The Sleepwalker's Introduction to Flight Read online

  SIÔN SCOTT–WILSON

  THE SLEEPWALKER’S INTRODUCTION TO FLIGHT

  Pan Books

  For my father, Hugh.

  We miss you.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The figure on the precipice is a distant sketch, lacking all detail. There is nothing to show what has brought him to this. He’s a man literally on the edge, perhaps even the brink of madness.

  He stands motionless, arms outstretched like a sleepwalker, and yet is surely more awake and alive at this moment than most of us will ever be.

  For an instant he hangs, leaning into nothing before exploding in a blur of motion, a human pyrotechnic; whirling, spinning, fizzing as gravity takes him.

  At the last possible second he unfurls, comes to a point and plunges, like a perfect dagger, into the waves below.

  One

  I’m in the tub, one of those massive ancient things with curly feet; cast iron overlaid with a whitish skin of enamel. Despite my mother’s Vim and vigour, the enamel appears to have contracted some kind of geriatric disease over the years; the areas of most frequent contact have become brown and scabby and are beginning to flake, like tiny liver spots. The good news is that I can gently scratch my back as I lie here, immersed in the oily, opalescent distillation of Wright’s Coal Tar soap.

  I like to pretend that my willy is a little man on a desert island, which, for complicated geophysical reasons, is sinking into the sea. I waggle him about, frantically searching for rescue. The island continues to descend, slowly and inexorably, into the warm grey water, taking the castaway with it. Then up he pops once again, revitalized and wearing an inflatable life jacket. Obviously, you can’t keep a good man down. But I have to exercise caution here, as I’m forbidden to lock the door. My mother has already caught me at this game once before. She went cross-eyed and all sort of gaspy: ‘Bernard, he’s playing with himself again,’ she shrieked, like I was drowning. I’m an only child and very unlikely to be getting a brother or sister any day now, so frankly, who the hell else would I be playing with? But there’s no point having that kind of conversation with my mother.

  For this, my father rewarded me with a good talking-to – a rambling stream of euphemism and bluster featuring a variety of improbable musical instruments. These occasional lectures are more or less his only form of communication with me and invariably leave us both disappointed and resentful.

  Bernard Hough is perhaps ten years older than my mother; a short, pugnacious man with a comb-over who seems to have gone through life with a perpetually surprised expression on his face – like the world just twanged his braces. His favourite expression is ‘Oh really?’ but he can deliver it with such a variety of subtle inflections that he can make it mean almost anything he wants it to. My father’s ‘Oh really?’s contain a veritable cornucopia of meaning if you know how to decipher them. He was a bank manager back in the seventies, one of the first to catch the property boom on the back of a one-per cent preferential staff mortgage, which has left him a very wealthy man. His last regional manager was a man by the name of O’Reilly and, from time to time, I amuse myself by imagining my father’s conversations with his ex-boss.

  I also amuse myself by farting, though rarely in front of my parents. My mother always looks so disappointed, as though this perfectly normal bodily function was some kind of wretched and devastating moral lapse: ‘Has someone left the gas tap on?’ She sniffs sanctimoniously. So I tend to restrict this activity to the bathroom. There’s only me to offend for one thing, and I am never offended by my own farts; although I am occasionally surprised. On especially flatulent days I pretend to be a Clavadista, one of the brotherhood of Acapulcan high-divers, luxuriating in the jacuzzi after a breathtaking, clifftop performance.

  I decide that ‘castaway’ is too risky today. My mother is under the weather again and has taken to her bed, which is only two rooms away from the bathroom. Instead, I decide to resume training. I’ve been refining this technique for a couple of years now, ever since I stumbled across Miguel Sanchez Domingo on Youtube. Miguel is the Clavadista Loco, greatest of all cliff-divers; he even has his own website.

  I clamber up on to the slippery edge of the tub and balance by curling my toes over the rim. Unlike Miguel and the genuine Clavadistas of La Quebrada, who employ an absolutely perpendicular entry, I use the flat-dive method, in order to dissipate kinetic energy. I launch myself at the steaming surface in a bellyflop.

  Almost immediately I can sense that something is wrong. I recall reading somewhere that it is possible to kill a person by driving the nasal bone into the brain and, for a ghastly moment, I fear that this is what I have done to myself.

  I’m underwater now, floaty. The scary thing is that I know that the warm creamy water surrounding me is gradually turning red. But really, I’m too tired and comfortable to care.

  Two

  It seems that my mother has saved my life, but only because she urgently needed the bathroom. I think she was more relieved to find me drowning than playing ‘castaway’. Nevertheless, the sight of my naked buttocks bobbing up and down in that blood soup appears to have delayed her recuperation by a week or two.

  I’m in the spare room, assessing the damage in the dressing-table mirror. It’s one of those chintzy, fussy antiques with a triptych mirror designed for four-foot-something Victorian ladies, so it’s ideal for my father to adjust his comb-over.

  I crouch to inspect my face and profile. No surprises there. I was never the most gorgeous of specimens, but at fifteen, I do have youth on my side. I’m slim, clean-limbed, olive-complexioned, but my nose has been horribly bent and now points emphatically to the left. In later life I might have attained a certain swarthy, brooding appeal, but that’s out of the question now. I have become Eddie Munster’s elder brother.

  I console myself with my hair. I’ve got great hair, incredibly thick, black and luxuriant hair, which is why I now spend so much time with my back bent, locked inside these three angled mirrors, admiring the back of my head. From behind, I’m a great advertisement for shampoo, from the front, seat belts.

  Our GP, Dr Hemstock, tells me that my nose bone is now frangible and can no longer be relied upon to protect my face or brain. This strikes me as odd. I have never found my nose to be much good for protecting my brain – usually the other way round.

  I consider the words of Miguel for the millionth time: ‘You cannot begin to live unless you take yourself to the edge.’ He’s right of course, total immersion is what I need; absolute commitment. To a Clavadista a broken nose means nothing, a minor setback – although in the case of my nose, it’s a setback of some forty-five degrees from the perpendicular.

  It’s pretty clear I’ve outgrown the bathtub.

  I’m startled by th
e creak of a floorboard. In the doorway is my father, puce in the face, as always, waving an ancient wooden Slazenger tennis racquet. I drop to a protective crouch, using both hands to cover my privates. From his expression, I realize that he now suspects me of playing with myself in front of the mirror. For one horrible moment I think he might actually be about to swat me with the racquet and engrave a grid of strings across my pink behind, like some kind of surreal Financial Times crossword puzzle. Instead, he simply holds out the racquet. ‘Tennis,’ he barks. ‘You’re playing tennis with Coombs and, for God’s sake, put some bloody clothes on first.’

  ‘But . . . but I hate tennis,’ I stutter.

  He arches an eyebrow. ‘Oh really?’ What this tells me is that he thinks I’m spending far too much time indoors, onanizing; I don’t get nearly enough fresh air or exercise; and that today, and probably every day for the rest of the long summer holiday, I’m playing tennis with sodding Coombs whether I like it or not.

  I dress quickly in a mixture of old sportswear and find the smirking Coombs in the driveway, leaning against his black Range Rover. Barry Coombs owns the detached turreted redbrick Victorian house which overlooks our back garden; a great bearded lout of a man who’s something or other on the borough council. He’s also involved in property and captain of the Caversham Lawn Tennis Club. In short, a pillock of the community.

  Coombs wears a pristine white Aertex tennis shirt and a pair of shorts at least three sizes too tight, extruding plump hairy legs like a couple of parboiled Weisswursts. As if he wasn’t a grotesque enough caricature of a middle-aged plonker, he’s also sporting stripy wristbands and matching towelling headband.

  ‘There he is, the young Henman. Come to show us how it’s done, eh, Michael?’

  Coombs only talks to me like this when he thinks there’s a chance of being overheard by my father. The rest of the time he snarls like a publican’s pitbull.

  I climb into the Range Rover and buckle up. ‘All right, Mr Coombs?’ I mumble, in a tone that I hope will discourage further conversation. Some hope. It turns out that Coombs is trying to inveigle my father into certain dubious local property speculations, which is why he’s sucking up and doing him this favour today. Coombs spends the journey pumping me for information as to the likelihood of my father ‘filling his boots’. As if I would know. I grunt a few monosyllables and jiggle the electronic windows until Coombs cuts me off with the master switch.

  Out on the hallowed turf of the Caversham Lawn Tennis Club, Coombs unzips a gigantic racquet bag and selects one of perhaps half a dozen state-of-the-art graphite racquets from its depths. ‘Right, Mikey, your dad wants me to play you in. But – and it is a big but, as the bishop said to the actress – even though I’d like to do your dad a solid, you need to be of a certain standard to become a full-time card-carrying member of the Caversham Lawn Tennis Association. No exceptions. You’ve got to be good. I can’t make allowances. Got it?’

  I nod dumbly and try not to grin, caper, or leap the net for joy. Game, set and match to me. Coombs doesn’t realize it, but with those words he’s just enabled me to ace my father and utterly scuttle his plans for getting me out of the house this summer. I’m going to play so awfully and with such potty-mouthed bad grace it’ll make Greg Rusedski sound like a Mormon choirboy.

  ‘Oh, yeah, and Mikey, your dad wants me to let him know whether I think you’ve been really trying. If not, he’ll want to know the reason why. You’re not to muck about, basically.’ With that, Coombs throws the ball high and does a corkscrewy thing with his arm.

  I’m not ready, for one thing; I’m still in shock from the way my father has vicariously smash-returned my best efforts at scuppering him straight down the tramlines; and for another, this wooden Slazenger racquet is completely wonky; warped from having sat in our damp garage for twenty years without the benefit of a press. I give Coombs’s serve a halfhearted swat but it spins away from me like a googly from Shane Warne.

  In truth, I’m not that bad at tennis. At any rate, I know I can do better than this. Although I loathe sports, the school games master, Evans-the-Physical, tells me I do have unusually good balance and hand to eye coordination.

  ‘Right, warm-up over,’ barks Coombs.

  I stand on the baseline and watch Coombs’s bizarre wind-up. This time I’m prepared: I step back and take a pace to the right, allowing the off-spinning ball to bounce and begin its downward arc. When it does, I catch it with a stunning top-spin from the Slazenger’s sweet spot. Only there is no sweet spot, just sour rotten catgut mesh, which emits a loud cartoon-like twang as the bright yellow ball pings off and sails over the fence into the trees beyond. I can feel the painful vibrations all the way up to my elbow.

  ‘Right, Michael, you can owe me for that ball.’

  Coombs continues to paste me into the beautifully trimmed lawns with his oversized racquet head. But – and it is a fairly big but, as the young athlete said to the fat bearded lout – as the match continues odd members of the club begin to cluster around the court and, for some reason, begin to cheer me on.

  Coombs enjoys a crowd. He makes an ‘aggahhh’ sound when he serves, as though the effort is devastating his trapezoids; he preens and prances athletically, huffing and spluttering like there was a championship at stake. Each time I take a point, though, I’m applauded wildly and I can see it’s getting to him.

  Coombs swishes ineffectively at one of my rare passing shots. ‘Bad luck,’ he bellows, without troubling to see where the ball lands.

  ‘Actually, I think it was in.’

  ‘Don’t think so, Michael.’

  ‘I’m sure it was.’

  Coombs approaches the net and beckons me over. He keeps his voice low, mindful of the crowd.

  ‘It can be in if you like,’ he hisses, ‘in which case, you’re out. Or it can be out, in which case I might still decide to play you in. Up to you.’

  It’s a good point and I concede it.

  ‘Forty, love,’ he announces, to murmurs of disapproval from the sidelines.

  He winds up again and sends down a rocket.

  ‘In,’ he exults, punching the air.

  It’s not, of course. Not even close.

  We change ends. I manage to serve a fizzer which, due to the idiosyncrasies of my antique wooden racquet, swerves through the air like a pretzel and bounces straight up into Coombs’s tightly sheathed nuts. I am given what can only be described as a standing ovation by the spectators.

  Inevitably though, and despite the urging of the crowd, I lose in three straight sets: six-love, six-love, six-one.

  Coombs leaps the net. Happily, he catches a trailing foot and down he goes, the back of his head crashing into the lawn. He picks himself up, feigning indifference, and trots over, all smiles and bonhomie. He grips my hand, hard. Too hard.

  ‘Did I . . . am I played in?’

  Coombs smirks, applying more pressure.

  The members begin to disperse but two bright-eyed, sprightly old ladies wander over – identical twins by the looks of it.

  Coombs releases my hand.

  ‘The boy played well, Coombs, and with a busted old racquet too.’

  ‘What are you thinking of, letting the boy play with a broken racquet?’

  Coombs recoils and raises his eyebrows. As he does so, the tight, sopping headband crawls up his slimy forehead before suddenly contracting at the top of his head, flipping his thick salt-and-pepper hair into a sumo wrestler topknot. ‘Look, I didn’t force him to . . .’

  The ladies shriek with mirth, which instantly endears them to me. I want to howl with laughter too as he snatches away the offending headband. But I keep a straight face since Coombs currently holds my fate in his sweaty paws. ‘I did try though, Mr Coombs.’

  ‘Of course you tried, love,’ replies one of the old dears.

  ‘Not much you can do with a racquet like that though. Shame that Coombs didn’t think to lend you one of his,’ sniffs her sibling.

  ‘He’s got som
e lovely racquets.’

  ‘A great sackful.’

  Coombs bristles and looms over the twins. ‘Look, you two, I can cancel your memberships right now, and then what are you going to do all day, collect old plastic bags in a shopping trolley and talk to your cats?’

  The sisters stand their ground for a second before scuttling away. ‘The boy was good. He played his heart out,’ one of them gets in a Parthian shot.

  ‘The Pond sisters,’ spits Coombs. ‘Pain in the arse. Always late with their subs.’

  I look down at the grass and try not to smile. ‘Well, I tried, Mr Coombs,’ I say with a touch of unctuousness, ‘but I just wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘No. You weren’t good enough.’

  ‘But I did try.’

  ‘You tried to make me look a prat.’

  ‘But you’ll tell my father I tried?’

  ‘I’ll think on it.’

  Coombs spins on his heel. He packs his racquets and I observe with satisfaction a great indelible emerald and brown grass stain smeared down the back of his white shorts. I’m still gloating about this when I realize that the bastard has gone and driven off without me.

  Three

  I’ve spent the morning at Edmund Kerr’s.

  Edmund is my only friend and, indeed, only my friend because I pay him: I pay him to use his laptop – Bernard believes that the internet is a corrupting influence, so I don’t have a connection at home, or even a computer for that matter – and I pay him so that my father can see me hanging out with him. My father generally approves of Edmund and the Kerrs.

  I hate Edmund with a passion.

  Alison Kerr, his mother, is a grumpy old heifer from Morningside. Although I’ve never been to Edinburgh, I’ve done a bit of internet research on Edmund’s computer and one of the jokes about Morningside ladies is that they’re so tight they greet you at the door with the words: ‘You’ll have had your tea then?’ I can vouch for this. Even though I’ve known Edmund nearly all my life I’ve yet to be offered so much as a beaker of bath-water by Mrs Kerr.