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with school prizes, written about in the local paper, put
into classes with children who were one, two years older than him — and two
feet taller than him as well because he never seemed to grow. He was tiny, with
bony knees and sticking-out ears.
    He was bullied. I don't just mean pushed
around in the playground or jeered at for being a swot. He was systematically
tormented by a group of boys and excluded by everyone else. The bullies called
him 'Troy Boy', locked him in the school toilets, tied him to a tree behind the
bike shed, threw his books in the mud and stamped on them, passed notes around
the classroom about him being a sissy and a gay. They punched him in the
stomach, ran after him at the end of the day. He never told anyone — and by
this time Kerry and I were so much older than him that we occupied entirely
different worlds. He didn't complain to the teachers or to my parents, who just
knew that he was quiet and 'different' from the other boys in his class. He
just worked harder than ever and acquired a pedantic and slightly sarcastic manner
that of course isolated him further.
    Finally, when he was thirteen, my parents
were summoned to the school because he'd been discovered throwing firecrackers
at boys in the playground. He was wild with rage, weeping and swearing at
anyone who came near him, as if the results of eight years of abuse had
surfaced all at once. He was suspended for a week, during which time he broke
down and 'confessed' to Mum, who stormed round to the school making a fuss.
Boys were hauled in front of the head, given detentions. But how can you tell
children that they have to like someone and be their friend, particularly when
that someone is like my little brother: shy, scared, socially dysfunctional,
crippled by his own particular brand of intelligence? And how do you undo
damage that's been built into the foundations? With houses, it's easier to pull
the whole thing down and start again. You can't do that with people.
    I had left college by this time. I didn't
understand how serious it was until Troy did his GCSEs. Maybe I didn't want to
understand. He was expected to do well. He said the exams had gone fine, but he
was vague about them. It turned out he hadn't done a single one. He'd sat in
the park near his school, throwing bread to the ducks, staring at the litter on
the banks of the pond, looking at his watch. When my parents discovered this,
they were stunned. I remember being with them one afternoon when all Mum did
was cry and ask him what she'd done wrong, was she such a bad mother, and Troy
just sat there, not talking, but on his face an expression of triumph and shame
that terrified me. The counsellor said it was his cry for help. A few months
later he said that Troy's cutting himself — dozens of shallow abrasions across
his forearms — was a cry for help. And the way he sometimes didn't get out of
bed in the mornings — that was a cry for help too.
    He didn't go back to school. There was a
private tutor and more therapy. He goes three times a week to a woman with
letters after her name to talk about his problems. Every so often I ask him
what goes on in these forty-five-minute sessions, but he just grins and shrugs.
'Often I just sleep,' he says. 'I lie down on the couch and close my eyes and
then suddenly there's a voice telling me my session is over.'
     
     
    'How's it all going?' I asked as I made us
a pot of tea and he cut red peppers into strips. Already the kitchen was a
mess. Rice bubbled ferociously in a pan, making its lid bump and water splash
over the sides. Eggshells littered the table. Bowls and spoons stacked up in
the sink. There was flour on the lino, as if there had been a light snowfall.
    'Have you noticed,' he asked, 'that people
always ask me how I am, in that careful, tactful kind of voice?'
    'Sorry,' I said.
    'I'm bored to death with talking about me.
How's it going with you?'
    'OK.'
    'No, you're supposed to really tell me.
That's the deal. I tell you,