Материал: nick_hornby_about_a_boy
‘Well, you see, he doesn’t really have a kid.’
‘HE DOESN’T REALLY HAVE A KID?’
And so on. Anyway, at the end of the question session he was in a lot of trouble, although probably
not as much trouble as Will.
Marcus put his old shoes back on, and then he and his mother went straight back to Will’s flat. Fiona
started raging at Will the moment they had been invited in and, at the beginning, when she was having a
go at him about SPAT and his imaginary son he looked embarrassed and apologetic—he had no answers
to any of her questions, so he stood there staring at the floor. But as it went on he started to get angry
too.
‘OK,’ Fiona was saying. ‘Now what the hell are these little after-school tea parties about?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Why would a grown man want to hang out with a twelve-year-old boy day after day?’
Will looked at her. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything.’
‘I don’t think that’s true, is it? You’re suggesting that I’ve been… fiddling with your son.’
Marcus looked at Fiona. Was that really what she was on about? Fiddling?
‘I’m simply asking why you entertain twelve-year-olds in your flat.’
Will lost his temper. He went red in the face and started shouting very loud. ‘I don’t have any fucking
choice, do I? Your son comes round fucking uninvited every night. Sometimes he’s pursued by gangs of
savages. I could leave him outside to take his chances, but I’ve been letting him in for his own safety. I
won’t fucking bother next time. Sod the pair of you. Now, if you’ve finished, you can piss off.’
‘I haven’t finished yet, actually. Why did you buy him a pair of expensive trainers?’
‘Because… because look at him.’ They looked at him. Marcus even looked at himself.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
Will looked at her. ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? You really haven’t got a clue.’
‘About what?’
‘Marcus is being eaten alive at school, you know. They take him to pieces every single fucking day of
the week, and you’re worried about where his trainers come from and whether I’m molesting him.’
Marcus suddenly felt exhausted. He hadn’t properly realized how bad things were until Will started
shouting, but it was true, he really was being taken to pieces every single fucking day of the week. Up
until now he hadn’t linked the days of the week in that way: each day was a bad day, but he survived by
kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before. Now he could see how
stupid that was, and how shit everything was, and he wanted to go to bed and not get up until the
weekend.
‘Marcus is doing fine,’ his mother said. At first he didn’t believe she’d said it, and then, when he’d
had a chance to listen to the words ringing in his ears, he tried to find a different meaning for them.
Maybe there was another Marcus? Maybe there was something else he was doing fine at, something
he’d forgotten about? But of course there was no other Marcus, and he wasn’t doing fine at anything; his
mum was just being blind and stupid and nuts.
‘You’re kidding,’ said Will.
‘I know he’s taking some time to settle at his new school, but—’
Will laughed. ‘Yeah. Give him a couple of weeks and he’ll be OK, eh? Once they’ve stopped stealing
his shoes and following him home from school everything’ll be great.’
That was wrong. They were all mad. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Marcus. ‘It’s going to take longer than a
couple of weeks.’
‘It’s OK, I know,’ said Will. ‘I was joking.’
Marcus didn’t think it was the sort of conversation that jokes fitted into, but at least it meant that
someone understood what was going on. How come it was Will, though, whom he’d known for two
minutes, and not his mum, whom he’d known for, well, all his life?
‘I think you’re being a bit melodramatic,’ said Fiona. ‘Maybe you haven’t had very much contact with
kids before.’
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Marcus didn’t know what the ‘melo’ bit of ‘melodramatic’ meant, but it made Will even angrier.
‘I used to be a fucking kid,’ said Will. He was swearing a lot now. ‘And I used to go to a fucking
school. I know the difference between kids who can’t settle down and kids who are just plain miserable,
so don’t give me any shit about being melodramatic. I’m supposed to take this from someone who—’
‘Ow!’ Marcus shouted. ‘Cowabunga!’
They both stared at him and he stared back. He had no way of explaining his outburst; he had made
the first two noises he could think of, because he could see that Will was going to bring up the subject of
the hospital, and he didn’t want that. It wasn’t fair. Just because his mum was being dim, it didn’t mean
that Will had the right to have a go at her about that. The way he saw it the hospital stuff was more
serious than the sweets and trainers stuff, and no one should mix them in together.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Will.
Marcus shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just… I don’t know. Wanted to have a shout.’
Will shook his head. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What a family.’
Marcus hadn’t enjoyed the afternoon’s rows, but when they had finished he could see the point of
them. His mum knew about Will not having a kid, which was probably a good thing, and she knew that
he visited Will after school most days, which was also a good thing, probably, because he’d had to tell
her a lot of fibs recently, and he’d been feeling bad about it. And, most importantly, she knew about
what went on at school, because Will had spelt it out. Marcus hadn’t been able to spell it out, because
he’d never been able to see the whole word before, but it didn’t really matter who’d done it; the point
was that Fiona understood.
‘You’re not going round there again,’ she said on the way home.
Marcus knew she’d say it, and he also knew that he’d take no notice, but he argued anyway.
‘Why not?’
‘If you’ve got anything to say, you say it to me. If you want new clothes, I’ll get them.’
‘But you don’t know what I need.’
‘So tell me.’
‘I don’t know what I need. Only Will knows what I need.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It’s true. He knows what things kids wear.’
‘Kids wear what they put on in the mornings.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You mean that he thinks he’s trendy, and that even though he’s God knows how old he knows which
trainers are fashionable, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about anything else.’
That was exactly what he meant. That was what Will was good at, and Marcus thought he was lucky
to have found him.
‘We don’t need that kind of person. We’re doing all right our way.’
Marcus looked out of the bus window and thought about whether this was true, and decided it wasn’t,
that neither of them were doing all right, whichever way you looked at it.
‘If you are having trouble it’s nothing to do with what shoes you wear, I can tell you that for nothing.’
‘No, I know, but—’
‘Marcus, trust me, OK? I’ve been your mother for twelve years. I haven’t made too bad a job of it. I do
think about it. I know what I’m doing.’
Marcus had never thought of his mother in that way before, as someone who knew what she was
doing. He had never thought that she didn’t have a clue either; it was just that what she did with him (for
him? to him?) didn’t appear to be anything like that. He had always looked on being a mother as
straightforward, something like, say, driving: most people could do it, and you could mess it up by doing
something really obvious, by driving your car into a bus, or not telling your kid to say please and thank
you and sorry (there were loads of kids at school, he reckoned, kids who stole and swore too much and
bullied other kids, whose mums and dads had a lot to answer for). If you looked at it that way, there
wasn’t an awful lot to think about. But his mum seemed to be saying that there was more to it than that.
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She was telling him she had a plan.
If she had a plan, then he had a choice. He could trust her, believe her when she said she knew what
she was doing; that meant putting up with things at school because they’d turn out all right in the end
and she could see things he couldn’t. Or he could decide that, actually, she was off her head, someone
who took drug overdoses and then apparently forgot all about them afterwards. Either way it was scary.
He didn’t want to put up with things as they were, but the other choice meant that he’d have to be his
own mother, and how could you be your own mother when you were only twelve? He could tell himself
to say sorry and please and thank you, that was easy, but he didn’t know where to start with the rest of it.
He didn’t even know what the rest of it was. He hadn’t even known until today that there was a rest of it.
Every time he thought about this, it came back to the same problem: there were only two of them, and
at least—
at least
—one of them was nuts.
In the next few days he began to notice more things about the way Fiona talked to him. Everything she
said about what he could and should watch or listen to or read or eat made him curious: was this part of
the plan, or was she just making it up as she went along? It never occurred to him to ask her until she
told him to go to the shops to get some eggs for their dinner: it struck him that he was a vegetarian only
because she was too.
‘Did you always know I was going to be a vegetarian?’
She laughed. ‘Of course I did. I didn’t decide on the spur of the moment because we’d run out of
sausages.’
‘And do you think that’s fair?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Shouldn’t I have been allowed to make up my own mind?’
‘You can when you’re older.’
‘Why aren’t I old enough now?’
‘Because you don’t do your own cooking. I don’t want to cook meat, so you have to eat what I eat.’
‘But you don’t let me go to McDonald’s either.’
‘Is this premature teenage rebellion? I can’t stop you going to McDonald’s.’
‘Really?’
‘How can I? I’d just be disappointed if you did.’
Disappointed. Disappointment. That was how she did it. That was how she did a lot of things.
‘Why?’
‘I thought you were vegetarian because you believed in it.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, you can’t go to McDonald’s then, can you?’
She’d done him again. She always told him he could do what he wanted, and then argued with him
until what he wanted was what she wanted anyway. It was beginning to make him angry.
‘That’s not fair.’
She laughed. ‘That’s what life is, Marcus. You have to work out what you believe in, and then you
have to stick to it. It’s hard, but it’s not unfair. And at least it’s easy to understand.’
There was something wrong with this, but he didn’t know what. All he knew was that not everyone
thought like this. When they talked in class about things like smoking, everyone agreed it was bad, but
then loads of kids smoked; when they talked about violent films, everyone said they disapproved of
them, but they still watched them. They thought one thing and did another. In Marcus’s house it was
different. They decided what was bad and then they never touched it or did it again. He could see how
that made sense: he thought stealing was wrong and killing was wrong, and he didn’t steal things or kill
people. So was that all there was to it? He wasn’t sure.
But of all the things that made him different, he could see this was the most important. It was why he
wore clothes that other kids laughed at—because they’d had this talk about fashion, and they’d agreed
that fashion was stupid—and why he listened to music that was old-fashioned, or that no one else had
ever heard of—because they’d had this talk about modern pop music, and they’d agreed it was just a
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way for record companies to make a lot of money. It was why he wasn’t allowed to play violent
computer games, or eat hamburgers, or do this or that or the other. And he’d agreed with her about all of
it, except he hadn’t agreed really; he’d just lost the arguments.
‘Why don’t you just tell me what to do? Why do we always have to talk about it?’
‘Because I want to teach you to think for yourself.’
‘Was that your plan?’
‘What plan?’
‘When you said the other day that you knew what you were doing.’
‘About what?’
‘About being a mum.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh. OK. Well, of course I want you to think for yourself. All parents want that.’
‘But all that happens is we have an argument and I lose, and I do what you want me to do. We might
as well save time. Just tell me what I’m not allowed, and leave it at that.’
‘So what’s brought all this on?’
‘I’ve been thinking for myself.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I’ve been thinking for myself, and I want to go round to Will’s house after school.’
‘You’ve already lost that argument.’
‘I need to see someone else who’s not you.’
‘What about Suzie?’
‘She’s like you. Will’s not like you.’
‘No. He’s a liar, and he doesn’t do anything, and—’
‘He bought me those trainers.’
‘Yes. He’s a rich liar who doesn’t do anything.’
‘He understands about school and that. He knows things.’
‘He knows things! Marcus, he doesn’t even know he’s born.’
‘You see what I mean?’ He was getting really frustrated now. ‘I’m thinking for myself and you just…
it just doesn’t work. You win anyway.’
‘Because you’re not backing it up. It’s not enough to tell me that you’re thinking for yourself. You’ve
got to show me, too.’
‘How do I show you?’
‘Give me a good reason.’
He could give her a reason. It wouldn’t be the right reason, and he’d feel bad saying it, and he was
pretty sure it would make her cry. But it was a good reason, a reason that would shut her up, and if that
was how you had to win arguments, then he’d use it.
‘Because I need a father.’
It shut her up, and it made her cry. It did the job.
Eighteen
November the nineteenth. November the fucking nineteenth. That was definitely a new record, Will
noted darkly. Last year it had been November the fucking twenty-sixth. He hadn’t made it through into
December for years now; he could see that when he was fifty or sixty he’d be hearing his first rendition
of ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’ in July or August. This year it was a busker at the bottom of the escalator at
the Angel station, a cheerful, attractive young woman with a violin who was obviously trying to
supplement her music scholarship. Will scowled at her with all the hatred he could muster, a look
intended to convey not only that he wouldn’t be giving her any money, but that he would like to smash
up her instrument and then staple her head to the escalator steps.
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Will hated Christmas, for the obvious reason: people knocked on his door, singing the song he hated
more than any song in the world and expected him to give them money. It had been worse when he was
a kid, because his dad hated Christmas too, for the obvious reason (although Will hadn’t realized it was
the obvious reason until he was much older—back then, he just thought that his dad was as sick of the
song as everybody else): it was a terrible reminder of how badly he had failed in his life. Quite often
people wanted to interview his father about ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’, and they always used to ask what
else he had written, and he would tell them, sometimes even play them things, or show them records
which featured another of his songs. They would look embarrassed, cluck sympathetically and tell him
how hard it was for everyone who was famous for only one thing, a long time ago, and ask him whether
the song had ruined his life, or made him wish he’d never written it. He would get angry, and tell them
not to be so stupid and patronizing and insensitive, and when they had gone, he would complain bitterly
that the song had ruined his life, and say he wished he’d never written it. One radio journalist even went
away and made a series called
One-Hit Wonders
inspired completely by his interview with Charles
Freeman, all about people who’d written one great book, or appeared in one film, or written one famous
song; the journalist had had the cheek to ask him for another interview and, perhaps understandably,
Will’s father had refused.
So Christmas was the season of anger and bitterness and regret and recrimination, of drinking binges,
of frantic and laughably inadequate industry (one Christmas day his father wrote an entire, and entirely
useless, musical, in a doomed attempt to prove that his talent was durable). It was a season of presents
by the chimney too, but even when he was nine Will would gladly have swapped his Spirographs and
his Batmobiles for a little peace and goodwill.
But things changed. His father died, and then his mother, and he lost touch with his stepbrother and
stepsister, who were old and dull anyway, and Christmas was usually spent with friends, or girlfriends’
families, and all that was left was ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’ and the cheques it carried to him through the
snow. But that was more than enough. Will had often wondered whether there was any other stupid song
which contained, somewhere deep within it, as much pain and despair and regret. He doubted it. Bob
Dylan’s ex-wife probably didn’t listen to
Blood On The Tracks
too often, but
Blood On The Tracks
was
different—it was about misery and damage. ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’ wasn’t supposed to be like that at all,
but he still felt he needed a stiff drink, or counselling, or a good cry, when he heard it in a department-
store lift or through a supermarket tannoy in the weeks leading up to 25 December. Maybe there were
others like him somewhere; maybe he should form a Successful Novelty Song support group, where
rich, bitter men and women would sit around in expensive restaurants and talk about doggies and birdies
and bikinis and milkmen and horrible dances.
He had no plans for this Christmas whatsoever. There was no girlfriend, and so there were no
girlfriend’s parents, and though he had friends on whom he could inflict himself, he didn’t feel like it.
He would sit at home and watch millions of films and get drunk and stoned. Why not? He was as
entitled to a break as anyone else, even if there was nothing to break from.
If the first thing he had thought of when he heard the busker at the tube station was his father, the
unexorcizable ghost of Christmas past, the second was Marcus. He didn’t know why. He hadn’t thought
about him much since the trainers’ incident, and he’d had no contact with him since Fiona dragged him
out of the flat the previous week. Maybe it was because Marcus was the only child he really knew,
although Will doubted whether he was soppy enough to swallow the repulsive notion that Christmas was
a time for children; the more likely explanation was that he had made some kind of link between
Marcus’s childhood and his own. It wasn’t as if Will had been a nerdy kid with the wrong trainers; on
the contrary, he had worn the right shoes and the right socks and the right trousers and the right shirts,
and he had gone to the right hairdresser for the right haircut. That was the point of fashion, as far as Will
was concerned; it meant that you were with the cool and the powerful, and against the alienated and the
weak, just where Will wanted to be, and he’d successfully avoided being bullied by bullying furiously
and enthusiastically.
But there was more than a whiff of the Freeman household in Fiona’s flat: you got that same sense of
hopelessness and defeat and bewilderment and straightforward lunacy. Of course, Will had grown up
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