THE MAN IN THE CARAVAN
by Drew Gummerson
When we arrive at the caravan there is this folded up wheelchair leaning against the side of it by the door.
“That’s funny,” says mum.
“Whoever was using it last must have left it,” says dad.
“Are you sure we’ve got the right one?” says mum. She lights a cigarette and puts it between her lips. “They all look the same to me.”
“For fuck’s sake,” says dad and he takes out the key we were given at reception. “Are you going to be like this all fucking holiday? And you can shut up too,” he says to me although I haven’t said anything yet. He puts the key in the door and the door opens. “See, the key fits. This one’s ours.”
Dad goes in first, then mum, then me but we all see the man at round about the same time.
He is sitting at the table that turns into a bed that is usually where I sleep when we go on these kind of holidays. He has a cup of tea in one hand and a book by Agatha Christie in the other. Although they are not hands really, they are more like these flippers.
“Who are you?” says dad.
“I’m Clive,” says the man. “Who are you?”
This seems to catch dad off guard and he opens and closes his mouth a few times. Then he has an idea and he takes out our holiday documents. Clive reaches for them with one of his flippers and carefully looks them over, nodding all the while. He passes the documents back to dad.
“Yep, this caravan seems to be yours. Would you like me to make you a cup of tea while you unpack?”
Mum can see dad is going to explode so she takes him off to the little bedroom and shuts the door. She might as well as have not bothered really because we can hear every word they say, especially as they are both shouting.
Mum’s argument is that Clive is a cripple and we can’t very well turn him out into the night. Dad says he doesn’t care if Clive is a cripple and for all he cares we can put him in his wheelchair and push him off the nearest friggin’ cliff. He doesn’t say friggin’ but that is the word I use when giving an approximation of my father’s speech. Then dad hits mum.
I see Clive stiffen and a bit of his tea spills out of his cup.
“He hits me sometimes too,” I say. I pull up my t-shirt. “Look. That’s what he did to me last week. Those long marks are his fingers. That circle is the palm I guess.”
Eventually the door opens and mum and dad come out. Somehow mum has won the argument and Clive is allowed to stay the night although mum has got herself a black eye for the trouble. Nothing apparently broken though so all in all I reckon we are quids in.
Mum makes up the little table into the bed and goes and fetches the duvet from the car.
“It’ll just be for tonight,” she says.
I tell her I don’t mind and I don’t. Anyway, Clive is only about three feet end to end and it’ll be nice to have some company for a change anyway. Mum tells us to get some sleep and dad follows her into the bedroom taking a six pack of Stella with him. He says he can’t sleep without a drink. Or go out. Or relax. Or watch tv.
I have loads of questions for Clive. First off I want to know how old he is. He has one of those ageless faces mum is always going on about whenever she sees Gloria Hunniford on tv. She says that she herself had an ageless face once but that was a long time ago, before she met my dad.
Next I want to know what Clive is doing in our caravan. When I say this Clive kind of props himself up on the pillow as best he can and looks right at me.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Course,” I say. “Cross my heart.”
“I’m opening a nightspot.”
“In this caravan?” I say and we both laugh at this continuously. I haven’t laughed as much since I was thirteen. I’m fourteen now.
“Not in this caravan, no,” says Clive finally. “I’ve been scouting around for locations. I reckon Southend is it. If Southend is lacking one thing, it’s a top-notch nightspot. I’m meeting this guy in the morning who’s got a place for lease. You can come with me if you like. Actually, you might be a help. I find that people don’t take me seriously when I’m on my own. I think it’s because I’m disabled.”
“Ok,” I say, “that will be cool.”
Then the door opens and dad is standing there. He is just in his boxers, belly hanging over them, Stella in one hand.
“ARE YOU TWO FUCKING NONCES EVER GONNA SHUT UP?” he shouts. “I WANT TO GET SOME FUCKING SLEEP.”
He closes the door and goes back into the bedroom and shouts at my mum for about an hour. Then he hits her again.
“Quite a character, your dad,” says Clive.
“He has his moments,” I say, although right then I can’t put my finger on one.
***
In the morning there is no argument when I say I am going out with Clive. Dad is pleased to see him leaving and mum is pleased too because dad seems happy at the idea.
I help Clive get dressed and then I unfold the wheelchair and put him in it. In fact, Clive can walk. He has these little flippers for feet the same as his hands but he says, (a) it takes too long to walk on them and (b) when he’s walking people tend not to see him because he’s so small.
“The wheelchair gives me presence,” he says.
The wheelchair is electric and Clive controls it with one of his flippers. It goes about walking pace and makes a low humming noise like a toy tractor I once had.
When I was dressing Clive I noticed that he had a full-sized penis, in fact it was bigger than my dad’s, and as we have spent the night together and I feel cool with him I feel it is ok to talk about girls.
“I almost had a blow job once,” I say. “It was at the school disco. These two girls were giving all the boys blow jobs. They were behind the curtains at the side of the stage. A boy would put his knob through the gap in the curtain and the girl would suck it off and everything. There was a queue and it was just about my turn when one of the teachers realised what was going on. I was gutted. They expelled both the girls.”
“I used to be married,” says Clive.
“Was she…? You know…?”
“She was a high-wire artiste,” says Clive. “She died in a road accident. We had a kid. They took him away after it happened. Said I wouldn’t be able to cope, especially because of my job.”
“What do you do?” I ask.
“I’m a dj,” says Clive. “I used to have trouble handling those old 12 inch vinyls but since minidisks have come along I’ve come into my own. I’ve travelled all over the world. That’s what the social worker said. It’s not an environment to raise a kid. I figure if I can get this club up and running I’ll have a stable base and be able to get him back. Look, we’re here.”
Here is outside a factory-like brick building. There is a sign swinging above a wide door which says, “Ye Olde Southende Fishe Market” and a man standing outside the door. The man is a big bloke with a pencil behind his left ear and sweat patches under both his arms. When he sees us he steps forward.
“Are you dj Flipper?” he says to me.
“That’d be me,” says Clive and holds up one of his flippers for the man to shake.
“I’m Big Steve,” says the man. “If you’d like to step this way.” Then he gives the wheelchair a good look. Then he takes the pencil from behind his head, jots down an imaginary something on the palm of his hand. Then he puts the pencil behind his right ear. “Or whatever,” he says.
As Big Steve shows us round Clive tells me his plans for the place. There is going to be the bar. Up there will be a lighting system. And over there a ladies toilets. As he says all this I can really see it and when I close my eyes I can almost hear the beat and feel the bodies dancing around me. Eventually Big Steve comes to stop by a wooden door.
“And this, I don’t mind saying,” he says, “is the pièce de résistance.” He places a hand on the door handle, twists it, then turns back to us. “There are some steps.”
I help Clive out of his wheelchair and we follow Big Steve down. Clive has to place his hand on the wall to steady himself but he does ok. It is dark down here and the air is damp.
“So what do you think?” says Big Steve.
“What is it?” says Clive.
Big Steve pats the edge of a round brick structure. It has bits of stuff growing on it and the mortar between the bricks is crumbling out onto the floor. “I’ll give you three guesses what this is,” says Big Steve. Then he says, “It’s a lime well. It’s part of Southend’s history. The fish traders used to bring all their fish waste down here at the end of the day, throw it down the well, and hey presto, the next day it would be gone. No smell or nothing. The lime eats it, or so they said.”
“I’m opening a nightspot,” says Clive.
“Any problem customers,” says Big Steve, “whoosh, shove em down the well.” He stands laughing for a while and then wipes his eyes. “You want the place or not?”
“I want it,” says Clive. “I’m just not sure about this well.”
“You’ll come round to it,” says Big Steve. “Like I say, it’s part of Southend’s history.”
Big Steve takes the lease documents out of his pocket and places them on the lip of the well and Clive signs them right there. After, I ask him he would like to come back to the caravan for some lunch.
“What about your dad?” he says.
Seeing the way Clive handles things has given me some courage. “It’s time someone stood up to him,” I say.
***
The first thing I see when I open the door of the caravan is blood. It is everywhere. The next thing I see is dad. He is lying half on and half off the sofa and he has this kitchen knife handle sticking out of his chest. The next thing I see is my mum. She is leaning against the cooker.
“I did it like this,” says my mum. She moves her hand through the air in an arc-like movement. “I did it like this,” she says again and makes the same arc-like movement with her hand.
“Ok mum,” I say.
“He came right at me. It was like a bat out of hell, really it was.”
“Ok, mum,” I say.
“I’ve got it all figured,” says my mum. “I’ll call the police. Tell them what happened. You can go and live with Granny Wilkins. I’ve got some savings, a little something I put by for a rainy day. You can have that.”
“Ok mum,” I say.
“I’ve got it all figured,” says my mum.
“Ok mum,” I say and then I remember Clive. I look around for him and see he is by the body of my father. He has a cloth in each of his flippers and he is mopping up the blood.
“What are you doing?” I say. “That’s the crime scene.”
Clive stops wiping and turns to look at me. “I didn’t tell you,” he says. “That wife of mine, she was a drinker. She was drunk when she crashed the car and I lost my son. The way I see it, you go about doing things the right way and you lose out. I’ve had an idea.”
“Yes?” I say.
Mum is still standing by the cooker. I see that she has a spot of blood on her left shoe and another spot on her dress. Apart from that she doesn’t look like she has killed anyone.
“Whoosh, down the well,” says Clive.
“Sorry?”
“Whoosh, down the well,” says Clive.
I think about those girls and the queue. The truth is I was never even in the queue. I just stood watching from a distance. In Social Studies once they gave out this book about co-dependency, I noticed in it there was a chapter on the children of alcoholics. I read it at the back of the class while the teacher was going on about something else and it said a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand but a lot of it seemed to be about not joining queues.
Clive has mopped up quite a lot of the blood now, he is really working at it. I look at my father. His face has set in this kind of grimace. It almost could be said to be a smile. I have this flash of being in his arms and him throwing me up into the air and catching me. He was laughing then. That seems like a long time ago now.
© Drew Gummerson
Reproduced with permission
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