Holes for Faces

by Campbell, Ramsey

  Summers was touched by the offer but disconcerted by the prospect. “I tell you what,” he said, “you give me that and I’ll buy you another.”

  He was glad for Adam as soon as the boy handed him the calendar. Even if only the winter day made the cardboard feel cold and damp, the corners were scuffed and the colours looked faded. The jovial faces were almost as white as their beards, and the floppy red hats had turned so brown that they resembled mounds of earth perched on the heads. Summers thrust the calendar under his arm to avoid handling it further. “Let’s get you home,” he said.

  Beyond a bowling green torn up by bicycles a Frugo Corner supermarket had replaced a small parade of shops that used to face the park. As the automatic doors let out the thin strains of a carol from the overhead loudspeakers, Summers wondered if it was too late for Advent calendars to be on sale. He couldn’t bring the date to mind, and trying to add up the spent days of December made his head feel raw. But there were calendars beside the tills, and Adam chose one swarming with creatures from outer space, though Summers was unclear what this had to do with Christmas.

  His old house was half a mile away across the suburb. Along the wide quiet streets the trees looked frozen to the sky. He saw Adam to the antique door that Paul and Tina had installed within their stained-glass wrought-iron porch. “Will you be all right now?”

  The boy gave the elderly formula an old-fashioned look. “I always am,” he reminded Summers and slipped his key into the lock.

  The streets narrowed as Summers made his way home. The houses grew shabbier and their doorbells multiplied, while the gardens were occupied by seedy cars and parts of cars. Each floor of the concrete block where he lived was six apartments long, with a view of an identical block. Once Elaine left him he’d found the house too large, and might have given it to his son even if Paul hadn’t moved in with a partner.

  The apartment was something like halfway along the middle balcony, two doors distant from the only other number with a tail, but Summers knew it by the green door between the red pair. He marched down the hall to the kitchen, where he stopped short of the bin. If the sweets in the calendar weren’t past their edible date, why shouldn’t he finish them off?

  He stood it on the mantelpiece in the main room, beneath Christmas cards pinned to the nondescript wallpaper. As he searched for the first cardboard door he heard an object shift within the calendar, a sound emphasised by the silence of the hi-fi and the television and the empty suite that faced them. At last he located the door in the midst of the haphazard dates and pried it open with a fingernail. The dark chocolate behind the door was shaped like the number. “One up for me,” he declared, biting it in half.

  The sweet wasn’t stale after all. He levered the second door open as soon as he found it, remarking “Two’s not for you” as he put the number in his mouth. How many did he mean to see off? He ought to heed the warning he’d given Adam about dinner. “Three’s a crowd,” he commented once he managed to locate the number. That had certainly felt like the case when, having decided that Paul was old enough for her to own up, Elaine had told Summers about the other man. The taste in his mouth was growing bitter yet sickly as well, and any more of it might put him off his dinner. Perhaps it already had, but since taking early retirement he’d gained weight that he could do with losing. There was no point in eating much when he was by himself.

  For a while he watched the teachers’ channel, which seemed to be the only sign of intelligence on television. An hour or two of folk music on the hi-fi with the sound turned low out of consideration for the neighbours left him readier for bed. He brushed his teeth until the only flavour in his mouth was toothpaste, and then he did his best to be amused by having to count a multitude of Santas in the dark before he could fall asleep.

  At least his skull wasn’t crawling with thoughts of tomorrow’s lessons and more lessons yet to plan, and tests to set, and conflicts to resolve or at any rate address, both among the children and within themselves. However badly he might sleep, he no longer had to set the alarm clock, never mind lying awake for hours before it went off or struggling to doze until it did. Since it was Friday he needn’t bother with breakfast; he would be meeting some of his old colleagues from Dockside Primary—and then he realised he’d lost count of the weeks. His friends would be preparing for tonight’s Christmas play at the school, and they’d cancelled their usual Friday lunch.

  He could still do without breakfast, given the stale sweetish taste in his mouth. He brushed his teeth at length and used mouthwash before swallowing his various pills. Once he was dressed heavily enough to switch off the heating he wandered into the living-room to feed himself today’s date from the Advent calendar. When at last he put his finger on the eighteenth he felt he’d earned a walk in the park.

  In spring he’d liked to take his classes to the one near Dockside Primary—to imagine that their minds were budding like the trees. That was before teaching had turned into a business of filling in forms and conforming to prescribed notions as narrow as the boxes on the documents. Now he could think that the children in the schoolyard of Park Junior were caged not just by the railings but by the educational system. He couldn’t see Adam, but if he ventured closer the boy might be embarrassed by his presence. What was Summers doing there at all? The children’s uninhibited shouts must prove that Smart was nowhere near.

  Summers watched the school until he saw teachers trooping back from lunch, but none of them looked familiar. Once the yard was empty he stood up from the bench. Ambling around the park used up some time, and then he strolled to the Dockside library, where he might have found work if the job had involved fewer numbers. People even older than he was or just as unemployed were reading the papers, and he had to content himself with a tabloid. Perhaps the prose as terse as the bitten-off headlines was all that some people could read. That was a failure of education, like the young and even younger criminals who figured in many of the reports. The paper took him a very few minutes to read, and then he hurried back to the school. He wanted to be there before anyone emerged.

  Some teachers did in the midst of the flood of children, but he recognised none of them, and Adam was impatient to question him. “How many did you have?”

  Summers was thrown by the irrational notion that it could have been a problem set by Smart. “Not as many as you, I expect,” he retorted.

  “I just had one and then we had some after dinner.”

  “Good boy.” Summers felt a little sly for adding “Did your teacher say anything about it?”

  “He wanted me to add up all the days till today in my head.”

  “Just this month, you mean. And did you?”

  “I got it right. He said everyone should be like me.”

  “It wouldn’t be much of a world if we were all the same, do you think?” Summers sensed that the boy had more to tell. “Is that all he did?”

  “Jimmy was next to top in class but he got the answer wrong.”

  “What happened, Adam?”

  “Mr Smart gave him a calendar as well but now Jimmy has to give it back.”

  “I knew he couldn’t change. He’s the shit he always was.”

  Summers had done his best to lower his voice, but Adam giggled with delight. “What did you say, grandad?”

  “You didn’t hear it, and don’t tell your parents, all right? There’s no need for language like that.”

  “I don’t mind. Some of the boys in my class say worse, and the girls.”

  “Then they shouldn’t, even about—” Although Summers had already said too much, his nerves were prompting him. “Just so long as your teacher never tries anything like that with you,” he said. “He’ll have me to deal with. I’ve got the calendar.”

  “He won’t, grandad. He says he wishes all the summers were like me.”

  Summers recalled Smart’s jokes about his name, but they’d been vicious. “So long as you are, Adam,” he said, and nothing more until they reached the house. “I�
�ll see you all tomorrow,” he said, which meant once a week.

  He brought dinner home from the Donner Burger Pizzeria, and ate nearly half of the fish and some of the chips before thoughts of Smart stole his appetite. He’d prove he deserved to have the prize. He cleared the kitchen table and laid the calendar face up on it. The open doors stood more or less erect, and he totted up their numbers while he looked for the fourth. There it eventually was, and he rewarded himself with the contents as he added to the total in his head and carried on the search. Ten became fifteen, and he swallowed to make room for the five in his mouth. He needn’t eat any more chocolates; he certainly shouldn’t see off however many led to today’s, even if it would feel like saving Adam from any reason to be grateful to the teacher. Twenty-what, twenty-one, twenty-more… At the eighth he lost count and had to start again. The relentless glare of the fluorescent tube overhead intensified his sense of sitting an examination, but it was only a mock one. One, three, six, ten… This time he progressed as far as the eleventh, and then searching through the numerical maze drove the total out of his head. He did his best to add up the numbers without looking for them, but he’d tallied fewer than many when he found he had to see them. He tried saying them aloud as he found them and repeating the latest total over and over while he searched for the next number, though he had to keep raising his voice to hold the count in his head. At last he arrived at the date and shouted the total, not loud enough to bother the neighbours, he hoped. He was about to feed himself one more sweet when he wondered if he’d arrived at the right answer.

  He added all the numbers up again, and the total was even louder than the process. It was a shout of frustration, because the amount was twenty-two less than his previous answer, which couldn’t even mean he’d missed a number out. He tried another count, though his throat was raw with shouting before he came to the end. Figuring out the difference aggravated the headache that was already making his vision throb. The total was nineteen more than the last one, which meant it was three less than he’d added up in the first place, but why did he need to know any of this? His head felt as if it was hatching numbers, a sensation that exacerbated a greasy sweetish sickness in his mouth. He stumbled to the bathroom to gulp water and splash some on his face. When none of this seemed to help he groped his way into the bedroom, but his thoughts came to bed with him. The year Smart had taken him for mathematics had been one of the worst of his life.

  “I’m here to make you smart like me,” the teacher had informed the class. “If I don’t do it one way I’ll do it another.” With his plump petulant constantly flushed face he’d resembled an overgrown schoolboy, and he’d revealed a schoolboy’s ingenuity at inventing tortures, tweaking a tuft of hair at the nape of the neck to lift his victim on tiptoe and hold them there until he’d delivered a lecture to them or about them. He’d called his favourite victim Summer because, he’d said in anything but praise, the boy was so singular. Before long Summers had spent every school night lying awake in terror of the next day, but he’d been too ashamed to tell his parents and afraid that any intervention would only make the situation worse. He’d lost count of how often he’d been singled out before the first of December, when Smart asked him to add up the days of the month.

  Everyone had found his bewilderment hilarious. He’d had to risk answering at last, and Smart had given him a round of dry applause. When he’d produced an advent calendar from his briefcase Summers had felt encouraged until he was called to the front of the class to find the date. Long before he did, the teacher was declaring “Summer means to keep us all here till next summer.” After that every mathematics lesson began with Summers on his feet to announce the total to date. He’d succeeded for over a week, having lost even more sleep to be sure of the answers, but he’d gone wrong on the ninth and on every school day for the rest of December. He’d still had to find the day’s sweet as he stood on tiptoe, raised ever higher by the agonising drag at his neck, and then he’d had to drop the chocolate into the bin.

  His anger at the memory kept him awake. Counting Father Christmases no longer helped, and he tried adding up punches to Smart’s cruel smug face. That was satisfying enough to let Summers doze, only to waken in a rage, having realised that he didn’t need to find the numbers on the calendar to count them. He turned it on its face and listed all the dates in a column on a pad—if he hadn’t felt that mobile phones involved too many numbers he would have had a calculator to use now. He tapped each date with the pen as he picked his way down the column. A smell of paint threatened to revive his headache, but eventually he had a number to write at the foot of the last row and another to add at the top of the next one. At last he had the full amount, and muttered something like a prayer before adding up the dates again. He did the sum a third time to be certain, and then he rewarded himself with a bath. Three times in a row he’d arrived at the same answer.

  He oughtn’t to have tried to prove he could repeat the calculation in his head. By the time he succeeded, the water was too cold to stay in. He meant only to glance at the bedside clock to see how soon he ought to leave for Paul’s and Tina’s, but he was already late. He almost snagged the padding of his jacket with the zip as he hurried out, to be hindered by tins of paint on the balcony. His left-hand neighbour’s door had turned green. “Just brightening the place up for you,” the overalled workman said, sounding rather too much like a nurse in a sickroom.

  Summers had scarcely rung the bell in the wrought-iron porch when Adam ran to open the door. “I said grandad said he was coming.”

  Paul emerged in a chef’s apron from the kitchen as Tina appeared from the dining-room with an electric corkscrew. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” Summers said.

  “Don’t give it a thought.” To his wife Paul said “I told you he’d never mistake the date.”

  “He’s just being silly, Teddy,” Tina assured Summers, which only made him wonder what else she’d said about him. “Take your grandfather’s coat, Adam,” she said and blinked at Summers. “Haven’t you been well?”

  “Perfectly,” Summers said, feeling too defensive to be truthful. “What makes you ask?”

  “You look as if you could do with feeding,” Paul said.

  “You can have one of my chocolates if you like,” said Adam.

  “I hope you thanked grandpa for the calendar,” Paul said. “I never had one at your age.”

  “I gave grandad one as well.”

  “Poor mite,” Tina said to Paul, and less satirically “That was kind of you, Adam.”

  “He gave me mine so he could have the one the teacher gave me.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  She was gazing at Paul, but Summers felt interrogated. “Perhaps we could discuss it later,” he said.

  “Adam, you can set the table,” Tina said as if it were a treat, and gestured the adults into the lounge. Once the door was shut she said “What’s the situation?”

  “I shouldn’t really think there is one,” Summers tried saying.

  “It sounds like one to us,” Tina said without glancing at Paul. “Why did you want Adam’s present?”

  “I just took it off him because it looked a bit ancient. Exactly like his grandfather, you could say.”

  “You mean you binned it.”

  Summers might have said so, but suppose Adam learned of it? “I didn’t do that, no. I’ve still got most of it.”

  “Most,” Paul said like some kind of rebuke.

  “I ate a few chocolates.” Summers felt driven to come up with the number. “Five of them,” he said with an effort. “I’m sure they’re nowhere near as good as the ones I gave Adam.”

  “They can’t be so bad,” Tina said, “if you saw five of them off.”

  “All right, it wasn’t only that. I just didn’t want Adam taking anything from that man.”

  “Which man?” Tina demanded as Paul said even more sharply “Why?”

  “The maths man. I hope he won’t be there mu
ch longer. Smart,” Summers made himself add and wiped his lips. “I wouldn’t trust him with a dog, never mind children.”

  “What are you saying?” Tina cried as Paul opened his mouth.

  “I had him for a year at Adam’s age. It felt like the rest of my life.” Summers saw he had to be specific so that they wouldn’t imagine worse. “He loved hurting people,” he said.

  “He’d never get away with that these days at school,” Paul protested.

  “There are more ways than physical. Let’s just hope Adam stays his favourite.”

  Tina gave Summers a long look before enquiring “Have you said any of this to Adam?”

  “I wouldn’t put him under any pressure, but I do think you should keep a close eye on the situation.”

  “I thought you said there wasn’t one,” Tina said and opened the door to the hall. “We’ll be discussing it further.”

  Summers gathered that he wouldn’t be involved, and couldn’t argue while Adam might hear. He offered to help but was sent into the dining-room, where Tina served him a glass of wine while his son and grandson brought in dinner. He saw they meant to make him feel at home, but every Saturday he felt as if he’d returned to find the house almost wholly unfamiliar, scattered with a few token items to remind him he’d once lived there—mostly photographs with Elaine in them. At least he could enthuse about Paul’s casserole, but this gave Adam an excuse to ask “Do you know what it’s called, grandad?”

  “Adam,” his mother warned him.

  “It’s not called Adam.” Perhaps the boy was misbehaving because he’d been excluded from the conversation in the lounge. “It’s cock off, Ann,” he said.

  “That’s very rude,” Tina said, “and not at all clever.”

  “Maybe it’s cocker fan.”

  “That’s rude too.” Apparently in case it wasn’t, Tina insisted “And silly as well.”

  “Then I expect it’s cock—”

  “Now, Adam, you’ve already impressed us with your schoolwork,” Summers said as he thought a grandparent should. “You’re an example to us all. You’re even one to me.”