Chapter 3
Arthur
‘Oh Christ, Ed, there’s another one.’ Mum flaps back into the kitchen with another article open on her phone.
The headline reads: Cavendish’s jealous, drug-filled row.
Her accent comes back in full force when she’s not talking to the international press and even more so when she’s stressed; so when she starts sounding like Guy Martin, that’s when I know I’m in a whole lot of trouble.
My dad sits opposite me at the dining table in stony silence.
He’s hardly spoken since the events of last night, and I’m not surprised.
The whole ‘everyone thinks my son is on drugs’ thing probably puts a bit of a downer on the award that has since been discarded at the bottom of the stairs.
No matter how much I assure them that it isn’t true, that I didn’t so much as look at anything illegal last night, because I can’t explain the reason for my little meltdown, of course no one believes me.
I don’t have the energy to fight it either.
Though I’ve slept for what feels like an age, every inch of me is exhausted.
It’s as if my soul has been sucked out, and my whole nervous system has short-circuited, leaving my body intact and yet completely empty.
‘What do we need to do? Make a statement? Send him to rehab? Give him a clip round the earhole?’ Her makeup is still painted on her face from last night and has hardly budged, even though she compulsively rubs at it as though trying to manually erase each one of her memories.
‘Mum, you know I’m here, don’t you? And I can hear you.’ She paces up and down the kitchen and stops to give me a hard stare. Dad still says nothing. ‘I never took anything. You believe me, right?’
‘I don’t know what to believe.’ Mum only shakes her head, finally slumping down beside her husband in defeat.
‘It was Charles. He was asking for it as soon as he started talking about Lizzie.’ At the mention of my sister’s name, my father shifts in his seat to straighten out his posture.
Sucking in a breath, the voice that comes out is one he reserves only for seriousness, or his voiceover work on that documentary he did about bigfoot back in his early days before he could afford to turn jobs down.
‘You are twenty-five years old, Arthur. Listen to yourself. When are you going to grow up? Take some responsibility for yourself for goodness’ sake and stop acting like such a spoiled brat. ’
I have no words to reply; what can I do to make them believe me?
The fact that the only reason they can think of for my ‘outburst’ is some arrogant drug-induced show cuts in a way that I can’t even describe.
I give up. I am so exhausted that I can only sit in silence as he continues, ‘It’s our fault, mine and your mum’s.
I know that. We wanted you to grow up not having all of the struggles we had when we were younger.
Instead, we’ve got a son who has no ambition, no prospects, and far too much pride.
What you did last night could have cost every one of us our livelihoods.
What would you have done then? When you couldn’t rely on us? ’
‘Dad, I’m sorry, I never—’
‘I’ve been speaking to some old acquaintances of mine and I’ve managed to pull in a favour, and I can assure you it will be the last favour I do for you.
From next week you’re going to New York, and that is where you’ll stay until all of this has blown over and you realise how much it means to be a Cavendish. ’
New York. A city so dense that no one will stop to care who my father is. A city so far away that I can be whoever I like and not have to live in his shadow. A city where I can have my own dreams and a whole new beginning.
‘Eddie, come on, that’s a bit harsh on the boy, isn’t it?’ Mum finally perks up, brows furrowed as if two minutes ago she wasn’t talking about either beating me or sending me to rehab for an addiction I don’t have.
‘He’s a grown man, Helena. He needs to finally know what hard work is, even if it is years too late. It’s a taster of real life. I’m not sending him off to war, love.’
‘Still here, by the way.’ I grumble. ‘I’ll go.’
They both look at me, shocked, as though they were expecting me to put up a fight. Why would I? It’s the perfect plan: they get me out from under their feet, and I get to stop pretending.
At the final ring, she finally answers the phone.
‘Hello?’ Despite my name presumably flashing across the screen, she answers as though she has no idea who I am.
‘Lizzie, it’s me, Art.’ I smile though she can’t see me and I picture her smiling too on the other end.
‘Art who?’ she mumbles into her receiver.
‘Your brother.’ My grin droops slightly but I try to keep my tone happy. She harrumphs so I continue, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I won’t get to visit for a couple of weeks but I’ll come and see you the minute I’m home.’
‘Artie,’ she says softly. My smile returns in full. ‘You’re coming to see me?’
‘When I’m home that’ll be the first thing I do. I’ve just got to go away for a while.’
‘Where are you going? Can I come?’ she asks, childlike hope in her tone.
‘I’m going to New York, Lizzie, you know, the concrete jungle.’
‘Oooo get you,’ she squawks, and I picture her raising her eyebrows and wiggling them in jest like she used to when I’d tell her I had a new girlfriend at school. ‘When are you picking me up?’
‘I can’t take you this time—’ an uncomfortable tingle spreads through my chest as I think about her sat alone, disappointed ‘—but I’ll make sure to bring you a present. How about a Big Apple keyring? Or an Empire State Building fridge magnet?’
‘An “I heart New York” mug?’ I hear the smile in her voice as if she’s remembering the one she used to have on a shelf in her bedroom when it was purple and full of Groovy Chick memorabilia.
Mum had bought it for her after working over there for a little while and I got a kilogram bag of M she filled it with pencils that she used to sketch with.
She was always the better kid, my older sister.
‘Deal.’ I sigh. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Artie?’
I hum in reply.
‘When are you coming to see me?’
‘Soon Lizzie, I promise.’ And with a short goodbye, I hang the phone up and return my attention to packing.
With both Mum and Dad away back to work, there’s no one to see me off at home.
The house is silent and I hear my own footsteps echo through the high ceilings.
We haven’t lived in this house long. It’s still like a show home: white walls, white skirting, no photographs, no life.
Our first house was the opposite; the whole place looked like it could sink with the weight of bric-a-brac dotted around.
It wasn’t like any of the houses of the people we would visit – those I’ve come to call aunties and uncles.
Their houses were like this one: hardly lived in.
This house is an investment. It’s a place for Mum and Dad to keep their money instead of a bank and to sleep in on the odd occasion they’re in this city and not living out of a hotel.
We haven’t had a home since Lizzie left.
I have been travelling from here to there for my entire life, following Mum around film sets, across different countries.
But long flights and drives never get easier.
Sitting there, feeling sick after looking at my phone for too long, unable to read a book from all of the bumps in the road, the whole thing just feels like one great waste of time.
It’s never a good idea for me to sit for hours with only my own thoughts and the cats’ eyes at the side of the road for entertainment.
So, exactly five days since the BAFTAs, as I slide myself and my suitcase into the back seat of the car my parents have sent to wait for me, I pop one of my sleeping pills and hope it’s enough to knock me out completely.
One will do for now, for the drive to the airport, and I make sure to slide another into my hand luggage ready for the plane.
‘We’re here, sir.’ The driver nudges me awake.
‘At the airport?’ I ask, rubbing my bleary eyes.
‘No sir, we’ve arrived in New York.’
Jesus, those sleeping tablets are even better than I thought. I can’t remember even getting on the plane let alone any of the flight and yet it only feels like I’ve been asleep a couple of hours at most.
The noise outside is exactly how I’d expect New York to be: a bustling cacophony of voices and car horns almost like that of a parade laid on just for me. Rolling down the blacked-out window, I prepare myself for that first look at my new home, the first taste of the new me.
Welcome home, Mr Cavendish scrawled in dripping red paint onto a bedsheet is the first thing I clap eyes on. The whole thing fills up the window so that it’s impossible to see beyond it. Perhaps I’m hallucinating.
When the bedsheet retreats from my window, it is a row of tractors I see next, lining a crumbling road.
Their tyre tracks have left at least a mile of churned-up grass verge behind them.
A dozen or so pensioners are turned out in their Sunday best, clapping and waving little union flags as though the king has just decided to pay their nursing home a special visit.
‘What’s going on? I’m supposed to be catching a flight to New York,’ I say to the driver, my palms growing sweaty.
‘This is New York, sir,’ he replies simply.
‘Unless you’ve got some sort of newly patented flying car, how the fuck can we be in New York?’ My temper grows short as my confusion mounts.
‘I’ve been told to take you to the Big Apple.’ The driver double-checks the map open on his phone and nods to himself.
Pressing the heel of my palms into the sockets of my eyes, my confusion shifts to frustration, then to anger. ‘The Big Apple. New York. The United States. North America.’ My words are staccato through my gritted teeth.
When I peel open my lids again, the light swirls and throbs across my vision.
Everything is blurred, as though a film has been laid across my irises, but after a moment of blinking, I finally pull into focus the building the congregation musters in front of.
I would assume that roses mix with wisteria to climb the trellises in the summer, but right now it’s bare branches that scale their way up the stonework and hanging baskets with forgotten Christmas decorations inside fill the gaps.
The whole thing is ancient, and I’m sure it’s a sight to behold in the summer, but it’s a bleak image of the crumbling English countryside at the arse end of February.
Yet it’s clear this place is a source of pride for all of these people who stand before it as though presenting their finest jewels and best goats to foreign royalty.
A sign hangs from the thick wooden beams above the door.
It swings back and forth though there’s hardly a breeze.
A lush tree fills most of it and a heavy Granny Smith hangs from its painted branches.
Within the shine of the green skin, the words ‘The Big Apple’ reflect the sunlight in their thick black lettering.
And beside it all, I see a beautifully ornate sign, its letters carved out and filled with the greenery that surrounds us at every single angle and it reads: New York Village.
‘You’ve got to be taking the piss.’ Placing my head in my hands, I try to ignore the smug look on the driver’s face that I catch in the rear-view mirror.
‘Oh my, last time I saw you, you were only this big.’ A shrill voice cuts in so close to my face that I jump back with such force I whack my head on the headrest. The deeply lined face of an elderly lady that I have never seen before is pressed so far through the cracked open window that I can smell the lavender rinse in her hair. ‘Haven’t you grown?’
Only when I see her bony hand reaching in to touch my face do I snap out of whatever trance has been keeping me stupefied in this car.
The only thing I can think to do is slide out of the door and stand before the rabble.
There’s plenty of open space, too much open space even.
If any more OAPs try to touch me, or this turns into some Hot Fuzz–type of small-town mass murder thing, I know I can run.
‘You don’t remember me do you, duck?’ She stands beside me now, her diminutive frame hunched over as close beside me as she can possibly get.
‘I’m afraid not.’ I smile, though I’m sure it comes out more of a grimace.
‘I’m Barbara. I used to change your dad’s nappies back in the day. You’re welcome to call me Auntie Babs – everyone else does.’
‘Oh right. Lovely.’ I laugh breathily, trying my best to be polite, though my brain is utterly scrambled with the onslaught of what has happened, and I’m still not convinced my sleeping pills aren’t making me violently hallucinate.
‘Give the boy some space, Barbara.’ A younger, stockier woman, seemingly mid-fifties, comes over and thankfully places herself between me and ‘Auntie Babs’.
‘Welcome to New York, son. I’m Tracy, but that’s a name I won’t force you to remember for a little while.
I’m the manager of that there pub. Let’s get you in an’ have a drink, eh?
’ She has a motherly air to her, and though this is my first time meeting her, my anxiety plateaus in her presence and I can finally breathe.
The crowd still rages on, however. Every step I take, they cheer, as though they’ve never seen a man walk in Alexander McQueen brogues before. Why on earth do these seemingly normal people care so much about me? My father isn’t even here.
Tracy the landlady leans close to me and through a gritted-teeth smile says, ‘Just give them a wave and that will pacify them for a bit.’ I do as she says, and the swarm cheer and wave their flags even harder than before.
Tracy pulls me through a side door of the Big Apple, and the thick, sloping walls muffle the noise outside so finally I can think again.