Now I Know (22 page)

He said that was okay so long as I agreed to follow his guidance. I said I would, unless he asked me to do anything I thought was wrong.

He said: Right, you start now. Between now and lunchtime I want you to write your Confession.

I said: What! My confession! I don't have anything to confess! I don't feel guilty about anything.

He laughed his funny squeaky chuckle and said he was very glad I was already fit for Heaven. But guilty or not, he wanted me to write whatever came into my head under the title
The Confession of Nik Frome.

I said I didn't know where to start.

He said: Start at the beginning, with your birth.

But why? I said.

Explanation later, he said.

I said: This is too much like school.

He said: So why are you complaining? School is where you should be right this minute!

So I said I would try but he wasn't to be surprised if all I had by lunchtime was a blank page.

He said: If your life has been nothing more than a blank page so far then at least there's nothing you want to cross out, lucky chap!

Anyway, I did it. You won't believe what came out! And because you won't believe it, I'm sending you a photocopy. I had it done when I was sent for my afternoon exercise in the park. Walked into town instead and had the copy made at a quick-print shop. (I'm not supposed to go into the town. Too much of a distraction! But as far as I can see the place is a dump with about as much to distract you as there is in a morgue. I.e.: only dead bodies.)

I'm not really telling the truth. The real reason I'm sending you what I wrote is that it tells you about something I want you to know about but never told you.

The Confession of Nik Frome

(or as much as he could manage in an hour-and-a-half)

I was born seventeen years and four months ago. This is not really a confession, as it is not a secret and I do not feel guilty about it. The guilt belongs to my parents. I did not ask to be born. They caused it to happen. I do not know if they decided to create me or if I was an accident. I never asked them. All I know is that, judging by what happened afterwards, I feel like an accident.

I can't ask them now because my parents aren't around to ask. They were divorced seven years ago, when I was ten. Since then I have lived with my grandfather (my mother's father). He was a ship's carpenter who set up his own woodwork business when he gave up the sea because he wanted to spend more time with my grandmother. She died the year before I came to live with Grandad. He is now officially retired, but he still has a workshop which he goes to every day as if he were still working. He does odd jobs for people. He says a person is the size of his work. I think he means that people need their work to give their lives a purpose and to make them feel useful. He can be cantankerous sometimes and difficult to live with. Everything has to be just right and ship-shape, and he hates clutter. But he is mostly fun and I love living with him. He has been very good to me, and has taught me many things. One of the things he has taught me is to be sceptical.

My parents divorced after many rows. And now I come to think of it, I do feel guilty because of something I
didn't
do during the last and worst row. I will confess this.

The problem was that my father couldn't, as my mother put it, ‘keep his hands off other women'. And my mother's problem was that she was nearly insane with jealousy. (This may explain why, ever since that time, I have disliked people who sleep around, especially when they boast a lot about it. And I have disliked even more people who are possessive. So I guess I think jealousy is a worse sin/crime than lust. Another thing I like about Grandad is that he doesn't try to own me, or coddle me, but wants me to be my own independent self.)

On the night when the last great row happened, my father arrived home late from work. My mother had already hyped herself into a state, convinced he was with ‘one of his whores'. She was stomping around the house, banging things, tidying and dusting, as if making the house ultra-clean would somehow show my father up, be an affront to him—his uncleanness against her cleanliness, like it was a competition.

This is what usually happened, and was one of the signs that told me there would be a mighty row soon. During the rows she often shouted at him that he was ‘a filthy beast'. At the time I didn't realize exactly what she meant. I was only eight, remember. I used to think she meant Dad didn't wash himself enough, because Mum had a thing about being properly washed and used to say my hands were filthy if I came in with them even slightly grubby from playing in the garden.

Mum had laid the table ready for supper and the food was overcooking in the oven. I was hungry but didn't dare ask for anything. When Mum was in a pre-row mood she made a big production of getting anything for me and I had learned that it was best at these times to keep out of the way. That night I sat in a chair in the corner pretending to read a comic.

Dad arrived two hours late. By then Mum was going at full throttle. She let him have it as soon as he got inside the back door. (I should mention that Dad was a big man. He worked as a fitter in a local factory and used to do body-building. Mum was thin and not very tall. When Dad had had a couple of pints of beer and was feeling in a good mood he used to call her his little sparrow.)

Whenever Dad could get a word in he kept repeating that he'd only been kept on at work for an emergency job. But Mum wouldn't listen. She rampaged on. Usually, Dad rode out these storms by letting Mum shout herself to a standstill and then wheedling himself into her good books again during the next day or two. But he didn't do that this time. Mum started listing off his previous misdemeanours. Dad said what a good memory she had. Mum opened a drawer, took out a pocket diary, and said she didn't need a good memory because she'd been keeping track of his ‘filthy habits' for two years.

This sent Dad into orbit. Now he started ranting and raving and stomping round the room, accusing Mum of spying and having a cesspit for a mind, and all sorts of stuff I couldn't understand the meaning of and can only half remember now. I got so scared I hid behind the armchair I'd been sitting in. I could feel that the row was turning into a fight.

They were standing either side of the table, yelling across it at each other. Mum shouted at Dad that he was a coward. This made him speechless with rage. His face turned red, his eyes almost popped out. I was sure he would burst. Instead, he grabbed the tablecloth and gave it an almighty heave that sent everything on the table flying off in all directions.

There was a terrible clatter. Crockery smashed onto the floor. Cutlery flew into pictures that fell off the wall and shattered. A knife stabbed the chair I was hiding behind as if it had been thrown at my head. Salt and sugar and mustard and milk sprayed everywhere. A bottle of tomato ketchup burst against a wall, spreading a splat like blood across it. The room was a mess.

After the crash there was a tense silence. I think we were all stunned by what had happened, even Dad. Then Mum let out a piercing scream, and the next thing I knew they were almost locked together. Mum was banging away at Dad's face and body with her hands, and kicking his legs with her feet. Dad was trying to smother Mum's attack while keeping his legs out of range. And they were bellowing and cursing at each other enough to bring the ceiling down. They looked like they were doing a very violent (and when I think about it now, comic) dance.

At this sight I broke into terrified tears. I thought Dad was going to smash up the entire house, including Mum and myself, and that Mum was aiming to murder Dad. Such a prospect crossed all my wires and I became hysterical. I ran from my hiding place and tried to hurl myself between them. Dad tried to push me away, but succeeded only in punching me in the face. Mum, aiming a foot at Dad's shin, hit my knee instead. That made me scream and claw at them all the harder. Dad yelled at me to get away. Mum yelled at Dad that hitting children was all he was good for. In the ensuing struggle, with me less than half Dad's height, the only result was that my head finally rammed into Dad's groin.

Dad doubled up, his hands grabbing his crotch. At that same instant, Mum's feet got tangled in my legs. She tripped and went sprawling among the broken dishes on the floor. As for me, suddenly left flailing at empty air, I slipped and fell on top of Mum.

Then began the worst part of all. Mum struggled upright and hugged me to her. Seeing what had happened, Dad came for me and tried to pull me to my feet with one of his hands while the other held his still no doubt painful goolies. Each of them tried to grab me from the other. So a furious tug of war got going. Accompanied by me screaming blue murder and them shouting at each other again. The frightening thing to me was that I felt like I was a parcel that two people wanted only because they hated each other. After that, even if they had patched it up and stayed together, I don't think I would have trusted either of them ever again.

As it turned out, Mum won the parcel. She was always more determined and stubborn than Dad. When he gave up, she clutched me to her till her grip was so tight it hurt. Dad stood, snorting and cursing, and glaring thunderously at Mum.

Get out! she hissed at him. Get out and never come back!

He stood his ground for what seemed to me like hours. Then, without a word, he turned and went out through the front door, which he rarely used. He shut the door behind him very quietly, I remember that clearly. It seemed somehow more frightening, more ominous than the noise there'd been. Right now, as I think of it, it echoes in my memory like an unfinished sound.

I've only seen my father four times since then. Our meetings have always been awkward and have left me feeling unhappy. I haven't seen him for two years now, and I don't want to.

I stayed with Mum for six months after Dad left. Then she made friends with an Australian working near where we lived. Soon he came to stay with us. I was nearly ten by that time and reacted badly. I went through a patch of throwing tantrums and stealing things—money from Mum's purse, even shoplifting in the end. I was never caught, but Mum found out and we had a row of our own that was a mini-version of her rows with Dad.

After that I deliberately made myself as unpleasant as I could, finding ways to annoy them both and smashing things accidentally on purpose, and especially spoiling any occasion when they were enjoying themselves. I won't go into details. Maybe I do feel a bit guilty and ashamed of this.

It was during one of these upsets that Grandad suggested I go and live with him for a while to give us all a chance to sort ourselves out. Three months later, Mum announced she was going to Australia with Bill, her friend, to live, and said I could go with them if I wanted. I said no, and she didn't try to persuade me. I still think she was pleased and didn't want to change my mind. Grandad said he was happy to have me go on living with him. And that was that. Mum went and I haven't seen her since. For a time, she wrote every month. Now less and less often. I stopped writing to her ages ago.

End of story. Except that I haven't said what it is I feel guilty about
not
doing. I feel guilty that I didn't ask for my supper before Dad got in on the night of the Big Row. If I had, I would have been sitting at the table when he came in. They would have had their row, but he would never have pulled the cloth off the table with me sitting there. And if he hadn't done that, they would never have fought as they did, between themselves and over me, which is the most demeaning, painful thing that has ever happened to me in my life. And if they hadn't fought like that, they would probably have stayed together.

What I mean, I suppose, is that somehow I feel responsible for their breakup. That's ridiculous, I know. But, it seems to me, that's the truth about guilt. It's irrational, ridiculous, a terrible waste of yourself, like a kind of sickness. It's a contamination. We should discover how to get rid of it, as we would if it were an evil disease.

I've only a few minutes of my hour-and-a-half left. I didn't intend going on so long about this one event in my life. Usually, I try not to tell people what happened. It embarrasses me. And compared with what some kids have had to put up with it isn't anything, so who cares?

I guess I should also confess that I've done pretty much the sort of things everybody else seems to do. I've told lies, all of them pathetic. I've hated people and wished that ghastly things would happen to them. I've felt superior to some people and secretly envied others. I had a sexy pash on a friend when I was about fourteen, then decided I preferred girls, lusted after various ones, who just thinking about would make me masturbate in desperation at not being able to have them, till a girl called Melissa did a sort of routine job on me one evening when I think she couldn't find anybody better to make out with.

But I don't feel any guilt about these things. They seem so pitifully ordinary. I think what a lot of people call guilt is just fear of the consequences when they've done something they shouldn't. They're guilty in the sense that they did it. But they don't feel remorse. Which is what I think guilt really means: remorse that you've done something, whether it's ‘officially' wrong or not. Remorse means regret for doing it and being determined not to do it again. Not because of what other people might think, but because you feel what you've done has diminished you in your own eyes, made you feel less and worse than you want to be.

So I guess my worst confession—my
only
confession really—is that I feel less than I
want
to be. Not some of the time, but most of the time. And I regret that. Want to do something about it.

End of time.