Best Mates

Continued from 'Journey Into The Unknown!"

The Future Never Happened Chapter VII: Best Mates

Seven.

I told Neil all about it on Monday, walking home from school and he
laughed, the bastard. Chewing wildly he open his mouth and brayed, his
tongue and teeth pale blue from the bubblegum he was eating.

"He what?"

"He took me to JJB Sports on Saturday and he&;#8230;"

Neil was literally holding his sides, only pausing in his laughter to
splutter and hawk great blobs of blue spit onto the pavement. "Let us
get this straight, he took you all the way to&;#8230; just
to&;#8230;" He continued to crease up, gasping for breath. "He
thought you wanted&;#8230; HA! HA!"

Neil was probably my best mate in those days. Even though he just lived
down our road, I only really met him when we went up to Kenton
Comprehensive. Neither of us played out much, and like me he was crap
at sport and, for want of a better word, geeky. I think we first got to
be friends by swapping computer games. Neil had a Spectrum too. I
suppose computer games served the same function as football, something
you invite your mates round your house to do, a sort of cohesive
factor. I reckon all the kids who couldn't kick a ball for toffee had
computers in those days.

There was a group of us who used to knock about at school, but Neil was
the only one who I used to do anything else with. Sometimes after
school we would go down to Joe's Computer shop in the Green Market,
trying to suss out ways of nicking the games.

I felt comfortable with Neil in a way that I didn't with all the
others. Outside of school there was an awkwardness with other mates,
but none with Neil. With everyone else I felt like we were only mates
through necessity, because no one else would have us, that we'd only
come together because everyone else had excluded us. Compared to the
hard lads and the lads that were good at sports, we were the freaks,
the misfits, the others. Don't get me wrong, we weren't rebels against
the hierarchy of masculinity or crusaders against a deadening consensus
of anti-intellectual machismo, we were just shit. Given the chance we
would have been up there putting the boot in like everyone else. By no
measure were we rebels who had chosen to be different, we were just
people who, for one reason or another, couldn't join in. People who are
outsiders often claim that they were too bright or too subversive for
the people around them. We weren't, we were just the same, but worse at
it, the kids that other kids always bully. The soft kids, the kids who
can't kick a ball to save their lives, the kids in cheap trainers and
hand-me-down coats.

Neil, though, I felt I really had something in common with, beyond mere
exclusion. Unlike my other mates, Neil seemed to think in the same way
as me. If I could have chosen a best friend then, I would have chosen
Neil.

Neil was quiet, very quiet. At school he seemed to fold in on himself,
getting smaller and smaller, as if left to his own devices he would
disappear altogether. He would just stand there and take anything,
never looking up, never saying anything in return. A few tears might
escape his eyes and run down his cheeks but there would be no sound. I
remember looking on in impotent, fearful wonderment as he took another
beating or had his bag stolen again, amazed at the way he seemed to be
able just to retreat into himself. His pale blue eyes would blank, as
if he'd left his body, as if what was happening wasn't happening to him
but around him, nothing to do with him at all.

I suppose I had an admiration of that, his aloofness, his lack of
connection. I was always fighting back tears and snot when something
happened to me, desperately trying not to cry. With Neil there seemed
to be an empty, hard place inside of him, somewhere untouchable where
no one could ever reach him. Where I felt soft and vulnerable, Neil was
hard and armoured.

I remember Neil's skinny shoulders shaking as he gasped for breath,
trying and failing to push the smile out of his face. "D'yu want to
come back to mine? My Mam won't be in." Something would always flicker
across his face when he said that, something that I couldn't read.
"Which would make a fuckin' change."

The inside of Neil's house, identical to ours, was always silent.
Compared to ours it was nearly empty of furniture, nothing on the
walls, no horse brasses or decorative plates, no porcelain dogs or
ladies on the mantelpiece. Whereas our house always smelled of tab
smoke and cooking and my Mother's perfume, Neil's house smelled of
disinfectant and a strange undertow of sour milk, a heavy, sickly
smell. Neil's Mam was a nurse and I always thought that maybe she
brought the hospital smell home with her, the way my dad brought home a
booze smell from the club.

There was a stillness to Neil's house that was different to a stillness
in our house. Stillness in our house was merely a pause, a gap between
action and life and activity. The stillness in Neil's house seemed to
be it's natural state, as if no one really lived there at all. The
house was almost a neutral space, like a hotel room, not like a home at
all.

Going we threw our bags and coats on the living room floor, where they
immediately seemed to corrupt the neatness of the room, looking out of
place.

"D'yu want a cup of tea?" Neil plowed through the house to the kitchen,
the movement almost visible in the stillness, as if he were hurrying
through still water. "Stick the telly on if y' want."

I sat down on the sofa, perched on the edge, unable to make myself
comfortable. I remember always feeling threatened by the neatness, the
lack of life. Despite the fact that all of the things were there to
make Neil's house a home, it felt like something else. In out house it
felt like you sank in, were absorbed and enveloped by the sheer
homeliness, the overburdening of objects, the weight of memories. In
Neil's house you skittered across the surface, the house so neat and
hard it was impossible to find purchase.

I remember taking my tie off while Neil was in the kitchen, stuffing it
into my pocket while he clanked cups and filled the kettle. At home I
would have just chucked it on the floor, but in that living room I
couldn't, the neatness pushing me into myself. I couldn't have dared to
make any more mess or take up anymore space than I already did.

"You'll never guess what I did the other fuckin' day." Neil brought
through a cup of tea and before I had a chance to grab a coaster from
the coffee table, placed it onto the pristine carpet at my feet,
spilling some as he did.

"You not havin' any tea?"

"Nah."

"So what did you do the another day?"

"What?"

"You said you did somethin' the other day that Ah wouldn't
believe."

"Aw, right." Neil had a way of avoiding questions by acting as if he
wasn't really there, as if asking him something involved him coming
back from somewhere else to engage with you. "Yeah right, when me Mam
was out th' other night I only went an' changed the fuckin' draws in
the kitchen around, didn't Ah?"

"Y fuckin' what?"

"I changed&;#8230;"

"Ah know, y' changed th' drawers around, but what d'yu mean?"

I remember Neil looking at me as if he was slightly hurt that I hadn't
understood what he meant the first time. "Well, like, Ah took the top
drawer with the forks and spoons out, and Ah swapped it with the third
drawer down where all the cookery books are, then Ah took the fourth
drawer down and Ah&;#8230;"

"So yu swapped them?"

"Aye."

"What the fuck did y' do that for?"

"Well like, it was, y'knaa, like cos me Mam's she's," Neil always
stumbled over his words when it came to talking about his parents, like
he found it difficult to think about them at all, "well, how she's
always so fuckin'&;#8230; fuckin' tidy?"

"Ah'd noticed."

"Aye well all she fuckin' does is fuckin' tidy. Put somethin' down, and
in a second it's fuckin' gone, y'knaa? So like Ah just wanted to,
y'knaa, just like, make her think."

"What'd she say?"

"Absolutely fuckin' nowt. Not a fuckin' thing. I stood and watched her
when she got in. All she did was fuckin' take them out and put them
back where they were supposed to be again. Fuckin' stupid cow fuckin'
said fuck all."

Neil's Mam never really said anything to him. When he used to come
round to ours my Mam used to say 'Ee, the poor lad, fancy his ain Mam
nevva saying anything to him'. Just like me, sometimes Neil would sit
and talk to my Mam, gazing across at her as she pulled on her tab.
Neil's Mam had a telly in her room and when she wasn't at work or
cleaning, she would sit in there, never with Neil or his sister in the
living room. At that age I wasn't sure what had happened to Neil's dad
because I'd never asked and Neil didn't give stuff about himself away
easily. Unless we were talking about computer games or school or the
future, Neil would be mostly silent, sometimes going as far as closing
his eyes when he didn't want to speak to anyone.

"So she wasn't angry. My Mam would have gone radge."

"Nah. Same fuckin' stupid cow expression on her fuckin' stupid face."
Neil stopped talking, a flush spreading across his cheeks. "D'yu want
to phone y' Mam"

Usually I would have but that day I didn't. "Nah. Can't be
arsed."

We both went quiet as the front door opened, then slammed shut again.
Stacey, Neil's sister, came striding in, went into the kitchen, took a
loaf of bread out of the cupboard, margarine from the fridge and a
knife from the drawer, then walked back past us and out and up the
stairs. The same as usual, neither of them acknowledged the existence
of the other, just bodies passing each other in space. Neil made no
reference to her as he continued to talk.

"So, Tony m' boy, what d'y want t' do? Wu could watch a video
or&;#8230;"

"How old's Stacy?" I remember the pause being very long before Neil
answered; as if he'd never had use for the information before.

"Er&;#8230; Fifteen." He, as he always did, carried on as if his
family didn't exist, as if he were answering through some
preconditioned reflex. "Or play on the computer or&;#8230;"

"Or what?"

"Or y' could tell us that story again?"

"What story?"

"The one about you and y' Da."

"What? About what happened on Saturday?"

"Yeah. Tell us that again, it's fuckin' funny."

"It's not fuckin' funny, it was fuckin' horrible."

"Nah, y' have to admit it's fuckin' funny."

"Well, Ah suppose, but fuckin' me Da, fuckin takin' us to town and
stuff just to&;#8230;"

"Ah think it's funny, go on, tell us."

"Alright, but this time divvn't laugh."

So I told the story again, going over the getting up, the journey
getting there, the sports shop. Neil did laugh again, even though he'd
promised not to.

When me and my Dad had went into the shop, laughing and smiling, I had
went straight over to the trainers, head filled with images of the
admiring glances I'd get at school on Monday, the acceptance That I'd
gain, the way I'd stop sticking out like a sore thumb. I didn't notice
that my Dad wasn't behind me until he called out, "Son, where y'
gannin? They've got just what wu need owa here."

I turned around and suddenly felt a red hotness spreading across my
face. For a moment I'd hoped, and then there was my Dad, smile still on
his face, holding something in his hands. As I said the word Neil
joined in, as if it were the chorus of a well loved song. In my Dad's
hands, sat in its square box was&;#8230;

"A football!" Neil laughed and laughed again.

My Dad had a football in his hands, grasping it as if it were some kind
of precious antique. "Look son, the guy's just telt us that this is the
best one y' can get."

I can see him poking at the lacing through the opening in the box, as
if he were trying to coax out some shy and fantastic animal. Looking up
at me he said "Just th' job this, eh? What d'y think?"

Even years later I remember his face, eyes wide despite their heavy
lids, face slack, not bunched up like it usually was, offering me the
prized object for my approval. Even with the anger rising in my stomach
I recognised his expression. I'd seen it thousands of times in blurred
orangey photographs in my Mam's photo albums. The expression he had was
exactly the expression I had on Christmas mornings, surrounded by
wrapping paper, holding up some new toy or other to the camera, my face
saying 'look Da, look. Look what I've got. Come and share my
happiness'.

Despite everything I couldn't disappoint him. It was as if the roles
were reversed and I was the dad, holding the power to either encourage
or belittle. So I did the only thing I could do. I pretended.

"Aye Da, it's great."

"Y' reckon?" A slight inflection of doubt hid itself in his enthusiasm,
tiny but noticeable. "Ah'm surpised that y' didn't realise. You an'
Neil can gan an' have yuselves a proper game of football now instead of
sittin' there in front of that bloody computer all hours of the
day."

I know it's horrible, but I couldn't look him in the eye as he handed
me the football, in case he would see straight into me, see the circuit
boards and flying cars and robots behind my eyes.

Stood there in front of me he was opening up, getting looser. "D'y like
it? When I was a lad wu used to dream of getting' a football like this.
Ah remember gettin' such hidings off of me Da for scuffin' aal me new
shoes from playin' in the back lane with stones and tin cans."

Standing there it felt like I was holding my Dad's soul in my hands,
and I felt frightened by it. This wasn't the Dad I knew, hard, spiky,
unyielding. It felt like cracking an egg and holding the yolk in your
palm. Suddenly it was me with all the power, the power I never had, the
power to hurt and not be hurt.

"I would have told him to stuff his football up his fuckin' arse,"
interrupted Neil.

"Nah man, Ah couldn't cos&;#8230;"

"Why? Y' didn't want a fuckin' football, fuckin' dozy
fuckin'&;#8230;"

"Just fuckin' leave it man Neil. I couldn't&;#8230;"

"Why? Y' divvn't even like him."

"Aye, Ah knaa but&;#8230;"

But what? A big part of it I suppose was that I didn't want to make him
angry, but I like to think it was more than that, that there was
something else that made me pretend. Looking at it, it was like
spending your entire life wondering what was behind a tall brick wall,
then passing by one day to find that the wall had fallen down and the
owner was inviting you into their garden. It felt like, for the first
time, I was really seeing my Dad. Behind the tab smoke, behind the
bitterness he was small. Not big and lumpy and hard, but small and
weak, as unprotected as some newborn thing, as if his outside had kept
growing and growing but his inside had stopped.

"What d'y think son?"

I said that I thought it was great.

"Ah tell y' what son, there's somethin' else to go with that. Come owa
here, gan get yersel' one of them." My Dad pointed, and following his
finger I saw a wall full of black and white vertical stripes.

"Da, you sure? They're a lot of money y' know."

"Divvn't be daft man, gan get one in your size."

Obediently I went over to the stripes and felt the shiny, almost wetly
glistening coarse weave of the fabric on my fingertips. I grabbed some
almost at random and took it back to my Dad.

"There y' gan son, y' first Newcassal strip."

I remember looking down at the vertical black and white stripes of the
short sleeved shirt, the crest on the left breast. I looked up to see
my Dad looking on with a terrible expectation on his face, like he was
dangling in space, ready either to fall or be saved.

"Thanks Da," I said, "it's just what I wanted."

"What did y' tell him that for?" Neil asked. "Hasn't he ever talked t'
y'?"

"Looka man, what else was Ah supposed t' dee?"

Looking at my dad, face filled with hope, I couldn't say anything, no
matter how angry I was.

After he paid, the shirt and ball put in a carrier bag by a kid not
much older than me, we went back out into the river of people, my dad
talking away at me.

"Y'knaa what son? Me an' you should start gannin doon the match
togetha. When Ah was your age me an' me Da and our Bobby an' our Davy,
when he was auld enough, used to gan every Satda. I remember one
Christmas when y' Nana knitted us al black and white scarves an' we al
went marching doon the toon wearing them. Wuz didn't have much in them
days but what wu did have wu wuz proud of. It's a shame y' never met y'
Granda, y' would have liked him. He wuz a good man, y'knaa? A good
man."

I wasn't listening, the people surging around me as I set off back the
way we came, eyes fixed forward. At the time I felt like maybe there
was still time to get back to my Mam, back to my comic, back to
normality. Now, it wasn't that my Dad was trapped in the present, but
that he was swimming backward into the past, moving back, back farther
and farther, trying to drag me along in the undertow.

"Aye, it wasn't like it is now in them days. Aye, mebees it was just
back t' backs but at least folks made an effort. The way it is now, y'
wouldn't think we'd be out at aal hours, in and out of each others
houses an' anly comin' home when it got dark. Ah remember y' Nana,
stood at the back door steps, shoutin' at the top of her voice 'Jimmy,
Bobby, Davy, yer tea's ready! Come forth, cuz if y' come fifth y'll get
nowt!' Every night that was, rain or shine." He carried on, his voice
fading as I got farther ahead of him. "Tony! How son, where y'
gannin?

We both stopped walking and I turned to face him. "Ah wuz gannin' t'
get the bus hyem."

"Well, like, Ah thought wu could, y'knaa, walk about a bit and make a
day of it. Gan get some scran and that."

I remember Neil pissing himself, whooping with laughter, and it making
me angry. I stopped talking and glared at him. "Right, Ah've had
enough!"

"What d'y mean?" Neil sat bolt upright in his chair, giving me that 'I
don't know what you're talking about' look that I got to know much
better over the years.

"Ah'm sick of y' fuckin' laughin'."

"You're fuckin' sick of me laughin'?"

"Yeah. I divvn't see what's so fuckin' funny."

Neil started to try and laugh it off, making out that I'd made a really
good job of pretending to be angry, shrugging and continuing to
laugh.

"I'm serious," I said quietly.

"Aw aye?"

"Lookit y' man, y' still fuckin' laughing'."

"Ah'm not."

"Y' fuckin' are." I could feel my voice begin to rise in pitch and
volume as I spoke, Neil started to stare at me.

"So you want me to sop laughing?" he said slowly, enunciating every
word precisely.

"That's what Ah fuckin' said."

"What y ganna dee if Ah divvn't?" There was something in the set of his
face, the way his eyes seemed at once looking straight into me and
straight through me, that made me have to look away as he spoke. "Y'
ganna hits us? Y' ganna twat us one if Ah divvn't?"

"Nah, Ah&;#8230;"

"Y' ganna twat us?" Every time I started to speak, Neil talked over me,
tripping me up.

"Nah, Ah'm&;#8230;"

"Eh?"

"Ah'm not ganna."

"Eh?" Every interruption was louder, so each time my voice got louder
too, as if we were stuck in some sort of multiplier, each utterance
increasing the force of the following one.

"I'm not ganna&;#8230;"

"What?"

"What d'y&;#8230;"

"Eh?"

"I'm not&;#8230;"

"Eh?" Neil was leaning towards me, spitting out words, his face
beginning to contort with anger.

"Look man Ah'm&;#8230;"

"Eh? Y&;#8230;"

"Ah'm NOT GANNA&;#8230;

"Y' not&;#8230;"

"AH'M NOT GANNA HIT Y', RIGHT?"

The shout burned the inside of my throat and set something in the room
ringing, a tiny vibrating tone resonating in the moment of shocked
silence, a tiny sound in empty space.

"Right." Neil stood up with force, pushing the armchair back behind
him. "Right." His voice was still loud as he rushed into the kitchen.
"Right. Y' not ganna hit us. Right."

I just sat there looking at the spotless pale cream carpet, blemishless
apart from where Neil had put my tea down, a pattern of slightly darker
patches, like the shadows of clouds. I could hear Neil banging around
in the kitchen, muttering to himself.

Everything was caving in, or so it felt. First my Dad, then Neil, and
my Mam&;#8230; Suddenly everything was complicated. I thought again
about the family of the future. I remember looking at a vase of dried
flowers on the mantelpiece, the only decoration in the room, and
thinking about how everything would be simpler in the future.
Everything planned, everything designed, everything smooth, no dark
corners, no cracks, nothing hidden. The family on that cover, smiling
with pride, citizens of the future, they were happy because there was
one thing in their lives that never went away. In the future,
everything was certain, no mess, just clarity. They were happy because
they knew what would happen, no surprises.

I'd never seen Neil get angry like that before. Usually he would just
be silent, clenching and unclenching his fists, and then only when he
was out of the situation that made him angry in the first place. I'd
never seen him react to anything really, never mind something that I'd
said. It was like someone had taken our relationship and thrown it up
in the air, watching it come apart and fall to the ground in a mess.
Suddenly I didn't know what to do, the room feeling full with something
I can't describe, like static electricity, oppressive and
charged.

I just sat there, scuffing at the carpet with my foot. I didn't know
whether to just leave or to stay and talk to Neil. I remember that I
could see his shadow moving about through the frosted glass kitchen
door, hear him swearing and talking to himself. I don't think that I
felt angry with him, just resentful that he'd reacted in the way he
did. It was him who was in the wrong, him that was angry not me.

Thinking about it, I didn't really realise Neil had feelings. He was so
impervious, so unmoved that I thought that's all there was there. That
was what I'd admired, that hard outer layer. Somehow, something that
I'd said had penetrated him, gotten into the hard place inside him, and
suddenly all hell had broken loose.

Sitting there, it felt like I was being overwhelmed. All around me
things that were simple were becoming complicated. It felt like other
people were sucking me in, involving me with the mess from inside of
their heads, dragging me down. In my head I could see an astronaut,
floating slowly in space, the Earth a pale circle below him. All around
him empty void, simple. Nothing but him in empty space, alone and
weightless, floating peacefully in infinite space.

If Neil was a supernova, tension withheld no longer then exploding,
then my Dad that weekend had been a black hole. I just remember wanting
to escape his pull, escape him before he absorbed me.

Continued in 'The Future Never Happened' Chapter VIII: Dreaming of the
Future