The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis Read Free Book Online Page A

God’ and ‘Fuck!’ Cos sex is like that, and that’s how we like it.

    ‘Mum,’ I say the following morning as she’s struggling to open the milk, ‘there’s blood on the settee.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘I said there’s blood on the settee.’
    She stops trying to open the milk and puts it down. ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘How do you mean, “How do you mean”?’
    ‘How do you mean there’s blood on the settee?’
    ‘I mean there’s blood on the settee.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I had a nosebleed,’ I hear myself say. I hadn’t meant to say that. I’d been all set to tell the truth. Me and Eleni have talked it over and we’ve agreed that I should just tell the truth. Eleni’s hiding upstairs.
    ‘You had a nosebleed?’
    ‘Last night.’ This is pathetic. There’s too much blood for a nosebleed, too much of it for it to have come from my nose. Who am I? Cyrano de fucking Bergerac?
    ‘A nosebleed?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You had a nosebleed?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘No, I didn’t have a nosebleed.’
    ‘Hector, what are you talking about?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Are you sleepwalking again?’
    ‘No, Mum. I’m just saying that I didn’t have a nosebleed.’

    ‘But you just said you did.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You said there was blood on the settee.’
    ‘There is.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘How do you mean, “How do you mean”?’
    Mum turns through three hundred and sixty degrees.
    ‘She’s not late anymore.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Eleni.’
    ‘What do you mean she’s not late? Where is she? What are you talking about?’
    ‘She’s not four days late anymore, Mum.’
    There. I’ve said it. I fucking said it. I got it out. Fuck I’m modern. What a modern little fucker I am. I told her. She gets it. She’s got it. It’s got. It’s done.
    Mum picks up the milk, pushes past me, walks through to the lounge and stands there looking down at the cushions, all sad. I stand in the doorway wondering if she’s thinking what I thought, what Eleni thought: I wonder if she’s thinking the shape of the stain looks a bit like Africa. I wonder this. And I wonder what to say. And I wonder how she feels. And I wonder where Dad is. And I wonder why she picked up the milk.
    Suddenly, out of nowhere, Sparky’s on the scene, jumping up onto the settee and getting to work. Giddy as fuck, lapping it up. Oh, Sparky, you idiot. You idiotic little twat. Most idiotic of all the beasts.
    In conclusion, let me say this: I wish – I really do, I really wish – that he wasn’t doing that right now.

    On the train home there is no great sense of regret. We had never planned to have a baby. In fact, it is important to mention that Eleni hadn’t taken a test, seen a doctor or pissed on a strip of plastic. Shewas simply late. She’s been late before, and no doubt she’ll be late again. One day, of course, we’ll all be late.
    The late Hector Kipling.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what am I bid? We start at twelve million.’

 

3

    BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON

    We’re back at home and Eleni’s sat at the piano, staring at the TV. She goes through a series of diminished chords interspersed with ninths and sevenths and concludes it all with a C sharp seventh and an F sharp minor. Not that I’d know all this unless she told me what she was doing as she was doing it, which she does, calling out all the letters and numbers as she moves her body from side to side, her fingers flickering across the keyboard, hair in her eyes, fag in her mouth. Sometimes she takes it out and does it all with the fag between two knuckles, like producing glorious music is the easiest trick in the world. She’s making me smile with how much she wants me to understand. I do the same for her with my painting sometimes, calling out the colours and the brushes. At times like these I think we’re perfect. At times like these I think she thinks the same; imagine that.
    ‘Put your fingers there,’ she says, ‘put your left hand