Robinson - Electricity

Electricity

Ray Robinson

Copyright 2006 by Ray Robinson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce extracts from the following:

Shes Lost Control written and composed by Curtis/Hook/Morris/Sumner.
Published by Fractured Music/Zomba Music Publisher Ltd.
Used by permission. All right reserved.

Electricity by Paul Farley from The Boy from the Chemist Is Here to See You.
Published by Picador.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest oppurtunity.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Ray, 1971
Electricity / Ray Robinson.
p. cm.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9912-6
1. Epileptics Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters Fiction. I. Title.
PR6118.O247E44 2007
823.92 dc22 2006052646

Black Cat
a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

for

CHARLIE ROBINSON
19181998

and

BELLA ROBINSON
19102005

Confusion in her eyes that says it all,

Shes lost control.

And shes clinging to the nearest passer by,

Shes lost control.

And she gave away the secrets of her past,

And said Ive lost control again.

And a voice that told her when and where to act,

She said Ive lost control again.

Shes Lost Control, Joy Division

and their hairs stand on end to a shimmer of leaves
or the movement of clouds, and the way that the tense
has been thrown like a switch, where the land turns
to dreams

Electricity, Paul Farley

and heres the breath

heres the breeze

heres the shimmer

I grab on to the side, fingernails scratch-scratching the wood.

Sorry?

She looks at me and we smile and the bolt, it snaps my hand away like fire and the planet tilts, burnt wind blowing around inside me, skin suck-sucking the dust in and the crackles, the coughing

Theyre here again.

Shadows moving all around me, breathing static breath, smell them in the buzzing as they sliiiiiide their long fingers in, tickling the switch and the colours, the sweet colours are here

wrapping their arms around me like they love me

I was thirty years old when they came to take me away again.

Sat in my booth having A Blank One, the din from the machines just getting too much and smothering me. Pulses and bleeps, whirrs and chug-chugs of slots spewing coins, the rat-a-tat-tats of guns and those lasers zapping away. Sounds sinking down the plugholes of my ears, making my eyes wander the signs on the walls:

UNDER 16S NOT ALLOWED IN WITHOUT AN ADULT
TAKE A SEAT, REST, PLAY BINGO!
CHECK IN, CASH OUT!
JACKPOT 50 FULL HOUSE FORTNIGHTLY
THESE MACHINES PAY UP TO 25 CASH!

The letters swimming in and out of my eyes, making me dizzy-as.

And thats when I saw them: two uniforms. They headed to Jims office and I thought: here to warn us about some gyppos on the make, something like that. But next thing I know Jims come round the Derby machine and hes pointing right at me.

I put my head down, pretending to count coins.

They tapped on the door and stepped in. The policewoman went Lily? and it looked like my name tasted proper bad in her mouth. The cloud on her face it said it all.

I nodded, wondering what the fuck Id done. Then the policeman asked me to confirm my full name and birth date and address, nodding away like he knew them all along.

And then one of them said it,

Your mothers ill.

Mother.

I felt my head drop.

Then my eyes went and my arms were all heavy down my sides.

Shes been rushed into hospital. Shes in a critical condition.

A hand squeezing me.

She asked for you.

I wanted to lie down, right there and then. I wanted to go to sleep. Wanted these bastards to go back out of that door and leave me the fuck alone. Come on. Yes come on. An arm through the crook of mine. Come on, Lily. I wanted to smash them away. Find somewhere small and dark to curl up and hide. Never come out again. But something inside said you just couldnt.

They had me again.

I watched my trainers through the blur of my lashes. Moving out of the booth, over the carpet, over the pavement, into the car.

Sirens blared away like I was some kind of murderer.

Do you really need to do that?

The policewoman turned around.

We need to get there as soon as we can, Im afraid. We did the full length of the promenade and I felt on show, people turning and staring. An old couple and some kids on bikes outside the chippy their eyes on mine in the back seat. Their heads moved together, slow, and I wondered what they saw as I gawped back.

I curled up on the back seat and watched the upside-down sky outside the window. It was all murk up there, like dirty dishwater and the clouds were suds. I pictured my hands going into the water and felt cold, felt wet inside.

Because I knew where we were headed.

Over the moors. Along the same road that Id come on when I was eleven years old. Brought to the care home down near the cliff-edge. Locked up until they could decide what to do with me. Taken away from her, from him, from that house. I remember my heart was hot with never wanting to see them again. The heat went from my chest to my body and I felt the warmth of myself because they were out of my life.

But that journey was in front of me now. I was going back in time.

A couple of hours of hills and cows and drystone fucking walls. The hills making me feel hemmed in. Like brackets in a sentence, but I couldnt find any words to put between them. And I knew I had to. Words that would make sense of the why-am-I-here?

I asked it when I was eleven and I was asking it now.

A couple of hours, then wed start dropping down those steep roads and into the vale. And those places would be out there. The places that I dream about, though I dont want to dream about.