Free The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis Page A

really liked it anyway, and it’s old, and my dad, based on nothing, is allergic to it, and it’s gone. They’ve taken it to the dump and they’re looking for a new one.
    ‘Why didn’t you wait till you’ve got a new one before you chucked out the old one?’ I said.
    ‘Cos we’re mad,’ she said and giggled.
    ‘But what will you sit on?’
    ‘The chairs,’ she said, and I couldn’t argue with that.

    She asked how her lovely Eleni is and I told her she’s fine and how she’s really sorry about the blood. Mum said not to worry cos now it’s at the dump. She’d seen an advert in the paper and she’s off to take a look but Dad’s not going with her cos his guts are playing him up and he’s in bed with a fever and a book about shelving.
    ‘Go easy,’ I said.
    She asked me what I meant.
    ‘Just go easy,’ I said, ‘with all that stuff you’re doing to the house. You’re both knocking on and you should be paying someone to do all that.’
    ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘we’re not paying folk to do what we can do ourselves. What’s the point of that?’
    I could see lots of points to that because I paint big heads and people buy them and I’m lazy and I’d pay someone to brush my teeth if there was such a thing. ‘Oh well,’ I said instead, ‘I suppose so.’
    She said goodbye and then rattled on for another ten minutes about how it’s a good job that I don’t eat meat because the French are feeding shit to their cows. She didn’t say shit, of course. Dung, is what she said. Dung. I love Mum. I love the way she makes an effort.

 

4

    J. SHEEKEY’S, ST MARTIN’S COURT, LONDON

    I’m prodding at my tuna and crafting elaborate contours with the barley. I’m attempting a little barley head and squeezing the blood from my tuna to render the lips. Eleni’s got the fisherman’s pie but she’s not playing with it, she’s eating it, like everything’s all right, like everything’s as usual, as though last night’s epiphany never happened. But then again, she was asleep and I’ve said nothing so she’s entitled to eat her fisherman’s pie. And now I’m beginning to shake. I am, I’m definitely shaking.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ says Eleni. ‘You’re shaking.’
    ‘Oh, nothing,’ I say, looking for a dribble of soy sauce to work into the shadow beneath the nose.
    ‘What’s that?’ she says, looking at my barley face. ‘A face?’
    ‘Yep,’ I say, and grit my teeth, cos I hate people who say things like ‘yep’ and ‘nope’, and ‘poss’ and ‘gotcha’. But I say ‘yep’ and grit my teeth. Not my real teeth; the teeth in my brain. I’ll tell you about the teeth in my brain later.
    ‘Is something bothering you?’ says Eleni.
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘I think something is bothering for you.’ Her accent, or her grammar or her inflection, makes it sound like a question or an accusation or a reprimand. First it was the nibbling on her toast in Blackpool that got to me, and now it’s her accent. I love Eleni. I love her accent. What’s going on?
    ‘Well, maybe something is bothering me,’ I say, and I think that myaccent, my dull, Blackpudlian mumble, must make it sound like a confession
or a rejection or an ultimatum.
    Eleni puts down her fork and strokes my neck. I put down my fork next to hers and cover her hand with mine and press, like I love her. Like I love her for stroking my neck when I’m being such a moody prick. I stare at my fork. I stare at both our forks there on the crisp white cloth. And I think of Kirk and my heart fills with petrol.
    I tell her the story of Kirk’s revelation and the journey home and the stairs and the bed and the shit and the dream and how Lenny couldn’t face Brenda, and how Dad couldn’t face Tutankhamen’s queue, and how I could, and wanted to, and would have loved to, but didn’t, cos Dad couldn’t. And I tell her about Bob, the dead budgie, and Pat, the dead aunty, and Yoko and Bolton and Kirk’s pessimistic doctor, and