The Boy Who Fell to Earth (19 page)

Merlin pushed away from me, distraught, his nerves
stretched
taut. He waved his arms around in an agitated way as though conducting Beethoven’s 5th symphony.

‘I looked all around Russell Square. Every café, bookshop, park. Then I finally thought I’d check the tube station. And that’s where I found him. Sittin’ on a platform. Apparently he’d been sittin’ down there since four o’clock,’ Archie said, as we squelched inside, out of the rain.

‘Why?’ I thought once more of all the dreadful fates that could have befallen him. Still oppressed by the residue of terror, I held Merlin close once more.

‘Well …’ Archie scratched his chin stubble ‘… it’s got somethin’ to do with tube germs and a sex change. I brought him home by bus.’

‘I just knew that if I got on any t-t-t-train, the germs from the carriage would give me a s-s-s-sex change,’ Merlin stammered, gripping his hands together convulsively, the way he did when traumatized.

I felt the colour drain out of my face. ‘Why didn’t you just leave the station and get a taxi?’

‘I just kept hoping I could get the courage to get on the next train … I was trying to make myself … But the sex change! The germs!’ He fell into a state of hand-wringing anxiety.

I took him by the shoulders and looked into his startled eyes. ‘But you know that’s illogical, Merlin, don’t you?’

‘But how do I know it couldn’t happen? Tap water has female hormones in it too.’

Archie carted his bag back to the spare room he’d vacated earlier, to change into some dry clothes. Merlin and I went on in this circuitous vein, with me trying to explain the impossibility of such a scenario, lecturing him on genes and chromosomes and trying to point out that, if this were the case, why didn’t
every
commuter change sex all the time? But Merlin just became more and more fraught.

‘Perhaps people do change sex? Maybe you were a man once?’ he asked me suspiciously, questions whirring around his head like hornets.

I now experienced a more brutal fear than the realization I’d lost him earlier in the evening. Merlin’s mild angst seemed to have morphed into something more serious. Was this the beginning of a darkening of his moods? Would he now be endlessly fleeing down some descending labyrinth of the mind, at the end of which his own demons lay in wait?

I stroked his arm and tried to rationalize away his terror. But Merlin remained lost in his own private torment. I looked into his face pityingly, all the time talking calmly and quietly. But my son’s expression remained one of baffled incredulity. Merlin took a shuddering breath and screwed up his eyes, as if in pain. Anxiety was always with him, the shadow on his psychological X-ray. There was no cure. His condition was constant, like tinnitus. It was just
there
. Always.

Merlin and I could have gone on and on in conversational circles till dawn if Archie hadn’t short-circuited the situation. I looked up to see him standing in the doorway draped in an old designer wrap dress Jeremy had bought me all those years ago. He wore a floral hat and a slash of red lipstick. His big hairy feet were half wedged into my sling-back stilettos, his heels sticking out the back like lumps of Parmesan. We all gaped at him as he pranced about in my purloined high heels.

‘Oh, look,’ Archie said in his earthy, twangy drawl. ‘I must have got on to a train carriage and changed sex because I feel like a woman.’

He grabbed his guitar and broke into a Shania Twain song, ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman’, segueing, with hip wiggles, into
Dylan’s
‘Just Like a Woman’ and Alice Cooper’s ‘Only Women Bleed’.

I looked at Archie, dumbfounded. How could he be so psychologically crass? This would only confuse Merlin all the more. But then I noticed that Phoebe was rolling about laughing. And so was Merlin. Great, heaving belly laughs that he wasn’t putting on.

‘Archie, as a woman?
I don’t think so
,’ my son guffawed. ‘I suppose it is a pretty deranged theory.’

And then I laughed too. With relieved abandon. I laughed until I started crying.

Fortified by success, Archie then asked if he could unpack his bags.

‘Okay.’ I shrugged docilely, wiping tears from my eyes. There were worse things that could happen than Archie moving back in, I thought to myself … But then why did I feel as though I was using a hammer to swat a fly on my forehead?

12

Nothing Risquéd, Nothing Gained

AFTER SIXTEEN YEARS
of raising Merlin I could qualify for a Ph.D in angst. If nail-biting adventure had been what I was looking for, I would have tried jumping over the Grand Canyon on a motorbike, diving with sharks, crossing the English Channel on a Lilo or taking a job as a BP oil-company executive. Trying to conquer Merlin’s condition all on my own was as effective as attempting to kill Genghis Khan with a paper cut.

My main worry about my son involved mugging. After failing all his exams, Merlin was repeating his GCSE year. In the course of his first week back at school in September, he was beaten up on the school bus, all for £1.50. On the way to the cinema he was mugged at knife-point to extort fifteen quid and his iPod. On the way to the British Museum
by bus
, he was cornered in the shelter by a gang who humiliated him by holding a lighter under his chin and filming it on their phones. For Merlin, leaving the house was as hazardous as Scott leaving his Antarctic base camp. He was held up so often that Archie started giving marks out of ten for the
robbery.
Plus extra money. ‘Here you go, kiddo. Money for the bus and a bit extra for the mugging.’ He also started teaching my son how to kickbox and some other forms of self-defence. ‘But screamin’ like a girl and runnin’ for the hills is also good,’ he advised, chortling. ‘That’s my motto, kid. Do unto others … and then run!’

As Mother was currently helping street children in Peru before trekking to Machu Picchu on the Inca trail, as you do, there was little choice but to trust Archie to keep an eye on Merlin after school. I’d planned to be deputy head by this age and, in my spare time, win the Orange Prize for literature, presented, of course, by Daniel Craig, preferably wearing his James Bond budgie smugglers … But all that going home as soon as the bell rang and popping out at lunchtime meant that I hadn’t even been promoted to head of department. Now that the hairy old rocker was earning his keep, I was trying to make up for my poor performance by running the after-school drama club and poetry appreciation. If opportunity doesn’t knock – get a doorbell. That was my new motto.

‘Sure. You can trust me,’ Archie said – words which had the same striking ring of authenticity as Iran saying it wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon.

‘Okay,’ I quizzed, as I threw together a packed lunch to take to work, ‘if Merlin was choking on, say, an ice cube, what would you do?’

‘If he was chokin’ on an ice cube, I’d simply pour a cup of boiling water down his cake-hole. That should do the trick … I’m jokin’,’ he said, to placate my horrified reaction.

But it wasn’t such a funny joke when I arrived home after drama rehearsal to find Merlin urinating in the bathroom basin. ‘Merlin! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘Archie told me the best way to avoid arguments with
women
about leaving the toilet seat up is to pee in the basin.’

‘Archie!’ I stormed through the house looking for my hapless boarder. I found him stretched out in my bathtub beneath a blanket of bubbles, with the door ajar. ‘Why did you tell Merlin that!!! About the basin??’ I was stopped in my tracks by an unmistakably pungent odour. ‘Are you smoking dope?’

‘I smoke drugs to forget I smoke drugs. Just like I have casual sex to forget that I have casual sex,’ he teased.

How could I let him know just how displeased I felt? Perhaps if I turned on my hairdryer and tossed it into the bath? ‘What kind of example are you setting my son?’ I pulled the plug on his bubble bath. But the symbolism that I was about to pull the plug on a whole lot more was obviously lost on the miscreant because he then said, ‘Hell, I can set a good example. Merlin!’ he called out. ‘
Some advice, son. Say no to drugs, so you’ll have more time to drink
.’ Archie sank below the frothy surface then blew a stream of water vertically through the suds, like a sperm whale.

I waited impatiently for him to reappear. ‘And if you think casual sex is satisfying you need to have both your heads examined.’

Merlin’s tousled cranium popped around the door. ‘So,’ he asked us, grinning like the cat which had not only licked the cream but also eaten the canary, ‘are you two having the ideal relationship?’

Archie’s laugh came from deep within his chest and rattled around the tiled bathroom. Merlin mimicked his chortle all the way down the hall.

‘What other life tips did you give my son?’ I demanded to know, averting my eyes as the water drained away. ‘Besides the fact that Iron Man is a superhero and that “Iron Woman” is a command.’

The bath water had drained, leaving my boarder beached on the white enamel, his body hairs glistening. I’d imagined Archie to be so hairy that he’d make Chubaka look waxed. I thought he’d be as bulky and white as a fridge, with an IQ to match. But, naked, he was alarmingly manly. Not to mention his obvious potential for a very lucrative jockey underwear endorsement deal.

‘You’re right, Lou. I feel totally remorseful … but I reckon I have the strength of character to fight it,’ he scoffed.

‘You see,
that
’s the kind of statement you make as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. What you don’t understand is that Merlin takes everything literally.’

‘You’re so friggin’ overprotective. I can’t believe you let the kid out … Out of your womb, I mean.’ Archie hauled himself up on to his feet in an avalanche of foam. He faced me, his muscular legs planted in a V-sign. I turned my back on him before the foam evaporated.

‘Of course I’m overprotective! Most parents expect their kids to have all the things in life they couldn’t afford so it’ll be nice to move in with them in old age. But my son will never leave home.’

‘Bullshit. How will you ever know if Merlin can cope in the outside world when you never let him in it? Every time he leaves the bloody house you’d think he was emigratin’. The fuss, the cryin’, the worry, the long hugs an’ heartfelt goodbyes. It’s nauseatin’.’

Fury bubbled up in me. ‘What do you know about it? Someone has to make sure he’s charged his mobile phone, that he has enough money on his travel card … Someone has to make sure he eats his vegetables. And that person is me.’

‘The way you get a kid to eat vegetables is to coat them in chocolate,’ he jibed.

‘Do you mind getting a towel? You naked is a sight people pray they don’t live long enough to witness,’ I lied.

‘The kid’s sixteen. In two years he can vote, for Chrissake.’

‘You’ve heard what Merlin says! He doesn’t want to grow up. He wants to stay a teenager.’

‘Well, who wouldn’t?’ he said, towelling off. ‘You get to take drugs, get pissed, stay out all hours, never work and not pay taxes. Seems perfectly sane to me. In fact, I want to stay a teenager too.’ Togaed in a towel, he sauntered downstairs to the kitchen to help himself to some of my food.

‘You know what?’ I complained, trotting after him. ‘I think I’d rather take grammar lessons from George W. Bush or, I dunno, grooming lessons from Motorhead’s Lemmy than parenting tips from you.’

‘Truth is, toots, the kid doesn’t need a babysitter. At his age,
he
could babysit. Besides, j’know what Merlin said to me about babysitters? He told me that he doesn’t understand why adults hire teenagers to act like adults, so that the adults can go out and act like teenagers. Pure genius,’ he chortled. ‘Strewth! The kid’s shavin’. But look at the instructions you leave when you go out.’ He picked up my list of emergency phone numbers. ‘It’s longer than War and bloody Peace.’

I was outraged by his ill-informed audacity. ‘
She’ll be right, mate
,’ I mimicked his accent. ‘That’s your answer to every angst, from parking tickets to a tracheotomy.’

Archie gave me a reproachful stare. ‘Merlin’s like a bungee-jumper. That invisible umbilical cord keeps snapping him back to you. Cut the kid free. Let him glide, soar …’

‘Does the word “splat” mean anything to you?’ I carped coldly. ‘I think you’ll find that a mother knows best.’

‘Bullshit!’ He rounded on me. ‘Mothers get stuff wrong. My
mum
told me that good things come to those who wait, that the meek shall inherit the earth and, oh yeah, that money ain’t everythin’. What a steamin’ pile of horseshit. For your information, sweet-cheeks, your son thinks you’re an interferin’ snoop … But I’m sure you’ve already read that on his Facebook.’

‘I
need
to interfere. It may have escaped your notice, Einstein,’ I castigated, ‘but my son is not normal … unless you count it normal writing thousands of cricket scores on the bedroom walls, blogging about his wet dreams, wearing a Batman mask on the tube and a bike helmet to bed in case his brain melts out of his ears, and wanting to live in a communist country so that he doesn’t have to make any decisions.’

‘You want Merlin to be normal, but what the hell is normal? Are
you
? Am
I
?’ Archie cast an amused eye over me and then, much to my surprise, laughed right into my face. ‘It’s abnormal to be normal. Everyone seems bloody normal until you get to know them.’

‘You’re not getting this, are you? When a woman’s pregnant, she’s always wondering, when will my baby move? Well, the answer is
right after he’s finished college
. But my son will never go to uni or have a job or move out. He can’t concentrate in class. He failed every one of his GCSE exams. Examination papers are like Swahili to him.’

‘Seems to me that Merlin has this photographic memory – which has yet to develop,’ he punned. ‘But I have a feelin’ the kid’s gonna grow into his brain … Meanwhile, you’ve gotta let him make mistakes, get drunk, get laid …’

‘Laid?’ I snapped, appalled. ‘He’s not a carpet, Archibald.’