DEAD END BREAKFAST

July   Long story made short:  We moved. From heaven to hell. And I never saw it coming.

My Mom’s the sort of person who’s always getting excited about weird stuff – mushrooms you can grow in your bathroom that keep you from getting cancer, mail order sea horses, sky diving -- you name it. She’ll get all excited about something and – if you don’t know her like I do – you might get uneasy and think she was kind of obsessed. But then give her a couple of months and she’s forgotten all about it. And soon enough she’ll be into something else. And then for the next month or so that’s all you’ll hear about until the next big deal comes along.

Only it turns out that this thing – moving us from one world to another – this thing was real.

So here’s what she did:  she moved us from a comfortable house in London to a decrepit old place that stinks and leaks and is in the coldest place in the whole world. Okay, maybe that last bit is an exaggeration, but for July, I can’t get over this weather. In London there’s a heat wave, it said so on the news. But things are different up here in Benmore!  (I’m calling it ‘Benmore’ ‘cause I can’t spell it yet and I don’t want to learn how. It’s easy enough to pronounce, though – ‘Ben-more’ as in ‘I’ve never been more cold.’)  Up here we’ve got gale-force winds and fog and masses of dark clouds and rain and people walking around all bent over, with these pinched, bitter looking faces, wearing anoraks and serious-looking fleeces. Here’s what I want to know:  if it’s this bad in July, what are we going to do in February? There are actual holes in this house! The roof leaks!

Consider the following:

L O N D O N                                                  B E N M O R E

Do I need to go into transportation, schools, and miscellaneous?

Until two weeks ago, I was well adjusted. I had a life, friends, a routine, good marks, my own room. Now I have this.

It all started a year ago when my Mom – who is American, and thus known as ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mum’ – met someone who said:  Wouldn’t it  be fun to run a B and B? Mom was working as an upholsterer and was tired of her job, irritated with her boss, sick of London, etc. (I found all of this out later when we had a disagreement of opinion about me accompanying her here.) 

Anyway, the person who asked her this question turned out to be a florist and wannabe cook who was sick of her job, etc. and she knew someone who could build and fix things and who was also tired of living in London, and they both knew someone who did accounts and also wanted to be out of London.  And then it turned out that the fixer-builder and the florist knew someone who was selling this enormous house up in Scotland cheap. And they all went up to Scotland to look at it after many meetings, and then all of a sudden we were packing up and moving.

Anyway, time for me to go to bed now. Except not really to ‘bed,’ actually, as Arnie the Goth and I are in sleeping bags on the floor. Beds are supposed to come later, when we can find them at an auction. Used, of course. So I’m off for a night of listening to Arnie snore in our shared room. Which smells like dogs and people’s feet.

Still July (Only you wouldn’t know it!)

This house has a huge garden. There is something that looks like a tree house in one of the biggest trees (which I didn’t manage to notice until two days ago)  and that tree overlooks a brook across from a meadow with real sheep in it. Charle, the person who fixes and builds, says that the thing that looks like a tree house really is a tree house, but it’s too rotten to use. But, she says she can help me and Arnie build a new tree house in the same tree. Arnie, who has slept with his mobile phone in his hand every single night for two weeks, didn’t comment. I must have looked more enthusiastic, because Charle told me that before we did the tree house, she’d fix up a rope swing.

5 August,

Man, there is never a dull moment around here. And we haven’t even started hanging out at the War Memorial yet! Today I helped Charle knock out plaster. She’s been doing this ever since we got here, I swear. Everyday, if she’s not knocking it out, she’s putting it back in.

Charle can do anything. She carried the Dyson up the stairs the first day we got here by her little finger. She did that after Lorene, the one who is going to do the accounting and reservations, said that it was ‘too heavy to carry up the stairs.’ Lorene’s a wimp, she wears hippy clothes and talks about karma and chakras and stuff. Not that I think all that sort of thing is rubbish – it just sounds like rubbish coming from Lorene. You’d have to meet her to see what I mean. Arnie’s mother is called Kathe, and she’s okay, but the weird thing is that even though she’s supposed to be the cook here, Charle is the one who ends up doing all the cooking. Kathe takes ages to cook anything.

6 August,

A guy came to look at the roof today, and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He might have been speaking Lithuanian.  Charle said he was from some place called Stran-something –  Stranrerr? Which is also in Scotland. Charle’s from Glasgow, but she’s lived all over the place, so maybe that’s why I can understand her fine. But when she was talking to the roofer she lost me. I don’t think I got as much as 10% of what she was saying. I start school in two weeks. Great.

Today Mom happened to be babysitting two kids for a friend of hers from London, and the roofer kept asking Charle and Mom about their ‘weans.’ I knew he was asking a question because his voice kind of rose at the end. Charle had to translate for Mom: ‘He’s asking whose kids those are,’ and Mom told him they weren’t hers, but I was. Then the guy asked where Charle’s weans were, and she said she didn’t have any. That’s how much of the conversation I got. Later Mom said it was a shame Charle never had any kids, ‘cause she’d have been a good mother.

9 August, 2003

Big drama! Charle fell off a ladder! Lorene, was supposed to be holding it, but she let go. It’s fun watching Lorene try to do stuff. Charle will say, ‘Lorene, take this wrench,’ and Lorene’ll take it like it’s a dead bird. At the end of the day, Charle is covered with plaster dust, paint, sticky stuff that she paints over crumbly plaster and Mom and Kathe are pretty grimy too. However, Lorene!  Lorene has hardly a smear on her!

Mom and Kathe were worried about Charle, but she was fine apart from some bruising. Mom tried to get her to go to a doctor ‘just to make sure’ (my Mom being the hypochondriac queen of the world), but Charle just laughed and said it’d take more than falling off a ladder to get her to go to a doctor.

10 August  Red Letter Date:  The sun shone in Benmore!!!

Yes, it did! Brightly! All day long! Charle went out to get more plaster mix, wallpaper, rawl plugs, etc. While she was out, Arnie and I cleaned up the rubble from the hall and bagged it. (Well, there was nothing else to do, and besides Mom and Kathe kept whining.) Then we stripped some of the wallpaper off of the walls in one of the guest bedrooms (there are ten guest bedrooms, we’ll be doing this until the end of time) with this plastic steamer thingy.

When Charle got back, she was astonished how much we’d done. She said, ‘Have you been outside?’ Which we actually hadn’t, really. So we all went out and it was just amazing how nice it was. We’ve had a couple of okay-weather days which haven’t been as cloudy and rainy as usual, but nothing like this. We helped Charle bring things in from the car, and man, is plaster heavy. The last bag had a rope in it, and it was sitting on top of an old tyre. Charle took the bag and Arnie and I took the tyre, which also was not light. We went out to the backyard and Charle commenced to make us a swing. We helped. When it was done she got on it and bounced around, then told us to try it. It was just unbelievably cool. The tyre swings out over the brook, you can see all over the place. There is this purply, lavender-type bush everywhere and the sheep stared at us while we whooped and hollered (even Arnie). After we’d had about ten goes each, Charle said ‘Okay, my turn,’ and then she got on and whooped and hollered too. I really like Charle, she’s Ace.

12 August, 2003 Another Red Letter Date:  Arnie left his cell phone by his bed!!!

This is really true. He did, for the first time in at least a month. I don’t have a cell phone. In the past, I did. In fact, I’ve had three. The problem is that after the third phone mysteriously vanished, Mom refused to get me another one. She said she couldn’t keep making donations, the City of London would just have to find other donors until I was old enough to buy my own. So watching Arnie strolling about with his cell phone all day long, communing with it (Mom’s expression – you may have figured out that she has a seriously sarcastic streak), peering into the display panel and pressing buttons has been kind of hard on me. But today he came downstairs and something was different, I noticed right away. Same black clothes, same furtive expression on his ferrety face, but – what was it? Ah!  He didn’t have the phone!!  I didn’t dare comment on it, nobody did. Mom said the reason Arnie carries the phone around all the time is that he’s hoping his Dad will call. His Dad didn’t object to his coming here with Kathe. Mom says Arnie wants his Dad to ask him to live with him in London, but that Kathe says no way that’ll happen.

14 August, 2003

The roofer is back, and he and Charle were up on the roof almost all day long. I found out something funny today:  Arnie is Scottish! His Dad is from Glasgow and Kathe’s parents were from Edinburgh, though Kathe sounds English. So what is Arnie? Charle, who can sound as Scottish as anybody, says that her Dad was Polish and her Mum is Irish, but they all lived in Glasgow. So what is Charle? Which one is Scottish? Both?  Neither?

We started talking about this today, ‘cause the roofer has this ‘I’m a Real Scot’ sticker on his truck. So exactly what would that be? Arnie doesn’t sound Scottish, but he is. Lionel, the kid whose parents run the Chinese take-away, sounds Scottish, but doesn’t look it. Mom keeps saying we’re Scottish, but that’s only because we’re in Scotland. Mom always wants to be whatever the people around her are. We’re actually Irish, German, Jewish, Iroquois, Dutch, Swedish, Welsh and Scottish, but depending on who we’re talking to, Mom always answers differently. If she’s talking to someone from Ireland, say, then we’re Irish. If we ever go to Germany, we’ll be German. She doesn’t mean to lie, actually, she just likes other people to know that she has stuff in common with them.

18 August, 2003

I’m beat. Charle and Mom have been knocking rocks and bricks out of fireplaces. Arnie and I have been lugging rocks all day long, taking them out to the garden where Kathe is building a rock garden. Arnie was getting tired, then when we were coming back for another load of rocks we could hear Charle telling Mom and Lorene how Arnie and I were getting muscle definition in our arms and backs from all the work. Boy, did Arnie’s attitude change! He started to move. He’s older than I am, but shorter and slighter, so I really can lift more, but suddenly Arnie was, like, taking control. 

We had Chinese take-away again. Lionel came home with us, to try our rope swing. He thinks Charle is Ace too.

25 August, 2003 FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Lorene drove us to school (at least she can drive), but we’ll be taking the bus from now on. The school is about five miles away. If we miss the bus, we’ll have to go back home and beg someone to give us a lift (and the bus stop itself is as far away from home as my school in London was from our house).  Mom says that when the B&B is up and running, we’ll have to walk if we miss the bus.

There’s one girl I hate already, Callie. You wouldn’t know she was a jerk to look at her, she’s pretty and she seems smart enough, too. She’s just cruel, that’s the only word for it. There’s a kid in the class who has a problem with his legs and today she and her hench-persons (a bunch of stupid girls who giggle and preen and follow her around) –  were making fun of the kid, imitating the way he walks. I hate that. I think it can be funny to imitate people  – the way they act and say things and all – but not someone who has a genuine problem

When we got home, there was furniture:  a sofa and two armchairs, and tables and cabinets and chests – and pictures on the wall. Charle and Lorene got it all at an auction today. Arnie went up to our bedroom first and I heard him yell all the way downstairs. We now have beds, chests-of-drawers, an oak chest, old and scarred-up and deeply cool, and  a bookcase with Tinkerbell stickers on it.  Then Charle called us to come outside. We were already walking around with our mouths hanging open, but then we went outside and saw A TRAMPOLINE.  All my life I’ve wanted one, and there it was. I still have to keep going outside to make sure it’s really there. Arnie had a go first, then I did, then Charle did, then we all three got on it together and held hands and jumped while Mom and Kathe watched us, smiling, but kind of nervous too, saying daft things like ‘Now be careful! Not too near the edge!’ and we yelled so much, all three of us, that I actually have a sore throat.

It took Kathe, Arnie and me half an hour to get the Tinkerbell stickers off the bookcase later.  Kathe says we ought to ignore Callie, and she and Charle said we could have Lionel over for tea anytime.

29 August

Friday!  Lionel came over and we played on the trampoline. Then the rope swing, then back to the trampoline. Charle and Kathe made us bangers and mash for tea. Lionel’s coming over next Friday too, definitely.

2 September

Weird day. When I got back from school, Mom was having a migraine. She’d felt it
coming this morning, and when we got back she was really bad. All the lights were off and she was in bed. I don’t know where Lorene was, but Kathe and Charle were out. Mom thought they’d gone to the DIY place, which takes about forty-five minutes to get to, and she’d run out of painkiller and was desperate. Arnie and I looked everywhere – the bathroom we all use, the kitchen, the downstairs guest bathroom, our room. I even looked in our suitcases, but there was no aspirin or paracetamol or anything. Mom gets really ill when she has migraines and the closest store is miles away, so I went and looked in Charle’s room, ‘cause Arnie remembered that she had some last week when he had a headache. Arnie had already looked in Kathe’s room, and Lorene’s room was locked.

I hate looking in people’s things. I’d be the worst person in the world to be a spy, I get really creeped out looking at people’s personal stuff when they’re not there.  Charle’s room was so neat and tidy it was weird. She’s painted the walls grey-blue and everything is simple and clean. I looked on her bookcase and chest-of-drawers and on the bedside table, but there was nothing there. Mom’s room has  stuff everywhere, bottles and jars and coins and pencil stubs and photos and books and glasses and underwear and coffee cups – Charle’s room has these neat wooden surfaces with a couple of smooth, round stones and some grey vases. So I looked – quickly – through her chest-of-drawers –  nothing but clothes and everything weirdly neat, and then I looked in the bedside table. Straight away I found a bottle of Paracetamol. I was going to take it to Mom – I don’t know why I didn’t just take it and go, but I didn’t. There was a picture under the bottle, a picture of a woman sitting in a wheelchair, holding a tiny baby and grinning away. And the woman was Charle, a lot younger than now, but obviously her. I just stood there holding the Paracetamol in one hand and the picture in the other and I didn’t even hear her come in. I jumped when she came up behind me, it was like one of those stupid soaps on t.v.

‘Alex?’ says Charle, looking kind of puzzled. I just stood there and gulped; I couldn’t talk. She looked at the Paracetamol bottle. ‘Your Mom still have that migraine?’ I nodded. ‘Go on, then, take it to her.’ She took the picture out of my hand and dropped it back into the drawer and shut it. I started trying to tell her that I was sorry, that I hadn’t wanted to look through her stuff, but she just shooed me off.

I swear to God, I have never felt so sorry about anything. My Dad died nine years ago and I felt bad then, but I was little and I didn’t know him all that well. I felt bad the time my turtle died, and the time some kids and I got caught stealing magazines, and I’m sure I must have felt this bad about something before, I just can’t remember what or when. Anyway, I went down the hall to Mom’s room and handed her the medicine

I got Mom some water and waited until she’d taken the Paracetamol. Nothing really helps her when she’s got a migraine, but anything is better than nothing. Afterwards I went outside and started jumping on the trampoline. I was out there about fifteen minutes when Charle came out. She watched me for a while and when I stopped, we started talking.   

The baby was her son. He only lived to be five months old, he died of cot death. He’d be a couple of weeks older than Arnie if he was alive now.

Charle said she and Kathe kind of dropped out of touch for a couple of months after Sam, her baby, died, then Charle went over to Kathe's one day and looked after Arnie, and from that time on he’s been sort of like a nephew to her.

After she told me, we sat there for a while and watched the sheep. Then Charle said ‘Wanna jump on the trampoline?’   And I swear, we jumped so high we could almost see over the house!