Skippy Dies (32 page)

Hi, honey… I know, he’s, but… no, it’s not nice, but listen, I forgot to ask you something, did you get the present Mummy
sent you? I know, but she’s asleep, but did you get it? Oh well, I bet it’ll come tomorrow… What? I can’t tell you, she wants
it to be a surprise… shh, I know… well, you can have fun with Aunt Greta too, can’t you?

While Dad is talking, Skippy gives Dogley his dinner. He breaks brown gristly lumps into the bowl. Chomp, chomp, goes Dogley,
his head down. Afterwards Dad turns on the football. From the corner of his eye Skippy watches him watching the white dot
zip over the green field between the different-coloured men, his face emptied out, his hand plucking emptily at the arm
of the armchair, rolling together little balls of fuzz then pulling them free.

At the station the tube of pills fell out of his coat as he was getting into the car. What’s this, sport? Oh yeah, they’re
travel pills Coach gave me. Travel pills? Yeah, um, because coming back after the swim meet that time I felt really crap?
Hmm, you don’t normally get carsick. Yeah, it was weird. Could have been just the excitement, I suppose. Yeah, probably. Or
you swallowed too much water! Yeah!

They burst through the front door in a flurry of bags and laughter, but thinking back on it now Skippy can’t remember what
they were laughing about, or if they were laughing at anything. Inside the stairs were everywhere. They angled upwards and
around and in upon themselves. Dad stood at the foot of them. Why not go up and tell Mum you’re here? Skippy hesitated and
examined Dad’s face, it was like a face torn out of a magazine. Go on, she’s been expecting you all day. Okay. Skippy climbed
the thousands of angling stairs, towards the door that waited at the top.

YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE FIRE DEMON, DJED!
It’s the owl, the one you cut out of the spiderweb in the Mournful Woods!
BUT THERE IS NOT A SECOND TO SPARE! WITH EVERY HOUR, MIND-ELORE GROWS MORE POWERFUL. IN HIS VILE LABORATORY, DEEP UNDERGROUND
IN THE SOUTHERN LANDS, HE LABOURS NIGHT AND DAY TO CREATE HIS FOUL MONSTERS. SOON, HE WILL HAVE RAISED SUCH AN ARMY THAT HE
WILL BE INVINCIBLE! YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN STOP HIM! YOU ARE OUR LAST HOPE!
The owl’s head swivels to the left, and when it returns to you its tawny eyes are full of tears.
THE REALM IS DYING, DJED. THE EARTH HAS TURNED TO POISON, THE RIVERS AND LAKES TO ICE, THE AIR TO FIRE THAT CHOKES ALL WHO
BREATHE IT. THE DOOM WE FACE IS DARKER THAN ANYTHING WE IMAGINED. SOON HOPELAND ITSELF WILL BE NO MORE, AND MINDELORE WILL
CROWN HIMSELF KING OF THE NOTHINGNESS THAT REMAINS. SAVE THE PRINCESS, DJED! MAKE HASTE!

Doing push-ups in your room. Posters all around you, footballers, rappers, superheroes, bands. Swimming star Michael Phelps,
the youngest man ever to break a world record (aged fifteen years, nine months). The
Star Wars
duvet and all your old toys on the shelves, Lego, Boglins, Zoids. You feel like you’re camped out in the room of another
boy. You feel like the replacement boy they’ve got in after something awful happened. You move through the house as if you’ve
been programmed with information about it.

The kitchen radio pops and frazzles every time you cross its path.

The magpies chatter like machine-guns, their claws scrape on the shed’s tin roof.

The drain refilled every morning with worn-out grey hairs.

Dad holds the book but never turns the page.

And the door stays closed all day.

You got a sec, Danny? I need to talk to you about something.

Sure thing, Dad.

This came this morning. Dad waves a pink slip of paper in his left hand. It’s Skippy’s mid-term progress card.

Oh.

Yeah, we need to have a talk about it. I mean, we should probably have a talk anyway, shouldn’t we.

They sit down at the table. Dad grips the underside of his chair and turns it diagonally so he’s facing Skippy. This close,
he seems very big, a bear crammed into a kitchen chair. His breath smells of whiskey. Skippy sits very still and peeks sideways
at the card lying next to them on the table. A line of C’s and D’s, and at the bottom in someone’s slapdash grown-up writing,
probably the Automator’s,
Disappointing – must try harder
.

First of all – is there anything you’d like to say about these grades, Danny?

Well… no… I mean, they’re disappointing.

No, I mean, I’m wondering if there’s some reason, like if they gave the tests that time when you were sick?

No. Dad’s eyes pour into his. He tries to think of something
else to say. I’m sorry, he says. I suppose I’ll just have to try harder.

Dad exhales. It’s the wrong answer. What I’m wondering is… he says. Obviously what I’m wondering is, are you having difficulty
concentrating at the moment? Are you finding it hard to focus on this stuff?

Hmm. Skippy makes a carefully-thinking-it-over face. No, not really. No, I wouldn’t say so.

You haven’t found you’ve got too much on your mind to…?

No – Skippy sounds like he’s surprised by the question. No, nothing like that.

And yet these grades are way down.

Skippy looks at Dogley, telepathically trying to call him over.

You’re not on trial here, sport. I’m just trying to find out, you know…

Skippy takes a deep breath. Well, maybe it’s just taking me a while to settle into senior school. I think I just need to settle
in more, and try harder.

Dad stares at him. The sour tang of whiskey, the metallic hum of the refrigerator. That’s it?

Mm-hmm, Skippy nods firmly.

Dad sighs and looks off to the left. Danny… in certain situations… well, let me put it this way, in my own work, personally
speaking, I can find it difficult at the moment to, to
care
about what I’m doing. I was wondering if you felt that at all.

Skippy’s eyes smart with tears. What is Dad trying to do here? Why is he trying to catch him out? He does not reply, blinks
at him to say,
What?

It’s not the grades that bother me, sport – Dad doesn’t notice – it’s more the thought that you might be feeling like… His
clasped hands dip between his knees like the head of a dead bird; then in a new voice, he says, I suppose what I’m thinking
is, maybe we made a mistake in our original plan. Maybe we didn’t foresee quite how – how long it would take for things to
pan out. Don’t you think it might make more sense if we arranged for
some kind of – if I spoke to your Mr Costigan and said to him, Well, here’s our situation, just so you’re aware.

Dad, what are you doing? What about the Game! Don’t you know what happens when you talk about it? Don’t you remember what
happened last time?

I know you said you didn’t want to do that. And obviously I’m going to respect that decision. I’m just wondering if it’s something
you’ve thought about since. Just as something that might take the pressure off you a little bit?

Skippy keeps his mouth tight shut, slowly shakes his head.

You’re sure? Dad’s eyebrow raised, pleading.

Skippy nods, just as slowly.

Dad drags his hands over his face. I just hate to think of you, off at Seabrook… I mean… we want you to be happy, if you can,
Danny, that’s what we want.

I am happy, Dad.

Sure. Okay. I know that.

Hold tight to your chair, wait for it to end. The pills in the drawer in your room.

Okay. Dad throws his hands up. I guess we’ll just see how it goes, then. He smiles mirthlessly. End of interrogation, he says.

You get up to go. Inside you feel cold, hollow, like a ruined castle with the wind gusting through it
whhhhssssshhhhhhhwhhhhhhhhhhshhhhhhhhhh
.

Hey – I was thinking of going for a swim tomorrow after work, down to the pool, you interested?

Hmm… no, I’m okay, thanks.

You don’t need to practise for the race?

No, Coach said it wasn’t so important.

Really?

Yeah, actually he said we should take a break from it. I might take Dogley for a walk. Come on, boy. He swings the collar
and lead over him and Dogley reluctantly rises from his bed.

Nights are the worst. Outside the fireworks explode like cluster bombs; through the walls the cries are like missiles screaming
into your heart. But in the secret compartment of memory where Frisbee Girl is waiting, everything’s just like it was. Her
hands, her hair, her eyes, her voice, singing her secret song – the moment picks you up and swirls you into it; you lose yourself
again in her sideways-8s, and everything real fades away to a dream.

That week of mid-term is the longest of Howard’s life. The house has never seemed so small, so confining – like an underground
bunker, shared with a ricocheting bullet that zings off the walls night and day, hour after hour. His teeth ache from smiling
vacantly; his muscles throb from maintaining his meticulously arranged slouch on the sofa; everyday conversation is like juggling
fire, Halley’s most basic inquiry –
Are we out of milk?
– setting off a mental pandemonium, every synapse blazing in the panic to construct a reply before the delay becomes obvious.
By the second day, he is fantasizing about throwing himself at her feet, confessing everything, simply to bring an end to
this exhausting assault on his nerves.

Then he discovers an escape route. Thinking he’d better avoid antagonizing the Automator any further, he goes into the school
library Monday morning and borrows a couple of books on Seabrook history as research for his piece for the concert programme.
Both are written by the same stylistically unblessed priest, and breathtakingly dull – but while he is reading them Halley
leaves him alone. He spends two days blissfully submerged in the mind-numbing minutiae of Seabrook’s past; when he is finished
he returns to the library and asks the psoriatic brother in charge if he has anything else on the school. The brother does
not. For a moment Howard is at sea. Then he has a brainwave. ‘How about the First World War?’ he says.

There are seventeen books on the First World War. Howard checks out all of them. At home he piles them around him on the living-room
table, and reads with an engrossed, not-to-be-disturbed expression; he even keeps a box of candles beside him for when the
construction work on the Science Park knocks the power out.

‘You’re really getting into that stuff,’ Halley says, regarding the stacks of books, their stern, catastrophic covers.

‘Oh you know, it’s for the kids,’ he replies abstractedly, and peers into the page to make an imaginary underlining.

For the rest of the week he does nothing but read. Textbooks and yarns, elegies and entertainments, eyewitness accounts and
fusty donnish histories, he reads them all; and on every page he sees the same thing – Miss McIntyre’s white body stretched
out before him, her mouth straining for his, her intoxicated, half-closed eyes.

He aches to talk to her. Her absence, his powerlessness to reach her, are agonizing. One evening he ends up telling Farley
what happened just so he can speak her name: even sketching it minimally down the phone line brings the electricity of that
night thrilling through him again, with a strange mixture of shame, pride, shame at his pride. But Farley does not seem to
share it. Instead he is sombre, as if Howard had announced some fatal illness.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Howard says.

‘What about Halley?’

‘I don’t know.’ These are all the questions he has avoided asking himself. Why is Farley asking them? ‘I think I’m in love
with Aurelie.’ Howard realizes this only as he says it.

‘You’re not, Howard. You barely know her.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘It makes all the difference. You’ve been with Halley for three years. If you mess it up now, I promise you’ll regret it.’

‘So what do you suggest I do, pretend it never happened? Just bury my feelings away? Is that it?’

‘I’m just telling you what you already know, which is that this thing with Aurelie is a fantasy. It’s a fantasy, you know
it. And now you’ve had your fun, you should let it go. You haven’t told Halley anything, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, well, keep it that way. In my experience, honesty is
definitely not the best policy with these things. Just sit tight until things are clearer. If she asks, deny everything.’

Howard is angry. How many of Farley’s fantasies has he listened to over the years? Chewing Howard’s ear off about the new
waitress in the deli, the new assistant in the pharmacy, the girl at the Internet café with the incredible jugs – all of them,
conquered or (mostly) otherwise, forgotten completely two weeks later. Who is he to sermonize? Who is he to dictate what is
and isn’t real? To say what Howard is or isn’t feeling? Just because he likes having friends who are living the straight life,
likes being able to come over to a nice house where he can eat a nice dinner and tell his wild stories, vicariously enjoy
the stability and routine for a night without ever having to submit to the slog of it, the endless strictures and limitations
–

Later on, however, when the initial sting has abated, he admits to himself that Farley might have a point. Yes, Miss McIntyre
is beautiful; yes, what happened in the Geography Room was exhilarating. But did it actually
mean
anything?

He’s back on the couch with his books; on the other side of the room, Halley taps at her computer, cigarette smoke gathered
at her shoulder, a spectral familiar.

People do crazy things, Aurelie said it herself. They do arbitrary things to test the boundaries, to feel free. But those
moments don’t have any meaning beyond themselves. They don’t have any real connection with who you are, they aren’t
life
. Life is when you’re not doing something arbitrary to feel free.
This
is life, this living room, the furniture and trappings they have picked out and paid for with slow hours of work, the small
treats and fancies their budget has allowed them.

‘You look deep in thought,’ Halley says from her desk.

‘Just straightening something out,’ he says.