more seriously than Dad does. He’s a total cynic—but an optimist, too. Mum has her cynical side, she’s worked with too many hard-core villains and thugs not to, but she still holds on to a vain belief that the system is worth fighting for. I’d certainly want her on my side if I was stuck in a courtroom, but I’d like a bomb belt under my shirt as well. It’s all so fucking middle-class—I’m so fucking middleclass. There’s a conspiracy in this country. We all play our roles, even the yobbos in the streets just fulfill some middle-class nightmare, they don’t have any real ideas of their own. It takes an outsider to inspire genuine fear—someone whose skin is a slightly different color from ours, someone who doesn’t know the rules, even if he’s lived here a couple of generations; or maybe does know the rules and doesn’t give a toss. Then watch us. We’re wary as hell. I mean, these guys don’t know when to take their hats off. They could get serious, they might forget that some ponce in a wig referees the match, they might just go and whack him with a machete, and post it on the web.
Mum’s on the lawn, lying prone on a huge beach towel which follows the bumps and pockmarks in the ground. She’s covered in sun screen, I can smell her from here, and listening to some opera or other on her headset. Jake is lying murmuring in his sleep like a drunk on a binge, his lightweight wicker carrycot placed just inside the shade of the kitchen door. Every now and then, Mum looks up from her book, lifts an earphone from one ear and checks that he’s OK. He looks OK to me, he looks like he’s having wet dreams or maybe planning the baby-aspirin dealership that’s going to set him up. Jake looks like a survivor, but you never can tell. There are times when he looks small and helpless like any other baby, but I think he’s only faking.
Me, I’m so desperate for entertainment that I’m filming the little bugger. I could be down at the beach, getting tossed around by the waves they have down here. The beach is brilliant, I’ll say that for it—a great ridge of pebbles that drops like a shock down to the sea, throwing you off balance if you’re not ready for it, deliberately angled to send you careering into the water, unable to stop. Instead, I’m hanging around, hot as hell in my shorts, a little buzzy-headed from a glass of whatever Mum’s drinking, trying to kill time and look interested as I range my camera over sleeping Jake, the ants massing by the cracks in the step outside the kitchen door, the tangled grass beyond that, like ropey fruitand-veg stall matting, and Mum’s eyes scanning her book, darting up to look my way then ignoring me, her tits cupped in her untied bikini top, a trail of sweat running from the small of her back down a slight fold of her waist to the shadow between her stomach and the towel.
The truth is I’m waiting, and the righteous are rewarded, for as I scan the camera over the wooden trestle table by the far wall of the garden, I hear a sound behind me. There is movement in the heavy air, the waft of a body cutting through the stillness of the kitchen, a local voice cooling my neck.
‘Aren’t you bored, Tom, taking films of the baby? I didn’t think to find you here on a day like this.’ She can make me blush, Lucy can. It’s stupid, but everything she says to me makes me prickle with embarrassment. Does she know this? Am I ahead of her, London boy to Devon girl? Not a chance. ‘You look hot.’ I don’t know what else to say. Her face is shining, her hair damp at the edges with sweat. She’s not exactly beautiful—certainly not as pretty as Jessie—but she has a sense about her that’s quite unmissable. Whereas Jessie is totally aware of what she can do with her whole body, the power it gives her, Lucy looks as if she might fuck on the stairs while cleaning house for us without missing a beat. They’d each have their own importance for her, the screwing and
Mum’s on the lawn, lying prone on a huge beach towel which follows the bumps and pockmarks in the ground. She’s covered in sun screen, I can smell her from here, and listening to some opera or other on her headset. Jake is lying murmuring in his sleep like a drunk on a binge, his lightweight wicker carrycot placed just inside the shade of the kitchen door. Every now and then, Mum looks up from her book, lifts an earphone from one ear and checks that he’s OK. He looks OK to me, he looks like he’s having wet dreams or maybe planning the baby-aspirin dealership that’s going to set him up. Jake looks like a survivor, but you never can tell. There are times when he looks small and helpless like any other baby, but I think he’s only faking.
Me, I’m so desperate for entertainment that I’m filming the little bugger. I could be down at the beach, getting tossed around by the waves they have down here. The beach is brilliant, I’ll say that for it—a great ridge of pebbles that drops like a shock down to the sea, throwing you off balance if you’re not ready for it, deliberately angled to send you careering into the water, unable to stop. Instead, I’m hanging around, hot as hell in my shorts, a little buzzy-headed from a glass of whatever Mum’s drinking, trying to kill time and look interested as I range my camera over sleeping Jake, the ants massing by the cracks in the step outside the kitchen door, the tangled grass beyond that, like ropey fruitand-veg stall matting, and Mum’s eyes scanning her book, darting up to look my way then ignoring me, her tits cupped in her untied bikini top, a trail of sweat running from the small of her back down a slight fold of her waist to the shadow between her stomach and the towel.
The truth is I’m waiting, and the righteous are rewarded, for as I scan the camera over the wooden trestle table by the far wall of the garden, I hear a sound behind me. There is movement in the heavy air, the waft of a body cutting through the stillness of the kitchen, a local voice cooling my neck.
‘Aren’t you bored, Tom, taking films of the baby? I didn’t think to find you here on a day like this.’ She can make me blush, Lucy can. It’s stupid, but everything she says to me makes me prickle with embarrassment. Does she know this? Am I ahead of her, London boy to Devon girl? Not a chance. ‘You look hot.’ I don’t know what else to say. Her face is shining, her hair damp at the edges with sweat. She’s not exactly beautiful—certainly not as pretty as Jessie—but she has a sense about her that’s quite unmissable. Whereas Jessie is totally aware of what she can do with her whole body, the power it gives her, Lucy looks as if she might fuck on the stairs while cleaning house for us without missing a beat. They’d each have their own importance for her, the screwing and
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