Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-six
Celie
Gene has a meeting with his agent, and gets the same bus as Celie so they’re seated together on the top deck. Celie will get off first, to walk the rest of the way to school, and Gene will stay on all the way into the West End. He is clearly not used to being up so early and keeps yawning and rubbing his eyes, but talks as much as ever, his loud American voice carrying across the seats so that Celie has to keep shushing him. British people like their public transport quiet in the mornings, aside from the psychopaths who play music without earphones or have conversations on FaceTime.
“So what did you choose?”
“I went for Animation.”
“Good call. This country is way too cold for nine months of the year to do Track.”
“I think I’m the only one in my class who’s signed up.”
Gene has been telling her she has to find the thing that she enjoys doing. “Life is going to batter you, honey. She’s a cruel mistress. So you have to find the place in your head where you can get lost in a good way. Otherwise it’s just drink and drugs and bad women.”
Celie is pretty sure she isn’t going to end up losing herself in bad women, but she gets his general point.
“Honestly, if I’d put more love and work into the acting I could have got an Academy Award,” Gene is saying. “I had all the studios lining up at my door. I should have carried on going to acting class, worked on my craft, not got distracted. The fame thing kind of went to my head for a bit. I guess it knocked me off course.” He rubs at his head. “In all kinds of ways.”
“You mean leaving Mum and Grandma?”
For the first time his voice drops a few decibels. Gene looks briefly uncomfortable. “I guess. Your mom finds it hard to forgive me for that.”
“Have you said sorry?”
He looks at her as if this is a radical concept. “Not in so many words.”
“Mum says you told Marja to say sorry.”
“Sure, but that’s…that’s different.”
“You told Marja if she broke up a family and she had to see Mum every day then she should say sorry. How is that different?”
Gene pulls out a cigarette from his packet, remembers he is not allowed to smoke on the bus, and puts it away again. He shifts in his seat. “It’s complicated.”
“Not really. You’re the one who fucked up. You should say sorry.”
“Celie! Don’t curse in front of your grandpa!”
There is a brief silence.
“?‘Grandpa,’ huh?” says Celie, speculatively.
“Your old pal Gene.” He sighs. “Maybe you’re right. Kind of hard to open up that can of worms, though. Your mom can be a little…”
“Scary.”
“Yeah.”
“You should try it, though. She’s not as tough as she looks.” Celie considers her mum. “I think she’s sort of expecting you to leave again. I think she thinks everyone is going to leave her.” She studies him. “Are you going to leave again?”
He shakes his head. “I kind of like hanging with my family. And, hey, who’s going to sort out your problems if your old pal Gene isn’t here? Who’s going to get you fake tattoos and make you stand up straight? Who’s going to make sure little Violet gets her share of doughnuts? Who’s going to make sure Bill steps up for that little piano lady of his?” He lifts his head and gazes around the bus. “Who’s going to give the women of northwest London something to talk about?”
A few women glance over, then look away. He pulls her to him and kisses the top of her head. He smells of toothpaste and old leather.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says. But she doesn’t push him away.
···
Celie’s stomach doesn’t hurt before school any more. The pain disappeared almost immediately on the first day she was able to walk past the girls using her Invisible Gene Shield, as he put it. They had all been gathered by the school gates, smoking, even though, strictly speaking, they were on the wrong side of the gates to do it. When Meena’s gaze had slid toward her, instead of shrinking she had met it, lifted her chin with the faintest of smiles, and carried on walking. She had felt them all staring at her the whole way to biology, but instead of like before, when she would have felt crushed by the weight of it, her head buzzing with the thoughts of what they might be saying, she had pulled her invisible shield around her and murmured, Oh, you’re all pathetic , and pictured Gene rolling on the grass yelling: “I’m dead! You killed me!” Every time she’d done it after that it had become a little easier, so that now, three weeks on, she barely even notices them. Yes, she is still a bit lonely, but she’s started eating with the girls from Music, who are a bit geeky, but always seem pleased to see her, and move their chairs up if they’re on a packed table so that she can join them.
They don’t talk about other girls. At all. It makes her realize that 90 percent of what Meena and the others talked about was who was doing what, who was stupid, or dressed badly, or had made an idiot of themselves. It was like other people were their currency. Harriet and Soraya talk about music, or films they’ve seen, or what they want to write next (they are both grade-eight musicians and Soraya composes her own pieces). Soraya had once played them a song she had recorded on her phone, while they were eating in the canteen, and Celie had plugged in her earphones to listen at the same time as Harriet and although it wasn’t brilliant—Soraya’s voice is a little thin and the song is about cats—the thing that had struck her was that Soraya was completely trusting: that Celie wouldn’t laugh at her, that she would listen carefully. Soraya took for granted that what she was doing was worth trying, and would be received in the same spirit. If she had shown that to Meena, Meena would have corpsed with laughter and told everyone who would listen that it was pathetic.
Celie realizes she quite likes talking about things, rather than people. She is pretty sure that when she leaves the table Soraya and Harriet won’t say anything mean about her. Although she still glances behind her twice as she leaves the canteen, just to make sure.
···
Animation Club is held at four p.m. in the art department, which is actually two Portakabins joined together. Celie makes sure she gets there at the last possible minute, as she feels weird about queuing up outside not knowing anyone there, and when she walks in she finds a table at the back in the corner where she can see everyone without anyone necessarily being able to see her. She scans the room, checking for anyone she might recognize—mostly boys from the two years above, but not the kind who dick around in class and steal each other’s bags to dump them in the bins. These are the shadow kids, the boys who are quieter, who hang around at the edges of things. There are two other girls, one of whom is in the year above and nods at Celie—the most outward greeting you were ever going to get from a year thirteen—and then, one row ahead, she spots Martin, his red hair glowing. He glances behind and gives her the kind of brief wave someone gives when they expect not to be acknowledged but feel they should do it anyway. She gives him a small smile—it feels unkind not to—and tries not to think of what it means that she is now doing extra-curricular classes with someone like Martin.
···
“Now, we’re going to start with storyboards. Don’t worry if your drawing skills aren’t up to much at this stage—we’re really looking at how to construct your story. Depending on whether you want to do two-D or three-D animation, we can use software to help you create the images later.”
Mr. Pugh is the kind of teacher who tells you to call him Kev, and sits on the corners of desks in jeans and trainers. She suspects he tells people he’s the kind of teacher the kids think of as a friend. There is one of these in every school.
“Martin. You did storyboards last time round, right? Do you happen to have one in your folder?”
Celie cringes for him. To be the first person called up to show your stuff is mortifying. Especially in front of the older kids. But Martin doesn’t seem troubled. He reaches down into his folder and pulls out a large sheet of A3 paper. Mr. Pugh strolls up to his desk and holds it up so that everyone can see.
It takes her a couple of seconds to register that this is Martin’s work and that it’s really good. There are maybe twelve squares of drawings, some of which have been heavily shaded. She can’t see clearly from where she is but it looks like someone experiencing a nightmare, then emerging into daylight. There are monsters that stretch across the frame, an anguished face, a giant teddy bear, and finally the face of a concerned woman, who might be a mum. Mr. Pugh is explaining how Martin has divided his story up into key scenes and that each one has an image.
“We’re going to stick to fairly simple animations at this stage so you can get the hang of it, but that means the stories you create should be quite short. Martin’s Nightmare, as you see here, fits the brief perfectly.”
Someone asks something about software, and the difference between two-D and three-D, but Celie isn’t paying attention. She is looking at the contents of Martin’s folder, which seems to contain lots of storyboards. She can see semi-hidden images, some in color, others in black-and-white. He is sorting them, placing them back in the folder carefully, and when he realizes she’s watching he turns his head and gives her a brief, neutral grin. Not the kind of grin you give if you feel a bit embarrassed about something, just the kind you give if you feel okay about what you’re doing and don’t see the need to defend it to anyone.
Working out your story is trickier than it sounds. Celie isn’t sure what kind of story she wants to tell. Everything in her life this last couple of years has been depressing. She can’t exactly animate her parents’ divorce, or Grandma getting hit by a bus, or Marja getting pregnant, or Meena and the others blanking her, or what it was like getting stoned on the Heath. She thinks about superheroes and cartoon animals—the normal stuff—but it just doesn’t seem very interesting. Everyone else seems to have come with a story already: she can see them sketching out their squares, cursing quietly as they get their drawings wrong. She leans over her board, trying to look as if she knows what she’s doing, but she starts to feel uncomfortable and exposed, like maybe she shouldn’t be here.
“You okay?” Martin has walked past her and stopped at her board. He can see that there is nothing in her squares.
She pulls a face and tries to look casual. “Just struggling for ideas really.”
He looks at the doodles she has done along the edges.
“I’m not really into superheroes and I don’t know what else to draw.”
Martin nods, as if this is completely to be expected. He has a strange air of authority in this club—he’s like a different person.
“How—how do you come up with your ideas?”
“Uhh.” He looks away from her when he talks, and she wonders if he’s shyer than he lets on. “Honestly? The first year I came I did an animation about bullying. It was pretty crap, but Mr. Pugh said the animation was good. And last year I did more kind of surreal stuff, dreams, nightmares, inanimate objects coming to life, that kind of thing. I don’t really know what I want to do half the time so I just have a small idea and try to make it bigger.” He blushes a little. “If that makes sense.”
“I don’t have any ideas, though.” She doesn’t want to do an animation about bullies.
“I’m trying to remember the prompts he gave us last year.” He stares at his feet for a minute. “Oh. Okay. What’s the last thing that made you laugh?”
She thinks about Gene on television with the toothpaste, the way he mimicked the many different ways the director had made him smile at himself during filming— Now give me Satisfied Smile! Now give me Sexy Smile! Unsure Smile! Confident Smile! Make Love to the Camera Smile! Then she thinks about him being mischievous in the gay sex shop. Him and Bill having a stupid old-man fight in the hall with tea-towels, as if she and Violet were meant to think they were joking.
“My two grandpas,” she says, “who hate each other. Or hated each other.”
Martin smiles. “Yeah. Two old men fighting. That’s funny.”
Her face falls. “Except I can’t draw old men.”
“Hold on.” Martin walks back through the tables and squats by a low bookcase. He comes back with a well-thumbed oversized paperback book titled: How to Draw Characters .
“Copy some of those,” he says, flicking through the pages. “Even if they’re not exactly what you want, they’ll give you some ideas. It’s quite good—it does step-by-step guides.” There are instructions on how to draw an egg and turn it into a face, how to draw emotions, how to age a character. He hands her the book, hesitates, then heads back to his table.
“Thanks,” she says, probably a moment too late. She isn’t sure if he hears her.
···
“How was Animation, honey?” says Gene, when she gets home. He’s in the living room lying across the entire length of the sofa, watching the news on the television and eating crisps from the packet, which means that Bill is out. Truant is sitting staring at him, every fiber of his being fixated on the possibility of stray crumbs.
“Good,” she says. She has a folder under her arm full of pictures of old men fighting. One has bright white teeth and a toupee, his opponent has a stick, a suit and tie, and she has created a storyboard in which they are arguing over who gets to climb aboard a bus first. As they fight they gradually knock over all the old ladies at the bus stop, then all the passengers on the bus, including mothers with prams, and finally the driver. Last, they pull out their bus passes and complain about their frailty. Martin had burst out laughing when she showed him and she doesn’t even think he was doing it kindly.
“So what did you draw?” he says. “Anything you can show your old pal Gene?”
“Not yet, Grandpa,” she says, and smiles as she trots up the stairs.