Oranges From Spain

by David Park

  But things were not always quite so normal. As the boat nosed through the waves he remembered the morning four years earlier when he had picked up an envelope from the hall floor and felt through it the hard outline of a bullet. They had packed and moved into temporary accommodation within the week. He had come to accept disruption as one of the persistent possibilities of his life.

  In the distance now he could see the Copelands. He wondered if anyone still lived on them. There were times in his own life when living on an island would have had its attractions. Almost as if he had been reading his thoughts, one of the men, a sergeant called Alec, turned to him and answered his unspoken question.

  ‘There’s nobody living on them now. Nothing there except a few derelict cottages. Hardly worth the effort of making the trip out to them. Know a few boys, though, I’d like to maroon on them.’

  They both laughed gently at the joke.

  ‘I believe you’re thinking of going to university.’

  ‘If I get the grades, that is – it’ll be tough enough.’

  ‘So you’re not thinking of following your old man’s footsteps and joining the force?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. One policeman in the family is probably all my mother could handle.’

  ‘I know what you mean, son. Anyway, I think your dad would rather see you go on with your education. I want my lad to do the same.’

  ‘You work with my dad, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s right – know him from a long way back.’

  There was a pause while he searched the sea for words.

  ‘Your father’s one of the best – they don’t come any better, or any straighter. There’s not a man on this boat wouldn’t follow him anywhere he asked and there’s more than one of us wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for the same man.’

  The sincerity behind the testimonial stirred a feeling of pride in him, but also triggered a tremor of doubt about his own frequent indifference. He could think of no reply, but as he looked up, he saw that none was expected, and the conversation slipped into the safe waters of trivia. As he talked about nothing in particular his thoughts tried to focus on his perception of his father. It was difficult for a son to know his father. He sought consolation by thinking of the future and the opportunities that time would bring. Perhaps there could be more trips like this – more outings, more shared times. Maybe they could take up fishing properly and get away for a weekend every so often. The three of them could go together – somewhere quiet and unspoiled, somewhere safe. Maybe even go to the lakes and hire a boat. He would suggest it later on that night. It felt like a good idea, and something told him his father would be pleased by it. Wanting to please his father was a foreign impulse that he hadn’t felt since he was a young child. He wondered if it would prove a temporary one.

  The roll of the boat jolted his memory and reminded him of the resentment he had felt at various times in the past, caused by his father’s non-appearances on a catalogue of occasions – sports days, parents’ evenings, cup games. Now he felt that his resentment had been unfair and selfish, realising that the absences bespoke not indifference, but a duality of commitment and responsibility he had never fully appreciated until this moment. He felt a little guilty about the times when he had sought to punish his father by excluding him from information and sentiments that he shared exclusively with his mother. It had been a childish thing to do. He wondered what his father had felt about it – had it hurt him as intended? There was no way of knowing. He realised too, for the first time, that his father was also part of another family, a family that he knew little about, but whose ties and bonds were equally strong and affectionate.

  His thoughts were interrupted by raucous laughter and ironic cheering. One of the men was hanging over the side and being enthusiastically sick, his sea-sickness making him the butt of a rapid succession of schoolboy jokes and vulgar advice, a source of humour that would obviously be milked for weeks to come. He didn’t feel all that good himself, but he breathed in deeply and was determined that he would not disgrace himself. Steadying himself with one hand, he lifted his head into the air and felt the cool breeze spray his face.

  The sea seemed menacing and restless now. The lights of the boat streaked the encroaching gloom as they reached the mysterious spot, invisibly and inexplicably marked as the destination. The engine cut out and the boat drifted rhythmically with the tide. Immediately, there was a feverish outbreak of activity among the party as they rushed to cast their lines. He let out his own line and watched it spin endlessly into the dark waters.

  The room felt artificially empty and silent. Through the window behind the chair he could see one section of the playground. A boy was loitering suspiciously by the bicycle sheds, while pages ripped from a discarded exercise book spiralled aimlessly in the winter wind. In the distance he could see a straggling line of cross-country runners lapping the rugby pitches. The steady, upright posture of the leading pack contrasted with the stooped forms of those following. It looked cold outside. This was the second time he had sat in the headmaster’s office. On the first occasion his parents had been with him. By now the experience of moving to a new school had taken on something of a ritual quality. He hoped this one would be the last. Doing A levels was difficult enough without the added burden of being moved in the middle of a course.

  His eyes focused on the desk in front of him. The clutter of papers and documents seemed inappropriate, somehow, for what was the holy of holies. What had obviously started as separate piles had merged into one undefined sprawl. A red desk diary lay open and revealed a page of tiny black writing. The cushioned chair behind the desk looked warm and comfortable. He wondered where the headmaster was. Perhaps he was out of school. Outside, in the secretary’s office, he could hear voices whispering. He did not need to hear what they were saying to know the reason for his summons. There had been something strange about the vice-principal’s mumbled incoherence when he had collected him from the history class, a feeling reinforced by the embarrassed silence during their walk to the head’s study. When they had finally reached it, he had been shown in and told that someone would be with him in a few minutes. The few minutes stretched on. The whispering grew louder. The couple of words he was able to catch were enough to confirm what he already knew. He felt now as if a kind of dream was unfolding before his eyes. They were debating whose responsibility it was to tell him. He felt a powerful urge to run out of the room before someone had the chance to pronounce the words he could not bear to hear, the words that would confirm the truth that his heart burned to deny. His memory tortured him with raw images of ripped-apart wreckage of cars, their remains strewn across countless fields. He hoped it had not been like that. His thoughts turned to his mother and he knew he must go to her. Outside the door the whispering had stopped.

  The night was growing colder now. The boat’s lights shimmered the dark waters. Far off, the lights of the shore signalled their silent invitation. Soon it would be time to return. He was glad, as by now the cool night air was beginning to seep into his bones. The spirits of the men were still high, but his own had begun to sag a little. The monotonous roll of the boat bedded itself uneasily in his balance and his feet began to yearn for firmer ground. The catch itself had been unspectacular and each fish that had been caught was the subject of boisterous celebration. His own lack of success did not concern him and he was content now to be a passive spectator to the proceedings. His father chided him good-humouredly about his lack of luck and proudly held up his own small catch for inspection. He wondered why his father bothered to keep them as he remembered his mother’s exasperated refusal to clean and store a previous catch in the family freezer. His smile as his father childishly clutched his trophies spread to a grin when he was offered one ‘to pass himself’ when he got home.

  Overhead, the sky webbed like a black net and stars shivered through its unfathomable depths. The night tensed, taut and motionless. The gulls grew more frantic in their scaven
ging. A sharp tug on his line awoke him suddenly and he knew at once that he had caught something. His father whooped encouragement, and his arm resting on his shoulder bespoke an equal friendship he had never felt before. Slowly and steadily he reeled in the line. It seemed unending. All eyes were on him and he felt nervous in case he let his father down by doing something clumsily and letting the catch slip away. He wound in, and wondered what was on the end of the line. Then, after a white splash of water, his father slapped his back and the rest of the men cheered as he swung the fish on board. The large fish, silver-wet and smooth, thrashed at his feet, gasping for the sweetness of life. He watched it wordlessly, then turned his head away, as the cold and bitter hook tore remorselessly at the soft chambers of his heart.

  The Silver Saloon

  I think it was only my second visit to Belfast. My uncle had asked me to come with him to help make a delivery to some contact of his. When the delivery was made, he dumped me in the city centre and arranged to pick me up in a couple of hours. I think he had a woman to see, but he never gave anything away and I didn’t ask.

  I had been wandering about aimlessly for an hour when I came across it. It was called The Silver Saloon and the front doors were opened back so that you could walk straight in from the street. Now, when I was younger, we sometimes went on day-trips to Portrush or Ballycastle, and there had been amusement arcades of course, but none had been like this. In those, everything had cost a penny and they had been friendly, haphazard novelties which you were never quite sure were going to work when you put your money in. There was the crane that picked up sweets and always seemed to let the things go just when you were about to win; the bagatelle games where you pulled a lever and propelled a ball round and round until it dropped into a hole with a number on it; and the table-football games where the players were little badly painted dolls covered in woollen rags. There had been fortune-telling machines and machines where they told your future by the strength of your grip, and everything was encased in wooden boxes with glass fronts. Hanging side by side on the wall were cases containing horrific scenes which you paid a penny to activate. My favourite was the execution scene. Curtains were drawn back, a light came on, and a little figure was guillotined, with its head falling into a wooden basket before the curtains closed again. It all took place inside about fifteen seconds, and sometimes you made it do it two or three times, not because you enjoyed seeing someone being decapitated, but because it was really funny when the little head fell off. I used to wonder how they got the head back on. I suppose it was done by magnets. Then there was the graveyard scene where the moon came out, a grave opened, and Dracula appeared wearing his black cloak. I liked that one too.

  But The Silver Saloon bore no resemblance to any amusement arcade I had ever been in. For a start, it had a carpet – covered in black cigarette burns, but a carpet nevertheless – and the smell wasn’t that fairground mixture of sparks, candy floss and sea, but something completely different, and there was music playing in the background. Everything was new and self-confident, made from shiny coloured metals and plastic, screaming at you to put money in. The lights were white and bright and flashed in the long strips of mirrors and dazzled and blinded. Everything wanted to take your money without giving anything back. Fruit machines with rolling, drunken eyes stuttered along the walls and small women with piled beehive hairdos pulled levers and fed more money without stopping to draw breath or look about them, and when their children tugged at the hems of their imitation leopard-skin coats, they slipped them a few coins without saying anything and the children disappeared for another while.

  Down the centre of the hall was a series of large games with clear plastic domes. Spectators and players grouped round them and hung over them. The first one was a model racecourse with five coloured horses. You had to select one and place your money on it before the race began. Then they raced round the track and over little fences and past the winning post. It was just like the real races, only you didn’t lose or win so much money, and you won or lost it in exactly twenty seconds. And of course everyone thought they had a system and knew the winning sequence, told their friends which horse to place their money on, and smiled complacently when they were right and looked indignant when they were wrong. Behind it was a basketball game. A rubber ball fell into little numbered sockets and when you pushed the button with the same number it flew towards the basket. I wanted to try this but you needed a partner to play it. There were pinball tables with ringing bells, flashing lights and whirling scoreboards, and all their patrons held on grimly to the sides as if they were exorcising them.

  In the bottom half of the room was another racing game, the same type as the first one, only this time it had greyhounds instead of racehorses, and they chased a little plastic hare round the course past a stand full of people, towards their handlers who were standing waiting at the finishing line in white coats. Every twenty seconds there was one winner and four losers, but all the little men in white coats seemed to be smiling. And beside the racing game were the ‘Penny Waterfalls’ and a huge ‘Roll-a-Penny’ game. In the ‘Roll-a-Penny’ you had to roll a penny down a chute on to moving lanes marked in black. If your penny landed in a lane without touching either of the sides, you won the amount marked in that lane, but it was difficult because the lanes were almost the same width as a penny. It was the same principle as the hula-hoop stand – more sophisticated, of course, but really the same. They didn’t have a hula-hoop stall, but in that game you have to get the hoop cleanly over the whole prize to win and the prizes are always sitting on thick little blocks, which makes it more difficult than it first appears. But there weren’t any hula-hoop stands or any of those types of stalls that needed people to run them.

  I had some money in my pocket and I went over to get it changed. It was confusing because usually in arcades there is a woman sitting with hundreds of little carefully counted piles of money in front of her. But this was different. When I told the woman what I wanted, she made no reply, but took my money, leaving me to stand staring expectantly until I received an impatient prod in my back from an elderly woman behind me whose thin finger pointed into a little tray where my pennies waited. I gathered them quickly, dropped one on the floor and had to scramble after it, only recovering it in time to watch her change come cascading out of the machine and scurry down the chute into the little tray.

  Turning round to look at the machine, I was momentarily stunned by the lights and the noise, the flashing colours and the bright, white teeth which threatened to bite if you didn’t play them. But there was no mystery in the playing, no enjoyment, and the activity was coldly speculative. I played the ‘Roll-a-Penny’ and lost each time, and of course as soon as the first penny is lost then you’re no longer playing for profit but to recoup your losses, and you no longer play with casual indifference, which is the only way that we can come close to catching Chance, who is herself indifferent and spontaneous and has no memory. You see, I understand about luck. Sometimes, for example, when I was kicking a ball about in the garden, I would set a stick in the ground and try to knock it over with the ball. The stick was small and I would stand a good distance away so mostly I would miss. But sometimes after doing this for a while, I would decide to stop, and before walking off would turn and, without looking or thinking, kick the ball, and very often that small stick would fly into the air. To be a winner on luck you have to stop trying. When you try too hard, you always lose. I mean, when you start practising a skill like hitting a stick with a ball or a tin can with a stone, you think about it too much, your brain gets in the way and you start consciously co-ordinating your arms and your legs and balance, with calculations of speed, force and distance. You begin to do things which your whole body can do instinctively for itself and without thinking.

  The machines were addictive, filling the head with unfulfilled promises, urging seductively that you have just one more go and whispering that your luck has changed. There was no way that anyone could ever make
money out of the machines. If you did win, you only won back what you had already lost, and if you made a winning you ended up losing it again. The only possible way to beat the machines was to walk in, make an immediate win and walk straight out again, but how many people have you ever seen doing that? There was no way that you could beat them – I knew that and yet I still kept feeding my money into them. They could not be beaten because they were machines and had no feelings of greed or loss, and their brains were whirling wheels and tiny cogs.

  I lost half my money and was playing ‘The Penny Waterfall’ when I noticed the man on my left playing the same machine. He was about fifty and was wearing a dark suit. Everything about him was neat and finely cut and there was a slight trace of scent. He seemed intent on what he was doing and from time to time made exasperated little clicking noises, then, without looking at me or taking his eyes off the machine, he said, ‘We don’t seem to be having much luck, do we?’ I agreed with him, surprised that he had even noticed I was there.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, you know, if these machines were fixed,’ he said.