The Boy Who Forgot How to Flinch

Foreword

I could say that I went off the rails a bit as a kid, but to say there were rails in my childhood might be something of a misrepresentation. Nonetheless, the long series of relatively horrific crimes I committed during my teenage years have never really left me. Even though it was twenty years ago now, I still feel like I’m forever hiding whole chunks of myself from my wife and child. I think maybe if I don’t tell someone, I’ll never have a single moment in my life when I can truly, honestly relax. So what I’m about to write is really just an attempt to free myself from that burden.

I’ve called the same place home for the last seventeen years, and I’m pretty settled here. I have a career – actually I’ve had two – and my kid goes to the local school, where for four years I’ve managed the campfires at a Halloween ghost story event. My tapas are locally famous, and I brew my own artisan raw beer with a Norwegian farmhouse yeast. I teach bushcraft to vulnerable adults in the local woodland on Tuesday mornings, and on Wednesday evenings I meet my former PhD supervisor and a couple of other guys for a “Look in the Mirror” discussion about the footprint of toxic masculinity in our everyday lives. It’s a men-only group, which recently caused me to fall out with a feminist friend who felt we had created “an exclusionary space”; my life is a walking testament to middle-class ideals.
As someone who is not a natural liar, I find it surprisingly difficult to conceal my entire past. When the school asked for my DBS I had to make awkward jokes about my childhood; when my wife asked if my parents were still alive I ended up saying “maybe a bit.” What happened to me back then, and more importantly, what I did about it, looms like a ghost behind my conversations, my application forms, my parenting.

It might seem ridiculous to other people, but I would like the love of all my friends and family not to feel entirely false and predicated upon lies. I want the people that love me to know who I actually am. The trouble with that is, well, I’m a fucking monster.

Chapter 1

“To understand just one life you have to swallow the world...
do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?”

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children.

My home-town is mostly famous for its extraordinarily posh private school, in which William Webb Ellis invented Rugby football in 1823. Other famous alumni include Neville Chamberlain, Salman Rushdie and Matthew Arnold. The school, like the shitty and incomprehensible game named after it, thrives to this day. Parents pay almost thirteen grand a term to deposit their kids there. Even if the well-heeled sprogs do manage to escape the grounds, they remain secure within the square mile or so of privately owned land in which teachers, staff and students are housed. Beyond that though, things go downhill faster than a greasy bob sled falling off a cliff, revealing Rugby town in its full chavtastic glory. The various estates all have their own little quirks.

Brownsover was the biggest and roughest estate back in my day, though Lawford was a near rival. I was safe in neither, but Lawford was the only area so brimming with dickheads that I had to actively avoid it. In other estates, like (Old) Bilton and Overslade, I was protected by my family and connections, so could occasionally saunter unharmed past a surly-looking group of hooded and baseball-capped young men as they slouched on walls, filling the evening air with the reek of burning weed. They would stare at me for a moment before returning to their business, which was not a privilege afforded to just anyone.

My own estate was New Bilton. I lived in Johnson Avenue, which runs parallel with Pendred Road at the top of what is colloquially known as Croop Hill. The back gardens of these two streets face one another across a block of manky graffiti-stained garages, upon whose opposing rooftops the kids of each street would gather to hurl unripe plums at one another. Occasionally, I’d be dragged into this activity; given my throwing power of approximately minus four out of ten I can only assume my main role was as cannon fodder. On our team were (among others) Sy, who could throw plums so hard that they’d explode on contact, and Clay Smith, a natural sportsman who could hit a moving target with his weak hand at thirty paces. The Pendred road crew were not soft either. Richard “the Perv” Pervo, a vicious little Scottish bastard with a face that reminded women not to drink while pregnant, was about four years older than me, and I think he targeted me as some weird form of flirtation. In June and July when the plums were greenest, his mad, foetal alcohol syndrome grin as he cocked his throwing arm was one of the scariest sights on earth, but for some reason he thought it was golden of me to stand on that roof like a giant, sobbing bullseye, and we were generally good friends.

We were all outdoors almost constantly, and on a good day our street would be filled with thirty or more children playing without an adult in sight. Groups seemed to form based mostly by age, with my own group overlapping my big brother Eddie’s more closely than I’d have liked. Jake, for example, was three years older than me and definitely in Eddie’s group – or rather, Eddie was in his. But his little brother Aubrey was only one year my senior, and was happy to play with all of us. Aubrey was always kind and I always loved him. We often commiserated together on the quality of our elder siblings.

Noel Gardiner lived opposite Aubrey and attended the same class in the same school. He looked exactly like Arnold Jackson from Different Strokes, after whom he was nicknamed forever. Two doors up from Aubrey and Jake, and ten doors down from me, was Clayston – with whom I shared a class, and his little brother Jye. Neither of them were the brightest sparks in Johnson Avenue’s intellectual fire, but they were both just built for sport. Despite our obvious differences, Clay and I walked into school together every day, and for every time I helped him with his homework he stopped someone bullying me, or tutored me in cricket or football.
All the games we knew were rough. We played British Bulldog the old fashioned way – most of the kids lined up at point A and had to run to point B, with one child being the bulldog, standing between the two points. If he managed to pin a child to the floor long enough to say “British Bulldog 123”while they attempted to run between the points, that child also became a bulldog, until eventually one child had to make runs alone while thirty other kids tried to lynch him. In this version of the game, the only actual rule was “no weapons”; and casualties were quite a bit higher than in the modern “tag” version. In “hedge hop racing”, we chased each other through privet hedges, leaving six foot holes gaping in front gardens all the way down the street. At Halloween we trick-or-treated, with Noel (Strokes) making special brews that could have come straight out of George’s marvellous medicine cabinet. Those who were stupid enough not to treat us had this “trick” poured through the orifices of their homes, stinking them out for days. In bonfire season kids threw fireworks at one another and scattered, screaming. Jake taught me how to make “penny bombs” by wrapping those old paper caps tightly around a coin and sealing it up tight with tape. If it struck true it would act like a mini frag-grenade, leaving shrapnel scars in walls and doors. Ninja stars made with Stanley blades were not entirely unheard of, though I never saw an injury from one that I recall. Whether that was luck or judgment I have no idea.

But such physical activities were not my natural area and either bored or terrified me. My earliest and happiest memories are of books. I could read well before I started school, though I don’t know how I learned; I asked for encyclopaedias for Christmases and birthdays from the age of five. I had a love affair with fantasy books from about the age of seven, and a few of the most important Romantic Poets after that. When I was nine a series called “The illustrated Encyclopaedia of Wildlife” released a volume once a fortnight for three years – sixty two volumes in total; I would pore over each one before the next was released, memorizing every word. Ouma – my Capetonian grandmother, once bought me a history of the twentieth century (which seems a slightly premature publicatin for nineteen ninety, when Diana was still alive, Nelson Mandela was not yet president, and the Euro did not yet exist…). I read every page, from the Irish War of Independence to the Dandi Salt March to the Moon Landing to Pan Am 103. I memorized whole books on dinosaurs, the history of warfare, the life and times of British Monarchs.

My mum and Marie (Aubrey’s mum) informally shared responsibility for us, but with very contrasting styles of parenting. Mum cared nothing for our behaviour unless we inconvenienced her, but if we crossed that line she was all Irish temper, cursing saints and throwing whatever was near to hand; Marie moved and spoke at a thoughtful, easy pace, was always patient and often kind. If you pissed Marie off you had almost certainly been a prick, but even then she would sulk and stare rather than shout and scream. Occasionally she threw a curse at Jake, but then, that boy was a genuine bell-end. I’m pretty sure that she hated Eddie as much as all the other neighbours, but even with him she maintained a solid silence.

Clay and Jye’s mum was a hardcore disciplinarian. I would stand outside the back door before school in the mornings, my view slightly obstructed by those long, multi-coloured hanging ribbons Jamaicans hang over their doors (though she herself was Irish), and I would listen to her coming out with a stream of motivational material which typically went something like: “you dumb little bastard – where’s your fuckin tie gone???” “If you’re not out the door in two minutes you’ll be fuckin wearing it [the door?] over your fuckin head!” “Finish that fucking cereal or I’ll smash that bowl in your fucking face and stab you with the shards you ungrateful little cunt!” These outbursts were punctuated by Clay skidding evasively across the kitchen, or the rain of blows and/or expletives raining down upon Jye as he tried to put his shoes on. The sheer hostility of their morning routine did not seem to phase them at all though,, and we’d walk through the Rugby club and up Bilton road laughing and joking like any other school kids. Further along the way we stopped to collect Jimmy O'Leary, whose mother made Clay’s mum look positively gentle. Have you ever seen a skip-It, or considered its utility as a weapon? The thing is basically a hard plastic ball and chain, you could swing around like an anklet/hoolahoop while jumping over it with the other leg. Sy swears he once watched her smack Jimmy’s big brother Nevin across the head with one because he put his school tie on with the thin end showing, “loike a feckin hooodlem.”

One morning during middle school we arrived to hear her cackling like a witch while she twisted a tea towel and wet the end. Jimmy was cowering in the corner of the kitchen, crying and begging, but she did not give a fuck, delivering quick swordsman-like snaps, the wet cloth cracking against his thighs and bare arms with each flick. After a few moments of morbid fascination we knocked the door. She spun when she heard it and whispered a stream of Irish invective over her shoulder, at which Jimmy fled the kitchen. She came out to greet us.

“Mornin boys, how you all doin today then?”, she said in her thick Irish accent, her face all friendly and smiling.
“Morning Mrs O’Leary. Has Jimmy left yet?” Clay said with, I thought, consummate tact.
“Oh sure he’s still here. Jay-aymes! It’s the buoys for ya!” And you would never, ever know, not for a second, that she was a total fucking psychopath. It’s possible she did not know herself.

None of the violence I’ve described so far seemed in any way remarkable to us though, simply because there was an obscene amount of similar violence in most aspects of our lives. We took entirely for granted that there would be fights between individual kids, opposing streets, opposing schools, neighbours, parents, the police... Hurting other people was just what happened, and we did a lot of it just for fun. There was one summer in which every older kid seemed to have a power cord with exposed wires in their home, which they used to electrocute unsuspecting younger kids they’d invited in; I never had to do the walk of shame – going home with piss-stained trousers - but the matter was largely out of my hands, and the shock did make my legs buckle at least three times. Some people would routinely faint and piss themselves. Occasionally, some hapless soul would be hit three, four or five times in the same day and end up looking like they’d been at the wrong end of a vampire orgy. Burning the back of a friend’s neck with the spoon straight from stirring the tea was considered so harmless that I was surprised when, over a decade later, my housemates at uni had a “sit-down meeting” with me to tell me it “just wasn’t okay to burn people.”

I was blessed with the most magnificent dog. Muffin was so called because Eddie and I were asked to come up with a name together and could not agree. Well when I say we could not agree, I mean we beat the shit out of each other. Mum intervened and said she would name him after the next thing she saw, and there you have it. It was not, on the whole, a bad name, as he was every bit as good-humoured and silly as it led you to believe. He was smart and energetic and loyal in the way that only dogs can be, and like most Labradors he could not bear to see anyone other than himself eat any food whatsoever. Sexually, he was disgusting. Boy, girl, large or small, old or young, he cared not a whit. I once watched as he pinned a staffie down sideways and straight-up fucked him in the rib cage. He looked so happy about it, and surprisingly relaxed.

Muffin and I spent whole afternoons fighting over a punctured orange leather football, and there is a picture of me holding tightly to it while he has it clamped in his jaws, yanking furiously. My whole body is in the air, legs flailing toward the sky and a huge grin on my face. I fought that dog over that ball for years, and was dragged and swung across the whole garden, defeated time and time again, left so exhausted and spent that Muffin would drop the ball on my chest, his saliva hanging in thick white ropes as he panted cheerfully, bouncing with enthusiasm to go again. And I would have, I swear, but I could not breathe, could not move my arms or lift my head. I loved that dog. And sometimes, just occasionally, I got that fucking ball, too.

My brother’s crew always had legendary status, for as long as I can remember. Even in middle school they were impervious to discipline and basically feral. Sy, who had repeatedly won fights against the hardest kids in the year above him, was the undisputed king, with Flannegan directly under him in the pecking order. After that, there was some jostling for third place, with several contenders. My brother and Irwin were probably the only members that existed outside of this hierarchy – nobody ever considered them valid physical opponents, but everyone accepted that they were useful in some sense. It was Eddie and Irwin that scored the alcohol, the drugs and the girls; it was Eddie and Irwin that arranged the fights with the rival schools. It was Eddie and Irwin that managed to lock all the staff out of the staffroom for almost half a day, that flooded the toilets, that brought the school to a standstill by setting off fire alarms one after another for literally the entire week. This was all in middle school.

I’ll admit that Sy had his issues. I love the guy. I love him even though I haven’t seen him for twenty years. He would never have hurt me, and I would imagine he would have given his life for me if necessary. But let’s not pretend he was a nice person.