Making Faces
a novel by John Bullock
Publication date: 5/15/2008
ISBN: 0-9796255-2-1
248 pages
$19.95

Like many adolescents, fourteen-year-old Matt Bowen has no idea who he is. Anxious for connection and friendship, he embarks on a series of illegal break-ins, searching for acceptance in a world Matt says he never asked to be a part of. This offbeat debut novel, set in an English seaside bed and breakfast, is a poignant and funny coming-of-age story about identity—in all its guises—which charts Matt Bowen’s adventures as he learns hard truths about family and forgiveness.

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Author bio: John Bullock is English and has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns fellow. He is managing editor of the New Ohio Review, and lives in Athens, Ohio. Making Faces is his first novel.

Blurbs: “Matthew is a wonderful character: young but wise; long-suffering; a survivor. Bullock can be extremely funny (chapter 40), but he sees life in its complexity, so that things that are funny are often tinged with sadness, while serious matters often have an element of slapstick about them. Making Faces is a clear-headed book about characters who don’t want to reveal themselves, or who want very much to reveal themselves, but wonder where and how to begin.”  Ann Beattie, author of Follies: New Stories

“The voice that describes this marvelous seaside place and people (and the character who speaks this voice) is a fountain of delights and surprises that doesn’t stop dazzling in the sun until the last page. How wild and frustrating it is to be born a child of imagination in a nation of shopkeepers! Busy, busy, busy are these fruitful people at their curious work. John Bullock and Matthew, his speaker, remember and touch on just about everything in their lives, and see them for what they are, and more.” Robert Pope, author of Jack’s Universe

“John Bullock is a wonderful writer whose greatest gift is his honesty. He has a true skill for dialogue, as well as for the perfect little detail that makes or breaks a novel.” Ron Riekki, author of U.P.

“From the first page of Making Faces to the wonderful last line, John Bullock establishes himself as a deeply honest, brave and very funny writer. An entirely original debut.” Laura Dave, author of London Is The Best City In America

Excerpt of Chapter 1, Making Faces

When you’re born into the bed and breakfast game, you learn to be quiet from day one. A crying baby’s bad for business. Everyone else can make all the noise they want, but not you – you live for our guests, and everything you do from the crack of dawn to last thing at night revolves around them. You can’t fart in bed without muffling it with your covers, or take a dump without running the shower. You learn to walk lightly, cough softly, to keep your voice down. If you’re angry, tough. If you’re ill, stay in your room. Keep the germs to yourself. One of the old bids might catch a dose and come down with pneumonia.

And another thing: you’ve got to like people. You’ve got to treasure their foibles. You’ve got to enjoy having them treat you like something they stepped in on the prom. On top of that, you’ve got to love the kids they bring with them.

We didn’t. At least, Mum and I didn’t. Dad was better at pretending. He was a greengrocer. He still ran the same shop that Mum had gone into twenty years ago and seen him tending his veg. She’d just started the B&B. For some reason they joined forces. Over the years, Dad kept the shop and helped out at home in the evenings, ferrying meals when we were pushed, but mostly doing the bar, which he wiped twice a minute, whether he had customers or not. Failing that, he’d be tinkering. He relaxed by keeping busy. And if busy was good for him, it was good for me.

My attic room was at the back of the house, far enough to shield me from the peak season hullabaloo. Fat chance.

To make sure I didn’t get a minute’s peace, Dad rigged an intercom between my room and reception, a silver-and-black box the size of a fag packet on the wall next to the door. I was sure he’d fitted it with a spy camera so that he or Mum could blast me out of my skin whenever they wanted. Regardless of whether I was training my telescope on the strip of sea at the edge of my window, or gluing Durex wrappers to my beachcombing collage, that buzzer could go at any moment. Next thing you know, I’d be up and down those stairs putting fresh lavender soap tablets in the bathrooms or mending the ballcock in one of our communal loos. But mostly I’d be lugging up suitcases from reception, where the smell of morning tea and toast lingered through the afternoon and seemed to stain the light that filtered in through the front net curtains. Itching to get settled, the new arrivals would be waiting in reception, plucking sightseeing pamphlets from the racks and browsing them idly before putting them back in every possible slot but the one they’d taken them from. Even before I arrived to help them to their rooms, they’d begun leaving their mark. Things went downhill from there.

One afternoon I was in my room making a list of who would and wouldn’t come to my funeral if I topped myself, an idea I’d been toying with all week. (Being fourteen, I was a miserable sod.) The list had started out long, but the more I thought about who I’d included, the more names I crossed off. On the final shortlist were Mum, Dad, Uncle Norm, Uncle Ern, Auntie Vi, and Lance, my sort of best mate, who, since getting his face burnt off by a firework had taken up grave rubbing. He’d visited every cemetery in Farthing – no small feat considering we had more of them than we had phone boxes. Farthing’s always been a hotbed of geriatrics, or crumblies, as we called them. God’s waiting room. And the only town in England with a death-to-birth ratio of fifty to one. Space wasn’t the problem. With the South Downs on our doorstep, we could’ve buried half of Europe if we’d wanted, imported corpses to raise revenue. But the council couldn’t even clear the washed-up seaweed off of the beach in summer till it had stewed so long that it stank out the town and sent everyone up in arms. So there wasn’t much likelihood of it tendering for corpses from across the Channel. Or the North Sea. Or the Irish Sea, come to that. Anyway, my only hope for the afterlife was that Lance would do a rubbing of my headstone and frame it for posterity. The pride of his collection. But what moving epitaph would Mum and Dad choose in my honour? Good riddance, probably. Thank Christ he’s gone.

Uncle Ern, Mum’s older brother, jumped ship to Australia in the sixties and hadn’t been back since. I’d never met him. As far as I knew, he’d never written. The odds of him flying halfway round the world to watch a kid he didn’t know get dropped into the ground were slim. So I wrote him off. The shortlist was now down to five predictables, none of who had oceans to cross, and none of who were famous. A crap turn-out. Hardly worth the dying.
The buzzer went. Mum needed some cases moved. Instead of smashing the intercom with a hammer, I punched the wall next to it hoping the pain would make me feel better, send sparks through my veins like it usually did. But it just made me madder.

On the first landing I caught a young boy and his sister sprinting from one end to the other, making all kinds of racket. So I blocked their way.

“I’ll chuck you out if you don’t stop,” I said.

The mop-haired boy faced me off. “You’re not my dad.”

“Yeah,” said his sister, stepping up beside him. “Our dad’ll chuck you out if you don’t leave us alone.”

“No he won’t,” I said. “This is my house. I can do what I want.”

They ignored me and bolted off down the stairs. I chased them into reception. Mum was showing a middle-aged couple the wall of watercolours done by her amateur painter friends. She sold them on commission. Tacky as they were, in the peak season they sold like Bank Holiday cockles.

“What on earth?” said Mum.

“I won, I won,” shouted the boy.

If it hadn’t been for the guests I would’ve lamped him. “Don’t run, I said.”

“Matthew, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Ask them,” I said, pointing at the boy.

“We weren’t doin’ nuffing,” he said. Again his sister came up beside him.

“Dad said it’s a safety hazard,” I said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Mum. Then to the kids: “Where’s your parents?”

The boy shrugged at his sister, then at Mum. “Dunno.”

“Well, go in the lounge or something. There’s games. Ker Plunk. Matthew, these cases need to go upstairs.”

The kids smirked. I felt like a dwarf, and vowed to get my own back. But even brats like those were our guests, and you didn’t upset them, or even go near them, not unless you were on waiting duty or were called on to unjam a door they’d got stuck behind.

After the kids went in the lounge, the new arrivals signed the register while Mum picked a key from one of the hooks.

“Mr. and Mrs. Walker,” she said in her fake polite voice, “this is Matthew.”

I’d been shaking hands with strangers since before I could talk. My right hand was thinner than my left. “Welcome to the Remora,” I said, with my best fake smile. (We were all liars, the lot of us.) I shook the man’s cold, bony hand, and then the woman’s, which was soft and warm as a fresh roll. She was nice. I felt like tickling her palm.
“Please follow me,” said Mum. She led the way.

The suitcases sat there.

“I can’t take both of them,” I said.

“It’s all right,” said the man, picking up the bigger case. “Just my wife’s, if you don’t mind?”

We trudged upstairs in a line, Mum first, then Mr. Walker, Mrs. Walker, and me. What sticks in my mind is the scent of coconut that trailed from Mrs. Walker, a smell I’d not come across before, and one which made her seem wildly exotic, as though she’d just wafted in from Tahiti. I stared at her arse, not six inches from my nose, at her skirt kinking from cheek to cheek with each upward step. Smiling to myself, I imagined the fuss I’d cause by sinking my teeth into her rumpy flesh. Instead I lugged her case to their room – on the same floor as mine – dumped it on the bed and snatched glances of her figure while Mum reeled off the short list of Farthing’s attractions: fish, pier, prom.

Maybe it was the coconut, I don’t know. All I know is that Mrs. Walker’s arrival was the starter pistol I’d been waiting for. After years in the blocks, I was finally sprinting to manhood.

That night I went to sleep with two fifty-pence bits taped to my dick. The plan was I’d gain an inch or more by morning and, with such consistent growth, be man enough to give Mr. Walker a run for his money by the time the week was up. Measuring myself the next morning, however, I found no sign of growth. Perhaps an inch was more than a night’s work. Thus began my nighttime ritual of coin strapping. According to my estimations, come my next birthday I’d have the biggest dick in England for a kid my age. I daydreamed of regional contests in which I’d put all my opponents to shame, rising swiftly through the ranks to the national finals where I’d wipe the board with the best of them. Interviewed afterwards, I’d put my magnificent growth down to the same seawater that was once thought to cure everything, proving that the magic of the seaside, far from being on the wane, was clearly more potent than ever. Upon my subsequent election as Minister of Seasides, I would educate the public on the restorative power of our bright and briny, citing my ample organ as proof.

For the week she was with us, I couldn’t get Mrs. Walker out of my mind. Serving her bacon and egg in the morning, I’d linger at her table just to hear her voice, even if what she said wasn’t directed at me but at her knobhead husband. After having her on my mind all day at school, I came home that Tuesday and checked the visitors’ book to find out her name. Carol. He was Jeremy. His flowery signature belonged on a scroll. I checked the hooks; their key was missing. Must’ve gone out for the day. I went straight to their bedroom door and knocked. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I slid my plastic strip in the bottom of the door and drew it up to the catch, same as I’d done before with most of the other locks in the house. With a few jiggles I was in.