I couldn’t catch Rain’s answer because Leeds upset a boulder on his way up, and the noise rolling down the slope increased from echo to echo. Then came the splash of water, and with it ended the conversation of my two wives.
For hours I lingered on in a dazed state between my new respect for Rain and the surprise at my sudden inability to lead the circle out of this rocky islet. Perhaps, I thought, a tiny particle of the fruit had dissolved on my tongue and was now poisoning my blood stream. Leeds had his sluggish moments, too. Having hoisted his self-confidence so high at first, he seemed unable to stay there, above his ordinary moods.
Gone was his superior talk, his boasting, and he would doze off, just like Joker and myself, in the middle of doing something. Once between a nap and a yawn I caught him staring at the edge of the domes which were sometimes visible over the coastline. This reminded me of Rain’s conversation with September.
The next morning, when the domes seemed to be sliding away from the Safety Zone, I went up to Rain, sat next to her in the skimpy shade under the tree, and pondered in silence over my question. Then I said it very quickly:
‘And they, on whose side do you think they are?’
‘They?’ Rain surprised me. I thought she knew whom I meant.
‘They, who else . . .’ I pointed towards the retreating line of colour. Then I blurted out the name: ‘The skymen, Rain, on whose side do you think they are?’
‘Whose side?’ This astonished me even more. Was Rain already losing her awareness and falling into our communal kind of stupor! But as soon as I saw the expression of her eyes, I had no doubt about her new intelligence.
‘You know well what I am asking. Are they on the side of the tree, on your side, Rain, or do you think they’re helping Leeds, Joker and—’ I paused, ‘and September!’
‘In your circle, Dover, you had us on both your sides. Whose side do you think were you on!’
I goggled and picked up a needle from the ground. If there was a fresh twig to be torn off, I would have eaten it then, like Leeds. The dry needle broke between my teeth and I spat it out.
‘Everybody in my circle was on two sides at once.’ The way I said it began to worry me. Then I tried to explain, got myself entangled in geometrical terms because of September whom I mentioned as the one of us who often stood or lay within the circle.
‘Who knows, Dover, we may be inside their circle. And the skymen—’ she pronounced the word with ringing clarity—’are on all our sides all the time.’
‘Which means that they don’t care,’ I said, rather pleased with my summing up.
Rain smiled at me as if I were a very clever or a very silly child. But instead of giving me a kiss, she hugged her tree.
How strange, I thought, watching her precise, unhurried movements, how strange that I should have taught this woman to memorize her own name. Real rain doesn’t stain.
No, she had no stain, not now. And she appeared to possess a different reality, almost tangible, as that tree she was embracing.
Out of rivalry with Leeds, though we both seemed equally sluggish of late, I went to Rain, my first wife, in the middle of the night. This tree islet was clearly meant to begin a new vegetation and a new breed of men. Why shouldn’t I be a begetter! I originated a circle, I brought my circle here across the land and the water.
I bent over Rain, but she was asleep under her tree. My head became heavy, then a brief spell of dizziness followed. I thought I dreamt, leaning against the trunk, but no picture developed when I came to my senses. Carefully I stepped over the rope, rubbed my temples to get rid of a headache; then in the same spirit of rivalry, I went in search of September. Her womb was mine too, I had entered her body before Leeds. No, I didn’t find the mingling of male seeds abhorrent.
I knew the passages between the boulders, I recognized the mossy mounds in the dark. This rock might have been my birthplace, why not? On whose authority did we believe that the place we had come from lay underground?
Half-way down the slope I saw my second wife stretched out on a stone ledge, one of her arms dangling over another ledge a few steps below. Joker was claiming his male right to her body which generous Leeds didn’t mind sharing either with me or with him. I decided there and then that our crossing back shouldn’t be delayed a day longer.
Back in the Safety Zone we were met by a welcoming party. It consisted of several hundred boxes, with hardly any space between them, and each had a door open.
There was a breeze under the natural clouds, and the doors swung out and in, creaking on their hinges.
‘They’re inviting us in,’ Leeds observed brightly. ‘Difficult to choose, isn’t it?
You’ve never seen so many hygiene boxes in one row, have you, Dover?’
I nearly laughed, not at his irritating words, but at his belly. It had grown big since the crossing, and his buttocks too had expanded suddenly to balance the weight in front.
Leeds looked a barrel in the middle, and a turret above, and I wouldn’t have hesitated to point that out to him, had not September shrieked at the top of her voice:
‘I won’t go in! I won’t go in!’
Underground
1
Then there were no lights in the tunnel, neither red changing to green, nor green changing to red. Patrick walked on the ledge towards the beam of his own torch. He had bought it at Woolworth’s in the King’s Road together with two plastic wallets, one for the quids his father always carried in wads and one for the quids he himself was to pull out of those wads. Patrick had three on him now, just in case; he might have some unforeseen and unnecessary expenses, as Dolly-mum would say, during his long walk underground.
Thick cables and other things, crooked and coiled like tree roots in the park, accompanied Patrick on his way. They ran ahead and he marched in their direction, confident that neither the cables nor Boris could really get lost. Perhaps what he saw were the toes of park trees trying to wiggle deep into the earth. Pipes maybe. Dolly-mum often said if only you could see my boy how much dirt flows under these lovely streets, all those sewers and pipes, every time you pull a plug, swish, down it goes, lower and lower, until the whole nasty stink disappears, I honestly can’t think where.
And now Patrick knew where, or at least he could tell his second mummy which way the pipes went. Not that he wanted to upset her about staying in the Underground after the last train and long past his bedtime. But he thought he was being brave, and the torch made the dark not quite so dark. Funny to be meeting Boris like this. Should they say ‘how do you do’, or ‘hello chum’, or grimace, grin, pull each other’s tie, whistle maybe? If Boris was a joker, Patrick of course wouldn’t speak like a puky no-father; if not, Patrick would talk ever so politely. He knew Boris didn’t mean Boris, they both played a game, Boris waiting in the tunnel, Patrick coming to meet him; all in good fun, just like that fuzzy-mop next door pretending there was another poodle on his tail.
The ledge ended. Patrick had to step down and follow the track. Suddenly, the rails glistened at the turning, a stronger light fell across the beam of his torch, and something was hitting something very hard in the distance. From now on, Patrick could have been only half-brave and retreated as slowly as half-bravery demanded, but he compromised with his shaking knees and stopped instead of taking to his heels. Then he ventured two small steps, halted and switched off his Woolworth’s torch. From afar, a few shadows answered him at once with a mime. They did this and that, their hands almost beckoning Patrick to approach.
Ho-ho-ho! Patrick resorted to his dad’s hollow laugh to silence the pounding of his heart, but the mimers were in no way appeased. Well, so much for poor Boris, Patrick said to himself, the devils have already got him, and they’re boiling him in a cauldron to put the dirt back into him. And when that’s finished, the dirtiest yes-devil will unbaptize Boris, so that he might again be as Greek and Orthodox as Patrick’s first mummy.
The cauldron did look like a cauldron even when the devils hid their
horns from Patrick, and it smelt like hell all the time. The banging, too, was terrible, and it stuck to the roof. How it must have hurt those tree toes up there.
‘Holy smoke!’ one of the devils shouted, ‘there’s a boy walking on the track.’
Two shadows moved away from the cauldron. Patrick held his breath, then one of them showed a face, and the face spoke.
‘You know, young fellow, you could have electrocuted yourself.’
This seemed to be the appointed moment for the scholarly reputation of St.
Patrick’s School, shining even through its inglorious rejects. Electricity, well—Patrick Saint Ginger was bottom of the class, but not Patrick Boris.
‘If that had happened, sir,’ Patrick paused to clear his throat, ‘you and all the other gentlemen would have been electrocuted with me.’ He said it in his most charming voice which Dolly-mum liked and praised so often. On that voice alone you’ll go very far, Patrick; remember to use it whenever you can, she would repeat. The combined effect of learning and charm produced great laughter around, and the devils not only loved Patrick for being Patrick, but obligingly changed into workers with a kettle on the boil and an extra cup ready for a nocturnal visitor.
‘You know a lot, don’t you? Have a cup of cha and rest. Here.’ A folded mackintosh fell on a dirty bag. ‘What’s your name, chum?’
Patrick liked being called chum. Daddy was his chum, Dolly-mum was dad’s favourite lady chum. So he told them his name, Dolly-mum’s address, his father’s telephone number, and explained between sips of tea why daddy didn’t take kindly to calls before half past one. Did he work night shifts, someone asked, and Patrick was at a loss because he only remembered Father Pio being called shifty something. Dolly’s advice came to his rescue. He used his most charming voice and punctuated sentences with sirs.
As the foreman was about to go up the tunnel to fetch a smart police car, so he said, Patrick created quite a stir by casually dropping the name of Boris.
The questions they asked then! And the foreman stepped onto a cup of tea, and someone cursed because his finger got burnt on the edge of the cauldron, and the noise that tool-bag made being tossed about.
‘Which way did you say your little brother was going?’
‘Boris is not little, he’s my age.’
‘Never mind that, Patrick. Where did he say he was going?’
‘He didn’t say anything, sir. You see, yes-sir, I was supposed to meet him down here. We haven’t met for some time, actually.’
Patrick sighed and added ‘yes sir.’
From this moment on, everything was great fun, and Boris must have loved it as much as Patrick, whichever hole he peeped through. Boris Patrick could be a joker, too, if he wanted.
The best part of the adventure came after they had brought a police dog into the tunnel. It didn’t bark, didn’t piss at all, but started on the job at once, sniffing Patrick and going round the tool-bag. Much nicer than the poodle, Patrick thought, and cleverer too, because the big Sergeant Dog refused to look for Boris where Boris couldn’t possibly be found. One of the workers said a rude thing about this, which the policeman didn’t like, and finally they took Patrick and the dog upstairs into the empty Tube station. There everybody kept mum until Dolly arrived. She scolded Patrick a little, but the sight of the police dog infuriated her. Dolly-mum turned against the man who held the leash.
‘Sending an alsatian after a quiet obedient boy like Patrick, that’s not very nice, officer.’ Here Dolly raised her voice, probably to wake herself up; she did look very sleepy, Patrick thought. ‘I am not surprised now that the Press prints all these stories about your men. After this incident, I honestly wouldn’t mind writing a letter myself, to the Sketch.’
‘Madam,’ the police foreman intervened, ‘I know you are upset, but we’ve been doing our best to trace the other boy. He will be found before long, I assure you.’
‘What boy?’ Dolly blinked her eyes and looked at Patrick to make sure. Patrick smiled sweetly: he was the boy, his second mummy’s boy.
‘Boris, Madam,’ the officer was politeness itself, and explained at slow length how it all happened: the pre-arranged meeting, the walk inside the Tube, the workers on the track, the dog-Patrick was duly impressed by his own achievement so far and by the man’s memory, who deserved even higher marks than Father Pio.
Dolly-mum kissed Patrick on the head as if she knew what he was thinking and said:
‘Patrick dear, what’s this all about! I hope you didn’t ask another boy to take so unpleasant a walk in the night!’ ‘Oh, Dolly-mum, it’s all right, you know about Boris, don’t you! I did tell you about him, surely I did.’
Dolly tried hard to remember through the tiredness on her face and all that powder on top of it. Patrick couldn’t bear seeing his second mummy like that, so he used the charming voice she loved to hear.
‘Well, Dolly-mum, Boris is really with me, right here, you see. He’s a bit of a joker, Boris Patrick is. And now I’d rather like to go to bed, if you and these gentlemen don’t mind.’
A smart police car waited outside, just as the man had said down there in the Underground.
Nothing much was done to Patrick, with Patrick, and about Boris Patrick after the first tunnel escapade. Dolly-mum talked to his father on the telephone, she talked twice, later they had dinner together in Chelsea, Patrick was promised a holiday in Cornwall, but when, they wouldn’t say. Somehow the son chum didn’t feel like pressing the father chum: that sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen between real chums. Once, for a longish moment, he thought about that door to his dad’s bedsitter. A few lines in chalk might shake up the demons of foul sublimation, but either Patrick had no chalk at home or didn’t want to change a whole quid for two miserable bus fares, so the scheme was quickly abandoned.
Patrick’s second escapade ended in complete failure, although he had prepared it with two maps of the Underground, thought out a few cunning decoys, and kept everything secret from Boris. It was to be, in fact, an independent expedition without any pre-arranged meeting between brothers, mothers or fathers for that matter. He made one fatal exception. The police dog gave him the idea of taking the poodle to outsniff any possible intruder on four legs. The poodle was groomed for the part in rain, drizzle and at dusk, whenever the lady next door couldn’t go out for her walks because of rheumatism.
She told Dolly-mum on each occasion what a nice and thoughtful boy she was bringing up.
The poodle, Nicky, could travel on any London transport, so well behaved and quiet he was. Nicky only barked at home to cheer up the rheumatic lady. Patrick had high hopes of him, but the fuzzy mop wouldn’t co-operate when the time came. He had to do his business at every single lamppost, and there were fifteen of them on the way to the Tube station. In the lift, too, he drew attention to himself by licking people’s hands and umbrellas. Finally, instead of entering the tunnel with his sniffer forward, the stupid mop smelt some wet spot on the platform and ran off, yelping.
Then he yelped and yelped at the closed grating inside the station and in no time people gathered, those especially who took their dogs for a late pee walk. And a policeman happened to be on his beat near by. Augustus the father arrived in person, and Patrick returned to Dolly-mum’s doll house in a taxi. Silence was observed on the way by both sides. Chums had their code and stuck to it, particularly when a chum could also snooze at will.
Augustus consulted his panel doctor, met Dolly-mum twice, gave the doctor a tinkle, and off they went, Dolly and Patrick to a big hospital. In the waiting-room Patrick saw a boy, older than himself, who was trying to push his whole hand deep into his mouth, the saliva dribbling down his spotty chin. He didn’t like the sight and told Dolly-mum about it, and she was nice, as always, giving him toffees to suck.
‘It’s a good place this. Famous in London and in the world too, I suppose, London being such a big and important town. And you know what, Patrick, your first mum was here when she delivered you. In a private
room, of course. They told you at your school about babies and bees, didn’t they!’ Patrick nodded solemnly. ‘Well, they always rush these things nowadays.’
The boy opposite Patrick still couldn’t swallow his right hand.
Now he was considering his left for size. Patrick felt sick and thought of himself as a baby in a private hospital cot. Then Dolly-mum said something about the maternity ward and he asked where the loo was. On leaving the lavatory, Patrick followed the signs up the stairs, down the stairs, left, right, straight, until he found himself in a large waiting room full of big-bellied ladies who were sitting with their legs apart, too heavy to get up in a hurry. So he gave them all a friendly smile, took a blue chalk out of his pocket and started from the right corner where the wall looked very white.
‘Ffuk Venezia,’ he wrote in large letters, then his spelling went wild, and two nurses had to hold his hand to get the chalk out.
2
‘And how is your Mrs. patho?’
‘She’s a Miss, father, and she still likes listening to rude words.’
‘Ah! Why hasn’t she got a husband?’
‘I’ll ask her. She comes from South Africa and is very Indian. Beautiful.’
‘Are you sure, my boy, you’ve got it right?’
‘Positive, yes, father.’ And Patrick laughed. He could just imagine his daddy in a white robe, his head even balder at the top, and a wad of banknotes dangling from a cord instead of beads.
‘Ho-ho-ho.’ Like Boris, Patrick’s father was always ready to share a joke, whether he understood it or not. This time, however, he bulged his watery eyes and asked: ‘What’s so funny? Am I kicking the wrong ball, or something?’
Patrick saw two balls at once, and remembered what the patho Miss said. No, he wouldn’t snort or titter. Balls, so what?
It was strange to watch his father in an armchair. He didn’t quite seem his usual recumbent self, though he had a cushion under his head and kept closing his eyes.
Augustus puffed at a cigar, and this alone made him distant, playing a hide-and-seek game in the midst of all that cloudy smell.
Inner Circle Page 8