4

Three months had passed and still P slept on. Jo was at his bedside once again as it was their anniversary. They were not actually married, but they counted their anniversary from their first proper date and had always made the day as special as possible. To see P lying there in the hospital bed, wasting away, was almost too much to bear for Jo. Her mind went back to the previous year when she had surprised him by taking him to Prague for the weekend. He had joked that the amount of time they had spent in bed, she could have saved her money and stayed at home, but he was only teasing her. They had had a wonderful time. Now, she was staring at him in silence and he was little better than a photograph of the man she used to know.
She had tried everything she could think of and everything everybody else could think of. All to no avail. She had tried talking, reading to him, singing to him, slapping him, pinching him, stroking him, massaging him, shouting, kissing, fellating, punching, whispering, wafting smells under his nose and slipping things into his mouth. Nothing appeared to have the slightest effect and she was exhausted, totally miserable, hopeless and exhausted.
She had now started to resent him, what he was doing to her as well as himself, what he had done to her life over the past three months. ‘If you wanted me to lose some weight, you should have said I look fat’ she said aloud. ‘That would have done it’ barely audible this time. She was alone in the room with him again and knew now that she was talking only to herself.
‘What did I do to deserve this, P?’ She expected no answer now and got none. ‘Is this you now? Is this how you’ll be until you die? Lying here like a stale loaf in a closed shop?’ Again her only answer was her own increased breathing.
‘I can’t spend the rest of my life in here waiting for you to wake up, you know. Waiting for something that might never happen, just sit here and watch you get slowly older and older, seeing nothing but you and my reflection getting older and older’. She was close to tears again, but fought them back.
She edged closer to the bed and spoke more softly. ‘I love you, P. But nobody has any idea what is wrong with you!’ She stared at his eyes, begging and wishing for them to open, for him to recover, for him to reveal what the fuck was going on inside his head. She hardly knew what was going on inside his head at the best of times (or any other man’s head for that matter), but she desperately, desperately wanted to know now. More than ever before. She wanted him to tell her what had happened, why it had happened and that he was alright and was never going to leave her again. Even if he would wake up for just one minute, just one more minute to talk to him and for him to hear, to hear his voice, to kiss him and hold him and knew he could feel it. She leaned forward and pulled his left eyelid open. She shivered and recoiled, hastily dropping his eyelid closed again. He had dead eyes.
She stared and he slept on, motionless. They had tried everything on him now. His brain was monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week and checked regularly. It did not vary, well no more than any other sleeping brain varied in its electrical activity. It moved smoothly from deep sleep with little activity to the dreaming with increased activity, then back again. But he never woke, never carried on that upward surge when the dream state pushes upwards and outwards and forces the dreamer to wake.
‘I’ll give you a week, P’ she said suddenly, the decision surprising even her. ‘If you don’t wake up in a week, my life moves on’. She fought hard against the rising tears. How many tears can one body produce? How much pain and sobbing and sleeplessness and snot and grief can somebody take? She leant in to kiss him once on the mouth. ‘I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry’. She kissed him again and she could not help it, the tears started and one raced halfway down her cheek and fell onto his eyelid. If she was hoping for a magical miracle from a fairy story, she did not get it. All P did was sleep and get wet beneath her tears. Anger now mixed with her suffering, she felt as if her heart really was breaking, physically breaking.
She stood and wiped at her tears, flinching as she did so as her eyes were so sore. ‘You’ve got a week’ she whispered. ‘A week, my love’. Please use it, she thought. The tears started burning again and Jo rushed away as fast as she could. She was tired of being stopped in the street and asked if she was ok.
The God of miracles had stopped watching Jo. It had become too difficult for him.

In his head, P dreamed of fighting. A new school term and all the boys were itching for dinnertime to come round because they had gone without a dinner time game of footy for over a week! When the bell went for dinnertime, the boys dashed outside quicker than you could say ‘I say chaps, how about dashing outside for a quick game of footer’.
‘Hello P’ said Rachel as he zapped downstairs faster than a speeding schoolboy, but he had passed her like a zigzagging Daredevil and was out into the playground.
The match was fierce between the two classes as a week’s pent up frustration was let out. As the bell sounding the end of dinnertime went, the match was evenly poised at 27-26. P cut through the sluggish and tiring defence like a gazelle that could play football, skipped inside the full-back and had a clear run on goal, when he was viciously hacked down from behind by Billy Ponce.
P leapt to his feet with grazed hands and a throbbing, bleeding knee. He looked down and saw that the fall had also scraped a hole in his cords. They were almost new! This was only the second or third time he had worn them and he knew that his mother would go bananas. Or nuts. Or crackers. She would be a really angry type of food, anyway.
Billy had a smug grin on his face as P faced him, breathing hard with pain burning his hands and knee and tears burning his eyes.
‘Arrrrrrr. Have you hurt yourself, ya big POOF?’ That was the final straw. P launched himself at Billy Ponce and the two of them tumbled to the concrete playground floor. Billy’s head banged against the hot concrete as P furiously pummelled his body with punches, tears of anger running down his cheeks. Billy grabbed hold of P’s hair and was trying to both push him off and punch his face with the same hand as P pinned him down and continued to rain apparently effectless blows to his body and head.
The other boys surrounded them instantly, casting strong sunny shadows over their fighting forms as they grappled on the floor shouting ‘FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT’, ‘DO ‘IM BILL’ and ‘KICK ‘IM IN THE NUTS’. The fight lacked style and quickly developed into a grabbing and rolling about sort of fight. P could not feel any pain from the tugging of his hair or the weak punches being thrown at him, but he did remember feeling the concrete scrape at his knees and elbows and thinking ‘that smarts’.
Mr Bong arrived to break it up. His clipped, refined accent cut through the shouting and his tall, elegant body cut through the crowd. ‘Now, now, chaps. Stand aside, chaps, stop that fighting at once. AT ONCE, I said!’ Mr Bong pulled the fighting boys to their feet still gripping each other and punching, then pulled them apart as easily as he would open a bag of crisps. ‘I SAID STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY’. They stopped. The bell sounded again and it was time to go inside.
‘The rest of you return to your classes. QUIETLY NOW. You two, follow me. I SAID QUIETLY. Any more fighting and you’ll answer to me.’ P and Billy Ponce followed Mr Bong into school and at the bottom of the stairs, Billy nudged him to make him trip up the stairs. P tripped and blushed, then turned on Billy instantly and seeing he had another smug grin on his face, lashed out with a punch that landed on Billy’s chin and sent him reeling two paces backwards. Billy staggered against the wall surprised, then returned the punch and again Mr Bong was forced to pull them apart and immediately grabbed them by the collars and dragged them up to the headmaster’s office.
Mr Bong casually knocked open the Head’s office door (without knocking!!) and ushered them into the dusty room. As Mr Bong told the tale, P studied the headmaster’s room. It was incredibly crowded, half-emptied coffee cups, over-spilling ashtrays, old black and white photographs of the head with someone or other and piles and piles of books, papers and magazines all lit by Summer sunshine and a layer of dust. Some were taller than him! The piles, not the magazines.
As Mr Bong came to a rousing finish to the story, in which he leapt in to save the boys from hurting themselves, the head turned and stared at both boys. Ferociously. Billy and P averted his stare by looking at the floor, which had suddenly become very interesting for both of them. P looked at his lovely new trainers. He loved those trainers. They were great. They were special goalscoring trainers his father had told him, even better than Clyde Best’s and he was right. P did not really need a new pair of trainers, but his father had come home early in the morning a few days ago with about five million pairs of trainers! They had all laughed as they emptied box after box of trainers and took their pick of the best ones, then his father said he had to take the rest of them back to the shop and laughed really hard as he went out. P did not understand this joke and when he asked him about it that evening, his father, who was a bit sleepy from booze, laughed hard again, called him a funny bastard and fell asleep.
‘This is disgraceful behaviour. Do you hear me? Disgraceful.’ The head shook his head and tutted a few times as P’s attention was snapped back to the Head’s study. Mr Bong joined in with the tutting, but when P looked up, Mr Bong was studying all the mess in the room and seemed to be tutting his disapproval at the state of the room rather than the two combatants.
P sneaked a look at Billy and was surprised to see a bloody nose and a huge lump forming on his face. P’s chest swelled with pride. His first real fight and look how he had triumphed. He now saw himself as Muhammad Ali dancing around Billy Ponce and cutting him down with vicious jabs and upper cuts.
In his head, P was Ali. I’m too pretty, I’m too fast and I’m too good for a gorilla like you, Ponce. I am the greatest.
‘LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU’ roared the headmaster. They looked.
‘Do you have anything to say for yourselves?’
Billy Ponce said ‘no’ timidly.
Muhammad Ali shook his head and put his hands in his pockets.
‘TAKE YOUR HANDS OUT OF THOSE POCKETS’ roared the head again. Muhammad Ali took his hands out of his pockets.
‘I shall be talking to both your parents about this and warning them about your future behaviour. Now shake hands’. They shook hands. ‘I meant with each other’ sighed the Headmaster and they did so. ‘Now back to class, you pair of ruffians and apologise to your teacher for being late’. The headmaster dismissed them and Mr Bong led them back to class with a firm ‘let that be a lesson to you’.
P looked at Billy and grinned. Billy, to his amazement, smiled back. They both giggled and were told off again by Mr Bong.
P felt great. He could feel a couple of lumps coming up on his head, he had given Billy Ponce a pounding and a nose bleed and would be the star of the class for a few days. LAYDEEEEZZ AND GENNELMEN. THE NEW, HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORRRRRRLD, MUHAMMAD ‘THE POUNDER’ ALIIIIIIIIIII. He tripped me up to make me look silly, but I got up and I whacked that Billy.
He could hear everyone whispering as they walked into the classroom and the cheers of the crowd as he was crowned champion. P spent most of the afternoon looking smugly around the class and at Billy’s ever increasing lump.
Eventually, Mrs Currie sneaked up behind him and roared in his ear like a dragon for him to stop messing about and get on with his work. Which he did as soon as he peeled himself from the ceiling.
After school, everyone wanted to talk to him, he was a star, but he just casually swaggered out of school, exaggerating his performance. All was going splendidly until Rachel appeared.
‘Oh, P, P, look at your face. Does it hurt? Quick, let’s get you home and put some ice on it. Oooohhh it looks reeeeeally sore. Does it-’
‘Get off me’ he shouted attempting to push her away. ‘I don’t want any ice, just sod off’.
‘Now that’s not very nice’ said Rachel. ‘I’m only trying to help. Now come along, let’s get you home’. Everyone was giggling at him now. His moment of triumph had evaporated, his performance ruined. He was dragged past the giggling hoards by Rachel and off down the road. He hated her.
Now Rachel was heavyweight champion and he would not dare have a fight with her.
Muhammad Ali was sat at Rachel’s table, dabbed with ice, pampered, annoyed and finally, made to walk home with a girly bandana on his head to keep the ice in.
He ran home and had freezing water running down his face by the time he got home. This loosened the scab on his head and made the water turn red. He burst into the house with puffed cheeks, a soaking bandanna and red water pouring down his face.
‘Hey Mum, I won a fight’.
His mother looked at him and fainted.
Six months had passed and still P slept.
His mother’s health had worsened considerably since P had started his sleep. She tried initially not to think of her son in hospital at all. He was alright really, just a day or two and he’d be right as ninepence. ‘Yeh, ninepence is about right for him’ said Ginge when P’s mother had mentioned it to him. ‘He was never the full shilling before he went in’. P’s mother slapped Ginge hard across the back of the head for that comment, sending a partially chewed piece of bacon flying onto the table and herself scurrying out of the house to the shops.
She took the long walk to the shops, through the park. There she sat beneath a weeping willow and cried alone, whilst watching the ambivalent ducks.
As P slept into the second week, then the third, then the second month, the reality which had hit Jo on the first morning, finally hit his mother hard too. By the fourth month, the worry and stress of his condition mixed with age and her regular trips to the hospital had brought on a stroke and by six months, the complications had meant she needed constant attention and had a health visitor daily.
Jo had painfully, heartbreakingly been true to her word and after the week deadline she had given him had passed, decided that for her own health, she had to leave P behind. All that changed in the first week after her decision was that she stayed at home sobbing every night instead of sobbing at P’s bedside. At least she had the home comforts.
Sam still visited P as often as he could, as did his Uncle Ginge and a couple of old friends. They read football reports from the paper, told him of what this aunt was up to or workmate D or whoever, but it was getting harder and harder for them, too.
The effort of seeing P so regularly was too much of a strain on any life, especially that of somebody who had to go to work everyday. Six months on and P’s only visitors were Jo twice a month (that was the limit she had given herself and she stuck to it), Sam, Ginge and his mother when she was able.
Old man Fang had taken legal and medical advice before paying and laying him off. Nobody at work argued for P, especially not Alan who took P’s job once his apprenticeship was over, just as his relationship with his Angelina ended.
Jo had got her life back on track, was working well again and had regained some of the weight she had lost. She and Sam were seeing each other every weekend to help fill the void they both found themselves in and Ginge was glad of the rest the weekends brought once work and caring for P’s mother was done for the week.
P was gradually being forgotten.

In a fluffy white corner of melodic paradise, the God of Miracles was busy with several projects at once. He had almost perfected a cure for hayfever and was wondering exactly where to whom he would release this great discovery, when he became distracted by another statue of the virgin mother that wept and was deeply annoyed at this transparent fake, then decided it was time for a genuine miracle and he would make a statue of Mary weep for real in an adjoining village.
All these distractions were putting him off finalising his next great discovery to release to mankind. A car that ran on water with no emissions other than steam and a remote control chair that farted at the press of a button.
Despite being so busy, he was further distracted by a flickering light from the P panel. He pressed a button and looked down onto the scene. P was lying in his hospital bed, as usual. There were four figures surrounding him; his mother, his uncle Ginge, his friend Sam and the lovely Jo. The God of Miracles warmed slightly at the sight of Jo, looking desperately sad, yet so hot in her flimsy white summer dress. He turned up the volume and decided to listen in.
‘Haven’t they got any idea at all?’
‘None whatsoever, apparently’.
‘I don’t know how much I can take of this’.
‘I know what you mean’.
‘Why? I mean why is he like this? Surely somebody must be able to find out?’
‘All this equipment, all these specialists, you mean’.
The God of Miracles looked into their minds. Confusion, pain, tiredness, misery, fading hope. The ape’s mother was feeling severe physical pain as well as mental anguish. She was keeping a great secret from the others. Jo was telling herself she could handle anything, she could leave him behind, but she was trying to deceive herself more than anyone.
Suddenly, there was a swish of a breeze and a feeling of being watched. The God of Miracles turned to face his visitor and immediately felt humbled and embarrassed by this vision before him. Tall, immaculate (naturally) in a perfectly dark two piece suit, supernova white shirt and cool shades.
‘Good afternoon, Sir’ stammered the God of Miracles.
‘No need to worry, 41’ said the visitor. ‘Just making my rounds, doing a few spot checks’.
‘Everything’s hunky dory here, sir’ replied the God of Miracles, lowering the volume on the P scene.
‘What are you working on?’ enquired the visitor and the God of Miracles began to run through some of his projects while trying to surreptitiously turn off the P scene.
Back in the hospital, Jo caught her breath, torn between unbearable pain and longing and the boredom from listening to P’s mother rattling on. ‘He moved’ she said softly, barely believing it herself. His eye had twitched, just for a second. As the other three present looked at her in stunned silence, she was looking at P. His eye moved again.
‘THERE! Did you see it?’ she asked, suddenly excited and shaking. They all got to their feet and leant in closer, babbling in excitement to each other.
‘Quick Ginge, get a doctor’ shouted his mother.
‘Do you think he’s coming round?’ asked Sam, not daring to believe it.
P’s eyes suddenly banged open and stared straight ahead. The wall at the far end of the bed disappeared and he could see a chubby, red-faced man speaking deferentially to a tall, elegant, well dressed man in sunglasses, the smaller man virtually prostrating himself.
P sat up and looked around the room in bewilderment. He was astonished to see Jo, Sam and his mother staring at him, seemingly frozen, motionless, while at the doorway Ginge was similarly frozen on his way out. P got to his feet and walked towards the two figures he could see talking and gesticulating at the end of the room, although he could hear nothing. Silence ruled totally wherever this place was.
He walked towards the figures and shouted. They ignored him or were unaware of him. He shouted again, louder and waved his arms. Again they ignored him. He reached out towards them, but snatched his hand back, rubbing and blowing on it as all it had touched was extreme cold.
He turned back to look at the room. Jo, Sam and his mother were still staring at the bed, as if he were still lying there. He turned back to look at the two figures, just as the taller, cooler one gestured toward the other and left. The smaller, chubby one span back quickly to his desk, pressed a button and stared in astonishment directly at P.
‘Can you hear me?’ demanded P and the chubby man flinched back in horror. He fell upon his desk and pressed buttons, then faded away in a swirl of mist and light, to be replaced by a blank hospital wall. P reached out and gingerly touched it, but there was no cold, no shock, just an ordinary wall.
P turned back to the room and felt a wave of cool water wash through his brain. The water turned to icy pain and P threw his hands to his head and fell to his knees screaming. The God of Miracles adjusted a few more knobs and the pain within P’s skull slipped away, to be replaced by bitterness and anger.
P got to his feet, snarling. He walked over to the bed and climbed into it. The room suddenly became colder. The light faded to darkness, the only illumination from the corridor, shading Ginge in silhouette. Ice formed on windows and hung in blue-white stalactites from the ceiling, the life disappeared from the monitoring machines at P’s bedside. ‘I know what you’re fucking up to’ he spat at Sam as he settled into his bed. ‘You too’ he said, pointing a finger into Jo’s frozen face. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what was going on with you and that Michael from your office. I’m not a fucking MORON’ he screamed into her face.
‘And as for you’ he pointed at his mother. ‘You HIT ME!’ he bellowed and took a swing at his mother’s face. His fist stopped just before it hit and P fell back into the bed, sobbing.
The ice melted, the light returned, the monitors flickered back on and Jo, Sam, Ginge and his mother moved again, suddenly talking at him, shaking him, pleading.
Despite their efforts, P did not move and slept on.

‘Now get in there and stop pissing me about’ shouted his mother with a shove and he was thrust inside the school gate, his face burning as he watched his mother walk purposefully away.
Terry Gordon appeared behind him and pushed him, then laughed as he fell, crying onto the playground floor. ‘Poof’ shouted Gordon and ambled towards the school building. P jumped to his feet and ran as hard as he could towards Gordon, then hit him as hard as he could on the back of his head, knocking him to the floor.
By the time Mr Wood arrived to break them up, the floor was red with Terry Gordon’s blood, mixed with the ice crystals of the morning frost. Mr Wood was astonished how hard he had to drag to stop the lad smashing poor Terry Gordon’s head against the floor.
One of the other teachers, Mrs Shirley, ran over and helped Gordon to his feet, blood streaming down his face, mixed with tears of pain and terror, a huge gash opened up on his forehead by the power of P’s attack.
P was led to the headmaster’s study and sat down by the Head’s secretary and given a cup of tea, which he sipped, then curled into a ball and sobbed.

In his head, P dreamed of Leela. The Doctor had seen off the invasion of the cybermats, now all that remained was to get back into the TARDIS and leave this infested cyberhole of a planet forever. Just one thing stood between him and the TARDIS, Rachel Axon, destroyer of worlds and here she was, in his sights walking across the playground.
The brave, daring and it had to be said, dashed handsome Doctor ducked around behind the cybertoilets and pulled out his mighty weapon. One blast from his sonic devastator would rid the universe of her menace forever. The Doctor peeked out and carefully took aim as she unknowingly walked closer. And closer.
‘Just a little closer’ he whispered to himself. ‘Juuuuust a little closer’. WEEOOEEOOEEOOEEOOEEOOEEOOEEOOEEOO. He fired and Rachel’s head exploded in a crimson cloud of brains, bones and blood, coating passers-by in splatters of red and causing her now headless body to sway for a second before collapsing to the concrete. The body oozed blood, creating a deep, red puddle on the hopscotch grid, as people stared at her rapidly decaying corpse and girly girls ran screaming towards the dinner ladies. The universe was now a safer place, thanks to him. Thank you, Doctor.
‘Hello P. Damn! He was hoping that she would not see him.
‘Oh. Hello Rachel’ said Doctor P quickly standing and hiding his sonic devastator.
‘What are you doing hiding behind the toilets?’
‘Erm, just err looking around’.
‘Behind the toilets?’ she asked.
‘Erm, yeah. Look, why don’t you buzz off and do some girlie things and leave me alone?’
‘Behind the toilets’ she said, smugly.
‘Yes, behind the toilets’ he said, angrily. The Doctor angrily pushed past the vile Rachel Axon in a huff and ran into the cyberplayground, the TARDIS and adventure were calling. He didn’t have precious time to waste talking to girls. Unless it was the lovely Leela, of course. Leela was a real girl with a knife and a leather leotard and lots of exposed leg. P got strange feelings when he watched Leela on Saturday nights. Since she joined the Doctor, his father and Herman had become glued to the show, as well. They never liked it when Sarah-Jane was in it.

It is strange the things that one remembers. P had absolutely no memory whatsoever of his first or last days at school, his first kiss, his first pube or even his first wank, whereas he could recall with crystal clear clarity finding a Spidey mask in an early copy of Spiderman when he was about five (Blistering front cover with Spidey in a high-rise fight to the death with the Vulture, as New York sprawled beneath them in eye-melting, groin-tightening Marvel colour), eating a slab of bread pudding the size of a table-tennis table whilst watching the Sea Devils, sugar all around his mouth, the occasional grain dropping onto Spidey’s adventures as he impatiently tried to watch, read, eat and put on a mask at the same time. A Spidey Mask!!!!!! It must have been good if he left a piece of bread pudding to put it on. He thought that the rubber must have reacted with the sugar, which was why he had to go to hospital that afternoon to have it cut off. P was so upset. A perfectly good Spidey mask ruined!
He could still see in his mind a girl he saw standing at a bus stop one blistering Summer’s afternoon when he was fifteen; blonde, long-legged, bra-less and wearing a semi-transparent top. There were a million other pointless episodes in his life that came swimming to the surface of the cesspool of his mind at the cajoling of the God of Miracles. Most major occasions had bypassed his memory banks and slipped into the desert of history. One of the most important occasions in his life, however he could recall perfectly.
It was the Saturday afternoon when something strange happened. Instead of visiting one of the Nan’s, going shopping with his mother or playing football with the boys, he found on the breakfast table a shining red and white piece of card the bore the legend Arsenal Football Club. A ticket! A ticket for the Arsenal!!!!! That afternoon he found himself sitting beside Herman and his father at Highbury. Highbury! The home of Football! Out of the blue his father had thought of taking him and his bothersome brother to see the Arsenal play West Ham. This was most odd, but very, very welcome. But then his mother and father had been behaving strangely for weeks. They had both been mooching miserably about arguing, then cuddling, then sulking, then shouting at him, Herm and C.
But suddenly his father had cheered up and P did not care exactly why they were going to the Arsenal. They were going and that was enough. It was like getting a special spring birthday, a smashing present and a huge cake all rolled into one. And then, almost before he realised, they were walking down Avenell Road, clunking through the chunky turnstile manned by a bloke smelling of sweat and hot dogs and into the ground. As he reached the top of the stairs and gazed down onto the pitch, he almost cried. He had never had such an emotional moment in his life before. He was there! At the Arsenal looking down onto the pitch where just minutes from that moment his heroes (now Charlie-less, alas) would run out onto and murder the Hammers. P wanted to savour the moment, drink in the atmosphere, feel the noise, remember-.
‘Are you gonna stand there all day?’ called his father from a few steps away. ‘Get a bloody move on’. Ho-hum. His father never had a sense of occasion. P took his seat. They weren’t in the North Bank, of course, because that was the Home end and his father and Herm were West Ham boys who did not want their heads kicked in. Under his anorak, P was wearing his brand new England shirt that his father had bought him a few days earlier without it being his birthday or anything. Herm had got a West Ham shirt and P moaned and moaned that he wanted an Arsenal shirt.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to take an Arsenal shirt. You’ll ‘ave ta put up with what you’ve got’ his father had said. P still made an effort by wearing an Arsenal scarf.
He gripped his father’s hand fiercely and he gripped P’s just as tightly. P told his father that he was hurting him. ‘Not as much as you might get hurt if Arsenal score’ he replied. P looked confused and he gestured for him to tear his eyes away from the still empty pitch for a second and take in his surroundings. As his father had bought the tickets from West Ham, they were surrounded by West Ham supporters and at that tender age they all looked very big, very fierce and very eager to tear into any Arsenal supporter.
Police surrounded the West Ham section, but they seemed an awfully long way away should he require urgent assistance. His father and Herman were nearer, but they were West Ham supporters and if anything more likely to join in than assist him flee from a beating. P gulped a cartoon gulp and prayed for an easy afternoon. His father said an easy afternoon would mean West Ham winning. P sat there wondering which was worse, being beaten up by West Ham fans or sitting amongst happy West Ham fans while Arsenal lost. The latter, he decided and cheered Arsenal on as they ran out.
The game began and P could not believe the noise. It seemed like everyone in the ground was screaming as hard as they could for no reason. HOOOAOOAOOAROOOROOROAOOAOROARR it went.
P was also amazed by the language! He had never heard swearing on such a scale.
‘FUCKING SEND ‘IM OFF’.
‘FUCK OFF, KIDD, YOU CUNT’.
‘WHOOOOOOO’S THE WANKER IN THE BLACK?’ It was quite an experience.
Midway through the first half, Arsenal scored. Three-quarters of the ground erupted in noise and flapping arms, as did P, a lone, small voice amid a sea of angry faces.
His father had a quiet word. ‘Do you wanna get us fucking lynched? If they score again, keep your gob shut or we’ll have to go ‘ome’.
All the other Arsenal fans were allowed to cheer, it wasn’t fair! Then he remembered his surroundings and noticed some of the very large faces glowering at him and his father and he understood. Herman was wearing a West Ham shirt and seemed safe and P was sure that these grown men wouldn’t bother with a little weed like him. Still, he did not want to put this to the test and so did not utter another sound throughout the game.
Arsenal won 3-0. P had to content himself with smug smiles as the other two goals flew in. His father and Herman did not want to talk about the game going home in the car, despite P enthusing about Arsenal’s brilliant attacking football and clinical finishing. These phrases were met with appreciative, understanding looks on the Big Match, but now they were met with ‘Shut the fuck up or you’ll feel the back of my ‘and’.
P shut the fuck up and sat smugly in the back of the car grinning at the world.
The following month, Arsenal played West Ham at Highbury again in the sixth round of the FA Cup. After suffering just a few weeks earlier, his father refused to go through it again, so P had to listen in on the radio.
Arsenal were pretty crap now. Not as crap as West Ham were, but still crap, languishing in the bottom half of the table and without a sniff of success for a few years. But a win today would mean the semi-final! P could feel Wembley beckoning once again and after stuffing them 3-0 the previous month, surely West Ham would present no problem. His father and Herman refused to listen with him, so alone in his bedroom P listened, excited, expectant, hopeful, then surprised, then angry, then sick. West Ham astonishingly won 2-0 on a mud patch of a pitch and P quickly did a runner to avoid seeing Herman when he discovered the score.
It did not make any difference. Herm was gleefully waiting for him on his return and he was merciless. P was sure Herman enjoyed the anticipation of what he was going to do to him as much as actually seeing him, the sicko. A life of sadism beckoned for Herman. Just when P thought he could not hate him any more, West Ham knocked Arsenal out of the cup and a whole new dimension of hatred opened up for him.
P went in for dinner expecting his father to dish out more of the same, but he was lying on the sofa, strangely pale and quiet. He wasn’t even doing his hippo snore. He didn’t even have any dinner, which was unheard of, and didn’t mention the football at all. Even when Match of the Day was on. This was most odd. Herman was very disappointed with him, who he expected to taunt P almost as much as he had done and was very cross when he thought P had got off lightly.

In his head, P dreamed of his father. Monday morning. Freezing cold, ice on the windows and Jack Frost prodding his warm bits with icy fingers yet again. On mornings like those P often felt a touch of déjà vu. O perhaps he didn’t. He looked at his watch. Ten past nine? That couldn’t be right. His watch must have stopped, thought P and he was mugged by sleep.
P awoke the second time that morning and again looked at his watch. Twenty to ten. That’s odd, that’s very odd, he thought. He got up and wandered into the living room to find his father gazing out of the window with a mournful expression and his mother slumped on the sofa, crying. This was awkward. Had they been fighting again? The circumstances and after effects were the same although this was different somehow. His mother looked up at him and sobbed. P was amazed at how old and haggard she looked, with her sagging cheeks and puffy, red eyes. His father turned to look at him and P could have sworn that he had been crying, too, except that Dads never cry.
His father walked over to P, slipped an arm around his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. Something funny was going on and P felt incredibly awkward.
‘Alright, son?’
‘Yeah’ he replied, puzzled and frowning. ‘Why aren’t I going to school?’
‘I thought I’d let you have a day off, today’
‘Great!’ he replied, excited for a second until he looked over at his mother. There was an edged silence. ‘Is Mum alright?’
‘She’ll be alright in a minute. Go and get dressed or something’. P walked slowly back to his room and clambered back into bed. There he lay, staring at the ceiling, keeping very still and trying to catch anything that was being said in the living room. He was concentrating on listening so hard, that it wore him out and five minutes later he was asleep.

The next morning everything was back to normal. Almost. His mother and father were very quiet, but that was all. He went to school, came home for dinner, went to bed and got up the next day to start again.
However, a few weeks later when the whole episode had been consigned to the dustbin of his mind, he was woken up by K. With breakfast. In bed!!!
‘What are you doing here?’ he managed to mumble between mouthfuls of toast.
‘Making sure you get up and go to school, so hurry up with that breakfast’ K replied.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Mum and Dad have had to go to the hospital for a while, so I’m taking you to school’.
‘Why have they gone to hospital?’
‘Cos Dad’s not feeling too well’.
‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘I don’t know’.
‘Who’s gonna pick me up from school?’ he demanded angrily.
‘ME! Now will you shut it and hurry up’ K shouted. P shut up and ate his breakfast in a sulk. K never used to shout at him. Maybe Colin keeps asking her to tell her father not to rip his balls off.
After school, K was there to meet him.
‘Come on’ she said, ‘ we’re going to see Dad in hospital.’
Colin drove them to the hospital in his clapped out Cortina that stank of smokey oil without saying a word. His car was so noisy, you could not talk in it anyway. Colin liked to concentrate on his driving, apparently. P had still not heard him say more than about twenty words, apart from No thanks.
They arrived at hospital and Colin drove carefully away, over the kerb and causing another motorist to call him the most dreadful names. P didn’t like the hospital one bit. The smell reminded him of the school toilets after someone had thrown up in them, that fake clean smell. People, plastered, tubed up or pale with God knows what were lying on beds with wheels in corridors, looking hopefully at anyone that passed by. Doctors, nurses, cleaners and ambulance drivers all looked tired and drawn, as if they hadn’t slept for weeks. Paint and grimy wallpaper peeled from the walls. Shoes squeaked on the fake clean floor. As they walked down long, grey corridors searching for his father’s ward, they heard snippets of screams, moans and protestations as they passed closed doors. Tired, disinterested eyes seemed to look from every doorway.
It all seemed so cluttered. Boxes, papers, chairs and even people were stacked everywhere. There seemed to be no empty space.
They eventually found his father’s ward and wandered over to his bed to find him sitting up wearing pyjamas! P laughed heartily at the sight of him in pyjamas, but everyone gave him BAD looks for laughing, so he shut up.
‘Hello Dad. Why are you in bed?’
‘Coz I’m ill, boy’. He did look ill. A bit yellow about the eyes. He probably needed a fag and a good cough. He was always praising the effects of a good cough was his father.
‘Oh. Why are you in bed here instead of in bed at home?’
‘Coz the doctor said I had to stay here’. The Doctor?
‘Which doctor?’
‘No, an ordinary one’ replied his father with a laugh that quickly turned into a really long cough. There. P just knew one was coming. He probably felt a whole lot better after that, even if he did not look it. Everyone else that was stood around the bed, Mum, C, Herm, Ginge, K and Nanny Plinge, laughed initially but stopped quickly when his father coughed. They all looked really serious. Everyone was asking him how he felt and he didn’t look well and they were sure he’d be out soon.
Ruby arrived with mascara running down her face and gave his father a kiss that left lipstick on his mouth. P cringed at the sight, but was amazed that his father did not wipe it off! ‘Traffic’s a bastard and I’m sure that cunt of a cab driver overcharged me. How are ya, babe?’ said Ruby, as everyone started talking at once and his mother spat on her hankie and wiped Ruby’s lippie of his father’s face.
P looked around. The light was so bright in here everyone was narrowing their eyes. Brighter than outside. It was like a Chinese takeaway in there. They were sitting in a huge, long room full of men in pyjamas lying in bed. Most of them looked ill. A few looked dead, but some were reading papers and things and looking well. Not ill at all.
Nobody had as many visitors as his father. He had seen a film like this once. Sid James was in it and everyone seemed to be having a great laugh. This was nothing like that.
P strolled down to the end of the ward looking at each man in bed as he went, smiling at the ones that were awake, having a really good look at the ones with their eyes closed in case they were dead. One old man looked very dead. P could see through his skin to all the veins and bones inside his face. P thought about telling the nurse that he was dead so that the sad man in the corridor could come in and have some sleep, but there wasn’t a nurse about, so he just strolled back to his father’s bed looking at some more beds.
One old man was asleep, snoring. P stepped quietly in closer to have a good look. The man had an enormous mouth that went in all the way around like a plughole. He had no teeth and dribble seeped from the corner of his mouth and made a little stream down the pillow onto the bed where it nestled in a frothy pool. The hair on top of his head was a different colour from the hair near his ears and the hair at the front of his head was stuck together in a line and was slightly lifted at the front so that P could see the bald head underneath.
As the man snored his head rose and fell slightly, giving P the perfect view of the bald bit when he breathed out. P was transfixed. This was amazing!
He was suddenly yanked away from his fascinated examination by his mother, who gave him a whack on the arm and told him to keep still and be good. The smack didn’t really hurt, but it was in front of everyone, so he sulked anyway.
A nurse in a different uniform walked through the ward telling everyone it was time to go. P was called over to his father, who reached out his hand, which caused him to flinch back, but a prod in the back from his mother pushed him back into range, but his father just stroked his hair and gave him a pound! A POUND! P stared at it in amazement. A whole pound.
P said thank you in his very best voice and left with his mother and the others. Ginge went home, but his mother took the rest of them to the shops opposite the hospital and bought them all FISH AND CHIPS!! FISH AND CHIPS AND A POUND! P hoped his father stayed in hospital for ages, this was great.
‘What do you want, P?’
‘Chips!’ P said with relish.
‘What do you want with your chips’ asked Mum, annoyed.
‘Fish!’
‘Cod and chips and beef pie and chips three times, please’ said his mother to the waiter.
‘Oh, I wanted saveloy’ P said, disappointed.
‘Just sit there and shut up!’ P sat there and shut up and sulked. A few minutes later, the food arrived.
‘Is it alright to smoke at this table?’ his mother asked the waiter.
‘The whole restaurant is smoking’ said the waiter.
‘Call the fire brigade!’ P shouted with a grin. His mother slapped him across the head and smiled weakly at the waiter, who responded accordingly. P sulked again and ate his chips.
He seemed to be the only one enjoying it, though. P and Herman were the only two to finish! They all went home on the bus and P was dreaming of what he could get with his pound. He wondered how much an air gun would cost, why his father was so ill that he had to wear pyjamas, why they kept calling the nurse sister (when they had never even seen her before) and why that old man had a solid lump of hair.
The third time they went to see his father in the hospital was not nearly as interesting. And P didn’t get a pound this time. He decided that he was not going to come anymore. His father just lie there talking so quietly that nobody could hear him and now he wasn’t getting any chips either.
A few days later he woke up to the sound of moaning. He went into the living room to find Mum, C, K, Nanny Plinge and Herman all crying. Herman crying? His father was dead, he was told after he had been sat down and given tea and biscuits. Dead? That couldn’t be right.
‘Does that mean we aren’t going to hospital today?’ P asked. His mother cried even harder. Annette arrived with more biscuits and papers. She gave him three bags of crisps and the new copy of Spider-Man. ‘GREAT’.
‘Now, get into bed and read them and I’ll bring you some more tea’ said Annette.
P started reading Spider-Man, but couldn’t concentrate with all the noise going on. He tried to keep up with the story of Spidey’s latest, most dangerous adventure yet against the Vulture. But, as he looked at the bodies lying in the street while the Vulture zoomed off into the sky, he realised that he was dead. His Dad was dead. As dead as those people lying in the street. As dead as a flat drawing on a piece of paper, even Spidey paper.
He would not be woken up by his coughing, hear him laughing, get told off, hear his snoring on a Sunday afternoon, get pocket money, take a slap, see him creeping into his bedroom on Christmas Eve and pretend not to, sit on the sofa with him watching It’s A Knockout and a million other things.
When Annette brought in more tea, P was crying harder than anyone.

They forced him to see his father before they buried him to be worm food. That’s revenge for all the worms he killed for fishing, thought P.
He walked slowly up to the coffin, full of dread. Years of watching vampire and zombie movies were now taking their toll and he was filled to the brim with trepidation and fear as he imagined a decomposing, smiling, evil Dad dragging P into his worm filled casket and taking him to zombie pitch fork hell.
P reached the coffin with eyes closed. It took him a few seconds to force himself to open them. There he was. His father. His dead Dad. Nobody else in his class had a dead Dad. Terry Chesterfield, the smelliest boy in the world, didn’t have a father, but that was only because he had run away with their old dinner lady. That wasn’t the same. It was not the same as having a dead Dad. They all looked at him in a funny way when they found out, but P did not care.
P looked down at him lying silently amongst the soft purple upholstery. He looked like he was asleep, except that his mouth was closed. If anyone tried to close his mouth while he was asleep he made a funny croaking, choking noise, like a strangled frog. Sometimes P closed his mouth just for a laugh or to show someone what he did.
Now he was looking at him in his purple-lined coffin (he hated purple), waiting for him to sound like a strangled frog and wake up. But he didn’t. He stayed still and stayed dead.
He was wearing his wedding suit with his tie done up right for a change and very clean fingers and fingernails. It must have taken them days to clean those nails. They were always dirty and yellow.
The more P looked at him, the less it looked like him. Mouth closed, clean fingernails, neat hair, tie done right. They were making him look nice so that God would let him into Heaven. God had better have a really short memory or his father had no chance. P looked at him again and started to cry, so they took him away and gave him some tea and cake.

P got the day off school when they buried him in the ground to be eaten by worms. Even though he wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral, he still got the day off, being looked after by Annette.
Everyone came back crying or trying not to cry.
But after he went to bed, he could hear people laughing.
He got up and walked to the living room, where Mum, Nan, C, K and Herman were talking to people he had never seen before and some of them were smiling and laughing.
‘WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING’ he cried at the nearest, an old man with greased down hair and no neck. ‘WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING WHEN MY DAD’S DEAD?’ The room fell silent.
His mother came over and walked him back to bed. ‘They’re not laughing at him, darling. They’re remembering him and the laughs they had with him’.
‘But they shouldn’t be laughing. He’s dead’.
‘I know darling’ said his mother, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘They’re laughing to stop themselves from crying’.
Then his mother tucked him into bed and told him a story about his father that he had never heard before. A story about how, when P was a baby, he had upset all the other babies at his Christening by sneezing almost continually, long and loud.
One of the parents had said something to his father on the way out which he had taken exception to and argued with the bloke. The bloke, whom his father with his infinite wit and imagination called furball due to his beard, argued back and got his whole family involved. His father and Ginge fought the furball family and came out of the church victorious. He had even decked the vicar. His mother had been annoyed as it meant that there was just one more place that they could not return to, but his father and Ginge had insisted that honour be satisfied.
The story was supposed to cheer him up, but when he looked up at his mother as she cuddled him, they both cried again.
In his head, P dreamed of his Nan. P was 12 and now spent his time going to school, enjoying the summer holidays, footy, sunshine, hanging about hoping to bump into Rachel now she was older and had breasts and he practised his superb masturbation technique daily. P was a brilliant wanker by that summer. He could go from limp nob to spurting in less than five minutes. Or four minutes if it was Freeman’s catalogue or page three girl of the year time.
That summer seemed such an eventful time for everybody except him. He spent the whole of the holidays waiting for something exciting to happen while K had a baby (and called it Dominic! The little brat screamed and puked so much, P called it Demonic. K was not very happy about that), Herman discovered punk and had a safety pin through his nose and ripped his slacks and Fred Perry t-shirts, Tottenham were relegated (HOORAYYYY), Arsenal signed SuperMac (HOOORRAYYYY), his mother bawled her eyes out when Elvis died and had to be comforted by uncle Ginge (quite a lot of comforting went on, he was always at their house) and his Nan bawled for days after Bing Crosby died. All P did was go to see Star Wars about twice a week.
His mother dragged him off in the ninety-degree heat to pay his Nan a visit. They could hear White Christmas blaring along the street as soon as they got off the bus.
“I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS”
‘How are you Gran?’
“JUST LIKE THE ONE’S I USED TO KNOOOOOWWWWW”
‘What?’
“WHERE THE TREEEEETOPS GLISTEN”
‘HOW ARE YOU?’
“AND CHIIILLLLDREN LISTEN”
‘Oh, not bad, love’. Ruby was also there.
‘How are you Rube?’
‘Going fucking deaf, that’s how I am’ said Ruby.
“TO HEAR SLEIGHBELLS IN THE SNOOOOOWWWWWWW”
Can we turn this off, Mum?’
“IIII’M DREAMING”
‘What?’
“OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS” Kkkkkkzzzzezezezezeztttttttt.
‘Mum, we are sick of bloody White Christmas. Can’t you play something else?’ asked his mother.
‘Anything except Bing fucking Crosby’ said Ruby, lighting another fag and blowing smoke rings. Ruby once told P at a drunken party that her mouth was not the only thing she could blow smoke rings with, but then she was whisked off to dance with some bloke and he never heard the rest of the story, which is probably just as well.
‘I can’t find any of the others. He had such a lovely voice. It’s so sad. So sad.’ His Nan started to sniffle again. She wasn’t this upset when Grandad had died and he brought her meat and vegetables every day. She took that extremely well. Got over it in about ten minutes.
‘Nan, your neighbours are hanging from lamp posts outside because of White Christmas’ said P.
‘Are they?’ she asked taking a peep through her nets.
‘He’s just being stupid Mum, ignore him’.
‘Oooh, you don’t know round ‘ere. Somebody nicked Jesus off the cross the other day’ said his nan, re-fluffing her nets.
P and his mother looked at each other in confusion. His mother shook her head as if to say ‘don’t ask’ and instead said ‘why don’t you give your Gran her birthday present?’
P smiled and pulled a terribly wrapped LP from one of the shopping bags and handed it over with a flourish. ‘Happy Birthday Nan’.
‘Ooooooooohhhh’. She unwrapped it eagerly. The Bing Crosby Collection. She started to sniffle again.
‘Oh fucking great’ said Ruby.
‘How old are you Nan? Asked P.’
‘Ayyy?’ said Nan.
‘HOW OLD ARE YOU?’
‘I’m seventy-two today’ said his Nan proudly.
‘Cor!’ said P, genuinely impressed. ‘You’ve had a lot of birthdays. How old are you Rube?’
‘You shouldn’t ask a lady how old she is’ sniffed Ruby, genteely placing a stray strand of red hair back into place.
‘Why?’
‘Because if the lady is me you’ll get a flipping great lie and a clip round the ear, that’s why’.
‘Let’s try it out Bing, shall we?’ asked his mother, putting it on the stereogram, as his Nan insisted on calling it.
“IIIIII’M DREAM-”
‘Oh, fucking ‘ell’ said Ruby. Ruby did not like the old stuff, she told P later. She preferred newer music, which he thought this meant Val Doonican and Jim Reeves, but it apparently meant Abba and the Bee Gees. ‘Especially Barry’ she said licking her lips in a quite distasteful manner.
‘Let’s skip the first one, eh?’ said his mother.
“SI-III-LENT NIGHT”
P, his mother and Ruby sat through the Bing Crosby Collection twice before leaving. As they set off for the bus stop through the muggy, summer air, a song floated out of his Nan’s house to speed them on their way.
“I’M DREEEAMING OF A WHIIIITE CHRISTMAS”. They walked as fast as they could as windows slammed all around them.