Breaktime Read online

  2. I must somehow get away from home, for a few days at least. The distance is necessary to help me sort out where I am. More: what I am. I feel this as a bird, perhaps, feels the need to migrate. A compulsion. Do it, or die. It is as though home were making me impotent.

  3. Which brings me to Helen. I know now, looking back, that the frustrations bred by her letter, my randy desire unsatisfied, spawned the irritation which spoke at supper and consummated Dad’s anger. I want to have it off with Helen, I know. But do I fear the act? If not, why have I not? Starkly, the truth: yes. A truth not easily told.

  4. And here around me as I scribble this laundry list of emotional dirty linen are the symbols of my rag-bag being. Last year’s toys, other people’s gimcrack. What is mine? Me? My own? I feel like a caterpillar chrysalised and about ready to slough off the carapace, that imprisoning lumber from a former life. I will not be so contained. I will not hide among the detritus of other people’s beings, or settle for childhood’s pleasures. I want more than that. And now I know I must work my muscles to get free.

  5. But I have been too cautious. Perhaps that is why I feel so constrained now, when Morgan (so it seems to me) does not. I have not experienced enough for myself. I must set about looking for new moments. Must widen my repertoire of living.

  6. So I have devised a plan: Next week is half term, seven days in convenient gift. I shall go camping. That will get me away from home, give me the distance I need to begin sorting out myself and my father. And I shall look for experience, welcoming what comes—pure sensation if that is all that’s going—for action, event, drama. I shall test my caution a little. And the main event shall be:

  7. The sexy Helen. I shall invite her to go camping (ho ho) too, meet her half way, at mid-point, pointing at her mid, no doubt too, for an encounter with but one goal, one eye to bull. In short—though at pleasant length, I hope—I shall lay her, the first that ever shall be.

  And all this shall be raw material to my other purpose: an answer to Morgan’s misminded Charges.

  Document

  Reply to Morgan’s Charges

  It is crap that literature (I know: you mean fiction) is crap. I could Easily reply to you in kind. But that is not the best answer. It would only be an argument. And you, Morgan, being an activist, a doer – as there ought, by your own confession, to be many able to bear witness – prefer to be shown, a demonstration.

  So shall it be: I shall demonstrate.

  I intend a jaunt. What I have not recorded there, however, is that I also intend recording the events of my jaunt, as they happen (or shortly thereafter). And this record shall be my fiction, the raw material for it anyway.

  But to counter your charges, my fiction shall obey certain rules:

  1. It shall not be written in the manner of our logical stories. It shall take what form it cares for at any moment – which means whatever form I feel like giving it at the time of writing. I do this because you feel fiction is contrived, designed to fit certain pre-set ends. I shall use whatever styles of prose – or verse, or writing of any kind – I wish to use and which seems best for what I want to say.

  2. I shall record as honestly as I can what it is I experience and wish to set down. And I shall set something down however insignificant it may seem at the time, and with or without connections with anything that has gone before.

  3. We shall see then(to take your charges on):

  a) whether the story of my jaunt is entertaining or not;

  b) whether my experiences are lies, though they are certainly a fiction – aren’t they?

  c) whether the ends are tied up or not, and whether their logicality is so weakening;

  d) whether this game is a game at all, or a pretence; or not. Whether it is unlike your and my life or not.

  Maybe I’ll surprise you.

  Maybe I’ll surprise myself.

  Maybe it will all be quite unexpectedly unexpected.

  Who knows?

  But before I begin there is a question to be answered:

  Who is Ditto?

  Ditto is

  Thin, wiry, given to being lanky.

  Brown-haired, undistinguishedly cut, worn long over the ears, fringy and thickish.

  Green-eyed, tending to short-sightedness. (He ought to have visited an optician by now but loathes medical treatment of any kind, dental most of all, and is vain about the owlish effect given him by glasses.)

  Slim nose, wide mouth, lips tending to thickness, above a chin that is square and juts too much for his liking.

  Complexion pale. (You look a bit peaky healthy adults usually tell him.)

  Right-handed. When interested in something requiring manual skill is reasonably able; when uninterested becomes manipulatively incompetent, a state of affairs he calls being psychologically spastic.

  Dresses to the left—as he looks at things.

  Has thin legs he prefers to conceal in trousers, rarely venturing into the machismo of showy beach clothes.

  Feet, size 9 narrow.

  Height, five feet eight inches (work the metric out for yourself, genius).

  Total income per week: £3.00 pocket money from mother (which makes him feel guilty under the present circumstances but which he rarely refuses); £4.00 on average from work as window-cleaner’s mate, an earned income dependent on the weather and the mood of his employer as well as on the fickleness of his will to get out of bed each Saturday morning early, as:

  Hates getting up in mornings and likes staying up late at nights.

  Temper uneven. When discouraged tends to sulkiness. When on a high, tends to impulsive loquacity.

  Generally, and when on best behaviour, much liked by mothering older women. Among contemporaries, liked by a small group of those who know him well and by everyone else, as are most people, entirely ignored. Feels no need to belong to what he calls ‘mobs of people’.

  So far, if you are none the wiser you are a great deal better informed and may add in the space provided any other attributes you think important and which you note or deduce from a study of these pages, previous and to come:

  Of course, we must not forget:

  A virgin. Though, as we have seen, a virgin not without urgent desire to change his state, nor without surrogate practice in preparation for that transition when it comes, if you’ll pardon the pun.

  Three Conversations

  1

  Hello.

  Hello?

  That Helen?

  Yes . . . Who’s this?

  Dee.

  Dee?

  Yes. Dee.

  O! Dee! Well, hello!

  I got your letter.

  I’m glad.

  Got your . . . picture.

  Like it?

  Certainement. Très jolie.

  I didn’t do it.

  Eh?

  French. Didn’t do it. Not clever enough.

  O, ah . . . but beautiful.

  But not clever?

  Did I say that?

  By omission.

  Hey, listen . . .

  Can you do anything else with the telephone?

  There have been attempts.

  Communications pervert.

  I wanted to ask you.

  That’s not possible on the phone either.

  You’re a telephonic hussy.

  Spoken like a true rapist.

  Listen, Helen, I’ve got a plan. This next week is half term for us. You too?

  Yes.

  Well, I’m going camping . . .

  Really! Darling, you should have told me. I’d have understood.

  Stop foolin’, will ya. I’ve got only one more tenpence left. I wondered if you’d like to come along. Or rather, meet me half way?

  Do you ever talk in anything but double whatsits?

  Only when people don’t think in them.

  Parry. I think, though, I catch your . . . shall we say, meaning?

  Ach, zo. And?

  Love to.

  Great. Here’s the plan
. . .

  2

  Hello, love.

  Hi.

  You all right?

  Sure. You?

  Tired.

  Course.

  Been home long?

  Half-an-hour I suppose.

  Telephoned about your dad yet?

  Not since this morning.

  I rang at one o’clock.

  How was he?

  About the same, they said. Comfortable as could be expected. Whatever that means. Poor man.

  Don’t cry, Ma. He’ll come through.

  You coming with me to the hospital tonight?

  Course.

  Good lad. He’ll want to see you.

  Next week is half term.

  You’ll be home then.

  Well . . . I thought, if you can manage . . . I thought I might go camping.

  O?

  Well, it’s something for school as a matter of fact. A project, sort of.

  Dad won’t be out of hospital for a few days yet. Not till I get back anyway. I’ll be back before they let him home, I mean.

  I see. Probably.

  Would you mind?

  You won’t be far from home, will you? Just in case.

  Same place as I went with Morgan last year. I can phone the hospital every day. And if you . . . I could get home easily.

  Your dad’ll miss you.

  He’ll be all right, Ma. He’ll be well looked after. But what about you?

  Me? O, I’ll be all right. I can manage. Someone has to.

  I always have.

  You go camping, love. The break will do you good. Do you good to have a change and some fresh air for a few days.

  I’ll help you with the supper. Then we’ll go and see him.

  Ta, love.

  3

  Hello, Dad.

  Hello, son.

  Did I wake you?

  No, dozing, that’s all. Nowt else to do here all day.

  Good to see you.

  Aye?

  Sorry I couldn’t come in with Mother. They only let us in one at a time. Ration us, you see!

  Aye. Anyway, makes it like two visits, ’stead of one.

  Feeling better?

  Not so bad.

  They look after you?

  Fine. Fine. Not like home, you know. But they do very well.

  What about the other patients? Do any of them talk to you?

  Haven’t felt much like talking yet.

  Dad, I’m sorry about the . . . the other night, you know.

  Aye? Me too.

  Not much sense in crying over spilt milk, is there?

  Suppose not.

  Looking after your mother all right?

  She doesn’t take much looking after, Dad, you know that. I just get under her feet, really.

  All the same, me in here, you’re the man in the house. She’ll need all the company she can get.

  She manages very well, Dad. Really. In fact, if I was out of the way as well she’d get a bit of peace and quiet for a change.

  It can’t be easy for her, me in here.

  It’s a rest for her.

  She must worry. You know how she is.

  It’s a break from her usual grind, Dad. Change is as good as a rest.

  She always did worry too much, your mother. A wonder she’s not in here ’stead of me.

  I brought you some grapes. Least, Mum bought them. I carried them.

  Thanks.

  When she left you just now she had to go off to the social security about something or other.

  Couldn’t you have gone for her?

  They said it had to be her.

  Bloody bureaucracy.

  Dad, I have to go away for a day or two.

  Go away? What for?

  I have to. Sort of school work, you see.

  School work?

  A project. Only a day or two.

  Couldn’t you explain? About me in here. Your mother on her own.

  Mam will be fine. It won’t be for long. And it’s the last chance before A levels.

  Your exams? Can’t go wrong with them. But she’ll be on her own.

  I’ll phone twice a day. See she’s all right. And that you’re okay.

  Doesn’t matter about me. It’s your mother I’m thinking of. On her own, in that empty house, worrying.

  She’ll be perfectly all right, Dad, and I’ll be back before she’s felt the miss of me.

  I don’t like it.

  I’m sorry, Dad, but I have to go.

  Are you doing all right at school?

  Smashing, Dad. Very well.

  Working hard?

  I think so.

  How’s that dead woman?

  Jane Austen?

  Aye, her. All right, is she?

  Fit as a fiddle!

  Better off dead than alive, then, isn’t she.

  Wouldn’t say that.

  No, maybe not.

  I’ll have to be off, Dad.

  Aye, right-o, son.

  Good to see you.

  Thanks for coming in.

  Take care.

  I’ll try.

  And mind them nurses.

  Can hardly raise me arm never mind owt else.

  See you, Dad.

  So long. And here . . .

  What?

  Mind you get back from yon jaunt as soon as you can. You don’t fool me, you know.

  Tarra then.

  Aye.

  JOURNEY OUT

  View from the “27”

  IF THIS WERE an old-fashioned story—the kind you, Morgan, so anathematize—this could be the beginning. The foregoing would be excoriated by the inventor’s pen and omitted finally, or be revamped as flashback, that worn device of the suspense mongers. But this is not one of those old-fashioned stories, is it? Though it is, for me, a kind of beginning. Journeys always are, aren’t they?

  The bridge out of town, across the river, allowing passage from County Durham to Yorkshire, humps beneath us, a pleasant undulation, providing glimpse over its grey stone parapet of ling brown Tees, in swirls, urgent, full-bedded, passing beneath.

  The Tees is diarrhoeic today: a consequence of spring rains elutriating Pennine bogs and peat. I digress, Morgan, only to entertain your anti-dithyrambic turn of mind.

  Why is it I wish Morgan were here now?

  To return to the matter in hand. The tantalizing vision not just of a willing but of a lusting Helen. And of a harassed mother and a stricken-prone father. The pursuit of the one inflames in me guilty feelings at my desertion of the others. But without feeling there is no guilt. So my guilty feelings provide proof of my filial affections for those from whom I seek escape.

  Ha.

  Maybe that is what this journey is really all about? Ineluctable evolution. Proving myself to myself, if to no one else. The strivings of my independent spirit.

  Getouthereladandshowthemyoucanstandonyourowntwofeet.

  Ffossip.

  ‘She should have had more sense,’ said the ageing driver-conductor to a rotund passenger of the female gender standing by the open bay of the driver’s cab in flagrant disregard of the bus company’s rule published in a notice posted above her head.

  DO NOT STAND ON PLATFORM

  WHILE BUS IN MOTION

  ‘Well,’ said the passenger, ‘there’s many a slip.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the driver, ‘nor but it’s happened before.’

  ‘And happen it’ll happen again,’ said the passenger.

  ‘What ’tis to be young,’ said the driver.

  ‘Nay,’ said the passenger, ‘nowt like it, is there!’

  They laughed; knowing.

  LIMBSOME . . . LITHESOME . . . LOVESOME said a neon-glowing advertising panel above a window.

  Picture accompanying words: a pair of dismembered legs of the female gender, arranged like pretty boomerangs, dressed in tan-coloured tights.

  Intention of advertisement: to sell women’s stocking tights by suggesting that they will transform every wearer’s leg
s into limbs of the sort pictured. Mine too?

  Ha.

  He took from his wallet, where he had carefully placed it, Helen’s previously provocative picture, and smiled. She needed no tights.

  There was that time when I was about eight when we still lived in the country at One Row, seven or eight anyway, before you really know what it’s all about, Mickey and me were wandering back home down the path through the wood when we saw a gang of older kids ten of them maybe all about ten or eleven as well and all of them crowding round looking at something in the middle of them and they were grinning and nudging and excited but keeping it quiet because, you could tell, they didn’t want to attract the attention of grownups who might be nearby but they didn’t pay Mickey and me any bother and we went up to them and edged our way to the centre and they had a girl there who wasn’t much older than eight herself maybe nine and they’d made her lift her skirt and drop her pants and show them herself . . . None of them touched her they just looked as they would at a new kind of toy in a shop window everybody taking a turn in front of the girl to bend down and look closely so that the crowd was circling slowly and bending and rising like a slow circling wave or an endless queue of courtiers processing round a queen and bowing to her . . . We had a look Mickey and me then went off back into the wood again and sat on a log side by side not saying anything at all just shivering, trembling, giggling at each other . . . When we recovered we wandered down the path home and the crowd had gone and the girl had gone and we had not seen the girl’s face because her skirt had been held up in front of her all the time we were there. And when we got back to our street there was Mickey’s mother and mine standing outside our back gate in their aprons with their arms akimbo watching us come and muttering to each other frosty faced so we knew we were in trouble. We know where you two have been Mickey’s mother said when we got up to them. You nasty little beasts. You get home my lad and don’t you dare do anything like that again. But my mother just looked at me not speaking till after she had given me my tea when she looked at me again for a minute before she said You know they could have crippled that poor girl for life . . . I puzzled over that for days afterwards but couldn’t understand how she could have been crippled just from us looking at her but no one said . . . When Dad was told he just grinned at me when Mother wasn’t looking. And winked.

  Ditto beat a retreat from his memory, replacing Helen’s photograph in his pocketed wallet. Richmond was in view.