by Adam Thorpe
When they stopped, and the world had been turned to show its grieving insides, my aunt called out to me, ‘Play in the snow, Hugh, like normal boys do. You’re not Mowser.’
Mowser was the cat; she’d felt the snow and shaken her paw as if she had scalded it. I kneeled down and scooped out a lump. I was starting to shiver.
‘Not on your knees, Hugh!’ my aunt cried. ‘You’ll get lumbago!’
I heard her, through the open door, remonstrating with my uncle; the word, I thought to myself, was ‘exasperated’. My mother had used this word on several occasions, in relation mainly to the servants. I stood up and left a trail of footprints, making big circles that joined up with each other. I made a face like this, staring up at the sky. I sensed my aunt and uncle watching me from the kitchen window, and hoped that this was what other boys did in the snow. But I had to remind myself that this wet, cloggy stuff was what I had seen pictured on Christmas cards.
Passing the beechwood, I glanced up at the trees. The evergreen shrubs of the garden had shrunk to my aunt’s woolly tea-cosies (she made them for orphans), but the trees were as finely spun as spiders’ webs. My aunt then decided that I was muddying the lawn (which I was), and could only play on the paved part by the back door. This reminded me of the yard after Augustina had plucked a hen for supper, though the iron smell of the snow put a wall between me and that picture. It had all gone by the morning, and everything was crying. It made me think again of what Quiri had said when he’d smeared my face with kaolin: without this, you will cry too much and for a long-long time.
Compared to snowfalls to come, it was pitiful, but for someone who had not climbed Mount Cameroon (like my father had) and seen the magic substance sprawled amongst the boulders of her peak, it was still a miraculous thing to recall, once vanished.
As were the frosts I had already seen, for they were even more like grieving. My mother had read me stories about the Frost Queen, and I was thrilled to see, one morning in late October, that she had breathed strongly upon the world. At first it looked as if everything had been turned to stone, but when I went outside, surprising myself with the air’s sharpness, I saw how the frost coated only the top of each twig, or leaf, or post. It looked as if the frost had fallen from the sky, and that each thing was staying absolutely still under it, waiting for the mortal danger to pass.
I wanted to keep watch that night and see it fall – perhaps from the Frost Queen’s very mouth – but my uncle told me that I wouldn’t see a sausage.
‘I don’t want to see a sausage,’ I replied. ‘I want to see the frost fall.’
My aunt told me that if I went on like that, I wouldn’t get anywhere in life. But my uncle was chuckling as she was saying this.
I went out again after lunch. It was still frosty where the shadows stayed. I found my mother’s pair of gardening gloves on the coal bunker, and tried to put them on, but they were as hard as the hands of the plaster nymph in the drawing-room. My breath smoked and my cheeks tingled. I took my glove off and felt them: my cheeks had shrivelled up, like old apples.
I wandered on to the middle of the lawn, muttering to myself as usual. I was Wolfe at the head of the Louisbourg Grenadiers, charging the French line. A shot had just shattered my wrist when there was a shout from the house. My aunt appeared in the doorway.
‘Hugh, off that lawn at once!’
Maybe, I thought, the lawn was a frozen lake I might suddenly fall through. I walked back to the house carefully.
‘Even your uncle is forbidden to walk across the grass in frost,’ she said. ‘It breaks the blades. Just think of it as brittle, Hugh.’
‘What’s brittle mean?’
‘Oh, like glass.’
She must have been brittle because a year later she was dead. It was too long after my charm to make me connect the two.
One morning in January 1931, I scraped at the ice on my window and spotted a dark track of footprints curving over the frosted lawn, ending up in a huddle by the wire of the wildwood. My uncle was in there, I thought, and my aunt is not here to scold him for breaking the grass. The funeral had taken place, in Ulverton, just after Christmas. I had been a boarder at Flytings Preparatory School only a year, but it seemed like ten. I was sent to Flytings for the start of the Easter term, joining the school a term late. I had no idea that schools and farms had the same year; it took two weeks for me to discover this.
Flytings was very like my uncle’s house, only bigger and filled with boys. A term had made them very sure of themselves. I stumbled about and didn’t know where anything was or what any names meant, and couldn’t understand why everyone else knew so much, so quickly. Only a few had been tutored at home until now. There were several boys in my year from the British Colonies, but the ones whose fathers worked in West or Central Africa had not been out at all. Either they had boarded at a nearby Pre-Preparatory from the age of four or lived with relatives. The last were like me, I realised with a shock. One, whose father was an officer in Kano, had lived with his mother in his grandmother’s big house in Dorset. This upset me.
The whole year passed in that place like the onset of a fever that never quite takes hold. I did not cry once. I never tried to run away, either. My mark was discovered on the second day, but I said that I had sailed the seven seas as a cabin boy, and been tattooed like a stevedore, in Malabar. Incredibly, all the boys around me believed this was true. After that, I had to tell them a tale of my sea-dog days every night in the dormitory. This earned me some respect, but not very much: I was still bullied rather badly. If the story wasn’t exciting enough, I was turned out of my bed and hit with pillows. My fetish packet was kept in the inside pocket of my jacket, and I was terrified that that would be discovered too, one day.
It was very difficult to be alone long enough to make charms or curses; even the lavatories had no doors on them, and walking by yourself in the grounds was not allowed. But when one of the worst bullies died of pleurisy one weekend, very suddenly, I felt rather guilty.
Some of the teachers had been in the trenches, like my uncle; these were either very nice or very nasty, but nothing in between. There was one who was a poet, and felt our bottoms in a funny way when we went up to his desk to have our books marked. He was soft and friendly, and apart from the bottoms thing and the fact that he picked his nose while he told us about the Latin poets, I liked him. Our headmaster was a war hero, one Captain Dene, a very tall man with a trembling head. One day a vice-captain gave me my shoes, which I had left out of their locker, and told me to see Dene after Tea. I had had this dream, ever since my arrival, that I would be called to see the headmaster one day and be told that my mother was missing me so much that I could go back to Africa immediately. I was so excited I ran the wrong way in the rugger match that afternoon.
There was a queue outside his study, and I joined it. None of us talked because a vice-captain was watching us. Boys went in, one by one, and came out biting their lips, their faces crumpling. I could hear a faint, light noise through the door as I edged closer, like a sheet of paper being torn top to bottom. I did not quite link this to the idea of beatings – probably because I knew I was not about to be beaten, even though no one was asked to see Dene after Tea for any other reason.
When I went in, Dene didn’t say anything about my mother or say anything at all. He was looking at three sticks one beneath the other on the wall, and whistling. This whistling was the sign that Dene was ‘on the warpath’. It was always five notes long and sounded like the signals on the short-wave of a wireless. I thought: the three sticks are the three canes the chaps all talk about, that draw blood. He chose the thinnest cane. It was of green bamboo, like the bamboo in the forest in Africa. Quiri made sticks from it, too.
When I came out, I had to stand for the rest of the day, hiding my waddle as best I could. One of the boys said, ‘What did Dismal want?’
‘It was about my mother, who’s in Africa,’ I said.
‘Has she copped it? Mine has, years ago.�
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‘No,’ I replied, thinking quickly. ‘She wanted to know whether I had enough tooth powder.’
The boy found this very funny, and told everyone else. That night I was surprised to find my tooth-powder bottle empty. When I pulled back my sheet and blankets, there were a lot of sniggers from the other beds. The tooth powder was spread like snow over the bottom sheet. Instead of being immediately angry, I was immediately worried: my aunt had told me that unless I used tooth powder on my teeth every day, they would rot and drop out, one by one.
I never mentioned these things in my letter home. We were allowed to write once a fortnight. I always said things were jolly fine, and hoped things were jolly fine in Bamakum, too.
My mother returned on leave a little later than she had done when with me, the year before. The thought of seeing her soon had made me very nervous; I’d ticked off the days of school in my Schoolboy’s Pocket Diary 1930, and now, at Uncle Edward’s, I ticked off the days to her arrival. When there were only fourteen left, at the beginning of July, I sailed in my mind past the long African coast, watching its forest and twinkling bays dwindle to one long beach of white sand – leaving the Canaries behind, leaving Casablanca, leaving Lisbon for the final choppy stretch past Land’s End towards the port of Liverpool. This is how I got to sleep each night.
When there was only one day left I disembarked and took the London train, clutching my fetish packet in its dry, brittle banana leaves and willing my mother’s safety and happiness.
I knew all the times of the rickety branch-line train to Fogbourne. We waited on the platform in front of a poster for Sutton’s Seeds, my uncle and aunt and myself lined up like the three steel milk churns next to us. I thought how funny this must look. The train was late; if it hadn’t been for the old porter with his newspaper and trolley at the other end of the platform, I might have believed it was not coming at all.
Too anxious to stay put, I wandered off to look at the red traction engine parked in the station’s yard. Stan and his trap were waiting, too, next to my uncle’s new Lanchester. Stan was snoring across the passengers’ seat. It was hot. I wished I could go to sleep like Stan. Then I heard the signal on the other side of the tracks clack into a new position. There was a distant hoot, and the sky was smudged with smoke above the trees on the edge of the cornfield next to the station.
I ran back just before the train came into view, the rails clicking and singing and telling us all how merry life is when things you expect come. And it did come, black and huge around the bend, clacking and whistling far too fast to stop. There was a big hiss and a cloud of steam, and the carriage slowed to a halt with its last door opposite us.
The stationmaster strolled up and opened this door. An old lady in a flowery hairnet stepped down, helped by the stationmaster. This was not my mother. Then another door opened, and an elegant man with a cane and a small leather case stepped down, looking about him as if expecting someone. A woman came running through on to the platform, in tears, and hugged the man.
‘There there,’ I heard him say, ‘there there, Marjorie.’
Then just when I was looking at this queer sad couple walking away, supporting each other and talking, my mother must have appeared, for my uncle said, ‘Here we are!’
When I looked, she was already standing on the platform, at the engine end of the carriage. It was as if she had not stepped down, but had always been there. She waved to us in a funny way, polishing the air in front of her face. We started to walk towards her. The porter was unloading some cases I recognised. I was between my aunt and uncle, having to walk fast to keep up with their grown-up pace.
‘Hello, all,’ said my mother.
She looked very tired, and had tiny wrinkles around her eyes; I didn’t remember these from last year. She kissed my aunt and uncle on the cheek, and then bent down and put her hand around the back of my head. I don’t know whether she meant to feel my mark, but feel it she did, and it made her face go like the field at the back of the garden when a wind darkens the corn for a moment.
Then she smiled again, through her tiredness. There were tiny black dots on her forehead, which I knew were smuts from the train. She smelt very much of trains and a little bit of eau de Cologne and also of unhygienic armpits.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘Have you been a good boy?’
I thought of the beating, and blushed. Africa lay over her skin like a veil. Even when she kissed me on the cheek, the veil stayed, and my Englishry couldn’t break through it.
‘Was it ghastly?’ boomed my uncle.
Was what ghastly?
We walked over to the car as my mother peeled off her white gloves and told us about the journey. Much of it went over my head, to do with times and people in London I hadn’t heard of. Stan and the trap had gone. The traction engine was still there, awaiting someone’s orders. The queer sad couple had gone, too. My mother’s cases were belted to the back of the car, and the box strapped on to the roof.
We drove back very slowly, my mother in the front with my uncle. This disappointed me: I wanted her in the back with me. Instead I had my ailing aunt, sucking Altoid Mints for her carsickness. Perhaps because she always sucked them for this purpose, their sharp, sweet smell made me feel carsick. A certain bend beyond Fogbourne lifted this sickness into my throat. I gripped the handle and started to wind the window down.
‘No, dear,’ said my aunt in my ear, ‘your mother’s been in the tropics.’
The car swayed like a ship with its heavy load, and my aunt’s mints made the air thick. I leaned my cheek against the glass and tried to catch a draught coming from a round ventilator in the front. I was stifling, breaking out in a sweat, and my uncle had his pipe in his mouth, puffing hard. The mint and the smoke and the leather of the seats, and something stale from my mother’s coat in front of me, made me feel even sicker than did the swaying motion of the car. I couldn’t believe my horrible luck. I had never noticed the zigzag weave in the bristly carpet between me and my mother’s seat before. I couldn’t stop even though my aunt was yelping and I was saying sorry, sorry.
‘Oh, how disgusting,’ shouted my aunt.
The doors were opened and my mother helped me out, though my body was still in spasms. My uncle and aunt were cross. The fact that they were cross, and I was weeping with humiliation into my mother’s handkerchief, made her take my side. I had been sick on the route between Fogbourne and Ulverton, just where it goes up on to a very bare ridge. My mother and aunt and uncle were being cross with each other in the middle of the dusty road, the car’s cut-off engine ticking as the sun beat down. The downs rolled away on each side, dotted with sheep but shadeless. A lark sang high up, directly above us. One of the problems was that there was no water in the car to drink, only water for the car’s radiator, which I had once tested secretly in the garage and spat out.
‘You were sick in Father’s car once, if you remember, Edward.’
‘He didn’t have a car until 1914.’
‘Well, you were sick in something – I remember it all over my shoes.’
My aunt said, ‘He could have said. If only he’d said. What a welcome.’
‘Oh, don’t fuss on my account, please,’ said my mother. ‘I am his mother, after all.’
There was a brief silence. Flies buzzed.
‘Attracting attention to himself, yes,’ said my aunt.
I wandered off up the road. The sun was pleasant, away from the petrol and oil and sick smells of the car, and those awful voices. There were crickets singing in the grass. I wondered whether I could trap one and keep it as a pet. I heard someone coming up behind me. There was a hand on my shoulder. My mother’s face appeared above me, then dropped down to mine.
‘Don’t worry at all, Hugh,’ she said. ‘But at least take off your shoes and trousers.’
She sounded even tireder than on the station platform, but her cheeks were red. I took off my shoes and trousers by the car while my uncle’s bottom protruded from the door o
n my aunt’s side. He was settling some oily rags on the carpet. Aunt Joy had her pinched look on, or perhaps she was just sucking hard on a mint.
‘I’d walk if we were nearer,’ she murmured, as if only to my uncle, who was emerging with a grunt.
‘Oh, do pipe down,’ he snapped, his face sweaty and strained, wiping his hands on his handkerchief. ‘For God’s sake, pipe down.’
As I stared at the footprints across the frosty lawn some six months later, I thought of those words of my uncle’s. Oh, do pipe down. She had certainly piped down now. Well, we all piped down, eventually. The only mystery was when, and where. (That was – is – the mystery of my mother, of course.)
‘Have you been a good boy, Hugh?’
That question again. I thought of the rippled Do Nots on the doors in our house, and of Mosea’s pictures of Jesus in her room, straining to be released from their pins. But being good in Africa was not the same as being good in England.
We were sitting in deckchairs on the lawn; at least, my mother was sitting in one – I was perched on the end of the other, as I didn’t like the way deckchairs hugged you and made it hard to jump up. I was forbidden to sit on the grass, and no one had brought out a rug. It was the second day of my mother’s leave. I was sure that the tiredness covering her would soon melt away. I considered her question, staring at the grass. Even from here, we could hear the tick-tock of Uncle Edward’s excavation up on the ridge, at the bottom of one of the mounds. It made me think of Long John Silver, of course, though Uncle Edward’s aim was not treasure. He was a friend of Mr Keiller’s, who was a well-known archaeologist in the area and had come to Sunday lunch with us a few times. Mr Keiller had shown us an object so like the amulet fetish I had exchanged for the galago that I blushed with shame. It too was shaped like an hourglass, if a little fatter and made of chalk.