Ostrich: A Novel (3 page)

I can swear in sixty-seven different languages. But I can apologize in only three, which means I could get beaten up in sixty-four countries.

One of the languages I can do both in is French, which is my first lesson on a Monday. In French class we’re not allowed to speak English. Instead, we have to do everything
en Français
. There are a lot of things I do
en Français
that I’d never do in English. For one thing, I help out around the house a lot more. Every weekend I spend a minimum of one hour passing the Hoover in my bedroom, and each night I set and clear the table before and after dinner (respectively (obviously)). I have a younger sister who calls herself Marie-Clare (who has nine years (whenever anyone tells you their age in French it sounds like they have a terminal disease) and enjoys horse-riding), and what is more, an older brother (Serge) who likes to play football. Moreover, I have a diet that consists exclusively of the potato in its various incarnations (plates of chips, bags of crisps, and baked), a father who is a doctor (because I don’t know the word for a driving instructor), and a mother who works at home (because I don’t know the word for sexism (or legal secretary)). Every summer the five of us go on holiday without fail, and always to the same place, La Rochelle, where we practice windsurfing and pass a fantastic week with one another and our dog, who calls himself Sausage. I even have a different name in French. (Madame Berger made us each choose one at
the start of the year and explained that in her class that is what we would be known as. At first it felt a bit like we were losing our identities, like we were going into prison and being given a number, but actually now I quite like my French name.) It’s Marcel.

“Marcel?”

“Oui, madame?”

“Qu’est-ce que tu as fait le weekend dernier?”

At first the question confuses me because I don’t know if last weekend means the weekend that’s just passed or the weekend before that. Both are in the past. I can tell that because I’m in French class.

“Le weekend?”

“
Oui. Le weekend
dernier.
En
passé composé.”

In truth, it doesn’t matter which weekend. Madame Berger was only trying to be helpful. But in French I do the same thing every weekend:
“Samedi j’ai joué au foot avec mon frère et dimanche j’ai lu un roman.”
(I am a much more active person in French, and I read novels only, because I don’t know if the Internet is masculine or feminine.)

“Ah, oui. C’est vrai?”

This is
une question rhétorique
. However, I decide to answer anyway, because Marcel is a keen conversationalist.
“Oui. C’est vrai.”

“Et pour aider tes parents, tu as fait quelque chose?”

“J’ai passé l’aspirateur dans ma chambre pour deux heures.”

“Comme un bon fils, n’est-ce pas?”

(Marcel is a good son. I take some vicarious pride from this, which is when you experience something as a result of something someone else has done.) Madame Berger is beaming.

“Et est-ce que tu as fait quelque chose
hors de l’ordinaire
peut-être?”

I pretend to scan my brain for an irregular past participle, but really I knew the question was coming.
“Oui, j’ai ri à un film.”

(In many ways, my life is so much simpler in French. I don’t get headaches or déjà vu in French, because I don’t know the words for them. Moreover, I don’t worry about my parents’ marriage or my own mortality or why I haven’t had a wet dream, because these are emotions I am not able to express. Sometimes I’m jealous of Marcel. I think that if I moved to France I’d be a completely different person. (For one thing, I’d agree with people a lot more, and for another, I’d spend much more time in libraries and swimming pools.) Do you know what the French call a Lost Property Office? They call it a Found Property Office. (But then again, they call a Potato an Apple of the Ground.))

“
Et qu’est-ce que tu
feras
le weekend prochain? Dans
l’avenir.”

I don’t know the French for brain surgery. So I cheat.

“La même.”

Our next lesson is the one I’ve been waiting for. English. Miss Farthingdale hands back our Compositions in reverse order,
starting with the worst and ending with … Simon Nagel’s.
Effing eff-word!

I come third, with 16 out of 20, behind Simon and Chloe Gower. As punishment, I decide I have to coat my forearm in the fluid from the white end of my ink eraser pen and rest my nose on it for the whole lesson. (It’s made from pig urine.)

Simon Nagel is an Alkaline Jew, and his grandfather was in a concentration camp (I forget which one. It’s definitely not Auschwitz, but it would be one of the other top answers in
Family Fortunes
if they ever did that round). He always finds a way to write about the Holocaust, whatever title we get set, which is why he always wins. Chloe Gower is an albino and comes from a Broken Home. Her skin is the same color as the correction fluid she uses to write
Manic Street Preachers
on her rucksack, and her parents split up a year and a half ago (which is about the time she dyed her hair black (which is not a good look for an albino (because it makes her face look like apartheid))). Every few months when her dad picks her up from school in his convertible there’ll be a new woman in the passenger seat. They always look roughly the same, like younger, prettier versions of her mum. It’s a bit like her dad’s casting for an American Remake of his life. I tried to talk to her once about the Manic Street Preachers because I quite like that song they do about being tolerant, but when I told her this she sneered and told me she liked only the early stuff. Then she gave me one earpiece from her minidisc and played me a song
called “She Is Suffering” and asked me what I thought. I think that being a Manic Street Preachers fan who prefers “She Is Suffering” to the Tolerance Song is like being a Christian who prefers the carpentry to the miracles. But I told her it sounded cool, and now when we cross each other in the corridor we nod.

(The Composition was A Life in the Day, which is absolutely not the same as A Day in the Life. A Day in the Life is a snapshot of a particular day from the time you woke up to the time you went to bed and all the things that happened in between. We don’t do A Day in the Life anymore, because it’s too easy.

A Life in the Day is much harder. In A Life in the Day you have to give an account of an average day in your life to show what it’s like to be you. To do this, you have to focus on all of the thoughts and feelings you have about the places, people, and routines that make up an average day in your life.

On an average day in my life I have milk on toast for breakfast
(or maybe Honey Nut Cornflakes with Peanut Butter). There is such a thing as an average day in my life, but I don’t think it tells you anything about who I am and what it’s like to be me. In fact, I’m not sure that life really has all that much to do with days in the first place.)

When the anesthetic practitioner came to visit, he weighed me like I was a fish he’d just caught and asked me if I had a phobia of needles, which I told him I didn’t because a phobia is an irrational fear of something and my fear of needles is 100% justified. (I don’t understand why people insist that they have phobias of things like heights and snakes and small spaces and open spaces and other people when all of those things can kill you. I hate how people think that not walking under ladders makes you superstitious, when actually it’s just common sense. You wouldn’t call someone superstitious if they didn’t want to live under a flight path. (I am not superstitious.))

Then he asked if I had any questions. I could think of only
one, but it didn’t seem relevant (If Stephen Hawking got his CapsLock key stuck, after a while would he start to lose his voice?), so instead I shook my head.

“It’s a real game of chess,” remarks Dad.

I have always wanted a TV in my room. There’s a bed (which I’m in), a bedside cabinet with a call button, an armchair (which Dad’s in), and an unusually high number of three-pin plug sockets (six). I thought about asking the nurse what they were for, but then I figured it out myself. (Three are for personal use, three for medical use. (Three to charge my minidisc and three to charge me.)) In the corner of the room, Chelsea are playing Liverpool.

I look up from my crossword (
24 across: uncooperative (9)
, which is either difficult or
difficult
, in which case it’s easy (and 19 down is
basic
)), because I prefer chess to football. At first I can’t see any similarity, and I’m just about to dismiss Dad’s claim as a bad metaphor when one of the Chelsea defenders reaches the opposition’s goal line and is replaced by a better player who can move forward, backward, and diagonally. Dad seems pleased by this and lets me go back to my crossword. A few minutes later, Liverpool mount an attack that ends in an acrobatic save by the Chelsea goalkeeper. Dad tells me to look at the screen: “Because that’s what a pedigree goalkeeper looks like, son.”

This means that both of his parents were goalkeepers and you can trace his ancestry back through an unbroken line of them.

During the halftime analysis I get déjà vu while they are replaying the save, which is like having déjà vu squared.

When Mum returns with a cup of coffee, Dad turns off the game guiltily without her having to say anything. She asks if I mind her drinking in front of me (because I am NBM, which means I can’t eat or drink anything), which I don’t, and then she asks if I’m okay.

“Ah, he’s all right,” says Dad. “It’s not like it’s rocket science!”

I wonder when Dad last made Mum laugh.

Once when I was very young, Mum and Dad left me with Aunt Julie and Uncle Tony because they were going to the Alps for a weekend for their anniversary. I remember after dinner on the night before they went watching Dad count out some strange-looking notes at the table. “Are those Francs?” I asked, because I didn’t recognize the markings, but I knew from the care that Dad was taking that it must be money.

“No,” said Dad. “They’re mine.”

It was the best joke I’d ever heard. And Mum agreed. It took the legs from under her. I remember she was standing behind him and she skied her hands down his front in a snow-plow until they crossed and she was draped over his shoulders like a knotted jumper. She laughed so hard nothing came out, and finally, when she had enough air in her lungs, she kissed the spot that’s now his bald patch. It made me feel queasy to
look at them because it was the only time I can remember that they didn’t look like parents.

For ages afterward, whenever I watched Dad counting out money he’d get a glint in his eye, which would be my cue. “Are those Francs?” I would call, melting into laughter before he even made the joke. Which didn’t stop him.

“No, they’re mine!”

Then he’d cheer and throw his hands up above his head like he was trying to start The Wave. When I’d join in, he’d swoop down to tickle my armpits or hoist me up onto his shoulders and parade me around the house until we found Mum. And then we’d restage the whole thing for her benefit. This time, though, he’d play around with the wording. Sometimes he wouldn’t give us exactly what we thought we wanted. Instead, he’d just nudge us in the direction of the punch line and sit back as we raced to the end.

“Are those Francs?”

“Well, it’s funny you should ask that …”

“NO, THEY’RE MINE!”

This was my favorite version of the joke. It was like we were running a relay and Dad was handing me the baton for the final straight. He’d already blown away the competition, and all I had to do was hold on tight and break the tape at the finish line.

Then it was Mum’s turn to run with it. The joke became how much she liked the sound of this Frank fellow, and did we happen to know if he was single? After all, Frank was a billionaire. While Dad could claim ownership over only whatever amount he had to hand (and would happily do so whenever I
asked him to), Frank didn’t need to boast. Whatever modest sum Dad wasn’t joking about belonged to Frank. And then the joke became how much more eligible Frank was than Dad in other departments. By Dad’s own admission, not only was Frank richer, he was better-looking, too, and a better listener and (as Dad got older) a better dresser and (as I got older) better in bed, until eventually Frank was Dad’s superior in every respect and Mum would openly fantasize about the day he’d rescue her from her life with us and whisk her away to his private island (France).

However, none of this stopped me from pitying Frank. Because for every point he scored over Dad there was still one thing that he couldn’t do. He couldn’t make Mum laugh. (For everything that Frank had, my parents had each other.)

Around the time of my first seizure, Mum and Dad had another trip booked to France, to the same resort they’d gone to half my life before. In the end, they canceled it to be with me at the hospital, but not before Dad had changed some money over. The night they were supposed to leave, we ate together in the hospital canteen, and when it came time for Dad to pay I noticed in his wallet an unfamiliar note sandwiched between fifteen pounds.

“Are those Frank’s?” I asked, expectantly.

“No, they’re Euros,” he replied.