England and Other Stories

KNIFE

HE STOOD BY the opened kitchen drawer. It was a warm April afternoon. He’d come home from school meaning to take the knife at some point before the following morning and hadn’t thought that his best chance might be straight away. The clock on the microwave said 4.25. His mother was in her bedroom with her boyfriend Wes. He could hear them, they were loud enough. Boyfriend wasn’t really the right word, but it was a word that would do. Either they hadn’t heard him and didn’t know he was there, or they’d heard him and didn’t care. By the sink were the scattered cartons they’d been eating from. They’d been eating KFCs and fries with ketchup, just like kids who’d come home from school themselves.

They could do it without making a noise, possibly. But he understood that the noises went with doing it. He’d been in this situation before, of having to be around and just listen, but not in the situation of taking the knife.

The brothers had told him that he should get a knife. He knew what they were saying. If you want to move on to the next stage, if you want to stay with us. So he’d thought at once of the kitchen drawer. It was the easiest way, the simplest way. ‘Here is a knife.’ He wasn’t going to say that it was really his mum’s knife. It didn’t matter, it was a knife.

But perhaps it did matter. Perhaps it mattered very much that it was his mum’s knife.

The noises from the other room only made it easier to take it. They were almost like a permission. So why should he hesitate? Why shouldn’t he just go ahead? He understood that at this moment, though he was only twelve, he had about as much power in the world as he would ever have. He understood it almost painfully now. At twelve you could not be held responsible, even if you were. To everything you could say: So? So what are you going to do about it? And at twelve you were still small enough not to be picked on. People would think twice.

The brothers knew this. That’s why it was worth their while to take on twelve-year-olds, to string them along and train them up, like dogs. But then there’d come the moment when they’d say, ‘Do you really want to be one of us?’

He knew — he knew it especially now — that this place wasn’t his home. If he belonged anywhere now it was with the brothers. Only with them could he have any respect. If you had nothing else, then you had to have respect.

His mother might have said to Wes, ‘No, not now. Danny will be back from school any second.’ But then just caved in and not cared.

He’d meant to take the knife — it wasn’t even stealing, to take a knife from your own kitchen drawer — but he hadn’t thought he’d be pushed into doing it as soon as he got home. And he hadn’t thought of all the other thoughts that would rush into his head — almost, so it seemed, into his hand — just before he did so. What it means to hold a knife, in a certain way, in your hand.

At twelve years old he knew he was fearless, or just about. He knew he could look anyone, or almost anyone, in the eyes and they’d give in first. So? So what are you going to do? The brothers perhaps recognised this quality in him.

So: a knife in your hand ought to make you even more fearless. But if you could be fearless without it, why have it? This was the real point. At twelve years old he understood that his fearlessness, rapidly acquired, might soon be over. He would not have the untouchability of being twelve.

He’d been in this same situation before — without the issue of the knife. In a little while Wes would emerge, perhaps buckling his belt. Wes had a belt with a big shiny buckle, part of which was shaped like a skull. But he wasn’t afraid of Wes. Wes wasn’t his enemy, he wasn’t his friend, and he’d just want to clear off anyway, but first they’d have to look at each other. Each time they’d done this before Wes had lost. At twelve years old he was good at looking, even looking at people like Wes who were more than twice his size and twice his age. There’d be a point when Wes’s eyes would flicker, as if to say, ‘So what are you looking at?’ Once Wes had actually said that. Now he didn’t say anything. There’d be just the flicker, then he’d clear off.

Wes was afraid of him. He was twelve, but Wes was afraid of him. Wes had a skull on the buckle of his belt and shoulders that bulged through his T-shirt, but Wes was afraid of him.

And now when Wes emerged he could go a step further. What was a knife for? He might not only look at Wes, but as he did so he might be holding a knife, pointing a knife. He’d never thought about this till moments ago. He’d never thought about it as he was coming home from school. Then there’d be an even bigger flicker in Wes’s eyes, not just a flicker, and he’d clear off even more quickly. And not come back.

Or he could go a step further still. This thought made his hand sweat. He could take the knife and just go into the other room and stick it in Wes’s back. Wes’s back might very probably be turned and bare. This is what a knife enabled you to do. The thought made him freeze.

Wes wasn’t his enemy. In some deep-down way he didn’t even mind his mum having Wes. He was something she needed. Maybe she got money from Wes. In any case she got something she needed. He didn’t even mind them being at it right now like animals and making their noises, even as he was standing here in the kitchen. It was just how it was. He understood very clearly now that it might also have been just how it was with his father, twelve years and more ago. So if he stabbed Wes it would be like stabbing his father. Which might have been the best and the right thing to do. Except he wasn’t around then to do it. If he’d stabbed his father then he’d never have been around at all. Which didn’t make any sense.

His father’s name was Winston. That was all he knew. Winston. Wes. Maybe his mother had invented the name Winston. She had to have a name, at least, to give him. His father had cleared off twelve years ago. Just like Wes would. And had never come back.

Outside, there were noises too, the noises of kids playing. Just kids playing, kids younger than him, cackling and screeching. Both the noises inside and the noises outside were like the sounds of animals.

Wes would emerge and look, and flicker, and clear off. Then there’d be quite a long gap, and then his mother would emerge. Then they’d look at each other too. It would be like him and Wes, but his mother would always win. When she emerged she’d have a deliberately lazy way about her, which he hated, as if she wasn’t going to hurry for anyone, and once when they’d looked at each other she’d thrown up her chin and said, ‘So what are you looking at?’ The very same words Wes had used once and failed. But his mother would always win. She was the only one who could.

And she was the only one he was really afraid of. In all the world. He was afraid of her even now. Once, his mother had needed to come and collect him from the police station. At twelve years old, or less, you could laugh at the police. He wasn’t afraid of the police. But when his mother had come to the police station she’d spoken to them all very obediently and softly, as if she were a child herself.

Then on the way home she’d changed, she’d kept trying to say things, but she couldn’t, her mouth had seemed not to know how to work. Then when they’d got home her mouth had tried again, but not worked either, and then she’d beaten him — hard, with the full swing of her arm and the full whack of her hand. It was an attack. It hurt. But he’d known she was only hitting him because she was incapable of finding the right words, she might as well have been hitting herself. She was hitting him because in some way she was afraid. He understood this. And yet he was afraid of her. His own mum.

Even now he was afraid of her.

Fear was a strange thing. Even right now, with these noises that were like a permission, he was afraid of the simplest thing. To take a knife from a drawer.

His mother might not even notice it was missing. Since when had she taken stock of what there was in the kitchen drawer? And even if his mother were to say later, ‘Where’s my knife? Where’s that knife?’ he might simply say he didn’t know, and shrug. It wasn’t his knife. Or he’d say it must have got chucked in the waste bin by mistake. Plenty of things did, including once one of her big orange bangles. Or he could say that it was another of the things Wes must have walked off with.

He could simply say that. ‘Wes took it.’

And if it really came to it, if his mother looked at him, not saying anything, but with a look that said, ‘You took it, didn’t you, Daniel?’ then he could look back at her with a look that said, ‘Well? So? So? What did you ever do to prevent me? What did you ever do to stop me going down this road? What did you ever do that was so right and good that you could tell me that taking a knife from a drawer was wrong?’

But he wondered if he could actually do that — and win.

It was the easiest thing. What was the simplest way of getting a knife? But he knew it wasn’t simple, since he knew there was the question: Why did it have to be her knife? Why did he want it to be her knife? He knew this wasn’t so much a question now as a question that would come later. A question that might even be his excuse. And even now it seemed he could hear people, people in the future, asking him the question.

Because. . But couldn’t they see? Wasn’t it obvious? Because if it was her knife then anything he did with it — if he did anything — would have to have been done too by her. And if they didn’t see it (who were these people?) she would.

Because. . Because she could talk about her father. She could talk about him and she could even talk about his father, her father’s father. And when you got back to him, to his mother’s grandfather — he even knew that his name was Daniel — then you were talking about someone who’d stepped off the boat. You were talking about fucking Bridgetown, Barbados. She had all that, she belonged to all that, and if she didn’t know what to do with it then that was her problem.

He belonged with the brothers.

It was a line, she had a sort of line. But he didn’t have it or want it, no fucking thanks. And everyone knows what you can do with a line. Everyone knows that when you’re born there’s this cord, but it doesn’t stay there for long.

Where is the knife, Daniel? What did you do with the knife? (Who was saying this to him?) What did you do with the knife?

Where is my knife, Daniel?

It was only something she’d have bought in a shop once. In Hanif’s Handy Store. A cheap kitchen knife. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her use it for what it was meant for. Slicing a piece of chicken.

He heard the kids outside and the thought came to him that one day he’d remember this moment, he’d remember it very clearly and precisely as if he were twelve years old all over again. Standing here like this, hand over the drawer, not yet holding the knife. The smeared cartons. The kids outside. In his white school shirt with his tie insolently knotted so that just a few striped inches of it dangled from his neck.

He heard the noise his mother would start to make when things were getting near their finish. It was a rough gasping repetition of a single word, so rough and gasping you could hardly make out it was a word. It was like when she couldn’t find the words before she beat him. But it was a word, and it wasn’t a word that said don’t.

He put in his hand and took out the knife. It was the simplest, easiest, most ordinary thing, to take a knife from a drawer.