Terms & Conditions (21 page)

Oscar's tune would change but, for a moment, all three of us stood around and took in the awe and amazement of what had happened, of what Malc had just done.

We all looked back across the yawning gap of the ravine and the vertiginous plunge below and without saying anything we started to walk home with Malc cradling his left hand in his right.

We stayed silent and happy all the way home and it wasn't until my mother saw the finger and freaked out with, ‘What the hell have you done?' that our tight ranks were split and Oscar stood away from Malc and me, and said, ‘It was Malc's idea, he wanted to jump this ridiculous gap and I begged him not to but you can't tell him and . . .'

Malc and I both looked at Oscar with that melting laser glare that teenage boys specialise in. Our mother drove us to the hospital where the doctor explained, ‘Nerve damage is really extensive, you have torn everything in there and it's really only the skin that's keeping it on. Now you can keep it on there but it will just be cosmetic, it won't work,
we will crack it back into shape but I think you have broken it for ever. We can amputate it if you would prefer but it's your choice. We can just take it off at the knuckle, nothing too extreme, and nothing that will affect your life too detrimentally.'

Malc talked to Mum and then was taken away.

Next time we saw Malc he told us how they literally snapped the finger back into place, with one confident crack.

Malc didn't have tear tracks on his face; he seemed placid throughout, still riding on the experience of that stupid-wonderful thing he'd done.

Today I look back at that moment and – tainted with adult judgment – I think,
That was a ridiculous risk for a young man to take, what a waste that could have been. To risk your precious life for a stupid dare!
*

* But, more importantly, I remembered what I really felt back then, as a kid. I remembered how pure my heart was; there was nothing sensible in my reaction, nothing judgmental, I just looked at Malc with the deepest clearest admiration and I thought,
My younger brother is made of something special, something I don't have and can't fathom, he is a brave hero and I love him for it
.

Malc, after much debate with our crying mother, made the decision to cut it off, from the knuckle, telling the doctor he didn't want anything on him that didn't work. That made my mum cry harder than ever and she begged him to keep it. In a very basic way Mum had made that little bit of finger and she had a natural sense of propriety about it. She even tried to call our dad, who was on a work trip in Europe, in order to get him to tell Malc not to cut it off – even Dad would not have changed Malc's mind, though, I knew that; I knew Malc had a strength of conviction that could defy even the might of our all-powerful dad. Malc never seemed to mind, it was cut off and that was that; he just made a joke about giving up flute.

After the surgery we all took a look at the bandaged stump and with Mum in the room Oscar played older brother, telling Malc off to win points with Mum, ‘That was a crazy thing you did, Malc, very irresponsible; lucky Dad's on a business trip or he'd be very upset.'

Mum said, ‘Oscar's right, Malc, you could have lost more than your finger,' and she burst into tears, unable to keep reprimanding him, and hugged Malc to her chest until she calmed down, and Malc said, ‘I'm fine, Mum, I know what I'm doing, you don't need to worry about me, honestly.'

Mum smiled at Malc and touched his cheek with the back of her hand in a way that I absolutely knew caused both Oscar and I simultaneously to think,
She never touches us quite like that
.*

* Mum, like me, had a special soft spot for Malc, always did; he just seemed different to the rest of the family. He suffered none of the repression and uncertainty that we all did; he was his own man. Even as a boy, he was his own man.

Mum left us boys in the room for a moment to go talk to the doctor.

Oscar said, ‘You prick, Malc.'

Malc looked at Oscar: he stared at him so hard that Oscar broke the stare and looked to the linoleum floor.

Malc waited, his eyes unmoving, trained at the spot where Oscar's eyes would return when he looked up again.

Oscar's eyes returned and Malc said, ‘You didn't make it Oscar. You made a joke of it. You went for a trick, not the real thing. You failed. But get this: no matter how many brownie points you try and score, no matter how much you lie to Mum and Dad, always remember that I did it, I actually made it, I did something you could never do, Oscar, and no matter what happens – I will always have done it.'

Oscar tried to think of a reply but I knew that Malc had him; I knew Malc had shaken him. It was the only time I had seen Oscar speechless and defeated.

For years after that if Oscar ever stepped out of line or lied or did anything wrong, Malc would catch Oscar's eye and, keeping his hand low – so that Mum or Dad didn't notice if they were in the room – Malc would point at Oscar with the stub of his finger as if to say,
Don't forget I had you, Oscar, I am braver than you can ever dream.

And as much as Oscar tried to shrug it off, I could see that it always freaked him out, it got to him, it kept him in his place. With young boys, especially brothers, before money, women, cars, jobs, before objects and people become ego-currency, there was really only one currency that we traded in and that was courage.

From that day on Oscar never regained his bullying grip. Malc had shifted things too far and Oscar would forever fear Malc's courage and commitment as much as I respected them.*

* Yes, I did ask Malc if I could keep his little finger and, yes, I did – in a Colman's mustard jar.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DRAGONS

I've been assured that they are not, in fact, real.

‘You've not touched your cappuccino,' said Doug.

‘I prefer it when it's stone cold.'

‘Fair enough,' said Doug, who I could see was struggling with the fact that his immaculate office now stank of bacon and his desk was littered with wrappers and cups.

I started to clean it all up but Doug said, ‘No, no, don't worry about that, you just relax and tell me this. What exactly do you recall about your little episode?'

I thought for a moment and then said the only thing I knew for sure.

‘All I remember was a man with ugly ears telling me about dragons.'

CLAUSE 2.3

MY LITTLE EPISODE*

*
Little episode:
That's what they call my massive nervous breakdown.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF EPISODES

You don't realise until you're out of one that you were in one.

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Subject: Suspicious Molar and Phantom Pinkie

Frank – hi!

Istanbul: saw a tooth of Mohammed the prophet.

Very unconvincing.

Love and enamel,

Malc

PS Also, do you still have my pinkie finger somewhere? Because my ‘phantom pinkie' finger is itching like a motherfucker. There is nothing there but I can still feel it twitching and itching as if my little finger is completely intact.
Freakiest thing
. Anyway, please can you dig out my pinkie and give it an itch for me? Much appreciated, brother.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF BELIEF

When you start to lose your mind, you find that deciding what you believe is real and what is not really forms the crux of the matter.

The day of my
little episode
started like any other. The only thing that distinguished the day was that I started to think about my parents.

Don't believe a word of it
. That was Dad's philosophy. Some people are believers, some are sceptics. My dad was the sceptic's sceptic. If a fact sounded even slightly suspicious, he dismissed it. If you said,
Camels have three eyelids
, he'd say,
Don't believe it
. Even if you tested him with facts like,
Hey, Dad, they cloned a sheep
, he'd shout,
Rubbish!

He didn't believe anything. It was his defence mechanism against everything. My dad was the ultimate lawyer. Unless my dad had personally overseen the contract to something, he wasn't completely convinced it existed. Written contracts were his only truth.

Whereas Mum, God bless her, believed the lot. She believed everything, no need for contracts or proof. A pure believer. She loved the silly facts that Dad deplored. She'd say,
Did you know the average person swallows a quart of snot a day?
Or if someone bullied me, she'd pick a fact to cheer me up:
Don't worry, Marilyn Monroe had twelve toes!

Sometimes she'd randomly shout facts as I was leaving the house,
There's cyanide in apple pips, Frank!

A small warning to keep me alert.

Watching them watch television was fun. A presenter would say,
And research suggests the average TV remote control is home to ten billion bacteria
.

As Dad mumbled,
What rubbish
, Mum would shout,
Isn't that amazing!

Somehow, our family housed these opposing forces of belief and disbelief. I was cursed with a little of both, my genes cleaved in two, constantly confused.

As I age I bend more to my father's scepticism but from time to time my mother's amazement overpowers me. One thing I do believe is that a healthy sense of disbelief keeps you alive longer. Dad survived Mum by a few years. Mum died a while ago but not before her illness turned her facts a little sour –
Sharks are immune to cancer, Frank. Lucky bastards. When I die my toenails will keep growing. Which means even if my soul doesn't live on, my toenails will.

I was there when Mum died, at the shiny white hospice. Dad – who'd been standing guard at her bedside for weeks – had popped home and it was then that she passed away.

I think Mum was too embarrassed to die in front of Dad; she was proud like that.

A heart beats a hundred thousand times a day.
Fact.
They all stop
. Fact. The terms of your body's condition are written in blood, coded in the fine print of your DNA.

When I called Dad to tell him Mum had died, he whispered, ‘I don't believe it.'

‘She didn't feel any pain at the end, Dad. The doctors assured me of that.'

We had just had the hardest year of our life, as my mother, with each passing day, died a little more and my dad and brothers all tried to cope without the one person who usually got us through the tough times. In that hard year there had been few nice moments between us.

So I was pleased when Dad said, ‘Thanks, Frank. You've been brave during all of this, thank you.'

It was the nicest thing he'd said to me in a long time.

Had I put the phone down then, it would have been a lovely bitter-sweet moment.

Unfortunately I held on, maybe hoping for something else, greedy for more.

Then he said, ‘I'm on my way. I need to look over her death certificate and ensure it's all in order.'*

* That was Dad. Even death required the correct paperwork.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF SEEKING HELP

It was my wife's idea.

My wife said I seemed lost and some spiritual guidance might help. I was surprised by how perceptive she was. I put this down to her consultancy training. They teach you to notice things in consultancy training. Like when your husband starts to cry uncontrollably over his dinner for no reason. That means something's wrong.

My wife's company approaches business holistically. She says her consultancy is more than just profits and losses, numbers on a balance sheet; she believes that even spiritual elements have to be taken into account when making business decisions. Her boss Valencia had been to see a spiritualist, hence my wife's sudden interest in it. I imagine my wife's ‘spiritual' office to be draped in white veils with men and women wafting from one pale area to another. In fact her office is the same as mine. Their interior designer studied at the same kindergarten school of design. Obnoxiously coloured walls, one room with a sunken area full of rubber balls printed with inspirational words. Ridiculously named meeting rooms –
Earth
,
Wind
,
Fire
,
Inspiration
and
Paradigm
. It's like a Disney office filled with people dressed in black suits; a sort of sick playschool populated by funeral directors.

I think mediums and spirituality are complete rubbish. (I also, with no apparent sense of contradiction, think mediums and spirituality are real.) Different day, different belief. Some days I think like Dad and believe nothing; some days like Mum and believe the lot.

Desperate, and quickly running out of options, I quietly agreed to my wife's suggestion. What I knew for sure was that I had seen a doctor recently who wanted to prescribe me Prozac. After I read the side effects I decided that I'd rather be depressed.*

* Drugs have terms and conditions – side effects are often worse than effects.

So I was willing to try something a little different. Hence the fact that the day of my little episode began with me seeking out a medium. My wife assured me this particular medium was the most famous one around. He had done a lot of celebrities and he was the ‘must-go-to guy for all things spiritual'.*

* That's how she talked these days –
must-go-to guy
.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF MEDIUMS

They know too much.

I'd been talking to Greg for ten minutes before I noticed his ears. Once noticed, they were all I saw: his swollen tumorous ears.

Seeing I was staring, Greg explained, ‘I played rugby. Semi-professional.'

‘Seems sort of strange a man tuned into the delicate world of spirits has such, um, mangled ears,' I said.

‘You sound disappointed. In me, I mean.'