The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📗

he remembered her all right. He remembered her quite well, thanks very much. She’d been the reason he’d lost his licence for three months and lost his girlfriend for over a year. But they got back together and now they had three sons and he wasn’t interested in this kind of craziness coming into his life. And that if Mum tried to contact him again he’d take measures, whatever that means.

It really made me wonder how many ways he thought he had to say that he wasn’t interested. I felt like ringing him back and saying, hey buddy, we got you at I’m not interested. Which were actually his first words after the hello and the stupid long umm.

Before I heard that message my psoriasis had stopped itching for the first time since before Jax left. I know that because I lay there for ages and didn’t itch once when I woke up at Toad Hall, thinking about how great the night before had been in the pub with Big Al and Lou and John Keats and winning my first open mic by a tit’s whisker. And even though I knew I wasn’t really that funny, it hadn’t mattered because I’d tried.

But by the end of listening to Dan McFurfeature’s message, which was fifty-four seconds long, according to Mum’s phone, it felt like my skin was trying to turn itself inside out. Like it woke up all of a sudden and woke up angry. Not that I was surprised. That last doctor Mum took me to, who wasn’t really a doctor and wore a dress and burned lots of incense, totally got it all wrong. I definitely wasn’t in control of my own skin, and I reckon we both knew it.

After the message everyone looked like they were waiting for me to say something, so I did. What I said wasn’t really true but I thought to myself, well, if ever there’s going to be a time when it’s OK to tell a lie it’s now. Anyhow, after I said that it was OK, honest, Mum hugged me and said, oh Norman, and Leonard just rubbed my arm and said bugger a few times. So maybe they knew it wasn’t true.

Nothing was really any different to a few minutes before I heard that message, when I’d just been Norman who didn’t have a dad. I just still didn’t have a dad, that’s all, is what I told myself. But even when Bill finally brought out the full English and the fried eggs were three-and-a-half-minutes perfect and the bacon was lovely and crispy, how me and Jax like it, all I could think about was Dan McSnotface and how maybe I’d just lost the only chance I’d ever get of having three little brothers.

Leonard said the one good thing about Dan not wanting to see us was that at least we didn’t have to hang around Barnstaple another night. I’d already noticed that Leonard’s great at finding good stuff about whatever happens, even if it seems really bad at the time. So I thought maybe it would help if I tried to do that too, and so the good thing I found was that I liked the way Leonard said us. Like it wasn’t just me and Mum that Dan McPoo wasn’t interested in. Like we were all in it together. Which felt nice, because I’d only ever been in it with Mum and Jax before, so having Leonard made it feel like maybe there was three in our us again.

Jax reckons three is the funniest number because the Comic Triple is the first rule of comedy. It’s like when you start with a line, then you repeat it in a different way and then on the third time you hit the audience with a twist in the punchline that’s the exact opposite of what they’re expecting. Which is kind of what Jax did for real, but I don’t really want to think about that.

When Mum and I were packing our stuff into the back of the car to leave, Leonard said he had to make a phone call and did we mind? Mum said of course not, and even though we couldn’t hear what he was saying because he had his back to us and anyhow Mum always says it’s not polite to listen to other people’s phone calls, I reckon that maybe and probably definitely he would have been talking to his wife, Iris.

I’ll tell you something I know for sure, though, which is that Leonard really and truly understands what it’s like to have the Rolls-bloody-Royce of best friends, like me and Jax. Because he told me that’s exactly the way he felt about Iris from the minute he first looked into her big baby blues at the Gresham dance hall on the Holloway Road. And he reckons he’s never stopped looking since. It made me think that it must be nice to have someone who still wants to be your friend after sixty-two years, which is how long Leonard and his wife have been married. That’s nearly two times as long as how old Mum is and five times as long as Jax’s whole entire life.

After Leonard finished talking on the phone, when he turned around he looked kind of sad, so I guess he was already missing Iris a bit. But before I could ask him if he was OK Big Al showed up, which was a big surprise to me and Mum, but maybe not to Leonard, because someone must have told him where we were staying. When I saw him come around the corner I got butterflies in my tummy straight away, which reminded me of how I feel when Jax and I are having a really good day. Which was pretty much every day when he was here.

Big Al said he couldn’t let us leave without saying goodbye and he gave me a book called The Big Book of British Comedy Greats, which