What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

14 Poet of Promise. Even after Wield Words Not Weapons was over, Joel was still able to summon up the pleasure he felt at the slaps on his back and the congratulations. He could still see the smiles on the faces of the audience as he faced them from the dais, and it would be a long time before the sound of their applause entirely faded from his ears. As the crowd began to disperse, Adam Whitburn sought Joel out. He said, “How old are you, bred?” and then with a grin when Joel said his age, “ Twelve? Shit. You not half, speck.” He slapped Joel’s palm. “I di’n’t put words together like dat ’fore I was seventeen. You got summick special.”

A frisson of pleasure tingled Joel’s spine. Having never been told he was special at anything, he wasn’t sure how he was meant to answer, so he nodded and said, “Cool.”

He found that he didn’t want to leave the Basement Activities Centre, which would mean putting an end to the evening, so he stayed behind and helped stack the plastic chairs and bag the remaining refreshments. When these small tasks were completed, he remained by the door, prolonging the sensation of having actually been part of something for the first time in his life. He watched Ivan Weatherall and several other hangers-on like himself making sure the basement was put back in order. When it seemed that everything was in its proper place, someone switched off the lights and it was time to leave.

Ivan came to him then, whistling softly and looking what he was, which was extremely pleased at the end of a successful evening. He called out good nights to those who were leaving and he turned down an offer of a post-event coffee, saying, “Another time perhaps? I’d like to speak to our poet of promise,” and offering Joel a friendly smile.

Joel smiled back in reflex. He felt charged up with a kind of energy he could not identify. This was the energy of a creator, the rush of renewal and sheer aliveness experienced by the artist, but he did not know that yet.

Ivan locked the basement door. Together he and Joel climbed to the street. He said, “So. You’ve had a triumph at your very first Wield. Well worth stopping in to try your hand, I’d say. This lot don’t give out that title often, by the way, should you be thinking of dismissing it. And they’ve never given it to someone your age. I was . . . Well, to be honest, I was quite astonished although I assure you that’s no reflection on you. Still and all, it should give you something to consider, and I hope you do that. But forgive me for preaching. Shall we walk home together? We’re going in the same direction.”

“Consider what?” Joel asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, writing. Poetry. The written word in any form. You’ve been given the power to wield, and I suggest you wield it. At your age, to be able to put words together in such a way as to move a reader naturally . . . no manipulative devices, no clever traps . . . Just emotion that’s raw and real . . . But I am running on. Let’s get you home safely before we map out your future, shall we?”

Ivan headed them in the general direction of Portobello Road, and he chatted amiably as they walked. What Joel had, he explained, was a facility for language, and this was a gift from God. It meant that he possessed a rare but inherent talent for using words in such a way as to demonstrate their metric power.

To a boy whose knowledge of poetry was limited to what was written on the inside of sentimental birthday cards, all of this was Greek. But that didn’t present a problem to Ivan, who simply went on.

By fostering this facility, he explained, Joel would have myriad options as his life unfolded. For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.

Joel trotted along at Ivan’s side, and he tried to digest all of this. Himself as a writer. Poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist, speechwriter, journalist, giant of the biro. Most of it felt like a very large suit of clothes handed down to Joel by someone who had no idea of his proper size. The rest of it felt like forgetting the single and most important fact directly related to his responsibility to his family. He was thus silent. He was very glad that he’d been called a poet of promise, but the truth was that it didn’t change anything.

“I want to help people,” he finally said, not so much because he actually did want this but because his entire life to this moment indicated to Joel that helping people was what he was intended to do. He could hardly have been given the mother he had and the brother he had if there was another calling to which he was supposed to be drawn.

“Ah, yes. The plan. Psychiatry.” Ivan turned them up Golborne Road, where shops were closed for the night and unwashed cars crouched along the kerb. “Even if you settle upon that permanently, you must still find a creative outlet for yourself. You see, where people go wrong when they set out in life is in not exploring that part of themselves that feeds their spirit. Without that food, the spirit dies, and it’s a large part of our responsibility to ourselves not to allow that to happen. In fact, consider how few psychiatric problems there might be if every individual actually knew what to do to keep alive in himself something that could affirm the very essence of who he is. That’s what the creative act does, Joel. Blessed is the man or woman who knows this at a young age like yours.”

Joel thought about this, attaching the thought quite naturally to his mother. He wondered if this was the answer for her, beyond the hospital, the doctor, and the drugs. Something to do with herself to take her away from herself, something to make her spirit whole, something to make her psyche heal. It seemed unlikely.

Still, he said, “Maybe . . . ,” and without realising what he was admitting to or to whom he was speaking, he mused aloud, “I got to help my mum, though. She’s in hospital.”

Ivan’s steps slowed. He said, “I see. How long has she been . . . Where is she, exactly?”

The question served to bring Joel around, depositing him in a more wakened state. He felt marked by the immensity of the betrayal he’d committed. Certainly, he could not say more about his mother: nothing about the locked doors and barred windows and the myriad failed attempts to make Carole Campbell better.

Up the street from them, then, a small group came from the direction of Portobello Bridge. They comprised three people, and Joel recognised them at once. He took a sharp breath and looked at Ivan, knowing that it would be wise for them to cross the road and hope not to be seen. For to be seen by the Blade in daylight was bad enough. To be seen by him at night was pure danger. He was accompanied by Arissa—whom he appeared to be holding by the back of her neck— with Cal Hancock trailing them like an officer from the royal protection squad.

Joel said, “Ivan, le’s cross over.”

Ivan, who’d been waiting for Joel to answer his question, took this remark as avoidance on Joel’s part. He said, “I’m being disrespectful? I do apologise for treading where I oughtn’t. But if you ever wish to talk—”

“No. I mean le’s cross over the street. You know.”

But it was actually too late, for the Blade had seen them. He stopped beneath a streetlamp, where the light above cast long shadows on his face. He said, “Eye-van. Eye-van the man. Wha’ you doin out on y’r own? Picking up another ack-o-lite, innit?”

Ivan stopped walking as well, while Joel attempted to digest this information. He would never have considered the Blade to be someone Ivan Weatherall knew. His body went tense with anticipation as his mind sought an answer to the question of what he would do if the Blade decided to get nasty with them. The odds were even, but that didn’t make them good.

“Good evening, Stanley,” Ivan said affably. He sounded like a man who’d just run into an acquaintance for whom he had high regard.

“Good gracious, my man. How long has it been?”

Stanley? Joel thought. He looked from Ivan to the Blade. The Blade’s nostrils widened, but he said nothing.

“Stanley Hynds, Joel Campbell,” Ivan went on. “I’d make further introductions, Stanley, but I’ve not had the honour . . .” He gave a little antique bow towards Arissa and Calvin.

“Full of it like always, Eye-van,” the Blade said.

“Indeed. It appears to be my calling. Have you finished the Nietzsche, by the way? That was intended as a loan, not a gift.”

The Blade snorted. “You been sorted yet, mon?”

Ivan smiled. “Stanley, I continue to walk these streets unscathed. Unarmed and unscathed as ever I was. Am I correct in assuming that’s something of your doing?”

“I ain’t tired of you yet.”

“Long may I continue to entertain. Should I not . . . Well, the Harrow Road gentlemen in blue always know where to find you, I assume.”

This was apparently the limit of what the Blade’s companions were willing to endure. Arissa said, “Le’s go, baby,” as Calvin stepped forward, saying, “You makin threats, mon?” in a distinctly unCalvin-like voice.

Ivan smiled at this and tipped a mock hat in the Blade’s direction.

“By the company he keeps, Stanley,” he said.

“Soon now, Eye-van,” the Blade returned. “Fast losing your power to amuse me, mon.”

“I shall work on the quality of my repartee. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m seeing my young friend to his doorstep. May we pass with your blessing?”

The request was designed to appease and it did so. A smile fl icked around the Blade’s lips and he jerked his head at Calvin, who stepped aside. “Watch your back, Eye-van,” the Blade said as they passed him.

“Never know who’s coming up on you.”

“Words I shall take to my heart and my grave,” was Ivan’s reply. All of this had left Joel astonished. Every moment he’d expected disaster, and he did not know what to do with the fact that nothing resembling disaster had struck. When he looked at Ivan once they were again on their way, it was with new eyes. He didn’t know what first to wonder about the man because there was simply so much to wonder about.

All Joel managed to say was, “Stanley?” That served to embody all the questions that he wanted to ask but for which he could not find the words.

Ivan glanced at him. He guided him onto Portobello Bridge.

“The Blade,” Joel said. “I never heard someone talk to him like that. I never ’spected—”

“One to do so and live to tell the tale?” Ivan chuckled. “Stanley and I go back a number of years, to his pre-Blade days. He’s as clever a man as ever was. He could have gone far. But his curse, poor soul, has always been the need for immediate gratification, which is also, let’s be frank, the curse of our times. And this is odd because the man’s quite an autodidact, which is the least immediately gratifying course of education one might ever embrace. But Stanley doesn’t see it that way. What he sees is that he is the one in charge of his studies—whatever they might be at the moment—and that’s enough to make him happy.”

Joel was silent. They’d reached Elkstone Road, and Trellick Tower loomed over them, shining lights from its myriad flats into the dark night sky. Joel hadn’t the slightest idea what his companion was going on about.

Ivan said, “Are you familiar with the term, by the way? Autodidact? It means someone who educates himself. Our Stanley—as difficult as it may be to believe—is the true embodiment of not being able to ascertain a book’s quality or its contents by examining only its cover. One would assume from his appearance—not to mention from his deliberate and rather charming mangling of our language—that he’s something of an ill-bred and uneducated lout. But that would be selling Mr. Hynds for far less than he’s actually worth. When I met him—he must have been sixteen at the time—he was studying Latin, dabbling in Greek, and had recently turned his attention to the physical sciences and twentieth-century philosophers. Unfortunately, he’d also turned his attention to the various means of fast and easy money available to those who don’t mind shimmying along on the wrong side of the law. And money is always a compelling mistress to boys who’ve never had it.”

“How’d you meet him, then?”

“In Kilburn Lane. I believe his intention was to mug me, but I noticed a suppurating sore in the corner of his mouth. Before he was able to make his demand for whatever he mistakenly thought I had on my person, I hustled him off to the chemist for medication. The poor boy never quite knew what was happening. One moment he’s poised to commit a crime and the next he’s facing the pharmacist with the man he’s just attempted to rob, listening to a recommendation for an unguent. But it all worked out, and he learned an important lesson from it.”

“What kind of lesson?”

“The obvious one: that you mustn’t ignore something strange and oozing upon your body. God only knows where it can lead if you do.”

Joel didn’t know what to make of this. There appeared to be only one logical question. “Why d’you do all this?” he asked.

“All . . . ?”

“The Wield Words t’ing. Talkin to people like you do. Walkin home wiv me, even.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Ivan enquired. They had made their way along the pavement and now they turned into Edenham Way. “But that’s not much of an answer, is it? Suffice it to say that every man needs to leave his mark upon the society into which he was born. This is mine.”

Joel wanted to ask more, but they’d come to Kendra’s house, and there was no time. At the steps, Ivan tipped his fantasy hat once again, just as he had done to the Blade. He said, “Let’s meet again soon, shall we? I want to see more poetry from you,” before he vanished between two buildings, in the direction of Meanwhile Gardens. Joel heard him whistling as he walked.

AFTER HER ENCOUNTER with Six and Natasha in Queensway, Ness felt the pressure inside again. The high of managing to walk out of the chemist’s with a lipstick in her bag and no one the wiser didn’t so much fade as it actually deflated, punctured by the scorn of her former friends. She was left feeling worse than before, restless and experiencing a building sense of doom.

What she felt was heightened by what she heard. Her makeshift bed on the first-floor sofa was directly beneath Kendra’s second-floor bedroom. Worse, it was directly beneath Kendra’s bed, and the nightly rhythmic movement of that bed was anything but a soporific. And it was nightly. Sometimes it was thrice nightly, awakening Ness from whatever uneasy sleep she’d managed to fall into. Frequently, groans, moans, and throaty laughter accompanied the thumping of bed against wall and floor. Occasionally oh baby comprised the coupling’s full stop, punctuating orgasm on three rising notes after which a final crash of the bed indicated someone’s satiated collapse. These were not noises any adolescent girl would likely appreciate hearing from the adults in her life. For Ness, they comprised auditory torture: a blatant statement about love, desire, and acceptance, a form of imprimatur upon her aunt’s desirability and worthiness.

The pure animal nature of what was going on between Kendra and Dix escaped Ness entirely. Male and female driven by instinct to mate when in naked proximity to each other and in possession of sufficient energy to do so as a means of propagating a species . . . Ness simply did not understand this. She heard sex. She thought love: Kendra having something that Ness had not.

In the state in which Ness found herself after her encounter with Six and Natasha in Queensway, then, Kendra’s situation seemed monumentally unfair. Ness saw her aunt as practically an old lady, an aging woman who’d had her chances with men and who by rights ought to be stepping aside in the eternal competition for male attention. Ness began to hate the very sight of Kendra when she appeared each morning, and she found herself unable to repress comments such as “Had a good time las’ night?,” which took the place of a more conventional morning greeting, as did, “Feelin sore ’tween the legs today, Ken dra?” and “How you managin to walk, slag?” and “So he givin it to you the way you like it, Ken?”

Kendra’s response was, “Who’s giving what to whom is none of your business, Vanessa,” but she worried. She felt inextricably caught between lust and duty. She wanted the freedom implied by sex with Dix whenever she felt like sex with Dix, but she didn’t want to be judged unfit to keep the Campbells with her. She finally said to him, “I think we got to cool things off, baby,” one night as he approached her. “Ness can hear us and she’s . . . Maybe not every night, Dix. What d’you think? This is . . . well, this is bothering her.”

“Let her be bothered,” was his reply. “She got to get used to it, Ken.” He nuzzled her neck then, kissed her mouth, and trailed his fi ngers down and down until she arched, gasped, sighed, desired, and forgot Ness entirely.

So the pressure Ness felt continued to build, mitigated by nothing. She knew she would have to do something for relief. She thought she knew what that something was.

Dix was watching his pirated copy of Pumping Iron when she made her move. He was preparing for an upcoming competition, which generally made him less aware of his surroundings than he ordinarily was. Whenever he faced a bodybuilding event, his concentration was on preparing to take another title or trophy. Competitive bodybuilding was a mind game as much as it was a demonstration of one’s ability to sculpt one’s muscles to obscene proportions. For days before an event, Dix prepared his mind.

He was on a beanbag, his back against the sofa, his gaze on the television screen where Arnold was eternally playing mental games with Lou Ferrigno. All attention on Arnold, he noted when someone sat down on the sofa, but he didn’t note who it was. He also didn’t note what she was wearing: fresh from having bathed, a thin summer dressing gown of Kendra’s pulled around her naked body.

Kendra was at the charity shop. Joel and Toby were in Meanwhile Gardens, where Joel had promised to accompany Toby so that he could watch the board riders and the cyclists in the skate bowl. Ness herself was due at the child drop-in centre to work off more of her community service hours, but the sight of Dix watching his video, the reality of their being alone in the house, the persistent memory of the thumping bed, and the fact that she needed to dress in this very space that he was occupying—her supposed private space—all urged her to approach him.

He was taking notes, chuckling at an Arnold witticism. He held a clipboard on his knees, and his legs were bare. He wore silky running shorts and a vest. He wore nothing else that Ness could see. She noted the hand in which he held the biro. She said, “I di’n’t know you were a lefty, blood.”

He stirred, but was only partially aware. He said, “Dat’s how it is,” and continued writing. He chuckled again and said, “Lookit him. Dat bloke . . . Never been anyone like him.”

Ness glanced at the television. At best it was a grainy fi lm, peopled by men with pudding-bowl haircuts on heads too small for the rest of their bodies. They stood before mirrors and heaved their shoulders around. They clasped their hands this way and that with their legs poised to show off massively bulging muscles. It was all not-so-vaguely obscene. Ness shuddered but said, “You look better’n dem.”

He said, “No one looks better’n Arnold.”

“You do, baby,” was her reply.

She was close enough to him to feel the heat coming off his body. She moved closer. She said, “I got to get dressed, Dix.”

He said, “Hmm,” but did not attend.

She gazed at his hand. She said, “You use that lefty for everyt’ing?”

He said, “Dat’s right,” and made a notation.

She said, “You put it in wiv your left?”

His note taking hesitated. She went on.

“C’n you do it wiv either hand is what I mean. Or do you have to guide it at all? Reckon not, eh. Bet you don’t have to. Big enough an’ hard enough to find it’s own way, innit.” She stood. “Oh, I been feelin fat. What d’you t’ink, Dix? You t’ink I’m fat?” She placed herself between him and the television, her hands on her hips. “Gimme your ’pinion.” She unloosened the belt of the gown and let it fall open, presenting herself to him. “You t’ink I’m too fat, Dix?”

Dix averted his eyes. “Tie dat t’ing up.”

“Not till you answer,” she replied. “You got to tell me cos you’re a man. What I got... you t’ink it good enough make a man feel hot?”

He got to his feet. “You dress yourself,” he told her. He looked for the video player’s remote control and he switched off the fi lm. He knew he needed to get out of the room, but Ness stood between him and the stairs. He said, “I got to go.”

She said, “You got to answer first. Shit. I ain’t goin to bite you, Dix, and you the only man round here I c’n ask. I let you go once you tell me the truth.”

“You ain’t fat,” he said.

“You di’n’t even have a look,” she told him. “All it’s goin t’ take is a little one, anyways. You c’n do dat much, can’t you? I need to know.”

He could have pushed past her, but he was wary of how she would take any physical contact between them. So he cooperated to buy her cooperation. He gave her a glance and said, “You look good.”

She said, “You call dat a look? Shit, I seen blind men give once-overs better ’n dat. You goin to need some help, ain’t you? Here, den. Le’s try dis again.” She dropped the dressing gown and stood before him naked. She cupped her breasts towards him, and she licked her lips.

“You guide it in, Dix, or it go by itself? You got to tell me or you got to show me. I know which way I want it, mon.”

At all this, Dix would have been inhuman had he not felt aroused. He tried to look elsewhere but the very flesh of her demanded, and so he looked at her and for a terrible moment fixed on her chocolate nipples and then, even worse, on her triangle of wooly hair from which it seemed the scent of a siren rose. Her age was girl; her body was woman. It would be easy enough, but fatal as well.

He grabbed her by one arm. Her flesh burned as much as his, and her face brightened. He stooped quickly and felt her hand on his head, heard her little cry as she tried to guide his face, his mouth . . . He scooped up the dressing gown and flung it on her, wresting himself away from her grip.

“Cover yourself,” he hissed. “What’re you t’inkin anyways? Life s’pose to be ’bout gettin stuffed by every man come your way? An’ dis the way you t’ink men like it? Dat what you t’ink? Struttin round displayin yourself like some ten-quid slag? Hell, you got the parts of a woman, but dat’s it, Ness. Rest of you, so goddamn bloody stupid I can’t t’ink of a man who’d even want a piece, no matter how desperate. Y’unnerstan? Now get out of my way.”

He pushed past her. He left her in the sitting room. She was trembling. She stumbled to the video machine and pulled out the cassette. It was a simple matter for her to yank the tape from its housing and to trample it. But it was not enough.

FABIA BENDER’S VISIT to Edenham Estate put Kendra in the position of having to reevaluate. She didn’t want to do that, but she found herself doing so anyway, especially once she read through all the paperwork that Joel had been given by Luce Chinaka at the learning centre.

Kendra wasn’t stupid. She’d always known that something would have to be done eventually about the problem of Toby. But she’d convinced herself that Toby’s difficulties had to do with the way he learned. To dwell on anything else as the source of his oddity meant heading directly into a nightmare. So she’d told herself that he merely had to be sorted out, educated properly to the extent he could actually be educated, given some kind of appropriate life skills, and led into an area of employment that might allow him a modicum of adult independence, eventually. If that could not happen for him in Middle Row School and with the extra assistance of the learning centre, then another educational environment would have to be scouted out for him. But that was the extent to which Kendra had so far been willing to dwell on her little nephew, which allowed her to ignore the times Toby just faded away, the muttered conversations he had with no one present, and the frightening implications of both these behaviours. Indeed, in the months the Campbells had been in her care, Kendra had successfully managed to use the disclaimer, “Toby’s just Toby” no matter what the boy did. Anything else didn’t bear consideration. So she read the paperwork and she put it away. No one would test, assess, evaluate, or study Toby Campbell while she had a say in the matter.

But that meant doing everything possible not to attract undue attention from any interfering governmental agencies. Thus, Kendra made a study of the room in which Toby and Joel slept, seeing it as Fabia Bender had likely seen it. It screamed impermanency, which was not good. The camp beds and sleeping bags were bad enough. The two suitcases in which the boys had kept their clothes for six months were even worse. Aside from the “It’s a Boy” sign that still tilted drunkenly across the window, there was no decoration. There were not even curtains to block out the nighttime light from a lamp on one of the paths in Meanwhile Gardens.

This would have to change. She was going to have to sort out beds and chests, curtains, and something for the walls. She would need to haunt secondhand and charity shops to do this; she would need to ask for handouts. Cordie helped her. She provided old sheets and blankets, and she put the word out in her neighbourhood. This produced two chests in moderate disrepair, and a set of posters featuring travel destinations that neither Joel nor Toby was likely ever to see.

“Looks good, girl,” was how Cordie supportively evaluated it when they had the room set up.

“Looks like a fuckin rubbish tip,” was Ness’s contribution. Kendra ignored her. Tension had been rolling off Ness for some time, but she’d been continuing with her community service, so everything else she was doing and saying was bearable.

“What’s dis all about?” was Dix’s reaction when he saw the changes to the boys’ room.

“It’s about showing that Joel and Toby have a decent place to live.”

“Who t’inks they don’t?”

“That Youth Offending woman.”

“Dat woman wiv the dogs? You t’ink she means to take Joel and Toby away?”

“Don’t know and don’t intend to wait round to see.”

“I thought she come here ’bout Toby and th’ learnin centre.”

“She came because she didn’t know there was a Toby. She came because she didn’t know there was anyone besides Ness living with me till she got called by the learning centre woman and . . . Look. What does it matter, Dix? I got to get a proper environment set up for those kids ’n case that woman wants to give me aggravation about having them living here. As it is, they’re looking too close at Toby, and can you imagine what that’ll do to Joel and Ness if he gets sent away? Or if they get separated ’s well? Or if . . . Hell, I don’t know.”

Dix thought about this as he watched Kendra straighten secondhand sheets and thirdhand blankets on old beds—an Oxfam find— whose pedigree was displayed in the cracks and gouges upon their headboards. With all the furniture in the room, there was barely space enough to move, just a narrow opening between the beds. The house was tiny, unintended for five people. The solution seemed obvious to Dix.

He said, “Ken, baby, you ever t’ink it’s all for the best?”

“What?”

“Wha’s going on.”

She straightened. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“I mean the fact dis woman shows up. The fact dat maybe she t’ink about changin where the kids’re livin. Truth is, dis place ain’t proper for dem. It’s too bloody small, and wiv dis woman makin a report, seems to me like it’s the proper time to t’ink about—”

“What the hell are you suggesting?” Kendra demanded. “That I send ’em off? That I let ’em be separated? That I let ’em get taken away without trying to do something to head that off? And then you and I can what, Dix? Shag like bunnies in every room in the house?”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. He didn’t reply at once, so Kendra was left listening to the emotional echo of her words.

He finally said quietly, “I was t’inkin time we got married, Kendra. I was t’inkin time I showed I c’n be a proper dad to dese kids. Mum and Dad been wantin me to learn the café business, and—”

“What about Mr. Universe? You give up your dreams as easy as that?”

“Sometimes t’ings come up dat make ’emselves bigger’n dreams. More important ’n dreams. You and I get married I c’n work a proper job. We c’n get a bigger place, we c’n have rooms for—”

“I like this place.” Kendra was aware that she sounded shrill, unreasonable, and unnervingly Nesslike, but she didn’t care. “I worked for it, I got a mortgage for it, I’m paying for it. None of it’s easy, but it’s mine.”

“Sure. But if we got a bigger place an’ we got married, den no social worker’s ever going to even suggest th’ kids need to be anywhere but wiv us, see. We’d be a proper family.”

“With you going off to work in the café every day? Coming home smelling like bacon grease? Watching your Arnold tape and eating up your insides because of what you gave up for . . . for what? And why?”

“Cos it’s the right t’ing to do,” he said.

She laughed. But the laugh broke on a note that was rising hysteria, a reaction that preceded panic. She said, “You’re twenty-three years old!”

“I figger I know how old I am.”

“Then you c’n also fi gger that these’re growing adolescents we’re talking about, troubled ones who’ve had a rough go of life so far, and you’re little more ’n adolescent yourself, so what makes you t’ink . . . think you can cope with ’em? An’ what makes you think that Fabia Bender woman would ever consider you able to cope with ’em? C’n you answer that?”

Again, Dix didn’t reply at once. He was developing an irritating habit of forcing Kendra to listen to herself, and this was maddening to her. More, his silence was demanding that she consider the reasons for her words, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to have a row with him.

Dix finally said, “Well, I’m willin, Ken. An’ Joel ’n Toby . . . They need a dad.”

She said shrewdly, “What about Ness? What does she need?”

Dix met her gaze, unflinching. Whatever she might suspect, Kendra didn’t know about his scene with Ness, and he had no intention of telling her. He said, “She need to see a man and woman lovin each other proper. I reckoned we could show her dat. Could be I was wrong.”

He pushed off from the doorjamb. When he left her alone, Kendra threw a pillow at the door.

DIX WAS NOT a man to shrink from a challenge. Had he been so, he wouldn’t have joined the world of competitive bodybuilding. As it was, he saw Kendra’s evaluation of him as akin to an Arnold mind game. She didn’t think he had the goods at his age to be a father to developing adolescents. He would prove to her otherwise.

He didn’t start with Ness, as he was wiser than that. Although he knew that his ruined copy of Pumping Iron was Ness’s form of a gauntlet, he also knew it was a dare whose conclusion was predetermined. Take it up and he would open himself to whatever fanciful charges Ness decided to hurl at him, which would take the form of all the reasons she had destroyed his tape, doubtless screamed in the presence of her aunt and coming directly from her own imagination. He wasn’t about to participate in that, so when he found the tape, he set about seeing to its repair. Could it not be fixed, so be it. Ness wanted a reaction. He would not give her one.

The boys were an easier matter. They were boys; so was he. After an outing to the gym, during which Toby and Joel watched awestruck from the sidelines as Dix bench-pressed superhuman weights, the next step seemed logical: He would take them to a competition. They would go with him to the YMCA at the Barbican, all the way across town. It wouldn’t be one of the huge competitions, but it would give them the flavour of what it had been like for poor Lou when he faced Arnold, always meeting with defeat at the hands of the wily Austrian.

They went by underground. Neither of the boys had ever been to this part of town, and as they followed Dix from the station to the YMCA, they gawked at the great coiling mass of grey concrete that comprised the many buildings of the Barbican, set in an incomprehensible maze of streets with traffic whizzing by and brown location signs pointing in every direction. To them, it was a labyrinth of structures: exhibition halls, concert halls, theatres, cinemas, conference centres, schools for drama and music. They were lost within moments, and they scurried to keep up with Dix who—to their great admiration—seemed to be completely at home in this place.

The YMCA was tucked into a housing estate that appeared to be part of the Barbican itself. Dix ushered Joel and Toby inside and led the way to an auditorium redolent of dust and sweat. He sat them in the front row and fished around in the pocket of his tracksuit. He gave the boys three pounds to buy themselves treats from the vending machines in the lobby and he told them not to leave the building. He himself, he said, would be hanging between the workout room and the locker room, psyching out the competition and mentally preparing himself to appear before the judges.

“Look good, Dix,” Joel said supportively. “No one goin to beat you, mon.”

Dix was pleased at this sign of Joel’s acceptance. He touched his fistto the boy’s forehead and was even more pleased to receive in return Joel’s happy grin. He said, “Hang cool here, blood,” and he added with a glance at Toby, “He goin to be okay wiv dis?”

“Sure,” Joel said.

But he was far from certain. Although Toby had followed cooperatively in Joel and Dix’s wake from North Kensington to this part of town, he’d done so lethargically. Not even a rare ride on the underground had stirred him to interest. He was listless and subdued. He looked flat of feature, which was worrying. When Joel studied him, he tried to tell himself this was all due to Toby’s being made to leave his lava lamp at home, but he couldn’t convince himself of that. So when Dix left them, Joel asked Toby if he was all right. Toby said that his stomach felt dead peculiar. There was just enough time before the competition began for Joel to fetch him a Coke from the vending machine, using a pound coin to do so. “Meant to settle you,” was what he told his little brother, but after one sip, he couldn’t get Toby to take any more. Soon enough, he forgot to try.

The judges for the competition took their places at a long table to the right of the stage. Lights dimmed in the auditorium and the disembodied voice of an announcer informed them that the Barbican’s YMCA was proud to be staging the sixth annual Men’s Competitive Bodybuilding Competition, with a special under-sixteen exhibition to follow. After this, music began—Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” oddly enough—and into the spotlight upon the stage walked a man whose muscles had their own muscles. In the first round of posing, his job was to show off those muscles to their best advantage.

Joel had seen this sort of thing before, not only in Pumping Iron but also in his own home. He could not have lived in the same house as Dix D’Court and missed the sight of Dix oiled and practising in front of the bathroom mirror since Dix never stopped if anyone other than Ness had to use the facilities. He had to be smooth, he explained to whoever sat upon the toilet. Each pose had to flow into the next one. Your personality had to emerge as well. This was the reason that Arnold had been so much better than the rest of them. Clearly, he’d enjoyed what he was doing. He was a bloke with no self-doubt.

Joel could see that the first few competitors hadn’t got that idea. They had the body in spades, even in the semirelaxed round of posing, but they hadn’t the moves. They hadn’t the minds. They stood no chance in comparison with Dix.

After a few men had shown their stuff, Joel became aware of Toby getting restless. Eventually, Toby plucked at Joel’s sleeve, saying, “I got to go,” but when Joel glanced at his programme, he saw that Dix was due to come onstage quite soon, and there was consequently little enough time for him to search out a toilet for Toby. He said, “Can’t you hold it, Tobe?”

“Ain’t dat,” Toby told him. “Joel, I gotta—”

“Hang on, okay?”

“But—”

“Look, he’s comin up in a minute. He’s right over there. You c’n see him waitin to the side, can’t you?”

“I’m just—”

“He brought us to see him, so we got to see him, Tobe.”

“Den . . . If I can . . .” But that was all Toby managed to say before he began to retch.

Joel hissed, “Shit!” and turned to Toby just as he began to vomit. Unfortunately, it was no ordinary moment of sickness. A foul stream fairly shot out of Toby’s mouth, a veritable showstopper as things turned out.

The stench was deadly. Toby was groaning, murmurs were rising all around the boys, and someone called for the lights to go on. In very short order, the music halted, leaving a bodybuilder on the stage, midpose. After this, the lights illuminated the audience and several of the judges rose from their places, craning their necks to see the source of the disturbance.

Joel said, “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” to anyone willing to listen to him. As if in reply, Toby retched again. Vomit splashed down the front of him. Mercifully, it no longer projected although it soaked into the front of his jeans, which turned out to be worse.

“Get him out of here, lad,” someone said.

“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” someone else muttered in disgust. And, it was disgusting unless one had no olfactory capability. Further comments, questions, and advice accompanied the smell of Toby’s sickness, but Joel was deaf to all of it, utterly intent upon getting Toby to stand so that they could leave. Toby, however, was immobile. He clutched his stomach and began to cry.

Joel heard Dix speak into his ear, low and insistent. “Wha’s goin on. Wha’ happened, mon?”

Joel said, “He’s sick, is all. I need to get him to the toilet. I need to get him home. C’n we . . . ?” He looked and saw that Dix was oiled and ready, bare to the bone except for his tiny red Speedo. It was inconceivable to Joel that he should ask Dix if they could all leave. But Dix knew without the request being made. He was caught and conflicted. He said, “I’m up in five blokes. Dis whole t’ing counts towards . . .” He ran his hand back over his bare skull. He bent to Toby. He said, “You okay, bred? You get to the toilet okay ’f Joel shows you where it is?”

Toby continued to cry. His nose had begun to run. He was nothing short of a spectacle.

The rumble of something rolling towards them heralded the arrival of one of the YMCA custodians. Someone called out that “the mess is over there, Kevin” and someone else said, “Jaysus, git it cleaned ’fore we all sick up.” At that point, what had seemed to Joel to be a mass of looming faces dissipated, and a skinny old man with few teeth and less hair starting wielding a mop and a pungent solution around the floor. Someone said, “Can’t you carry him out of here?”

“You want to? Little bastard’s got puke all over him,” was someone else’s reply.

Burning with shame, Joel said, “S’okay. I c’n get him . . . Come on, Tobe. You c’n walk, innit. Le’s go to the toilet.” And to Dix, “Where’s it at?”

He pulled Toby by the arm. Mercifully, the little boy rose, although he hung his head and continued to sob. Joel couldn’t blame him.

Dix shepherded them to the doorway of the auditorium. He told Joel the gents was just down the stairs from the lobby and along the corridor. He said, “C’n you . . . ? I mean, you need me . . . ?” with a backwards look at the stage.

That look was enough to tell Joel what his answer was supposed to be. He said, “Nah. We c’n cope. I got to take him home, though.”

“Okay,” Dix said. “You good to do dat on y’r own?” When Joel nodded, Dix squatted in front of Toby. He said, “Blood, you don’t worry ’bout dis. Shit happens to ever’one. You jus’ go on home. I’ll bring you summick on my way back.” Then he rose and said to Joel, “I got to go. I’m up in a couple minutes.”

“Dat’s cool,” Joel told him, and Dix left them at the auditorium door.

Joel led Toby out and down the stairs. Thankfully, they had the men’s toilet to themselves. There, Joel managed his first truly good look at his brother, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Mucous and vomit dirtied his face, and his T-shirt was streaked with sick, smelling like the floor of an upside-down, tumbling, fun-fair ride. Toby’s jeans were little better. He’d even managed to get vomit on his shoes.

If ever the ministrations of a consoling mother were called for, this was that moment. Joel took Toby to the basin and turned on the tap. He looked around for paper towels, but there was only a grimy pulldown roller of blue cotton that looped inextricably through a dispenser and hung wetly from there down to the floor. Joel saw, then, that his efforts would have to be limited to washing Toby’s face and hands. The rest of him would have to wait until their return to Edenham Estate.

Toby stood mutely through the application of a sliver of soap to his face and his hands. He accepted the toilet tissue pressed to his skin, and he didn’t say anything until Joel had done the best he could do with the soiled T-shirt and jeans. Then what he said would have surprised anyone who knew him less well than Joel, anyone who made assumptions about the world that he felt safe to inhabit. He said, “Joel, why i’n’t Mum comin home? Cos she i’n’t, eh?”

“Don’t say dat. You don’t know an’ neither do I.”

“She t’inks Dad’s at home.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Cos she can’t cope wiv t’inkin anything else.”

Toby considered this, his nose still dripping. Joel wiped it with another bit of tissue and took him by the hand. He led him back along the corridor and up the stairs, surrounded by the foul sick smell of him, so strong an odour that it seemed like a palpable presence. Joel told himself it would all be better when he got Toby outside. The air—even laden with the fumes of vehicles zipping by—would make the stench less foetid, surely.

They were out of the YMCA and heading vaguely in the direction from which Joel remembered them coming when he realised two things simultaneously. The first was that he didn’t know where the underground station was and the brown directional signs pointing every which way were not helping matters. The second was that finding the station was of no account anyway since he didn’t have enough money to buy them tickets. Dix had bought returns when they’d left Westbourne Park station, but he’d held on to them throughout the journey, and they were in his gym bag inside the YMCA locker room. It was inconceivable to Joel that he should go back there, taking Toby into that auditorium again and seeking out Dix to get to the tickets. It was also inconceivable to him that he should leave Toby alone outside while he did it. So there was nothing for it but to return to North Kensington by bus since he did have enough money to pay for a single ride for each of them.

The problem he faced with this plan, however, was that there was no single ride that would take them from the Barbican all the way across town. When, after twenty-two minutes of wandering around the maze of buildings, Joel finally found a bus stop that was more than merely a pole sticking up from the pavement, he studied the plan and saw that no less than three different bus routes were going to be necessary to get them home. He knew he could manage it. He would recognise Oxford Street, where the first change had to be made—who wouldn’t?—and even if he somehow didn’t recognise it from the swarm of trend-seeking shoppers on the pavements, the bus they needed to take from the Barbican terminated there anyway, so when it ground to a halt, they’d have to get off. The real problem was that they didn’t have enough money to make the necessary changes after the first ride. That meant for the second two rides he and Toby were going to have to sneak on and pray they weren’t noticed. Their best hope for that would be if two of the three buses they needed were of the old, openbacked double-decker type: utterly unsafe, completely convenient, and quintessentially London. These types offered entrance from the rear, a driver and a conductor, and crowded conditions. They also offered Joel the best chance of sneaking on unnoticed and getting home on the meagre funds they had.

As things turned out for the boys, this operation took more than five hours. This was not because they got lost because they didn’t. Rather, the journey stretched and stretched because the first change at Oxford Street resulted in their being thrown off the bus without tickets, and four more buses lumbered past them in the mass congestion of the shopping district before one suitably packed with passengers suggested that the conductor might be too preoccupied to notice them. This indeed proved to be the case, but they had the same trouble with the next change at Queensway. From there it took six buses—leaping on, riding one or two stops, getting thrown off—just to make it to Chepstow Road, where they were thrown off once again. Joel finally decided that they’d walk the rest of the way as Toby hadn’t been sick since the YMCA. He smelled no better and he was obviously tired, but Joel reckoned the air—as fresh as it could ever be in London—would do him some good.

It was after seven in the evening when they finally reached Edenham Estate. Kendra met them at the door. By this time she had become quite frantic with worrying about what had happened to them, as Dix had arrived hours earlier—his trophy in hand—asking how Toby was feeling and setting off at once to search for the boys when he learned they hadn’t returned from the Barbican. Kendra’s mental state was evidenced by the state of her language. She cried out, “Where you been?

Where you been? Dix’s out there . . . Ness even went out ’s well. What happened? Toby, baby, you sick? Dix said . . . Joel, goddamn. Why di’n’t you give me a bloody bell? I would’ve . . . Oh God!” She swept them both into her arms.

Joel was surprised to find she was crying. No astute student of the human psyche at his age, he had no way of understanding that his aunt was reacting to what she’d been seeing as the incarnation of her own unspoken dream to be relieved of the burden of responsibility.

For Kendra, it was a real case of be-careful-what-you-subconsciouslywish-for. As she ran the bath for Toby and stripped the ruined clothes from his body, she talked like a woman on amphetamines. Dix, she said, had been home for hours. He’d walked in with his bloody stupid trophy—

“Oh yeah, he won, di’n’t he just”—and he looked round and said Boys make it all right? like he di’n’t have no worry at all dat you lot’d find your way ’cross the whole bloody stupid town though you never even been there before. I say to him What you raving ’bout, mon? Dem boys wiv you, innit? He say Toby sicked up down the front of himself and he made you come on home.

Here, in all fairness, Joel interrupted. He’d been sitting on the toilet watching his aunt wash Toby with a soapy flannel and shampoo, and he knew it was only just that he set his aunt straight in the matter of Dix. He said, “He di’n’t make us, Aunt Ken. I told him—”

“Don’t tell me who tol’ who what,” Kendra said. “Oh I ’spect he di’n’t tell you to disappear, but he made his bloody feelings known, di’n’t he? Don’t lie to me, Joel.”

“It wasn’t like dat,” Joel protested. “He was near up before the judges. He’d’ve had to leave. And look, anyways, he won, di’n’t he?

Dat’s what’s important.”

Kendra turned from the bath where she was rinsing Toby. “Holy God in heaven. You thinking like him now, Joel?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she turned back. She wrapped Toby in a towel and helped him out of the tub. She used her drier on his crinkly hair, roughed him up with the towel, and patted him with powder. Toby glowed under all the attention.

She took him to the bedroom and tucked him in, telling him she was going to make him Ovaltine and soldiers with butter and sugar, so “just rest there, baby, till Auntie gets back.” Toby blinked at her, all awe at this unexpected maternal outpouring. He settled into bed and became expectant. Ovaltine and soldiers constituted more nurturing than he’d had so far in his brief life.

A jerk of Kendra’s head told Joel he was meant to follow her down to the kitchen. There, his aunt had him tell her the story from start to finish, and she managed to listen more calmly this time. Once he had completed the tale of their trip across town, the Ovaltine and the soldiers were ready. She handed them over to Joel and gave a nod to the stairs. She poured herself a glass of wine from the fridge, lit a cigarette, and sat at the kitchen table.

She tried to sort out her feelings. She was an amalgamation of the physical and emotional in a pitched battle with the psychological. It was all too much for her to cope with. She sought out a focus just as a focus walked through the front door.

Dix said, “Ken, I been all over in th’ car. All I got was dat Joel set off like he said he was going to do. A bloke busking near the bus stop at the Barbican tol’ me—”

“He’s here,” Kendra said. “They’re both here. Thank God.”

Thank God also meant no thanks to you. Dix understood that from the tone and from the look Kendra cast at him. In concert, that look and that tone stopped him in his tracks. He knew he was being blamed for what had happened, and he accepted that. What he couldn’t sort out was Kendra’s state of mind. It seemed more logical to Dix that she would be feeling relief at this juncture and not whatever it was that she was feeling, which read like hostility.

He approached their encounter cautiously. “Dat’s good. But what th’ hell happened? Why di’n’t they come straight home like Joel said?”

“Cause they didn’t have the means,” Kendra told him. “Which you apparently didn’t consider. You got the damn tickets in your gym bag, Dix. They didn’t want to disturb your concen tra tion, so they tried to come home on the bus. Which of course they couldn’t.”

Dix’s gym bag was where he’d left it earlier, near the doorway to the stairs. His gaze went to it and his mind’s eye saw the tickets where he’d stuffed them—indeed where he’d actually seen them when he dug out his own to return home after the competition. He said, “Damn. I’m dead sorry ’bout this whole t’ing, Ken.”

“Sorry.” Kendra was a missile, seeking culpability. “You let an eightyear-old boy wander round London—”

“He’s wiv Joel, Ken.”

“—without the means to even get home. You let a boy been sick all down the front of him try to find his way out of the middle of a city he never been into before . . .” Kendra paused to breathe, not so much to dismiss her anger but to organise her thoughts and to express them from a position of power. “You talk a good talk about being a father to these kids,” she pointed out. “But at th’ end of the day, it all comes down to you, not to them. What you want and not what they need. That sort of thinking has nothing to do with being anyone’s dad, y’unnerstand?”

“Now that ain’t fair,” he protested.

“You got . . . You have your competition to attend and that’s what the whole day’s about to you. Nothing’s going to distract you from that. Not another lifter—cause you got to be like bloody Arnold, ’f course, and he’d never be distracted by anything, not even a nuclear bomb—and surely not a little boy being sick. Concentration is the name of the game. And God knows you a man who can concentrate.”

“Joel said he could cope. I trusted him. You got someone you want to rave at, Ken, you rave at Joel.”

“You blaming him? He’s bloody twelve years old, Dix. He thinks your competition counts more ’n anything he might need from you. You di’n’t see that? You don’t see that?”

“Joel said he’d bring him straight home. ’F I can’t trust Joel to tell the truth of the matter—”

“Don’t you blame him! Don’t you bloody blame him.”

“I’m not blamin anyone. Seems to me you the one doing the blamin here. Makes me wonder why, Ken. Joel’s back home. Toby’s back home. I ’spect they’re both upstairs, listenin in on dis if it comes down to it. Everyt’ing’s okay. So question is: Wha’s going on wiv you?”

“This is not ’bout me.”

“I’n’t it? Den why you castin blame? Why you lookin for someone to blame when what you should be doing is being relieved Joel ’n Toby got back here wivout trouble.”

“You call five hours of wand’ring round London like two lost mongrels ‘without trouble’? Shit. What’re you thinking?”

“I di’n’t know . . . Oh hell, I already said.” He waved her off. He headed in the direction of the stairs.

She said, “Where you going?”

“Takin a shower. Which, by th’ way, I di’n’t do at the end of the competition cos I meant to get home quick an’ see how Toby was doing, Ken.”

“An’ that was your bow to being a dad? Not taking a bloody shower at the end of a competition you refuse to leave when your boy gets sick down the front of him? You want you and me to get married so we c’n keep the kids safe from Social Services, but this is what I c’n expect in the way of fathering?”

He raised a hand. “You vex just now. We talk ’bout this later.”

“We talk about it bloody now,” she said. “Don’t you climb those stairs. Don’t you walk out of this room.”

“An’ if I do?”

“Then pack up and get out.”

He cocked his head. He hesitated, not from indecision but from surprise. He did not see how they’d come to this point, let alone why they had come to this point. All he knew was that for a moment Kendra was playing a game whose rules he did not understand. He said, “I’m takin a shower, Ken. We c’n talk ’bout this when you ain’t so vex.”

“I want you out ’f here, then,” she said. “I got no time for selfi sh bastards in my life. I been there before and I’m not going there again. If your bloody shower is more important to you than—”

“You comparin me? To which one of dem?”

“I ’spect you know which one.”

“So? Dat it?” He shook his head. He looked around. He made his move but this time it was towards the front door and not towards the stairs. He said regretfully, “Got your wish, Ken. I give you ’sactly what you want.”