I’ll Go To Bed At Noon

by Gerard Woodward

  The knock came when Aldous’s fingers were deep in clay. The knock was so loud and emphatic it was as though a cleaver had sundered Aldous’s work. Yet it could have been that little girl again, asking for her tennis ball back so that she could play fives against the garages. Aldous ignored it, tentatively put his fingers back into the clay. The knock came again. Five knocks – bang bang bang bang bang – that effectively chopped Aldous’s sculpture into five wet pieces. He had no alternative but to investigate.

  He opened the front door while wiping the clay from his hands with a rag.

  The policeman was of the old school, not one of these cocky young chaps they seemed to send round nowadays, but a gentle, portly greybeard.

  ‘Mr Aldous Jones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Father of Janus Jones.’

  ‘Yes.’ Aldous gave his affirmatives in a tone of weary anticipation

  ‘Your son was involved in a serious incident last night.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘We believe he deliberately created an obstruction in Parsons Lane, using materials from a nearby roadworks. This obstruction caused an accident, resulting in injury to a motorcyclist . . .’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘The motorcyclist is currently in hospital. He’s not in danger, but he has a broken leg. And a broken wrist. Mr Jones has admitted to creating the obstruction. We have charged him with criminal damage and obstructing a public highway with intent to endanger life, both very serious offences if they result in injuries to members of the public. The magistrates have agreed. He will appear for sentencing next week.’

  ‘Will he go to prison?’ said Aldous, unable to disguise the hope in his voice. He failed so badly, in fact, that the policeman gave him a long, quizzical look.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said the policeman, still regarding Aldous thoughtfully, ‘it depends.’

  Janus received a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years. Southgate Magistrates had viewed Janus’s drunken activities very seriously. He’d managed to avoid prison, but the threat of incarceration was to hang over him for the two year duration of his sentence, if he committed any further offence, no matter how minor. The motorcyclist’s testimony provided a full account of Janus’s activity that evening, because Janus had spent twenty minutes in close conversation with him while waiting for the ambulance (which he’d called) to arrive. He’d told the motorcyclist how he was angry because his friends had deserted him. He had gone to Redlands Park with another friend, but had lost her in the dark. He had wandered around in the woods for some considerable time, possibly falling asleep at one point. At around four-thirty A.M. he was in Parsons Lane. He used the stacked paving stones he’d found at a roadworks to build an obstruction across the road, which was at the time deserted of traffic. The obstruction was, in effect, a low wall, about ten inches high, covering both carriageways. The motorcyclist, a milkman on his way to work, had crashed into this wall at around five-thirty A.M. When asked why he’d done it, the motorcyclist reported that Janus had said something incoherent about starting a revolution.

  He had asked for twenty-five other offences to be taken into consideration.

  The magistrate told him that he was lucky not to be appearing on a manslaughter charge.

  The Sunday following Janus’s court appearance, Aldous, Colette and Julian paid a visit to Lesley and Madeleine in High Wycombe. On the way Colette extracted from her youngest son a promise.

  ‘You won’t say anything about Janus to your aunt and uncle will you?’

  Julian shook his head. He rarely spoke during these visits anyway. His mother needn’t have worried.

  ‘All in all it’s probably a good thing,’ she went on, ‘It’ll knock some sense into him maybe. The threat of going to prison is surely enough to make even someone like Janus toe the line. Don’t you think?’

  Father and son gave no response.

  It had been at Madeleine’s invitation that they were visiting. She seemed keen, having heard that Janus Brian was looking for a house in the area, to learn more about his plans.

  ‘So he’s really going to go through with it? He’s really going to move all the way out here, to High Wycombe?’ Madeleine spoke from the comfort of her modern rocking chair, which filled a gap in her living room between the ceramic mantelpiece and the colour television.

  ‘Yes,’ said Colette, ‘He’s made up his mind. I’ve tried talking him out of it a hundred times but he’s very stubborn. I think it’s a stupid idea . . .’

  Lesley gave a resigned laugh but said nothing. Aldous lifted a cup from his saucer, drank and replaced it, the clink of porcelain sounding uncomfortably loud. Aldous always felt discomfort at Madeleine and Lesley’s house. Everything there seemed to be breakable. He and Colette and Julian were sitting in a row on the couch, Lesley was in the armchair.

  ‘Well I think it’s marvellous,’ Madeleine said, ‘That he’s decided to make a fresh start. It’ll be just what he needs.’

  Colette was silent. They hadn’t visited Lesley and Madeleine for a long time, and may never have visited again had not Madeleine written to invite them. Madeleine now seemed to have the upper hand. Colette felt sure that her sister-in-law was reading the situation as follows – Colette has failed to bring Janus Brian through his crisis and so he has to resort to moving house to High Wycombe so that he can be under the more responsible care of his older brother and sister.

  ‘Those vases,’ Colette said, noticing a line of little ceramic pots lined up on top of the pelmet above the French windows, ‘I like the way you’ve arranged them. We’ve done that in the back bedroom.’ This was true, a line of ceramic pots on the pelmet of the back bedroom, the only difference being that Aldous had made their pots himself.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Lesley, ‘we’re copying you. Now tell me, Rex, about these windows you designed. I saw the piece in the Telegraph. Have you had any more commissions?’

  ‘Not really,’ Aldous replied.

  ‘The bishop of Durham wants him to design a fountain,’ said Colette, quickly. ‘For a monastery.’

  ‘How exciting, Rex, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Well, it’s still not settled . . .’

  ‘And this commission came about as a result of the piece in the Telegraph?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And have there been any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, there will be, I’m sure. It’ll be just the start, Rex. Dear,’ (meaning his wife), ‘I think at last this man’s talents will be recognized. One day we’ll be going to see his work in the Tate.’

  ‘That’s unlikely,’ said Aldous.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Unless I put them on the walls myself.’

  A little round of laughter quickly died.

  ‘I wonder if you could tell me,’ Madeleine began after a short pause, ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about alcoholics. How does one deal with them? I’ve been to the library but I couldn’t find much. I didn’t really like to ask the librarian . . .’

  ‘Why not?’ said Colette.

  ‘Well, I mean . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a little bit delicate, isn’t it?’

  Colette shrugged but didn’t speak. Seeing that she’d reached a dead end with Colette, Madeleine turned to Aldous, ‘I just wonder what I should need to know. It’s difficult isn’t it?’ She beamed that ingratiating smile at Aldous, and Aldous and his family grimaced inwardly.

  ‘What makes you think we should be such experts?’ Colette snapped.

  ‘I just meant,’ said Madeleine, with a hint of ‘here we go again’ irritation in her voice, ‘that since you’ve been looking after Janus Brian for all this time (and I do commend your dedication) you must have a lot of experience by now of dealing with alcoholics . . .’

  ‘An alcoholic,’ said Colette, ‘and for your information, we were just as much in the dark about it as you supposedly are, but I’ll tell you thi
s, it would be a waste of time nosing through libraries and doing your homework from books on the subject, because there is no book that could describe what it’s like to have a chronic alcoholic on your hands, or that could describe what I’ve been through this past year or so.’

  ‘Exactly my point, Colette. So why can’t you tell me, from your point of view? All I’m asking for is a little help, a little guidance . . .’ here she gestured towards Colette generously, as though handing her an invisible bouquet, ‘from someone with experience.’

  Colette sulked for a few seconds. Inwardly she was seething. It was not an unreasonable request from her sister-in-law, of course, but in its delivery every word was barbed and poisoned, every phrase contained the hidden message ‘I am a better mother and wife than you are, have been, or ever will be.’

  ‘The diarrhoea is the worst thing,’ said Colette, after a pause, ‘worse than the vomit. That’s the first thing I’ve learned. The second is that Janus Brian tends to neglect his toenails. Every few months he starts to look like Nebuchadnezzar. You need to trim them for him once a fortnight. The third thing is not to be bothered by nakedness. Janus Brian likes to walk around in the nude. If he’s very far gone he is likely to take hold of your breast. He will eat steamed fish, nothing else. Also, he needs to be talked to, for hours on end, sometimes. Or read to. I’m in the middle of reading him the complete works of Dickens, but so far we’re still only on Bleak House. You will need to visit him every other day. If you leave it any longer he is likely to die. And he won’t thank you for anything that you do for him. Not a word of thanks. Is that enough information for you? Do you think you can cope with that?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll do our best, but I’m also sure that there must be people, I mean, social services or something, that can help . . .’

  Madeleine’s sentence drifted into the room and faded away, leaving an edgy silence in its place, interrupted by Lesley.

  ‘Perhaps when he’s started breathing in the air of the Chilterns he’ll start feeling better, you know there are some very good bus companies in the town that do little excursions into the countryside, Madeleine and I have been on several . . .’

  ‘Janus Brian doesn’t like the countryside,’ Colette interrupted, ‘and he’s not coming here for the fresh air. He’s coming here so that you and you,’ she pointed in turn at Madeleine and Lesley, whose eyes were now closed, ‘and Agatha can all take turns in looking after him, so that if he gets so sozzled, as I can guarantee he will, that he passes out in a pool of his own piss, there will be someone on hand to pick him out of it. Though why he should think any of you should bother, when you clearly couldn’t give tuppence, any of you, for the well-being of your younger brother, and you,’ Colette pointed at Madeleine whose eyes were also closed by now, ‘you with your library books, making out you’re all concerned and caring when we all know full well that you’ll visit him once when he’s moved in and then never see him again . . .’ Colette could have gone further but she’d run out of steam, and concluded her tirade with a dismissive hand gesture.

  ‘Well, I think that’s a little unfair, Colette,’ said Madeleine, rocking back in her chair, ‘We only want to do our best for Janus Brian, I’m sure once we get into the swing of it, and we gain some experience of coping with an alcoholic . . .’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Colette snapped, ‘will you stop saying alcoholic as though you’ve only just learnt the word?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean will you for once drop this pretence, this sham, when everyone knows you’ve turned my brother into a nervous wreck?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit rich blaming me for Janus Brian’s . . .’

  ‘I don’t mean Janus Brian, I mean this man here, Lesley, who’s sitting here acting the role of contented husband, when we all know what’s really going on.’

  ‘Do we?’ Madeleine seemed genuinely puzzled. Lesley turned to the little row of books on the cabinet by his chair, a concession, Colette thought, after years of booklessness, and fingered through a crumbling, leather-bound volume of poetry.

  ‘It would be a good thing,’ said Colette, ‘if he took his trousers off and chased you round the bedroom, once in a while.’

  After a shocked pause, Madeleine gave a high-pitched series of chuckles.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘you really have excelled yourself this time. The banality of your remarks are matched only by their vulgarity.’

  ‘Well it’s true isn’t it? He won’t say anything because you’ve got him tamed like a poodle,’ she nodded at Lesley, who was reading poetry intently through his bifocals, ‘but we all know how he’s suffering . . .’

  ‘Suffering?’ Madeleine laughed, ‘Your family know all about suffering, of course, how one must suffer to have a son like Janus . . .’

  ‘Janus is doing very well, thank you,’ said Colette, passing over the fact of his newly acquired criminal conviction.

  ‘Is he? You will let me know when his next concert is won’t you – where will it be, the Royal Albert Hall? The Royal Festival . . .’

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘How about,’ said Lesley with suddenness, snapping his poetry book shut, ‘we all go out for a drink?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Colette, reaching for her handbag and spilling the teacup that was cradled in her lap. Cold tea spilt onto her trousers, she didn’t seem to notice, ‘the atmosphere has got rather stuffy in here.’

  ‘It certainly has,’ said Madeleine, waving away the blue fog of cigarette smoke that Colette had produced that afternoon, then she said to Lesley, ‘I don’t think I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Right-ho dear,’ said Lesley, all eager suddenly. It was well known that Madeleine never went in pubs.

  Wearing a countryman’s cap and a long woollen coat with a tweed scarf, Lesley walked Aldous, Colette and Julian through the crisp, autumnal streets of High Wycombe to a pub he knew.

  ‘Have you been drinking already, dear?’ he said to Colette as they walked side by side.

  ‘Only four Gold Labels in the car on the way here.’

  Lesley and Madeleine lived in Cedar Way, a road which did not contain, nor was on the way to any cedars. It was a genteel thoroughfare, and looked as though it had been designed by the same architects who engineered the spread of the north London suburbs in the 1930s, for it had the same appearance of rustic comfort as Leicester Avenue or The Limes, or any of the roads of New Southgate and Cockfosters. The houses were set back behind long front gardens and were pebbledashed and bay-windowed, some with token half-timbering in their front gables. Lesley and Madeleine’s house was a paragon of its kind, a front lawn in stripes, a border of well-pruned roses, a rockery of rare alpines, and a pond where a solitary plaster gnome, brightly painted and varnished, sat fishing. Their front door had a sunrise in stained glass, radial spokes of light over a landscape of ploughed fields. There was more stained glass in the bathroom, and in a little side window up the stairs, of seagulls in flight. All the houses in Cedar Way had stained glass.

  There were views of hills in all directions, topped by stately beechwoods which were yellowing with the season.

  The pub Lesley had in mind was twenty minutes walk, and was in a district of the town Colette and Aldous didn’t know. He called it his local, and from his descriptions Aldous and Colette were expecting some quaint mock country tavern, but The Bricklayers Arms, a tatty looking building of flaking paintwork and blacked-out windows, was quite different. It stood on a busy corner of the A40, passed continually by juggernauts and other traffic. The door to the saloon opened onto an intense noise and odour, a dimly lit interior crowded with people. The floor was scrappy lino, there was a threadbare pool table, a jukebox. A sort of cheer went up as Lesley entered, as though he was a visiting celebrity. The clientele of The Bricklayers Arms was almost exclusively black, they wore brown leather jackets or frilly shirts, gold chains, their hair topiarised into extravagant globular hairstyles Colette understood were called Afros
.

  ‘Fine fellows,’ Lesley said to Colette, having to shout above the chanting rhythms of the loud music as they sat down on stools around a circular table in the corner of the pub. Aldous was reaching for his wallet to buy a round of drinks when a friendly Negro beamed into his face and asked him what he wanted.

  ‘Most of the chaps in here were my pupils a few years ago. Astonishing, isn’t it? When they were at school they spent most of their time trying to make my life hell. I sometimes thought I must be the most hated man in High Wycombe. Do you know, I even, at one time, found myself agreeing with that man Powell, and thinking they should all be sent back to wherever the hell they came from,’ here Lesley afforded himself a long, chortling laugh, ‘but now we’re all out of school they treat me like some sort of hero, and instead of throwing paper darts at the back of my head, they buy me drinks. I’ve been coming here for over a year and I’ve never once had to buy my own drink. It has restored my faith in humanity. Oh yes indeed. Fine chaps these . . .’

  There was almost a queue forming to supply Lesley with drinks. The table quickly filled with brimming pints of dark, headless beer. Negroes shook Lesley’s hand, patted him on the back, hugged him. Boys brought their girlfriends over, tall lean women resplendent with tacky jewellery and great spheres of hair about their heads, and introduced them.