Another Justified Sinner Read online

He released his grip on me but looked unsure. ‘I didn’t put it out in the wash. Jackets don’t get washed.’

  ‘Maybe Mum thinks they do. Maybe she dry-cleaned it. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mum. All I know is that it ended up in my bedroom. I mean it, Jackson. Leave it out.’

  But by then he was distracted and walking away. Kitty had landed on the asphalt runway, her skirt hitched up, the sunnies on, her hair flicked back. She flashed a billion-watt smile at Jackson and they sort of melted together, their flesh tangled up and disgusting.

  It wasn’t long after that that I joined the church group at school. Maybe it was the thought of Jackson’s dick in Kitty’s underage cunt. (I often heard them going at it in their bedroom.) Maybe it was the constant rejection from the girls. Maybe it was what Mr Lennon had said about stars. Suddenly the world opened up to me, like a glorious flower, and I was heady from the scent. I saw mystery, glorious and blissful, radiate from everything around me. And in that mystery I saw a source, ineffable and potent, and I decided it was God.

  The church group were also the only people who were nice to me. Once I started to approach them, they always sought me out at lunch times and assemblies, offering me bites of ciabatta, friendly slaps on the back, enthusiastic talk about timetables. And revelation and temptation and original sin. But that was by the by. Mostly it was just solidarity and camaraderie. I would be lying if I told you that they were fascinating, stimulating people. On the whole, they were all the stereotypes you can imagine: serious and quiet and mousey and dulled. But they had smiles for me and came from tidy homes where lunch was full of sundried tomatoes and balsamic glaze. They spoke in twisted facts, and it was so nice to hear my language. We’d converse about floods that cascaded over the world and killed every living thing (except the 50,000 animals that managed to fit inside Noah’s boat). We enthused about people who lived for days within whales and the magic trick of turning water to wine. Our faces would go quite pink when we told these stories, and our voices would drop to mere breath, like our soul was already leaving our bodies. Sometimes, I admit, I would get tears in my eyes. The thought of so much love, so much hope, so much endlessness.

  I would replay scenes in my mind of my death. My enemies at school: their howling and their wailing, this dramatic sense of guilt. A couple even kill themselves. One is a girl from afar, who has always been a bit in love with me, but hasn’t been able to say. And then there is Jackson, his hand beating his chest, repeating over and over: ‘I never told him how much I loved him; I never told him how much I loved him.’ And the jacket gets tossed on top of the casket, the pockets sucking up soil. ‘Keep it forever,’ he says. And then he retreats to the background, where my mother and grandmother stand, their bodies darting with grief. ‘He was always my favourite,’ my mother whispers into Nana’s ear. ‘My beautiful boy.’

  And then there is the best bit. The momentous, majestic, almighty bit. The bit where my spirit shimmers out of my body and out through the casket and looks down on these sorry folk and then ascends through the clouds. Up, up, I go – then suddenly a whoosh and acceleration and a tumble and flare. Then things are mottled and vague and indefinite. Things are more thoughts than things. Nothing is confined or restricted or actual. And there’s this parental sensation, this overwhelming worship. I’m in the arms of my creator, the one who approves me. The angels play at harps. It’s a ‘welcome home’ party and everyone in heaven is invited.

  I wish I had believed in God and Jesus and everlasting love when I was fourteen. It came a year too late. Because, when I was fourteen, my dad died. One minute he was driving home from work, singing along to the radio; the next he was crumpled into a lamppost, his brain skewered with shards of glass. It was just before Christmas, which might explain why I didn’t want to celebrate Jesus at the time.

  On Christmas Day, my mum went to bed with a migraine. We were put into a taxi and sent to my nana’s, where we pretended to be happy. Her toyboy carved us some turkey and we put party hats on our heads. Except Jackson wouldn’t do it – his sorrow soared into anger, he smashed up the bedroom and drank all the bottles of brandy. He jumped on his bike with his face mulled red. No-one could find him, but my nana didn’t want to worry my mum, so she didn’t tell her anything. Instead, she went back to the table and pulled a cracker with me. I read out the joke, and we all fell about laughing at how terrible it was; and Toyboy Tony made me say it again, as he didn’t quite get it. And I did all of this, and I somehow performed it quite brilliantly. Sometimes a fantasy is easier, the pretence is a comfort. I didn’t have that distraction at night, when I switched out the lights, and I saw my dad’s face in the darkness. The radiator pipes gurgled and the floorboards groaned. Even the house was releasing its breath, was unleashing its sadness, now that no-one could see. So we both cried together, and my hand stroked the wall like it was somebody’s face.

  After the first month, things started to change. I got to understand the phrase that life ‘moves on’. I really could feel this rapid conveyor belt that I had to stay on top of, that I had to hold on to. It was sink or swim. Drop off or survive. So I let go of Dad until I could barely remember his face. When I tried to picture it, it was usually a memory of a photo, or else it was pixelated, with none of the detail. He was getting left further and further behind. He had dropped off the belt.

  I was young enough that the whole thing was swept up into an overarching narrative. The accident didn’t feel real, so I wrote it into an epic story in my head: triumph over adversity, endurance and valour. A sob story, no less. But Jackson took it worse than me. And my mother, the worst of all. My mother was never, ever the same – and I hated her for it.

  Maybe that’s why I wanted to punish God so badly when Nancy died. Because he had done the same thing to me twice. He had given me something I loved and that loved me back and then he had destroyed it in exactly the same way. What could be a clearer message than that? It was a vindictive act, an act of swollen power. I sort of pictured him as a Super Accountant: performing miracle formulae in spreadsheets as he reckoned the grand total of sins. Or maybe like a beardier Alan Sugar: the no-nonsense work-harder who didn’t take any crap. ‘You’re fired,’ he’d say, as he pushed the less savvy into Hell. ‘You’re fired,’ he’d say, casually kicking folks from the game. Argh, and after all I had done for him: the sore knees on pew cushions, shrapnel tossed in the tin, the fervent preaching of gospel. The best days of my life – all given to serve the Big Boss in the Sky.

  But there were other days, you know, there were ones he didn’t get, before it all went wrong. I remember when dad took me to the horses. I was eleven, so Jackson was fourteen; this meant that he was getting into hanging out at shopping malls and bowling alleys and trying to peer up teenage skirts. So Jackson wasn’t coming. It was just me and my dad.

  Dad wore a suit. It was a throwback pastel blue from his prime. His tie was a little too long and he tucked it into his trousers. The hair was slicked back, with an excess of gel, and he reeked of chemical sandalwood. ‘Come on, son,’ he said, and pushed me out of the door with his hand on my head.

  There was a sense of occasion about everything, the way there is at ceremonies or festivities, Christmas or weddings. Dad pulled up besides the bank and very gruffly said, ‘Wait here.’ It seemed like an eternity that I sat there, playing around with the dials of the radio, blinking up at the sunshine, watching women push their pushchairs past, the frantic dance of shoppers shopping. But time did indeed pass, like all time must, and eventually he was back beside me, solemnly flicking through a wad of notes with an enchanted, faraway look on his face.

  ‘You see this?’ he said; lowering himself a little, to make sure he was staring me right in the eyes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s money, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you know how we get this money?’

  I knew better than to roll my eyes in front of him, but I did think, jeez, Dad, I’m eleven, not five. But I c
opied his gravity and nodded emphatically. ‘You and Mum make it.’

  ‘We do indeed, son. Now, listen to me carefully. You better listen. You hear? Right: money is a precious, precious thing, and not to be thrown away unless you can afford it. What Daddy has done is save up very hard so he could have this little outing with his boy. The same way we save up for a holiday every now and then. It just so happens that Dad likes to relax, he needs to relax, and he finds going to the horses relaxing, you see? So he’s been saving for a while, keeping his money, the money he makes and takes out from the bank, you know? He’s been doing that so he could have this next outing, and he could take his two sons. Now it’s a pity that Jackson isn’t here, but you’re here, Marcus, and that makes this a little dad and son outing, right? So we’re going to have fun with this money, but I want you to know that I saved it up properly, that I’m not spending money I can’t afford to spend. You hear?’

  It was a longwinded message but I gave him another solemn nod, the kind that might fool him into believing that he’d given the speech of a Churchill or King. I would give him anything, anything he wanted; I just wanted to be his favourite son, like this, sitting next to him in the car, with the wind whizzing through my hair and making my eyes water up.

  When I think about it now, that wad of cash – so formally held aloft – was about a hundred quid. I’m pretty sure it was a pile of ten pound notes. I mean, that’s the way I remember it. But in his hands it had the significance of millions. It represented freedom and fun and adventure and ‘relaxing’. It represented a rare day out between father and son.

  The races lived up to this speech: it was a spectacle on a scale never hitherto seen. There were women with sculptures on their heads, elaborate bows and nettings, lips heavily rouged, their heels a good two inches higher than normal. A lot of the men wore suits, like my dad, and many of them bought champagne, including my dad, who purchased a glass, just the one, and then drank it very slowly. He sat down on the grass, beckoned me over, and let me have a sip of it. It tasted like bubble bath and I wanted to spit it out, but I saw the look of expectation on his face, that reverent, trance-like gleam. I had a sense that this was a glimpse into some distant, other world that he longed to be part of, so I returned his appreciative look, and he chuckled loudly and ruffled my hair.

  The day reminded me of pantomime. Every Christmas we would get dolled up and go to the local theatre for the once-a-year treat. There was always some washed-up celebrity in the title role, usually a full-on-top soap star or a one-hit wonder. I always wanted to get the programme but my mum always said it was too much money. I would enjoy the red velvet seats against my arms and the buzz of expectation just before the curtain began to lift. To me, it was the most exciting thing that there could possibly be, sitting there, amongst all those people, all seeing and believing in the same storyline, all knowing the same lines, the same ‘Look behind yous’ and the ‘Oh no you didn’ts’. It was comforting to buy into this together and watch people play the parts they always played, with their heroes and villains and the happily ever after: so delayed, so tremulous, and yet so sweetly inevitable when it happened, such a relief that yet again it had happened, and exactly as we’d hoped it.

  So these people around me were all dressed up too, all head to toe in their fancy garb, their special occasion clothes. And they seemed to speak in this strange, private language of numbers and figures and the passing of currency. I didn’t know the script yet, but I enjoyed watching them say it, especially my father. He turned to me.

  ‘What shall we bet on, boy?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What horse!’ He laughed. ‘That’s a list of horse names, there. You see it? They’re going to run against each other, and if we pick the right horse, we win some money. And I’m going to place about a third of this money’ – he waved the wad in front of me again – ‘on this race. So who’s it going to be, son?’

  ‘They’ve got some funny names, Dad.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got a good sense of humour, these jocks and trainers.’

  ‘Are they really called this?’

  ‘Yes, son. Come on, Marcus, before the race starts…’

  ‘Ha ha, I like that one.’

  ‘What one?’

  ‘Hoof Hearted.’

  He studied the note very carefully. ‘You see those numbers, son? They’re the odds. What I mean is – that there is the likelihood of a horse winning. And that’s 30 to 1, so they’re pretty low odds. He’s not going to win, son. If he wins, he’ll win us a lot of money, but it’s a gamble; because if he loses, and he probably will, we’ll lose all our money. You see?’

  I did see. And I thought that my best chance of seeming commonsensical and keen was to pick the horse with the second-highest odds of winning (the highest would be too obvious). My dad smiled at my choice, and said, ‘Yes, that’s my gut, too.’ And we went over to the booth and we paid together.

  Just like the pantomime, the happily ever after arrived to some rapturous hollers and whistles and roars of applause. I was pleased, especially when my dad picked me up and spun me round laughing. Yes, I had known it had to happen, but that didn’t devalue the happiness. There is a kind of deliciousness in knowing a formula and watching it happen, again and again, this eternal alliance of hunger and satiety. The only problem is that films and stories can make you think it happens like that all the time.

  But I had never seen my dad look so happy. Not even when the princess got the prince and the ugly sisters were sent away and the bad guys put in prison. I watched as money magicked into being and the paper quadrupled in his hands. And to think that was it – just paper. Whole lives lived in deference to paper, in fear of paper, in thrall to paper. How could the trees have turned into this?

  My mother and father met when they were both very young. He was apparently ‘Not like the others’, not like the ‘boys’, as my mum would spit. My dad, by contrast, was always a ‘man’. He bought her flowers on their very first date. I pictured him with slicked back hair, like he wore it at the racetracks. He probably tucked his tie in then, too. My mum didn’t really mention what he wore, but she said that he listened like a gentleman, didn’t ‘try anything on’, although I didn’t get her meaning. ‘He had rough hands but the softest voice.’ That was always the final statement, and her lips would part and her hands splay open, as if to say, ‘What?’ What could she have possibly done, other than fall in love with him? He had rough hands but the softest voice! For heaven’s sake. Who wouldn’t have fallen in love?

  This was the most passionate I ever heard her. She was always flitting in and out of things, my mum, never holding on, never fully there – except when it came to Dad. One time she was a receptionist at the doctor’s surgery; for a while, she worked in Littlewoods, on the front desk, customer services, so it happens. There was even talk of her becoming Assistant Shop Manager, until the incident with the clothes hanger. But her biggest stint was as a dinner lady, when Jackson and I were at primary school. So many embarrassing moments whenever I saw her, standing there, with greasy hair in a net and baggy grey overalls. She never seemed to serve pudding; she always dished out plastic peas and shapeless mash.

  Dan Fletcher’s mum also worked at the school, but she was a teacher and wore colourful beads and always spoke with a titter. Mrs Fletcher taught us about rock cake and planets and food chains. She was an omnivore, she said, because she ate both plants and animals. Some creatures are prey, others are predators, and some can be both to different things. It all depends on where you are in the food chain. (I thought of mum, then, as we snaked around the frosty hall in our lunchtime screeches, and mum scooped up cabbage that stank of old bin liners and kept her eye forever on the clock.)

  Mrs Fletcher said that food is energy, and energy constantly moves from one thing to another. It never gets lost. So the bigger things eat smaller things – but everything eats something. It doesn’t really matter who gets the biggest bit of food in the end, you just n
eed the energy flowing, you just need to keep the system in place. (I thought of mum, then, as I shuffled along in the queue and those eyes swivelled to me, the ladle lifting in greeting, the happy recognition in her eyes, and I just looked away, felt food tip and ooze on the plate, kept moving forwards, forwards, forwards.)

  Mum and Dad were grafters. They were both from working class families with aspirations. They wanted to work hard, do well, find a way out of this mire and mud. And my dad was a listener, he was a gentle and educated man, but he still had to plaster and decorate and come home with specks of paint in his hair. ‘He had rough hands but the softest voice.’ Those rough hands could strap her in like a seatbelt on those cold, lonely nights that are made for enduring.

  One winter, I remember it, we were particularly cold, frozen down to the bone. You could see the ice on the pane, and wind blowing through cracks so it shivered the curtains, they very visibly moved. Jackson and I spent more and more time round friends’ houses, where there was warmth and even heat, and you could stand with your back against the radiators. Back home, we’d slip on the jumpers and Dad would give us hot water bottles to hug.

  Mum wasn’t doing very much at all back then, she was just there in the background, nothing much to do with her time. We didn’t know why, nobody ever mentioned the why. I still remember that dressing gown, all starched and fusty, as she sagged on the sofa. She flicked through magazines, ate pot noodles, sometimes looked at the TV, mostly stared at something I could not make out. Oh yes, she liked to watch films, romantic comedies but also the kitchen grit. She loved Charlton Heston: his solid, bullet-shaped body and the ire in his eyes. On better days, Mum cleaned around our feet and chatted to friends on the phone, people who never hung around long but always seemed important at the time.

  Finally, the dressing gown would slip off and the clothes would return. Another job would be found – for a while, at least. And then Mum and Dad would be back around the table, sorting out paperwork, doing their sums, always worrying about money, always fretting, always trying to make the ends meet. If the ends didn’t meet up, then the circle wouldn’t complete, and then you’d have chaos.