Ozzie Rozzie #12
[CAUTION: ALL KINDS OF EVERYTHING REMIND ME OF YOU]
This is a fiction series, and part twelve is the final instalment. It will make more sense if you read: Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four. Part five. Part six. Part seven. Part eight. Part nine. Part ten. Part eleven. In that order.
It was truly enormous, and Oswald stood blinking and licking his lips in the middle of it. It stretched all the way around the room, from the door, past the bed to the window; and then back along bookshelves and under floorboards, to the door again. It was on the table, under the bed, and it was all long the curtain rail. It had levers, switches, buttons, control panels and screens.
The entire room was mechanised. Like electronic ivy, it had consumed it's host.
Clint's jaw dropped as his eyes moved along lines at right and other angles, across materials and objects the like of which he had never seen, upon wood, metal, plastic, bakelite, rubber, which had been cut, shaped, filed, bent, tied, bolted, screwed, welded and clamped. Absolutely everywhere in the room lights winked, small rotors rotated, cogs whirred. The place hummed with a quiet, tuned efficiency.
Outside, the sun shone down on a flat expanse, ringed by beech, ash and poplar trees, flaking and rusting metal goalposts set at regulation intervals casting sharp shadows sideways, as the as the summer afternoon baked the mown grass brown. Inside, Clint felt as if he had entered the set of The Tomorrow People.
"Fucking hell, Ozzie!" ejaculated Clint "When the fuck did you do all this? This is AMAZING man, fuckin' amazing! Did you invent ALL OF IT?! You total genius! You country bumpkin fuckin' genius!" Clint whooped, forgetting all fear, all pain, reverting to his usual verbal torrent in surprise and delight.
Oswald was visibly taken aback, but his face flickered and he smiled spontaneously. "How long has it taken you to do all this?" asked Clint, closely examining a mechanism which had a alarm clock attached and which looked like it might be dangerous. "What, about.. six months or so?"
"Um, yes. That's about it," said Oswald, nervously.
"What's this then?" asked Clint, indicating the clock.
Oswald crouched down beside Clint, and began to explain carefully and in detail how the clock was wired up to various electronics so that he could automate various tasks throughout the day, mostly for the benefit of his mother. Clint remained in rapt attention. Oswald seemed despite his adult size to be a boy again, as Clint followed up Oswald's explanations with more questions, demanding a full tour of the room, until ten minutes later, Clint was lying flat on his back on Oswald's bed, opening and closing the window with a finger and thumb, giggling infectiously. Oswald lit up, his farmhand frame shaking with silent joy, as he turned red and covered his grin with his fingers.
"Fucking cool! How fucking cool!" repeated Clint, as he understood the reason for Oswald's permanent distraction. "You just plan this in your head all day, don't you?"
"Yes," replied Oswald. "Sometimes stay up all night. Makes me bad tempered though."
"You mad fucker. Honestly. Where did you learn it?"
"Dad. And books. Dad's dead." Oswald offered this in the same careful manner as he had explained how everything worked.
"Shit," said Clint, and paused. Then, "Still, he got you really fuckin' going didn't he?"
"He fuckin' did!" Oswald grinned, his adolescent voice breaking as he spoke, so that "did" became an unexpected bass note, to both their surprise.
"Oswald, darling..." Mrs Rosbotham's voice called faintly from a speaker in the ceiling. Clint swivelled his head to find the source, as the disembodied voice continued, "Would you mind finding Frisbie, dear? He hasn't been fed all day..."
"OK Mum," called Oswald through the open door at full volume, then, turning to Clint, he said quietly, "Look, um, Clint.. um, Andrew. I am sorry I hit you. I... I didn't really mean to." He paused, licking his lips, staring left and right, avoiding Clint's eyes.
Clint stood before the man-sized boy who had given him the worst beating of his life, looked intently at over-large, introverted, shy, excluded, mocked, misunderstood, misfit Ozzie, and promptly forgave him.
"You can make it up to me, Ozzie," he said calmly. "Make me something cool."
Oswald looked so deeply serious for a second that Clint wondered whether he'd gone too far in asking for reparation, but his instinct trusted the Boy's Code to which, however much an outsider, Ozzie clearly subscribed. The Code allowed for injustices to be dealt with in this way. He knew that he had taken undue punishment, meant for the entire group, and that it was not only his right to ask for something, but his obligation. Such a reasonable request was a good thing, rescuing his status among his peer group, even in turn earning Oswald their respect, and thus finally drawing him into the fold.
"Well, OK," said Oswald, with a furrowed brow. "Just don't say nothing about my mum."
"I won't," said Clint, then added, "She's cool anyway. Deal?"
"Deal," said Oswald, looked him in the eye, grinned back, licked his lips, and offered his hand. As they shook, the doorbell rang.
On the back seat of the MG, Thompson found an old red tartan blanket. Grimacing with pain, he lifted the dead body of the cat into it with great effort. He remembered he had once tried to persuade his ex into some alfresco sex by laying the blanket down upon a particularly beautiful part of the South Downs at dusk, and producing with a conjuror's flourish a bottle of chilled wine he had packed in ice hours before; and her scornful, already drunk reaction, before she passed out, snoring all the way back to London. Bitch, he thought bitterly.
Holding the still-warm cat in the blanket, he attempted to orientate. Rosbotham's house was first left, first right. Limping, he set off. He felt sick and exhausted. Blood was seeping through the threadbare wool onto his shirt and trousers, and as he made his way towards Harold Road, he was on the edge of panic and despair. Sweat poured down his face as he walked, his foppish fringe sticking to his forehead like Action Man's plastic hair, a trail of bloodspots marking this macabre procession.
As he turned into the street, the girl he had met earlier in the telephone box was coming towards him. She startled. He ignored her, as she backed away from him, her jaw moving silently at his awful image. She turned and began to run back the way she had come, and the road echoed to the sound of her cheap shoes slapping on paving stones as she fled in horror, yelping.
Thompson finally stood before the Edwardian terrace, seven tiled steps leading up to a large door. The afternoon's dark shadows had begun to lengthen, but there was no shade to speak of beneath the sticky, over-pollarded lime trees, and the sun's heat absorbed by brick and black tarmac over ten hours was radiating through him as if he was in a sauna. He mounted the steps one by one, and finally, leaning up against the remains of a once-smart porch, released his left hand to push the round black button that bore the legend, Flat A.
Bing-Bong sounded the two electronic notes loud in the empty hall. Thompson stood unsteadily in the sun, looking down into the bright basement ten feet below.
Large flies from a nearby bin began to swarm around him, attracted by the smell of death, so that when Oswald, flanked by Clint, answered the door, they beheld the sight of Mr Thompson with a halo of bluebottles circling his head. His face was a stripy mess of blood, dirt and fingermarks, his sweat making white vertical streaks through the grime like the bars of a cage, through which he peered into the dark communal hallway, blinking and uncertain. The blood-soaked blanket he was carrying had stained his pale shirt so it looked like he had taken a bullet in the guts.
"Mr Thompson? Sir?" said Clint, incredulously. "Are you alright?"
Thompson found himself unable to answer, and took a breath, which caused a wave of sick pain almost to engulf him. He seemed about to fall backwards down the steps, and Oswald stepped forward to prevent it, taking his arm.
"Rosbotham," said Thompson faintly. "Eastwood."
"Yes, Sir," replied the boys, and looked at one another. This was outside anything they had ever experienced.
Thompson was cradling the dead cat like a baby, holding it close, as he sank to his knees in the doorway.
"Rosbotham... Eastwood… kidnapped... " Thompson was trying to articulate, but he could not.
"Oswald had to come home urgently, Sir, to assist his mother, and I offered to help him. Sorry about leaving school, Sir, but there was nobody to ask," Clint started to explain.
Thompson looked up, shorter on his knees than both the boys; he lifted the blood-soaked blanket, and said, "I'm afraid... I am very sorry... I have had an accident... I believe this is your cat... Rosbotham..."
Oswald took the blanket carefully and laid it on the top step. Thompson, relieved of his burden, felt his strength drain, and slumped onto his ankles.
"Silly bastard was always running in the road. Never really did understand cars. A country cat, see." said Oswald, with a gentle shake of his head. Then, looking at Clint, "I'd better tell Mum."
He disappeared into the hallway to break the news, as Clint took in the terrible state of his teacher.
"Sir - what happened? Do you need an ambulance?"
Thompson looked at Clint then, his kind, bright, bruised, intelligent face, and saw something of himself eighteen years past.
"Fuckers," he said in a hoarse voice, "Miserable fucking fuckers. Bitches and fuckers."
"Who, Sir?" asked Clint, concerned, and at the same time delighted, by this string of forbidden language from such an authority figure.
Thompson did not reply. Instead, he was staring into the distance, thinking of a hot afternoon like this one, but long past, in a beer garden he had once known, where he had once regaled a lively group of young colleagues with his best comedy ideas, who had found them all hilarious, witty and original... and how pleased he had been that one girl in particular had warmed to him, and how much love he had felt for her, and how he had never expressed it, and how he still felt that love, and how surprised he was that he had not until that moment known it.
"Do you smoke, Eastwood?" Thompson asked, faintly. "I won't tell anyone if you do. Just need a smoke. I'll be fine. I'll be fine."
Thompson reached out and took Clint's hand, and Clint, understanding that his teacher was in another place, remained with him like this, until fifteen minutes later, the ambulance that Mrs Rosbotham called arrived, and carried Thompson away to a place of healing.
Frisbie was buried with full honours in the overgrown garden. Mrs Rosbotham seemed to accept the cat's fate with the same phlegmatic attitude as her son, and Clint realised that this was a country thing. In the country, life and death are much closer all the time, he thought to himself. Later, in his life as a screenwriter, he was to use this knowledge in the comedy thriller that made him famous, The Day Of The Dead Cat.
Clint remained friends with Oswald, for the duration of their school life at least, who later joined the army and went on to design advanced prosthetics. Angela Spender coincidentally arrived to study medicine at the same London university where Clint studied drama, and one frosty autumnal night, they were finally able to combine his boyish longing and fabulous ability to talk dirty with her fine, relaxed physicality and enjoyment of Anglo-Saxon terminology, thus beginning a long, sexual affair of great passion and intensity.
Colin Thompson recovered slowly from his injuries - a collapsed lung, two broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and damaged vertebrae. The boys closed ranks and denied wrong-doing on anyone's part, and because of this, he managed to wangle a large industrial injury compensation payment and left teaching to travel. In India, he lived in an ashram, and learned Raj Yoga from his guru, whom he came to love and worship mindfully.
Returning to England three years later, he ritually burned his book, sold his flat, and took a job in a quiet Yorkshire town running an "alternative" bookshop. Happy in this niche, he started a comedy night in a local pub, taught yoga, smoked St Bruno in a pipe, and imported and quietly sold good quality hashish to anyone who wanted to get seriously stoned.
[End]