They Do the Same Things Different There (37 page)

I went back the next day to pick up my car. All the balloons and streamers had been taken down out front, Robin Hood’s house looked like any other. I supposed Robin Hood was inside, he’d probably come home by now, and I waited for a bit, but I didn’t see him.

I was asked to come into the school and see the deputy headmistress. I waited outside her office on a little plastic chair, and I felt nervous, as if I were the one in trouble!

She was very stern. She told me that Paul was a very promising student. She said that his take on Winston Churchill had been good, the words she used were “spirited” and “rousing.” But, she said, Paul was mixing with the wrong sort of company. He’d been seen in a gang. There’d been lots of complaints about this gang, they’d hang about the shopping precinct, and drink, and be noisy, and play with traffic cones. They hadn’t done anything illegal yet, no one said they’d stolen anything, but it was only a matter of time.

She told me the ringleader was Robin Hood, and advised me to keep Paul away from him. “Don’t let Paul give up on his future,” she said. She told me she knew he was going through a difficult time, that there were domestic problems, and that she was sympathetic. But the school couldn’t condone anti-social behaviour. “How do you think it’s going,” she asked me, “the relationship you have with your son?” I didn’t want to discuss relationships. I didn’t want the school to know about my problems with Janet, what had Paul been saying about me?

I spoke to Paul that evening. He told me that the gang didn’t have a leader, it wasn’t that sort of a gang, and that if the gang did have a leader it’d be Nicky Culshaw, it wouldn’t be Robin Hood, Robin Hood just hung out and did shit the same as everybody else. I told Paul that maybe Robin Hood was a bad influence all the same; could I rely on him, could I trust him, that if he went out with his mates downtown to play and Robin tagged along, could Paul make his excuses and come home? “Sure,” said Paul.

In retrospect I felt angry, and ashamed, and I phoned the deputy headmistress the next day. I told her that whatever “relationship” my son and I enjoyed it was none of her business, her business was to teach him, that was all. And besides, it was all a storm in a teacup, the gang wasn’t doing anything wrong, they were just kids having fun. What was wrong with having fun if no one got hurt? Couldn’t she remember being young once? She didn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t.

It was in the local paper—a cat had been shot with an arrow. The owners found it in the morning when they were taking their kids to school; the cat had dragged its way to the house and tried to get in through the cat flap, but with an arrow sticking out of its side it had got stuck, and it’d spent the night half inside and half out. The arrow was in its flank, just above the hind legs. Miraculously, the cat had survived, the arrow hadn’t gone in too deep, that was one lucky animal. Though, mind you, it had to have one of the legs amputated, there was a photo in the paper, nasty.

A few days later a dog was found, and this one was dead, chained up to a kennel, an arrow through its neck. This one had been a more expert kill, and the only consolation the owners could find in the interviews they gave—because by this time the national press had got hold of it, it was even on the telly, in the evening news—was that at least the kill had been quick and the dog wouldn’t have suffered. The police urged people to keep their pets indoors and safe, although they were certain whoever was responsible would be caught soon and there was no need for panic. It was odd seeing pictures of our town on the television; I know those streets, but they looked bigger on the screen somehow, and all the signposts and wheelie bins looked like movie props.

Young Robin Hood confessed the very next day. It’s said that he didn’t offer any explanation or show of remorse; he just went up to a policeman and said, “I did the pets,” and as proof showed his bow and his quiver. “I Did The Pets” was one of the headlines the next day; others used “The Face Of A Monster,” alongside a photograph of Robin. He looked calm and insolent, and that meanness around his eyes was plain for all to see.

He wasn’t sent to prison the way the public demanded on chat shows; he was too young for that. He was expelled by the school, of course. And he gave a statement to the papers that said he was bitterly regretful of all the distress he had caused, and that he blamed temporary insanity—it was only a written statement, the press weren’t allowed to interview the lad. They tried to track down his father for comment, but the family had gone into hiding—the one time they got him on camera he kept silent and tight-lipped, pushing his way through the reporters toward his car, and I was surprised at how ordinary Robin Hood looked, really, how thin, how old.

I didn’t see Stacey again after that. I suppose we both used the scandal to put an end to things, but in truth it was on its way out already. The last time she’d come to my house she’d asked me where I thought our relationship was headed.

“Is it a relationship?” I asked. “I didn’t know we’d got that far!” I was only joking, I was only trying to make her laugh.

“I just don’t know what it is we’re doing,” she said. I didn’t know what to say, and she sighed, and got out of bed, and got dressed.

And I said to her, that she was lonely, and that I was lonely, and that there was nothing so evil in two lonely people meeting up every so often to make themselves feel better. What was wrong in having fun?

“But I’m married,” I went on. “And I love my wife, and one day we’ll get back together. And you love your husband, don’t you? And it’s not as if you love me.”

She just said, “I don’t know what we’re doing if it’s never going to mean anything.”

We’d only ever met up at my place. Saturday afternoons, when Paul was safely with his mother. I thought that was simpler, and she’d agreed. Better that our sons didn’t know we were seeing each other, after all our sons were close friends. But there was more to it than that. I just didn’t fancy going to the great Robin Hood’s house and having sex with his wife in his own bed. I suppose you could say there’s a moral ambiguity surrounding Robin Hood and the way he pursued a life of crime for a greater good, but whichever side of the argument you come down on, Robin Hood as folk hero or as social menace, surely the man deserves better treatment than that.

Paul brought me the bow and the remaining arrows. He’d taken them from the Hood house, but insisted he hadn’t stolen them. There were so many bows and arrows just lying about there, how could it be stealing if no one would notice they were gone?

He didn’t know why Robin had confessed. He told me that if Robin hadn’t confessed, he would have done so. In fact, he’d just been on his way to confess, and then Robin had got in, just ahead of him.

“He doesn’t even like archery,” he said. “Any of that stuff his dad was into, he thought it was all bollocks.”

Paul was sorry about the cat. He hadn’t meant to hurt anything. He was just mucking about, he never thought he’d actually manage to hit the thing. “What about the dog?” I asked. He didn’t say anything to that.

“Are you going to tell the police?” he asked.

And he stared at me, and he seemed frightened. Or maybe it was just another sort of defiance, one I wasn’t used to.

“I don’t think we should even tell your mother,” I said.

I took the bow and the arrows. I said I’d get rid of them, I’d dispose of the evidence. I put them upstairs, nicely under my bed.

I asked Paul if he wanted any supper. Normally he’d say no, he’d go out with his mates. That night he agreed to stay in.

Neither of us quite knew what to say as we ate.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is all my fault.”

He looked genuinely surprised by that. “Is it?”

“I just wish,” I said. “I don’t know. I’ve always wished. You’d be the sort of son who’d want to take after his father. That I’d done something, achieved something, worth taking after.”

He said nothing, just toyed with his apple crumble. That was probably the kindest thing.

After supper Paul asked if he could be excused from the table. That was polite of him. So I said yes.

The next evening when Paul came home from school, I asked him if he wanted any supper. “No,” he said. “I’m going out.”

There was still a gang, but no one pretended that Robin Hood was in charge of it anymore.

I had rather hoped Paul might stay in, that the two of us could do something together. I told him this. And he said we’d do something soon, yeah. But he had to go out, he’d promised, and the others wouldn’t know what to do without him.

I watched some television. I went upstairs, from under the bed I took my bow and arrow. I wondered whether Robin Hood had ever killed anyone with them. I wondered whether he’d ever killed anyone famous, like King John, or one of the sheriffs of Nottingham. I texted Stacey. She didn’t reply.

On Thursday night Janet called and told me she wouldn’t be able to fit Paul in this weekend, she’d be at an impromptu conference in Frankfurt instead. I said I’d tell him.

On Friday morning I broke the news to Paul. If he felt rejected, he didn’t show it. I asked him whether he had any plans for Saturday. I knew he wouldn’t have had time to make any—that got him.

On Saturday I showed Paul what I’d found.