Human Conditioning (6 page)

Aiden pursed his lips in
disappointment and they walked in silence for a short while until he asked,
with typical curiosity, “Have you been to prison, Uncle Grant?”

Grant frowned. “No. Why do you
ask?”

He shrugged. “Just interested
to know what it’s like...”

“Not good.”

Aiden raised a dark, quizzical
eyebrow. “How do you know, if you’ve never been?”

“I know some people that have
been inside... some on long stretches... and they tell me it is not good. Don’t
ever aspire to such a fate, son.”

Grant knew plenty of men who
had gone to prison on account of their ignorance and greed. Aiden’s ‘real’ uncle
had been in and out of the nick more times than a prostitute dropped her drawers,
but Aiden did not know this.

As they approached Carlton
House, Aiden turned to Grant expectantly. “Are you coming in for dinner?”

“No, not tonight. I’ve got
something on.” Aiden bowed his head and nodded. The boy had gone from bravado
to despondence in a second. Grant took his chin between his huge fingers and
lifted his face to meet his. “What’s up?”

Aiden hesitated, then
announced, “Mum and Duggie were arguing again this morning... bet they’re gonna
be in a right shit mood tonight.”

Grant stared into the boy’s
despondent eyes and he couldn’t resist the chance to make him happy again. He
rolled his eyes. “Alright... come on, then! I’ll cancel me meeting later.”

Aiden beamed at him and,
taking his Uncle Grant’s hand, he pulled him up the stone stairwell to the
first floor of the block and across the walkway towards the flat. “Mum says you
bought this flat,” Aiden announced, pulling out a key from his kit bag as they
approached the front door of his home.

“I did.”

“Why, when you don’t live
here?”

“You’re a nosey little git,
aren’t you?” Grant grinned, wrapping a thick arm around Aiden’s shoulders and
knuckling the top of his head, making his already scruffy black hair stand on
end.

“Gerroff!” Aiden laughed.

The door swung open. “Good,
you’re back. Tea’s ready,” Vivien proclaimed dejectedly.

Grant peered down at Aiden and
made a face, and Aiden chuckled. Vivien didn’t notice; she had already left
them to get back to her kitchen. “Told ya,” Aiden whispered, his eyebrows
arching as they made their way inside. “If she’s in a bad mood, Duggie’ll be
worse,” he muttered. They both stepped into the living room to see Duggie
sitting in his armchair. He glanced up, and when he saw Grant his mouth set into
a hard line. Grant ignored his gesture of disapproval and headed directly into
the kitchen.

“How’s it going, Viv?”

Aiden trailed in after him,
and when Vivien turned from the oven to see him all sweaty and bloodied, his
skinny legs cut and dirty, she snapped, “Shower, now!”

“Alright! I’ve just got in the
door!” Aiden retorted, his handsome young face contorting into a mixed
expression of frustration and offence.

“Now!”

When Aiden stomped from the
room, Grant raised his eyebrows and Vivien stared back at him impassively.
“What?” she asked curtly, her clenched fists finding her hips.

“Was there any need for that?”

“He never does as he’s told!”
she retorted, flicking her long dark hair over her shoulder. Turning back to
the oven, she put on a pair of oven gloves and took out a casserole dish. Grant
knew by the familiar smell that they would be having colcannon – a dish Vivien
served up for her family at least three times a week. It was cheap and it was
easy.

Grant shook his head and sat
at the small kitchen table. Lighting up a cigarette, he offered one to her and
she took it. She didn’t smoke often, but Grant knew her well enough to know
when she was in need of one. “He
had
just walked in...” he pressed.

“Oh, hush, Grant!” she
snapped, bending down towards the flame of his match. She puffed on her
cigarette and stood up, poised with her other hand once again on her hip.

“What’s eating you today?”

Vivien’s voice lowered to a
whisper. “What do you think?” she replied, pointing her smoking cigarette
towards the living room.

Grant rolled his eyes, but he
didn’t ask for a commentary. The subject of Duggie and Vivien’s quarrels was
usually inconsequential, and nothing ever got solved as a result of their
bickering. Vivien pulled hard on her cigarette. “Are you staying for tea?” she
asked.

“Yeah. Aiden wants me to.”

She nodded then announced, “I
need some money.”

Grant’s eyebrows shot up. “I
gave you fifty the other day.”

“That went on Kate’s school
trip,” she snapped, as if paying for her daughter’s education was a total
inconvenience to her.

Grant eyed her speculatively
then pulled his wallet out from the back pocket of his trousers and took out a
small wad of ten-pound notes. “How much?”

“Thirty should do it.”

He counted three notes and
handed them over just as Aiden came back into the room.

“That was quick!” he announced
with an exaggerated gawp, his entire focus now on the young boy, instinctively compensating
for the injustice of his mother’s earlier admonishment. Vivien slipped the
notes into the pocket of her trousers and went back to the oven. “Come here and
give your Uncle Grant a big hug!” Grant crooned and, grabbing Aiden’s skinny arm,
he pulled him onto his lap and began to tickle him.

“Gerroff!” Aiden chuckled gleefully.

“He’s a bit too old for that
kind of treatment, don’t you think?”

Everyone’s eyes went to the
door of the kitchen to see Duggie limp in from the living room. Aiden dragged
himself off Grant’s lap immediately and raced from the room. Grant jumped out
of his chair and Duggie had to stifle a flinch. Grant didn’t have to say
anything but the tension in the room was tangible. His menacing glare and grave
expression as he loomed over Duggie said all that needed to be said.

Leaving the room, Grant headed
up the stairs to Aiden’s bedroom, where he found him sitting at the little
wooden desk he had bought for him, carving aggressively into it with a small
kitchen knife, his little tongue poking out at the side of his mouth. When
Grant stood over his shoulder, he saw that the boy had carved the makings of
the term, ‘fuck you’: FUCK Y...

“Aiden...”

“What?” Aiden replied, tears
pricking his eyes. But he wouldn’t cry; he never cried.

Grant sighed and sat on the
edge of Aiden’s single bed. It was unmade, the duvet scrunched up at the bottom
of it. Grant watched the boy with concern.

“I’ll say it one day...” Aiden
grumbled, his lips pursing as he concentrated on carving the letter ‘O’ then
‘U’ in the word, ‘YOU’.

“Say what?” Grant sighed.

“This,” Aiden replied, nodding
down at his carvings.

“You shouldn’t disrespect your
elders, son.”

“They hate me!” Aiden retorted,
with absolute concentration on what he was doing.

Grant continued, “Many people
will attempt to disrespect you in this life. You can’t get upset about everyone
who says a bad word against you.”

“I’ll just hit them with some
knuckle-dusters...” Aiden replied through clenched teeth. He sniffed and rubbed
one of his eyes forcefully, as if punishing it for allowing a tear to fall.

Grant closed his eyes. He couldn’t
bear this. He sighed in exasperation and snapped, “Right, that’s enough!”
Grabbing Aiden’s arm, he prised the knife out of his hand. “What you got this
up here for anyway, eh?” he pressed, angrily.

Aiden snarled, “Oi, that’s
mine!”

“It belongs downstairs!”

As Grant stood, Aiden jumped
off his chair and stood before Grant, his small chest pumped and his behaviour
confrontational. “That belongs here. It’s
mine
!” he bellowed. Grant’s
jaw clenched and he had to refrain from clipping the boy around the ear. “You
ain’t my fucking dad!” Aiden spat with purposeful nastiness.

Grant’s eyes widened in shock,
then, on a sigh, he closed them. And there it was: Aiden’s irreverence about
his strange guardianship.

Before Grant could react, a
small figure entered the room, her eyes wide and bright. Kate Foster. She was a
pretty little thing. Her deep blue eyes were slightly too large for her face,
and her lips were puckered, her nose a button, her hair a silky black.

“Aiden?” she whispered, her
little mouth forming an ‘o’ after speaking his name.

Aiden’s eyes went to her
immediately and the conflict with his Uncle Grant was immediately replaced with
his protective affection for his little sister as he jogged over to her and
wrapped an arm securely around her slight shoulders. “Alright, Bone!” he crooned.
“Shall we go downstairs? It’s dinner time!”

She nodded timidly, and Aiden
took her tiny hand in his and led her out of the room.

Grant watched the children
leave with a heavy heart.
Shit!
He had been waiting for this day to
come, but no amount of contemplation could have prepared him for the devastation
he felt as a result of Aiden’s words: ‘
You ain’t my fucking dad!
’

He ran a hand through his hair
and stared down at the knife in his hand, then over at Aiden’s carvings in the
desk. He sighed and felt utterly deflated. He stepped over to the bed and, placing
the knife on Aiden’s pillow, he pulled the duvet over, ensuring it concealed
the knife, then he left the room.

<> 

Another slam of the front door brought Grant out of his
reverie. Vivien turned, and her eyes and his went to the door of the kitchen as
Aiden strolled in puffing on a cigarette. Aiden had an aura that commanded any
room. If he was happy, the atmosphere was light and carefree; if he was
displeased, the atmosphere thickened like a fog, and when he saw Grant sitting
at the kitchen table, the fog descended.

Grant smiled apprehensively.
He hadn’t seen Aiden for a couple of weeks, so they hadn’t spoken since their
last spat , when he had told Aiden that he would be better off working for him
than for Reggie Driscoll.

He loved Aiden, more than he’d
loved any other person – even more than he’d ever loved Vivien – but he had to
start admitting to himself that the boy had grown tired of his counsel and his
scrutiny. Grant stood to leave, but Vivien quickly wiped her hands on a tea
towel and shuffled out of the room, eyeing him expectantly as she left. Aiden
did not see this gesture as he headed to the fridge and began rummaging for
food that he wouldn’t have to cook in order to eat.

Grant sighed inwardly. Vivien
wanted him to talk to her son, but the truth of the matter was, how could he
tell Aiden not to steal when the majority of his living was made from some sort
of illegal activity? He took a deep breath, watching Aiden warily as he made
himself a sandwich at the speed of light: a piece of bread, a splatter of
peanut butter, another piece of bread. Done.

Aiden turned to leave.

“You shouldn’t be thieving, son,”
Grant announced cautiously.

“Telling me what to do,
Grant... that’s new,” Aiden retorted, as if he had been waiting for the chance
to fight him.

Grant sighed loudly.
Everything that anyone said to Aiden had some belligerent answer to it. No one
could win with him at the moment. With a quick change of mind, Aiden turned on
his heels and headed back to the fridge. Opening the fridge door, he added,
clearly agitated, “Should I get a real job? Work twelve-hour shifts for fuck-all
pay? That’s if I’m even offered a job. What do you do to earn all your money,
eh?”

Grant refrained from answering
him. Aiden had known from a young age that Grant earned unlawfully and he
wasn’t afraid to throw that fact in his face every time he tried to lecture
him. Grant had never been specific as to what he actually did for a living,
always swaying the conversation to another subject when he was asked about it.
Aiden took one of Duggie’s ciders out of the fridge. Grant knew he wouldn’t
have had permission to do so but he refrained from pointing out that fact in
fear of being accused of ‘butting into his business’ again.

“Gone quiet again...?” Aiden persisted,
exasperated. “And you wonder why I don’t listen to you.”

“You’ve always got an answer
for everything, you arrogant little sod...”

“
Fuck you!
” Aiden sneered;
his tone drenched with loathing and disrespect.

Grant stood abruptly. With the
recent reminiscence of this boy’s repugnance and the words he had carved in his
desk all those years ago still fresh in his mind, he was all of a sudden
rail-roaded. They were just two words, but both he and Aiden knew the potent
meaning behind them.

Aiden did not yield and immediately
squared up to the big man. They both glared at each other, the physical confrontation
shocking them both yet equally fuelling their renowned tempers. Deep inside, neither
wanted to hurt the other; Aiden was testing the boundaries, laying claim to his
manhood and marking his territory, and Grant was finally showing him who was
boss.

There had been a battle for
supremacy going on between them for quite some time now, but it had never
escalated into anything other than a war of words because Grant had sat back
and taken it, when really he should have given the boy a good hiding the first
time he had challenged him. He had never had the heart to meet Aiden head-on
before, but he could not allow this rebellious boy to disrespect him anymore,
whatever he felt for him. Enough was enough and, today, Aiden’s quick temper
had pushed him to his limit.  

Grant pointed a chubby finger in Aiden’s face and in a
low growl, he said, “You speak to me like that again and I will knock you all
over this room, do you understand?”

Aiden went to retort, to tell
him that he didn’t care, that he’d received regular beatings off his father all
his life so it would be of no consequence if he was beaten again now, but he
didn’t. Grant had no knowledge of the extent of violence that went on in the
Foster household, and pride prevented Aiden from confessing that he, ‘Aiden
Foster’, could be vulnerable. He could not confess his weaknesses to the man
he’d looked up to for most of his life; a man who he had always perceived as
brave and indestructible.