An apple that doesn’t want to be eaten will still fall off the tree” Billy Bragg
To be a writer we have to reveal the layers. I grew up in a house where we papered over the cracks. Things were not discussed. Nobody spoke to a child the way they might now. Children didn’t need to understand the way the world works. They shouldn’t enquire. Don’t ask don’t need to know. Don’t need to know sits silent in the corner. Don’t need to know is stifled. He watches as others pass through. Because they ask questions. And they grow. I watch as the ivy grows through the window. The window reveals only a little light. It’s an old window that no longer opens. Don’t need to know why. It just doesn’t, ok? Because the wood has expanded. You don’t need to know how that works. It just happens. When it’s damp.
The house is damp. Especially today. The cold gets into your bones they say. It gives you arthritic joints. My family have those. I’m not sure if they always did, or if they came with the house. A huge mound of history. Iron gates. Strong enough to keep ideas out. And to keep a family in. We played tennis against that wall. Now it’s no longer straight. Roots must have warped it. Or the wind. Or the kid in the summer who kicked it with his great big boots. Or God. God the Giant blew and Jack went to market with the cow and came home with the beans. My dad was like that. He took his books to market and came home with a box of artefacts and a receipt for his petrol. And a box of apples. Once my dad sat under that tree. We used to think he had forever. Then he began sleeping more and before long he slept so much under the tree that we used to call out DAD. Close your mouth before an apple falls in it. That apple did fall one day. Dad died. All apples fall. All dads die. Eventually. My dad did.
My mum didn’t mention him. Don’t ask. You don’t need to know. If you don’t ask you don’t care and if you do ask you don’t know so sometimes, just sometimes. The world was easier in a story. Stories had a structure. A beginning a middle and sometimes an ending.
There was once a house. It had a structure. It also had a story. A beginning and a middle. Don’t ask about the ending. You don’t want to ask because if you don’t ask you don’t care and if you do ask you might find out. A house begins as a single brick. And then another and another until it’s a big box that keeps out the rain. It’s not just that. It keeps us safe.
Like stories. Stories keep us safe. Especially if we create them. Then we control them. I give you the story of a house. It’s a strange place - a house filled with art, and beauty. But what of love? Yes, love lives here too. It’s a house of immense glamour. It radiates frivolity. Splendour. Pure unending riches. But if you look, it doesn’t take a lot. If you look behind the curtain, through the window, behind the door. It’s collapsing, a building in reverse like it must have its say, one moment at a time. Little by little. Wait. The bulging wallpaper.
She taps it. Tumbling falling brick. Like a house of cards, a poker game where the chips are down she tumbles, falling like Alice onto the flat earth of the rabbit hole beneath. "Don’t Need to Know" holds onto the bar by the window. He assumes it is safe. The plaster is damp so don’t need to know might not be as safe as he thinks he is. But don’t need to know doesn’t need to know because things like that just freak out kids, but it would be good if his mum told him gently not to lean on the bar. Just in case. The just in case came just too late and Don’t Need to Know did take a fall, landing in a small pond of a terraced garden where it was summertime and a group of children sat, discussing What had happened to Lulu. They didn’t notice Don’t Need to Know because Don’t Need to Know had spent so many years feeling invisible that he actually became transparent. Save for a flow of air, the terrace and the kids of local intelligentsia remained unaltered. They didn’t need to know Don’t need to know and don’t need to know didn’t want to trouble them.
So he sat, listening to the voices, accepting that he mattered very little, brushing his bruises. It wasn’t the time to disturb his mum. She would ask why he was leaning on the window after lights out and he would have to explain that he heard children, even younger than himself, learning all the things that he might want to know, and he was just leaning on the window, minding his own business when the cement gave way. It was bound to happen at some point. Nothing lasts forever. Save memories, guilt, unused soaps and blocked plumbing. It wasn’t likely that Don’t Need to Know would get much sympathy so he sloped off, and went to find a roll of sticky tape to mend his broken knee he sat for a long while pulling the pieces of patio grit, one by one by one from his chafed and slightly ruddy kneecap. When Don’t Need to Know brought this up the next day, Mum was bemused. You’re making it up. You weren’t even there. It was past six o'clock. You were long in bed. That’s it. Don’t need to know had dreamt it. Dreamt everything. That was all he needed to know.
In the gap between reality and fiction lies a great space for possibility and Don’t Need to Know was fast becoming a ball of imagination. His bedroom became an Imaginarium filled with space for dreams and the same few books that he was fed, over and over by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose swing went so high into the air so blue that Don’t need to know thought he should never come down. He watched the clouds shapeshifting across the small square of the sky and hoped for a bird to fly through his window and take him off to a new land. One where the hours passed more quickly and where he could perhaps learn just a little something so he didn’t feel quite so stupid. It might be about animals or cookery and as he didn’t have any animals except for an occasional visit from a fat grey kitten he decided to try a little baking.
With Mother as busy as she was he opened the cupboard and looked to see what might be in there. A larder of sorts. It held old plain flour, baking soda and glacee cherries. There were baking cards from another life so he had a little look for something with sticky cherries and found his way to an edition entitled Floury Fingers. He put on an apron, turned on the oven and then heard a noise. A small visit from a highly attuned mouse made all the difference. As the blender spun around and flour shot out in every direction, Don’t Need to Know wished he knew just a little more about electricity. Should he turn it off and remove the mouse or … without further thought, Don’t need to know was trying to save the life of a small woodland creature. His day was worthwhile. A true creative, he had combined his two thoughts. That of the cordon bleu chef and that of the animal saviour. This was significant. Something to contribute to the conversation at school. Don’t need to know would sound like he had had a full-on weekend of amazing adventures. Nobody would need to know that his arm would need to be reconnected at the elbow, as long as he kept his blazer firmly buttoned.
It was fortunate that it was one of the cooler days of term. When your limbs are hanging off, quite literally it is useful to have someone take just a little interest in you. Don’t need to know might have been called Don’t make a fuss because his life seemed not to matter one iota. Nobody would notice that he wasn’t doing games today. His face was always light in colour but today it was hard to tell whether it was pale green or pale yellow as his skin was hidden by the white flour that had shot out into the kitchen air during the cookery. Don’t need to know had no interest in sport. Not any. Possibly as his level of fitness was below par at the time he had started his education he had fallen far behind and was now most certainly unable to learn the rules. He had once tried to play catch up by looking at the drawing of the netball court in Make Do and Mend, a 12 anthology set of encyclopaedias for children sporting some delightful drawings. The books took pride of place on the shelf and while they appeared terribly intellectual they were a good way to mask his ignorance as they included many, many pictures.
It is the end of my one-hour writing exercise and I see I have created the foundations of a story. Don’t Need to Know might soon become a real live boy.