Doing It (18 page)

‘Understood?’ asked Sue incredulously. Since when had Dino understood anything? ‘What exactly did you say to him?’

‘What we said. I told him. I said I needed more time to be sure of what we felt for each other, and he said that he agreed with me.’

‘He
agreed
?’

‘Yes,’ insisted Jackie. ‘He said he thought that we should just forget about sex for a while.’

‘Dino said that?’

‘Dino,’ said Jackie.

‘He’s up to something.’

‘Why do you have to be so suspicious?’

‘Aren’t you suspicious?’

‘No,’ said Jackie, in an offended voice. ‘I mean, he’s making all the right noises, isn’t he? That was the deal, wasn’t it?’

‘I suppose the least you can say is, he knows the right noises to make. I wouldn’t have even given him credit for that before.’ Could it be that Dino was actually being clever? Surely not? But even that unlikely possibility was more believable than that he was being genuinely caring.

‘He’s up to something.’

‘Don’t be cynical. He was sweet.’

‘It’s better than his usual grunting, I suppose,’ agreed Sue. ‘But it’s not like him, is it? Or are you going to give me some crap about this being the real Dino, the Dino beneath who has been waiting to emerge?’

‘Oh, don’t be patronising,’ snapped Jackie. But although she would never admit to anything so foolish, really she did hope that it might be so. She had no idea of the depths of deceit that Dino was prepared to stoop to.

Before she put the phone down, Jackie hesitated. There was more to tell, but she knew exactly what Sue would say if she ever found out that Dino’s mum was having an affair and that Dino had more or less grassed her up at the dinner table the week before. She put the phone down, Dino’s secret kept, but she could hear Sue’s voice ringing in her ears even as she put the phone down.

‘Sucker! Why are you doing this to yourself?’

He needs me, thought Jackie in reply. He was like a six-foot teddy bear, right down to the sexy little growl when he whispered in her ear. He needed her. But did she need him?

Back home, Dino went straight up to his room. He felt calm inside, but his whole body was vibrating as if a perfectly balanced mechanism was spinning rapidly inside him. One jolt and he’d blow to pieces. He was furious with Jackie for making such a fuss. Look at the state he was in!

Below, he heard his mother’s step on the stairs. He’d been dying for her to talk to him about it, but what good did talking do? He’d just talked about it to Jackie and look at him now. Talking just made it worse.

Her foot sounded on the creaky steps. The creaking paused, then restarted. Then paused. Then with a firm tread, she came upstairs. A knock. Dino flung himself sideways on the bed and closed his eyes. The door opened.

‘Dino?’

Pause.

‘Dino? Are you awake?’

‘Uh. What? Mum?’

‘Did you have a good day?’

‘Yeah. All right, why?’

‘You look …’

‘I’m tired.’ He glanced over to her through screwed-up eyes as if he was unused to the light and saw her watching him as if he was something you could open up, a box, a purse, and she could just pick out and throw away the bits she didn’t want in there.

‘Do you …? Is there anything …?’

‘No.’

‘Anything bothering …? Anything …’

‘No.’

‘… you want to talk about?’ Dino suddenly couldn’t work his mouth. He lay there and stared at her hopelessly until she gave in.

‘Would you like a sandwich?’ she asked.

‘Yes!’ That was more like it. Mother.

She smiled back at him, and for a second the two of them were complicitous in pretence, mother and son doing their mother and son stuff.

‘Fried egg?’

‘And ketchup.’

‘Right.’

‘Thanks, Mum!’ he called after her. He meant it. He was so relieved, so pleased with her. All the business she had with him was a fried egg sandwich. He lay back down, exhausted.

‘Things aren’t as straightforward as they seem,’ muttered Dino to himself. You ain’t kidding. He closed his eyes and tried to blank everything out.

Ten minutes later, Kath Howther came upstairs, knocked gently on the door and went in with the fried egg sandwich on a small plate. Dino lay on his bed, fast asleep.

‘Dino?’ No answer. She went up close, put the plate down on the little table next to his bed and looked down into her son’s pale face.

‘Dino.’ She said his name like a statement, as if she was testing to see if it still fitted this handsome, long man, who had been her baby son of just a few years ago. What was it like to be mother to a grown-up? How good would she be at it? She had thought it was going to be so much easier now, but look, she’d let go and thought of herself and here she was suddenly and hopelessly out of her depth. She had so much wanted the whole thing to work for them all – family, childhood, Mum and Dad. She loved him so much and here he was, already passing beyond her and her own feelings were suddenly too big, too soon.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. She tiptoed out. She waited outside his door listening to see if he was awake really, but there was no sound.

One of the worst things about the whole mess was not knowing how long it would go on for, but she found out the answer to that very soon, when Dino destroyed his family the next morning accidentally, like a man with a shotgun pointing it at someone’s head and pulling the trigger whilst suffering from a temporary illusion that he was really holding a feather duster. It started with an outrageous argument with his mother. Afterwards, he couldn’t remember what it was about until she told him, much later on. It was socks. He had no clean socks. He called down asking where they were, and she yelled back up, ‘Just a moment, Dino, I’m dealing with the cat.’ Next thing, he was storming downstairs.

‘Oh, the cat, the cat, the cat’s all right, then. Always the bloody cat before anything else. You’re mad about that bloody cat, I don’t know why you don’t marry it.’ He burst into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and furious.

‘Don’t speak to your mother like that,’ yelled his dad. First thing in the morning – not the time to start up. Before he could stop it, Dino’s mouth opened and out it came.

‘She might as well marry the cat, she’s just a tart anyway. Come and get it, here it is. Pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy.’

In the silence that followed he watched his father’s face change shape. He wasn’t even conscious of being outrageous. It was true, wasn’t it? His mother stood there with a tin of Katkins in her hand and her mouth open. Mat stared at him as if he was made of horror, a piece of toast halfway to his mouth.

‘Just a tart,’ Dino insisted in a squeaky voice. ‘Pussy pussy,’ he repeated. He couldn’t understand what they were being so appalled about. His mother knew, his father knew – didn’t he? They’d been arguing ever since he said that thing about Dave Short. The only person who was being kept in the dark was him. What did they expect?

His dad was rising to his feet and pushing the table out of the way. Dino was going to get hit. His mouth filled with wet, salty liquid. He smacked his lips, expecting to taste blood already. Now his father’s mouth was opening and a stream of rage poured out of it.

‘Fed on shit!’ yelled Dino. He prepared to run for it, but then he remembered how small his father looked these days. He’d often had fantasies about beating the shit out of him. Well, maybe now was the time. He was fit and young; his father was a sad old bastard who couldn’t even stop his wife shagging creeps like Dave Short in his own living room, probably in his own bed if Jackie was right and she usually was. Dino bent at the legs and moved his hands forward. His father was pushing the chairs out of the way. One went over. The milk spilled on the table. Mat jumped back.

It was all happening in slow motion but suddenly something broke out of the frame. His mother. It felt afterwards as if she’d jumped right over the table to get at him. She leaped on Dino, grabbed him tight, wrapped her arms round his neck and hugged him so hard it hurt.

Dino caught sight of his dad changing direction in mid-murder, face popping, swinging his arms to keep his balance and stop himself from colliding with them. His mother kept her face deep into his neck, just like Jackie sometimes did. His dad ricocheted off the edge of the work surface and banged his fist violently into the breadbin. His mother lifted her face to Dino’s ear and whispered right in there, in words that sent a shiver and a tickle down his side until he squirmed, ‘Don’t do this to me.’

‘Ah, oh, all right,’ he yelled, wriggling and jumping because of the tickle.

‘I’ll speak to you about Dave. OK?’

‘Right,’ he said in a quieter voice.

She let go of him.

The room had escaped by the skin of its teeth. Mat suddenly ran out of it and up the stairs. Chairs down, milk spilled, tea slopped out of the cups, toast and crumbs everywhere. The air was ashes. It was amazing how much damage you could do in just a few seconds if you stopped bothering not to knock things over. His mum was already straightening things on the table, but his dad just stood there. He looked older, more wrinkled, smaller and more useless than ever. He seemed to have shrunk and his mother seemed to have grown.

She brushed herself down and said, ‘But first I’d better tell your dad, don’t you think?’

‘I thought he knew,’ said Dino.

‘Tell me what?’ said his dad.

‘You were right,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry.’

He shook his head and added even as she spoke, ‘Don’t tell me, I can guess.’ He sat down at the table, and to everyone’s pity and shame, began to weep bleakly, his head in his hands, his elbows crunching up the toast crusts. ‘I knew it, I knew it, and you just kept denying it. Why did you have to keep denying it?’ he wept.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Can we get the children off to school first?’

‘She’s been shouting at me about my suspicious mind,’ he explained to Dino, his eyes glistening, his voice wobbling. He stopped, wiping his eyes, and looked up at the clock. ‘But I have to go. I have that meeting.’ He stood up. ‘An important meeting, God help me, I was looking forward to it. Now look. What timing!’ He glared at his wife and then at Dino, trying to swallow the things he wanted to say.

He moved around the kitchen picking things up and getting his jacket on as he wept. Dino, watching from the table, thought he looked like a man in a movie.

‘Do you have to go now?’ asked Kath.

‘You’ve had how long to tell me – how long? Weeks? Months? How long?’

‘We’ll talk later,’ she said, looking away.

His dad looked at Dino. ‘Dino. None of this is your fault. OK?’

‘Why should it?’ asked Dino, but it sounded rude so he added, ‘OK, Dad.’

‘OK like hell, eh? I’ve got to go. Christ, what timing!’

‘Let’s take the day off, Mike. We can talk now,’ said Kath.

He stood in the kitchen considering. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Not like that. Not because you say so right now after so many … so many lies. I’ll take this afternoon off. See you here, OK?’

‘The meeting too important for you, is it?’

‘Don’t be spiteful.’

‘Sorry.’ She looked away and bit her lip. ‘Sorry.’

‘See you later.’ He clapped a hand on Dino’s shoulder and walked out of the door.

Dino stood up. ‘I’d better get going too,’ he said.

‘No. We need to talk.’

‘School …’

‘We’ll take the morning off, both of us.’

‘Sausages,’ sneered Dino. He meant, she was treating him and his dad like sausages – him in the morning and his dad in the afternoon. But she knew what he meant.

‘No, important people I’ve neglected too long,’ she said. ‘I won’t be a minute, I’ll just get Mat away. We have to talk.’

She went upstairs after Mat. Dino ignored her instructions. Why should he go through this shit? Everything was going to stop for her? Nothing was going to stop for her! He went upstairs to get his things ready and slipped out while she was in the kitchen packing Mat’s bag. He walked halfway down the road before he realised that if he went, he’d have to wait all day before finding out what was going on. He felt sick with anticipation already. He turned round and went home to listen to his mother’s music.

Kath came back from taking Mat to school, stood in the hall and called his name.

‘I’m in the kitchen,’ he told her.

‘Be with you, I just need to pee.’ She ran upstairs to her bedroom and stood in front of the mirror doing her face, as if her son was an interviewer, or a lover or someone she had to look good for. What was she going to say? Poor Dino didn’t even know how to think about this sort of thing. It was going to be a question of what mood he was in.

Not fair to him, she thought.

How much had he seen? Ouch – she couldn’t even think of that. What a mess. She hadn’t got a clue how to go about it.

She patted her hair and went down.

‘It’s all wrong, I should be speaking to your dad first, not you,’ she said.

‘I’ll go to school, shall I?’ said Dino.

‘No, no, please. Oh, God, Dino. I’m not very good at this, am I?’

‘You looked pretty good at it in the living room the other day.’

‘How much did you see?’ she asked, before she had time to think about it.

‘Enough,’ he muttered, and turned his face away to avoid having to watch her blush.

She walked two or three times up and down the room, turned, and put the kettle on.

‘Tea.’

‘Thanks.’ Suddenly impatient, he squirmed in his chair and said, ‘What do you want to say to me? I should be at school.’

His mother rubbed her eyes. ‘I should have spoken to you ages ago. I didn’t know … I mean, I wasn’t sure if you’d seen us.’

Dino shrugged.

‘Although I suppose I knew you’d seen us by the way you were behaving. You made it pretty clear, actually, considering it’s almost impossible to get you to talk about anything.’

Dino laughed.

‘Thanks for waiting for me, anyway,’ she said.

‘OK.’

He watched her as she turned to make the tea. This was a woman; he hardly knew her. She was like a tiny box he had held in his hand all his life, and he had pressed a catch and she’d opened up and here she was, big as the sky. She was like the bloody Tardis. He felt a wave of resentment that she had so much life.