Boys on the Brain

I said, “I know what they look like… short and dark and squat.”

That shut her up! I know it was mean, destroying someone’s fantasy, but it served her right for saying that that stupid Brad Sullivan looked like Carlito. She didn’t talk to me again for another five minutes, until this woman came over to us wanting us to give money for cancer research and we wouldn’t because we once read somewhere that they torture animals, and the woman said, “Suppose you got cancer?” to which Pilch replied, “A principle is still a principle,” which I thought was rather good, and that got us talking again. Me and Pilch never stop talking for very long. We have too much to say to each other!

Mum complains about it, because of the telephone bill. She says, “How you can be at school together all day and then gabble on for hours in the evening, I really do not know.”

It is because we have things to discuss. Important things. School things, work things, book things. Things about Alastair and Carlito! Pilch and I have always talked. Back in Year 7 Ms Martin used to say, “Cresta McMorris and Charlotte Peake. I want you at opposite sides of the room.” But even then we used to pass notes!

And then we had our secret language that no one but us could understand. IBBY language. We used to put an Ib after the first letter of every word - unless it began with a vowel, in which case we put an N in front of it. Verree complicated! But we got so’s we could rattle it off.

That was when we were in Juniors. I can’t do it now. Unfortunately. If I could, I would go up to Cindy and Tasha and yell, “Sibtupid miborons!” And I’d do a rude gesture to go with it.

Came back here with Pilch to read our latest episodes and found the whole place pulsating.

“Oh, God,” I said, “they’re at it again!”

“At what?” said Pilch.

I said, “Playing their music!”

As soon as me and Pilch appeared, Harry very ostentatiously turned the volume down.

“Sorry,” he said. He put a finger to his lips. “Old folk being noisy again!”

“What is it?” said Pilch.

Mum, foolishly beaming, said, “They were my favourite group when I was young.” She held out a record sleeve. She has become a real vinyl nut since meeting Harry. It seems CDs aren’t loud enough, or something. “Look!”

Pilch took the sleeve with this air of naive wonderment.

“It’s a record,” she said.

“I know! Isn’t it brilliant?” said Mum. “This album came out on my sixteenth birthday!”

“And it’s still playable,” said Harry. “Who said records don’t last?”

Pilch was staring, like, transfixed, at the sleeve. It was green and purple, with swirly bits.

She said, “Dawn of Humanity… is that the name of the group or of the album?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” said Harry.

“It’s the name of the group,” said Mum. She snatched back her precious sleeve. “Please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them!”

“Mum,” I said, “things have moved on.”

Mum sniffed. A bit huffy. “Fat lot you’d know about it,” she said. “Spend your life with your head buried in a book.”

I grumbled to Pilch as we came upstairs.

“It’s horrible,” I said. “They play it all the time.”

“I think it’s fun,” said Pilch.

“You wouldn’t,” I told her, “if you were trying to read War and Peace”

Pilch said she didn’t expect, if she were trying to read War and Peace, she would find anything much fun.

“They’re really hard going, aren’t they?” she said. “These Russian things?”

“They’re classics,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” said Pilch; and she heaved this big sigh.

Pilch worries me sometimes. She doesn’t seem as committed as she used to be. I know it was my idea that we should read the classics, but she agreed with me. I didn’t force her. I just felt we ought to tackle something a bit - well! Worthy. Of course I have already done Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice; Pilch has only seen them on the telly. Anna Karenina is the first classic she has ever tackled.

Maybe she just needs a bit of a breathing space. I am not going to nag as I feel that would be counterproductive. I will just wait and see what happens.

Sunday (#ulink_296a52e0-35bf-55e8-a77b-322c3d0e75ed)

Drove over to Wimbledon Dog Track with Mum and Harry. Not, alas, to see greyhounds but to look for vinyl at this record fair that’s held there.

Record fairs, it seems, are full of the weirdest people! Strange anoraky men clutching big bags and long lists of the stuff they’re looking for. They speak in these nerdy, high-pitched voices and they loom over you and breathe over you as you go through the records. And when they find one they think they might want, they take it out of its sleeve and hold it up to the light and peer at it this way and that way, sometimes through a magnifying glass. If they discover even the tiniest mark, totally invisible to the naked eye, they point it out, with great earnestness, to the person that’s selling it.

“Look at this,” they go, in their nerdy flutey voices. “There’s a mark about half a centimetre in. Can you see it? Just there, where my finger is… is it fly doings, or is it a scratch?”

I didn’t know that flies did things on records but apparently they do. And then it sticks and causes the needle to go thunk or to fly into the air.

I looked in vain, amongst all the anorakys, for anyone resembling Carlito. I look for boys who look like Carlito everywhere I go! They are very rare in this part of the world, though I did see a pizza delivery boy the other day who looked like him from a distance, only when I got close he turned out to be all nerdy and spotty. A big disappointment! But I live in hope.

Mum, meanwhile, lives in hope of finding this one particular album called Driftwood.

“If you come across it,” she told me, “buy it! No matter what the price.”

She gave me some money and sent me off, but I didn’t find it, and nor did she or Harry. I looked ever so hard! I mean, I do like to make her happy if I can. I waded through stacks and stacks of grungy old fly-spattered records, but it wasn’t there.

“What’s so special about it, anyway?” I said.

“It’s part of my youth,” said Mum. “Just imagine, Cresta! You’re missing out on so much! You won’t have anything to look back and remember when you’re my age.”

Oh, yes, I shall! I shall remember reading War and Peace.

I am now on page one hundred and forty-three.

Phew!

Monday (#ulink_9dd021a1-deb3-5d6b-9b54-32eb74e8ea9b)

(3rd week)