Black Swan Green (28 page)

It came to life and buzzed my entire skeleton.

Dad’d
kill
me for doing this. It’s so obvious that I mustn’t touch his shaver, he’s never even told me not to. But Dad hadn’t even bothered telling me to go to
Chariots of Fire
on my own. His shaver came closer to the bumfluff on my upper lip…closer…

It bit me!

I unplugged it.

Oh
God
. Now my bumfluff had a ridiculous patch missing.

Maggot whimpered,
What have you
done
?

In the morning Dad’d see and it’d be all too
obvious
what I’d done. My one hope was to shave the whole fuzz off. Surely Dad’d notice that, too?

But I had nothing to lose. The shaver tickled. On a scale of 0 to 10, 3.

The shaver hurt a bit, too. On a scale of 0 to 10, 11 4.

I panickily examined the results. My face
did
look different, but it’d be hard to put your finger on how, exactly.

I ran my finger along where my fuzz’d been.

Not even cold milk was so smooth.

I accidentally flicked open the blade cover. Dad’s gritty stubble and my almost invisible fur snowed together on to the white porcelain sink.

Lying on my chest, my front ribs sank into my back.

Thirsty now, I needed a glass of water.

I got a glass of water. Water in Lyme Regis tastes of paper. I couldn’t get to sleep on my side. My bladder’d ballooned.

I took a long piss, wondering if girls’d like me more if I had more scars. (All I’ve got is a nick on my thumb where I was bitten by my cousin Nigel’s guinea pig when I was nine. My cousin Hugo said the guinea pig had myxomatosis and I’d die, in foaming agony, thinking I was a rabbit. I believed him. I even wrote a will. The scar’s nearly gone now but it bled like shook-up cherryade at the time.)

Lying on my back, my back ribs pressed into my chest.

Too hot, I took my pyjama top off.

Too cool, I put my pyjama top on.

The cinema’d be emptying after
Chariots of Fire
now. The lady with the torch’d be going up and down the aisles putting popcorn cones and Fruit Gum boxes and empty Malteser bags into a bin bag. Sally from Blackburn and her new boyfriend’d be stepping outside, saying what a great film it’d been, though they’d’ve been snogging and stroking each other all the way through. Sally’s boyfriend’d be saying, ‘Let’s go to a disco.’ Sally’d answer, ‘No. Let’s go to the camper van. The others won’t be back for a while.’

That song by UB40 called ‘One In Ten’ thumped up through the bones of Hotel Excalibur.

The moon’d dissolved my eyelids.

Time’d turned to treacle.

‘Oh sod soddity
sod
it and sod Craig sodding Salt too, the sodding sod!’

Dad’d fallen over the carpet.

I didn’t let him know he’d woken me for two reasons: (a) I wasn’t ready to forgive him; (b) he was banging into things like a comedy drunk and pub fumes wafted off him and if he was going to bollock me for using his shaver, tomorrow morning’d be better. Dean Moran’s right. Seeing your Dad pissed’s
dead
disturbing.

Dad made his way to the bathroom like he was in zero gravity. I heard him undo his zip. He tried to piss quietly on to the porcelain.

Piss drummed on the bathroom floor.

A wavery second later it chundered into the bog.

The piss lasted forty-three seconds. (My record’s fifty-two.)

He pulled out loads of bog paper to mop up the spillage.

Then Dad switched on the shower and got in.

Maybe a minute passed before I heard a ripping noise, a dozen plastic
ping
s, a thump and a growly
Sod it!

I opened my eyes a slit and nearly yelled in fright.

The bathroom door’d opened by itself. Dad stood with his head in a turban of shampoo wielding a broken shower-rail. Stark raving nuddy, he was, but right where my sack-and-acorn is, Dad’s got this wobbling chunky length of oxtail. Just hanging there!

His pubes’re as thick as a buffalo’s beard! (I’ve only got nine.)

The
grossest
sight I
ever
saw.

Dad’s snorey skonks and flobberglobbers’re
impossible
to sleep through. No
wonder
my parents don’t sleep in the same bedroom. The shock of seeing Dad’s thing’s dying down now. A bit. But will I just wake up one morning and find that rope between my legs? It horrifies me to think that about fourteen years ago the spermatozoon that turned into me shot out of
that
.

Will
I
be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine? I’ve never even ejaculated, apart from in a dream of Dawn Madden. Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intricate loops? What’s she doing right now? What’s her name?

Too much to think about.

I s’pose Dad’ll have a hangover tomorrow morning.

Today morning.

Chances of us flying my kite on the beach at the crack of dawn?

Big fat zero.

‘The wind blows north,’ Dad had to shout, ‘from Normandy, over the Channel,
smacks
into these cliffs and ally-
oop
, a thermal updraught! Perfect for kites!’

‘Perfect!’ I shouted too.

‘Breathe this air in deep, Jason! Good for your hayfever! Sea air’s chock full of ozone!’

Dad hogged the kite spool so I took another warm jam doughnut.

‘Tonic for the troops, eh?’

I smiled back. It’s
epic
being up at the crack of dawn. A red setter raced ghost-dogs through the bellyflopping waves on the shore. Shale pooed from the cliffs off towards Charmouth. Mucky clouds lidded the sunrise but today was bags windier and better for kite-flying.

Dad shouted something.

‘What?’

‘The kite! Its background blends into the clouds! Looks like it’s just the dragon flying up there! What a beaut you picked! I’ve worked out how to do a double loop!’ Dad had that smile you never see in photos. ‘She rules the skies!’ He edged a bit closer so he didn’t have to shout so much. ‘When I was your age,
my
dad’d take me out on Morecambe Bay of an afternoon – Grange-over-Sands – and we’d fly kites there. Made ’em ourselves in those days…Bamboo, wallpaper, string and milk-bottle tops for the tail…’

‘Will you show me’ (Hangman blocked ‘some time’) ‘one day?’

‘Course I will. Hey! Know how to send a kite-telegram?’

‘No.’

‘Righto, hold her for a moment…’ Dad passed me the spool and got a Biro from his anorak. Then he got the square of gold paper from his cigarettes. He didn’t have anything to rest on so I knelt by him like a squire being knighted so he could rest on my back. ‘What message shall we send up?’

‘“Mum and Julia, Wish You Were Here”.’

‘You’re the boss.’ Dad pressed hard so I felt the Biro trace each letter through my clothes and on to my back. ‘Up you get.’ Then Dad twizzled the gold paper round the kite string like a sandwich-bag fastener. ‘Wobble the line. That’s it. Up and down.’

The telegram started sliding
up
the kite-string, against gravity. Pretty soon it was out of sight. But you knew the message’d get there.

‘
Lytoceras fimbriatum
.’

I blinked at Dad, not knowing what on earth he’d said. We stepped apart to let the wheezy fossil-shop owner lug a signboard outside.

‘
Lytoceras fimbriatum
.’ Dad nodded at the spiral fossil in my hand. ‘Its Latin name. Ammonite family. You can tell by these close tight ribs it’s got, with these extra-fat ones every so often…’

‘You’re right!’ I checked the tiny writing on the shelf. ‘
Ly-to-ce-ras
—’

‘
Fimbriatum
. Fancy me being right.’

‘Since when did you know about fossils and Latin names?’

‘My dad was a bit of a rock-hound. He used to let me catalogue his specimens. But only if I learnt them properly. I’ve forgotten most of them now, of course, but my dad’s
Lytoceras
was
enorm
ous. It’s stuck in my memory.’

‘What’s a rock-hound?’

‘Amateur geologist. Most holidays, he’d find an excuse to go off fossil-hunting with a little hammer he kept. I think I’ve still got it somewhere. Some of the fossils he got in Cyprus and India are in Lancaster Museum, last time I looked.’

‘I never knew.’ The fossil fitted into my cupped hands. ‘Is it rare?’

‘Not especially. That one’s a nice one, though.’

‘How old is it?’

‘Hundred and fifty million years? A whippersnapper among ammonites, really. What say we buy it for you?’

‘
Really?
’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘I
love
it.’

‘Your first fossil, then. An educational souvenir.’

Do spirals end? Or just get so tiny your eyes can’t follow any more?

Seagulls strutted in the dustbins outside Cap’n Scallywag’s. I was walking along still staring into my ammonite when an elbow swung out of nowhere and knocked my head backwards on its hinge.

‘Jason!’ snapped Dad. ‘Look where you’re going!’

My nose gonged with pain. I wanted to sneeze but couldn’t.

The jogger rubbed his arm. ‘No permanent damage, Mike. The Red Cross chopper can stay on its helipad.’

‘Craig! Good God!’

‘Out for my morning fix, Mike. This human bumper car’s your handiwork, I take it?’

‘Right first time, Craig. That’s Jason, my youngest.’

The only Craig Dad knows is Craig Salt. This tanned man matched what I’d heard. ‘If I’d been a truck, young fella-me-lad,’ he told me, ‘
you
’d be a pancake.’

‘Trucks aren’t allowed down here.’ My crushed nose made my voice honk. ‘It’s just for pedestrians.’

‘Jason,’ the Dad out here and the Dad in the fossil shop just weren’t the same person, ‘apologize to Mr Salt! If you’d tripped him you could’ve caused a serious injury.’

Kick the wazzock’s shins
, said Unborn Twin.

‘I’m really sorry, Mr Salt.’
Wazzock
.

‘I’ll forgive you, Jason, thousands wouldn’t. What’s this? Bit of a fossil-collector, are we? May I?’ Craig Salt just took my ammonite. ‘Nice little trilobite, that. Bit of worm damage on this side. But not too bad.’

‘It’s not a trilobite. It’s a
Ly
-
to
—’ (Hangman blocked ‘
Lytoceras
’ in mid-word.) ‘It’s a type of ammonite, isn’t it, Dad?’

Dad wasn’t meeting my eyes. ‘If Mr Salt’s sure, Jason—’

‘Mr Salt,’ Craig Salt plopped my ammonite back, ‘
is
sure.’

Dad just had this weedy smile.

‘If anyone’s sold you this fossil as anything
but
a trilobite, sue ’em. Your dad and I know a good lawyer, eh, Mike? Well. Must clock up another mile or two before breakfast. Then it’s back to Poole. See if my family have sunk my yacht yet.’

‘Wow, have you got a yacht, Mr Salt?’

Craig Salt’d scented my sarcasm but couldn’t act on it.

I stared back, innocent, defiant and surprised at myself.

‘Only a forty-footer!’ Dad said it like the man-of-the-sea he isn’t. ‘Craig, the trainees were saying what a pleasure it was yesterday to—’

‘Ah, yes, Mike.
Knew
there was something else. Would’ve been unprofessional of me to bring it up in front of the Great White Hopes at the hotel, Mike, but we need to talk urgently about Gloucester. Last quarter’s accounts are making me
mucho depressedo
. Swindon’s going straight down the bloody toilet as far as I can see.’

‘Absolutely, Craig. I’ve got some new concepts for in-store promotions we can kick about in the long grass and—’

‘It’s arse-kicking we need, not
grass
-kicking. Expect a call from me on Wednesday.’

‘Looking forward to it, Craig. I’ll be in the Oxford office.’

‘I know where
all
my area managers are. Be more careful, Jason, or you’ll cause someone an injury. Yourself, perhaps. Until Wednesday, Mike.’

Dad and I watched Craig Salt jog down the promenade.

‘What say,’ Dad’s jolliness was forced and feeble, ‘we get ourselves that bacon sandwich?’

But I couldn’t speak to Dad.

‘Hungry?’ Dad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Jason?’

I nearly biffed his hand away and flung my shitty ‘trilobite’ into the shitty sea.

Nearly.