The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

apology and stepped aside to let him in. I busied myself getting teabags out of the canister and when I flicked on the kettle it was still slightly warm from the cup Norman had brought me an hour or so earlier.

‘Mum, Mum, I’m just going down to do the rocks. I’ve got my phone, I’ll be back later, OK?’ Even his whisper sounded like it was fading away these days.

To be honest, even though I half woke up and opened my eyes just enough to register that Norman had a warm enough jacket on and wasn’t going out in his pyjamas, I wasn’t sure that it truly was OK.

Whenever Jax stayed over on a Saturday night, which was almost every week, the next morning the boys would get up early and walk the hundred metres from our house down to the beach. They’d search the shingle beach for the perfect rocks among all those millions the low tide exposed every day, then, in a perfectly chosen spot just back from the water’s edge, they’d spend excruciating aeons taking turns to balance them on top of each other. With boyish gruesomeness, they loved the fact that no matter how much work they put in and how high they got their little Zen stone stack, within a few hours it was doomed to obliteration by a wave anyhow.

Josie Fenton told me that one morning, when she’d gone down to collect Jax to go to a family brunch, she’d stood up on the road and watched the boys for about twenty minutes without them knowing. Seeing Jax patiently and tenderly encouraging Norman when it was his turn, and his intense concentration and considered movements as he balanced his own carefully selected rocks, it was the first time she’d dared to think there was a chance that maybe her husband, the teachers and an entire street full of angry neighbours just might be wrong about her son.

The last I’d heard, their record was eighteen high, but my only defence on Sunday mornings now when I started to think about Norman trying to balance those little piles of rocks on his own was to put the pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

Leonard sat himself down at the kitchen table and took his laptop out of his backpack. He opened it up, tapped a few keys then folded his hands in his lap and waited. I placed a cup of tea down in front of him and took a casual look over his shoulder at the screen. Despite up until then still having been vaguely daydreaming about being back in bed, suddenly I was very much awake.

A pair of familiar eyes stared back at me from the computer, brown, kind and unblinking. Only, after a closer look, I decided I was wrong and it couldn’t be Norman, because I was pretty sure that last time I checked he hadn’t grown a twirly handlebar moustache and sideburns. Also, this guy’s skin was very smooth, without any traces of psoriasis, and he was wearing a fringed suede jacket and a top hat, both of which I could be fairly confident Norman didn’t own. I shook my head and blinked hard so I could have another run at whatever it was I was looking at.

‘Um, Leonard . . . what’s . . . ? Is this supposed to be Norman’s father? Did you . . . find one already? Because I . . . I have to say I really don’t think . . . I mean, I think I’d remember this guy.’

‘No, no, no, Sadie, look again!’ Which was a bit hard because, as he said that, he actually zoomed the screen out so the face got smaller. ‘It’s Norman himself, in digital disguise!’

The computer screen was now totally filled and I realized I was looking at some kind of a promotional poster. Above the image of my twelve-year-old son masquerading as a middle-aged man I could see some words in a fancy scroll font. Norman Foreman, Little Big Man of Comedy. As I leaned forward over Leonard’s shoulder to get a closer look, the longer I stared, the closer my jaw got to the floor.

The scene was an American Wild West-style bar and I could see now that Norman’s big fake-moustachioed head was attached to a tiny cartoon body that was bursting out between two wooden saloon doors. Behind them, I could see a Calamity Jane type featuring my head leaning on the bar, and there was a horse with Leonard’s face tethered out the front of the saloon. Everywhere I looked there was something else taken out of any sane context and dropped into this crazy imaginary scene. There was the Austin Maxi on top of the saloon’s roof, there was Eric Morecambe sitting quietly drinking a whisky at the bar, there was my father, even, hunched over at a table, laughing into a bowl of peanuts. And just when I thought I’d seen it all, right down in the bottom-left-hand corner, waiting patiently outside the saloon, was a small white dog with Jax’s smiling face balancing on its furry shoulders. My heart fell into Leonard’s teacup and did a few seconds of boiling backstroke. It was completely ridiculous and I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but somehow it was also absolutely, totally, out-of-this-world wonderful.

‘Leonard. This is so . . . it’s amazing. Really. Where did you get . . . and how did you . . . I mean, did you do this? How do you know how to . . . ?’

Leonard put up his hand to bat away my praise, but I could see a tinge of pink rising up from underneath the collar of his shirt. He sat up a little bit straighter in the chair and I got a faint waft of clean laundry.

It turned out Leonard’s mother had instilled in him an ethos that learning was a lifelong commitment. She herself had learned to speak French at the ripe old age of ninety-two, despite the fact that, crippled and confined to