Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘For another man?’

  ‘For anyone.’ Josie smiled. ‘Tom still gets me twitchy but that’s habit. What I’ve found out in the last few weeks, I don’t need sex. Correction. Sexual partners. I just need me. It’s wonderful. I’m going to write a book and start a revolution.’

  Norma took a cigarette. She did not often smoke.

  ‘You’re shocked,’ Josie said.

  ‘I guess I’m shocked at solitariness. I don’t think that’s the way to go.’

  ‘I’m not solitary, I’m talking to you.’

  Norma took a puff and stabbed the cigarette out. What a foul taste. ‘Are you sure you haven’t rationalized it, Josie? Other men are no good after Tom and women won’t do?’

  ‘No. I’m talking about – God, what? Norma, something marvellous is happening to me, with work and friendships and my kids, and being by myself and not needing anyone else. I’ve always had people chipping at me, running away with bits I need. Jesus, Tom got off with a barrow load. But now it doesn’t happen any more. When I said revolution just now, it’s a sort of no-sex I’m talking about. I mean, when it gets so I need something – hell Norma, it’s like a cup of Milo before bed.’

  ‘Don’t you get lonely?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you want someone there with you?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fantasy.’

  ‘So you do want someone.’

  ‘You’re talking about yourself. Loosen up. Sex isn’t in it really, you know. Being enough for yourself in every way is what it’s called. I’ll tell you what, I’ll come along and give the prize-giving speech. I’d love to get the message to those girls.’ She grinned fiercely.

  ‘What do your own girls think about it?’

  ‘Oh, families are different. I can’t tell them.’

  Norma laughed. Suddenly it shrank to nothing at all. Another Josie fad, bee in her bonnet. What Josie could find arguments for Josie would do. Some things worked for a while, no doubt. She sat and looked at the night and the stars glittering emptily over the hill, and thought about the difficulties of living alone. One learned a set of stratagems and put all those other ones of daily connection by. Forgot whole areas of play and desperation and all those cunning thrusts, discoveries of the mind and the affections. What had Josie done? – made a move because of pressures on her. Free move? Oh the pressure was inescapable, but the move was free.

  I should stand up and cheer. She’s on an ascending curve; and Norma wondered where she was herself. Starting to descend perhaps? On her way down from a place where she had known contentment? Discontents were making their bat-squeak now.

  ‘You know what I miss most?’ Josie said. ‘Loving my kids. No, I mean physically, of course I love them still. But touching them and hugging them, they don’t want it any more. Even Bel is getting past it now.’

  No child, no lover. But isn’t it my corner-stone that I’m not troubled by regrets for things I chose not to have? How would an adman put it – regret-free? And look now, my career. See how it sparkles and shines. Norma laughed.

  ‘It isn’t funny.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Josie. Just some nonsense in my head. There must be other satisfactions. Seeing them grow up into women.’

  ‘That’s when the pain really starts. I wish I could,’ made a lifting movement with her hands, ‘pick them up and shift them where I am.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody pious, yes I do. You think there’s some virtue in that stuff with men? Love and trust and kicks in the teeth? You kept clear, I notice.’

  I won’t get angry, Norma thought. But really, does she have to be so crass? She shouldn’t be so careless as that.

  ‘Duncan is a man. Or he soon will be.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself. Duncan is a nothing. No, no, sorry, I mustn’t say that. Duncan is – what? – evidence?’

  ‘He’s got some life, you know, outside your mind.’

  ‘Yes, he has. But I keep on thinking someone said, “That’ll bloody teach you.” Duncan as a lesson to me. Isn’t that what God’s supposed to do? Cut us down when we get uppity. Jesus, if I thought the prick had used Duncan on me …’

  ‘Oh shut up, Josie.’ Said it pleasantly. But self-indulgence of this sort really was disgusting. ‘Tell me about his telescope.’

  ‘He just went out and bought it. Four hundred bucks’ worth. Drew the money from his own account. The day after he met your friend.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that good?’

  ‘Is it? Do you think it makes a jot of difference how he’ll end up? Why in hell did you bring up Duncan? I’d managed to forget him for a while.’

  You managed to forget the way you feel. Duncan isn’t something in your head. ‘Don’t have another drink. You’ve had enough.’

  ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? Oh Norma, I’m sorry. You’re my friend. You’re right, I won’t have another. Booze just screws me up, I can’t think straight. Duncan is improving, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘He took me up,’ she waved at the top of the section, ‘and showed me a globular cluster last night. It was beautiful. I had no idea. And he knows all the names. In a week.’

  ‘I’d like to get him back to school some time. At least into classes of some sort.’

  ‘Yes, please do.’

  But how? And where? And to what end Duncan might choose? There was a long way to go and Norma had the sense of being excluded. It seemed she might have played her part, and John Toft his, and Duncan be moving on his own. She felt robbed of possibilities for love, astonished at her sudden nakedness. She had not thought him much more than a job, an exercise in – caring? – the fashionable term? The boy had not looked at her or spoken at the table, had gone without a word at the end of the meal, and later she had glimpsed him climbing through the rock garden, dropping over the wall, with a squat black box in his arm.

  ‘A telescope,’ Josie had explained.

  ‘It’s one of those short ones,’ Belinda. ‘You can see the moons of Jupiter.’

  ‘Ah,’ Norma said. She had felt elated; and depressed.

  He sits in his possie in the firebreak and finds M7 in Scorpius. Viewing low in the west isn’t good because of the city-glow over the hills. But there’s no single light anywhere. Duncan has chosen his place. The house is hidden by the curve of the hill, and Clearwater’s and the clubhouse at the golf course are blocked by trees. There’s only one small stretch of road where car lights show.

  Saturn is gone. He is too late for Saturn. In all that time he wasted it was there, passing over from east to west. Now it’s in the city-glow and it won’t rise again until next June. Venus is nearly gone too, but Venus doesn’t interest him. He wants to see rings and satellites. He does not want ordinary, unmarked, perfect things. Soon he will shift to Jupiter, high in the north. At half past nine Io will disappear into eclipse. East to west is the movement after opposition. Duncan means to time the event. In the meantime he practises finding the Messier objects in Scorpius, then uses Venus to find Neptune and Uranus. The distance of those two makes him smile. He spans it between his finger and thumb.

  His stand for the telescope works fine, there’s not the slightest bit of wobble now. Hard work lugging up that length of tanalized post and the four half-buckets of concrete, and tricky getting the level right and screwing on the chipboard plate and vinyl pockets for the tripod legs. On the plate is written in felt-tip: Equipment for Astronomical Observations. Do not Disturb. R. Observatory. The ‘R’ stands for Round but Duncan hopes forestry workers and tampers will take it for Royal. He is using the stand for the first time tonight. He thinks he might show Belinda soon, and maybe his mother. Not Mandy or Stell. And what about Mrs Sangster? He feels a little guilty about her; the sudden way he found he didn’t need her any more. He’s embarrassed by the kind of crush he had, but knows it isn’t fair to act as though they haven’t been friends. Next time she comes he’ll talk to
her.

  Now, though, he doesn’t want anyone. He looks up to the north and finds Jupiter with his eye, just like a star among the stars. The ancients were pretty bright to notice that it moved. You couldn’t blame them, he supposed, for working out their crazy stuff as an explanation.

  He gets Jupiter in the spotter-scope, then shifts to the big scope and makes the planet jump towards him, millions of miles, with its raft of Galilean moons; and there is Io on the eastern side.

  Duncan bares his teeth. ‘Beaudy,’ he says.

  ‘I think I’ll have a swim after all.’

  ‘What about your sneezes?’

  ‘I’ll just have to try mind over matter. Will you come in?’

  They went to Josie’s bedroom and Josie found a one-piece suit for Norma and bikinis for herself. ‘Why use these things? Tom’s not here and Duncan’s gone.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you.’ Belinda might be sensible but could any child resist such a tale – Mrs Sangster swimming in the nick? She put on the togs, wishing these little freedoms were not denied her. They made her buttocks feel as though set in cement. Josie put on hers: perfect fit, body all ship-shape. That must be the aerobics she did.

  They were at the water, dipping their toes, when Belinda cried, ‘Phone for you, Mrs Sangster.’

  ‘Nobody knows I’m here, who is it?’

  ‘It’s a man,’ Belinda grinned.

  ‘Hallo, Norma Sangster.’

  ‘For God’s sake Norma, where have you been? I’ve been phoning all over town.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Clive?’

  ‘It’s Mum and Dad.’

  She turned from Josie in the conservatory door. She put her hand on the wall to touch something firm. Clive’s nittery voice went on and on.

  ‘Yes,’ Norma said, ‘tell her I’m coming.’ She put down the phone. ‘Josie, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Is it something bad?’

  ‘Mum and Dad. Dad’s in hospital.’

  ‘Oh, Norma.’

  ‘Someone broke in and tried to rob them.’

  ‘Hurt them? Attacked them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She went to the bedroom and took the swimsuit off. It had cut deep marks in her thighs. ‘Don’t tell the girls. I’d prefer not to have it round the school.’

  ‘Is your father all right?’

  ‘Clive thinks he’s dying. I’m sorry Josie, bad news makes me rude.’ She went out to her car and drove away. How absurd, she thought, to find out a thing like this wearing someone else’s tight bathing suit. She could not, yet, think of what had happened.

  Clive was in the ward foyer, leaning on the windowsill. He ground out his cigarette. ‘They stick me out here because I smoke. Non-smokers get a waiting-room.’

  ‘How is he, Clive? Can I see him?’

  He led her along the ward, put his head in the sister’s office, ‘I’m taking Mrs Sangster to see Mr Schwass,’ and showed her into a small sideroom. The empty bed by the window made her gasp, then a curtain squeaked back round a second bed and a woman came out. Plain woman with one off-centre eye. Her white coat meant she was a doctor.

  ‘This is my sister, Mrs Sangster,’ Clive said.

  Norma saw her father through a gap in the curtain. He was sleeping with the stern look she remembered from her childhood.

  ‘He’s deeply unconscious, Mrs Sangster,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s not in any pain. I want you to be certain of that.’

  ‘Is there any chance that he’ll recover?’ She was pleased that she could speak right out and not waste words. She watched the doctor weigh her.

  ‘I don’t think so. A massive stroke. I don’t think recovery – we shouldn’t wish for it.’

  ‘You can’t say that,’ Clive began, but Norma stopped him.

  ‘And he won’t hear anything we say?’

  ‘I think perhaps I’d sit and talk to him and hold his hand. But really he’s deep down and far away.’

  Norma had a flash of admiration for the woman – to say these ordinary words and yet avoid cliché … ‘Thank you,’ she said, and went behind the curtain and sat in a chair by her father’s side. ‘Hallo, Dad,’ she whispered, putting her hand on his. The skin was papery and moved on the hand-shape underneath. ‘Can you hear me? I love you, Dad.’ She managed that before Clive came in. He stood at her side and seemed to be waiting for some act she might perform.

  ‘Did they hurt him?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s got some bruises here, on his shoulder,’ he touched his own. ‘No, he’s not hurt. They held him down. God knows, his mind just kind of, I don’t know, went bang.’

  ‘Did they hurt Mum?’

  ‘One of them got a handful –’ Clive turned away and swallowed, ‘– he got a handful of her stomach and twisted it –’

  ‘God.’

  ‘– trying to make her say if there was any more money.’

  ‘Is she –’

  ‘Mum’s all right. Mum’s pretty tough.’

  ‘Who were they, Clive?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two of them. Not Maoris, both of them white. There was a girl in it too.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘I don’t know any names. She waited outside in a car. Don’t talk about it, eh Norma? Not in front of him.’

  Norma sat and held her father’s hand. She lifted it and was surprised by its weight. One did not feel that weight when lifting one’s own. With this thought she felt him go from her; and though he lived she gained a sense of ending, of something done and brought to its close. Tears ran on her face. She kissed his brow.

  It seemed this was what Clive waited for.

  ‘I think you should go and see Mum now. I’ll stay here. If you want to come back when she’s asleep we’ll work it in shifts with the old man.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’

  ‘Bring me a packet of smokes when you come.’

  She drove out to the berry farm and found her mother drinking tea.

  ‘I can’t get her to go to bed,’ Daphne said.

  ‘I’ll have to take one of those knockout pills when I go to bed so my stomach won’t keep hurting where that silly boy twisted me. How’s poor Ken?’

  Norma kissed her. ‘No change, Mum. He’s still unconscious.’ She knelt by her chair and held her tight.

  ‘Ouch, dear,’ Mrs Schwass said. ‘I think he loved his adventure today. He was always talking about fights.’

  ‘He’s had a stroke, Mum. Don’t you understand?’ Daphne said. She had red eyes and a swollen nose.

  ‘He was marvellous trying to hit them with his stick.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘You shouldn’t make her remember it,’ Daphne cried.

  ‘I certainly don’t intend to forget,’ Mrs Schwass said. Norma had not known her so sharp in years.

  ‘I’d love a cup of tea, Daphne. Did you know them, Mum? Had you ever seen them?’

  ‘They had stockings on their heads so they looked all squashed up like plasticine. When I opened the door I thought they wanted pennies for the guy. “It’s too late for Guy Fawkes, boys,” I said. Then they just pushed in, absolutely rude, and one of them – the fair one because he had some hair sticking up through a hole in his stocking – he caught me round the jaw and squeezed my mouth …’

  ‘No squeals, grandma, or I’ll break your fucking neck.’ He spun her round so fast her head went dizzy and ran her at the stairs, with one arm round her throat and one round her middle. His knee butted under her behind and lifted her up at each step. The other man ran ahead. She heard Ken shout and saw him swing his stick and catch his attacker on the arm. ‘Good one, Ken,’ she tried to say. Then her captor threw her on the sofa and the other man lifted Ken and clapped him in a chair. He hooked the handle of Ken’s stick under his chin and pulled his head back.

  ‘How do you like that, you old fucker?’

  ‘It was like a butcher’s hook,’ she says, ‘as though they were going to hang poor Ken on a rail.’

 
Her man pulled her up. ‘OK grandma, let’s see what you got. Money first.’ He put his arm over her shoulder in a way that might have been friendly if the forearm had not angled back and forced up her chin. She wasn’t afraid and tried to tell him so. She wasn’t afraid for Ken. It would satisfy him if his life ended in this way. She did not care for the cruelty of the men and their language was so nasty she wished they would give her time to say what she thought of it.

  ‘Where’s this money in the biscuit-tin?’

  The queen was on the lid, smiling away. A fat lot she knew. Men like these would never come within cooee of her. He pushed her into the corner between the sink and stove, made her sit, put his foot on her to hold her down. That was degrading but she did not struggle. His face, flat and fat and ugly in the stocking, made him somehow – what was the word – incommunicado? He must like such unhumanness. The sprig of hair poking out the hole would annoy him – so boyish, she thought.

  He ripped off the lid, grunted at the money. ‘How much?’

  ‘It’s Ken’s nest-egg. He’ll be angry if you take it.’

  He stuffed the notes into a plastic bag from his pocket. Looked in the coin tin. ‘You can keep this for ice-creams. What else have you got?’

  ‘Peanut brownies if you’re hungry.’

  He pushed his foot into her. ‘You’re a cheeky old bitch. Jewels and watches, eh? Where do you keep it?’

  ‘No, you’re mistaken, we’re not rich.’

  He opened crocks and tins. Felt in them. He emptied sugar on her, flour, tea, and she spluttered and coughed. ‘That’s a dreadful waste.’

  He pulled her up. His misshapen face was alarming, but she was not going to be scared. ‘I’m going to call the police in a minute.’

  ‘Try that and you’ll get your tongue ripped out.’

  That was too absurd to frighten her. She guessed though that he would hit or squeeze her, choke her maybe until she died. His judgement would be poor on a thing like that. She wanted to see what the other one was doing to Ken.

  ‘There’s a few things in the bedroom but they’re not worth very much.’

  ‘Where’s the bedroom?’