DAD’S ALWAYS forgetting to take his keys out with him.
Lets the front door slam shut behind him – keys still sitting inside on the kitchen table.
Won’t cross his mind till he returns home later, approaches the front door, dips his hands in his pockets, feels around furiously in search of a miracle. Punches the front door.
Regrets it immediately: it’s a heavy door.
Shakes his throbbing hand and says in resigned manner: “Fuckin need this, don’t I?”
Looks at me, cheers up instantly.
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
“But Dad, we’ve just come from a walk.”
Doesn’t matter, Dad has to keep moving. Ants in his pants.
Unless we are coming back from the shop at the bottom of the street. In which case, inside the carrier bag he’s carrying is a can of beer or a mini bottle of vodka.
We sit on the little wall in front of the house and Dad tells me a story while self-medicating. The dog watching from the living room window, nose pushed against glass, serenading the street with his melancholy ballad.
Time was that the dog would come to the shop and wait with us on the outside. But too many times Dad forgot the dog was tied to a lamppost outside the shop and returned home without him, so now the dog stays indoors.
If we’re locked out and Dad has no money for a drink, there’s no telling where we’ll end up.
One time, we walk in the same direction for hours. Farther and farther from home. Leave the houses and cars of suburbia behind; pass over green fields surrounded by nothing but more green fields; get lost in a forest; keep going. Come out the other end in another suburbia, unfamiliar.
Dad lifts me up and shows me over a high fence: a family of foxes sleeping on a railway embankment. Urban foxes make dens wherever they can, he says, easy to find if you know where to look.
Dad answers all my questions without getting bored. Questions about animals and books and countries and dinosaurs and everything else in between.
Darkness falls. Temperature drops. I don’t have a jacket, just a sweatshirt with a picture of He-Man on the front, wielding a sword. Dad’s in just a button-up shirt.
“Dad, I’m cold.”
“No you’re not. Remember what I’ve taught you: it’s all in the mind. You just think you’re cold. Now, what are you?”
“WARM!”
“That’s right. Warm. But you’re not wrong, Son, it is gettin a bit nippy. Come on, let’s go home.”
We enter a train station. Walking up the slope to the platform, Dad unbuttons his shirt, takes it off, wraps it round me; leaving himself in just a white sleeveless vest, huge biceps released into the wild.
We board the train in the last carriage. Without tickets.
Normally, if the guard comes along, Dad explains he didn’t have time to purchase one at the station and he buys one off him there on the train, lying about which station we got on at to get a cheaper ride.
But today when the guard comes walking up the carriage towards us, Dad turns to me and says, “Uh oh. No readies.”
The guard asks to see our tickets. Dad makes an appeal to his sense of humanity.
“Hello mate. Long story short, we went to the park to play on the swings before lunch. Just twenty minutes or so, that’s all we wanted, then we’d go home and eat. Didn’t think I’d need my wallet. But that was four hours and ten miles ago, the boy’s cold, hungry, tired – and I’m in a vest.”
Dad pauses to let the guard take in the sorry sight, then says, “So, do the boy and me a favour please, mate. I’m just trying to get my son home and warm.”
When the guard insists we get off at the next station, Dad snorts.
“You’re avin a laugh, aintcha? Come on, mate, what difference does it make if you let us stay on for a few more stops?”
The pair exchange words. The guard has an unusual accent, which throws my concentration and I miss what leads to him saying what he says next.
“Now you listen to me, you Cockney cunt. You’re being slung off at the next stop and let that be the end of it. If I have to do it myself, I will. In front of your wee laddie an’all.”
Dad’s mouth curls into his signature half smile. He says nothing.
The train’s slowing down, we’re approaching the station. The guard tells us to follow him to his carriage. Dad stands up slowly, wide eyed, mad-dogging the guard.
The guard starts walking up the aisle, Dad follows closely behind, talking into his ear.
“Why don’t you fuck off … kicking a shivering child into the cold, don’t care if he lives or dies … I’m just trying to look after my boy … fucking prick.”
We get to the guard’s carriage just as the train’s coming to a halt.
The guard opens the double doors, lets a man take his bike off, then turns to Dad and says, “Go on then.”
Dad steps towards the open doors. The guard says something in Dad’s ear.
CRACK! Like an egg hitting the floor after being dropped from atop a skyscraper. Dad’s knuckles connecting with the bony part of the guard’s head.
The blow sends the guard reeling backwards into his carriage.
A woman on the platform screams, “OH MY GOD!”
The guard picks himself up, lump like a cricket ball under his left eye socket, about to lunge at Dad. Dad turns back into the carriage, deals the guard an open-handed chop to the neck, grabs him by the scruff of his neck, pulls his head face first into his rapidly rising knee.
The guard’s lying on the floor of his carriage, semi-conscious, face like a cauliflower, one eye completely closed, one of his teeth sitting on the floor next to him in a pool of blood and spit.
“Come on,” Dad says, taking me by the hand. “We’ll find a bus.”
He picks me up, carries me in his arms along the platform, through the ticket hall to the street.
Outside the station, a police car, blue lights flashing, siren wailing, screeches to a halt.
Dad puts me down, as a policeman gets out of the car and approaches us. Another one goes inside to talk to the guard.
When he comes back out, he makes Dad put his hands behind his back and slaps handcuffs on him. Puts us both in the back of the car and starts the engine. While outside the window, the congregated onlookers play Chinese Whispers.
Soon I recognise Mum’s McDonalds through the window. Then Dad’s department store. My nursery. The little shop at the end of our street. We pull up outside our house.
The policeman in the driver’s seat gets out, opens the back door, lifts me out. Unlocks and removes the handcuffs from around Dad’s wrists.
“Don’t you worry about it, Kev, just leave it with me. I’ll go back and talk to him tomorrow. He’ll understand.”
“Cheers mate,” Dad says.
“Tell Jan we said hello. And don’t talk about today,” the other policeman says.
We stand in front of the house and watch the police car drive to the end of the street and disappear round the corner.
Illustrations by Dean Simmons. Check out his animated series The Fruitirical Show.
"...feel around furiously in search of a miracle." Love this. :)
Kris, love your pacing and prose in these first two chapters. The writing is very neat and clean. Looking forward to working through your catalogue.