Doing It (23 page)

‘Dino, your father works full time …’

‘Why should you get the house and both of us and everything?’

‘Because your mother is the main carer,’ said Dad. ‘She does all the mum things.’

‘You do all the dad things.’

‘Yes, but …’ And the poor twat looked at her to help him explain why he was being a twat.

‘Dino, this isn’t a discussion,’ she went. ‘We’re telling you. We’ve talked it over and decided that this is the best thing. You’re old enough to understand. These things happen, however difficult it may be. Our relationship … needs a break …’

‘What about my relationship with Dad? What about Mat’s? So why’s your relationship with him so much more important than ours?’

‘It’s what we’ve
decided
. We’re telling you before Mat because you’re older and we thought you’d be able to understand better …’

‘So,’ I said, ‘if it’s just a break, how long for?’

‘Not long,’ said Dad.

‘We don’t know,’ said Mum.

‘Well, let’s put a time limit on it, then,’ I said.

‘You can’t put a time limit on these things …’ began Mum, but I said,

‘At least then we know it won’t go on for ever. Put a time limit on it. So we know what’s going on. So we can plan,’ I said, which was a good one, because that’s what my mum always says. You have to plan things. Yeah, sure. Unless it doesn’t suit her.

She looked across at Dad.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘We could say, three months? That’d be long enough for you to … have some space. That’s what you said.’

Mum glared. I’d got her.

‘Six months,’ she said crisply.

‘Four,’ I said, and Dad said, ‘Four,’ at the same time. So Mum pinched her lips together and nodded and I thought, Oh, yeah? See? I knew it was her all the time. She goes off shagging someone else and then tries to bully him into leaving home. And he’s stupid enough to go along with it too.

I was furious with Dad too, though. Letting her push him about like that. I mean, it’s a bit pathetic having to have your son stand up to your wife, isn’t it? But I was really pleased that I’d got a limit on it. If it was up to him he’d just go and do whatever she told him to do.

‘OK, if that’s the way it’s going to be, but I don’t like it,’ I told them. I could see Mum glare at me as if to say, you know – like, what’s it got to do with anything whether I like it or not? ‘But I still want to go with my dad. OK?’

And my dad looked really pleased, and my mum looked so totally pissed off.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it.’

‘We don’t have enough money,’ said Mum. ‘You’d have to get enough room for him. Somewhere with two bedrooms and so on …’

‘Oh? What exactly did you have in mind for me, then? A bedsit, was it?’ he asked. And she didn’t say anything, and he said, ‘My God, it’s right, isn’t it? You want me out and in the cheapest little hole possible. What am I going to be eating in this hovel of mine? White bread and marge?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Well, how did you mean it, then?’

‘Well, there’s not much point in …’ She paused.’ … in spending too much,’ she finished, and she winced.

‘Oh! Not much point in spending too much? So that you don’t have to go without, is that it? So that the kids don’t have to suffer getting a cheaper pair of trainers? So that …’

‘Stop it, Mike!’

‘Oh, stop it now, is it?’ he ranted, and she began ranting back and …

I got up and left them to it.

So that was a shit start to the day. What a pair of dorks. It was only another year or so before I left home to go to Uni., they could have waited that long. It was for Mat, see. If it was just me she’d have bloody gone, but of course Mat had to have his bloody mummy. So she took her wishes into account and Mat’s wishes into account, and me and Dad just had to trail along with it, and why? Because he’s too weak to stand up to her.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was shit, but I still had a life to get on with. I had a date with Siobhan.

They met in the Arndale Centre – the Aardvark Venture, Siobhan and Violet called it. Dino was feeling nervous. He’d heard a great deal about Siobhan’s friend Violet. Siobhan evidently adored her.

They mooched about at the bottom of the escalator, something which Dino felt uncomfortable with, partly because he was worried about being seen with Siobhan, and partly because he was worried about being seen hanging around at the bottom of the escalator. That was for poor people. Siobhan was carrying an old plastic bag with some books and a couple of items of clothing in. Her parents, it seemed, gave her a clothing allowance, and she’d spent some of it before Dino turned up.

‘What about the books?’ he asked.

‘Oh, they always like me reading books. If I spend the clothing allowance on books, they give the money back to me.’

Dino looked at the books. They were heavy, thick things. ‘
Picasso – A Visual Biography
,’ he read. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in art.’

‘I’m not. It’s just, like, it’s for free, innit?’

‘Right.’ He flipped to the back cover. ‘£32,’ he read. ‘Christ, they’re generous, your parents, aren’t they?’

‘Vets earn quite a lot, especially when they do dangerous work for zoos and things,’ said Siobhan. ‘Dad did a job for Woburn the other day – taking the tonsils out of a hippo. It’s tricky, you have to put your whole head inside and if the hippo yawns you can lose your life.’

‘Don’t they use anaesthetic?’

‘Just local. Hippos react badly to going under.’

Dino picked out another of the books. ‘
Stalingrad
,’ he read. ‘Wow. Do you actually read this sort of thing?’

‘I’m fascinated by war material. Hitler and all that. You know?’

‘Wow.’ Dino goggled. He hadn’t realised how clever she was.

Siobhan and Violet burst out laughing. ‘You dope – it’s a present for my dad. It’s his birthday next week.’

‘Right.’ Dino did his best to laugh at himself, but it came out rather hollow. He poked back in the bag and took out a CD.

‘It’s a present.’

‘For who?’

‘For you.’

‘Really?’ It was ‘Spangles the Movie’. He’d been after that one. ‘Wow, thanks, that’s really generous.’ Dino felt mean, because he was, after all, only in it for the shag. He put his arm round her and she pressed herself into him and wriggled in a way not really suited to a shopping mall.

‘What are we doing today?’ he whispered to her.

‘Later.’ She pulled away. ‘We have some more shopping to do first.’

They rode up the escalator to the floor above and made their way to Debenhams. Dino was dismayed. He’d expected to have a good time. Instead he was going to get bored.

‘Do we have to do this now? Can’t you do it later? I thought we were going somewhere,’ he complained, but Violet glared back at him so ferociously he sighed and shut up.

‘She just wants to shop,’ she hissed.

‘It won’t take long,’ said Siobhan.

The girls went to the Miss Selfridge area and started raking their way through the clothes, while Dino lurked on the edges, feeling like a spare part. It went on for hours. Violet and Siobhan conferred, tried on a few things, conferred some more, asked Dino for his opinion, went back into the changing rooms, conferred some more. Dino thought he was going to go mad with boredom. At last they’d done – that’s what he thought, anyway. They walked off together through the store, but in the perfumery, they told him what was going on.

‘There’s a great little top, I’ve got to have it, but I can’t afford it.’

‘How much is it?’

‘Eighty quid.’

‘Whoh!’ said Dino. ‘Sorry,’ he added, getting the impression from the way they were looking at him that something was required of him. Eighty quid was not something he could do anything about.

‘We’re not going to buy it. You’re going to nick it.’

‘What? No way!’ Dino started to laugh, but they weren’t laughing back. ‘Really? No way!’ He began to back off. The girls followed him, scowling and pressing in.

‘Come on – what’s wrong with you?’

‘Don’t be a wimp,’ hissed Violet.

‘I’m not nicking anything.’

‘Why not? Not scared, are you?’

‘No. Yes. It’s stupid. What if I get caught?’

‘You won’t get caught. Just do as we say.’

‘If you’re so good at shoplifting, you do it.’

‘Oh … all right then. But I think it’s mean of you,’ said Siobhan.

‘Are you really going to nick it?’

‘Yeah, ’course we are. You can watch – see how it’s done.’

‘Er …’

‘Perhaps it’d be better if he waits outside,’ suggested Violet. ‘I don’t think he’s much good at this sort of thing.’

‘OK, then,’ agreed Siobhan. ‘Here.’ She handed him her plastic bag. ‘Take this for me and wait outside. We’ll see you outside Marks, OK?’

‘Right.’ Gratefully, Dino took the plastic bag and moved quickly off. Those girls were crazy, man! Shoplifting! You always got caught sooner or later. Imagine the humiliation, the fuss, getting nabbed outside the store, the police, the court case, his parents finding out! Unbearable.

He hurried through the scattering of shoppers – it wasn’t lunch time yet, there weren’t many people about. The perfumery was quite close to the entrance. Dino moved fast. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that store when Siobhan and Violet came through the doors with the alarms ringing and the plain clothes men moving in.

He pushed through the doors and the alarms started ringing. He froze in his tracks – had they already worked out that he was an accomplice? – and someone took him by the arm.

‘Excuse me, sir.’

?

‘If I could just have a look in your bag, sir.’

Security guard. Big bloke. He took the bag from Dino’s unresisting fingers. Another guard had appeared at Dino’s other side and was standing close up. The first guard peered into the bag. Dino looked round. A number of other security guards had materialised around him.

‘We’ll have to ask you to step into the shop, please, sir. If you don’t mind.’

No one was touching him at the moment, but Dino was surrounded. The guard stepped to one side and Dino walked back into the shop. As he went through the door he heard a voice – he wasn’t sure whose it was, Siobhan or Violet or both – shouting out in the distance,

‘Oh, Dino, you’re so
sexy
!’

I’ve been set up, he realised.

‘I’ve been set up,’ he told the guards.

‘That’s what they all say, son,’ said the guard.

After that, the endless humiliation. The humiliation of being walked through the store. Look! There he is! A shoplifter. The alarms went off and they got him. So that’s what they look like. The humiliation of being walked into the security manager’s office and being searched. The items taken out of the bag one by one.

‘My, you’re a little sophisticate, aren’t you?’ The man held up a bra, black, frilly, edged with lace. Suspenders. ‘Like a big of leg, do you?’ The knickers, God help us, had a split crotch. ‘Well, well.’

The CD. Then the books, one by one. ‘
Picasso. Stalingrad.
Educated too. Or are these for your dad?’

‘They’re not stolen, they’re …’ But he didn’t even bother to finish the sentence, because they were stolen, weren’t they? Bound to be.

‘I guess we’d better give Waterstones and HMV a ring.’

The humiliation of the endless wait for the police. The underwear lay like a set of exposed genitals (his) on the desk, for everyone to see. Then, the police themselves. Their amused disbelief when he told them his absurd story. More poring over the underwear, the policeman looking at him curiously, as if he was making Dino a reference point for future perverts before he dropped them briskly back in the bag.

‘This sort of thing is for old men, son.’

The humiliation of his parents being called in to see their erring son. The long, boring, frightened wait. Their faces as they came into the room where he was being kept, pale and scared as if it was them who had committed a crime. The shocked drive back home and the inevitable, awful interview at the end of it.

‘Dino, is this about your father and me? Is that what it is?’

‘I told you, I didn’t do it.’

‘Dino …’

‘I didn’t!’

‘I know it’s been very stressful. I know. But this sort of thing … It isn’t going to help.’

‘I didn’t
do
it!’

‘Denying it isn’t going to make it go away.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘Dino!’

‘How dare you!’

‘Oh, God. I’m sorry, but I didn’t do it! I’m not upset about you and Dad. I mean, of course I was upset but I didn’t do it. OK?’

A long pause. ‘OK,’ said his mother.

‘What?’ said his dad.

‘No, if Dino is insisting, we have to go along with it. He’s our son. He’s old enough to know right from wrong.’

‘No, he’s not, he’s a shoplifter, they just caught him in the act. He’s upset. He’s stressed. He’s
disturbed
.’

‘I’m not disturbed!’

‘Well, you’ve never behaved like this before.’

‘We have to trust him. We have to show him we can trust him.’

‘Trust?’

‘Yes, trust. Not something you’re very good at,’ snipped Kath.

‘What?’ Dino’s dad looked as if he’d stung. ‘Is that what this is about? Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself here?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then what’s all this about me not being good at trusting?’

Dino listened in disbelief. He’d just been through the most awful ordeal of his life and his parents had changed the subject already.

‘You always have to give me ulterior motives for everything I do. This isn’t about me. It’s about Dino.’

‘You get caught in the act and you want to be trusted and now he’s been caught in the act and you want him to be trusted? I think a little honesty’s the way forward here.’

‘For God’s sake, not everything I do has to do with me and Dave Short!’

‘All right!’ Dino leaped to his feet. ‘I did do it! I admit it! OK? All right? Happy now? I’ve been doing it for months. Now just … leave me alone!’

Bursting to his horror into tears, Dino fled upstairs, his mother in pursuit. She stood outside the locked door banging it and asking to be let in, to no avail. She went back downstairs, where, shortly, recriminations and rage began to float up the stairs in suppressed whispers.