Richard Read online

  It wouldn’t be fair to put that responsibility on anyone.

  But still.

  America.

  Interviews. Radio stations. Breakfast brunches and power lunches.

  The meet and greet. What Quentin Crisp calls ‘the smiling and nodding racket’.

  Having to pretend like you care.

  About album sales.

  About the American market.

  About anything.

  Two weeks of stale questions from people with ice-hockey hair and white, white teeth.

  Having to charm DJs.

  Journalists.

  Pluggers.

  Having to excuse yourself all the time. To puke. To sob uncontrollably. To scream into the nearest pillow.

  Two weeks of fakery.

  Can’t do it. Sorry.

  Just can’t do it any more.

  None of it.

  Sorry.

  Sorry.

  Your first week at Oakdale Comprehensive and you make a new friend.

  He’s not human. He’s something far better.

  He’s just a tiny pup when your parents bring him home – big brown eyes, big brown face. Floppy ears and floppier chops.

  You all agree on a name. Snoopy. It’s the ears and his comical face.

  He spends the first week shitting and yapping. Dad feigns annoyance at the noise and the stink but you know he loves him just as much as you do.

  At first he sleeps curled up in a circle in a basket in the utility room, but soon he’s scratching at your door, burrowing under your duvet, nuzzling your leg. You’re not meant to let him sleep with you – something about establishing a groundwork of rules – but you like that solid feeling of warmth against your leg, the rise and fall of his ribcage, the occasional sigh or whimper.

  You spend hours at a time just stroking the waterfall of fur that runs up from his wet black twitching nose and along his back as he blinks back his gratitude.

  He grows in size, quickly.

  — Eats like a horse, he does, says Dad. We should enter him in the National.

  You’re growing too, but not half as quickly as your new best friend. You’re one of the smallest in the year. You still have your junior-school looks, while some of the lads, the dunces who the girls predictably swoon over -Joseph Sowerby, Gaz Jones – are already growing wispy moustaches. Dad says you’ll fill out in time.

  You’re not sure you want to fill out. You certainly wouldn’t want a ’tache, even if you could grow one.

  Then after school there’s usually a kickabout down the rec. The teams change daily, a revolving cast that’s dependent on who is allowed to play out from this end of the estate.

  You enjoy football. You enjoy the simplicity of it; you enjoy being breathless and feeling your muscles ache. The sweat on your brow. It’s so much more fun than the dreaded rugby.

  Nick Jones is one of the best on the footie pitch. He usually brings the ball and picks the sides. A year younger than you and already his legs practically come up to your shoulders. He’s all right. He’s not a wanker like some of the rough lads from the villages; for a sporty kid, he’s all right. He always makes an effort to pick you, and it’s appreciated. He puts you on the right wing and optimistically tells you to ‘do some damage’. And he brings the trophy for your on-going tournaments. Says it’s the old Welsh FA Cup but we know his dad found it in a skip somewhere.

  Sometimes you bring Snoopy. You let him off his lead to join in and he gets in the mix to run rings around everyone, desperately attempting to burst the ball that’s twice the size of his head.

  He won’t be able to play for ever, though – in a few months, he’ll puncture Jonesy’s new Wilson and he’ll be forced to watch from the sidelines, barking orders like John Toshack, as frustrated as any boy would at the inexplicable exclusion.

  You joke about getting him a fur-trimmed manager’s coat.

  Then afterwards you trot home to Woodfieldside, analysing the game.

  You eat your tea and get told off for throwing scraps from the table.

  — Those chops are too good for a dog, says Mum, even though you see her saving the bones and strips of fat for his late-night treat.

  He’s Snoopy and you’re Charlie Brown. Life is Peanuts.

  You feel ecstatically, joyously happy.

  There’s one thing I need to do first, though. It’s only fair.

  I open up my notebook and remove the pictures that I have carefully cut out and accumulated over the past week or so – from magazines and papers, mainly. Pictures of girls and movie stars, buildings, landscapes and cartoon characters. Pictures of animals and singers and cities.

  Pictures of war zones and bodies, faces and flowers.

  I take the glue stick and begin to stick them onto the cardboard box that I got from reception earlier. I paste them on and smooth them into place. The pictures form a decorative collage around the rim of the box, then when the glue is starting to dry I carefully copy out a number of literary quotes from my notebook.

  Camus.

  Sartre.

  Mishima.

  My old friends, the old boys, all together for one last time.

  When I’m done I put what is left back into the box. My VHS copies of Naked and Equus, a couple of T-shirts, some photos of me and her – a girl, the one girl I have come closest to falling in love with – and my books. The rest of my books.

  I take a pen and a sheet of the hotel’s headed note-paper and sit staring at the carpet for a long time. I think about what to write but my mind is as blank as the page. Minutes pass. There is so much to say, but I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps there is actually nothing to say.

  Then I realize what it is I want to write – something that, fearful of sentimentality, I can rarely say, or perhaps rarely have cause to say, but nevertheless find easy to convey with a pen. I write I love you – love that will be forever unrequited – on a note, put it in the box, tape it shut, then put the box on the table.

  Paul Winters says, Wait here a minute – you’ve got to see this.

  You’re round his house and his parents are out. It’s the summer holidays and they are letting him stay at home by himself. Actually his big sister is meant to be keeping an eye on you but she spends most of her days down the town with her boyfriend, an older boy with a motorbike and the obligatory leathers.

  You’re in the Winters’ living room, watching the farting scene from Blazing Saddles again – the one with the beans – munching on biscuits and slurping juice. Brian disappears for a couple of minutes, then you hear him charge back down the stairs.

  Then he’s behind you.

  — Close your eyes, Eddie.

  He’s the only person who calls you by your abbreviated surname. Most people call you Richard. Or Teddy.

  — I’m watching telly.

  — Just close your eyes and hold out your hands.

  You reluctantly turn away from Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and their baked beans, and you close your eyes.

  He places a magazine in your hands.

  — OK, you can look now.

  You look down and the magazine is opened to the centre pages. You see a naked woman with blonde hair, her legs spread wide open. She is laid back on cushions, invitingly. You see her pink, hairy fanny first. Then her breasts. They’re large and weighty. The first pair you have ever seen. Her vagina looks odd, like nothing you’ve never seen before. It’s not how you had imagined it to look. (Had you even imagined it?)

  The hair on her head is so blonde it’s nearly silver but the hair on her fanny is much darker. She’s wearing silk gloves up to her elbows, and nothing else. Her mouth is open ever so slightly and her eyelids look heavy over blank eyes. Your mind reels.

  This is alien territory and you feel strange to be inhabiting it.

  — Isn’t it great? Look at them tits. You don’t answer.

  — Turn over – it gets better.

  You turn the page and see the same woman turned sideways this time, positioned on all fours. In front of her, a couple of inches from her face, is a long dark penis. It’s not erect and you can’t see the man it belongs to, only his legs and part of his torso. It’s just dangling there. It is strange. It is huge.

  The woman has her head positioned so that she’s looking out from the pages with the same blank-eyed look as before. You notice that she’s wearing more lipstick in this photo than the last one. A continuity error.

  You also notice the wallpaper in the background, the colour of the scatter cushions; a birthmark on her upper thigh. Her hair is impossibly blonde and you’re struggling to guess her age. She could be twenty-five, she could be fifty.

  Her breasts hang down below her, pendulously. They look different at this angle.

  — Isn’t it great? Paul says again. My brother keeps them under his bed. He thinks I don’t know about them. Look at them tits.

  This image – this glimpse into another world, a world you didn’t know existed – awakens something inside you. Something that feels strange and cold and inexplicable. Something adult that you want no part of.

  — He’s got loads of them. Wait a minute and I’ll go and get the others.

  — Paul, I don’t think I . . .

  He leaves the room. You know you don’t want to see the other magazines. You don’t even want to see any more of this one.

  Suddenly you feel terrible. Like you’re gripped by the horrors, your stomach turning somersaults.

  You throw the magazine down, run outside and retch into the bushes at the side of the Winters’ drive. A string of sick comes out of your mouth. It tastes of the Ribena you drank earlier, only it is bitter and it burns at your throat.

  You don’t bother going back into Brian’s house.

  You don’t want to see any more of those magazines.

  You don’t want to look at them tits.

  And then it all happens in a flurry.

  I throw the remaining unpacked items into my holdall. My notebooks, passport, road atlas, a bottle of water, a couple of books, my cassette copy of the new songs James has been demo-ing and the new Nirvana album, some clothes, my jacket, sunglasses, cigarette, lighter. Roll of cash.

  I put the pre-packed suitcase – the suitcase that will never see America, the suitcase containing clothes that I will never wear again – on the floor by the bed.

  I walk into the bathroom and select the toiletries I might need while I work out what the hell is happening. I choose the bare minimum: toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant.

  Everything else I leave behind: my moisturizer, aspirins, aftershave, razor, dental floss, my hair products (there is no hair left to care for), shaving foam, shampoo, conditioner, tweezers, nail clippers (there are barely any nails to clip), an old stub of an eyeliner pencil, a peel-off mask, a comb, a brush. I leave them all in the bathroom. Don’t even bin them.

  Just leave them.

  My hair still in the brush. My razor blunt.

  I scan around the room. The papers and magazines I dump in the bin. I also empty the ashtray then take a minute to light a cigarette. I stand in the centre of the room, smoking it, trying to draw the different strands of thought together, trying to weave them into something solid and tangible. Something of worth.

  Deep in the hotel I hear a door slamming shut. I hear cars outside. I hear my own heartbeat.

  I grind the cigarette out, empty the ashtray again, go to the bathroom and drink some water from the tap, splash some of it on my face, then in one decisive move I pick up my holdall, scan the room, place the room key on the table, then leave.

  The door quietly closes behind me of its own accord.

  Swish.

  Click.

  Your Easter-holiday homework assignment is titled ‘The Life and Times of William Shakespeare: An introductory study’. Who he was. When he lived. What he did.

  Why he mattered.

  You spend the best part of the week on it because you have bugger-all else to do. While everyone else is out playing or trying to cop a feel of their first teenage tit, you hit the Blackwood library and spend hours in there, nose-deep in the books, cross-referencing the critical theories with the plays themselves. You return, day after day, and occupy the same table in the corner by the radiator. You skim-read Shakespeare’s complete works in one thick hardback edition and you even read some of his sonnets. Then you move onto his rival Christopher Marlowe.

  The librarian gets to know you. She even asks if everything is OK at home because young boys don’t normally spend so much time reading.

  By the time you’re back at school on Monday you have filled an entire one hundred and twenty-four page notebook on The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. You have provided a critical overview of his oeuvre and interspersed it with an appraisal of the most significant moments in his working and personal life, and some historical and socio-political context too.

  You are thirteen years old.

  The corridor is long and empty and smells of stale cigarettes. The dimmed night lights are still on and cast a strange orange hue and the nicotine-tinted Artex ceiling tiles feel like they are bearing down upon me as I walk and I’m suddenly aware of the peep-holes on each door that stare out like unblinking eyes. I wonder if anyone is watching me at this very second, and if so what do they see?

  A man.

  A skinny man with a shaved head and a bag over his shoulder.

  A skinny man with a shaved head and a bag over his shoulder wearing an anorak with a fur-lined collar and woollen hat pulled low, walking with purpose along the corridor, eyes wide, cheeks sunken, lighting another cigarette as he turns the corner to the elevator and moves out of sight.

  Just a man. Any man, off to do anything. Work. Shopping. Travel.

  Whatever.

  Just some man in the hotel, a nobody, passing through, a ghost, like we all are.

  As I walk, Room 516 no longer ceases to exist. It falls away behind me, a black hole in time and space. Just a void to be filled by some other drama, someone else’s second-hand smoke.

  And I’m gone.

  Friday afternoon and raindrops hit the prefab window like bullets.

  Outside, the school’s two punks – two fifth-formers – are caught in the downpour. They dash for cover, their blazers pulled over their heads to stop their hair flopping, their DIY dye jobs running.

  Last year they were wearing Led Zeppelin and AC/DC T-shirts, this year it’s The Clash and The Ruts.

  It’s double history. The Fall of the House of Tudor. History is normally your favourite but today you can’t concentrate. You’re staring out at the rain that falls in grey sheets, layer after layer of it sweeping across the landscape like death shrouds on a giant washing line.

  Death seems to be everywhere at the moment.

  That guy Sid Vicious is dead is from a drugs overdose. Twenty-one years old. Apparently punk is also dead and you’ve not even heard it yet. You’ve seen his spotty face squinting insolently from the front pages of the papers, though. And Sex Pistols is a great name for a band. Dirty and dangerous and scary.

  The rain keeps falling and the classroom is stuffy. Someone drops a ruler with a clatter.

  The sense of pre-weekend distraction is tangible in the room; few people are paying attention.

  The rain drums down on the flat roof and the sports fields are collecting puddles that will still be there next Tuesday when you’re forced to play rugby sevens. You’re looking forward to a night in front of the telly with Snoopy. Shopping for new shoes in town tomorrow. Then tea at Gran’s.

  It is 1979 and the end of the year is looming. The end of the decade.

  Out in the real world, beyond Oakdale Comp, beyond Blackwood, ‘I Will Survive’ on the radio all the time; a maxim adopted by people the world over. The drummer from The Who dies from drugs. More victims of the Yorkshire Ripper are found. The Times closes for months during strike action. Callaghan out. Thatcher in. Disco fever. ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ Ten minutes until home time.

  The elevator doors close and I press the button for the ground floor. The interior is mirrored and my reflection stares back at me. The skinny pale man with the holdall again. The shaven head. The black eyes.

  I turn to my left and he’s there, and to the right also. The mirrors reflect one another, my image repeated on and on into infinity. Dozens of me in all directions. Dozens of Richards staring back blankly. My stomach flexes nervously and nauseously at the thought of what I am about to do.

  What am I about to do?

  I don’t even know. Maybe nothing.

  Maybe I’ll just suck it up. Maybe I’ll walk around the block, look in some shop windows, maybe stroll in the park before going back to my room, realize that I don’t have a key and then go back down to reception to find a porter to let me back in, where I’ll take a shower, change my clothes, drink some tea and then wait for James to knock on my door so that we can go downstairs together and get in the car that will drive us straight to Heathrow Terminal 4.

  But the wheels are already in motion. Different wheels. I’ve packed my bags, locked the room and I’ve walked away. I am walking away right now. I’m going to miss the flight to America. I’m going to screw it up again. I’m going to fuck up the itinerary for the next two weeks. Those dozens of interviews, all those hotel bookings -they’ll all have to be cancelled. James will be pissed off. Everyone will be pissed off.

  I’m going to let everyone down again.

  I’m going to let everyone down again and the thing is I know I am going to do this before it has even happened. For once I am in control of things. I have the power to stop it, but I can’t bring myself to. So perhaps I don’t have that power at all. Maybe I’m even weaker than I think.

  Either way, I can’t do it.

  People who are sound asleep in their beds this very moment in London, New York and Los Angeles are unaware that they are about to have their lives inconvenienced over the coming days. People in Boston and Chicago and Blackwood too. Only I know it because I am that inconvenience. All this fleetingly gives me a strange flicker of excitement – the notion that this mystery, this mess, will unfold as and how I choose.