Billy and Girl (16 page)

‘My wife took the blame, didn’t she? Said she was provoked. Got a doctor’s report on the boy’s bruises. They let her off, but she wasn’t allowed to stay with her kids. Had to live separate. Her father’s looking after them.’

Mr England looks directly into the lightbulb so tears will roll down his cheeks.

‘Yes, I have had a few girlfriends since. Thing is, I never like to go to sleep with them in the house. It’s a panic thing. Case they do something to me while I’m sleeping.’ Mr England shifts his focus. Imagines where the McPsychologist will be sitting. Should he give him a sly wink? Probably a few housewives out there who want to marry him. Credits coming up. Chat-show theme tune coming up.

‘Look, fuck off, will you? I haven’t a clue where their mother is. Piss off out of my house now. Any more trouble from my family sending people over here, I’ll hire a security guard. Going to put a sign on my door:
ARMED RESPONSE
.’

‘Yeah?’

Louise believes him. He hasn’t a clue. Got no curiosity. Mr England has shut himself in his castle for ever. Patiently tying the bin liners with little strips of green plastic wire. Doing his weekly shop for one. Pint of milk and little tin of butter beans. Watching the chat shows. Singing old Elvis numbers. She’s got no information for the girl and Billy. Billy’s voice coming into her head. Telling her about the man who gave a name to his pain. Called it dog. Kicked and screamed at it. She can’t find a name for her pain. ‘They’ hurt her and she ran away. Princess Louise of FreezerWorld. Cooling down – calmed by the murmuring. Fridges humming Louise lullabies to her broken heart, all day long. Hush little baby don’t say a word. Hush little baby. Hush. Atgam, Cleocin, Didrex, Povera Quinidine, glass vials, white gloves, Lidocaine, Darvocet, Phenurone, diagnostic manuals, the free market, free love or the essential English dictionary, they’re not going to do it. Mrs O’Reilly might just do it. Taking her in. Folding her into her Mom arms. Cleaning up the snot and tears. Yeah, the Girl and Billy voice channelling through her as one
voice, they’re in this together. What did Girl say? ‘Soon all the kids in England will be pushing up daisies.’

Someone’s knocking at the door. Ringing the bell.

Mr England looks worried now. Punching his fist into his own thigh.

‘Only Danny.’ Louise lets him in, princess eyes squeezed into pain slits. Biting her nails.

‘You all right, Lou?’ Danny, who’s taken the day off work on her behalf and everything.

‘I’m all right.’

Mr England just about manages to stand up and stagger to the corridor. Complete fucking strangers coming to his house. It’s got to stop. Why’s the bloke staring at him like that? Mr England slugging another premium lager.

Danny checking him out. Sneaking side glances at Louise. He’s used to getting into situations with her. She’s a wild girl. Knows he mustn’t ask too many questions. Sometimes you can’t, got to keep ventilation between knowing and not knowing when you love someone. Ask when you have to, otherwise leave it. Danny’s never believed he has to know everything. I mean, he’s not some fucking private dick on the Louise File, is he? Louise. Danny loves the smell of her hair. Holding her tight in her bad times. A man in love. Walking proud, heart busting with Louise. Teenage runaway. Those orange ankle boots the other girl gave her. He was just pretending when he said he liked them but it all went wrong because she believed him and he didn’t want to be cruel. There are limits to love. It’s not good for a bloke to have a girlfriend who looks like Marc Bolan.

Billy

The Merc is now ‘all there’. It’s a good thing I’ve got my books and pain research to keep me preoccupied because I’ve stopped talking. My voice is in hiding and only Mom is going to drag it kicking and screaming out of me. This happened ever since Raj kissed my crazy bitch sister in the back seat of the Merc. Look, Raj is not just my best friend, he is also a patient. I’ve been working on him for some time which is why I didn’t pay a penny when he delivered his bill for the motor. I couldn’t anyway because Grand-Dad cash has stopped. We have not received an envelope for two weeks now. The two-thirty has not come home. It’s probably being mashed up for cat food because in all this time Grand-Dad has never not sent us cash.

Look, if my sister gets intimate with Raj, it’s like me getting intimate with him, and that’s not ethical. Never ever sleep with your patients. Go down that road and you’re a professional without a profession, an omelette without eggs. Time to take myself off to a film. Sit in the dark. Take out my lickle Billy knife and slide it into the seat. It’s known as ‘cutting’ in the mind trade. I have been looking into this knife thing, come to a few conclusions if you’ve got the time to hear me out? I think my little knife is to protect me from being castrated by my mother. Yep, I’ll wait while you fix yourself a Pernod and open the cocktail-hour Twiglets. See, if anyone’s gonna castrate
this boy, it’s gonna be me. Gonks. If ever there was a castrated pet toy it’s the gonk. Grew its hair long to cover the severed parts. Honky Gonky. A mummie’s gonk.

I have become my mother in order to prevent my own castration. Someone get me some gripe water, quick! Mom has disappeared but she blinks in my mind all through the night. She never goes to sleep. I study myself through the watchful eyes of my absent mother. She fills the whole screen with her big eye sockets, watching me. Where I score, tho’, is I don’t feel like I’m the wicked son waiting to be punished, nor do I want to destroy her power. I just want some of it.
No one
is cutting off my dick.
No one
is even going to lop off my foreskin for religious purposes. One thing I’m sure of: my dick is bigger than Dad’s was. Heh heh heh. Let me explain myself. What I am saying to the distinguished gentlemen assembled here (the local Odeon, as it happens) is that I have access to more masculinities than Dad. I am husband, father, son, brother, virgin, pimp, career man,
homme fatale
– yep, I’ll wait while you pour yourself another vodka martini. Got any frankfurters? I am a wizard, a vampire, a smart boy with pain problems. So when I cut up the seats, it’s Mom trying to castrate me.

Velvet cinema seats made for watching heroes and heroines fall in and out of love. Girl and I are made for the big screen. We are hero and heroine material and there will probably be a car chase on account of us now having a car because Raj is expressing himself motor manually.

The reason why we are heroic is because we are tragic and flawed. Yep. If there is some kind of catharsis to be had in the future I hope it’s got antiseptic and yards of sterilised gauze waiting for us at the end of it. I have this idea that perhaps the Merc will be like James Dean’s Porsche Spyder. We’ll have an accident, a smash-up, and die young. Word of
the tragedy will echo around the world. We will be icons of the alcoholic-lemonade generation. Someone will unearth photographs of us and become famous. A number of these early pics will wind up in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in the table-tennis club in Rotherham. I want the Merc to smash on account of Girl and Raj. Lost my sister and my patient/best friend in one sitting. I’m not going to ever speak again.

When Raj beeped the born-again Merc hooter, Girl and I were wringing our hands in the kitchen because Grand-Dad has let us down. No money to even do a shop and we are big consumers. We need to shop. Shopping for us is like going on a long walk in the countryside. We feel healthier afterwards. We sleep better. Breathe easy. Even if food rots in our fridge, at least we know it is there. Even if cleaning products are never used and gather dust in the cupboard under the sink, we feel all the more clean for owning them. So we are moody when we go outside to see what all the fuss is about. Frankly, we don’t give a fuck about anything at the moment. Grand-Dad, despite his humour problems, equals survival. The world is about to lose Billy England to malnutrition. While the mediocre stuff themselves with mushroom pies and straight men with a famine of masculinities at their fingertips write literary novels in their second homes in France and their wives bring up the kiddies, Billy England is about to die.

Raj beeping the horn again.

There he is! Raj put our pain inheritance into intensive care and today the master surgeon is wearing a new silk shirt to celebrate new Merc life. Revving the engine, his elbow out of the window and a fat Cuban cigar between his fingers.

‘C’mon on in,’ he drawls in this new self-satisfied voice. My crazy fucked sister. A moment ago she was talking about us
drowning ourselves in a canal somewhere, and now she’s opening the Merc door like she’s taking a spin to her health club. She sits next to Raj (purple velveteen seats) who shows her the work he’s done ‘on all the controls’ (like this is an aeroplane or something) and then, worst of all, takes her into the back seat where he’s built her a minibar. A minibar! Raj, who is not only wearing a silk shirt but also new Nikes in the shape of spats, puts his arm around my sister while she fiddles about with the hundreds of miniatures some cousin has given him.

‘Hey, Billy man, drive us somewhere.’

Whaat? He knows I can’t drive. For a start there are so many beads and air fresheners in the shape of apples, weird Gods and pears hanging from the mirror, I can’t see out of the front window. Raj coming on like some French playboy from one of those crummy old movies set in a casino, watching Girl mix the miniatures, shake the mixer and pour ’em both some killer brew, forgetting all about
me
! Raj knocking it back in one
and
then kissing my bitch sister full on the lips for about two three four minutes.

What am I supposed to do? Watch? Drive off? Make notes? Go away discreetly on the big day of our Merc delivery? Four minutes is a long time if you live your life intensely. Four minutes. Enough time to let silence fall eloquently over the proceedings. I mean, the Merc is supposed to be one third mine. Seems like the back seat ain’t big enough for three.

Louise feels really hard done by. So she calls on the England children and tells them the truth. Their dad doesn’t know anything. Got no information for them. They’re gawping at her, not believing her, making her feel bad. Worst of all, Billy has stopped talking. Passes little notes across the table to her.
HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU ASK DAD WHERE MOM WAS? COME ON! ONE TWO THREE TIMES? WHAT?
She can’t even read his writing. Girl has to lean over, swipe the note and read it out loud, making her feel stupid. Who the fuck do they think they are? Girl wants to know what they talked about. Did she get the right house? How can she be sure? Did Dad give her a message for his kiddies? No? Is Louise keeping something back from them? If she is, she better spill the beans. Billy shaking his head. Insinuating she handled it really badly. That she’s no good. Girl snarling at her. The Louise tangle. Okay, what did Dad do when Louise said her name was Louise? But Louise isn’t good at describing things. She doesn’t like setting the scene. It’s not her thing.

‘He said you set fire to him,’ Louise says in a morbid, expressionless voice. ‘For bashing Billy.’

Girl puts her hand on her lip. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

Her brother nods. Writes something.
FANKS. THANKS
.

Girl’s face starts to cave in on her. The whole Girl thing collapsing. ‘Oh, my God!’

Billy writing more.
NO GOD. JUST PAIN
.

Tears. Girl’s tears are hideous. Pouring out of her. She’s
sobbing into her hands, meowling, even her hair is wet, red welts on her cheeks where she rubs them and cries more.

‘I’m evil, Billy.’

NO EVIL. JUST PAIN
.

Girl stamps out of the room. Slamming the door, making everything shake and judder off the shelves, about to fall and break. Everything is trembling at the moment. Juddering to the edge about to fall.

GIRL’S GONE TO SEE RAJ. THEY KISS ALL THE TIME
.

Another Billy note. Who do the England kids think they are? Louise has got a hunch that Billy has become even more frightened of his sister. On account of her being capable of damaging someone. Dad. Louise likes it that Billy is afraid. Something she can do too. Damage people. So why not wind him up a bit? She sits at the table making her eyes flutter up to the top of her head. Talks to him with just the whites showing. Makes her voice go croaky so he has to call the exorcist in to number 24. ‘I am possessed, Bill-ee, I am possessed, Bill-ee.’ Billy’s losing it. Taking out his knife. Cutting up the kitchen chairs. Not threatening her. Just doing it to let off steam. He’s hungry. Hasn’t had a proper meal for weeks. There’s no food in the house. Only what Raj gives them from the shop. So Raj has become a bit of a saviour in Girl’s eyes, a saviour who does kissing. Billy is losing it. He hasn’t made a pizza since Raj kissed Girl. Not seen a movie in weeks. The TV listings bore him sick. No weather to play hoopla in the park, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Play sports in the open air? Louise is sick of hearing him moan through his notes. Why’s he gone dumb? Just because that bloke kissed his sister?

‘I’m possessed, Billee! Billeeeeeeeeee! Billeeee.’

Billy just can’t believe it. Girl’s mad enough, but to have to endure Louise is too much. He opens a book on the
psychochemistry of the brain, ignoring the FreezerWorld girl and her retard play-acting.

Two hours after Girl stormed out of number 24 in a whirl of tears, she storms back in with Raj on her arm. Both of them are clutching FreezerWorld bags. Louise finds it hard to believe Girl has dared go back there after robbing Express. But she has. She goes there a lot. Louise sees her skulking in the aisles. Staring at her. She knows Girl follows her home. Watches her when she’s out with Danny. She doesn’t mind that so much. Girl has taught her a lot. Taken her round the shops, bought her new clothes. Given her new words and thoughts. Louise even helps Girl write her words on walls. Girl doesn’t know that Louise does this.
MOM CALL HOME. GIRL
. Louise has written it quite a few times – whenever she sees a space and no one is looking. Easy.