The Secret Life of the Panda
Page 15
As he paused and smiled, turning to observe the beads as they swung against his chest, a sudden movement in the depths of the mirror caught his attention. The old man was standing in the bedroom doorway, peering into the dimness.
What’re you doing? The voice was suspicious though he couldn’t yet make out what the boy was up to.
Daniel grasped at the necklace to pull it off but the beads clung together and the necklace twisted itself in his fingers and the more he yanked at it the more it tightened.
The old man, whose eyes were still getting used to the gloom, asked again: What are you playing at in here?
The boy wrenched and the tangle of beads finally gave, the beads came apart in his hands, exploding with a soft splutter onto the flowered carpet and rattling away under the bedstead.
What is it you’re doing?
The last of the beads fell with a muted chink and the boy knelt and began to scoop them up.
Leave them alone, said the grandfather in such a low whisper that the boy glanced up into his eyes. For a moment he thought the old man was smiling.
The old man let his large hands hang down helplessly. If the boy had been a piece of circuitry he could have tinkered, but the cavernous reaches of the mind repelled him.
Look at you, he said, just look at yourself.
And he restrained himself, only just, from shaking the troublesome mechanism.
Reflected in the glass was a scruffy child with a comb hanging from a tangle of hair and a lop-sided t-shirt from which a broken string of beads dangled.
The box, whispered the boy.
Box? What box?
The box, you said you wouldn’t forget.
Forget? What in blazes are you talking about?
The box you said you’d give me. You said you wouldn’t forget.
They looked at each other above the carpet littered with grains of light.
The old man stumped out of the room at last, his fingers twitching for a cigarette.
*
Black hooves thundered on the ceiling, beating the rhythm of blood forced through veins. Daniel’s fingers fought back the covers that threatened to smother him. His cry was thin amid the thunderous hammering and yet she came, the old woman, her hair wild from being dragged out of sleep.
She tried to soothe him with a song. Three blind mice, three blind mice, she quavered and shook, unable to make any sense of the child. It was three thirty in the morning and he was looking at her, out of deep-set black eyes.
Then the old man came, the white tufts sticking up on his shining skull:
What is it? Has he wet the bed?
No, she said, it’s not that.
Oh for pity’s sake, what then? What can it be at this time of the morning?
But Daniel could not say what it was, for he was fumbling, like one of the blinded tail-less mice, through a hopeless maze.
See how they run, see how they run...
Your grandmother is very worried, said the old man putting his head in his hands.
She carried the child into her own bedroom, rocking him uncertainly in her arms. As she turned to the mirror he caught sight of himself in the glass, clinging to her quilted dressing gown with his eyes grown huge.
He’s feverish, she said, perhaps he’s caught a chill.
I don’t know. I don’t understand the boy. The old man sank onto his mattress and covered his head with a pillow.
*
In the morning sun Daniel knelt before an egg box, trickling sand into the base of each cardboard dimple. Into the sand he poked the purple eyes of flowers he’d snipped and the broken bits of shells. He was so absorbed he didn’t notice the two who were watching him from their creaking garden chairs.
She wrote cheese and potatoes on her list.
We need a few things, Albert, if you wouldn’t mind popping to the grocers. She threw a glance at the boy’s lowered head. I’ll stay with Daniel.
He needs toughening up. We shouldn’t treat him as if he’s made of glass. The old man pulled his battered hat forward against the sun. The chair wheezed and the boy looked up squinting into the glare.
Daniel, he said, you’ll come with me to the shops.
No, he murmured making a small adjustment to a landscape.
Now there’s a good chap.
No.
But Daniel was hoiked to his feet.
We’re going to get you a haircut.
*
While the barber dealt with his grandfather’s hair, Daniel sat on a narrow bench under the window and leafed through an old magazine. The barber seemed not to have noticed the boy and stared hard at the wrinkled skin of the old man’s neck as he tucked in the cape.
Cut it short, said the old man settling himself under the billowing black.
Yes, Mr Carole.
As he clipped away at the white hair, the barber caught the boy’s eye in the mirror. The grey searching glance seemed to pluck at a raw nerve in the boy, a nerve that tingled with recognition of something shared, then twitched away like the sea-anemone he’d touched in the rock pool that closed itself up tight against the probing of an alien intelligence.
Nicholas Silver, the old man was saying, now there’s a horse.
He’s finding his form, maybe.
They say he’ll sweep the board this season.
The barber pinched an invisible hair from the old man’s collar. I’d put my money on Red Alligator. He flicked up the cloth and stood back. All done, and the boy?
Cut it as short as you can; he’s got nits.
The barber’s cold fingers touched his collar, but briefly, to tuck in a piece of cloth, and the scissors snapped in his ears as the curls fell in his lap. The shearing scissors soothed him into a state of dullness, almost lulling him to sleep, until the blades caught the tip of his ear and made him jump. There was a tiny nick in the top of his left ear and the barber was dabbing with cotton wool. He was about to swab at it with something reeking from a jar.
No, said the old man, he doesn’t want any of that stuff.
*
In the trembling depths, something stirred—a transparent shrimp with a tiny heart of glass pulsing at its centre. It picked delicately at a grain of sand and, with a flick its tail, vanished.
As he peered into the pool, he saw himself reflected, hair cropped close. He leaned over the water, picking at the scab on his ear. The clouds behind his head moved across the disk of the sun and he saw himself more clearly still. When he breathed, the surface rippled and the scalloped edges of the clouds were shivered to pieces. He smiled at his reflection, so close now his lips almost touched. His face was framed by waving strands of weed.
Daniel! A voice called. Come here!
Figures moved in the distant haze far out on the shining sand. Someone turned a slow awkward cartwheel; another raised an arm to wave. Daniel, holding up his hand to the horizon, could pinch the wriggling body between his index finger and thumb, could have crushed the life out.
Daniel!
But he would not go, not this time. They’d only make him kneel on razor shells and kick sand in his eyes and push him down the steps. Why should he go when he was happy in his garden?
The sun broke through then and the shadows in the pool shifted from grey to turquoise. A minute pearl-grey crab edged out from beneath a stone and a ripple disturbed Daniel’s features as he gazed at the reflection of the massing clouds behind his head.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the following editors for publishing some of the stories in this collection:
Trevor Denyer
Midnight Street Magazine
‘Paper Wraps Rock’, ‘The Rope’
Rachel Kendall
Sein und Werden
‘Anton’s Discovery’, ‘The Island’
Sheryl Tempchin
Zahir Magazine
‘Lady with an Ermine’, ‘Shell Fire’
Des Lewis
Nemonymous
‘The Sec
ret Life of the Panda’
Andrew Hook
New Horizons
‘City in Flames’
Thanks to all the members of my writing group: Gordon Collins, Hilary Stanton, Peter Tovell, Philippa Champain, Stephanie Amey and Udara who have helped to shape many of the stories in this book.
Thanks to Quentin S. Crisp who has guided this venture with steady judgement.
And finally, thanks to Martin Hammond.
Also from Chômu Press:
Looking for something else to read? Want a book that will wake you up, not put you to sleep?
Here Comes the Nice
By Jeremy Reed
I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like
By Justin Isis
Link Arms with Toads!
By Rhys Hughes
The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children
By Brendan Connell
Nemonymous Night
By D.F. Lewis
For more information about these books and others, please visit: http://chomupress.com/
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Table of Contents
Anton’s Discovery
Lady with an Ermine
The City in Flames
The Secret Life of the Panda
Paper Wraps Rock
Boys’ Games
Cut Short
The Rabbit Keeper
Flaubert’s Poison
The Island
Spadework
The Rope
Shell Fire
Made of Glass
Acknowledgements