The Boy Who Fell to Earth (15 page)

It was clearly time to Tipp-Ex my mother off my Christmas-card list. What had the woman been thinking – or rather,
not
thinking. ‘So, Archibald …’ I infused his name with total contempt.

‘Archie.’

‘… why are you in London really? Let me guess. You’ve jumped bail and are on the run?’

‘No offence, love, but your mum warned me that you’re a hard arse.’

‘Hey, I used to care, but I take pills for that now.’

‘What? Bitchy pills?’ he laughingly enquired. ‘The reason I’m in London is that I had to make a pilgrimage to Abbey Road at some point. And I just love that Princess Anne. She always gives the impression that her horse is tethered, like, two feet away. Jeez. I’d just love to saddle up some member
of
the royal family and ride her round the block. Yee-hah! Giddy-up, girl!’

I looked at him as though he were something I’d walked in on the bottom of my shoe. ‘Well, I don’t know what my deranged mother told you, but I am not a halfway house for recovering celebrities. So, I think you’d better find somewhere else to stay.’

Archie flexed a heavy forearm as the muscles in his jaw tensed and twitched. ‘The reason I’m here is that I need to lie doggo for a while. Whatja mum tell ya? Bugger all, by the looks of things. I met your mum through your cousin, Kimmy, my wife. They went off to some solstice yoga tantric retreat together or somethin’. Anyway, my wife started usin’ the rhythm method … literally. She started rootin’ my drummer. Which kinda put the kybosh on the band. I’m tellin’ ya, just lately, if it was rainin’ palaces I’d get hit by the dunny door.’

His voice, ragged with emotion, no longer sounded harsh. It was more like ruined velvet. His obvious pain made me relent a little. ‘Well, I know what that’s like. To be left, I mean. My ex-husband left me when our son was three. It took time, but I’ve now expunged him from our lives … In fact, I’m writing to the pope to confirm that Merlin is the product of immaculate conception.’

My visitor scratched forlornly at his five o’clock shadow. ‘Divorce is like a haemorrhoid: in the end, every arsehole gets one.’

I was about to suggest a few cheap hotels when a cacophony of swearing erupted from upstairs. I could hear books thumping to the floor, lamps being thrown and doors slammed.

‘What the bejesus is going on up there? A poltergeist?’

‘The Immaculate Conception. He hates school.’

‘Can’t blame him. Is he chuckin’ a sickie?’

‘Daily.’

‘You mean he does his block like this every bloody mornin’?’

‘Well, it does save on gym fees, being attacked by a teenage male on a regular basis. Dodging hits and kicks is quite aerobic.’

I thought this revelation would be enough to send the antipodean rock-and-roller scurrying off to a B and B. But the interloper took off his hat and swung his feet up on the coffee table as though he lived here. ‘Little bastard! Jeez, that must be bloody exhaustin’.’

My barbed veneer was momentarily cracked by his sympathy. ‘It is actually,’ I sighed wearily.

‘You must want to wring the little bugger’s neck.’

‘Some days, I really do!’ I confessed, with shocked relief.

I sagged into myself. Suddenly my shortie pyjamas felt too big for me. The grey stuffing was coming out of the sofa, like a brain spilling out after a road accident. The house really was on its last, wood-wormed legs. Whatever money I made teaching was eaten up by tutors, ‘talking doctors’ and occupational and cognitive therapists. I looked beyond Archie to the garden, which had grown knotted and wild, and felt momentarily overwhelmed with fatigue. My shoulders slumped just thinking about getting Merlin dressed. I was like a punctured balloon with all the air slowly leaking out. It was 7.30 and I hadn’t yet made the cake for the fête. In my experience, only two things seriously upset teachers, the disappearance of coffee mugs and the health of the photocopier. But not contributing a cake to my school fête would be a definite mark against me in the staffroom – a
fête
worse than death, I murmured to the cat, the only creature who seemed to appreciate my Wildean wit. Unfortunately, the last time I baked was when I fell asleep on the beach, which meant a last-minute dash to the shops …

I turned back to the big, bulky shape on my sofa. He wasn’t gym-toned, like my ex-husband, but his body was corded by hard work and heavy lifting. Muscles and sinews strained against his shirt.

‘So,’ I heard myself saying, ‘can you do DIY?’

‘Sure. It’s easy. You just use WD40 for everythin’. Even on the foreskin,’ he twinkled impertinently.

It was a mistake. I knew it as I offered it. ‘Okay, you can stay. For one week. A trial only. And you can start by persuading the Poltergeist to come down for breakfast.’

Archie opened his guitar case, cocked a leg up on to the coffee table like some kind of conquistador, plugged his guitar into the amp and hit some gigantic chords which sounded a lot like a nuclear explosion. By the end of the chord sequence the windows were shuddering.

‘Shit, I’ve never played this badly before!’

‘I didn’t realize you
had
played before,’ I shouted, covering my ears and cringing. But before I could renege on my offer, Merlin’s head thrust itself around the door.

‘My brain is leaking through my ears,’ my son announced.

I felt panic rising in my chest. Was he having some kind of haemorrhage?

‘Yeah? My brain leaks through my ears all the time, mate. It’s normal,’ Archie counselled, between twangs. I looked up at Merlin. And Merlin was grinning.

I took stock of the bedraggled, ponytailed, cowboy-booted 50-year-old ex-rocker sprawled incongruously across my living room. He was an odd bird. But still, he was also a bird
in
the hand. Merlin was so entranced by Archie’s strumming I was able to take off his pyjama top and button up his school shirt without any violent resistance. For that moment, I dared to let myself believe that having such a man around the place might actually make things easier. That maybe this maniac had ridden to the rescue of Merlin and me …

But what I’d forgotten about a bird in the hand is that it’s bound to crap on you.

9

You Say Tomato

‘THE MAN’S AS
useful as a bloke at a lesbian festival,’ I moaned to my sister. It had taken only three days for Archie’s charm to wear thin. We were sipping tea as we watched my fifteen-year-old son trying to make a sandwich. We’d been watching in an agony of impatience for twenty minutes as Merlin laboriously but haphazardly laid out the ham on the bread. The simplest request, like making his own sandwich, left him rubbing his temples as though dazed from a fistfight.

‘Merlin, do you like Archie?’ my sister asked.

‘Oh yes. I find it quite relaxing being around musicians. Musicians see the world in a very placid way,’ he replied. ‘I prefer being with musicians than lawyers or accountants and other grown-ups.’

‘There!’ Phoebe said to me, sitting on her hands so she wouldn’t be tempted to help my son slice his tomato. ‘Surely it
is
kind of relaxing having a man around the house?’

‘Relaxing? Well, I guess it’s more relaxing than getting gang-raped by a horde of bikers with gingivitis, but that’s
about
it.’ My perplexing son was now staring at the tomato as if attempting, through the power of his gaze, to make it slice itself. ‘Hold the tomato with one hand, honey, like I showed you, and then cut slowly.’

‘Archie’s wife is dead,’ Merlin said matter-of-factly. ‘He said he didn’t realize at first, because the sex was the same, but the dishes started to pile up in the sink.’

Phoebe spluttered into her tea with inappropriate laughter. Merlin laughed his head off, too, before stopping abruptly and confessing, ‘I don’t really get it, Mum.’ Whenever he didn’t get a joke, he would laugh immoderately to cover his confusion, concluding in a bewildered, lippy grin.

I glowered at my sister. ‘It’s not funny. Archie says these things and Merlin takes them literally. Kimmy left him for the drummer in his band.’ I glanced back to Merlin, who, panic-stricken, was now holding the big round tomato as though it were a hand grenade. ‘Merlin, darling, why don’t you try to slice the tomato the way I’ve shown you … only, like,
a million times
,’ I reiterated, under my breath.

‘Because knives make me nervous. What if the blade goes into my brain?’

‘How can the knife go into your brain when it’s in your hand, nowhere near your head?’ I asked, my heart shrivelling up like a raisin.

Phoebe topped up my tea to distract me from the glacially slow sandwich-making. Merlin’s movements were so sluggish it would be faster to move things telekinetically. ‘But Merlin told me Archie’s been busy about the place,’ my sister said encouragingly.

‘Oh, Archie does his best to appear productive to the untrained eye. But in reality his approach to DIY is that if you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.
He
reckons that you only need two tools in life – WD40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move and
should
, he uses the WD40. And if it shouldn’t move and
does
, he uses the duct tape.’ I rattled the spoon in my teacup with irritation at Merlin’s snail-like progress and made myself look away. ‘I mean, what was our mother thinking? I am going to kill her. Do you have any idea where she is, by the way?’

‘I think she’s helping to save a butterfly habitat in Darwin. Or is it Darfur? Or Alpha Centauri? I simply can’t remember.’ Phoebe laughed fondly. ‘You’ll have to send a smoke signal or a homing pigeon to find her. Um … Lucy …?’ Phoebe broke off to point a painted nail in Merlin’s direction.

I turned to see my son trying to dislocate his jaws, boa constrictor-style, so he could fit two slices of bread wedged around a huge, whole beef tomato, into his gaping maw.

‘Oh Merlin, you can’t eat the sandwich like that! You have to
cut
the tomato. I’ve been trying to teach you this for months.’ My frustration erupted vesuvially. Then, as usual, overwhelmed by his dependency and despondent at his helplessness, I commandeered the knife and effortlessly sliced through the tomato. I then layered the slices neatly into the sandwich and shoved it at him. ‘You’re like a giant toddler, do you know that? You’re nearly sixteen now. You have got to try harder!!’

Merlin’s face was stricken with anxiety. ‘It’s not easy growing up. Why can’t I be a baby again? Do you know how hard it is for me … that there are only sixty seconds in a minute? It’s like some kind of punishment. Why does time have to only go in one direction? Why can’t it go backwards?’ he demanded. ‘Who decided a minute should be so short? Where does time go? It’s just blasting. Like a jet plane. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? I don’t want to be an adult, ever, ever, ever!!!!’

As usual I instantly regretted my outburst. My patience was fraying. I needed help, goddamn it. And with no partner, my mother off somewhere on the planet being what she called a ‘Sassy’ – ‘single, sexy and sixty’ – and Phoebe flying long-haul, there was only one person who readily came to mind …

I prodded at the bulk lying prone on my couch. A snort let me know it was alive. I shoved harder this time, prompting an even more guttural outburst. Archie peeled open one eye, grunted and rolled over. I picked up the glass of water on the table and poured it over Rip Van Winkle’s head.

‘Fuck!’ my antipodean lodger spluttered, jerking upright as though tasered. ‘You’ve got to be the worst landlady in the freakin’ world!’

‘I doubt it. That would be too much of a coincidence … I agreed that you could stay here for a week, Archie, in exchange for help around the house. But when I said “Make yourself at home” I didn’t mean lounging on the sofa all day eating all my crisps. I meant cleaning my oven, de-leafing the gutters and getting the mould out of the grout.’

‘Bloody hell, your hospitality knows no bounds.’

‘You’re half man, half sofa.’

‘Well, you’re half woman, half prison-camp wardress. I’ve never seen a woman clean so often. You’re so anal you’d put newspaper under a bloody rocking horse.’

‘I’m not
anal
. I’m just trying to discourage rodents … although it didn’t work in your case.’

It struck me then that even though I’d only known the man for a few days we were arguing like an old married couple. The instant familiarity was unsettling but felt strangely natural. Sparring with him was infuriating but compulsive –
a
bit like the way you pick at a piece of torn nail quick or jiggle a loose tooth with your tongue. In retrospect, I can see now how much I was craving adult company. Archie was exasperating, but he was also an inoculation against loneliness and so much more conversational than the cat.

‘Housework’s a complete waste of bloody time,’ Archie continued, yawning. ‘As soon as you finish it, you have to do it all again, like two lousy months later.’

‘It may have escaped your notice, but I’m a wage slave. I’m a teacher. Not a princess living in a castle.’

‘Even if you built a castle in the air, you’d spend all bloody day cleanin’ it,’ he scoffed. ‘And anyway, I do some housework,’ he said, looking around. ‘See? I’m sweepin’ the room with a glance.’

I rolled my eyes in exaggerated annoyance. ‘So, who does the majority of cooking and cleaning? Feel between your legs. Are there testicles there? Then it’s obviously not you. Didn’t Kimmy domesticate you at all?’

He took the feather duster from my hand. ‘Chill out, woman. I tell you what, no bloke ever got the horn for a chick ’cause her carpet was well vacuumed. “
Oh, look, there’s no dust on your skirtin’ boards. I want you now, you comely wench
.” He made a playful grab for my waist.

I lacerated him with a cutting stare. ‘Oh, by the way. The 1970s rang. They want their manipulative chauvinism back … I’m beginning to see why my cousin traded you in, Archibald.’

My words obviously stung, but he countered with a caustic comment of his own. ‘You say “manipulative chauvinism” as though that’s a bad thing. Ah, women,’ he sighed, ‘can’t live with them – can’t force them into slavery.’