Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

I probably go a bit too far when his mouth becomes filled with blood, but that’s always been my problem: obsessive attention to detail. It’s cool that he has my scarf as his own little souvenir of Punking #2, as I have another one exactly the same at home. It’s soaked with his own blood anyway. I only would have slung it. Who’s gonna think that a kid will have the brains to buy two of the same scarf six months earlier, just in case? Will he be able to identify the silver Mongoose I rode off on? No problem if he can, as I lifted it earlier from outside the video shop. I ride a mountain bike, and it’s stayed in the garage all night, wheels bone dry, not an ounce of dirt on it. Walk my shoes in the mud round my way so they can’t place me round Auriol’s green spots. Down to the details, every last one.

This isn’t the work of a criminal mastermind. I just gave it a little thought before I came out. Grown-ups are always asking kids to think before they act. They shouldn’t ask such things of us if they’re not going to like what they get.

I know even before she’s said a word that she’s had a drink. I get this feeling when I put my key in the door of what kind of afternoon I’ll be having. When Dad left, there was a couple of years when I’d get that feeling every day. We lived this real-life Groundhog Day for longer than we should’ve. The reason I spent so much time at the Harrier Centre when I should have been up in my room reading about dinosaurs or battering my Playstation. I had to go somewhere.

Since secondary, the feeling’s evaporated, and I forget about the sharp intake of breath pulling from deep in my chest as I shut the gate and walked to my front door. It’s nearly banished to memory, bar the odd day when someone’s made some thoughtless remark that she takes to heart and then mulls over, like whoever it was had pinpointed her exact place in life, leaving it down to me to get some food and coffee down her and re-set her axis.

Now I’m a grown-up boy, I’m an expert at it. But I won’t lie, there are days when I’m on some fucking high cloud, like you’ve had a good race, or an afternoon where you’ve clicked with a girl, and you get home, and turn the key in your lock and sense immediately that she will be on the sofa with a wine glass, and all your good spirit disappears, popping loud and clear and irretrievable like a needle stuck into a balloon. All the private things that made you feel happy earlier no longer exist. All you can do is assess the state of the drunk woman and try for the thousandth time to sort her life out. (And start mentally planning on when you are going to get the hell out.)

Also, the hall light is on. We only have that light on downstairs when someone is getting ready to leave the house. You put the key in the lock, and clock the hall light on through the glass panels in the door, lights on in the middle of the day, and you know that she must be distracted and feeling careless about wasting electricity, and if she’s feeling that way about electricity…

If I’m too happy or wrapped up in myself to listen to my sixth sense, the clue is in the light. Always in the light.

‘I’ve done a terrible thing,’ she says, not waiting for me to sit down. When she talks in that deep tone, hoarse, using the back of her throat, like she’s channelling a dead spirit or something, you know it’s going to be something heavy, not some stupidness about one of the old coots on her rounds calling her a stinking Jewess or anything.

‘Please don’t tell me you’ve hit someone in your car,’ because that had happened before. A cyclist whose wheel she clipped and then pegged it before he could get her details. On her way to do a fill-in shift and well over the limit. If she had to care for people under the age of seventy-five, someone would have sniffed out the problem a long time ago. Maybe that’s why she’s still there. So the only person who has to deal with it is me.

‘Nothing like that,’ she goes, but she’s still using the voice. She’s also still not looking at me.

We both talk to the TV in these situations. It’s much easier than staring anyone in the face.

‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’

‘How? At work?’ ‘No. Last night. At Billie’s.’

‘At Billie’s? Look, can you just turn Countdown off for a moment? I can’t hear you over that racket.’

‘There’s no need to shout at me like that in my house, Veerapen. I’m not a child.’

‘I’m not shouting at you. I just want you to turn the sound down on the TV so that I can hear you better. That’s it… So, at Billie’s?’

‘I looked like such an idiot.’

‘No disrespect to Billie, but she’s not got anything to brag about. She’s a mess.’

‘Don’t start mouthing off, Veerapen. Those are our friends. That family has been good to us.’

‘I know.’

‘And it wasn’t anything to do with Billie, or even at her house.’

‘You just said you made a fool of yourself at Billie’s.’

‘It was on the way home.’

‘I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with Billie?’

‘Don’t be so impatient and I’ll tell you. She was in one of those moods where you could see she’d been anxious and upset all day, so as soon as we arrived, she was trying to get us all drunk. Make the house merry, she kept saying. I was driving and wasn’t in the mood to get smashed, but you know how it is when she gets an idea in her head and wants pleasing.’

‘Please don’t tell me the pair of you were getting trashed all evening like a couple of teenagers.’

It’s far easier to talk about getting trashed with Mum if we include Billie. Makes it all sound far more casual and accidental. We’ve done this before. It’s another conversation that I’m an expert at.

‘She was trying so hard to be the life and soul. It was pathetic. The woman is seriously depressed, she needs professional help.’

‘Yeah, we know all that. What does that have to do with you, and what’s going on here now?’

‘It wasn’t just me and Billie there. She’d invited someone else.’

‘Keith?’

‘How would you know that?’

‘What other bloke’s going to spend any time round that house?’

‘You’re getting very rude about people as you get older.’

‘Lucky guess. I met him with Jason down the Bowl and he couldn’t stop asking about her. So this is about Keith?’

‘He walked me home because, in trying to be a good sport for Billie and act the perfect house-guest, I’d managed to get myself over the limit. I could have got home easily enough, it’s only a few roads, but Keith wouldn’t have it. I was clicking the locks on my key, and he kept pulling the keys out of hand and clicking the locks back. It was so funny.’

‘Sounds hysterical.’

‘Will you stop taking that tone with me? I’ll ground you otherwise.’

‘OK, I’m sorry. So what happened? He walked you home, right?’

‘I let him keep the keys and he drove me home before walking to the bypass to catch a bus. His car’s in the garage or something.’

‘That all sounds fine. So what’s making you so upset?’

‘I’m getting to it.’

‘Have you eaten today? Can I get you something to eat? I could make a sandwich, or put that soup in the microwave.’

‘Don’t change the subject, Verapen. You’re just like your dad, always wanting to talk around the subject, never tackle it head-on. I’m trying to tell you something here.’

‘I’m not talking around anything. I’m listening.’

‘No, you’re not, you’re just making noise with your mouth. Yak yak yak, that’s all it is.’

‘I’m listening, Mum. You either want to tell me or you don’t.’