Weeks after being released from his first incarceration in 1986, Sandy purchased a convertible Chevrolet Cavalier. It was one of the first American convertibles in Gibraltar. I was five years old when Sandy first parked the automobile outside my bedroom window; Delia says I shed tears of joy. Its red shell glimmered in the Mediterranean sun. I remember Pili, standing in front of the car for minutes not knowing, for once, what to say. Sandy stayed inside the car and revved up the accelerator. The roaring of the engine echoed around the blocks of Varyl Begg. Brum! Brum! Brum! Our male neighbours, most of them in white fishnet vests and Marks and Spencer’s boxer shorts, popped their heads out of their windows. They wanted to witness the spectacle of the American car. Sandy predicted this. He had driven the car deep into the patio to give them a good show. The thirty-foot square of cement and clay tiles was the epicentre of the public life of Barham House and Warspite House. Sandy wanted to feel, for an instant, like the king of the whole damn Housing Estate. My father picked me up and landed me on the driver’s seat to explore the insides of what resembled the cockpit of an interstellar spaceship: the personalised gear box, the digital clock, the glittering components of the dashboard, the leather glove box. It was impossible for a five year old Gibraltarian boy to resist falling in love with a Chevrolet Cavalier. It was like taking a peep into the US of A, like staring into a crystal ball where Sylvester Stallone, Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy, Hulk Hogan and Mickey Mouse were all hanging out and talking about the future.
When we returned to the flat Delia was singing in the kitchen. She looked so fresh and radiant that I wondered whether my Gibraltarian mum had also been transformed into a New York celebrity. Her shiny dark hair, the yellow linen dress, the new leather sandals. Even the kitchen was improved. The plywood workstation was greener than it had ever been, the floor tiles shone brightly, the old single column fridge had stopped its rumble to allow my mother’s song to gain volume and effect. What was she singing? Was it a Sevillana? Was she belting out an American Country tune? I want to remember. I need to remember. Sometimes I think I hear it in my mind but just when I am about to sing the song, the melody and the lyrics escape me and disappear into oblivion. I have asked Delia on numerous occasions before but she says she can’t recall la cancion de lo cojone and does not even remember singing that morning. Why do we forget these things? If only I rediscovered the track! Perhaps I could summon the feeling of hope the Chevrolet morning had installed in my nervous system. Perhaps I too could sing while washing dishes in South East London. Perhaps the song could help my whole family start again – even Sandy – who knows?! That morning my father was in an especially good mood. He looked tidier than usual, cleanly shaven, parading his shiny black cowboy boots, moving gracefully around the kitchen, swinging his shoulders and hips like an Argentinian Tango dancer. He was full of morning air. His eyes glistened like the jewels of The Tower of London. Sunshine Sandy. Smiling, realising perhaps, for the first time, that life was not a big hairy dude you are meant to wrestle to the ground. I remember him picking my mother from the hips and lifting her up into the morning air.
‘Ay, Sandy let me go,’ said Delia amidst smiles and blushes.
‘You are mine. You are mine chiquilla.’
We should have all stayed there that morning. We should have cut the tape and looped the scene to protect the mood the American car had conjured. But the morning passed and so did the two or three days of positivity that followed the arrival of the Chevrolet. Mum’s hair lost its celluloid gleam, the kitchen tiles got covered in fluffy grey dust and the fridge woke up and continued its season of grunting and burping. Then one Saturday morning, a couple of weeks after the Chevrolet’s arrival in our working class kingdom, Sandy stomped in through the front door, sweating and panting and shouting his head off. Delia was in the kitchen when he barged in. She was still immersed in her morning chores. When she turned around and saw the paleness of her husband’s face she asked whether someone had bleached his face by mistake or converted him into a jodio Icelander. But her silly jokes were not well received. Sandy was grunting all over the place, eyeballs spinning like derailed bounce cars in the La Linea fair, cursing the Spanish Police with all the richness and rage of hundreds of years of Andalusian devotion to swear words. Puto bastardo hijo de puta! Cabrone, to ello! The green bloody tricornio maricone who had chased him across the frontier and tried to arrest him. The olive-loving motherfuckers who had conspired with his smuggling enemies to bring him down. And how lucky he was that the Gibraltar border control hated sloppies more than they hated smugglers because otherwise they would not have opened the barrier! Imagine! Imagine if the metal hurdle had not been lifted! He would have been stuck on the wrong side of torture. If it weren’t for the dividing line he would be done for. The Bobbies were on his part of the turf for once, Sandy said. For once the cockroaches had saved his ass because he would never have returned to Varyl Begg in one piece if it weren’t for those putos vendio. De verda! Te lo digo yo chiquilla! Especially because los hijo de puta were in bed with the Spanish dealers. The same bastardo at La Atunara who had shot at the car. Lo podian haber matau! Putas ratas! He was lucky to be alive. Someone had ratted him out. Some fucking Spanish bastard! Uno de esos guarro trying to get him off the boats. Bastards Bastards!
‘Por Dios Sandy! It’s only been a couple of weeks since you were out . Un par de semana sin escandalo,’ weeped Delia sat on the floor of the living room.
‘Ratas! Palomo de mierda!’ bellowed Sandy.
‘No puedo ma!’
‘It's not my fault!’ he protested, ‘it’s the slops. !Y si no es por los customs, me quedo ahí frito!’
The screams proved too loud for my child-ears. The door of the flat was wide open and the adults of the household were too busy fighting to notice a boy scarpering into the patio. Pili found me standing alone there and intervened. She grabbed my little hand and led me to her place, Number 2, Warspite House, Varyl Begg Estate. Number 2 was exactly like our flat but with flashier furniture: imperial light fixtures, thick ebony wooden cabinets, shiny glass living room tables. Why was every object in her house more luxurious and clean? Wasn’t Sandy the smuggler? Where did all the money go? Bloody Pili! Always making us feel so small! And yet that morning I did not see the gossiping kraken Delia had warned me about but more of a benevolent aunt or a nurse who seemed worried and upset. La muje was no psychological genius but she figured screams and family drama were probably not the best kind of stimulus for a fragile five-year old brain. She offered me milk chocolate digestives and left-over polvorone from the Christmas holidays and tried her best, poor woman, to distract me from the ramble emanating from the adjacent flat. Sandy’s anger was seeping through the walls. So were Delia’s laments and her unwillingness to put up with his lifestyle. I remember Pili leading me to the patio again. Perhaps to get some fresh air. Perhaps to escape the noise.
The morning was foggy, grey and warm. It was one of those days when the Levante cloud decides to park itself over the rock and exude its reign of humidity and heaviness over all of Gibraltar. Pili and I dragged our limbs across the sticky Mediterranean air like ghosts strolling around the underworld. As we crossed the patio we caught sight of the Chevrolet parked on the road opposite our block. At first my mind did not compute the metamorphosis of the vehicle. My mind associated the car with the image I had first formed of it when Sandy drove it to my window. I could not digest its change of disposition. I discarded the new information. The warning signs, however, were on Pili's face. Her contorted features alerted me to the fact that something was off. Pili furrowed her forehead as if it were an old cloth, un trapo sucio. I looked at her face again. She was surprised and perhaps a little relieved too. I turned towards the car again and felt my intestines grumble. How long can a child delay the appearance of the krakens of reality? How long before the real American car replaced the image of the Chevrolet I had stored in my brain. I looked again. Yes, my mind's defences were finally destroyed: the only thing that had not changed was the colour: the car was still red but what lay in front of me was not the American paradigm of the future but a wrecked automobile. The doors were scratched and dented. The wheel protectors were ripped off. The gloss was covered in mud and sand. My precious car turned into a heap of metal and wobbly wheels. I wanted to scream. Just like Delia. I wanted to run away and never come back to Varyl Begg. O shame! The transformation was bestial. I could not believe a machine of the US of A could be undone so suddenly, so violently. Surely the Chevrolet engineers were cleverer than the Spanish Civil Guard, but there it was. As I moved in front of the car I also noticed that the windscreen was completely cracked and displayed a two by two centimetres aperture in the middle. A group of teenagers had gathered round the automobile to inspect the hole. I remember one of them screaming a word three times.
Pistola! pistola! pistola!
Pili took me back to 1 Barham House some hours later when the screaming had subdued. My mother was lying on the sofa in tears. Sandy slammed the door and disappeared for a couple of days. America was gone.
Years later when Sandy abandoned us for good Delia bought an old Ford Fiesta for 350 quid. I remember the car was so battered that we had to stop every two hours to refill the radiator with warm water from plastic bottles stored in the boot. If we wanted a little jaunt to El Pina del Rey or Gudiaro on the other side of the border, we had to spend a good half an hour filling up water bottles in the kitchen. Delia would also make me pray for lord Jesus to protect the Ford Fiesta and prevent it from breaking down. The vehicle was painted in three or four random colours and the leather seats were so worn out that sometimes you felt you were sitting on the actual foam. Delia insisted that cars don’t matter in the grand schemes of God and the cosmos but do you know how uncomfortable it is to sit on foam seats in Andalucia where the average temperature is 35 degrees in summer? Air conditioning was as far from us at that point as nuclear science. I cursed Sandy and the Spanish Civil Guard every time we drove to Spain.
***
‘I need more time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To understand.’
‘To understand what?’
‘Life.’
‘I am sick of this, Mark.’
Dante started to cry. I could hear the grunts and animal sighs seeping through the walls of our bedroom. He usually woke up at six thirty but that morning he had given us an extra twenty minutes of sleep to pursue the impending argument. The extension was not enough. The initial instances of awkwardness and small talk had taken up all our time and we could not discuss the peculiarities of our anger. By the time Dante woke up, Natalie and I could merely agree on the fact that we were both fed up.
‘Fetch him,’ commanded Natalie.
Dante continued wailing . I went to his room and picked him up.
‘Daddy bottle!’
‘The night in London is a bloody octopus,’ I replied. ‘I am in pieces when I get home.’
‘I’ve told you before; you can keep your ghost to yourself.’
‘I am so tired, Natalie. I could vanish for a year or two. Hide in a cave with a friendly bear or something.’
‘Meet your end of the deal. That’s all you need to do to keep this going. The rest is nonsense.’
‘Keep what going?’
‘Us.’
A hangover was never the same after Dante was born. Gone were the mornings spent taking refuge under the duvet and waiting for the pain to disappear. Gone were the hours smoking fags and decodifying the chaos of the previous night. Duties had to be seen to. There were fundamental chores which were impossible to ignore. The child was asking for water. He needed milk. Narcissism was chucked out the window together with Nietzsche and Descartes, and his ghost in a machine palaver. Life takes precedence. Breathing, eating: the survival of another human being. Of course Dante would have sprouted perfectly without me. It was his mother and her care that preserved his existence on earth for the first twelve months at least. Nevertheless, one would have to be a total philistine to let narcissism, or a bad hangover for that matter, control your brain when you could be busy satisfying the needs of your son.
‘I’ve told you a thousand times,’ said Natalie. ‘You must boil the water first and let it cool down in the bottle. It’s the only way of killing the germs.’
During my infancy in Gibraltar, mothers would dip dummies in duty free whiskey purchased in one of the many petrol stations scattered around the rock. They thought you could disinfect the plug and pacify our restlessness in one single stroke of genius. Seems primitive now, though I must admit I considered doing it at times. Natalie would have barbecued my balls. How often did I praise Natalie’s diligent conscientiousness when it came to Dante’s preservation! He could save me from narcissism but no one could save me from constantly trying to wing it even when it came to making bottles for my first-born son. Natalie saved us both.
‘Here! Give it. I will make it,’ she demanded anxiously.
‘I can do it too, you know?’
‘Of course you can.’
Reality and its minions will attack in many forms. An infant’s pram is one of reality’s most bestial reincarnations. I remember one cold January morning outside Natalie’s flat in Battersea, trying to open the wretched vehicle; wrestling with levers and bars, conceiving ways of positioning the rain cover, failing to activate the brakes correctly. It felt like I was battling my inner Kraken too. I was challenging my most terrifying inability to function in the outer world, my failure coping with reality: my incapacity to make things happen in otherness. I cursed and wailed against the Gods and my fate. Natalie was at work and could not help.
Dante, weeping, waited desperately in the Moses basket wondering why he had been appointed such an inept creature as a father. I was trying my best to subdue the titanic push-chair monster. Surely he had to know this was no ordinary feat for a decadent scoundrel of the night. Domestic difficulties were much more challenging than writing a folk song, fighting an obese drunkard outside the Betsey or trying to pull a lady who was evidently half my age and had twice my brain. Eventually I won. I subdued the devilish thing with my bare hands. And what’s more, the victory changed my mood and banished some of the fears about becoming a father. Could I shape up and provide a dignified example of constraint and honour for my son? Would I abandon the night and pursue a life of routine and safety for him? Would I abandon romanticism for the social and economic benefits of pragmatism? Of course, the answer was still no but at least I could assemble a baggie and transport my child to the baby group at Battersea Park library where he crawled and spat with other tiny creatures. I had wrestled otherness and won. I was on my way to taming fatherhood. Problem was that just when I had managed to defeat the first pram-monster, Natalie bought another one, a more advanced and complicated one, leaving me with the prospect of another battle with life. It happens every day: calculating how many diapers to fit in the nappy bag, remembering to bring the baby hat or the sore-bum cream, changing him in a park without a mat, surrounded by the judging eyes of a thousand mums who think that it is cute that you are a house-groom but that ultimately you are bound to make a dog's dinner of the whole affair.
‘Bottle! Bottle!’ Dante kept on screaming.
‘What the hell do you want? How many beers do you need before you understand it?’
The doorbell of our two floor maisonette interrupted our deliberations. It was not the postman. He had already dropped by according to Natalie and London was famous for discouraging the art of spontaneous visiting.
‘Get the door. I am getting ready for work’ ordered Natalie.
‘It won’t be for me!’
‘Get the door!’
I never expected anyone to drop by our new residence in Deptford. Oh how I hated the days in Gibraltar when friends, family and neighbours knock on your door at unexpected hours of the day interrupting hangovers and guitar sessions! Gibraltar is a territory of thirty thousand people and half of them are either acquaintances or blood relations. It’s hard to be alone in Gibraltar and yet if you are struck by the sickness of solitude there is no worse place to be. If you ask me, there is nothing more dreadful than feeling alone surrounded by a nation of busybees. In London, distance and shyness are perfectly acceptable. No one is going to come to knock on your door in the early hours of the morning. Anyways, hardly anyone knew of my move to Deptford. It was a rash decision. Natalie had sold her one-bedroom flat in Battersea and used the cash for a deposit for a three-bedroom maisonette near the Deptford DLR. I had never moved in with anyone, let alone with a kid. I was terrified but I secretly enjoyed the comforts of middle-class life after spending five years habitating a space meant for storing musical instruments. The first maisonette shower was a sacred experience! It was like being caressed by the fingers of Aphrodite and her priestesses. Please take into consideration that my last shower in Cable Street (where I shared a three metre squared unit with Jez) was a plastic hose fitted to the kitchen tap.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Jez?’
He was carrying a huge plastic instrument case which he placed on top of my toes.
‘Bastardo!’
‘We really have to rehearse,’ he said as he pushed himself into the house.
Jez was never awake in the early morning. He especially did not wake up to rehearse. Convincing Jez to rehearse was like dragging a hundred pound elephant into a pawn shop across a pebbled street. He looked sweaty and I could recognise his clothes from the night before.
‘What the hell Jez?! How did you even know where I lived?’
‘I have been here before,’ responded Jez with a tone of irritation. ‘Natalie wanted me to see the flat before she showed it to you. You have always been so shit with decisions. Poor girl, I am not sure how she stands you. The thing is we have to rehearse for tonight. We really have to.’
‘You are making no sense Jez.’
Jez pushed past me and made his way to the living room where he dropped off his cello and a bag with sheet music and CDs. I followed him wearingly. I was dressed in a lime-coloured 70’s sports cardigan and blue pyjama bottoms. I did not feel like I could have a serious conversation dressed like that. I had never intended the world to see me looking like a seventies sports clown. Natalie shouted out from the second floor.
‘Who’s there?’
Jez ignored her and threw himself onto the sofa, making a terrible racket.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Remember Dorian’s friend, the one who wants to be a singer. It turns out she is working for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s as an Aupair.’
I continued to stare at him in stupefaction.
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said as tried to light a cigarette.
‘Well, of course it does and don’t you dare smoke here. Natalie will cut your testiculos.’
‘I am talking about Amanda fucking Palmer,’ said Jez as he put the cigarette back in its box. ‘Amanda fucking Palmer from the fucking Dresden Dolls. Anyways, apparently, you see? They have become kind of buddies with Nina and Amanda was asking her about the London underground music scene. It turns out Nina told her about our gig tonight and they are coming. They got the tickets and all. Can you believe it? I have just seen their names on the list. They live in Camden, just next to The Green Note, I think. Or not! Who knows! Anyway, the point is that they are coming. Imagine that! Imagine, Amanda Palmer. We have to nail this shit. She could help us. This could be that moment.’
‘What moment?’
‘The moment they speak about. The breakthrough. The day when it all comes together!’
‘Jez, you’ve seen too many movies and you are against rehearsing, anyways,’ I answered.
‘Bullshit!’
The thought of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (who I had never heard of before that January morning) sent shock waves through my system. A sudden blob of green pus parked itself inside the corridor of my throat, just under the larynx, on top of the windpipe. I started to cough almost immediately. The image of a power couple sitting down at the front of a 50 person capacity venue, judging my underground musical songs made me want to escape to India and hide in a hippy Ashram for a couple of years. What the hell had I to offer to underground celebrities and artistic legends? Why did Jez have to throw all this upon me in a hangover morning? And why the fuck did we drink so much the night before?
Dante and Natalie came down the stairs. Dante screamed at Jez. Jez scoffed. Natalie prepared some Egyptian free trade organic coffee for all of us.
‘We really have to rehearse,’ said Jez.‘We really do.’
The rehearsal was a total disaster. My hangover, together with my suddenly developed acute viral nasopharyngitis and the terror of being judged, heightened by Jez’s nervous energy and Dante’s mood swings made the whole thing unbearable. I was about to cancel the concert even if most of the 50 tickets had already been sold but Jez stepped in and reminded me of a golden rule in LIVE underground music performances;
‘A bogus rehearsal is the sign of a good gig. Every musician should know that, even you.’
‘That’s an urban myth and complete nonsense Jez. If it’s gonna fuck up it will fuck up no matter how bad a rehearsal is.’
‘Don’t be a pussy, mate!’
‘Natalie would kill you if she heard you use that word.’
‘Pussy, pussy, pussy!’
‘I hope you get cancelled!’
‘We have been cancelled for years. The thing is, you see, no one gives a shit about what we say and that’s why we need this gig. Don't you dare chicken out on stage.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Yes, you know. Those times, when someone speaks, or the sound box distorts, or you miss a note or something and you start playing like a bloody chicken, like you didn't belong there. Like you should be paying them for listening to you. Don’t!’
‘Don’t what?!’ I shouted.
‘Don’t you dare tonight, we need this gig! Just imagine it’s you and me in a smoky bar in Gibraltar.’
‘You’ve never been to Gibraltar, Jez!’
‘I am sure there are smoky bars and I am sure you have performed well there with your people.’
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