What I Did (2 page)

 

The thing about the electricity is that it wants you to use it. So now I run away and flap my arms. I hold them out and beat them up and down fast like the wings of a bat which are serrated. Then I run back.

— Hey Dad, I say. Hold your arms like this as if they are wings and flap them like this.

He's looking at his phone.

— Or you can just hold them out without flapping and do soaring if you want, I say.

— Eh?

He looks up and it could be good or bad but hooray it's good.

— Straight out like an albatross, he says, or swept back like a peregrine falcon?

— Wandering albatrosses have a wingspan of up to 3.4 meters, I tell him.

— True.

— They are capable of staining uninterrupted flight for weeks.

— Marvelous. Sustaining.

Dad ruffles my head which is fine, but then he looks at his phone again and his mouth changes. I know from experiments that the best antic now is to do things on my own and probably shut up too. But it's difficult because of the electricity and actually impossible so I put my arms out for wings again and beat them hard like a seagull climbing into a gale or even a hurricane, flap flap vicious hard flap, and he's there too so it's impossible not to say it.

— Hey Dad, you do it too. Go on, flap your arms.

He doesn't join in or even pat the top of my head and say not now, Son, or even do the ignoring, but grabs me by one wing and grips it.

— Don't. I'm not in the mood, he says.

It's hard to think then but albatrosses along with other seabirds are sometimes lost flying into storms. And when they're lost what do they do? They just keep on flapping, of course, until they die. The storm doesn't mind. I would prefer not to flap but I can't and it's annoying, I know that, and Dad sees my free arm flapping.

— Don't ignore me, he growls. — Stop waving that arm about before I . . .

He lets go and shakes his head and I run off up the road with my wings held tight to my sides, controlling my tragedy with tiny movements of my finger feathers only!

— Don't go too far ahead! Dad shouts after me.

Don't, don't, don't. Very boring. And it's going to get worse because look, look, here's a cat flap.

— Don't!

It's not a real cat flap, but a cat-flap sign hanging on a square stand that they stick outside shops to make you buy ice cream and newspapers. Very entertaining!

— Don't!

I won't, but I will, because I'm far enough ahead. He might be saying don't about something else and even if he isn't I have to do it anyway. I have to duck down and push my way through the cat-flap sign to pop out the other side. Victory! But oh no a bit of paper slips out of the sign as it flaps back down again. This is the problem. I jump up and down near it until he catches up with me.

— What part of DON'T don't you understand? he growls.

I pick up the bit of paper and try and push it into the slot between the two plastic halves of the cat-flap sign thing but sadly they have suction. Imagine if you had to put sandwiches together like that, by posting the ham in edgeways between the two bits of bread that were already stuck together with butter. It is too tricky and the paper tears and falls onto the ground again. It has some words written on it. Horse, I think, and Pies.

— Give me that.

Dad bends over to pick up the paper. Some grapes are green but his face goes like the other ones, red grapes. Ribena doesn't come from them but I like it. Even with only one good hand he manages to stick the sign back together again. Prime-apes have posable thumbs too.

— I'm not in the mood today, Son. Not. In. The. Mood.

— Okay I know okay.

He's still at my level. When I grow up I too will have sharp hairs in my chin.

— Are you cross? I ask.

He puffs out his cheeks and slowly shakes his head. — Let's just carry on, he says. First-time rule, understand?

I nod.

 

The first-time rule is that you have to do what you're told the first time you're told to do it, not the second or third. It is quite boring but worse than that it is sadly impossible to do right the whole time because it only works if you think about the exact things you are being told and not about other things as well, and the thing about other things is that it is extremely hard not to notice them because they are massive and everywhere. At school in Reception Miss Petit said God is like that but she made a sad mistake. God does not exist. He is a segment of the imagination.

 

— Come on. Hold my hand, he says.

We walk along the pavement a bit more and I think hard about nothing. It's hard. Cracks in the pavement. Cracks.

Then Dad's hand stops so I stop too. We're outside the café and this is why we walked this way round to the park, the slightly longer up-hilly way.

— Look at that. Barely seven o'clock. Corporate tenacity. Shall we?

— Yes, I say. — Yes.

We go in. Dad orders a coffee and I do my best to stand still which is boring. I don't ask. Dad takes a newspaper from the rack and unfolds it on the countertop. There's a picture of a huge gray ship with airplanes actually on it and some people waving. Dad sucks in some air over his teeth and shakes his head. The big words under the picture say STAND OFF something. And below the counter I can see them there in the tray but I do a squint instead of looking and I think about my two feet. If you ask you don't get. Flamingos manage to do standing on just one leg for ages and birds have tiny brains. My brain is hugely developed. It is clever enough to know that the picture in the newspaper upsets Dad because of the new clear bombs. We have them but they're not allowed them so Dad took me on a walk with nearly a million other people to tell the Government to do talking about the problem instead of a war. Some of the people on the walk had incredibly loud drums and a man did a wee in the street before we got to the bit with the talking. Megaphones are not huge phones. Later Dad bought me a Coke with two bits of lemon in it in the pub and was happy. — They can't ignore us now, Son, he said with a four-beer grin. — Not after Blair's mistake in 2003. Even this lot will have to back off now.

The smell in the café is just about as lovely as it is when I put my nose in between Mum's hair in the morning. Her head smells of lemons and chocolate. A basset hound has a more hugely developed sense of smell than I do and so it would like it in here more than I do but only blind dogs are allowed in. I am not blind. Out of my eyes even though they are squinting I can easily see Dad's hand go to the tray and yes, go on, yes, yes, yes!

He's got one, hooray!

He tosses it onto the glass shelf and tells the woman, — That, too, please.

Oh yes, yes, yes.

A massive chocolate coin!

Maybe the whole day will be okay!

I still don't say anything though because I don't want him to change his mind which is easily something he could do. He puts the paper under his arm and picks up the coffee and the lid and the massive chocolate coin which is winking because the lights in here are truly excellent small star-lights aimed at everything. Did you know that stars can tell you where to go? These star-lights are telling Dad to go to the other counter. He walks up to it right near me and he starts ripping sugar into his coffee cup and the chocolate coin is there on the glass sitting next to the lid and I think it's just about as big as the lid and I lean a bit to one side to see if the coin is bigger or smaller than the lid but I have forgotten I am standing on one leg and I fall over. Not right over. I sort of do a half fall into Dad's side. It's okay. Much more massive falls would not hurt me. But sadly I fall into Dad and his arm jerks sideways and knocks over his coffee cup. It goes all over his plaster-cast hand and the paper and up his sleeve.

— Jesus Christ!

I take a few steps away. Dad stands up the cup and grabs for some napkins and starts dabbing and a noise comes out of him which isn't a word or a shout exactly. It's more like a growl inside a box. It makes me shut my own mouth so tight my teeth squeak.

— Here. Let me help. The woman who makes the coffee has come out from behind her bit with some cloths. She allows Dad to run his fingers under the big sink. They are red like the cast which he is trying not to splash. Interestingly the sink doesn't have a tap but a long silver trunk dangling down instead. Dad holds his fingers under the dribble of water for quite a long time, and while he's doing it the woman makes a new cup of coffee and I stand very still indeed. She puts sugar in the cup for him this time and while she's doing that she gives the big coin to me. I say, — Thank you, but I feel sick. He still hasn't looked at me.

 

I do not eat the chocolate coin. I want to eat it and it wants me to eat it but I don't because he is cross so I put it in my pocket instead. We walk along the pavement. The white bits could be chewing gum which you should not drop or guano which is an excellent word for bird poo. Birds make whole islands out of it and they don't know any better so don't blame them. He is holding his arm with the plaster cast away from his body a bit as if it is still hot but it can't be. Perhaps he is drying it. I don't know and I can't speak yet but I do know this: his arm is making me feel bad.

When somebody makes you feel bad what should you do? Sadly there is no answer to this question, or rather wherever you are the answer is different. If you are in a game of chess the answer is that you should attack back because attacking back is the best form of defense. But school is a different cuttlefish. At school Miss Hart says the first thing you should never do when somebody is mean to you is retaliate back because Jesus wouldn't. If you hit Jesus he just kisses your cheek. Or rather that is what he used to do. He is dead now but some people don't think so because when he was alive he was excellent. The animal kingdom is different from the kingdom of heaven. When a warthog is cornered by a pride of lions it uses its razor-sharp tusks to infect slashing wounds. I found a dead cuttlefish washed up on the beach last summer and it was quite razor sharp, too, but I am less excellent than Jesus because here's what I would do if I had that cuttlefish now: I would jab Dad's bad hand with it.

I walk behind a bit. Then I walk farther behind so that when we reach the zebra crossing — lie down there, zebra, we're all going to drive over you unless somebody wants to walk on you instead — he has to wait for me to catch him up. The flashing-ball lights are pelicans which isn't very realistic because you don't get zebras and pelicans with the same habits in the wild.

— Hurry up.

I slow down a bit more.

— Come on, stop dawdling.

Dawdling is a gentle word when he says it like that and, look, he's holding out his hand to me as I arrive. But do you know what, I am not ready yet, I'm just not, so I don't take it, and he whips the hand back down to his side and says something I don't hear because he says it in a quick quiet un-gentle way, so that although I know that it is mean I don't know what it is exactly, and that's exactly the effect he's striding for.

I walk straight past him onto the stripes.

— Hey! He grips my shoulder hard and spins me around, jerking me back a step in a way that is not nice at all even before he makes it worse by shouting, — You don't just walk out into the road, Billy! Hear me? No matter what!

— But it's a zebra—

— Don't talk back to me! How many times do I have to . . . You wait for me. We look both ways. We cross when I say.

And on
say
he jerks me forward again so that my feet are scrabbling to keep up and you know what, this is very complicated. Shall I tell you why? I will, because you will never guess. There are two things. The first thing is that he hates roads. Or rather he hates the cars that go on the roads because the cars, he says quite often, to get it into my head, and normally he rubs my head when he says it, are modern-day top predators. Saltwater crocodiles, Siberian tigers, Great Whites. They're out to get you so you have to be on your guard because there's no way I'm going to lose you to one of them, okay? That's the first thing. And the second thing is the even more complicated thing and it is this: he is actually quite
pleased
that I stepped into the road because now he has a proper reason to be cross with me. Spilling the coffee and running ahead and ducking through the sign thing and going too slowly and not putting on my shoes and waking him up early were all bad reasons to be cross, but walking into the road without looking is a good reason, one of the best! Polar bears, sea eagles, Galápagos iguanas. It's such a good reason it means he can be very angry and quite happy at exactly the same time! Excellent!

But sadly it is not excellent for me. For me it is horrid.

I kick out at the road and I miss and hit his shin.

— Ow! Billy! What the—?

He pushes me with a stiff arm across the road and through the railings into the park which is empty except for a man and a dog. In the war they cut down lots of railings to kill people with, but they put these ones back up. The dog has three legs, two at the front and one at the back. If it is a male it won't have to cock a leg to wee but half of the time it will have to turn around to aim at the tree. Girls have to sit down. I don't know what to say about kicking Dad's shin apart from sorry and I can't say that because sorry sticks in your throat when you try to say it. Try for yourself. Sorry is exactly like a fish-bone.

Luckily just then Dad's phone goes off in his pocket again.

He pulls it out and glares at me and says, — Don't go far, to me and, — Yes, to it.

I do as he says this time. It's relatively easy because he's not on me anymore. He's concentrating at something else. Whatever the else is I can't tell you exactly but I can tell you this: whoever Dad is speaking to has something to do with his work and is saying annoying things.