twenty-three 

Major moments in my life always seem to take place in bad weather. I'm not saying those turning points are punctuated by Mercurial storms like I was some Greek hero or something. But every time something significant happens to me it does seem to be raining. I expect if I ever get married it will pour all day. And if I ever move into my own house all the furniture will have to be covered in waterproof sheeting. Still, at least when my time is finally up, the ground will be nice and soft for the gravedigger's shovel!

It was still raining quite persistently as I walked home from Target, and the town seemed very still, unreal almost. Everything around me seem unusually vivid and I kept noticing things I'd never noticed before in streets I'd walked down a thousand times. For example, in the garden of one house which I'd passed every day on the way to the bus stop I saw a gnome fishing by a small pond in the garden. The gnome had a red hat, black rimmed glasses and a small dark green frog by his foot. The gnome was too weathered and settled to be new, but I was certain I had never previously seen it. Maybe it had been revealed by some long-delayed weeding, or maybe I had never looked closely at the pond before. Still it was strange, I thought, to have walked by so many times and never've noticed it.

Although I knew my parents wouldn't be happy about me leaving school, I had made up my mind to take the job come what may. I had never really had any money of my own and was getting too old to ask for hand-outs. I decided it was time I started looking after myself.

When I got home, mum was in the kitchen, scrubbing the scorch marks off the bottom of the saucepan in which John had made beans on toast for his breakfast. At first, she seemed startled to see me, and then her face furrowed with irritation.

"What on earth are you doing here," she said, looking me up and down for signs of illness. Unable to observe anything visibly wrong with me (other than all my normal peculiarities, of course) she asked, "What's going on? You haven't been getting into trouble at school again. You're too old for that. You should be setting an example now. Behave like a responsible adult."

"I have been behaving like a responsible adult," I said. "I've got a job."

"What kind of job?" she asked putting down the burnt pan and starting to bite her nails.

"Working for Target Marketing, they deliver magazines and stuff. Tony's uncle said I should go and see them, so I just went for a..."

"Tony's uncle?" she said. "You haven't got a job with Tony's uncle?" Her voice was filled with disgust and dismay, the words Tony and Uncle rasping in her throat like the name of some shockingly disgraceful disease (gonorrhoea - you haven't got gonorrhoea?!).

"It's not with Tony's uncle," I explained. "He just recommended me. It's good though. I'm going to be in charge of this massive warehouse and have my own van to deliver all the stuff in."

"Delivering things?" spat mum incredulously ( as if I had just described some foul symptom of the 'disgraceful disease' caused by Tony's uncle).

"Yea, magazines and brochures and things," I said.

"Well I'm not having you doing that," said mum.

She bit a nail off, then picked it from her tongue and laid it on the draining board by the sink next to a green scourer with a blob of lemon Fairy on top.

"It's too late," I said. "I've said I'll take it."

"Well I'm sorry, you'll just have to un-take it, won't you," she said.

"I'll do what I bloody well like," I said, gathering courage from the knowledge that I would soon be a man of independent means.

"But it will interfere with your school work," said mum.

"There won't be any schoolwork," I said. "I've had enough of school."

"Oh don't be so bloody stupid Peter."

"I'm not being stupid."

"You are being incredibly stupid," said mum. She picked up and started scrubbing what appeared to be an already perfectly clean glass bowl.

"Look mum, I've left school. I hate it there," I said.

Mum scrubbed on in silence, her lips pursed.

"It's difficult to get jobs nowadays," I continued. "It's not like it was when you were my age."

"I'm sure you know best," she muttered.

"Don't be like that," I said, trying to be reasonable. "I know you wanted me to stay on, but school's just a waste of time. Half the people in John's year who've left haven't got jobs," I said. "Go on, you ask him."

"That's because they've all go on to university or at least polytechnics," she said.

"Not all of them. And, anyway, I can't see the point of going to university. I'd rather be out earning some money."

"It's not about making money," she said. "If you leave school now you'll never have the chance to do anything you enjoy."

"Bollocks," I said. "It's nothing to do with that. You don't like it just cause Tony's uncle sorted out this job for me and cause if I don't stay on all the neighbours will think you've got a thick son. Well tough shit. I've got a job and that's that."

Mum stopped scrubbing the bowl, but still held on to it, limply clutching the green scourer inside.

"But Peter you could do so much," said mum. "If only you'd put your mind to it. Maybe I could have a word with them at the school. Maybe you could change your subjects. what do you like doing?"

"Playing the guitar," I said.

"I didn't mean that," she said.

"Yea well, that's what I like doing," I said.

"Oh Peter, you'll never get anywhere playing the guitar."

"That's what they told John Lennon." I said.

"Oh for fuck's sake Peter," said mum. She hurled the bowl into the sink where it broke neatly into two halves.

"That was clever," I said sarcastically. "What are you going to break next?"

"Oh just get out of here," said mum tiredly.

"No," I said, standing in the middle of the room.

Mum stepped back from the sink (ostensibly to put the saucepan she'd been cleaning on a shelf to my left) and in doing so deliberately pushed into me. I braced myself, adopting the blocking position I had learned in basketball, leaning forward, knees slightly bent.

"Get out of my bloody kitchen," shouted mum as she bounced off me. I stumbled backwards a step then readopted my basketball blocking stance. She waved the saucepan at my head, shouting, "Go on, get out! Get Out! GET OOOUT!!!"

I laughed and shook my head.

"You're fucking pathetic you are," I said.

Mum looked as if she were about to push into me again (or possibly whack me on the head with the pan). But then thought better of it. She sighed and raised a hand to her cheek. Her fingers moved over her face like those of a blind woman at an identity parade. Then her hand fell limply to her side. And she started to cry.

"Please Peter I can't take anymore of this."

"Tough fucking shit," I said and walked out of the door. As I stepped onto the street, clouds began to gather and rumble overhead, but I trudged on regardless to a piece of bumpy, bramble-skirted waste ground behind the shops where we used to play football. With the sole of my DM's I cleared rabbit droppings from a patch of dry earth between the roots of an old beech tree and sat for quite a long time just listening to the rain lashing through it's branches.