for a while. “I think I need to go back to them.” I didn't say anything. She was chewing on the words, trying to get them out. “Mum and Dad need me there. They just don't understand how the world works. They're about to get their Internet back, you know?” That startled me. But of course -- it had been a year. “But Dad's got to find new work, and he's been offline for a year and you know what he was like -- he could barely make the computer work when he was using it every day. He's hopeless.” She heaved a huge sigh. “Trent, all this stuff you're doing here, I mean to say, it's really fantastic, honestly. Makes me proud to bust, just to be related to you. I thought that I'd come to London and discover a life of mystery and excitement, and I did, but I also discovered that I'm just not cut out for it. You and your mates, you're magic, but you're also insane. The truth is --” She looked me straight in the eyes. “The truth is, I am a good girl, the kind of girl who gets top marks and loves to study and so on. I'm not nearly cool enough to hang around with you and your friends.”
“Cora,” I said. “You're the coolest girl I know.” And it was true. Cora didn't have illustrious clothes or a shaved head or a bunch of piercings or whatever, but she'd seen through what I was doing with Sewer Cinema instantly, and challenged me to be a better version of myself. “I know you think you're not cool enough for us, but the truth is that you're so cool you don't need to live in a squat or break the law to be cool. You're cool just by being you -- you're cool enough to go to the bleeding library. If anyone should be proud, it should be me.”
She chuckled a bit and kicked her feet. “Who knew my brother was so soppy? Whatever, Trent. Listen, I've spent the past year worrying myself stupid about you, and Mum and Dad are twice as worried as I am. So I've got a proposal for you: come home and see them with me. Show them what you've done with yourself. Talk with them. You can come straight back to London afterward. I'm not trying to convince you to go live in Bradford or anything, but, Trent, you don't know what it's doing to them. They may not be the brightest people in the world, but they love us both like fire, and it's just not right --”
I held up my hands. “You're right.” I was surprised to hear myself saying it, but as soon as I did, some band of tightness and sorrow that had cinched up my chest for so long I'd forgot it was there released itself, and I found myself breathing into corners of my lungs that hadn't felt air in a year. “You're right, Cora. I didn't call because I hadn't called, and every day that went by made it harder to call. It's been nearly a year now, and I can't stay away any longer. You're right, you're right, you're right.”
She got up and kissed me on the cheek. “I love you, Trent,” she said, and gave me a ferocious hug that made my ribs creak. I guess carrying all those library books had given her strong arms.
No one was surprised to hear that I was going home to see my family. Chester had been to Manchester twice in the time I'd known him, returning in a weird happy-sad mood, with a big bag of food and a little stash of money from his parents. Even Rabid Dog called his parents once a month, and endured their shouting and abuse, and then went out and danced his ass off all night, returning exhausted and red-eyed and crawling into bed for a day. Only Jem was like me, a man without a past, never contacting his family or anyone else from his old days, whatever they might have been. I asked him about Dodger from time to time, but he just shrugged and changed the subject.
26 took Cora out before we left and they went clothes-shopping at the vintage places Twenty liked, and they did Cora's hair in her bathtub, dying it a weird reddy-brown like a fox and cutting it so that it stood out in clumps that looked random but did flattering things for her round face. They returned from their day happy and giggly as ever, and swore they'd stay in touch. I sat on my laptop and lazily worked on my timeline of the life-and-times of Scot Colford, a huge file I kept that documented every appearance Scot had ever made and all the people who'd co-starred with him. It was a big project that I'd been working on for years, though I'd had to start over when my lappie was stolen.
They were deep in conversation about the intricacies of copyright, talking about something called “plurilateral trade negotiations,” “TRIPS,” and “the Berne Convention.” It made me feel a bit thick, but also proud -- the women in my life were so corking brilliant, and they let me hang around with them.
Cora and I rode the tube to Victoria, and I helped her carry her big bag of library books and another bag of clothes 26 had helped her pick out. I had a cloth carrier-bag with my lappie and mains adapter, a couple clean pairs of underpants and socks, a toothbrush, and a spare T-shirt. I was going back to Bradford, but I wasn't staying more than one night.
As the bus pulled out of Victoria Station, my anxiety began to mount. What would I say to Mum and Dad? What would they say to me? Cora could tell that I was starting to work myself into a state, so she started to explain what she and 26 had been talking about. It was the history of copyright treaties, starting with something called the Berne Convention that a French writer named Victor Hugo had dreamed up in 1886, the first in a long line of international agreements on copyright that all built on one another. I didn't quite under- stand what Cora meant by this, but she explained: Every copyright treaty ever passed, for hundreds of years, has had in it something like, “By signing this treaty, you agree to all the other copyright treaties ever.” The way Cora described it, it was a net that got tighter and tighter, every time a country signed on and promised to make its laws comply with all the copyright laws anyone ever managed to come up with.
Cora told me that lately, copyright treaties weren't even being made at the United Nations, not since the big film and record companies figured out that you could get a lot more done by holding the treaty discussions in secret, then announcing the results to the world's nations and demanding that they sign on, and refusing to trade with them if they didn't.
At first I didn't understand her, and then I didn't believe her, and then she made me get out my laptop and jump on the bus's WiFi network -- I had a whole fistful of prepaid credit cards now that I used for this sort of thing, topping them up with cash only at newsagents that didn't have CCTV cameras -- and look it up. It was sickening, really, thinking that our laws weren't really being passed by our MPs, but instead being made up in secret meetings run by executives from giant corporations. How the hell could we fight that?
All this business made the time fly past, so that I didn't even have time to worry about seeing Mum and Dad again, which was what Cora had intended all along. When we got off the bus in Bradford, my mind was still whirling with thoughts about secret treaties, so that I hardly noticed where we were until we were out on the road, smelling the smells and seeing the sights of my hometown.
It was so familiar -- it seemed like I knew every crack in the pavement, every spiderweb in a shop doorway. The faces of the tramps asking for spare change outside of the station were like old friends: I must have seen them a million times in my life. Watching them begging for money, I wanted to run over and explain about Jem's sign-theory, but mostly that was about avoiding Mum and Dad for as long as possible.
I wanted it to drizzle while we walked home, for the sky to be iron-gray and low and glower- ing, but it remained stubbornly cheerful and blue, with clouds that looked like fluffy sheep.
Stupid sky. We were home far too soon, and if the bus station had seemed familiar, the chipped cement steps leading up into the estate were like seeing my own face in the mirror. They still had the same graffiti, even the same withered crisp packets and sneaky dried out fossil dog-shits that I remembered, like the place had been pickled the day I left.
Cora had her keys out before we got to the door, and she wanded them over the panel, punched in her PIN, and the door clicked open, and the smell of my parents' house slithered out the crack and up my nostrils and I was home.
Mum and Dad stood in the hallway, and Cora gave them each a kiss and a long hug, then slid past them into the sitting room, leaving me alone and facing them. They seemed to have aged ten years since I'd last seen them, skin sagging loose on their bones. Mum was leaning heavily on Dad, and when she took a step toward me, she wobbled so violently that both Dad and I leapt out to steady her. So there we were, all holding onto each other, and it seemed like we'd start blubbing any minute. So I said, “I'm sorry I didn't call. You must have been worried sick.”
Mom said, “We were,” and her voice cracked a bit.
“I'm sorry,” I said again. “I'm so, so sorry. But I couldn't stay here, not after what I'd done to you all. And once I was gone... Well, I just couldn't bring myself to ring, I didn't know how I'd explain myself to you. And the longer I waited --”
“We thought you were dead!” Dad said, so loud that we both jumped. “We thought you were a prostitute, or taking drugs --”
Mum squeezed his arm hard. “Enough,” she said. “We promised Cora.” She put her arms around my neck and squeezed me so hard I thought my stuffing would come out. “It's so good to see you again, Trent. We love you.”
“I love you too, Ma,” I said, and I didn't want to cry in front of them, so I squirmed away and ran to my little room and threw myself down on my old bed and stuffed my face into my pillow and sobbed like a baby.
My room looked like I'd just stepped out. I could have sworn that the sheets on the bed were the ones that had been on it when I left for London, though they smelled of fresh detergent, so I guessed that Mum had come in and cleaned up, which also explained the lack of dust. There were my schoolbooks, and my old clothes, and the parts of laptops I'd taken apart to keep mine running. There were the scuffs on the wall from where I kicked off my trainers every day, and even spare trainers under the bed. Though it had been a year since I'd last been there, it felt like I'd only just left -- but at the same time, it had been so long I couldn't even remember what or who I had been then.
Worst of all was the feeling that I was somehow going backward, or sinking down, into the life I'd had before London. I'd always had a sad, worshipful insecurity about being from the North, always wanted to trade the northern habit of saying little, of being wry and low-key, for the gabby, exuberant blathering of Londoners in the TV and films I'd grown up with. In my time at the Zeroday, I'd reinvented myself, made myself into a fast-talking and wordy sort. Back home in Bradford, all that felt like a cheap trick, a flimsy mask I'd made for myself, and now it was slipping off as I found myself speaking -- even thinking -- in the northern patterns I'd been reared on.
I dried my eyes and went into the sitting room. Cora had changed into more of her new clothes and to my surprise, both Mum and Dad were making approving noises about them. When did they get so cool? In my mind, Bradford had been a remote village with the cosmopolitan sophistication of a pig-sty. Mum and Dad made space between them on the sofa, and I smelled Dad's cologne, Mum's perfume, like they'd made themselves up for a big night out, the way they did when we were little kids.
“We saw your film,” Dad said. “On the telly. They showed it on the news. Sky only had bits of it, but ITV showed the lot.”
Mum said, “They say that the film company's going to sue ITV for breaching copyright by showing it.”
I snorted. “Brilliant: it's illegal to report the news now.”
“It was a damn good film,” Dad said. “All that Scot stuff. I didn't know you were as clever as that, son.” He smiled, a proud and soppy kind of smile that sliced right through my guts. Making my dad smile like that was better than a hundred Christmases.
“You liked it?” I said, blatantly fishing now.
“Made us proud,” Mum said. “Laughed ourselves silly. It was so much better than the real film.”
We sat there in awkward silence for a while.
“Is this what you've been doing since you got to London, then?” Dad said. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Erm,” I said. I thought of all the adventures -- the food from the skips, the squats, the giant bags of skunk, the hours spent begging in tube stations. “Mostly.”
“How do you live?” Mum asked.
“I --” I swallowed. Then I told them all about Jem, and about the squat and the skips and the begging, though I danced quickly over it. I wasn't proud of that, even though I had made some major advances on Jem's science of panhandling project. I didn't tell them about the weed or the drink or the parties, either. Some things my parents didn't need to know. “So you see,” I said, looking back and forth at their pop-eyed expressions, “You don't need to worry about me. I'm taking care of myself.”
I was worried that they'd explode again, but now they were completely silent. I guess it was a lot to digest.
Finally, Mum said, “Trent, what on earth are you going to do with yourself? What sort of future is there in doing this...stuff? Are you going to spend the rest of your life squatting in abandoned buildings, eating garbage?”
It was like a slap across the face, and my first reaction was to shout and scream like a little kid, or run out of the room, or both. Instead, I swallowed a few times and said, “What am I going to do with my future? I'm going to make art. That's all I've ever wanted to do. Look, I just want to make my films. I don't really care how I have to live in order to get that done.”
“How about how we have to live while you get that done?” Dad said softly.
“That's why I left,” I said. “It's not fair for me to put all of you at risk so I can do my thing.
With me gone, you won't have to worry about my downloading.”
“We just have to worry about you.”
Of course, they were right, and there wasn't anything to say about that. I reached out and squeezed Mum's hand, then Dad's. “I don't have a good answer. I can put you at risk, or I can make you worried. But when I go back, I promise I'll be much better about keeping in touch. I'll call every day, come back for holidays some times. I promise.”
“When you go back,” Dad said.
“Well, yeah. Of course. You didn't think I was going to stay, did you?” “Son, you're only seventeen. We have a responsibility --”
I jumped off the sofa like I'd been electrocuted. “Wait,” I said. “This is a visit. I can't stay here. I've got a whole life now, people who are waiting for me, films to make, events we're putting on --” I began to back toward the door.
Mum said, “Sit down, Trent! Come on, now, sit down. We're not going to kidnap you. But wouldn't you like to sleep in your own bed for a few nights? Have a home-cooked meal?”
The first thing that popped into my head were the mouth-watering, epic feeds that we brewed up in the huge kitchen at the Zeroday from all the ingredients that turned up in the skips. I had the good sense not to tell Mum that her cooking was well awful in comparison to our rubbish cuisine. “I'd love dinner,” I said, carefully not saying anything about “a few nights.” Mum smiled bravely and got delicately to her feet, holding onto the sofa-arm and wobbling gently. “Erm, can I help with the cooking?” I found that I quite fancied showing Mum all the elite cookery skills I'd acquired.
She waved me off, though. “Don't be stupid,” she said. “I can still cook a dinner for my own family in my own kitchen, son.” She limped off, back stiff.
“I didn't mean to offend her,” I whispered to Dad.
He closed his eyes. “It's all right,” he said. “She's just touchy about her legs, is all. All the rehab clinics and physiotherapy only accept appointments over the net, and it's too far for her to walk to the library, so Cora's been booking her in, but it's not a very good system and she hasn't been getting enough treatment. It's got her in a bad way.”
Dinner was just as awkward, though Cora tried bravely to make conversation and talked up all the fun things we'd got up to in London, how excited all her mates were to see me on the telly. Mum had made noodles with tinned tuna and tomato sauce and limp broccoli and oven chips, and it was just as awful as I remembered it being. I longed to take Cora out to the grocers in town and find a skip to raid and cook up some brilliant feed, but I knew that Mum would certainly take this as an indictment of her womanhood or something.
I went to my room and I lay in my narrow bed, listening to the Albertsons' dogs barking through the thin wall. I heard Mum and Dad go to bed and mutter to one another for a long time, then the click of their bedside lamp. Sleep wouldn't come. That morning, before I'd got on the bus, I'd been an adult, living on my own in the world, master of my destiny. Within minutes of crossing the threshold to my parents' house, I was a boy again, and I felt about five years old and totally helpless. London felt a million miles away, and my life there felt like a silly kids' fantasy of what life could be like on my own with no parents or teachers to push me around.
I was seized with the sudden conviction that if I stayed in that bed overnight, I'd wake up a small child again in my pajamas and housecoat, demanding to play with my toys. The dogs next door barked. My dad's snores shook the walls, chased by my mum's slightly quieter ones. I sat up in bed, put my knees over the edge, grabbed my bag, and stuffed it full of the things I'd brought, along with a few extra pairs of underwear and socks from my drawer. Then I tied my bootlaces together and slung them around my neck and padded on cat-feet out of my room and down the corridor toward the front door and freedom.
As I reached for the doorknob, a hand landed heavily on my shoulder. I gave a little jump and a squeak and nearly dropped my bag as I turned around, giving myself a crick in the neck. It was my dad, unshaven, his dental appliance out so that his missing front teeth showed, looking grim. He reached out and turned the doorknob and opened the door, then jerked his head at it. I stepped out and he followed me, pulling the door closed behind him, but leaving it open a crack so it didn't lock.
“Going away again, son?”
I hung my head. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I say good-bye like a proper person?
“Just --”
“Forget it,” Dad said. He looked like a huge, sad, broken bear. Without knowing why, I found myself wanting to hug him. I did. He hugged me back, and the strength in his arms was just as I remembered it from my childhood, when I believed my father could lift a car if he took a mind to. “We're proud of you, son. Keep in touch with us, and stay safe.”
He fumbled for my hand and stuck something into it. I looked down and saw that it was a pair of fifty pound notes.
“Dad,” I said, “I can't take this. Honestly, I'm just fine. Really.” I'd seen for myself how tight things were around the flat, the soap in the bathroom made by pressing together carefully hoarded slivers from other bars. My parents were so broke they could barely afford to eat. This was a fortune for them.
“Take it,” he said, trying for a big, magnanimous style. “Your mother would worry other- wise.”
We had a kind of silly arm-wrestle there on the doorstep as I tried to give it back to him, but in the end, he won -- he was my dad, of course he won. He was strong enough to lift a car, wasn't he?
He hugged me again, and I walked off to the coach-station, and with every step, I grew taller and older, so that by the time I bought my ticket (not using the fifties; those went into the little change-pocket in the corner of my jeans), I was a full-fledged adult.
Bride of commercial interlude
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