A Place of Hiding

Paul Fielder usually awoke to the sound of his alarm clock, an old, chipped black tin affair that he religiously wound every night and set with some care, always mindful that one of his younger brothers may have messed it about sometime during the day. But the next morning it was the phone that awakened him, followed by the sound of feet clumping up the stairs. He recognised the heavy tread and closed his eyes tightly on the off chance Billy came into the room. Why his brother would be up at all in the early morning was a mystery to Paul, unless he’d never gone to bed last night. That wouldn’t be unusual. Sometimes Billy stayed up watching the telly till there was nothing more to watch and then he sat and smoked in the sitting room, playing records on their parents’ old stereo. He played them loud, but no one told him to lower the sound so that the rest of the family could sleep. The days when anyone said anything to Billy that might set him off had long since passed.

The door of the bedroom crashed open, and Paul kept his eyes squeezed shut. Across the small room from his own bed, his youngest brother gave a startled cry, and for a moment Paul felt the guilty relief of one who believes he’s going to escape torture in favour of some other victim. But as things turned out, that cry was only one of surprise at the sudden noise, because a slap on Paul’s shoulder followed hard on the heels of the door’s abrupt opening. Then Billy’s voice said, “Hey. Stupid git. Y’think I don’ know you’re faking? Ge’ up. Gonna have a visitor, you are.”

Paul stubbornly kept his eyes closed, which may or may not have prompted Billy to grab him by the hair and lift his head. He breathed the rank breath of early morning into Paul’s face and said, “Want some tongue, little wanker? Help you wake up? Like it better from blokes, don’ you?”

He gave Paul’s head a shake and then dropped it to the pillow. “You’re lame, you are. Bet you even have a stiffie with nowhere to put it. Le’s check that out.”

Paul felt his brother’s hands on the covers and he reacted to that. Truth was, he did have a stiffie. He always had one in the morning, and from conversations he’d overheard during games at school, he’d reckoned it was normal, which had been a big relief to him, because he’d begun to wonder what it meant that he woke up daily with his prong at the perpendicular. He gave a cry not unlike his little brother’s and clutched on to the blanket. When it became obvious that Billy was going to have his way, he leaped out of bed and raced to the bathroom. He slammed the door shut and locked it. Billy pounded against the wood.

“Now he’s pulling the pud,” he laughed. “Not so much fun without help, though, is it? One of those you-’n’-me wank jobs you like so much.”

Paul ran the water in the bathtub and flushed the toilet. Anything to drown his brother out.

Over the rush of water, he heard other voices shouting outside the door, followed by Billy’s crazed laughter, followed by knocking that was gentler but insistent. Paul turned off the water and stood next to the tub. He heard his father’s voice.

“Open up, Paulie. Need to talk to you.”

When Paul had the door open, his father was standing there, dressed for his day with the road-works crew. He wore crusty blue jeans and dirtsmeared boots and a thick flannel shirt that was foetid with the scent of heavy sweat. He should have had his butcher’s clothes on, Paul thought, and the sadness of it felt like a grip on his throat. He should have been wearing the smart white coat and the smart white apron covering trousers that were clean every day. He should have been setting off to work where he’d worked from the earliest time Paul could remember. He should have been ready to set out the meat on his very own stall at the far end of the market, where no one now worked because everything that had once been there was as gone as death made everything in the end. Paul wanted to slam the door on his father: on the dirty clothes his father never would have worn, on his face unshaven as it never would have been. But before he had the chance to do that, his mother appeared in the doorway as well, carrying with her the scent of frying bacon, part of the breakfast she insisted that Paul’s father eat every day to keep up his strength.

“Get dressed, Paulie,” she said over her husband’s shoulder. “You got an advocate coming to call on you.”

“Know what this is all about, Paul?” his father asked. Paul shook his head. An advocate? To see him? He wondered and thought there was some mistake.

“You been going to school like you ought?” his father said. Paul nodded, unrepentant of the lie. He’d been going to school like he thought he ought, which was when other things didn’t get in the way. Things like Mr. Guy and what had happened. Which brought grief back to Paul in a rush.