Jack Mutant - Which Way is Down? (part eleven)

 

Jack’s stomach churned, he struggled to eat breakfast, his appetite deadened by the familiar wriggling worms of anxiety and negativity. It was always the same, the best times, relaxing with people he loved were always tainted by the looming of their ending. It was Wednesday, five days after Grandad arrived and three days before he was due to leave. Jack had become hung up on the counting, by Monday evening he was already experiencing the odd sad wave, this time next week he’ll be gone and I’ll be back at school, he kept thinking. Now there was just a few days left and he was struggling to enjoy the remaining time.

 

Rain had put an end to their outdoor activities. It drummed on the roof of the car, it flowed and swirled along the gutters and cascaded into the drains, it ran down the back of grimace-faced walkers who wrote off the present and dreamed of sun-filled days. Jack watched from his armchair and felt thoroughly holed-up. The acoustics of the house seemed to echo, voices in the  television, the shunts and pumps of the water in the washing machine, Mum’s stockinged feet walking on the floorboards upstairs.   

 

A small brown package had arrived in the post with Jack’s name on it. The postman had spent a number of seconds squishing and squashing it through the letterbox causing Bristol acute agitation. The dog being thoroughly suspicious of postal workers or anyone else who ventures on to home territory yet is never welcome enough to be invited to come inside the ‘den’. The parcel, now rather tatty and creased plopped onto the hall carpet.

 

‘Oh,’ Mum said descending the stairs quickly, ‘It’s for Jack,’ She looked down at it with furrowed brow. ‘It’s his dad’s handwriting.’ Holding the package up, she shook it, sniffed it, ran her fingers along it, held it in suspicion as if it could be some explosive device.

 

‘Well give it the lad then!’ said Grandad.

 

‘There you are, I think it’s from Dad.’ Jack took the parcel, put it in his lap and continued staring out of the window. ‘Well open it then!’ she said, her blue eyes shining with vexed curiosity.  

 

‘No,’ Jack shook his head, closed his hands over the writing on the front, feeling that he must defend it from predators in the den. There was something very satisfying about the unopened package, it filled up the emptiness which he’d put in front of himself obsessing over Grandad going back to Wales. He walked steadily upstairs clutching it into his chest, heard his mother exhale a short breath of frustration as he closed his bedroom door.

 

There was an uncertainty in his father’s scription, a little wobble in the slant of the letters but there was openness too and the round loops of the characters flowed with goodwill. He squashed the package with his fingers, it felt soft like it was something all covered with padding. Jack was well aware that his father was not flushed with cash and that the contents of the package were unlikely to be of much monetary value but it was the thought that counted and this was a thought wrapped up in brown paper. He loved that idea and the wrapped thought changed the character of his bedroom, his world.

 

There was a message on his phone from Chris, ‘My dad’s signed me up for Space Club, get your mum on the case, there’s an email from school about it.’ That didn’t sound too bad, Space Club, that could provide some proper escapism from the confines of the school day, less competitive than Chess Club, more accessible than Brass Band Club. ‘Oh and I think it’s better if we don’t tell Tristan.’

 

There was a homework project on the backburner, to write a week long diary of a physician in London during the period of the Black Death, include illustrations the teacher said, it didn’t sound like too much fun. Jack got a pad and pencil and made a rudimentary sketch of a dead man and a doctor in a bird mask, it looked ridiculous, he laughed, shook his head and rubbed it out, flicked the rubbings off his duvet. He thought about those children who could just draw anything with great skill and accuracy, how on earth do they do it and why can’t I, he thought.

 

The package called out to him to be held, he fondled it and smelt it, there was that papery smell and another smell, like food perhaps and soap, maybe the hotel or his father’s hands. Jack wondered about washing facilities in the staff accommodation, he remembered how his dad had been very messy at home and not good at putting his clothes in the wash. Were the other members of staff friendly to him or did they laugh at him and gossip behind his back, call him a weirdo, a loser. Jack hated that idea, the thought of it set his stomach churning again.

 

He began to peel away the edge of the sellotape, it wasn’t as sticky as he’d expected, it was as if the package had been wrapped some weeks earlier or perhaps the wrapping had been recycled. Beneath the brown paper were layers of rough blueish purple paper towel, the sort you get in a thick roll, it was wrapped around and around the contents; a bag of Monster Munch rather crushed and a small, clear plastic pouch containing a blue stone pendant on a black piece of leather labelled, Adventurine.   

 

Jack removed it and put it around his neck. Attached was a note, “Hi Jack this will help you to see the whole picture. Hope we can meet up soon, love Dad.”

 

It was tactile, he turned it in his fingertips, felt the coolness of the stone, looked at himself in the mirror. That’s not really me, he thought, but nevertheless he liked it, there was an energy to it, a memory. He tucked it under his top, felt the stone against his chest. How desperately now he wanted to speak to his dad, imagining him in his battered blue van or inside the little bedroomed he’d described, too small for visitors, maybe listening to music or having a nap. He shook the Monster Munch pack, the contents all broken and dusty, unappetising having lost their airy monster feet formation.

 

There was a loaded presence outside his bedroom door, a creaking floorboard, the sense of someone hovering, attempting to tune into what Jack was experiencing. ‘Mum, is that you?’ he called out, there was a still pause followed by the sound of light footsteps taking giant steps as she retreated to her room. He leaned over and opened his door, Bristol trotted in and jumped onto his bed, his wet nose scanned over the Monster Munch packet. ‘No, we’re not opening those Bristol.’ Jack had been warned by his mum many times about the perils of monosodium glutamate and he wasn’t going to risk it on a semi-carbonated terrier.

 

Grandad called him down for sandwiches It was lunchtime and as they sat at the table Jack could tell that his mum was itching to ask about the contents of the parcel so he pulled his stone pendant up out of his top and let it sit on the upper part of his chest in full view. She stared at it for a while and then raised her eyebrows and said, ‘That looks very new age Jack.’

 

‘Dad sent it.’ Jack bit into his doorstep sandwich, layered with a thick slice of cheese. Grandad’s lunches were reassuringly predictable, rustic and filling.

 

‘Funny how’s he’s gone all bohemian isn’t it.’

 

Grandad coughed, ‘Maybe the corporate life pushed him that way.’

 

‘Mmmm or maybe it’s a cover for his failures, you know, an attempt at convincing everyone that he doesn’t care about money and success and things because he doesn’t seem any good at it these days.’

 

An angry shadow cast itself across Jack’s face. Grandad noticed it, he took a sharp intake of breath, he had a way of averting conflict, of shaking up any bad seeds so that they didn’t get the opportunity to settle and germinate. He coughed and said, ‘Maybe he hasn’t had any failures.’

 

‘Apart from our marriage.’

 

‘Well….yes but the result of that relationship, our Jack here, could never be described as anything other than a triumph.’

 

Mum smiled and looked ashamed. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but he’s gone down in his career hasn’t he. I never get any money from him. Has Jack told you what he’s doing these days?’

 

Grandad nodded, ‘Yes,’ he shrugged, ‘And I remember you complaining all the time that he was too tired to do anything in his old job, he was never home.’

 

There was a few minutes of silence. It sometimes seemed to Jack that his mum was often desperate for people to take sides with her, did she feel alone? Grandad was on her team but he certainly wasn’t playing that game, not in front of his grandson who deserved to see the value of both his parents. Jack tried hard to think of something to say to change the subject. He fondled his pendant, it had become warm against his body, matching the temperature of his blood, then   it came to him. ‘Can you sign me up for the Space Club at school please Mum?’

 

‘How much is it, I’m not in a position to pay for these extra things, you know that Jack.’

 

‘I’ll pay for it,’ said Grandad, ‘It’ll do you good to look beyond the confines of the school curriculum.’

 

‘It’s free I think….there’s an email about it.’

 

‘Okay, yes I’ll have a look in a minute...and what about your homework Jack, I haven’t seen you doing any this holiday.’

 

‘Oh that. Can you help me with my homework tomorrow Grandad?’

 

‘Yes of course, I love homework,’ Grandad said, rubbing his hands. ‘What’s it all about?’

 

‘History, medieval times….the plague.’

 

‘I’m not that old!.... But I am very good at drawing spots.’

 

Jack laughed and Grandad laughed at him laughing. Mum was tight lipped, still thinking about her ex husband and how all the responsibility was put on her shoulders and everybody seemed to be thoroughly okay with that. ‘They’re buboes,’ she said softly.