Материал: nick_hornby_about_a_boy
you.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, but… I’m not sure there’s very much I can do at the moment. We’ve come for lunch, and Will…
that’s my dad, I call him Will, because, anyway… he’s talking to Rachel, that’s your mum—’
‘I fucking know it’s my mum.’
‘—downstairs, and to be honest he’s really pretty keen, and who knows? She might be keen on him,
so—’
‘SHE’S NOT KEEN ON HIM!’ Ali suddenly shouted. ‘SHE’S ONLY KEEN ON ME!’
Marcus was beginning to realize that Ali was nuts, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He
wondered whether this had ever happened before and, if it had, whether the kid who had been in his
position was still here somewhere—either in pieces under the carpet, or tied up in a cupboard, where he
was fed once a day on leftover bits of Ali’s supper. This kid probably weighed three stone and only
talked his own language that nobody else could understand, not that anyone ever listened anyway, not
even his mum and dad, who he would never see again.
Marcus considered his options carefully. The least attractive, he felt, and also the most unlikely, was to
stay here and pass the time of day with Ali, chat about this and that, have a laugh and a couple of games
on the computer; that simply wasn’t going to happen. He could go downstairs and join in with Will and
Rachel, but Will had as good as told him to stay upstairs, and if he went downstairs he’d have to explain
that Ali was a psycho who was on the point of cutting off his arms and legs, and that would be really
embarrassing. No, Marcus’s choice would simply be to dash downstairs without anyone noticing, sneak
out of the front door and get a bus home; after a very brief moment’s thought, that is exactly what he
did.
He was standing at a bus stop near the Lock when Will found him. His sense of direction wasn’t
brilliant and he was actually standing on the wrong side of the road, waiting for a bus that would have
taken him to the West End, so it was probably just as well that Will drew up alongside him and told him
to get into the car.
‘What are you playing at?’ Will asked him angrily.
‘Have I messed it up?’ And then, although he shouldn’t have said it, even though, or probably
because, it was the first thing he thought of: ‘Will you still help me out with Ellie?’
‘What happened upstairs?’
‘He’s off his head. He said he’d kill me if you went out with her. And I believed him, too. Anyone
would have. He’s really scary. Where are we going?’ It was raining now, and Camden was choked with
traffic and market shoppers. Everywhere Marcus looked there were men and women with long wet
straggly hair who looked like they probably played in Nirvana or one of the other bands Ellie liked.
‘Back to Rachel’s.’
‘I don’t want to go back there.’
‘Tough.’
‘She’ll think I’m stupid.’
‘She won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she thought something like this might happen. She said Ali could be difficult sometimes.’
That made Marcus laugh, ‘Ha!’, the kind of laugh you did when there was nothing much to laugh at.
‘Difficult? He was going to tie me up and lock me in a cupboard and only feed me once a day.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Anyway, he’s crying his eyes out now.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Blubbing like a three-year-old.’
This cheered Marcus up no end; he was perfectly happy to go back to Rachel’s, he decided.
As it turned out, running away from the house was the best thing Marcus could possibly have done. If
he’d known it was all going to end so well, he wouldn’t have been so panicky when Will found him at
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the bus stop. He would have just winked at Will like a wise old owl, and said, ‘Wait and see’. When
they got back, everything had changed: it was like everyone knew why they were there, instead of
pretending that the whole lunch thing was a way of Ali and Marcus getting together to play computer
games.
‘Ali has got something to say to you, Marcus,’ Rachel said, when they walked in.
‘Sorry, Marcus,’ Ali snivelled. ‘I didn’t mean to say those things.’
Marcus couldn’t see how you could threaten to kill someone by mistake, but he didn’t want to make a
thing of it; the sight of Ali snivelling away made him feel generous.
‘That’s OK, Ali,’ he said.
‘OK, shake hands, guys,’ said Rachel, and they did, although it was a rather peculiar and embarrassing
handshake. They went up and down much too far three times, and Will and Rachel laughed, which
annoyed Marcus. He knew how to shake hands. It was the other idiot who was doing all the up-and-
down business.
‘Ali finds this very difficult.’
‘So does Marcus. Marcus feels just the same, don’t you?’
‘About what?’ He had drifted off temporarily. He was wondering whether there was any connection
between Ali’s tears and his ability to hurt: did it follow that because he cried so easily he wasn’t hard?
Or could it be that he was a psycho, and he would pull your head off with his bare hands, blubbing all
the time? Maybe the crying had been a bit of a red herring, and Marcus was in even more danger than he
had feared.
‘About… you know… this sort of thing.’
‘Yes,’ Marcus said. ‘I do. Exactly the same.’ He was sure he would find out soon enough what he felt
exactly the same about.
‘Because you get into a pattern, and then each new person who comes along seems to represent some
kind of a threat.’
‘Exactly. And the last guy I—’ Rachel broke off. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not comparing you to him. And I’m
not saying that, you know, we’re—’ She broke off hopelessly.
Will smiled. ‘It’s OK,’ he said gently, and Rachel looked at him and smiled back. Suddenly Marcus
could see why people like Rachel and Suzie—nice, attractive women who you thought wouldn’t give
someone like that the time of day—might like Will. He had gone into this way of looking that he never
used on Marcus: there was something in his eyes, a kind of softness that Marcus could see would really
work. While he was listening to the conversation, he practised with his own eyes—you had to sort of
narrow them, and then make them focus exactly on the other person’s face. Would Ellie like that? She’d
probably thump him.
‘Anyway,’ Rachel went on. ‘The last guy I went out with… He wasn’t one hundred per cent good
news, and he certainly couldn’t work out how Ali fitted in, and they ended up… not on good terms.’
‘He was a weirdo,’ said Ali.
‘Look, I’m sorry that everything’s become quite so… unsubtle,’ Rachel said. ‘I have no idea
whether… I mean, I don’t know, I just got the impression that on New Year’s Eve…’ She made a face.
‘Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. And it’s all your fault, Ali. We shouldn’t have to talk about this now.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Marcus brightly. ‘He really fancies you. He told me.’
‘Are you going cross-eyed?’ Ellie said after school on Monday.
‘I might be,’ Marcus said, because it was easier than saying he was practising a trick he’d learnt from
Will.
‘Maybe you need new glasses.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you get glasses that are stronger than that?’ Zoe asked. She wasn’t being nasty, he didn’t think,
just curious.
The problem was that they were walking to the newsagent’s between school and home, and they
weren’t talking about anything in particular. Will and Rachel had been sitting down, facing one another,
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and basically talking about how much they liked each other. Walking along the street meant that Marcus
kept having to twist his neck to do the eye thing, and he could see that this would make him look a little
peculiar, but the trouble was that he and Ellie never did any sitting down and facing each other. They
hung out at the vending machine, and sometimes, like today, they met up after school and just mooched
around for a while. So what was he supposed to do? How could you gaze into someone’s eyes if all you
ever saw was their ears?
The newsagent’s was full of kids from school, and the guy who owned the place was shouting at some
of them to go outside. He wasn’t like Mr Patel, who never shouted and never told kids to clear off.
‘I’m not going,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m a customer, not a kid.’ She carried on browsing over the sweet
display, her hand poised to strike when she saw something she liked.
‘You, then,’ said the owner to Marcus. ‘Outside, please.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Marcus,’ said Ellie. ‘It’s a breach of human rights. Just because you’re young
he’s calling you a thief. I might take him to court.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Marcus. ‘I don’t want anything.’
He stepped outside and read the postcards in the window. ‘YOUNG DISCIPLINARIAN—
UNIFORMS AVAILABLE’… ‘PUMA STRIKER BOOTS, SIZE 5, STILL IN BOX’.
‘You’re a pervert, Marcus.’
It was Lee Hartley and a couple of his mates; Marcus hadn’t had much trouble from them so far this
term, probably because he hung around with Ellie and Zoe.
‘What?’
‘I bet you don’t even know what those cards are all about, do you?’
Marcus couldn’t see how the first sentence and the second went together: if he was a pervert, then of
course he would understand what the cards were all about, but he let it pass, as he let everything pass at
times like this. One of Lee Hartley’s mates reached out, removed Marcus’s glasses and put them on.
‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘No wonder he doesn’t know what’s going on.’ He reeled around for a
moment, his arms stretched out in front of him, making grunting noises meant to show that Marcus was
in some way mentally deficient.
‘Can I have those back now, please? I can’t see much without them.’
‘Fuck
off
,’ said Lee Hartley’s mate.
Ellie and Zoe suddenly emerged from the shop.
‘You pathetic little shitbags,’ said Ellie. ‘Give him those back or you’ll get such a slap.’
Lee Hartley’s mate handed Marcus the glasses, but she hit him anyway, hard, somewhere between his
nose and his eye.
‘Tricked you,’ she said, and Zoe laughed. ‘Now run along, all of you, before I get really cross.’
‘Slags,’ said Lee Hartley, but he said it quietly as he was walking away.
‘Now why does hitting someone make me a slag, I wonder?’ said Ellie. ‘Boys are peculiar creatures.
Not you, though, Marcus. Well, you’re peculiar, but in a different way.’
But Marcus wasn’t really listening. He was too overcome by Ellie—by her style, and her beauty, and
her ability to beat people up—to pay any attention to what she was saying.
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-four hours later Marcus was still buzzing, and Will was finding it difficult to adopt the right
tone. It would be a mistake, he felt, for the boy to regard Ellie’s assault on Lee Somebody’s mate as
evidence of an uncontrollable passion: surely it proved something like the opposite—that while he relied
on teenage girls to defend him in the street, he was unlikely to be much of a catch for anybody. But then,
maybe Will was being too traditional in his thinking. Maybe that’s how things worked now, and until a
girl had smacked someone in the eye for you she wasn’t worth a second look. Either way, Marcus was
even more smitten than he had been before, and Will feared for him.
‘You should have seen her,’ Marcus enthused.
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‘I feel as though I did.’
‘Wham!’ said Marcus.
‘Yes. Wham. You said.’
‘She’s fantastic.’
‘Yes, but…’ Will knew he would have to outline his theory that Marcus’s current status as victim did
nothing for him sexually or romantically, even though it would be a rocky conversational road. ‘What
do you think
she
thinks about having to get you out of trouble?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s just… It’s not what normally happens.’
‘No. That’s why it’s so great.’
‘I’m not so sure. See, I think it’ll be hard for Ellie to think of you as a boyfriend if every time she buys
a Mars Bar someone steals your glasses and she has to turn herself into Jean-Claud Van Damme.’
‘Who’s Jean-Claud Van Damme?’
‘Never mind. D’you see what I’m getting at?’
‘What am I supposed to do about it then? Take karate lessons or something?’
‘All I’m saying is, it might not turn out to be the sort of relationship you want it to be. In my
experience romances don’t develop in this way. This looks more like pet and owner rather than
boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Marcus cheerfully.
‘You don’t mind being treated like a… like a
gerbil
?’
‘No. Course not. That’d do me. I just want to be with her.’ And he said it with such sincerity, and with
such a complete absence of self-pity, that for the first time ever Will was tempted to hug him.
Will had no intention of adopting the Ellie/Marcus/gerbil model with Rachel, and though he could
recognize the simplicity and decency of Marcus’s desire, his own was neither simple nor, frankly,
decent, and it was with this knowledge he intended to proceed. At least Ellie knew who and what
Marcus was, though, not that Marcus had any choice in the matter: that weird little speccy guy being
tormented outside the newsagent’s, that was Marcus, and nobody was pretending any different. The guy
who turned up for lunch with his twelve-year-old son, that wasn’t really Will, and somebody—namely
Will himself—was certainly pretending different. One day, he thought, he might learn the lesson that
lying about one’s very identity was a purely short-term strategy, useful only in relationships that had a
limited life-span. You could tell a bus-conductor or a taxi driver all sorts of rubbish, provided the
journey was brief, but if you intended to spend the rest of your life with somebody, then it was kind of
inevitable that she would find out a few things sooner or later.
Will decided he would correct any erroneous impressions he might have given slowly and patiently,
but halfway through their first time out alone together, he was reminded of the old April Fool’s Day joke
about Britain changing over to driving on the right, and making the changeover gradually. Either you
lied or you told the truth, it appeared, and that in-between state was pretty tricky to achieve.
‘Oh,’ was all Rachel said at first, when he told her he wasn’t Marcus’s natural father. She was trying
and failing to pick up a clump of seaweed with her chopsticks.
‘It’s not really seaweed, you know,’ said Will in a misguided attempt to make out that what he was
telling her wasn’t any kind of big deal—not to him, anyway. ‘It’s lettuce or something. They shred it
and fry it and put sugar and—’
‘So who is his natural father?’
‘Well,’ said Will. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that if he wasn’t Marcus’s father, then someone else
would have to be? Why did these things never occur to him? ‘It’s a guy called Clive who lives in
Cambridge.’
‘Right. And you get on OK with him?’
‘Yeah. We spent Christmas together, actually.’
‘So—sorry, I’m being a bit thick here—if you’re not Marcus’s natural father, and you don’t live with
him, then, you know, how is he your son?’
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‘Yes. Ha ha. I see what you mean. It must look very confusing from the outside.’
‘Tell me how it is on the inside.’
‘It’s just that sort of relationship. I’m old enough to be his father. He’s young enough to be my son.
So—’
‘You’re old enough to be the father of just about anyone under twenty. Why this particular boy?’
‘I don’t know. Just one of those things. Would you like to move on to wine now, or do you want to
stick with the Chinese beer? Anyway, tell me about your relationship with Ali. Is it as complicated as
mine and Marcus’s?’
‘No. I slept with his father and nine months later I gave birth, and that’s about it. Pretty
straightforward, but these things usually are.’
‘Yes. I envy you.’
‘I’m sorry to harp on about this, but I still haven’t got it all worked out. You’re Marcus’s stepfather,
but you don’t live with him or his mother.’
‘I suppose you could look at it that way, yes.’
‘How else could you look at it?’
‘Ha. I see what you mean,’ he said thoughtfully, as if he had just that second worked out that there was
only one way of looking at it.
‘Did you ever live with Marcus’s mother?’
‘Define "live with".’
‘Did you ever have a spare pair of socks at her house? Or a toothbrush?’
Say that Fiona had given him a pair of socks for Christmas. And say that he had left them at her house,
and hadn’t got around to picking them up yet. Then he could point out, with a clear conscience, that not
only had he once kept a spare pair of socks at Fiona’s house,
but they were still there
! Unfortunately,
however, she hadn’t given him socks, she had given him that stupid book. And he hadn’t even left the
book there anyway. So the dream sock scenario was just that—a dream.
‘No.’
‘Just… no?’
‘Yes.’
He picked up the last little spring roll, dunked it in the chilli sauce, put it in his mouth, and behaved as
though it were way too big, so he wouldn’t be able to speak for several minutes. Rachel would have to
do the talking, and she would probably want to talk about something else eventually. He wanted her to
tell him about the book she was currently illustrating, or her ambition to exhibit her work, or how much
she had been looking forward to seeing him. Those were the kinds of conversations he had envisaged;
he was fed up with talking about imaginary children, and even more fed up with talking about why he
had imagined them in the first place.
But Rachel simply sat there and waited for him to finish his mouthful, and however much he chewed
and grimaced and swallowed and choked he couldn’t make a mini spring roll last forever. So he told her
the truth, as he knew he would, and she was appalled, as she had every right to be.
‘I never actually said he was my son. The words "I have a son called Marcus" never passed my lips.
That’s what you chose to believe.’
‘Yeah, right. It’s me who’s the fantasist. I wanted to believe you had a son, so I let my imagination run
riot.’
‘You know, that’s a very interesting theory. I read this thing in the paper once about this guy who’d
taken all these middle-aged women for a ride, cleaned them out of their life savings because they were
convinced he was rich. And, the thing was, he didn’t even have to do anything to prove it. They just
believed him.’
‘So he told them he was rich. He lied. That’s different.’
‘Ah. Yes. I see what you mean. That’s sort of where the comparison breaks down, doesn’t it?’
‘Because you didn’t lie. I just made it up. I thought, Cute guy, if only he had a kid, a geeky son, pre-
teenage if possible, and then you turned up at my house with Marcus, and bingo! I made this crazy link
because of some deep psychological need in me.’
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