by Unknown
‘Nathan,’ said Dotty. She resented his everlasting nights of symbolic imagery. She herself dreamed mostly that she was being betrayed or tortured or conned by Joseph. She could never remember the whole of her dreams, and if she was asked she made something up. Still when Joseph spoke so directly to her, treating her as if she were real to him, she was forced to respond. Apart from that, she loved him and she didn’t want to hurt him.
‘Of course, Nathan.’ Delighted, Joseph smiled at her. Nathan was the cat.
‘I dreamed the baby next door was in my bed,’ Roland said.
‘The baby next door was in your bed,’ repeated Joseph fondly, still thinking of the rope about the thick waist of Kidney.
‘But when I woke up it was only Kidney,’ said Roland.
‘Only Kidney,’ said Joseph. ‘Only Kidney! In your bed? Surely not?’
The child didn’t reply, absorbed in thoughts of the baby next door. Sometimes when the baby’s parents went out – to a party or something – they left it with his mother and it slept in a cot in his room. In the morning Roland would wake and see it standing in a long nightie at the end of the cot, peering through the bars at him. It had a pinkish face with no eyebrows and no teeth either and just a few shreds of hair, the colour of marmalade, on its plump head. If he went towards the cot the baby lifted up its arms and tried to pull itself up out of the bed. His mother had warned him never to lift the baby out on his own, but he often did, until one morning the baby slipped backwards into the cot and fell with its head against the bars. His mother came running then and lifted the baby up, and after a while she let Roland cuddle it. He was sad and excited at having hurt it, and he put his face down into the fold of its neck, where it smelt like an apple, and he cried too.
‘Roland, I’m talking to you. Was Kidney in your bed?’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘What the hell did he get into Roland’s bed for?’ asked Joseph helplessly, looking at Dotty with raised eyebrows.
‘Probably couldn’t see in the dark,’ she said reasonably.
‘But he shouldn’t have.’
‘Why not?’ asked Roland, leaving the table and going to the door of the hut. He peered over at the marigold and was relieved to see that the wasp had gone.
‘Well, he shouldn’t have.’ At a loss, his father put back his frying pan on the gas and continued his cooking.
‘I didn’t mind.’ Roland came back to the table and leaned against Dotty. ‘Did you mind Daddy being in your bed?’
‘No,’ Dotty said, stirring her tea and wanting her comb.
Willie spent most of the morning hanging about the barn and Hut 4, anxious not to miss anything and with plenty to think about. He filled the lavatory pan with an equal amount of chemical and water and replaced it on its base in the shed among the bushes. Nobody appeared to take advantage of his gesture. He refilled the crater he had made, burying Kidney’s waste matter, and burned some rubbish left by Balfour several weeks ago.
The girl in the nightgown wandered about the field for some time before getting dressed, looking at the flowers in the hedgerows and lighting a lot of cigarettes she rolled herself. She dropped matches and stub ends all over the place. She went and sat on the swing too, gliding over the grass with her nightgown billowing out behind her and her two thin yellow feet pointing at the sky. Mr George, Willie thought, would be grim-faced about all those fag-ends littering the place. He was a tidy sort like his father, though not half the man his father was. In the middle of the morning Mr Joseph went into the barn. There was a lot of shouting, and after a while a boy came out into the sunshine with a mop of hair and a face pretty as a girl, prettier than most. Mr Joseph said it was too late for breakfast now, nearly lunchtime in fact. He told the lad he was too fat anyway, which was about the size of it – a big soft lump of a lad, just standing there shuffling his feet and blushing and saying he was sorry. After a bit more talk, too low-pitched for Willie to catch, the lad began taking off his shirt and his vest and there was a pair of breasts good enough for a woman, if you didn’t like them too big. White little swellings turning pinkish, for all the world like the buds on the Norway maple down in the Glen, and not a sign of hair on the padded chest nor beneath the armpits. This last fact Willie established when Joseph had hoisted the youth on to the branch of the tree, letting him dangle by his arms above the slope. He was supposed to raise his legs, but he just hung there with his face filling with blood.
4
At mid-day when Joseph was checking the food stores he was depressed to realize that the supply he had brought to last three or four days was barely going to feed them for today. It was Dotty eating half the bacon at one go. Where had the grapefruit juice gone and the three boxes of cheese segments? Righteously indignant, he thundered her name from the doorway, agitating Willie who was taking his ease at the back of the barn, sitting in the long grass with his cigarette alight and his cap over his eyes.
‘What’s up now?’ Willie asked himself out loud.
Again the girl’s name was called, louder this time.
Grinning because it wasn’t he Mr Joseph was after, Willie relaxed and drew on his Woodbine.
After a while, for she had been down at the stream with Roland when the summons came, Dotty appeared at the door of the hut, a little out of breath from her climb up the slope. She had been dreaming all the time she ran up the path that above in the holiday hut love waited. Love had suddenly seized Joseph by the throat and dragged him to the edge of the forest to call her name. Either that or he had found her lost comb which she hadn’t washed for weeks or the soiled underwear she had stuffed into the wicker basket under the settee.
She said ‘Yes?’ looking at his humourless face as he put down knives and forks on the dinner table.
‘Where’s the cheese and where’s the grapefruit juice?’
‘The grapefruit juice?’
‘The grapefruit juice.’
He was emptying salt from a packet into an egg cup. All the work there would be when they left, she thought – putting butter in glass bowls and Roland’s tomato sauce into a gravy jug. Such a fuss. Relieved that it wasn’t her comb or the state of her bra, she said, ‘If you mean the grapefruit juice we got on the Finchley Road, it’s in the fridge at the flat.’
‘At the flat?’
‘You said it was too big to go in the grocery box, so we didn’t bring it. And the cheese is in the tin on the shelf.’
‘Do you realize we have only enough food for today?’
It didn’t surprise her at all. He’d brought rice and raisins but no potatoes or tins of Heinz beans or anything they could live on.
‘It means,’ said Joseph, bitterly, ‘that I’ll have to shop again tomorrow. I’ve already spent a bomb.’
Dotty sat down at the table.
‘You’re slouching,’ he said. ‘Here, cut up some onions. I’m making a rice thing for lunch.’
‘Roland won’t eat it,’ she said.
Joseph didn’t reply. She chopped gamely at the onions he placed in front of her.
‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that I ought to say something to Kidney? About his being in Roland’s bed?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dotty. ‘What could you say?’
‘I could mention the bed’s not big enough for two. He might say something – give some explanation.’
‘I doubt it,’ Dotty said. ‘Are you worried about sex or something?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Joseph. But he was worried. When he had suggested having Kidney to live with him, the doctor at the clinic Kidney attended had asked him if there were any women living in the house. Joseph hadn’t mentioned Dotty because he hadn’t thought of her as being a permanent fixture.
‘He was probably just cold,’ said Dotty. ‘I’d forget about it. If he was really bonkers – I mean, dangerous – he’d be in a home.’ She stood up and turned the gas lower under the pan of bubbling rice. It still mystified her how Joseph had managed to get permissio
n to take care of Kidney.
‘He has been in a home,’ said Joseph. ‘Several in fact. Leave that rice alone.’
She did as she was told. The rice was almost done and with any luck it might stick to the bottom of the pan. She went and sat on the settee at the end of the hut, feeling with the heels of her feet for the wicker basket, watching Joseph scrape the cut onions and paprikas into the frying pan. When he turned his back to place the vegetables on the stove she leant forward and put her fingers under the lid of the basket, trying to locate her bra. But she couldn’t.
‘Go and call Roland,’ bade Joseph, turning the contents of the pan with a knife. ‘And see if Kidney is at the back of the barn with Tommy.’
‘Willie,’ corrected Dotty, going out into the field.
Joseph shook the pan about briskly, causing mushroom buds to fall among the paprikas and the pale rings of onion. He thought, Degas or Delacroix or someone like that had made a work of art once out of an omelette. What a pity Kidney had given up painting. Not that the results were all that stimulating – dull little fields with puffy clouds – and he himself had to spend such hours clearing the mess up afterwards, the paint splashed on the wall and the smears of water on the table. It was a pity, but some time soon, very soon, he was going to have to turn Kidney over to someone else. It would mean he might have to go into a home again. But somehow, he’d lost interest. He could always visit the youth. ‘Lunch,’ he shouted, putting his head out of the window, seeing Dotty and Kidney on the path. ‘Did you call Roland?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
When he came in, Roland ate the rice without complaint. ‘What’s that tree called?’ he asked his father. ‘The one beside the barn?’
As usual, he received no reply, for Joseph was listening to the sounds made by Willie hovering outside the hut.
‘He’s waiting for his bloody tip,’ Joseph told Dotty, none too quietly, adding loudly for the benefit of the Welshman without, ‘Like a cup of Nescafé?’
Willie didn’t really want the drink. To tell the truth he was beginning to feel a bit peckish and regretful he hadn’t gone home for some breakfast, but he did want to be amongst them – the woman and Mr Joseph and the plump young lad. What the devil was the lad doing along with Mr Joseph? ‘Come up from London too?’ he asked Kidney, removing his cap now he was indoors, wondering where to sit himself.
‘Yes, from London too,’ said Mr Joseph. Not a peep out of the lad himself, sitting there at the table with his cheeks like apples and his eyes shining. ‘Sit down, Bill,’ Mr Joseph told him, and there being no chair vacant he had to go to the end of the hut to the settee. He hadn’t been called Bill since he was a boy and he sat very stiffly on the chintz settee with his shirt very full in the front, giving him a breast like a pigeon, and his red hair pressed flat to his head after being under his cap for so many hours. The girl looked as if she hadn’t had a decent meal for God knows how long, spooning the food into her mouth, sitting with rounded shoulders. Mr Joseph had noted her shoulders. He was sitting very straight himself, in the manner of Mr MacFarley.
‘Not at work today then, Bill?’
‘Oh God no, Mr Joseph. I’ve been retired these six years. Seven more like.’
‘Retired? Really.’ Fixing his attention on Willie and off the hungry Dotty, Joseph made an attempt at conversation. ‘Must find a lot of changes, being retired, Bill. Time hang heavy on your hands, does it?’
Dotty, hearing the mimicry of Willie’s accent, scowled.
‘Oh God no, I’m kept pretty busy here, you know. Always something to do, there is. Mr MacFarley’s always got improvements in hand.’ He wasn’t sure that Mr Joseph was listening. At all events he was looking out at the field beyond the open door, leaning well back in his chair.
‘Plenty to do,’ said Willie, wondering when the girl would roll another cigarette and whether he would be offered one.
‘I haven’t seen old George this morning,’ said Joseph.
‘I have,’ Roland said. ‘He came down to the stream when I was playing with my boat. He told me not to fall in the water.’
‘That’s right,’ Willie told him. ‘Can’t have you falling in the water.’
‘He asked if you were up here,’ said Roland. ‘I said you were. I said you were digging a hole.’
‘Oh, aye.’ Mr George, Willie reflected, was no fool. Not the man his father was, but fairly shrewd. He’d be up here soon to ask why he was doing the toilet when it had been done only a day or so earlier. He’d best be getting off home soon.
‘How do you get on with George?’ asked Joseph suddenly, abandoning his food, laying down his fork and pushing the plate away.
‘Well, now.’ Willie dropped his cap to the floor. ‘I can’t say that I divine Mr George. I can’t say that I do.’
‘Very apt,’ Joseph said, seeing in his mind the pigmy Welshman standing before the giant George, holding a divining rod towards the dark and elongated head.
‘You see, it’s like this, Mr Joseph. He was always a trifle odd, but he wasn’t half so odd till he’d been to Israel – ’
‘To Israel?’ said Joseph, startled.
‘When he came back from Israel,’ Willie said, ‘he was a changed being and that’s the truth. Even Mr MacFarley remarked on the change in him. Like as if he was mesmerized.’
‘What’s Israel?’ Roland wanted to know, eating an orange on the floor.
‘Where the Jews live,’ his father told him. ‘Get up and sit at the table. No one said you could eat on the floor.’
The child stayed where he was, juice running from his lips.
‘What’s the red tree by the barn please, Willie?’
‘The juniper tree, you mean – the one with the dark berries?’
‘I didn’t see any berries,’ said Roland.
‘Don’t go eating any berries, my lad. You’ll get belly-ache.’
‘I think I’d better have one of my pills,’ Kidney said, apparently to Willie. ‘I should have one three times a day.’
Joseph said, ‘I’ve decided to cut them out for a time. See what a bit of fresh air and exercise will do.’ He began to put coffee powder into mugs of assorted colours.
‘What’s been wrong with Balfour?’ asked Dotty. ‘George said last night he’d been ill for a long time.’ Dotty had been thinking about Balfour most of the morning.
Willie saw that she had already rolled one cigarette and was in the process of rolling another. In anticipation he said, ‘Something wrong with his blood, I think, Mrs Dotty. I don’t rightly know what. Thank you, I will.’ He took the thin wafer she proffered him. ‘He went away to Italy for a holiday some years back and picked up a germ. Kept him off work for quite a time. You see, it’s like this. He gets sick suddenly – very high temperatures and the shivers, like as if he was turned to ice. All he can do is hide away and sleep it off.’
‘How awkward,’ remarked Joseph. He had little patience with sickness. How the hell, he wondered, had someone like Balfour afforded to go abroad. Not to mention George trotting round Israel. He bent and wiped at Roland’s sticky mouth with the tea towel. If he wasn’t so encumbered with responsibilities he might manage somewhere more exotic himself, though it would probably be the same wherever he went.
‘Is Balfour ill now?’ asked Dotty. But Willie was lighting his cigarette for the third time and pretended not to hear. He was a little tired of being the focal point of attention and he didn’t much care for Balfour, hardly crediting why the MacFarleys had taken up with him in the first place.
‘I think I ought to have a pill,’ said Kidney loudly. ‘I may get a bad headache otherwise.’
‘Nonsense.’ Brusquely Joseph placed a mug of coffee before him. ‘Tell me, Bill, don’t you find there’s a sight too much pill-taking? Too many drugs and soporifics used today … in comparison with when you were a boy? … Don’t you agree? … Don’t expect you saw the doctor much?’
‘No … no …’ Dismissing such pampering, Willie blew on his drink
to cool it, looking down at his cigarette with disgust. The bloody thing was out again.
Pushing back his chair, Joseph said briskly, ‘Right. Everybody out. Lionel will be arriving soon. I don’t care what you do but leave me to tidy up.’ Energetically he piled plates and stacked mugs. Willie, unable to ask for his tip, went out feeling cheated.
‘Aren’t you ever going to come and play with me and my boat?’ said Roland.
‘Later, boy, later. Go on, move.’ Joseph pushed both the child and Dotty towards the door. Kidney stood up.
‘Just a moment, Kidney,’ said Joseph. ‘Something I want to ask you.’
Kidney sat down again.
‘I did tell you last night not to disturb Roland,’ began Joseph. ‘I did say to be quiet.’
Kidney stared at him.
‘I did say that, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ said Kidney.
‘Well?’
‘I didn’t disturb him, Joseph.’
‘You got into his bed.’
‘Yes, Joseph.’
‘Well?’
‘I didn’t disturb him, Joseph.’
‘But why did you get into his bed?’ Joseph took away the plates and dumped them in the sink.
The boy looked at him as if to speak. Instead he turned his eyes towards the doorway and studied the field.
Trying to reach him another way Joseph seated himself at the table. ‘Why do you think you ought to have a pill?’
‘I usually have a pill after lunch. I always have one.’ Mouth trembling, Kidney repeated, ‘After lunch I have one.’
‘Well, I don’t know if it does much good really, but if you feel you ought to – ’ Capitulating, Joseph decided to let Kidney have his pill.