From her black crack mouth, a blizzard rushes out.
A silent roaring hangs here.
Not going anywhere.
Hangman
Dark, light, dark, light, dark, light. The Datsun’s wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain, not even at the fastest setting. When a juggernaut passed the other way, it slapped up spumes on to the streaming windscreen. Through this car-wash visibility I only just made out the two Ministry of Defence radars spinning at their incredible speed. Waiting for the full might of the Warsaw Pact forces. Mum and me didn’t speak much on the way. Partly ’cause of where she was taking me, I think. (The dashboard clock said 16:05. In seventeen hours exactly my public execution’d take place.) Waiting at the Pelican crossing by the closed-down beautician’s she asked me if I’d had a good day and I said, ‘Okay.’ I asked her if she’d had a good day too and she said, ‘Oh, sparklingly creative and deeply fulfilling, thank you.’ Dead sarky, Mum can be, even though she tells me off for it. ‘Did you get any Valentine’s cards?’ I’d said no, but even if I’d had some I’d’ve told her no. (I did get one but I put it in the bin. It said ‘Suck My Dick’ and was signed by Nicholas Briar, but it looked like Gary Drake’s handwriting.) Duncan Priest’d got four. Neal Brose got seven, or so he reckons. Ant Little found out that Nick Yew’d got twenty. I didn’t ask Mum if she’d got any. Dad says Valentine’s Days and Mother’s Days and No-armed Goalkeeper’s Days’re all conspiracies of card manufacturers and flower shops and chocolate companies.
So anyway, Mum dropped me at Malvern Link traffic lights by the clinic. I forgot my diary in the glove compartment and if the lights hadn’t turned red for me, Mum would’ve driven off to Lorenzo Hussingtree’s with it. (‘Jason’ isn’t exactly the acest name you could wish for but any ‘Lorenzo’ in my school’d get Bunsen-burnered to death.) Diary safe in my satchel, I crossed the flooded clinic car park leaping from dry bit to dry bit like James Bond froggering across the crocodiles’ backs. Outside the clinic were a couple of second- or third-years from the Dyson Perrins School. They saw my enemy uniform. Every year, according to Pete Redmarley and Gilbert Swinyard, all the Dyson Perrins fourth-years and all our fourth-years skive off school and meet in this secret arena walled in by gorse on Poolbrook Common for a mass scrap. If you chicken out you’re a homo and if you tell a teacher you’re dead. Three years ago, apparently, Pluto Noak’d hit their hardest kid so hard that the hospital in Worcester’d had to sew his jaw back on. He’s still sucking his meals through a straw. Luckily it was raining too hard for the Dyson Perrins kids to bother with me.
Today was my second appointment this year so the pretty receptionist in the clinic recognized me. ‘I’ll buzz Mrs de Roo for you now, Jason. Take a seat.’ I like her. She knows why I’m here so she doesn’t make pointless conversation that’ll show me up. The waiting area smells of Dettol and warm plastic. People waiting there never look like they have much wrong with them. But I don’t either, I s’pose, not to look at. You all sit so close to each other but what can any of you talk about ’cept the thing you want to talk about least: ‘So, why are you here?’ One old biddy was knitting. The sound of her needles knitted in the sound of the rain. A hobbity man with watery eyes rocked to and fro. A woman with coat-hangers instead of bones sat reading Watership Down. There’s a cage for babies with a pile of sucked toys in it, but today it was empty. The telephone rang and the pretty receptionist answered it. It seemed to be a friend, ’cause she cupped the mouthpiece and lowered her voice. Jesus, I envy anyone who can say what they want at the same time as they think it, without needing to test it for stammer-words. A Dumbo the Elephant clock tocked this: to – mo – rrow – mor – ning’s – com – ing – soon – so – gouge – out – your – brain – with – a – spoon – you – can – not – e – ven – count – to – ten – be – gin – a – gain – a –