DEFYING GRAVITY

by
Rosalind Wyllie

The day the Bank of England collapsed me and Jonny lay in the freshly cut grass in Heaton Park and listened to the sirens clashing like a bad Emo-rock band in the distance.

‘Do you think this is what New York sounds like?’ Jonny says. ‘In Central Park, all this green and all that noise?’

‘New York is full of muggers and murderers, so yeah probably.’ I agree, pleased that I remember something about New York.

‘And Musicals,’ adds Jonny, ‘I’d love to go to Broadway. Idina Menzel was in ‘Wicked’ for over a year on Broadway.’

‘Muggers, Murderers and Musicals.’ I say, putting extra emphasis on each of the M’s, and then flicking at a mound of mown grass. ‘How come the people who mow the grass, don’t take the cut stuff with them?’

Jonny doesn’t answer, he’s singing the words to ‘Defying Gravity’ and staring up at the sky, and anyway he doesn’t always answer my questions – he’s usually too far gone into his head. Jonny is nearly always in the middle of a verse or a chorus of a song, and sometimes I have to wait until he has finished the whole thing before he will even think about responding.

‘That Captain Jack on Dr Who was in musicals before.’ Jonny says, ‘But he doesn’t sing in Dr Who.’

‘No.’ I say ‘He doesn’t.’ And for a moment in the middle of the sirens I begin to imagine ‘Dr Who The Musical’. It seems so obvious, I could practically make out the words of the Daleks big choreographed numbers, the bittersweet love song between Rose and The Doctor. Then I think that perhaps I’m spending too much time with Jonny and I should maybe get some other friends.

Jonny’s been musical mad ever since his Dad took him to see ‘Wicked’ in London. His Dad should have known better. Jonny’s always been one for totally obsessing over something. In Reception class it was Power Rangers, then in year three he would only talk about War Hammer. Last year he fell in love with Veronica Smith in Year Nine and wrote her name in the condensation of every window in school, until Veronica found out it was him, and told everyone on MSN that she’d rather move to some cacky shithole in Sunderland than go out with a stalker like Jonny. For a while his nickname at school was Stalker, but everyone seems to have forgotten about that now. But anyway, at the moment Jonny’s stalking musicals. He likes lots of different ones, Rocky Horror Show, Rent, West Side Story, but the absolute top of the tree, his own personal heaven on a stick is ‘Wicked.’ The untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West. He must have listened to it a thousand times and he goes on My Space and makes friends with all these other dweebs who are just as obsessed and have seen every production in the world ever. Like last week he was on to this girl called Rodine or something and she reckons she’s seen it over a hundred times – that’s like about £2000 worth of musical. Jonny was so impressed that I thought he might propose to her right there and then. The only time Jonny stops singing songs from Wicked in his head is when Doctor Who comes on TV. So, if they ever did make a ‘Dr Who the Musical’ then they would be sending Jonny into the outer space of happiness.

I was about to ask if Jonny knew whether Dr Who could sing, when this man runs into the park and stops right in front of us. He’s wearing a dark suit like he’s on his way to work, and even though it was really hot in the park he has this giant coat thing on. I think he should probably take it off as he has big blobs of sweat dripping from his chin. Anyway, he’s sweating and puffing away and bashing at the buttons on his mobile phone saying ‘Fuck, fuck fuck…work you bastard,’ and all sorts of other bad words at the flat screen in his palm.

‘Here comes another…that’s the third in half an hour.’ Jonny says, then yells ‘The lines are blocked,’ at the man who looks up straight away. We’re waving up at him while he’s looking around and all over the park, even in the trees, like maybe there’s some weird park genie yelling at him. Like the ghost of Heaton present or something. Then eventually he spots us, which makes him less than a genius seeing as if he had taken another two paces forward then he would have trodden on Jonny’s Ipod.

‘Say what?’ He says crossly.

‘Networks are down…too many people trying at once.’ I say, but he still stares at me like he didn’t understand, so Jonny adds , ‘Like when you’re trying to get through to vote on X-factor.’

The sweaty man looks at Jonny, like he’s an idiot and then at me like I’m his even bigger idiot friend, then he says ‘What do you know about it?’ and stomps off still tapping at the buttons on his phone.

‘I don’t understand all the fuss.’ Jonny says, ‘It’s just a bank collapsing in London...and London’s full of buildings…when my Dad took me there to see ‘Wicked’ there were like more people and more buildings than in the whole of Newcastle, like even ten times as many maybe, and at the theatre when we went in there were like -’

‘My Mum said that it’s the end of civilisation as we know it.’ I say quickly interrupting him before he starts talking about Galinda and Elphaba and all things wonderful and Oz.

‘Oh.’ Jonny says, ‘That doesn’t sound so good. But maybe it’s not so bad even if it is the end of this world, I mean we could go and live in a parallel universe or something and I might get to meet Rose Tyler.’

I could remind Jonny that Rose Tyler is a fictional character and so it’s pretty much impossible that he’ll ever meet her, but instead I think about heading home. My Mum had seemed pretty upset.

We were all in the kitchen, me, Mum and Dad when the radio started talking about escalator indexes and Bow Joneses and stuff. Mum wiped her hands on a tea towel and said. ‘That’s it, everything is in freefall.’

‘There are going to be riots, ‘Dad said really seriously. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d got that gun licence.’

Mum said ‘I don’t think that an air rifle is going to be much help for very long.’ Dad said, ‘A shotgun licence for clay pigeon shooting is not the same thing as an air rifle, which you would know if you ever bothered to listen to anything, and anyway it’s always better to be armed in these situations.’ Mum slapped the tea towel down on the kitchen table and started counting from one to ten, except backwards, which is what she does when she’s trying not to lose her temper. When she got to one she breathed really deeply and said, ‘Well either way, perhaps we shouldn’t be arguing about something that we didn’t do.’ And Dad said ‘Yeah maybe,’ and then he added ‘But I tell you now Angie that there’s going to be bedlam and if you hadn’t been so bossy about me getting a shotgun then at least I could provide for my family. Still, I’ll make sure we’ve got something sorted out.’ Then he started going through the kitchen drawers and taking out all the sharp knives and holding them up to the light so that they glinted like the CDs that Mrs Buchanan keeps hanging on the trees in her garden.

Mum said, ‘All this violence probably suits you to the ground, you love the drama don’t you?’ and Dad said ‘Me dramatic? You’re the one who said it was the end of civilisation.’ In the voice he uses when he’s pretending to be a stupid version of mum. And Mum said ‘ You know what I meant.’ And Dad put the knife he had in his hand down and said ‘No tell me, seeing as how you are suddenly the fucking all seeing, all knowing sphinx!’ Which was my cue to leave.

Mum and Dad don’t like it if I see them shout or swear so I went upstairs to my room and turned on the TV as loud as I could without being shouted at.

On TV there was a man in a suit by a glass building holding a microphone. Behind him all these other men in suits were running about like worker ants, back and forth. The man with the microphone said something about inflating 8,000% and knock on effects and how a pint of milk was now £10, but by tomorrow nobody knew how much it would be – maybe even the price of a house! Some other people were saying that perhaps America would lend the bank some money, and some other people were saying that they might not because of what had happened in Iraq and the end of a beautiful friendship and stuff. Then this other woman came on and she was saying that even if the bank got a ‘temporary stay of execution,’ then ‘There were still questions that needed to be answered and that heads would have to roll.’

I thought about how the streets of London would be filled with heads rolling along the pavement, like in the middle ages or zombie films. I figured that I should ask Mum whether we had any milk in the fridge, and if we had enough money to afford Frosted Wheats, but she was still yelling at Dad, so I didn’t bother. I tried getting on MSN but the server was jammed, and so I went and knocked on Amy’s door to see what she was doing.

Amy thinks she’s really cool because she’s a whole year older than me and gets to stay up half an hour later on school nights. But she’s not even that cool really and she’s not half as pretty as she thinks she is. I mean, I don’t know anyone who fancies her, and I don’t think anyone has ever kissed her, even though she acts like she knows all about sex.

‘Fuck off freakboy.’ Amy’s sat at her princess dressing table trying to iron out the curls from her hair with pink straighteners. Her whole room smells like burnt hair, stale cigarettes and hairspray.

‘The Bank of England has collapsed.’ I say, ‘Dad says there will be riots.’

‘Are you stupid or just fucking suicidal?’ She chucks a glass perfume bottle straight at me, I go to duck but somehow miss, so that the bottle hits me right on my forehead.

‘Ow.’

‘You, Snotrag, are not allowed in my room – ever – get it.’

‘But -‘

‘But, But, But, But nothing – scram. Go play with that gay freak of a friend of yours.’

So I went to Jonny’s house and then we came to the park.

Jonny’s trying to light piles of dead grass with a packet of Swan matches. ‘ It’s good that there’s no school today,’ he says striking the match against the side of his trainer ‘But I guess we’ll have to go back when they build that building again.’

‘The Bank of England is more than a building.’ I said thinking of the man with the microphone. ‘It’s the financial back bone of the economy.’

‘Oh.’ Says Jonny, blowing on the smoking grass ‘is it?’

‘Yep, there’s going to be millions of inflations and end of civilsation…maybe even riots.’ As I say the word riots the sun pops right behind a cloud and where we are lying goes from really sunny and warm to really cold, just like that.

Jonny stops trying to light his fire and looks at the sky, ‘That cloud looks like a witches hat,’ he says. ’Like the one Galinda gives Elphaba to wear to the Ozdust Ballroom.’

‘Don’t be gay.’ I say.

Back home Mum and Dad have stopped fighting and are sat on the sofa side by side watching the TV like it’s the lottery show and they’ve already got five numbers and are waiting to for the machine to spit out the sixth.

I sit on the floor in front of them and stare at the screen, the TV says ‘BREAKING NEWS…PM RESIGNS…..CITY IN TURMOIL…M25 AT A STANDSTILL….PANIC ON THE STREETS OF LONDON.’

‘That’ll be right’, Dad says to the TV. ‘Don’t worry about us lot up here – it’s a national crisis you London-centric bastards’. Dad says everyone on TV is a London -centric wanker and that the sooner Newcastle gets a dissolved parliament the better.

The London-centrics are showing pictures of all these cars on a big motorway and none of them are moving. They show pictures of the traffic jam from space and the cars look like the wall of china or something.

‘It makes London look like a Tesco Superstore carpark.’ I say and am pleased when they laugh, and Dad ruffles my hair, which he never does. Then he says ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do kiddo.’

The TV says ‘MORE BREAKING NEWS….CITY IN FREEFALL….GOVERNOR OF BANK OF ENGLAND IN SUICIDE BID.’ And then they show a really tall building and right at the top there’s an old man in a suit, and all around the bottom of the building there are police cars and camera crews and ambulances. The TV cameraman zooms his lens right in on the old man, but you still can’t quite make out his face. ‘FATHER OF THREE…SUICIDE FEARS,’ comes across the screen.

‘Come here.’ Dad says and pats the space between him and Mum. I sit down between them even though we hadn’t sat like that since I was like ten or something. ‘They shouldn’t be showing this.’ Dad says but none of us take our eyes off the screen. Mum takes my hand as I curl between them, Dad takes my other hand and leans across me and kisses Mum. Mum says ‘We’ll be okay, as long as we’re together…what’s Amy up to? We should all be together, I want both my babies with me.’

And right on cue my sister slams open the door of the front room and says, ‘I can’t get Eastenders!’ Mum says, ‘It’s not on.’ And Amy shakes her yellow dyed hair and says, ‘You what?’ Then she starts flicking through the channels, but they are all the same, all blokes in suits standing outside banks and talking into microphones. On every channel they are showing the same pictures of the old man on the roof – except on E4 where they’re showing Friends, the one when Ross and Rachel are on a break. ‘How come they’ve got this shit on, but I don’t get my Eastenders!’ Amy chucks the remote back at Dad who catches it quite tastily actually, like with one hand as though he’s been practising. Then Amy says, ‘Well, what time does all this news shit finish, why is everyone watching some fat bald Paedo anyway?’ Normally Dad yells at her when she swears or calls people Paedo’s. But today he just says ‘Amy, that man on the television is up there thinking about killing himself. So perhaps that’s a little bit more important than your stupid soap opera.’ Amy turns to look at the TV screen properly, just in time to see the old man, the father of three, leap from the top of the building his arms outstretched like he’s hoping maybe he can fly.

Mum screams, Dad covers my eyes with his hands, and for like the first time in history Amy doesn’t say anything. I start singing the tunes from Wicked in my head and wishing that I’d listened more when Jonny played the CD, because I don’t know enough words or songs.

© Rosalind Wyllie
Reproduced with permission

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