A Thousand Cuts

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That’s a lie.

Please, love. Calm down.

I’m not gonna fucking calm down. How fucking dare she? How dare you? He’s dead. My son is dead, murdered by that faggot freak of a teacher, and you expect me just to sit here while you go around pissing on Donnie’s grave?

Bollocks. That’s not what you said. You weren’t asking. You were telling. You were what’s the fucking word. Insinuating. That’s what you were doing. If Donnie was such a trouble-maker, how come the school never said nothing? My wife, she was at parents’ evening what. Just last month.

It was February. It was four months ago.

February then. What does it fucking matter when it was? The point is they never said a word. Not a fucking word.

Barry, please. Language.

Shut up. Just shut up a minute. You. You listen to me. My son was a good lad. He had a mouth on him, I’ll grant you. He was sharp too, too sharp for his own good sometimes. But he was never in trouble. No drugs, no booze, nothing like that. He was smart enough to know what would happen to him if I found him with any. And maybe his grades weren’t all that great but he was quick. He was canny. The only stupid thing he ever did was hang around with that loser mate of his. Wassisname. Christ. What was his name?

Gideon. Gi. Gideon.

Gideon. That’s it. Waste of fucking space. You come here asking about Donnie causing trouble but this kid Gideon is the one you wanna be talking to. Donnie was always getting blamed for the shit Gideon pulled. I told him, I said, you better be careful, boy, or that loser mate of yours is gonna drag you down with him. And I was right. That’s exactly what happened. Gideon got a reputation for being a low-life and Donnie got tarred just the same.

Back me up, Karen. I’m right, aren’t I? Tell her I’m right.

He’s right.

Of course I’m right. Like last summer. Like what happened last summer with that kid on the bus.

It was November.

It wasn’t fucking November. It was summer.

It was November, I’m sure of it. It was dark outside, don’t you remember?

It was summer. You, write that down. It was summer.

I don’t care if you’re recording it, I’m telling you to write it down as well. You’re writing other stuff down. Write that down.

So it’s summer. I’m eating dinner. I’ve just sat down. It’s been a long day and I’m in a bad mood anyway because the only beer we’ve got in the house is warm.

I told you, Barry, it’s the fridge. It’s not been working properly for months. And I said I’d run down to the off-licence to get you some cold ones but you said—

Jesus H. Christ. Can you not just be quiet for a single minute? It hardly bloody matters, does it? So the fridge is broken. So the beer was warm. So fucking what?

What the fuck was I saying? All your fucking interrupting, I’ve lost track of what I was saying.

You were eating dinner.

I’m eating dinner. Right. I’ve barely started. So I’m sitting there and the sodding doorbell goes. Then, right away after, there’s this knocking. Hammering, more like. You know, like with the back of someone’s fist. And I go to Karen, who the bloody hell is that? She just shrugs. She’s looking at me all gormless, just like she’s looking at me now, and then the doorbell goes again, dingdongdingdongdingdong, like whoever it is has got their finger held against it. And I’m like, I’ll get that, shall I? Even though Karen here, she’s already eaten and Christ knows she could do with the exercise. So I get up and I’m not even out of the kitchen when whoever it is starts hammering again. I yell, I go, there better be something on fire out there, pal. I’m in the hall and I can see this figure through the glass – you know, like a shadow, a what’s the word, a silhouette – and I can tell he’s got his face pressed against the glass. So he can see me coming but all the time I’m walking towards him he’s still got his finger on the bell. By this time I don’t care what the hell’s on fire. Whatever it is will just have to burn while I take care of this joker.

I open the door. I’ve got my left in a fist. But guess what. It’s a woman. Which is lucky for her because if she hadn’t of been the conversation that followed would of ended up a whole lot shorter.

I say, who the hell are you?

She says, Stanley. You’re Stanley, right?

Who the hell wants to know? What the hell do you think you’re doing hammering on my door like that? You’re lucky you’re a woman, lady, else you and me, we’d be having words.

A word is just what I want, Mr Stanley. A word with you and your son.

Donnie. What about Donnie? I’m gonna ask you one more time. Who the hell are you?

She says her name. She says it but Christ knows if I can tell you what it was. It was some nignog name. African or whatever. She’s one of them, see. A coloured.

Barry. You’re not supposed to call them that.

Then what the hell am I supposed to call em? Her skin, it’s coloured, ain’t it? In my book, that makes her a coloured.

They’re African-American. You call them African-Americans.

American? What the hell’s America got to do with anything? Look, the point is I don’t know her name. Her accent’s all right, I can understand what she’s saying, but I couldn’t tell you what she was called. Okay?

Right then.

So she tells me her name. I say, and?

And your son attacked my son.

Attacked. What are you talking about, attacked?

He attacked him, she says. On the bus. The school bus. Him and his friends, they pinned him down and they punched him and they kicked him and… and…

And what?

And she’s crying now. That’s the problem with women. You’re having a conversation and halfway through they’ll burst into tears. I dunno if it’s the hormones or all the soap operas or what the hell it is.

I say again, and what?

And then she turns on me. When she answers, she spits. She shouts, like some fucking savage. They urinated on him, she says. He’s twelve years old and they urinated on him. They beat him and they knocked him down and then they urinated on him. Your son did. Your bastard son!

Which is just too much. I’m like, hang on a minute. Just hang on a goddamn minute. That’s my son you’re talking about. That’s my son you’re accusing.

And she’s like, there’s no accusing about it. I’m telling you what happened. I’m saying to you how it is.

At this point I turn around. Karen, she’s already lurking, and Donnie, I expect he was lurking too. But I yell for him. I shout, Donnie. Donovan! Get your arse down here. Now!

No one says nothing while we’re waiting for him to appear. I hear his door shut. I mean, I know he’s already on the landing. All he’s done is, he’s crept back along to his room and slammed the door like he’s been in there the whole time. Like I said, he’s canny. So when he gets to the stairs he’s like, what? What do you want?

Just get down here, I tell him.

And when she sees him she goes off on one. She tries to get past me. She’s reaching and lunging and spitting again and shouting. Then Karen here starts crying.

I wasn’t crying.

Karen here starts crying and meanwhile Donnie’s standing there halfway down the stairs and I’ve got this nut-job lunatic by the shoulders, trying to keep her out of my house.

Who the hell is this? says Donnie.

I don’t answer him. I’m busy wrestling. I mean, she’s a woman but she’s not small. That lot: their women tend to be bigger, don’t they?

Anyway, eventually she calms down. I say she calms down. What she does is she stops screaming. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and she’s breathing in and out but in her eyes she’s got that look, like she’s willing Donnie to step just a little bit closer.

He doesn’t. He hangs back. I told you, he’s not stupid.

You, she says. What did you do?

Who is this, Dad? What’s she been saying?

She says you attacked her son, I tell him. On the bus. Says you pissed on him. And I expect Donnie to laugh or something. You know, just cos it’s so fucking ridiculous. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t say anything. He looks at the floor.

Donnie, I say.

And the crazy woman, she’s like, see! See! He did it, he admits it.

No! says Donnie. It wasn’t me. I swear, Dad, it wasn’t me.

I just look at him.

Honest, Dad, you got to believe me. I mean, I was there. I saw it happen. I saw what they did to him but it wasn’t me.

He’s lying! says the woman.

Shut up, I say. You, just shut up. Then, who did it Donnie? What did you see?

And Donnie goes shtum. Just clams up. Which makes it obvious, right? It was one of his mates. And it doesn’t take a whatdyacallit, a whateverthefuckologist to work out which one.

Donnie, I say again. What did you see?

I can’t, Dad. You know I can’t.

It was him! My son told me it was!

It wasn’t me. I swear to you it wasn’t!

He saw him. He saw you!

Maybe he saw me but I didn’t do it. There were lots of people there. Loads. Maybe he got confused. Maybe he only thought it was me.

He did not get confused! If he says it was you then—

You’ve got the wrong boy, I tell her. Do you hear me? You’ve got the wrong boy. Talk to the school. Tell the school what happened. Let them deal with it.

I spoke to the school, she says. I spoke to the headmaster. He said they can’t do anything. Which means they won’t do anything. So I’m talking to you. I talked to my son and now I’m talking to you!

Then Karen pipes up. There’re cameras, she says. Aren’t there? On the buses.

That’s right, I say. Talk to the bus company. Look at the cameras.

They put tissue paper over the cameras! She’s shouting again now. Your son did! He put wet tissue paper over the cameras! And she starts trying to get past me, to get at Donnie, and by that time I’ve had just about enough. So I do what I should of done in the first place. I grab her by the arms and shove her back. I tell her to piss off. I slam the door in her face. I go inside and finish my dinner.

That ends it. That’s the end of it. I never see or hear from her again. Which just proves it, doesn’t it? I mean, if she was so convinced it was Donnie there’s no way she would of just crawled back into her hole, not after the way she was carrying on. What happened was, she went away and she spoke to her son again and her son was like, er… well… yeah… maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Donovan. But do I get an apology? Does Donnie get an apology? Do we fuck.

So you can sit there insinuating all you like. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve heard it all before and not one word of it is true.

You know what, I don’t know why I’m even bothering. You’re like the rest of em, I can see it in your face. It doesn’t matter what I say. I’m wasting my breath. Believe what the hell you want to believe. What the fuck does it matter now?

This is over. Right now.

Here, give me that thing.

How do you stop this?

Where the hell’s the damn but—

I’m sorry about my husband, Inspector.

Don’t worry. He wouldn’t like me talking to you but he won’t be back now, not till later. He’ll come home when he gets hungry. My mum used to say, men are like dogs. They bark and sometimes they even bite but as long as you keep em fed they’ll never stray far from home.

You mustn’t think bad of him. He’s upset, that’s all. He gets angry – that’s what he does when he’s hurting inside. Sometimes I think it’s the only way he has of expressing himself. I mean, he’s passionate, that’s his problem. He’s a passionate man. And he misses his son. It’s not right, is it, that a parent should outlive their child? I heard someone say that once, on the news I think it was, or Corrie maybe, and it stuck in my mind but I never thought it would… I mean, that we would… that…

Don’t mind me. I’m okay. I’m not even crying. Look. See?

I’ll tell you something I haven’t told anyone else: I haven’t cried. Not once. Not since Donnie died. I don’t know why. I mean, it hurts, don’t get me wrong. And I know they’ll come. The tears. It was like this when my dad died. I was only seven but I remember. I remember not crying and trying to cry and worrying what everyone thought of me, that they thought I didn’t love my dad, that they blamed me somehow for him dying. Then I worried that I was to blame, that he’d be alive if I’d of loved him more.

It was only after the funeral. Maybe two or three weeks after. I was shopping with my mum and we got home and Mum opened the door and she had all these bags and what would normally of happened was, Dad would of come out of the kitchen or the garden or from upstairs or wherever and he would of taken the bags from my mum and carried them through for her and all the time he would of been moaning about how heavy they were, about how much my mum must of spent. But he didn’t come. Mum opened the door and it was just the empty house waiting. And she was puffing and struggling with the bags and it suddenly struck me as the saddest thing in the world. That my dad wasn’t there to carry the bags. I cried then. I cried and I couldn’t stop. My mum just held me. She left the shopping on the doorstep, with the peas defrosting and the butter melting, and she held me.

So it will be like that I expect. Except, well, Mum’s not here now. And Donnie’s not here now. And even when Barry’s here, he’s not always exactly in the moment, if you know what I mean. But I’ll be all right. I’ll manage.

I’m getting sidetracked. I don’t mean to keep you. All I wanted to say was, what Barry said, he wasn’t wrong. About Donnie. A lot of people said things that nobody could ever prove. And Gideon was definitely a bad influence. There’s no question about that. It’s just… I mean, the truth is…

The truth is, it wasn’t easy for Donnie. His dad has certain expectations, certain rules. And Barry, I mean, he’s not always around, like I said. He works and he has his friends and a man only has so much time, doesn’t he? Particularly some men. Certain types of men. I mean, nappies, bedtime stories, football in the park. It’s just not them. Do you know what I’m trying to say? So it wasn’t easy for Donnie.

Because I work too, you see. I’m out most of the day. And we never had a brother for Donnie. We never gave him a sister. I would of liked to of done. I would of loved to of had a little girl, even two little girls, two little sisters for Donnie to protect. But Barry wasn’t keen. So we didn’t. Which means Donnie was on his own most of the time. Which isn’t always good for a boy, is it? Boys, they need occupying, even the bright ones. Especially the bright ones. And Donnie was bright, just like Barry said. Although do you know what I think? I think he was ashamed of it. That’s what I think. He was ashamed of being so bright. So he hid it. Either he hid it or if he let it show he let it show in ways that… Well. In ways that oughtn’t to be encouraged.

Because that was the other problem with us not being around. A boy needs discipline, doesn’t he? Not that Barry didn’t give him discipline. But discipline, it’s not just the bad stuff, is it? It’s not just the shouting and, well, the rest of it. It’s also the other things. Things like… I don’t know. Like guidance, I suppose. Guidance is the word. I would try sometimes but it should come from the father, really, shouldn’t it? I’m not saying it’s Barry’s fault. It’s my fault, I know it’s my fault. Because I remember what Barry was like when Donnie was younger, when we were having trouble with the schools and we had to move him, three times we had to move him, and I remember how Barry reacted. So since then, and because everything seemed to be all right at school, I didn’t always tell Barry things. You know, like if Donnie had done something he shouldn’t of. Because I was scared how Barry would react. And I thought, so long as he’s settled at school, that’s better than it was before.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. It’s complicated, that’s all. I suppose all it is really is that Donnie had his problems. What Barry said, he wasn’t wrong, but there were other things too. There was another side to things. And like I say, it’s not Barry’s fault and it’s not Donnie’s fault and if it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine. It’s just, I can’t help wishing that I’d had a little help. Just sometimes, from someone. Because it’s hard, being a parent. I mean, I had Barry. I wasn’t all alone like some people. So maybe it’s just me but I have to be honest and say that I found it really hard. And now, after what’s happened, well. This is about as hard as it gets.