Life's Lottery (6 page)

The Lime Kiln is full, packed with drinkers whose fathers are still alive or have been dead for so long that it doesn’t matter. You and James have said little about Dad. You think that, as the Man of the Family, you should be able to say something to your brother that will make it easier. Nothing comes to mind.

As you force your way through to the bar, a cheer goes up. You wonder why, then remember James is in uniform. There’s a drunken wave of patriotism going on in the aftermath of the invasion of the Falkland Islands, a frenzy of kill-the-Argies war-hunger. The barman is Max Lewis, with whom you were at school though he was never a special friend. James orders a couple of pints of bitter. A man claps him on the shoulder and offers to pay for the drinks.

James, flinching from the touch, turns to accept… and freezes. Pressed close to James by the crowd, you sense the tension which draws your brother tight as a bowstring an instant before you recognise the man with the money.

It’s Robert Hackwill, grown up.

The Ash Grove School Bully has done well for himself. He wears a sheepskin coat and a trilby hat. His property business is flourishing and he is in line for a council seat. He has a flash car, a Jag. His smile splits the world horizontally in half.

Hackwill repeats his offer.

You look around for Jessup, never far from Hackwill, and spot him in a corner. Reg’s smirk is still there, shaped by the fat in his face. He’s still a sidekick.

What will James do? It’s fifteen years later and Hackwill is off his guard. James is depressed enough not to give a shit. You know your brother must be thinking of breaking a glass in the grown-up bully’s face.

You remember that day. When James wet himself while being given the worst Chinese burn in history and you ran to Mrs Daye, the Class Five teacher, and told on Robert and Reg. She saw the bullies off, ordering them to stay away from the school, and looked after the sobbing James, sending him home for the afternoon. You watched, wishing it hadn’t happened, wishing you could have done more.

You have never talked about it with James. Dad commended you for doing the right thing, but you always knew you did it out of cowardice. James needed help
right then
, not to see you running off for a grown-up while he was being tortured. Ever since, James has worked to be self-reliant, self-contained. You realise now that you know very little about the man he has become.

Max puts two pints on the bar. James picks his up carefully, getting a good grip.

You can
see
the pint smashing against Hackwill’s smile, glass and beer exploding, blood and froth drenching his whole front.

But James just takes a deep draught and swallows. He drains it.

‘Thanks, mate,’ he says. ‘Now have one on me.’

Hackwill insists on buying the soldier boy another.

You wonder if you were wrong. Maybe James hasn’t recognised Hackwill? The bully has obviously forgotten him, one among so many long-ago victims.

Jessup comes to the bar and springs for a round. Your drinks are bought for you too. It is as if you and James were being picked up by a couple of queers, but you know Hackwill and Jessup aren’t like that. What they want from you two isn’t sex but the association with a potential war hero. You’d prefer it if they were just after your arse. The mateyness of these two blokish men, careering towards middle age while still in their twenties, hits you in the pit of your stomach. You think of the school custard that always made you want to puke.

As the pints go down and your bladder fills, you assume you were wrong. James is friendly with Hackwill, even exchanges names with him. He must have forgotten the whole thing. You’ve carried the guilt for fifteen years and he’s wiped the copse from his mind.

This realisation, combined with the drink, makes you light-headed.

Finally, Hackwill eases off the sturdy bar-stool and mutters about ‘pointing Percy at the porcelain’.

‘You sure your mate’s all right?’ James asks Jessup as soon as Hackwill has tottered off. ‘He’s had one too many. Shouldn’t you see if he’s okay?’

Bewildered, Jessup agrees and follows Hackwill into the bog.

Lightning-sober, James tells Max not to let anyone use the Gents for five minutes.

‘Come on,’ he tells you. ‘This is for the copse.’

James remembers. He has always remembered.

The barman comes out, on his break, and guards the Gents door as James slips in. You follow.

* * *

Hackwill stands at the white wall, urinating loudly. Jessup is wheedling, asking if he’s all right, annoying him.

James springs across the room and catches Hackwill with his cock out, shoving him against the wet enamel. He rains blows on Hackwill’s head, driving him into the urine-trickling runnel, scattering disinfectant cakes. The smell is strong. James, grunting with each of his well-aimed punches, dances back and forth, jabbing and kicking. Blood trickles in with the piss.

James pauses and looks back. ‘You do fat boy, Keith.’

He kicks the whining Hackwill in the side and starts a boot ballet, as if trying to cram the sodden bully into the plug-holes of the urinal.

You look at Jessup, who backs into a stall. You remember the fat face snickering as James wet himself, calling to you.

‘It’s all right,’ you tell him. ‘I won’t hurt you…’

Relief sweats out of the fat face.

‘Much.’

From inside, violent rage erupts. You didn’t know that you were still so angry, that you carried the hurt.

* * *

You leave Hackwill and Jessup bloodied on the stinking floor of the Gents. Max has lined up fresh, on-the-house pints on the bar. Everybody remembers their school bully. No one ever forgives.

People gather round. You buy them all drinks. You buy a roomful of witnesses. Hackwill and Jessup slink out by a side door.

Drinking your pint, you catch James’s eye. As one, you make fists in the air and roar. The Marion brothers are back in business!

* * *

In the Falklands, James is severely wounded. He loses his left leg below the knee and is mustered out on a disability allowance. The medal citation commends his ‘initiative and conspicuous bravery’ in holding a position while someone else went to summon reinforcements. You wonder whether you taught him (by example) that he had to bear the brunt of the attack while others took the problem to a higher authority. James comes home changed but not obviously embittered. He is still self-reliant, even if he has to hobble around on a prosthesis. After a few months, he refuses to use a crutch.

The family regroups around James. With Dad gone and you in London, he becomes the fulcrum. You talk with him every week on the phone, and he updates you on what’s happening with Mum – who has a boyfriend, Phil Parslowe – and Laraine.

Wounds heal. Disabilities are coped with.

It’s all been taken out of your hands.

* * *

You work as a technical journalist in the daytime but struggle in the evenings with
Freebooter
, a historical novel. You live with Christina Temple, your girlfriend since university. You sell
Freebooter
and are contracted to write two sequels,
Buccaneer
and
Privateer
. You follow your hero, Kenneth Merriam, through a career of piracy from stowaway cabin boy to governor of Jamaica. Once you’ve used that up, you write about Merriam’s ancestors, in
Gallant, Galleon
and
Galliass
. You and Christina marry, and have two children, Jasper and Jessamyn. You write about Merriam’s descendants in
Crossbones
,
Cutlass
and
Cutthroat
.
Freebooter
is turned into a very unsuccessful film, which nevertheless makes you more money than all your publishing deals combined. You are published in sixteen languages. There is a
Merriam Quarterly
, a fan publication devoted to your books. You take a cruise in an authentic pirate ship for a TV documentary, and try to be good-humoured about seasickness. You write a book about the experience,
Landlubber
.

* * *

In February 1998, James wins £6.3 three million on the National Lottery. He buys you a yacht as a birthday present.

The Merriam saga completed, you don’t need to write any more novels. Effectively, you retire.

James invests, speculates, develops. Determined not to squander his winnings, he incorporates.

The Marion Group grows. Jasper works for James and becomes a vice-president at twenty-two. James, perhaps because of his leg, never married, though he has been seeing his personal assistant, Kate, for fifteen years. Outsiders sometimes think Jasper is James’s son.

You have a seat on the board but can’t keep track of James’s dealings. You give advice when it is sought but feel cut out of the loop.

This is James’s game.

* * *

Jasper has come up fast. He’s a twenty-first-century man, clued-in to technologies that baffle you, temples shaved to accommodate the decorative plugjacks he wears even though the tech to interface on a brain-level with information nets hasn’t been developed and isn’t likely to come along in the next few years. James relies on Jasper in communications; he is very obviously Heir Apparent.

You love your son, but – as he nears thirty – you find it hard to
like
him. At school and university, he was erratically brilliant, often depending on you or James to cough up cash to get him out of trouble. He got married young, to Robert Hackwill’s daughter Sam of all persons, and made you a grandfather, to little Zazza. Sam has smoothed him somewhat – he had a bit of a stimulants habit at university – but he still likes electronic short-cuts and corner-shaving. James is more tolerant of his foibles than you are.

And you are wealthily irrelevant anyway.

James keeps making speeches about luck and merit. The Marion Group is the first Lottery fortune to last. Most big winners are dead inside six months, used up by hedonism or torn apart by vultures. Their money drains away into the sand. James’s win is the seed money of an empire. He always credits you with demonstrating the difference between burying treasure, frittering it away and using it. He has turned his treasure into a treasury.

As the new millennium whooshes on, you face sixty.

Christina, five years younger, asks if you’re content. You wish you’d done some things differently and had tried harder in other areas but can’t deny that you have been a success.

Then, one spring morning in 2020, your daughter visits you on the latest yacht.

* * *

Jessamyn wears living tattoos on her breasts and magenta knee-length shorts. She’s had her cheekbones done, ridges of coral implanted around her eyes. It’s a look.

‘Daddy,’ she says, air-kissing you.

Jessamyn has never been as focused as Jasper. Born to wealth, she has pleased herself, not quite making a go of careers as a sound sculptor or an estate agent. Currently unmarried, she is engaged to a woman. Though she’s had two husbands, Mandii will be her first wife.

‘Jess.’

You’re pleased to see her. She was at your Big 60 party, but so was everyone else and you didn’t get to talk to her much.

Her smile is serious. You know this is not good news.

‘I’ve had my family area scanned,’ she says, tapping her skull. A current fad is specific cat-scans of brain regions. Apparently the walnut-folds can be read like palms. ‘I know you always loved Jas more.’

‘That’s not true, Jess.’

It isn’t. Everyone thinks their parents loved their siblings more. You certainly felt yours did.

‘No, it’s all right. I was a drip as a little girl. What was the word Uncle James used, “sneak”?’

Whenever Jasper committed some naughtiness – which was often – Jess used to run and tell you, the model of public spirit. As you strode off to admonish or punish, Jess’s rectitude was replaced by unlovely glee.

‘Are you glad I told you?’ she would ask.

An impossible question. You needed to know about Jasper but no one likes an informer.

‘I’m obliged to sneak again, Daddy.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s Jas, as usual. I’ve known for weeks but not known what to do, who to tell. I thought I’d warn him I knew and he’d make things right and seal the record. But he wouldn’t. If you want to know, I’m afraid of what he’d do. You know what he can be like.’

Her tattoos swirl around her nipples like twin dragons, reacting to her minutest skin secretions. They’re supposed to match her emotional state.

‘He’s been transacting in his favour. From the Group, from Uncle Jimmy.’

The dragons’ eyes are blood-black.

‘I think it’s long-term. I know it’s major.’

She leans forward and hugs you, miming crying.

‘Are you glad I told you, Daddy?’

If you take this to your brother, go to 102. If you take this to your son, go to 116.

W
hen your Eleven Plus results come through, your parents think there has been a mistake. But everyone is used to being disappointed in you. Remembering the tantrums you used to have, they always had a nagging feeling that any tests which suggested you were intelligent must be wrong. Everyone could see you were mental. Actually, you haven’t pitched a fit since Class Four. After Robert Hackwill dragged you into the copse for the worst Chinese burn in human memory and no one came to help despite custard-level screams, you gave it up.

You are the cleverest pupil in your class at Hemphill, but the lesson you learned in botching your Eleven Plus stays with you. The way to get through is not to scream and shout or show off, but to pretend consistently to be less able than you are. You can’t get away with a complete thicko act, like Timmy Gossett (in a special class, even at Hemphill), but keep answers to yourself, let others speak up in class.

Every report you get is a variation on the theme of ‘Could do better if he tried’. Academically, you hover just under the top five of your class, conscientiously doing enough to get by, never letting yourself stand out in any way. Your mission is to come through the war without getting your head shot off. That means not shoving your helmet above the parapet.