The World Out There - 43. Forty-Three

Liam sat down next to Ed on the sofa, in the Common Room, that evening. He’d spent an hour finally finishing off an essay for Mrs Williams. He just couldn’t get into it and kept restarting it and restarting it. Finally, he just wrote it, just got it down on paper. It was crap, not his best work, but Mrs Williams would know what to do with it.

As he sank back into the sofa, Ed said: “Everyone wants to watch that Celebrity Love on the Beach shit,” Ed’s voice dripping with disappointment.

“It could be interesting,” Liam replied.

“It could be shit … it will be shit,” Ed said. “Let’s watch it, there’s nothing else is on. Everyone else is watching,” he admitted.

Liam settled down onto the sofa. He couldn’t admit that he wanted to watch the program - he wanted to see his mother again. Just seeing her on television meant… Well, it didn’t mean he had a connection with her, but he could just see her. Also, there was the nagging thought, what would she do? When he lived with her, she had been so unpredictable: he’d had to learn to walk on eggshells around her, not to upset her. Those other people on the program didn’t know his mother - they didn’t know how to walk around her.

The bright theme music started to play, bouncing out of the television. Liam looked up and saw the fast-moving titles playing out across the screen. The program started off slowly. The celebrities were sat around the villa’s pool, many of them sunning themselves, while just two men swam in the water, one of them being Sid. The camera turned onto his mother, who was applying large amounts of suntan lotion to her skin and complaining about the problems of being “pale skinned.” Alan James sat down on the lounger next to her, wearing a brightly coloured pair of shorts, but not bothering to hold his stomach in.

“Why don’t I do that for you?” he said, as he lent inwards Liam’s mother.

“I can do it myself, thank you,” his mother said, without a note of friendliness in her voice, before she turned away from him.

“That’s harsh,” a girl’s voice called out in the Common Room. It was Bella, sitting on the next sofa. Liam didn’t look at her. Instead, he kept his eyes on the television screen.

The program quickly moved onto a large dinner party, with all the celebrities sat around a long table on the villa’s patio, the nighttime illuminated by bright lights. His mother was wearing a short black dress which displayed so much of her cleavage. She spent most of the meal flirting with the other men there, but pointedly ignoring Alan James. Was this how his mother behaved when he lived with her, when she went for her “nights out”? He’d watched her putting her latest boyfriend ahead of him and everything else. As a kid, he’d just accepted it as the way she was. Now, he felt so uncomfortable watching her on television, throwing herself at any man around her. Why was she behaving like that? Liam moved uncomfortably on the sofa.

After the meal, the celebrities moved to the bar, by the villa’s pool, and started to drink brightly-coloured cocktails. His mother seemed to wander around the group, trying to latch onto one or other of the young men. One-by-one, she would approach one of the male celebrities and try and push her way into the conversation they were having with whomever. A few times she was successful, to a degree, actually being involved in their conversation for some time, but when it was obvious she wasn’t the centre of attention, she would move on to someone else. Most times she was rebuffed or just ignored by the male celebrity. The television screen showed a near montage of her behaviour as the voice-over made blunt fun of her, laughing at her “desperation.” She was acting desperate. Liam couldn’t take his eyes off her, on the television screen: she was so pathetic and desperate and… Was this the woman who had ruled over his childhood, the woman whose approval he’d vainly tried to get, the woman who had criticised everything he did, nothing being good enough for her? She was so pathetic now and could she even see how pathetic she was? It was so uncomfortable to watch, but neither could he just walk away from it.

The program jumped to later in the evening. There didn’t seem to be that many celebrities left around the pool. His mother managed to corner Sid at the pool’s bar.

“You’re a fine piece of manhood,” his mother said, stroking Sid’s forearm.

But Sid slowly pulled his arm back, away from her hand, saying, “Sorry, but you’re the same age as my mum. You remind me of her too. I’m just not into old women.”

“I’m not old, you cheeky bastard! I’m in the prime of my life!” his mother snapped back.

“Look, you’re not my sort. I don’t go for old women and you’re not a nice person, anyway.”

“You bastard!” Again, his mother shot back. “You’re the nasty bit of work!” She suddenly turned her away from him and the bar, turning her back on the camera. “I’m going to _______ bed. On my own!” One word had been edited out, replaced with just silence, but Liam could easily guess what word it was.

She looked so pitiful, walking away like that, but the camera only showed a few seconds of it, so Liam didn’t have to look away.

Next the television screen cut to another area by the pool, but still during the same evening, the same bright lights illuminating the nighttime. Sid was talking with Jasmine Primrose. She was another actress - or was she a dancer on that celebrity dance show they didn’t watch? Liam wasn’t sure … he couldn’t remember. She was pretty and blonde, like so many women on that program.

“Sometimes I think I’m, like, pansexual. I mean, I can look at another beautiful woman and say that she’s beautiful,” Jasmine said.

“I am bisexual,” Sid calmly replied.

“But you can’t be. This is a dating show for straight couples - you know, boy and girl couples,” Jasmine replied.

“I’m attracted to women and men.”

“But I thought, being bisexual was just another way of saying gay. There’s a load of gay guys on my show and they all say they’re bisexual.”

“I’ve had relationships with women and men,” Sid said.

“How does that work? Don’t the women get pissed if you’re dating them and another guy at the same time?”

“Not at the same time,” Sid said. “My last relationship was with a woman, and I didn’t cheat on her with anyone.”

“Oh…” Jasmine replied, with a little giggle.

Liam blinked. Handsome and charming Sid was also bisexual. He had relationships with other men too. He was so attractive and so open and… Liam stared at the television screen, but he wasn’t really watching it. He couldn’t move his mind beyond the thought of Sid being bisexual, and he said it openly on television.

Then his mother’s voice cut into his thoughts.

“You can’t trust them, and I should know.”

He focused back on the television screen. It was full of a daytime shot of again beside the villa’s pool. His mother and Jasmine were sat on the bench seats there, both wearing bikinis in the bright sun.

“But he’s so sweet,” Jasmine told his mother.

“Them bisexuals are all the same,” his mother continued. “They’re either shagging other men behind your back or they’re really just queer and can’t be honest about it. I know.”

“If you say so,” Jasmine replied, her voice falling with disappointment.

“I know so,” his mother said.

Liam physically squirmed on the sofa. His mother was again making him feel uncomfortable. It was like he was a child again and his mother was having a rant at someone else in public. As the angry words poured out of her mouth, he’d hide behind her body and hope for the very ground under his feet to open up and transport him somewhere else, anywhere else. At least she was safely behind the television screen. She wasn’t there in the room with him. At least he could avoid her.

The rest of the program rolled past him with no sign of his mother. There were several scenes of different celebrities circling around each other, trying to chat-up each other and make connections. Jasmine seemed to be spending a lot of time with Sid, laughing with him and giving him a lot of her attention.

Towards the end of the program, the Geordie announcer told them: “Now we go to the Confession Room, where Emma wants to get something off her chest. Not that she hasn’t been doing that all day.”

The screen was filled with his mother sitting in the big, dark blue “confessional chair.” She was wearing a yellow t-shirt, which was decorated with a flash of blue lightning, but her face stared into the camera with a hard and angry expression.

“That Sid is just some street _______ ______!” Her last two words had been edited out, replaced with just silence, but as she said them her lips were blurred out too - just her lips, momentarily blurred out of focus. What had she said? Liam didn’t know but he recognised that angry tone in her voice, the tone he always dreaded hearing as a child. “Don’t you look at me for saying that!” she momentarily shouted at someone off camera. “He sits there calling himself a ______!” again the word was replaced with silence and her lips were again momentarily blurred out. “He sits there with his shirt off, showing off his chest, and thinks he’s so hot. I’ve met hotter things on Tesco’s meat counter! But he can’t hide that he’s street trash. Then, he has the nerve to have a go at me! He dares to call me ‘bi-phobic’, whatever the ____ that means!” Again, her word was edited out and her lips blurred. “He’s just some gym-pumped queen, trying to prepare to be straight to get his face on TV. I can see right through him! He’s just another street _______ queer ______!” and, again, two of her words were edited out and her lips blurred. “I know his sort, I can see right through him, and he has the nerve to complain to you lot that I’m prejudiced! I’ve been the victim of real prejudice. I’ve lived through stuff that would make him wet his pants! And you bunch of tossers! He’s just another _______ ______!” Yet again two of her words were edited out and her corresponding lips movements blurred.

She stared angrily into the camera for a long moment. Shit, Liam remembered that expression. He remembered all of that performance from her, her rant and false victimhood. Shit, had she not changed at all?

“Emma, you need some time alone to calm down. Therefore, we are going to take you into The Green Room and out of the Villa,” an off-camera, female voice said.

“I’m not a _______ child!” his mother snapped, turning her head away from the camera.

His body relaxed as the television’s screen was filled with the program’s end credits. The program was over, and his mother’s awful behaviour was gone.

“Fuck, she’s a real bitch,” Ed quietly said, next to him.

“Yes, she is,” Liam quietly agreed.

<><><><>

After he’d put on his pyjamas, he just sat on the edge of his bed. He was tired, his arms and legs felt heavy with fatigue, but he just needed a moment to think.

Seeing his mother and her appalling behaviour again kept playing on his mind. He had been an unobserved witness of her behaviour, but it was as if she’d never changed, as if he were still a child and trying to hide away from her as she had another rant in public. Why did she behave so badly? Why was she like that with other people? Couldn’t she see how her behaviour effected and unset other people?

She’d never seemed to have any friends when he was a child, just a succession of boyfriends, and none of them stayed around for very long. Did this explain her behaviour?

Watching her on television was so embarrassing: she was so embarrassing and… Was that what scared him as a child? Even as a child, he knew what she was ranting about wasn’t something you should say in public, especially her racism. But he had also been afraid of her. Her temper had been so frightening, something to be feared and avoided.

But that had been years ago now, and she hadn’t changed at all. Didn’t people learn, especially if their behaviour was so bad? But … what if they didn’t know their behaviour was bad? His mother had never seemed to listen to anyone. She had always acted as if only her opinions mattered. That hadn’t seemed to change.

Why was he questioning himself about his mother when she’d abandoned him here, and so quickly? He was tired. He needed to sleep.

Liam lay down on his bed, settling his body down into a comfortable position, and pulled his blanket over himself.

He fell asleep so quickly that he didn’t remember doing so.

<><><><>

Thursday lunchtime, as Liam left the Dining Room, he met Janet, walking the opposite direction. She was dressed in her usual clothes, dark trousers and a pale blouse - todays was a pale yellow one, and the thick leather belt around her waist. It wasn’t unusual to see her walking around the ward. Liam didn’t worry about seeing her there. He was on his way to meeting Pearl, who was the nurse would be taking him back to the Education Centre.

“Liam, can I have a word?” Janet quietly spoke to him.

Liam stopped walking and turned to her.

“Yes.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” he told her.

“I know everyone is watching that new TV program, Celebrity Love on the Beach.”

“Yes, it’s pretty crap.”

“If you need to talk about it, I’m here, and Aiden’s back on duty tomorrow.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got to go and meet Pearl.”

“Certainly,” Janet replied.

He casually walked off towards the Common Room where Pearl would be. Shit, was everyone on the ward watching that shit television program.

<><><><>

That evening he sat down again on the sofa, next to Ed, in the Common Room, a few minutes before Celebrity Love on the Beach was due to start.

“Don’t know why you want to watch this shit,” Ed quietly complained.

“It’s all right, I sort of like it.”

“Why? It’s shit!” Ed looked at him for a moment. “You fancy that Sid,” Ed quietly said.

“I do like him - he’s all right.”

Ed lent his head close to Liam’s and quietly said, “He’s hot.”

Liam felt embarrassment prickle at the back of his neck, but Ed just lent back on the sofa, grinning at him.

The television screen, opposite them, was filled with the channel’s ident as a voice announced: “Now we go over to tonight’s edition of Celebrity Love on the Beach.”

A knot of excitement gripped Liam’s stomach. Why was he excited? It was only his mother. But what would she be doing?

Instead of going straight into the program’s opening titles, the screen was filled with white writing on a dark blue background, and a different voice-over announced: “Due to her unacceptable and racist behaviour, Emma Duffield has been removed from the villa. Her replacement will be announced later in the program.”

The screen dissolved into the program’s opening titles with its bright theme music.

Liam ran his tongue over his dry lips. Someone had stood up to his mother. Someone had told his mother her behaviour wasn’t acceptable. Someone hadn’t given in to her bullying. Where was that someone when he was a child?

The rest of the program seemed to fly past his eyes, he barely noticed it. It did feature a lot of Sid, mostly without his shirt, and it introduced a new member of Villa, Angie Newton, a TV journalist, whom Liam hadn’t heard of. Angie Newton was probably the same age as his mother, but she seemed much more relaxed and at ease around the other people in the villa. But without his mother there, Liam wasn’t almost on the edge of his seat, worrying what his mother would be doing next. Without that concern, he was able to relax and just watch the program, and the program was so dull. He was watching a group of adults flirting and fawning over each other, and it was so dull. They weren’t even funny. It was just boring. He found himself looking forward to hearing the Geordie announcer - at least he was funny.

“That was still shit,” Ed quietly said, as the program’s end credits filled the television screen.

“Yes, you’re right. It is really shit,” Liam quietly agreed.

“You’ve gone off Sid?” Sid quietly asked, smiling back at Liam.

“He’s all right but he’s dull too. Him and that Jasmine, they’re boring together.”

“At least that bitchy, old woman is gone.”

“Yes,” he agreed with Ed.

<><><><>

Friday afternoon, as he and Ed were returning to the ward, escorted back by Tommy, the nurse, Aiden was waiting for them. Aiden was just inside the Ward’s entrance.

“Liam, can we have a chat?” Aiden asked him.

“Sure,” Liam replied.

“I’ll wait for you in the common room,” Ed replied.

“Yes,” he told Ed, and gave him a nod in reply.

He didn’t bother leaving his notebooks in his room - he just carried them with him as he followed Aiden. His notebooks were full of his work from the Education Centre, He could easily drop into his room after talking with Aiden. This was just one of their regular talks as he hadn’t seen Aiden for most of that week.

Again, Aiden took him to one of the ward’s Quiet Rooms. It would have been far nicer to go for a walk in the hospital’s garden - he liked being out there - but it had been raining all day, hard and heavy rain.

Once they were both settled in there, Aiden said, “I’m not a great fan of reality TV but my partner is. We’ve been watching Celebrity Love on the Beach. It’s an awful show but I was so surprised to see your mother on it.”

“Yes,” Liam replied.

“How was it watching her on TV?”

He looked back at Aiden, who was waiting with that expression Aiden had - that expression that told him he could trust Aiden.

“It was awful. She was… she was horrible.”

“How was that?”

“She was the same as she was when I lived with her. She was saying and doing the same things as when I was a kid, and it was all about her. It was horrible.”

“But how did you feel, watching her? You haven’t seen her in so long.”

Liam took a deep breath. Here was the chance to explain how he’d been feeling, those thoughts that filled his mind when he should have been sleeping.

“At first, it was like I was a little kid again and she was having one of her rants in public. I just wanted to hide away like I did as a kid, so she wouldn’t see me. But I quickly realised, she was there in the TV, nowhere near me. Then I started watching her and… she’s horrible. She treats people like dirt, and she only thinks about herself. I mean, she can be nice to someone’s face and then really nasty behind their back. Or she’s just horrible to their face. Then, in that Confession Room bit, well she uses the n-word about Sid and said that he used it too, but he didn’t. She was really… well racist… and she lied.”

He stopped there. He wasn’t making sense, not saying what he’d been thinking but he didn’t know how to find the words to say what he meant.

“I’m not making sense,” he said, the frustration was creeping into his voice.

“Yes, you are.”

“I watched her on TV, and she was just the same as when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I thought she behaved like that because I was such a disappointment to her, and she hated me. But watching her on TV, I realised she was like that with everyone. Not just me.”

“Yes,” Aiden replied. “But as children we don’t realise that. We think if a parent is nasty to us then it must be our fault.”

“Yes, and realising she was like that with everyone, I realised how horrible she is.”

“How did that make you feel about your mother?”

“She was horrible and… And she was just sad. She couldn’t see how everyone else hated her behaviour… When I was a kid, I don’t remember her ever having any friends. There was Aunt Sadie, her sister, but they were always fighting. She had boyfriends, a lot of them and she’d give them her full attention, but they’d never last long. I don’t think she had anyone in her life who could tell her that her behaviour wasn’t right. She never listened to me.”

“I never met your mother, but Janet did, and Janet always says your mother is almost a textbook narcissist. And Janet isn’t wrong about things like that.”

“What’s a narcissist?”

“Someone who thinks they’re the most important person in the world and that the world revolves around them. They believe other people are only there to be used. They have no understanding or care about how their actions affect other people.”

“That sounds like her.”

“Yes, it does.”

“But on television, she was acting the same as when I was a kid, but I wasn’t there - so I could just watch her. She was all over all the men in the villa. It wasn’t like she liked just one of them – she wanted any of them. She was being nasty to everyone in that villa, usually behind their back. She was also so prejudiced. All those racist things she said, and all those things she said about Sid being bisexual.”

“The homophobic things.”

“Yes, that. She was saying the same things when I was a kid. She hasn’t changed a bit. It’s so pathetic.”

“Narcissists usually don’t. They think they are always right. It’s other people who are wrong, they think. But how did you feel, watching her behaviour on TV?”

“At first, I was embarrassed, she’s such an embarrassment. Then… Then…” He took a deep breath … was this a betrayal? She was his mother, in the end. But it was a thought that he couldn’t shake. “I thought, what a crap mother she was.”

“In what way?”

“I was the last thing she cared about. She gave more attention to her latest boyfriend than me, and he’d piss off after a week or so. I was her son, and she didn’t want me there… If she’d been a better mother, I don’t think I would be here.”

“How do you mean?”

“If she’d been a better mother, I could have told her Rhys Clarke was bullying me and making my life hell. I was terrified of him. I didn’t know when and how he’d attack me, and no one seemed to care. One time, Rhys Clarke and his mates ripped the sleeve of my school blazer when they beat me up on my way home from school. I tried to tell my mum what had happened, what Rhys Clarke and his mates did, but she just smacked me across my head for getting my blazer ripped. That’s what she cared about, having to get my blazer repaired.”

“That’s shit,” Aiden quietly said.

“Yes, it is…” Liam stared down at the room’s carpet, the dull green carpet they’d put in there a year ago. His mood was falling downwards, and he didn’t want it to, but he had to tell Aiden. Keeping everything so quiet and to himself hadn’t helped. “If she’d been a better mother, if she’d cared about me, even a bit, I mightn’t have taken that knife to school to frighten off Rhys Clarke, and that didn’t work out. If she cared a bit about me I could have told her what was happening, and she’d have listened to me. Maybe she’d have done something. Maybe she’d have gone up to my school and ranted at my old headmaster. Maybe that would have done something. It would have embarrassed Mr Stein, the Deputy Head… But she didn’t. She didn’t care about me, and she was supposed to be my mother.”

He fell silent. He didn’t want to admit the last part, not even to Aiden. He sucked in a deep breath of air.

“I’m sorry,” Aiden quietly said. He then reached over and laid his hand gently on Liam’s forearm, the gentle pressure on his arm. That moment of physical contact broke his resolve.

“I hate her!” he spat the words out as his eyes filled with heavy tears and sobs poured out of his body. A moment later, Aiden’s arms enfolded around him, and he was held in Aiden’s embrace. He sobbed on Aiden’s shoulder.

<><><><>

Alone in his room, Liam pulled on his pyjamas, that night. His body now ached with tiredness. Where had this tiredness come from? He hadn’t done anything really physical that day.

He’d talked with Aiden for nearly an hour. Talking and talking about his mother and… and how he felt about her. All those feelings that he’d pushed down as far as he could for so long. It hadn’t been easy: it sounded as though he was blaming his mother for everything. Everything that seemed wrong with his childhood he was blaming on her. But Aiden listened to him, sometimes telling him some things, sometimes asking him another question, but Aiden never said things weren’t his mother’s fault.

When he finally met Ed, in the Common Room, an hour later than he meant to, Ed had just said, “It happens here. Don’t worry.”

Liam climbed into his bed. He was too tired now to think about reading. He turned his light off and rolled over in his bed, but he didn’t remember falling asleep, he fell asleep so quickly.