Girl A(20)

I still recall some of Ethan’s own facts; once, in a pub quiz and sitting beside JP, I took the pencil and paper and noted the capital of Tuvalu.

‘Funafuti,’ JP said. ‘Well, you couldn’t make that up.’ We received a free tequila for the only correct answer, and as I set down the glass, JP shook his head. ‘Funafuti,’ he said. ‘I’ll be damned.’

Before joining Jasper Street Primary School, Mr Greggs had spent a year travelling the world, and Ethan described the contents of his classroom to me at teatime, with eyes like globes. He had a set of Russian dolls, which lived inside one another, and a little bronze model of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He had a kimono from Japan, which you could try on – both boys and girls, because in Japan, anyone could wear them – and a cowboy hat from the actual Wild West.

Father had returned home from work and joined us in the kitchen. It was a dull Friday evening, February, and he was still wearing a coat, which smelt of the cold. He took four slices of bread from the freezer and slotted them into the toaster. ‘That isn’t a place,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The “Wild West”. This Mr Greggs is having you on, Ethan. He can’t have been there, because it isn’t a real place.’

I looked at Ethan across the table, but he was fixated on his hands, which were pressed together, as if in prayer. Father smeared butter across his toast and shook his head.

‘I didn’t think that you would be so slow,’ he said, ‘as to fall for something like that.’

Father had rarely taught us facts, but he had taught us philosophies. One of these was that no person was any better than another, however educated or wealthy he or she might appear to be; specifically, no person in the world was any better than a Gracie.

‘Who is this person?’ Father called. ‘Deborah?’

Mother came arduously from the living room, bearing Delilah in her arms and Evie in her belly. ‘What?’

‘Mr Greggs,’ Father said. ‘Ethan’s teacher.’

‘What about him?’

‘Is he peculiar?’ Father asked. He bent the final piece of toast in half and folded it into his smile.

‘He was a bit delicate,’ Mother said, ‘at parents’ evening.’

Father snorted. Pleased with that. He wore a blue boiler suit, which couldn’t contain his laughter; his body bulged against the material, like magma at the crust of the earth. After his dismissal by Mr Bedford, Father worked as the electrician for a Victorian hotel in Blackpool, right on the seafront, and wore the same uniform required of the hotel cleaners.

‘It’s only temporary,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

When he first met Mother, Father had described himself as a businessman, which wasn’t so far from the truth. In the evenings and at weekends, he still occupied an office space in town, with dirty white blinds and a sign which he had ordered from a printer: CG Consultants: Ideas with a spark. He dispensed advice on purchasing computers, fixed Walkmans, and hosted unpopular programming classes on Saturday afternoons. Children of all ages were welcome; on the better days, two or three glum boys would file into the room, accompanied by their mothers, who liked to tap on the keyboards and talk to Father. Father wanted to talk about computers; the mothers wanted Father to talk about himself.

Father spoke only when he was quite sure that his audience was listening to him, and so each phrase was weighed, prepared, and carefully proclaimed. The mothers at coding class leaned eagerly into the silences between his words: they liked his quiet temperament and his beard and his black hair, and the heavy hands which skimmed across the computer keyboard, and which were easy to imagine on your skin.

‘Back to the breach,’ Father said, and stood from the table. One of the coding club mothers had made an appointment to discuss whether she should purchase a Macintosh or an IBM. A busy evening at CG Consultants. Ethan waited for the front door to close; as soon as it had, he darted past me and Mother, and upstairs. He, too, went to work.

Sunday dinner: the fortnightly endurance of steak and kidney pudding. The burst of each slither of organ made me want to vomit.

Ethan had visited the town library on Saturday morning, and smuggled home a rucksack of books which he refused to share; he upended the swag onto his bed and bundled me out of the room. Now we awaited him at the kitchen table. Delilah was anxious, contorting in Mother’s arms. Mother flopped a breast from her maternity dress and offered it to the child.

‘That’s it,’ Father said, and stood up. ‘I’ll go and get him.’

There was no need. We heard the light footsteps on the stairs, and Ethan appeared at the kitchen door.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

He was quiet through the steak and kidney pudding, and quiet as we took the plates to the sink. He was quiet when Father asked him for liquor, which he took carefully from the Forbidden Cupboard and poured into Father’s wedding glass, as he had been taught.

He, like Father, understood the importance of just when to speak.

When we were back at the table, and watching Father drink, Ethan cleared his throat. He was too nervous for introductions, and he came right to it.

‘There is such a place,’ Ethan said, ‘as the Wild West.’

I looked up from the table. Father’s lips were wet, and he licked them. He rolled the bottom of the glass around the table, and watched the amber surface shifting under the kitchen lights.