The Darkness of Wallis Simpson

by Rose Tremain

  No friendship had ever been like this one.

  ‘Are you aware, Newbold, that your friend, Peerless, has been late for games three times in three weeks?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t aware, sir.’

  ‘Well, now you are. And what do you propose to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir!’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Well, I think I know. You can warn Peerless that if he is ever – ever– late for cricket again, then I, personally, will give you a beating. Do you understand, Newbold? I am making you responsible. If you fail in your task, it will be you who will be punished.’

  Peerless is in the grounds of the school, reading Keats. Badger sits down by him, among daisies, and says: ‘I say, old thing, the Ogre’s just given me a bit of an ultimatum. He’s going to beat me if you’re late for cricket practice again.’

  Peerless looks up and smiles his girlish, beatific smile. He starts picking daisies. He’s told Badger he loves the smell of them, like talcum powder, like the way his mother smells.

  ‘The Ogre’s mad, Badger. You realise that, don’t you?’ says Peerless

  ‘I know,’ says Badger. ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, then, we’re not going to collude with him. Why should we?’

  And that’s all that can be said about it. Peerless returns to Keats and Badger lies down beside him and asks him to read something aloud.

  ‘. . . overhead – look overhead

  Among the blossoms white and red—’

  When Verity came back that evening from wherever she’d been, Badger showed her the photograph of Peerless the Penguin and said: ‘I’m going to become his Benefactor.’

  Verity laughed at the picture. ‘Typical you, Badger!’ she snorted.

  ‘Why typical me?’

  ‘Save the animals. Let the people go hang.’

  Badger ate his ham and salad in silence for a while; then he said: ‘I don’t think you’ve got any idea what you’ve just said.’

  There wasn’t a moment’s pause, not a second’s thought, before Verity snapped: ‘Yes, I do. You’re completely apathetic when it comes to helping people. But where animals are concerned, you’ll go to the ends of the bloody earth.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s because I am one,’ said Badger. ‘An animal.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Badger,’ said Verity. ‘You really do talk such sentimental bollocks.’

  Badger got up and walked out of the room. He went out on to the terrace and looked at the spring moon. He felt there was a terrible hunger in him, not just for proper food, but for something else, something which the moon’s light might reveal to him, if he stayed there long enough, if he got cold enough, waiting. But nothing was revealed to him. The only thing that happened was that, after ten or fifteen minutes, Verity came out and said: ‘Sorry, Badger. I can be a pig.’

  Badger wrote to Peerless and sent his cheque for £25. An effusive thank-you note arrived, inviting him to visit the Sanctuary.

  It wasn’t very far away. But Badger’s driving was slow, these days, and he frequently forgot which gear he was in. Sometimes, the engine of the car started screaming, as if in pain. It always seemed to take this screaming engine a long time to get him anywhere at all. Badger reflected that if, one day, he was obliged to drive to London, he would probably never manage to arrive.

  He drove at last down an avenue of newly planted beeches. Grassy fields lay behind them. At the end of the drive was a sign saying ‘Welcome to Oaktree Wildlife Sanctuary’ and a low red-brick building with a sundial over the door. It was an April day.

  At a reception desk, staffed by a woebegone young man with thick glasses, Badger announced himself as the Benefactor of Peerless the Penguin and asked to see the penguin pool.

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said the young man, whose name was Kevin. ‘Do you wish to avail yourself of the free wellingtons service?’

  Badger saw ten or eleven pairs of green wellingtons lined up by the door.

  He felt that free wellingtons and new beech trees were a sign of something good. ‘Imagination,’ Anthony Peerless used to say, ‘is everything. Without it, the world’s doomed.’

  Badger put on some wellingtons, too large for his feet, and followed the young man across a meadow where donkeys and sheep were grazing. These animals had thick coats and they moved in a slow, unfrightened way.

  ‘Very popular with children, the donkeys,’ said Kevin. ‘But they want rides, of course and we don’t allow this. These animals have been burdened enough.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Badger.

  And then, there it was, shaded by a solitary oak, a grey pond, bordered by gunnera and stinging nettles. At one end of it was the slide, made of blue plastic, and one of the penguins was making its laborious way up some wide plastic steps to the top of it.

  ‘So human, aren’t they?’ said Kevin, smiling.

  Badger watched the penguin fall forwards and slither down into the muddy water of the pond. Then he asked: ‘Which one’s Peerless?’

  Kevin stared short-sightedly at the creatures. His gaze went from one to the other, and Badger could tell that this man didn’t know. Someone had given the penguins names, but they resembled each other so closely, they might as well not have bothered. It was impossible to distinguish Pooter from Pavlov, Palmer from Peter.

  Badger stood there, furious. He’d only sent the damn cheque because the penguin was called Peerless. He’d expected some recognisable identity. He felt like stomping away in disgust. Then he saw that one of the penguins was lying apart from all the others, immersed in the water, where it lapped against the nettles. He stared at this one. It lay in the pond like a human being might lie in a bed, with the water covering its chest.

  ‘There he is,’ said Kevin suddenly. ‘That’s Peerless.’

  Badger walked nearer. Peerless stood up and looked at him. A weak sun came out and shone on the dark head of Peerless and on the nettles, springy and green.

  ‘All right,’ said Badger. ‘Like to stay here a while by myself, if that’s OK with you.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kevin. ‘Just don’t give them any food, will you? It could be harmful.’

  Kevin walked away over the meadow where the donkeys wandered and Badger stayed very still, watching Peerless. The other penguins queued, like children, for a turn on the plastic slide, but Peerless showed no interest in it at all. He just stayed where he was, on the edge of the pond, going in and out, in and out of the dank water. It was as though he constantly expected something consoling from the water and then found that it wasn’t there, but yet expected it again, and then again discovered its absence. And Badger decided, after a while, that he understood exactly what was wrong: the water was too warm. This penguin longed for an icy sea.

  Badger sat down on the grass. He didn’t care that it was damp. He closed his eyes.

  It’s the beginning of the school term and Badger is unpacking his trunk. He’s fourteen years old. He lays his red-and-brown rug on his iron bed in the cold dormitory. Other boys are making darts out of paper and chucking them from bed to bed. Peerless’s name is not on the dormitory list.

  The Ogre appears at the door and the dart-throwing stops. Boys stand to attention, like army cadets. The Ogre comes over to Badger and puts a hand on his shoulder, and the hand isn’t heavy as it usually is, but tender, like the hand of a kind uncle.

  ‘Newbold,’ he says. ‘Come up to my study.’

  He follows the Ogre up the polished main stairs, stairs upon which the boys are not normally allowed to tread. He can smell the sickly wood polish, smell the stale pipe smoke in the Ogre’s tweed clothes.

  He’s invited to sit down in the Ogre’s study, on an old red armchair. And the Ogre’s eyes watch him nervously. Then the Ogre says: ‘It concerns Peerless. As his friend, you have the right to know. His mother died. I’m afraid that Peerless will not be returning to the school.’

  Badger looks away from the Ogre, out at the a
utumn day; at the clouds carefree and white, at the chestnut leaves flying around in the wind.

  ‘I see,’ he manages to say. And he wants to get up, then, get out of this horrible chair and go away from here, go to where the leaves are falling. But something in the Ogre’s face warns him not to move. The Ogre is struggling to tell him something else and is pleading for time in which to tell it. I may be ‘the Ogre’, says the terrified look on his face, but I’m also a man.

  ‘The thing is . . .’ he begins. ‘The thing is, Newbold, Peerless was very fond of his mother. You see?’

  ‘See what, sir?’

  ‘Well. He found it impossible. Her absence. As you know, he was a dreaming kind of boy. He was unable to put up any resistance to grief.’

  That evening, Verity made a lamb stew. It was fragrant with rosemary and served with mashed potato and fresh kale. Badger opened a bottle of red wine.

  Verity was quiet, yet attentive to him, waiting for him to speak to her. But for a long time Badger didn’t feel like speaking. He just felt like eating the good stew and sipping the lovely wine and listening to the birds fall silent in the garden and the ancient electric clock ticking on the kitchen wall.

  Eventually, Verity said: ‘When I said what I said about you letting people go hang, Badger, I was being horribly thoughtless. For a moment I’d completely forgotten about Anthony Peerless.’

  Badger took another full sip of the wine, then he said: ‘It’s all right, darling. No offence. How were the Battered Wives?’

  ‘OK. Now, I want you to tell me about the penguins. Are they being properly looked after?’

  He knew she was humouring him, that she didn’t care one way or the other whether a bunch of penguins lived or died. But the wine was making him feel cheerful, almost optimistic, so he chose to say to her: ‘The place is nice. But the penguin pool’s not cold enough. In the summer, they could die.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘I won’t let it happen. I’ve got a plan.’

  ‘Tell me?’ said Verity.

  She poured him some more wine. The stew was back in the oven, keeping warm. Mozart was softly playing next door. This was how home was meant to be.

  ‘Ice,’ said Badger. ‘I’m going to keep them supplied with ice.’

  He saw Verity fight against laughter. Her mouth opened and closed – that scarlet mouth he used to adore. Then she smiled kindly. ‘Where will you get that amount of ice from?’

  ‘The sea,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy it from the trawlermen.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Good idea, Badger.’

  ‘It’ll be time-consuming, fetching it, lugging it over to the Sanctuary, but I don’t mind. It’ll give me something to do.’

  ‘Yes, it will.’

  ‘And Peerless . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He seems to suffer the most with things as they are. But the ice should fix it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Verity. ‘Very good.’

  He lined the boot of his car with waterproof sheets. He bought a grappling hook for handling the ice blocks. He christened it ‘the Broderick’. Despite the sheeting, Badger’s car began to smell of the sea. He knew the fisherman thought he was a crazy old party.

  But at the pond, now, when the penguins saw him coming, lugging the ice on an ancient luge he’d found in the garage, they came waddling to him and clustered round him as he slowly lifted the end of the luge and let the ice slide into the water. Then they dived in and climbed up on to the ice, or swam beside it, rubbing their heads against it. And he thought, as he watched them, that this was the thing he’d been waiting for, to alter the lot of someone or something. All he’d done was to change the water temperature of a pond in the middle of a Suffolk field by a few degrees. As world events went, it was a pitiful contribution, but he didn’t care. Badger Newbold wasn’t the kind of man who had ever been able to change the world, but at least he had changed this. Peerless the penguin was consoled by the cool water. And now, when Verity asked him what he was going to do on any particular morning, Badger would be able to reply that he was going to do the ice.

  From this time on, in Badger’s nightmares, the death of Anthony Peerless was a different one . . .

  Peerless has come to stay with him in Suffolk. There are midnight feasts and whispered conversations in the dark.

  Then, one morning, Peerless goes out alone on his bicycle. He rides to the dunes and throws his bicycle down on to the soft sand. He walks through the marram grass down to the sea, wearing corduroy trousers and an old brown sweater and a familiar jacket, patched and worn. It’s still almost summer, but the sea is an icy, meticulous blue. Peerless starts to swim. His face, with its high colour, begins to pale and pale until he’s lost in the cold vastness. He floats serenely, silently down. He floats towards a vision of green grass, towards the soft smell of daisies.

  . . . overhead – look overhead

  Among the blossoms white and red.

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Epub ISBN: 9781446450550

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2006

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  This collection of stories copyright © Rose Tremain 2005

  Copyright © Rose Tremain 2005

  Rose Tremain has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs

  and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Chatto & Windus

  ‘How it Stacks Up’ was first published as ‘The Stack’ in the New Yorker ©

  Rose Tremain 1996. ‘The Beauty of the Dawn Shift’ was first published in

  New Writing 5, eds A. S. Byatt and Christopher Hope © Rose Tremain

  1996. ‘Death of an Advocate’ was read on Radio 3’s The Verb © Rose

  Tremain 2004. ‘Nativity Story’ was first published as ‘One Night in Winter’

  in Country Life © Rose Tremain 1999. ‘The Over-Ride’ was first published

  in the Sunday Express © 1999. ‘Moth’ was first published in Good

  Housekeeping © Rose Tremain 1998. ‘The Cherry Orchard, with Rugs’

  was first published in The Times © Rose Tremain 2004. ‘Peerless’ was first

  published in Prospect © Rose Tremain 2005. ‘The Dead Are Only Sleeping’

  was first published in the Guardian © Rose Tremain 2005 Line from

  ‘Tonight I can write’ from Twenty Love Poems by Pablo Neruda, published

  by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Line from ‘Singing the

  Blues’, by Tommy Steele © Sony/ATV Music Publishing

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  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099268567