‘Wait,’ says Jordan. ‘Get a saucer. Keep the hairs for me.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s keep the hairs – they’re white. Save them and use them in a painting some time.’
‘Are you serious, Jordan?’
‘Yes I am.’
I go and wash a saucer and dry it, then continue clipping his beard on to it.
‘I never know with you, whether you’re sending me up or not.’
‘It’s a great idea. Hairy paintings. I’ve used sand in the past – but to . . . I’d like to put something of myself into just one of these images.’
‘You are joking.’
‘If I could find the right medium to float them in. Save them anyway – let me think about it.’
I put the clippings from the saucer into a polythene bag, tie the neck in a knot and put it on the shelf.
‘I want you to read to me tonight. Also I want to get drunk.’
I know that this is a command for me to stay with him until whatever hour he chooses and put him safely into his bed. His capacity for drink is prodigious and his aggression proportional to the amount taken. The only thing in my favour is that he is now physically weak and I can master him. He used to throw things at me but that ceased when he finally became blind.
‘Very well,’ I say. It has the makings of a long and difficult night.
The last session – about three weeks ago – he said to me, ‘I’m getting through it quite well.’
‘What?’
‘My life. There can’t be long to go now. The thought of suicide is a great consolation. It has helped me through many’s a bad night. Do you know who said that?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think you would. You have a Reader’s Digest grasp of the world. Just promise me one thing – don’t slot me into one of those wall cupboards in the graveyard.’
‘But I will. And I’ll put one of those nice ceramic photos of you on the door with little roses all round it.’
‘Burn me and fritter my ashes on the ocean.’
Inevitably halfway down the bottle he will begin to cry. The tears will fill his eyes and spill over on to his cheeks and wet his beard. When he stops and blows his nose thoroughly in that navy hanky of his, he will say, ‘It’s amazing that the eyes work so well in that function but in no other way.’
If he cries tonight I’ll really put the knife in – get even with him for today’s nastiness. I’ll ask him if he wants his tears kept. If he wants a phial of them put in one of his paintings. If I do say this there will be a God-awful row. He’ll wreck the place. The one thing he cannot stand is to have his work ridiculed – even by me.
But no matter how furious the fight, the bitching, the name-calling, I will be back in the morning with Pangur-Ban at my heels. There is now a kind of unspoken acceptance that I am here until he dies.
MORE THAN JUST THE DISEASE
AS HE UNPACKED his case Neil kept hearing his mother’s voice. Be tidy at all times, then no one can surprise you. This was a strange house he’d come to, set in the middle of a steep terraced garden. Everything in it seemed of an unusual design; the wardrobe in which he hung his good jacket was of black lacquer with a yellow inlay of exotic birds. A little too ornate for my taste – vulgar almost. And pictures – there were pictures hanging everywhere, portraits, landscapes, sketches. Dust gatherers. The last things in his case were some comics and he laid them with his ironed and folded pyjamas on the pillow of the bottom bunk and went to join the others.
They were all sitting in the growing dark of the large front room, Michael drinking hot chocolate, Anne his sister with her legs flopped over the arm of the chair, Dr Middleton squeaking slowly back and forth in the rocking-chair while his wife moved around preparing to go out.
‘Now, boys, you must be in bed by ten thirty at the latest. Anne can sit up until we come back if she wants. We’ll not be far away and if anything does happen you can phone “The Seaview”.’ She spent some time looking in an ornamental jug for a pen to write down the number. ‘I can find nothing in this house yet.’
‘We don’t need Anne to babysit,’ said Michael. ‘We’re perfectly capable of looking after ourselves. Isn’t that right Neil?’ Neil nodded. He didn’t like Michael involving him in an argument with the rest of the family. He had to have the tact of a guest; sit on the fence yet remain Michael’s friend.
‘Can we not stay up as late as Anne?’ asked Michael.
‘Anne is fifteen years of age. Please, Michael, it’s been a long day. Off to bed.’
‘But Mama, Neil and I . . .’
‘Michael.’ The voice came from the darkness of the rocking-chair and had enough threat in it to stop Michael. The two boys got up and went to their bedroom.
Neil lifted his pyjamas and went to the bathroom. He dressed for bed buttoning the jacket right up to his neck and went back with his clothes draped over his arm. Michael was half-dressed.
‘That was quick,’ he said. He bent his thin arms, flexing his biceps. ‘I only wear pyjama bottoms. Steve McQueen, he-man,’ and he thumped his chest before climbing to the top bunk. They lay and talked and talked – about their first year at the school, how lucky they had been to have been put in the same form, who they hated most. The Crow with his black gown and beaky nose, the Moon with his pallid round face, wee Hamish with his almost mad preoccupation with ruling red lines. Once Neil had awkwardly ruled a line which showed the two bumps of his fingers protruding beyond the ruler and wee Hamish had pounced on it.
‘What are these bumps? Is this a drawing of a camel, boy?’ Everybody except Neil had laughed and if there was one thing he couldn’t abide it was to be laughed at. A voice whispered that it was a drawing of his girlfriend’s chest.
Neil talked about the Scholarship examination and the day he got his results. When he saw the fat envelope on the mat he knew his life would change – if you got the thin envelope you had failed, a fat one with coloured forms meant that you had passed. What Neil did not say was that his mother had cried, kneeling in the hallway hugging and kissing him. He had never seen anyone cry with happiness before and it worried him a bit. Nor did he repeat what she had said with her eyes shining. Now you’ll be at school with the sons of doctors and lawyers.
Anne opened the door and hissed into the dark.
‘You’ve got to stop talking right now. Get to sleep.’ She was in a cotton nightdress which became almost transparent with the light of the hallway behind her. Neil saw her curved shape outlined to its margins. He wanted her to stay there but she slammed the door.
After that they whispered and had a farting competition. They heard Michael’s father and mother come in, make tea and go to bed. It was ages before either of them slept. All the time Neil was in agonies with his itch but he did not want to scratch in case Michael should feel the shaking communicated to the top bunk.
In the morning Neil was first awake and tiptoed to the bathroom with all his clothes to get dressed. He took off his pyjama jacket and looked at himself in the mirror. Every morning he hoped that it would have miraculously disappeared overnight but it was still there crawling all over his chest and shoulders: his psoriasis – a redness with an edge as irregular as a map and the skin flaking and scumming off the top. Its pattern changed from week to week but only once had it appeared above his collar line. That week his mother had kept him off school. He turned his back on the mirror and put on a shirt, buttoning it up to the neck. He wondered if he should wear a tie to breakfast but his mother’s voice had nothing to say on the subject.
Breakfast wasn’t a meal like in his own house when he and his mother sat down at table and had cereal and tea and toast with sometimes a boiled egg. Here people just arrived and poured themselves cornflakes and went off to various parts of the room, or even the house, to eat them. The only still figure was the doctor himself. He sat at the corner of the table reading the Scotsman and drinking coffee. He wore blue running shoes and no socks and had a T-shirt on. Excep
t for his receding M-shaped hairline he did not look at all like a doctor. In Edinburgh anytime Neil had seen him he wore a dark suit and a spotted bow-tie.
Anne came in. ‘Guten Morgen, mein Papa. Hello Neil.’ She was bright and washed with her yellow hair in a knot on the top of her head. Neil thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen up close. She wore a pair of denims cut down to shorts so that there were frayed fringes about her thighs. She also had what his mother called a figure. She ate her cornflakes noisily and the doctor did not even raise his eyes from the paper. Close your mouth when you’re eating, please. Others have to live with you.
‘Some performance last night, eh Neil?’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Daddy, they talked till all hours.’
Her father turned a page of the paper and his hand groped out like a blind man’s to find his coffee.
‘Sorry,’ said Neil.
‘I’m only joking,’ said Anne and smiled at him. He blushed because she looked directly into his eyes and smiled at him as if she liked him. He stumbled to his feet.
‘Thank you for the breakfast,’ he said to the room in general and went outside to the garden where Michael was sitting on the steps.
‘Where did you get to? You didn’t even excuse yourself from the table,’ said Neil.
‘I wasn’t at the table, small Fry,’ said Michael. He was throwing pea-sized stones into an ornamental pond at a lower level.
‘One minute you were there and the next you were gone.’
‘I thought it was going to get heavy.’
‘What?’
‘I know the signs. The way the old man reads the paper. Coming in late last night.’
‘Oh.’
Neil lifted a handful of multi-coloured gravel and fed the pieces singly into his other hand and lobbed them at the pool. They made a nice plip noise.
‘Watch it,’ said Michael. He stilled Neil’s throwing arm with his hand. ‘Here comes Mrs Wan.’
‘Who’s she?’
An old woman in a bottle-green cardigan and baggy mouse-coloured trousers came stepping one step at a time down towards them. She wore a puce-coloured hat like a turban and, although it was high summer, a pair of men’s leather gloves.
‘Good morning, boys,’ she said. Her voice was the most superior thing Neil had ever heard, even more so than his elocution teacher’s. ‘And how are you this year, Benjamin?’
‘Fine. This is my friend Neil Fry.’ Neil stood up and nodded. She was holding secateurs and a flat wooden basket. He knew that she would find it awkward to shake hands so he did not offer his.
‘How do you do? What do you think of my garden, young man?’
‘It’s very good. Tidy.’
‘Let’s hope it remains that way throughout your stay,’ she said and continued her sideways stepping down until she reached the compost heap at the bottom beyond the ornamental pool.
‘Who is she?’ asked Neil.
‘She owns the house. Lets it to us for the whole of the summer.’
‘But where does she live when you’re here?’
‘Up the back in a caravan. She’s got ninety million cats.’ Mrs Wan’s puce turban threaded in and out of the flowers as she weeded and pruned. It was a dull overcast day and the wind was moving the brightly-coloured rose blooms.
‘Fancy a swim?’ asked Michael.
‘Too cold. Anyway I told you I can’t swim.’
‘You don’t have to swim. Just horse around. It’s great.’
‘Naw.’
Michael threw his whole handful of gravel chirping into the pond and went up the steps to the house.
That afternoon the shelf of cloud moved inland and the sky over the Atlantic became blue. The wind dropped and Dr Middleton observed that the mare’s-tails were a good sign. The whole family went down the hundred yards to the beach, each one carrying something – a basket, a deckchair, a lilo.
‘Where else in the world but Scotland would we have the beach to ourselves on a day like this?’ said Mrs Middleton. The doctor agreed with a grunt. Michael got stripped to his swimming trunks and they taught Neil to play boule in the hard sand near the water. The balls were of bright grooved steel and he enjoyed trying to lob them different ways until he finally copied the doctor who showed him how to put back-spin on them. Anne wore a turquoise bikini and kept hooking her fingers beneath the elastic of her pants and snapping them out to cover more of her bottom. She did this every time she bent to pick up her boule and Neil came to watch for it. When they stopped playing Michael and his sister ran off to leap about in the breakers – large curling walls, glass-green, which nearly knocked them off their feet. From where he stood Neil could only hear their cries faintly. He went and sat down with the doctor and his wife.
‘Do you not like the water?’ she asked. She was lying on a sunbed, gleaming with suntan oil. She had her dress rucked up beyond her knees and her shoulder straps loosened.
‘No. It’s too cold.’
‘The only place I’ll ever swim again is the Med,’ said the doctor.
‘Sissy,’ said his wife, without opening her eyes. Neil lay down and tried to think of a better reason for not swimming. His mother had one friend who occasionally phoned for her to go to the Commonwealth Pool. When she really didn’t feel like it there was only one excuse that seemed to work.
At tea Michael took a perverse pleasure out of telling him again and again how warm the water was and Anne innocently agreed with him.
The next day was scorching hot. Even at breakfast time they could see the heat corrugating the air above the slabbed part of the garden.
‘You must come in for a swim today, Fry. I’m boiled already,’ said Michael.
‘The forecast is twenty-one degrees,’ said the doctor from behind his paper. Anne whistled in appreciation.
Neil’s thighs were sticking to the plastic of his chair. He said, ‘My mother forgot to pack my swimming trunks. I looked yesterday.’
Mrs Middleton, in a flowing orange dressing-gown, spoke over her shoulder from the sink. ‘Borrow a pair of Michael’s.’ Before he could stop her she had gone off with wet hands in search of extra swimming trunks.
‘Couldn’t be simpler,’ she said, setting a navy blue pair with white side panels on the table in front of Neil.
‘I’ll get mine,’ said Michael and dashed to his room. Anne sat opposite Neil on the Formica kitchen bench-top swinging her legs. She coaxed him to come swimming, again looking into his eyes. He looked down and away from them.
‘Come on, Neil. Michael’s not much fun in the water.’
‘The fact is,’ said Neil, ‘I’ve got my period.’
There was a long silence and a slight rustle of the Scotsman as Dr Middleton looked over the top of it. Then Anne half-slid, half-vaulted off the bench and ran out. Neil heard her make funny snorts in her nose.
‘That’s too bad,’ said the doctor and got up and went out of the room shutting the door behind him. Neil heard Anne’s voice and her father’s, then he heard the bedroom door shut. He folded his swimming trunks and set them on the sideboard. Mrs Middleton gave a series of little coughs and smiled at him.
‘Can I help you with the dishes?’ he asked. There was something not right.
‘Are you sure you’re well enough?’ she said smiling. Neil nodded and began to lift the cups from various places in the room. She washed and he dried with a slow thoroughness.
‘Neil, nobody is going to force you to swim. So you can feel quite safe.’
Michael came in with his swimming gear in a roll under his arm.
‘Ready, small Fry?’
‘Michael, could I have a word? Neil, could you leave those bathing trunks back in Michael’s wardrobe?’
On the beach the boys lay down on the sand. Michael hadn’t spoken since they left the house. He walked in front, he picked the spot, he lay down and Neil followed him. The sun was hot and again they had the beach to themselves. Neil picked up a handful of sand
and examined it as he spilled it out slowly.
‘I bet you there’s at least one speck of gold on this beach,’ he said.
‘That’s a bloody stupid thing to say.’
‘I’ll bet you there is.’
Michael rolled over turning his back. ‘I can pick them.’
‘What?’
‘I can really pick them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I might as well have asked a girl to come away on holiday.’
Neil’s fist bunched in the sand.
‘What’s the use of somebody who won’t go in for a dip?’
‘I can’t, that’s all.’
‘My Mum says you must have a very special reason. What is it, Fry?’
Neil opened his hand and some of the damp, deeper sand remained in little segments where he had clenched it. He was almost sure Anne had laughed.
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘Useless bloody Mama’s boy,’ said Michael. He got up flinging a handful of sand at Neil and ran down to the water. Some of the sand went into Neil’s eyes, making him cry. He knuckled them clear and blinked, watching Michael jump, his elbows up, as each glass wave rolled at him belly-high.
Neil shouted hopelessly towards the sea. ‘That’s the last time I’m getting you into the pictures.’
He walked back towards the house. He had been here a night, a day and a morning. It would be a whole week before he could get home. Right now he felt he was a Mama’s boy. He just wanted to climb the stair and be with her behind the closed door of their house. This had been the first time in his life he had been away from her and, although he had been reluctant because of this very thing, she had insisted that he could not turn down an invitation from the doctor’s family. It will teach you how to conduct yourself in good society.
At lunch time Michael did not speak to him but made up salad rolls and took them on to the patio. Anne and her father had gone into the village on bicycles. Neil sat at the table chewing his roll with difficulty and staring in front of him. If there is one thing I cannot abide it’s a milk bottle on the table. Mrs Middleton was the only one left for him to talk to.
Collected Stories Page 29