Being Small Read online

  My mother used to say I sulked, but that was a misunderstanding, so it had to be deliberate. For myself I just thought that I got clagged up, choked off with fury, nowhere to go but inward. That it was possible to fight without being angry had been a revelation, and remained a development that I think we were both watching with interest. Far from stirring up any anger inside me – and how could it be fresh in any case, after so long a time? Nothing but dregs and ashes at best, not worth the kindling – her utter self-absorption was a touchstone, recognition, safe home again. Still, I was quite willing to fight about it if she wanted to.

  She only went quiet for a while, though, and then said, “Do you want your presents now?”

  “Well, yeah, if you’ve got ’em. I’m seeing Adam later. I just thought they’d be all scrambled up in the boxes and you wouldn’t find ’em for weeks.” If she found them at all, if she’d bought them at all, if she’d given our birthday any thought at all except to fix it as a good day for a

  move.

  “Don’t be silly, sunbeam. Presents matter.” They mattered to her, that much I did know. She was always good at giving things away. And I was still half a kid, I could still be full-on child when I tried, they could matter very much to me also; but because I was still half a kid, I was trying very much to pretend that they did not. “I wouldn’t let them get mixed up with the move. They’re in the footwell, that carrier bag you were folding your legs around. I did tell you not to kick it.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.” That meant no big boxes: no skateboard, no laptop, nothing that I knew I really wanted. No matter. When did we ever get what we really wanted? Maybe they were all for Small. More likely they were just what she really wanted to give us. “I’ll fetch them, shall I?”

  “No, you stay. I’ll go.” And she went, crawling back through the van’s body and stretching over the passenger seat, fumbling out a carrier-bag and dragging it into the light, puffing audibly as she settled again beside me.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to walk round, open the door, lean in?”

  “Yes, of course. When did I ever do anything the easy way? I had you, remember, the two of you. And chose to bring you up on my own and full-time, no man, no dumping either of you on grandparents or schools. I only like things difficult.”

  I said that was probably just as well in the circumstances, but didn’t spell them out. I had my little history of troubles and a certainty of more to come, some she knew about and some she didn’t. No doubt the same was true of her, that there were secret struggles, private shames she hadn’t shared with me. I really didn’t want to know it all. Sometimes I wondered if she had an undeclared reason to keep us moving on, but never far. Perhaps she was afraid that something, someone might be gaining on us; perhaps she was half-hoping to be caught. I never asked, for fear she might tell me.

  “I didn’t make such a bad job of you, either,” she said, eyeing me up and down. “All things considered. Open your presents. And your brother’s, his as well. Do you want them one by one, or all together?”

  “I want to lay them out, see who gets what.”

  “Child. Where did you get that competitive instinct? Not from me. Nor from your father, as far as I could ever tell. He was a man of great disinterest.”

  “It’s not competition, it’s comparison – and I do it on Small’s behalf. There’s usually more for me.”

  “Never mind the quantity, feel the wit.”

  It was true that his presents tended to be better, either because she tried harder or else because she didn’t try so hard. It didn’t matter. I got to play with them all, as he did, share and share alike. Small and I, we really did have no secrets from each other and nothing private to ourselves; which only made it all the more important that our presents were separately wrapped and labelled, his and mine.

  No big boxes, but the carrier bag was half the size of Santa’s sack, if not so fatly stuffed. I drew out all the contents and arranged them in two piles; as usual, mine was larger and his felt more expensive. I quickly got a pattern running: one from my pile, one from his, one from mine again and then a drink, a word with Mum, repeat. That way I could spread out the disproportion, not to be left with half a heap for me and no further interest for him.

  There were books, of course, there were always books. Books were half the furniture of my life. Second-hand furniture, for the most part. There was Greek and astronomy for me, the poetry of Robert Lowell and Gerard Manley Hopkins, all of last year’s Whitbread winners – those bought new in paperback, to keep me au fait with contemporary tastes, she said – and a random selection of charity-shop crime. Those last would be deliberately hit-and-miss, all part of her campaign to teach me that it was good to pass things on, okay to throw them away. So far, the lesson wasn’t taking. Even the bad books I hung on to, along with all my childhood reading, all my elementary textbooks, everything.

  For Small there was just the one book, as he’d never learned to read. I used to enjoy reading to him, but my mother found it hard going to persuade me now, though she did persist.

  Just the one book, then, but a fat one. “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo?” I murmured, gazing at her, as neutral as I could manage.

  “Your accent needs work,” she said crisply. “I can listen in sometimes, to correct you.”

  “Every time, then, or I don’t start.”

  “I can’t promise that, with shiftwork. You know I can’t.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll read in shifts.”

  She frowned at me, and sighed, and said, “Your poor brother. I’ll try, Michael. Open something else.”

  Summer clothes for me, jeans and T-shirts in bright mother-colours, with ostentatious logos that weren’t quite right, weren’t at all what they were hoping to be mistaken for. For Small something better, a pocket electronic chess game. It looked twenty years old and maybe older, but the batteries were fresh and all the pieces were there. Who cared if the logo was missing and the plastic cover had a crack in it, the hinge was held together with gaffer tape and the edges were worn shiny? Not us.

  “It’s got an ‘undefeated’ level,” my mother pointed out, like a challenge.

  “So’ve I.”

  “I know. That’s why Small needs to practise.”

  It was true, my little brother never had beaten me yet. I made the ritual protest, “That’s just an excuse, to give him the best presents.” She said, “Of course it is, I don’t need telling that,” and I went on cheerfully unwrapping, with the odd gloating glance back at the ChessLord.

  That was prime, the prince of presents, but the last of mine had its own happy talent. It was light, it lay in the palm of my hand, it gave a little metallic jingle as I tossed it palm to palm. We don’t play guessing-games, my mother and I, so I said, “It’s the key.”

  “Open it and see,” she suggested, smiling with a hint of smug.

  So I opened it, and of course it was the key to our new lodgings. I had a collection that had been growing for six or seven years now. My mother always had one cut for me, so I saw no need to give it to our landlord as we left. Each one came with its own key-ring and fob, as a treat and a distinguishing feature; I could remember which key belonged to which house, all the baker’s dozen of them with all their hoarded, sordid histories.

  A couple of the fobs had my initials on, carved in wood or etched in steel. Others were pretty things, polished stone or silver plaitwork. One wasn’t a fob at all, it was a beaded leather string for wearing round my neck. That had given me the necklace habit; when I’d had to take it off, next time we moved, Adam replaced it with a thick gold chain that hung heavy on the nape of my neck, rippled over my collar-bones and pressed into the point of my throat when I lay back. There’d been trouble over that, my mother thought it was too expensive to accept. I might have told her that it had cost him nothing, that he’d stolen it for me, but I was fourteen and not actually stupid. I told her it had been a gift to him but he had enough already, too many to choose from; he was thinni
ng out his dressing-room, I said, passing on what he didn’t need, she had to approve of that. She grunted, and let me keep it. I made him pinch another, made him wear it visibly to lend

  verisimilitude.

  I was wearing the chain now, I wore it always: in bed, in the shower, everywhere. I slipped my thumb beneath to pull it tight and slid a finger over the smooth suppleness of its links, as I grinned at the finger-sized Homer Simpson in my hand, with the key-ring hanging from his grasp.

  “Throw it away,” my mother said.

  “Do what?”

  “Throw it away. Oh, no, you can’t do that, can you? Here...”

  And she did, she just picked it up and tossed it, a casual five or six metres into the shadow and the undergrowth of the wood. I saw where it fell, but only dimly.

  “Mum...!”

  “Now whistle.”

  “Do what?”

  “Whistle. You can do that, I know. I endured the months you spent learning.”

  Well, I’d had to learn. I was a boy, I had a friend,

  whistling was a necessary accomplishment. More than that, I’d had a dog, too briefly.

  I blew the two-note call I used to use for Max, but barely on a breath.

  “Perhaps a little louder?”

  I did it again, shrill and hard; in answer, from the undergrowth, came Homer’s trademark “D’oh!”

  When I could manage it, when I’d stopped choking on the giggles, I did it again. And then again, and eventually she said, “Actually it’s meant to help you find it when it’s lost, it isn’t a John Cage duet for one voice and a transponder. I’m bored with this. Go fetch.”

  I went to find and fetch it, whistling all the way; and more than Homer answered me. There was a sudden rush-and-skitter, all the familiar sounds of an eager and awkward body charging blindly. I had a moment to wonder if I was going to grieve again, cry again, lose my heart and hope again, before a mess of black came hurtling out between the trees and plunged at me, all eyes and fur and tangled limbs and happy mouth and heavy.

  Heavy enough that I sat down on the thin grass there and had young dog in my lap and all over me, his paws on my shoulders, his tongue in my mouth. I hugged him, because what else could I do? And told him he was fast, he was forward, we hadn’t been introduced and I never snogged on a first date. My mother’s snort at my back might have meant anything; I didn’t care. By now I was on my back and he was play-growling with his teeth oh so gently around my wrist while his tail thrashed widely, wildly as we wrestled.

  Distantly I heard voices with an anxious edge to them, calling a name he paid no attention to. Not a birthday present, then: neither a sneaky one from Mum nor a gift from any passing god, a stray dog needing shelter. Not a gift to keep. Okay, I could live with that, without this. I’d been doing it for months.

  “Nigel! Nigel, you futile fucking creature, where the shit have you got to this time...?”

  They came out suddenly from the shadows beneath the trees, two men. Nigel and I spared them a glance apiece and then decided to go on romping, while the same voice said, “Oh, whoops. Sorry about the language. And the dog.”

  “Ill-trained, the pair of them,” the other man said. “They’re not mine, I’m just walking them for a friend. Shouldn’t have let that one off the lead, really. It’s not that he doesn’t come when he’s called – he just comes when anyone calls, whoever they are. Or whistles.”

  “We noticed,” my mother said, a little dryly. “Michael, perhaps you’d better hang on to his collar, if he’s liable to go shooting off again.”

  The dog wasn’t going anywhere, he was having far too much fun. He’d squirmed out of my grasp and was playing with the wrapping-paper now, pouncing stiff-legged into the pile of it and grabbing mouthfuls, shaking them and scattering them like rats.

  “Oh, God. Nigel...!” One of the men grabbed him then, while the other snatched at the mangled paper before the wind could take it. I stood up to help, saw that I wasn’t needed and went to talk to the dog again. Even on the lead he was happy, bouncing, jumping up as if all the soul of him were in his teeth and his tongue and that was strong enough to lift him as high as he wanted to go.

  It was the older man who had control of Nigel. The other might be half his age, early twenties, blond and pretty and knowing it, groomed for it. He gathered up armsful of paper and took them back to my mother, saying, “Somebody’s birthday?”

  “The twins,” my mother said, nodding in my direction. “They’re sixteen.”

  “Nice. Set the controls for the heart of the sun. But I’m afraid we’ve pooped your party.” His voice was light and lemony, tart enough to shiver me.

  “Not to worry. We were just having a break to do their presents, but we should get back to work anyway. There’s another vanload to shift yet, and I’d like to be in before dark. Find that key, Michael, and we’ll get on. If you’ve finished winding up the dog.”

  Obviously, I hadn’t. The guy on the other end of the lead twitched an eyebrow at me and said, “Aren’t you missing someone? Twins, she said.”

  “My brother died,” I said quickly, before my mother could, “but he still gets his presents.” Sometimes she could sound quite mad, when she talked about Small. I could say the exact same things and just sound haunted.

  “Ah. I’m sorry. Of course he does, that would be important.”

  His friend was checking over the heap of presents as he spoke, where they were piled just inside the van’s door. “Oh, hey – you play chess?”

  “Sure.” We both do, but I’m better – it was on the tip of my tongue, and for a wonder that’s where it stayed, even while my mother waited to hear it.

  “Fancy a game sometime, just come by the house. Number thirty-nine, up the lane there, and say you’re a chessmaster. You’ll be welcome.”

  “I’m not –”

  But I was overridden by my mother’s saying, “Number thirty-nine? We’re almost neighbours, then. Michael and I are Mrs Alleyn’s new lodgers, along at forty-seven.”

  “That right? Welcome to the neighbourhood. We don’t know the neighbours; we don’t actually live here, see. Just come by to walk the dog and be useful. But definitely, come round and play chess. Any time. Come tonight, and we can introduce you.”

  “Can’t,” I said, not too sorry. I don’t like being rushed. “I’m out with a friend tonight.”

  “Of course you are, you’re sixteen. Crash and burn. Well, come soon, then.”

  “He will,” my mother promised for me, she who loves to rush things. “Who should he ask for?”

  “Doesn’t matter, really. Chess is the password. But – oh. You mean, who are we, that you should trust your boy to us? Sorry. Again. I’m Kit, and that’s Peter,” his more solid friend, dark and quiet, like an anchor. “The dog’s Nigel, but you know that already.”

  My mother introduced herself and me, and said that my brother was called Small; and then of course she said, “And if the dog needs a regular walker, I think Michael would be happy to help.” So swift, so keen she was to give me all away.

  “Oh, cool. A chess-playing dogwalker. Couldn’t be better. Peter, can we adopt him?”

  “Only for the duration. And with his mother’s consent. Michael, never mind Kit; if you want to come by, please do. Not only Nigel will be pleased to see you, though I think we can promise that,” as the dog chewed rapturously at my hand again. “Look for the Merc in the drive and you’ll know I’m there, if you’re shy to call on strangers. Kit drives a silver Mini, if you want to avoid him. Come on now, you two. Heel,” and it wasn’t clear if he was talking to Nigel or Kit, but neither one of them paid him any attention as they left. Nigel strained back towards me for a fickle little moment, then leaped ahead, trying to drag Peter after; Kit bestowed a last sunny smile on the pair of us like a blessing, and sauntered off in their wake.

  “All right, son?”

  “Yes, of course.” I wasn’t so sure about the chess; there was a security in only ever playing Small, an
d always winning. But the men had piqued more than my curiosity, and Nigel had stolen my heart.

  “Good. Extra birthday present, then. Thank your pushy mother who levered you into it, and call by sometime in the week. That kind of invitation has a use-by date. Especially if you want to be official dogwalker, you’ve got to look keen and reliable. Go tomorrow, while we’re unpacking; the break will do you good. So will having more friends than one. You spend too much time with Adam.”

  She built too swiftly, and too high. I saw no signs of budding friendship here, small hopes of it. It was the dog I wanted, and I’d play chess as the price, even with grown-ups. I was sixteen; I didn’t make friends with grown-ups. I didn’t make friends with anyone but Adam. But, “I know that, Mum. At least, I know you think that. I’m not stupid.”

  She said nothing, she only whistled sharply and unexpectedly, and Homer said “D’oh!” in the long grass.

  ～

  We’d fixed to meet at his house, and when I got there – for which read, when my mother at last let me go – I found Adam enmeshed with his sister and his sister’s friends, a perfumed stew of teenage girls hugging cushions and watching television. Even those who’d never met me knew who I was, and what I was to them, which was a freak. They eyed me askance and pretty much silently, holding back whatever whispers and shrieks my appearance might provoke. The first time I’d been introduced to Charlotte and her cohorts, I’d betrayed myself twice over: first by answering all the questions on The Weakest Link, which made me a geek if not a nerd, and then by talking about Small. Adam had patted me on the shoulder like a kindly uncle giving the brash young idiot nephew a hint, shut up now, and then he’d taken me away and tried to explain about girls.

  The lesson really hadn’t taken, or else my position was irrecoverable. I was the creepy genius kid who didn’t want to win quiz shows, who had a ghostly twin that I still talked to, for God’s sake, as if he was really there, and how weird is that? And I didn’t go to school and I didn’t have any friends except Adam, and he was pretty weird himself by their lights. Like my mother, they thought we spent far too much time together. Every now and then Charlotte tried to save him from himself, which meant from me, but she wasn’t cut out for missionary work; she lacked patience, and in the end she lacked commitment. Only her brother, after all, and boys were strange by nature. There was probably no point trying to meddle.