The Everlasting Sunday

by Robert Lukins

  The house was no pretender of authority. It gave no effort to an impression of being an asylum, a prison or any amalgam of the two. It seemed, if anything, to have been fashioned from the innards of innumerable aunts’ drawing rooms, all rugs on rugs and browns on browns, the wallpaper generations thick. Radford had followed West into a hallway with chambers running both sides and heads projecting suddenly from doorways. As West brought them to the end he towed a crowd jostling to inspect the foundling.

  ‘His name is Radford,’ West announced as they poured into a room. ‘We must make space. Where’s Rich?’

  ‘Gone to the village,’ said a long, freckled face. ‘He and Lewis think they’ve got a chance with the bakery girl.’

  ‘Well, he’s been sent down to the chicken house.’ There was some dark laughter at this. ‘It’s a luckless day. The least we can do is set him up well in his new digs.’

  Bodies continued to maraud in, sallow figures scoffing and competing, and in small time the room had been stripped. The vandalism seemed practised and the vacating tribe left only a bare bed and a wardrobe with its doors swung open to reveal vacant hangers. Someone pushed an armful of trousers into Radford’s arms and he was pulled into the hall and absorbed into the running huddle, a half-dozen, now sunny as they charged downwards, the plundered loot of Rich’s room aloft. There had been no time to form a defence; Radford was centred in the pack as West started to cluck and bekirk at the front. The others copied and, having rampaged a dining room and kitchen, they were disgorged to continue their exercise across the snow.

  ‘Keep up, little one.’ West slugged Radford on the back, and he hugged Rich’s trousers tighter still, stumbling ever colder.

  They made the rear of the building and over his shoulder Radford saw the full scale of its confused shape. It was as if a village had coalesced over time into a single structure. What might once have been stables and servants’ quarters, family cottages, had been drawn in with the central house. Walls and pitched roofs of different centuries met at both strange and obvious angles like the grafted limbs he had seen on his grandparents’ roses.

  The freckled boy slipped and came down hard, spilling his cargo. Others slowed to observe the accident and poked around at the fallen goods until someone ahead shouted something accusatory and they regained their pace, crowing as one. It was unclear how much of this was brotherly and how much unkind. The snowfall was coming for Radford as he strained to keep straight, finding himself alongside a short figure with Roman, serious features. This boy nodded as introduction, adjusting his blankets to shake hands and, looking satisfied, promptly vanished.

  As they rounded the building’s far end a frail wooden shed came into view and a coven of chickens scattered. The coop. Radford felt unease at the sight of it. His arrival was forcing this unmet Rich to be put up in the fowls’ house and it was simultaneously too daft and too severe. He had expected this place to be a situation close to purgatory, yet here they were in the midst of an infant school’s jape. He wanted to return to sleep, to its persistent past.

  Hay bales were dragged in, brushed clean of their snowy caps and ordered into the shape of furniture. One of these, waist-high and wrapped in sheets, became a bed. A wooden crate on its end resembled a bedside table. More hay was amassed against a wall, creating nooks into which clothes were affectionately folded and made into bundles, and around all this chickens returned, pecking and curious at their new ornaments.

  Radford neatened his armful of trousers into a pile and found a home for them. The coop offered toy resistance to the weather’s enterprise and when the wind turned parallel it delivered a gush of fresh ice. The boys shivered and their chatter dulled. West made attempts to pull the leaning door closed but it scraped and stopped solid against the muck. He had come through carrying an archaic lantern and, with two others lifting him by the belt, hung it over an exposed nail in a roof beam.

  ‘A palace.’ West dusted off his hands as his toes touched earth. ‘Rich can only be delighted.’

  Gazes were dodged as another nasty gust blew through the walls and rattled the tin. One boy motioned to leave and the rest departed as an undisciplined company, West making himself last, trying again but with less effort to bring the door shut. The others ran back at the big house, with no more clucking or congratulation. Radford and West cantered in tow, each folding arms against their torsos.

  ‘This Rich will really be sent out?’

  ‘Of course,’ West said.

  Reaching the same patch of blanched earth that had claimed the freckled boy, Radford lost his feet and was only just caught by the shoulder.

  ‘Teddy will have his little edicts,’ West said, righting him. ‘They’re only to keep the game alive, nothing to be frightened of.’

  It would be admitting too much, to respond. Radford was the first of the pair inside and he chased the sounds of warring life back to the upstairs hall. West followed and failed twice to have them speak, halting at the entrance to Radford’s room as he lifted his suitcase to the mattress. Radford evacuated its clothes, holding them for a time at the yawning mouth of the wardrobe before thinking better and placing the stack on the floor. The case went under the bed and Radford on top, shuffling until he sat with his back flat to the wall.

  ‘Feeding’s around six,’ West said. ‘I’ll knock when it’s up.’ He allowed time for acknowledgement to remain unspoken and pulled the door closed.

  Radford stayed straight, refusing the temptation to lie down. Half an hour it had taken for simplicity to have been poisoned. Even the bareness of his new room was false, an absence instead of an emptiness. This was not as he had intended. There had been the purest of plans, to be silent and dumb. Then came Teddy and West with their complicating kindness. Those two had intruded so quickly and completely, and Rich, whoever he turned out to be, was now to live out in a slurry of snow and guano for no reason other than Radford’s presence. This Rich would hate him for it and so in turn would the rest.

  The hanging bare bulb glowed yellow. How useless, as unremarkable darkness lay behind and ahead. On the opposite wall the plaster’s age grew in a branching fissure until it butted up against more recent material. The door too was modern with rough gaps remaining around its frame and it occurred to Radford that his room had been created by splitting a larger in two. He stopped himself only a second before turning this inconsiderable fact of architecture into metaphor. Enough, enough of all this. Enough cleverness. The seams of his arrival had been torn but his ultimate plan was untouchable. All that remained was to see it out, to not have it distracted.

  Weariness descended and he removed his shoes.

  Across was a window that may well have looked down at a pond, but from Radford’s position he could see only cloud ready to drop its storm.

  The Manor was a place for boys who had been found by trouble. Those were the words the man from the government had used: found by trouble. He had been addressing Radford’s mother and in that instant the boy had wanted more than anything to be able to injure time, to go back and remove what it had witnessed; to unstitch this ill that had found him.

  The government man explained that the house was by a long shot the best option they would be offered. The alternative was a more difficult place. He had called on favours and twisted the arms of several important people to have the Manor be even a possibility. Radford and his mother, it was explained, did not realise how fortunate they had been. The Manor was something they must be grateful for.

  When the knock came Radford was by the glass. Outside, just the meringue peaks of landscape were visible by the light from ground-floor windows.

  ‘Housekeeping.’ West came in whistling and dropped a pillow and blankets. His buoyancy must have been that of driftwood. It could not be a living thing.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Supper will be up,’ West said. ‘You’re coming?’

  As they travelled
others joined, some starting on tussles that ended in only messed hair and threats. An approximately handsome figure came upon Radford, inspecting him and all the while sharpening the point of his quiff. He asked questions and West answered Radford’s name and presented him as a pet might be introduced to a household of children.

  ‘And this is Brass,’ West said, biting his thumb. ‘Ignore any and every thing he has to say. His is a mind unencumbered by reason.’

  ‘You mustn’t blame our West for his little digs,’ Brass said. ‘He gets his frustrations all confused with his jealousies. And he has an awful lot of frustrations.’

  They moved ever downwards.

  ‘You’re society?’ Brass asked. ‘Come clean if you are, it’s no crime.’

  Radford felt his mother’s steamy breath on his neck. He briefly pondered how answering this could do anything but confirm the false accusation. West threw his hands up in objection.

  ‘Jesus, sensitive,’ Brass said, forfeiting his interest and starting again on his hair.

  They arrived in the dining room, where four long tables made rows by mismatched lounges and kitchen chairs. An upright piano and a radio sat in a corner and the fireplace took up the far wall’s centre. Twenty or thirty boys were already roaming in noisy clans, all gripping food bowls and making huffy declarations to the warmth. West called Radford into the kitchen and handed him a dish and spoon. From one of the two copper pots steaming beside a cube of bread rolls he claimed a serve of the fair-looking stew.

  Back in the dining room West’s lot took over a table’s end and Brass shared around jam jars filled with a murky foam. West clutched his and took a swig. It took two attempts for Radford to recognise the sour-bread aroma of beer. Brass was watching, egging on with conspiratorial eyebrows.

  ‘Get stuck in, will you?’ he said. ‘Before it’s seen.’

  Radford wrapped his hands around the glass. By virtue of being West’s discovery he had been brought among this subset. The ease of this was why it could not be trusted. Nonetheless he lifted the beer to his lips and let it pour in. Bitterness muddled with wood turning to ash; all the world became the inside of a football boot. He thought of his uncle filling his sitting room with the scent of burnt sugar and oil while cleaning engine parts.

  The one named Lewis arrived flustered. He ploughed his meal while working himself into an indignant lather over the actions of an aggressor he never quite named. He had been put offside with the cook, blamed in absentia for some crime with the potatoes, and his protestations had been so great that they were taken as an admission. He went on, raging ever hotter until he spotted the beer and his words ran loudly together. West clamped his mouth and drew him into a clinch, slashing a finger at his throat. Lewis nodded, his eyes growing wide as Brass produced a tall open bottle from between his feet and halved its contents.

  Radford watched the alcohol take. Smiles were begun and extinguished, the beer and stew settled and as minutes succeeded they all grew slow and contented. Circumscribing Radford, they spoke and joked easily. They were a mongrel outfit, accents and skins from all over, some looking separated by at least a few years.

  Brass jostled like he might be the eldest, perhaps as old as nineteen. His hair, on which he performed constant maintenance, was oiled into a greaser style. His cheeks were drawn with pink perforations yet the pallid, scarred skin somehow amplified his glamour, giving it a defiant narration.

  Lewis was the tallest in the room, his head peaked with a ragged blonde outcrop. He sat with a stoop, which only emphasised his length; his broomstick arms waved around in wide, wind-making signals.

  West: still wildly keen, ever contriving circumstances in which to be generous.

  Radford considered adopting shame at the anger that had run through him. He had felt such fury at West, at being wrong-footed so quickly, but now not a spark of offence remained. West’s face cycled through expressions of devotion; it seeming to have no normal, never finding a state of rest.

  Another boy came crashing down, all bother and its redness. He was as short as Lewis was long. They made sympathetic bookends, matching each other’s gestures as they began to fight over, then forget, then change subjects in the space of single breaths. Dark rings were drawn around his eyes and his lips were white and dry. He looked ill, like he never slept.

  ‘What is this about the chicken coop?’ he demanded, as if suddenly giving birth to consciousness. So this was Rich.

  West took to explaining the matter of his relocation and made a thin call for compassion against the laughter that had come after. It was a directive from the chief, he offered. Rich reminded them of the certainty of his imminent death, which was countered with an assurance of the coop’s new tasteful décor.

  Rich buried his face in the tabletop, though he shook enough of his sullenness to blindly reach over and command Radford’s hand into a shake. ‘You’re staying?’

  At this Radford diverted his eyes in apology and glanced at West.

  ‘His won’t be the only life you’ll ruin, I assure you.’ Brass looked to Radford and laughed into his froth. ‘Dicky’s demise is a burden you will learn to live with.’

  Radford drank and attempted a smile and begged his poisoning blood to lead his mind to sweet places. He retreated into the fog of where cold met fire. All started up about him, mostly laughter, mostly at Rich’s expense. The story was told of the day in the village and of Lewis’s chance with the baker’s girl, Frances, being foiled by Rich’s secondary advance. The facts were disputed but it seemed that in a moment of panicked bravado Rich had attempted a verse of ‘It’s Now or Never’. Lewis insisted that he and Frances shared a rare connection. Rich maintained that his serenade had been justified. Regardless, the baker had emerged floured and cross, ordering his daughter into the back of the shop and the boys into the street. Frances’s concession to either boy’s tactic remained unrecorded.

  ‘Rough.’ Brass pulled fingers through the hair at his temples. ‘Even I wouldn’t try Elvis.’

  ‘No, Rich, it was very brave of you.’ West began to cluck and flap his elbows, with the rest joining in, crowing and scratching at the table.

  It went on and Radford succumbed to the medley of voices and their uncomplicated rhythm. He had been ignored, the truest acceptance. A chilling wind came through the room and some made closer for the fire, which in return scattered its flames and sparked protest. The corner of a burning log pulsed between bright and dull and as it did Radford allowed his muscles to finally relax. He could not believe evening had come. In this place time seemed unanchored to the wider world. The house floated within reality as an island and he was merely one of those dumped to its beach by storm. Home, now, he supposed. A drive and a suitcase was all it had taken: how slippery the idea had been all along. What else lay waiting, pretending to permanence? The beer was turning thick in his veins and sending signals for slumber. The chatter circled and weaved a cocoon.

  ‘Boy.’

  Sleep called.

  After everything, it could all be okay.

  ‘Radford.’

  It was West’s hands that shook him back to sentience, to Teddy standing expectant at the room’s entrance. The man wore a dressing-gown with a pipe peeking from its breast pocket.

  ‘The house has made welcome?’ Teddy asked, gesturing with the appliance and speaking so all could hear.

  Radford nodded, minutely, already wishing this away.

  ‘I wonder if they have mentioned the entertainment, the celebration of your first evening. That some show is made. All silly of course, but it has become a tradition.’

  The room turned to Radford and he wondered if the effect was that intended. The horrid, terrorising attention. This was a man who hours ago had taken his hands and so precisely punctured his caul, but here he was, wounding with all these eyes.

  ‘So, no-one has told you.’ Teddy’s face gave nothing away.


  Simply, this was not fair. Radford felt his cognition reduce to that of a toddler. After the kindness he’d been shown, this was not fair.

  He infused a lone syllable, ‘No,’ with all the furious import he could muster.

  ‘We are in luck.’ Teddy was addressing all the others. ‘Radford is something of a sensation at the piano.’

  He had considered himself safe for a time, now this treachery, and he wondered how Teddy had invented the ammunition. He imagined his mother hunched over paperwork at their kitchen table, angered and tearful, profiling her son and becoming stumped at Hobbies and Interests. He looked to those near for a cue but Brass wouldn’t meet his eye and Rich nodded as if this was to be expected.

  Radford tensed. ‘I don’t know what you mean me to say.’

  ‘You’ll give us a tune?’

  So this place was to be no different. Unseen, Teddy must have made gestures for Radford to be seized and dragged to the piano, for a rash of boys leapt to their feet and did just that. Pulled across the room, his wrists throttled together, feet held from the floor, he could only marvel at the ingenuity of this torture. He could have been beaten or had a balloon of urine emptied over him as he slept. This was something else.

  He was lowered to the stool and had to throw his hands out to stop from cannoning into the instrument and in doing so struck the keys and brought a clap of untuned thunder. There was a weak cheer. Having spent years below ground, the recollection of his first football match surfaced. Malcolm Allison had put it into the back of the net with five minutes to go and he had never heard a noise like it. A roar, but like dinosaurs had made. Back then it had shaken him and he had cried with the excitement. He had been put onto a stranger’s shoulders and punched at the sky.

  Teddy waved for the concert to proceed and something not as grand as a hush spread through the hall. Some near the back sat up on a table. West’s lot stood on chairs, West himself a fool with both fists clenched and held above his head. Every one, traitors all. If this was to be a humiliation, he would make it a great one. A dumb energy brewed in Radford and radiated to his limbs. Hands into balls, he raised them, the knuckles just touching.