Laddered Tightropes Page 4

“Nerdoraptor, use your Algebra Attack!” went Andy.

  “Carrot Peeler, use peel!” Ryan countered.

  Charlie blurted, “Brickman, block him!”

  I noticed that Kitty and Jade seemed a little overwhelmed by the game, and yeah, I’ll admit it, I thought it was the dumbest thing since one-piece pyjamas. I could just see someone being carted off to hospital in a minute (if Jersey had a hospital), and if it was Jade, I got the distinct feeling that her mother might sue.

  “Uh, could we maybe play something different?” I suggested in the general direction of Cousin Who. “Hey! Hey, could we play something different?”

  It was impossible to get his attention without using his name. Until Ryan patted him on the shoulder and pointed my way.

  “What?”

  “Could we play something different?”

  “Sure. What about Doctor Who hide-and-seek?”

  “What’s Doctor Who hide-and-seek?” I asked, intrigued.

  “It’s a really good game that you can play with as many people as you want. I’ll be the Doctor, and… Jade can be my companion.”

  I privately doubted that Cousin Who would be up to running anywhere in his giant jeans. So far today, I still hadn’t seen his trainers.

  “I wanna be the companion!” Kitty complained.

  “You can be next, Little Cuz,” he said fairly. I had a teeny suspicion that The Cousin wasn’t 100% on Kitty’s name either – she hadn’t even been born the last time we met. Well, that made me feel a little less bad about it all, but I still wasn’t about to ask. And the best part was, he was astonishingly good at managing Jade’s impatience for an only child.

  “So what does everyone else do?” asked Ryan.

  “Everyone else is a Dalek. It’s basically reverse hide and seek. Two people hide, and the rest look for them, and then after Kitty’s turn it’s the person who finds someone first who can swap out and choose to be The Doctor or the companion.”

  “That sounds complicated,” mumbled Charlie.

  “IT’S NOT COMPLICATED!!” shouted Zak.

  “Uh, no offense, but no thanks…” I managed, shuffling off in the parental direction. Sure, it would’ve been fun if we were nine, but unlike Devon I felt distinctly silly as I fast-forwarded in my head and realised I’d be expected to shout Ex-ter-min-ate!! in a public setting.

  “I’ll count thirty-seven slow,” I heard Andy start.

  “Why thirty-seven?” asked Charlie.

  I had made the right decision.

  Mum and Harry were sat outside the nearby café with Uncle Clifford and Auntie Freesia, talking jobs of all things. I kept my mouth shut, mainly because I didn’t actually have any idea what either of them did for a living, and soon gathered that Cliff and Freesia were both teachers. I still dithered.

  “So, Harley,” said Freesia, who had no trouble remembering my name. “Any idea what you want to do for a career yet?”

  Oh, stop. My life so far had been blissfully free of these questions anywhere outside school, but I guessed it was par for the course at family reunions. “Well… I went with my English teacher for Work Shadowing. I don’t know if that counts.”

  Cliff laughed. “There’s plenty of time yet. No sign of future planning from Nobby over there either; I’m thinking museum curator?”

  “Charlie’s going to be a musician,” said Mum.

  “Leave off,” said Cliff, with a familiar face of derision. Not that he looked much friendlier the rest of the time, with his James Bond suit and his dirty-blonde hair gelled in a spiky quiff like a posh teenager. “Rocky was going to be a big rock star, but he never wanted to leave the island either. You must encourage Charlie to think outside his teen dreams.”

  “Rocky is blind,” Mum reminded him. She always got narked when someone knocked Charlie, and I think I just realised where that came from. “We can’t all be Stevie Wonder, but he’s happy enough.”

  “Not like you, honey,” added Freesia, twirling a lock of hair. It was dark like neat Bisto. Freesia was one of those grown-ups with a fringe, and it really set her coffee-coloured eyes off against her pale complexion. I could see why Clifford would go for her, and I suspected that she was a bit of a trophy wife. “You’re so cynical.”

  Damn. Was I like that? Was I the life-limiting disability Charlie suffered from? Did I have an automatic lack of faith in his talents? It was weird, because I’d always thought he was holding me back.

  Harry looked awkward.

  Cliff exploded with enthusiasm. “Anyway! Not like you and Shaz left us to it as soon as you could get away. Australia is it? She really has no regard.”

  Resentresentresentresent.

  “Cliff,” muttered Freesia.

  “I’m just trying to make light of things. What about that old boy Jeff’s indignant pauper fetish? Still going strong after ten years!”

  “Another cup of tea, anyone?” offered Harry. “Harley, would you help me carry the trays?”

  I tried not to leap up too enthusiastically, but still dislodged a netted bucket-and-spade set from the display. I clearly remembered our best attempts (last at the age of eight) at manipulating our local beach’s variety of stones into castles. Our pebble piles had collapsed back into the carpet of marbles as soon as the plastic wall-support was removed.

  Harry jingled the door open. “Zak?” he asked me through gritted teeth, no sooner had we bustled into the café.

  I nodded.

  #10 The Aristotwat

  After two and a half hours of recounting brilliant(ly exaggerated) test results, bitching about your mum (sorry), and trying to make Aimee’s baby sound less of an accident, the tension in Nana’s maisonette was still high.

  “You can’t be trying to convince me that was on purpose,” scoffed Nana, indicating Lemmy. She was awfully sharp-tongued for her blobby casing. I hadn’t remembered her being so large in photos, but it sort-of explained how Mum was getting that way in recent years.

  Speaking of, Mum looked narked. “No, Mum. That’s my baby, Lemuel.”

  “I know it’s your baby. You and Harry met last summer, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it wasn’t planned.”

  Everyone looked at everyone else. We passed the squirm around the room like a party-game parcel with a pooey nappy at the centre. Kitty and Jade were spared from this as Jeffrey, the wealthy but pleasant husband, had delighted in entertaining them with pictures of Mum as a little girl from the photo albums he seemed to love the way Nana was supposed to – someone else’s memories of days gone by. I decided I would rather have joined in with that than listen to my grandmother make it painfully obvious how little she’d wanted my mother, aunt or non-matching twin uncles in the first place.

  “Well, it’s been nice catching up, Mum,” said, well, Mum.

  “No it hasn’t,” sniffed Nana, self-centredly fiddling with her salon-frothy white hair. She was Snow White’s stepmother with a hand-mirror. “Stop deluding yourself, love.”

  “I think it’s time we left for Ron’s.”

  “Go, go. I think one of your children has dropped its guts.”

  Pass the cringe again.

  “Don’t you want to join us?” asked Devon, who thanks to Eileen had the highest tolerance in the world for snarky old ladies.

  “No.”

  “But don’t you ever help?”

  “No. Silly me thinking he’d be cured.”

  Silence.

  “We mollycoddled him, and for what? I set a meal on the table every day for a son who’ll be no use in my old age.”

  Cliff’s cynicism? Nothing compared to this old hag. First there was her crazed insistence that it hadn’t been worth keeping Rocky alive, and then there was the notion that her own true days of elderlism had yet to come.

  “I would,” said Devon. (Did she intend to worm on every single male in my extended family?)

  “Of course you would, dear. You’re a darkie.”

  “I think that’s about enough,” said Harr
y, whose usual tact seemed to have been left at the café, and for the best. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Nana.”

  “A darkie? A DARKIE?!” Charlie exploded, no sooner had we reached the car. “How could she call you A DARKIE?!”

  Devon shrugged. “I should set Keisha on the witch.”

  “What’s a darkie?” asked Kitty. “Is that like a goth?”

  It annoyed me that someone would have to explain that to her, or else she’d start saying it at school. Harry took on the task, while I stared out of the hire-car window and tried to unbunch my stomach over the idea of visiting a much-maligned blind uncle who I didn’t remember at all.

  * * *

  Rocky’s bedsit would’ve been a minimalist’s dream if he’d had reason to care about the colour of his walls. It was the polar opposite of the Cousin’s lair; the bed, sofa, couple of armchairs and television were all spaced out so that there was plenty of room to navigate, but we weren’t by any means in a big room.

  Rocky himself wasn’t a big person. He had small, shining, kindly eyes like space marbles, and thick eyebrows like an older man. The almost black hair of his beard was maybe three centimetres long, and that on his head passed the shoulder in a ponytail. His skin was literally tan but ruddy and freckled at the cheek like he’d got plenty of sun over the years. Obviously not a recluse.

  “Why do you have a television if you can’t see?” asked Kitty, upfront.

  Rocky chuckled and patted the spot next to him on the sofa. “Is that little Harley?”

  Mum rolled her eyes. “No, Ron. It’s Kitty. She’s seven years old. Harley’s nearly fourteen now.”

  “Oh right,” said Ron. “Kitty?”

  Kitty went and sat down next to our uncle. “Now I’m over here,” she said.

  “I know,” said Rocky. “Well, the TV license is cheaper if you’re blind. Still better than boring old books, eh?”

  “Amen to that,” said Zak. “I’m Zak by the way.”

  “Find a seat, all,” said Rocky. “I can sense you hovering.”

  Jade clutched Harry’s hand.

  I made the first move, and went to sit next to Kitty. Charlie sat opposite Rocky and took the opportunity to stare at him. When everyone else had found a place, Rocky was satisfied.

  “How about you introduce yourselves?” he suggested.

  “I’m Kitty and I have brown hair and pink skin,” said Kitty. “I want to be a actress when I grow up.”

  “Well, good luck to you, Kitty,” said Rocky.

  “I’m Zak and I support Pompey,” said Zak.

  “Blow me down with a feather,” said Rocky. “Lifelong supporter here too.”

  “How can you like football if you can’t see?” asked Kitty, saying what everyone else was thinking.

  “My friend Ian comes over and does a commentary,” said Rocky. “We do all the chants as well. Charlie?”

  “Oh, I don’t really watch football. Sorry.”

  Understatement. Charlie not only didn’t watch football, but he actively hated sports.

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  “I’m a guitarist and a singer-”

  “A frontman,” Andy butted in. “I’m Andy and I’m the bassist.”

  “I wasn’t finished, Andy,” whined Charlie. “My favourite band is Avenged Sevenfold, and my idol is Alice Cooper.”

  “Alice Cooper!” said Rocky. “I saw him – well, I didn’t see him – in London back in the late eighties.”

  Cliff had said that Rocky never left the island. Had it been some sort of a cruel joke where they put a live video on surround sound to prank him? Or was Cliff just offensively inattentive where his own twin brother was concerned? It wasn’t that I exactly couldn’t sympathise, but Rocky was such a nice bloke.

  “That’s really cool,” said Charlie. “Mum doesn’t let me go to gigs.”

  “You can go to one tonight,” said Rocky.

  “Where?”

  “My gig.”

  “Don’t you have to rehearse?” asked Charlie.

  “Well, it’s jazz, so I just need to limber up my fingers. What about you, Harley?”

  “Uh, well… I draw a lot and I guess I might want to write… a book.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Rocky. “I’ll make the special effort to read your book if you can get me a braille copy.”

  “Or an audiobook,” said Zak, who for all his 20/20 vision was dyslexic enough to relate.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, having no intention of exaggerating my pale existence to someone who couldn’t even notice how hideous I was. “It’s still way off in the future yet.”

  The conversation turned for another hour. Devon fetched biscuits from the kitchenette and made the tea. Rocky went on about Pompey and Alice Cooper and had my brothers in thrall. He held Lemmy and told him he’d certainly amount to something with a nickname like that. Charlie and Andy were allowed to faff with the guitars, and Kitty plunked about on the keyboard claiming that it was a song from The Aristocats. Then Harry made his dinner excuses and we left Rocky to prepare for the show and wait for Ian and his van.

  #11 Impressing The Impressionable

  Bob, bob, bob…

  Kitty smiled, obviously entranced by Ian’s shiny saxophone as she held onto the string of her authentic Pizza Hut helium balloon. Made out of bona-fide rubber, and filled with luxury air, it looked perfectly at home in this small but kinda sweet little club.

  Um, no, not really. In its own pinkly bob-ily way, the balloon was doing a fine job of standing out, bob, bob, bob-ing to the bluesy-smoothy jazzy beat of the music, upstaged only by Devon, in the ultra-skinny, ultra-violet jeans and yellow crop-top she’d insisted on teaming with purple and yellow scrunchies and fluffy socks that billowed out of her sandals. I was starting to feel like Rocky was the lucky one…

  Compared to the bustling bar below, the venue was sort of empty. I didn’t know if he knew. If he was anything like a bat (Charlie’s enthusiastic man-crushy comparison), the music probably threw off his sonar. Ian looked glad there was anybody here, the club having waived its age restriction upon the realisation that selling overpriced J2O to our clan would beat the heck out of going out of business.

  Bob, bob, bob…

  No time to be sad; there was nothing depressing about Ian’s sax solo. I couldn’t tell if it was a cover or an original piece, but it sang to my bleeding heart when I was so full of disillusion and an odd kind of sympathy for Mum. No wonder she was like she was. No wonder Sharon was like she was. No wonder Cliff and Rocky…

  Ian’s sax and Ron’s guitar spoke to me on a whole new level. The other musicians, who I knew nothing about, were also very talented.

  Another man stepped up on the stage. “OK,” he spoke into the barely-working mic, as the others continued in the background. “I’ve got a little ballad for you. I think it goes without saying that I didn’t write this song, and… neither did Lisa Simpson. Heh.”

  Ian ripped into possibly the greatest tune I’d ever heard in my life.

  Even with his fairly terrible smoke-a-day voice, I could still make out what the sudden vocalist was singing about. So could Charlie, who had tears pouring down his face. I rocked Lemmy, who had been lulled almost to sleep by the music, not that anyone besides me cared.

  Mum and Harry were dancing together. It was actually beautiful. The purple lighting gave a mood to it that made them seem like they were onstage. But my mesmerisation was not to last. I could never have a moment to myself.

  One particular impressionable person was kicking boredly at the leg of the table and rattling the glasses, in a crazy, crushy imitation of much-older-man Charlie and his human-drum-machine disorder. Oh, hang on, no. That was the sound of a disinterested, cranky, sugar-filled seven-year-old who wasn’t my sister, beating her own bluesy-blue feelings into the poor old one-legged table which was likely to keel over from being axed repeatedly in the same spot of its central support limb.

  “Jade, don’t,” I chastis
ed her, picking up some of the empty glasses and putting them on another table behind me, out of kicking range.

  “Bored,” she humphed, using her favourite word, and switching from her one-legged torturee to a four-legged one. (Thankfully not an animal of any sort; she was aiming her size-tiddly pump at my chair, now.) “Where’s all the dancing?”

  “There isn’t any,” I told her. “Well, no dance routines. The audience can dance if they want, but not like… y’know, High School Musical dancing.”

  “Why are they standing still?! That’s boring!”

  “No it isn’t,” I sighed, wondering why I’d been given the childminding job, while Devon sat dappled in the smoothy-smooth music and both my brothers were presumably deep in conversation with their closest buddies.

  Anyway, Uncle Ron and his bandmates weren’t standing still; they just had the maturity of swaying cats on walls, rather than than hyperactive puppy-doglets barking and making eyes at passing, interestingly perfumed women (i.e. the behaviour of your average boyband).

  “I’m bored!” Jade insisted, kicking my chair-leg once more, harder than before, and attracting the attention of the few people (also friends of the performers) who had turned up.

  “Shh,” said Freesia. “This is the last song…”

  “It’s all been one big long boring song!” Jade bratted. “I wannid to see The Simpsons Movie and play on the beach and go swimming and do fun stuff!” (She was ignoring how we’d been on the beach all morning and got sunburned, and how she could go to the cinema any time at home, and how it was half-past ten at night, so technically a take-it-or-leave-it bedtime extension.)

  “Shh…” said Mum, who had finished dancing.

  “Lisa plays saxophone much better than that man,” Jade said, snootily.

  “Look here, kid,” said Cousin Who, “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. I didn’t want you to rip my poster, and I didn’t want to give you my Stitch teddy, but guess what? I did it anyway because I’m nice to people. Why can’t you be nice to our uncle and his friends?”

  “Calm down, ---” shh-ed Auntie Freesia, using his name, which I (stupidly) hadn’t caught.

  “Andy, did you hear his name?” I whispered, poking my gorgeous boyfriend, who’d been lapping up the every note of the music and paying no mind to the me/Jade/etc scenario.

  “Who?”

  “My cousin,” I hissed.

  “No. Is it funny?”

  “I don’t know – I didn’t hear!” I groaned.