Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  As the years after university went by, however, the pool of possible partners dwindled. Even now, Ezra admitted, if he were asked for his favourite hobbies he’d list chess, when he’d not actually played in years. Working out as many moves ahead in the dizzying infinity as you were able: there was no longer room for such speculation, was there, in the quickening pulse of our leisure time?

  * * *

  Without disturbing the players, Ezra made his way upstairs. Louie was in the bath. Minty was kneeling on the floor, leaning against the tub.

  ‘Hey,’ Ezra said, stooping to kiss Minty. She extended her neck, offered one cheek, then the other, pressing each cheek against his as she did so. He would have kissed his son as well, except that the boy had a grey plastic helmet on his head. Louie lifted the visor.

  ‘Daddy, I’m is a knight in armour.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed, darling.’

  ‘I’m is swimming.’

  ‘My, my, this water is cold.’

  ‘First he wouldn’t get in the bath,’ Minty explained. ‘Now he won’t get out.’

  ‘You’ve got one minute, Peanut.’ Ezra lowered the loo seat lid and sat down. ‘No news?’

  ‘Simon rang just a minute ago. He’s been thrown out, he thinks they’ve just about cut through the last one. Guess who she is?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Ezra said, raising his eyebrows in a gesture that he trusted was not too disloyal. He had to confront Sheena this evening; it was her irresponsibility that he’d been pondering on and off all day at work.

  ‘I really appreciate this, Minty,’ he said. ‘You get back home, now.’ He wondered whether or not Minty knew what had happened to Blaise. ‘Have you spoken with Blaise?’

  ‘Just “Hello”. “Hello.” You know?’ Minty pulled herself up. ‘We’ll see you on Sunday, Ezra.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Supper. Here, right?’

  ‘Oh, of course. See you guys then. Come on, Peanut, here’s your towel. Pull that plug out.’

  Louie was in bed in time to receive his full two book quota. Ezra picked his way across a rug strewn with cars, trains, farm animals and medieval warriors in a gruesome, time-travelling pile-up, to read one book about a fox thwarted from eating chicks by a lazy dog and another about a somewhat dysfunctional but basically loving family of hedgehogs. He used to be repelled by this anthropomorphism, but Sheena borrowed a neverending shuttle of such books from the library, the children enjoyed them, and now only a stubborn residue of his resistance remained.

  Ezra hugged tight his son’s willing little body. Louie informed his father of subjects of which he intended to dream: horses. Princes. Cars. Not cars, motorbikes. ‘Right,’ Ezra acknowledged. ‘Fine,’ as he retreated out of the room. Knights. Helicopters. Castles.

  Hector stood on the landing in his pyjamas. Without his spectacles on he looked a little lost. Ezra approached him from the side.

  ‘You off to bed, soldier?’

  Hector jumped like a startled deer, as if he was not an urban boy standing in his own house but some rural child, disturbed on a hillside. Once he’d collected himself Hector said, into the stairwell, ‘I’m not a soldier, Daddy.’

  ‘I know, Hec.’

  ‘I’d watch some telly but it’s trash. I’ll read. Actually, I’ll re-read.’

  ‘What already?’

  ‘The Amber Spyglass. Dad? Wake me up if Mummy doesn’t come home.’

  ‘How will I know when she hasn’t come home, Hector?’

  Hector stared. His father would do this: utter these sentences whose clarity was disturbed by humour, like a drop of milk in water.

  ‘You’ll know,’ he said, finally, nodding. ‘Of course you will.’

  Then Hector let his father give him a rare kiss goodnight, before stepping silently into his room.

  Blaise was in the kitchen, chewing peanut-buttered toast. She’d long since bathed and washed her hair, and was back in her beads and sweats and flared jeans. Watching her from the doorway, Ezra found himself assailed by the memory of being thumped by another boy at school. They must have been twelve or thirteen – Stephen Winter was the boy’s name. It was the last physical fight Ezra had ever had. He could recall scrutinising his reflection in the mirror over the following days: a bruise, changing colour around his eye and his cheek, which he’d borne with a confusion of shame and pride. He shook his head and stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘You didn’t eat with the others?’ Ezra asked.

  Blaise looked up at her father as she chewed, slowly, before swallowing. She shook her head.

  ‘Is that enough?’ he asked. ‘Shall I cook you something?’

  Blaise shook her head again, and looked down at the table.

  Ezra nodded. He was about to ask her something, he wasn’t sure what, when the back door swung suddenly open and in burst Sheena. She brought with her a pungent cloud, rank with marsh and sweat, and a still trembling elation, an insanity, corroborated by her wild black hair, muddy face and wide grin. She dumped a bag on the tiled floor.

  ‘We did it,’ she told Ezra, looking up, and only then did she see their daughter, obscured behind Ezra. ‘Blaise!’ Sheena said. ‘Blaise.’ Sheena pulled Blaise up into a hug in which, with a wide open arm, she then included Ezra. She spoke into Blaise’s hair. ‘You can’t believe how proud of you I am.’

  The three of them squeezed each other in a smelly, eager scrum. Blaise was weeping.

  ‘Isn’t our girl incredible?’ Sheena said. Her eyes were closed.

  Ezra eased out of the trio. Sheena and Blaise closed the gap he left, their limbs tightening together. Blaise sobbed. Sheena murmured, ‘You’re amazing.’

  ‘But, Mum, the man,’ Blaise mumbled.

  ‘I know, sweetheart,’ Sheena soothed. ‘I know. And I know how proud we all are of what you did.’

  At length Sheena withdrew her left arm from around Blaise’s shoulder and took a step back, opening the shell of their embrace. They stood facing Ezra, Blaise an inch or two the shorter, her left arm around her mother’s waist. Her damp, sad eyes shone. Sheena had on someone else’s T-shirt, too short and too wide, over a black catsuit. She looked like she’d taken part in a filthy yoga session. Ezra needed to talk to Sheena alone. As if in complicit telepathy, Blaise wiped her eyes, and said, ‘Do you want me to run you a bath, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, would you? I’d love one. Will you tell me all about it while I’m soaking?’

  Blaise nodded, and walked away through the living-room.

  Sheena turned to Ezra. She looked exhausted. Ezra passed her a glass of red wine. ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said. ‘But I’m very angry, Sheena.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Sheena said, chinking Ezra’s glass. ‘They so didn’t expect it, Ez. All day we stopped them. All right. It’s only one last day. They’ll start tomorrow.’

  ‘Sheena.’ Ezra unwound the cork from the corkscrew.

  ‘We’ve done everything we could. It feels good.’

  Ezra threw the cork into the open bin. ‘I want to know what she did,’ he said.

  ‘She was brilliant, Ez.’ Sheena lifted the glass to her lips and drained it, swallowing with a murmur of satisfaction. ‘This lout was beating up Bobby Sewell – you know, one of the guys who came down from the north, the ones who’ve really befriended Blaise – and she tried to stop him. She was so brave.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  Sheena looked at Ezra and frowned. Then she looked away again. ‘Yes. Of course. She was just trying to stop him, but he slipped, and kind of fell towards her. It was unfortunate.’

  ‘Unfortunate? You know what happened to the guy?’ Ezra raised his hands in a pleading gesture. ‘You were supposed to be looking out for her. She’s thirteen years old, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sheena nodded. ‘I was underneath a truck. But Jed Wilson went with her to the police station.’

  ‘He wasn’t there when I got there.’

  ‘Someone rang you at work, Ez. The
y were told you were already on your way.’

  Ezra perched against the edge of the kitchen table, and took a sip of wine. ‘You should have seen her,’ he said quietly. ‘Curled up in a plastic chair.’ He shook his head.

  Sheena smiled. ‘We knew she’d be released without charge.’ She went over to the sink, turned on the tap and filled a glass with water. She drank it down in one long gulping swallow.

  ‘You did, did you?’ Ezra said. ‘I didn’t get that impression at all. It was a fluke that she’s not facing a charge.’

  ‘There’s no need to mollycoddle her,’ Sheena said, breathless. ‘You don’t do her any favours.’

  A band of heat flared across Ezra’s chest. ‘Mollycoddle?’ he responded. ‘Damn it, Sheena, I let you have her take part in all this without a word of caution. Don’t throw my leniency back in my face. And I was the one who had to take care of it. They wouldn’t release her until one of us went to get her, would they?’ Ezra took an irritated sip of his wine. It left an aftertaste of vinegar. ‘She wouldn’t even tell them who she was,’ he murmured.

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘No! Not good for her, Sheena.’ The events had seemed clear to Ezra, rumbling through his mind during the course of the day. Sheena was supposed to be apologetic. She would be upset when he described the scene in the police station. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d need ammunition for his argument. ‘She’s a child. It’s our job to protect her,’ he said. ‘I mean, are you oblivious?’

  A grimace tightened Sheena’s countenance. ‘Well, look, Ez,’ she said, ‘it’s over now.’

  The anger had migrated to Ezra’s head, a ball of heat moving around his upper body. ‘It’s not over for this guy in the hospital.’

  Sheena stared at him. ‘A vicious thug,’ she said, incredulous.

  ‘A human being, for Christ’s sake.’

  She shrugged, and something about the gesture made him realise something that should have been obvious. He said, ‘She’s only trying to copy you, after all.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Sheena frowned.

  ‘She’s only trying to impress you.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Sheena shook her head. She put her empty wine glass on the sideboard. ‘I think that bath’ll be run by now,’ she said, and left the room.

  Ezra set pasta to boil, and made a pesto in the food processor, robotically adding ingredients. Their mutual incomprehension had floored him. Was it simply because he wasn’t there? If he’d taken part in the protest, would he have been able to see that Blaise’s act of violence was admirable? Or that Sheena’s irresponsible example was actually an inspiration? He ripped up green leaves for salad with trembling fingers. He could hear the water from Sheena’s bath running down the pipes as he halved and juiced a lemon for the dressing. Perhaps they were living in a Wonderland, where you could flip a coin and good became bad, right became wrong.

  ‘Blaise says goodnight,’ Sheena told him when she came back into the kitchen, dressed in clean jeans and T-shirt. She had a white towel around her drying hair, wrapped up on her head like a turban.

  Ezra served the pasta and salad. Sheena ate greedily. ‘That was delicious,’ she said, her lips shiny with olive oil. ‘I’d better get back to the vigil. They’ll have a bonfire lit.’

  ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  ‘I should. They’re expecting me. I mean, it’s nearly over now.’ Sheena leaned over to Ezra, squeezing his arm, drawing his averted eyes back towards hers. ‘You know how much I appreciate your support, Ez. I know I couldn’t have done this without you. But you do believe in what we’re doing, don’t you?’

  What an unfair question. The non-combatant asked if he supported the war. ‘Of course. I guess.’

  Sheena smiled, and kissed him. ‘I’ll grab an apple,’ she said, taking a couple from the fruit bowl. ‘See you later, Ezra.’

  After washing up, and tidying the sitting-room of Louie’s toys, and gathering newspapers for the recycling bin, Ezra Pepin traipsed upstairs. He undressed, performed ablutions in the bathroom, and lay in bed, yawning. On Monday he was due to lead a presentation to the Board: Ezra checked he’d put his Pocket Memo on the bedside table to record any ideas that might occur to him, but he fervently hoped that he wouldn’t wake yet again. He was due just one night sleeping straight through, that’s all it would take to replenish his energy; it was just that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one.

  The house was quiet. The carnival of family life in abeyance, for a moment, in which he might even be able to collect his thoughts. Sheena was out, the children were sleeping. Except, he sensed, that one of them wasn’t. How or why Ezra figured this he didn’t know. Because of some noise, he assumed, but as he listened now he could hear nothing, beyond the barely audible sound of their almost new house muttering to itself: a sigh in the pipes, a squeak from a ceiling beam. Down in the kitchen the dishwasher swished, hurling hot water at dirty plates and mugs; into the plastic cage of cutlery. The washing machine heaved and spun a soapy load. Cotton underwear – tiny Y-fronts, boxer shorts, knickers – tumbled in the dryer. Lifting the summer duvet and leaning to his left, Ezra let gravity lever him out of bed. He walked through the open doorway of his and Sheena’s bedroom out into the hall. Louie was fast asleep. He looked in on Blaise: she slept soundly. He closed the door and stepped across to Hector’s room.

  Hector turned on to his side as Ezra entered. ‘Are you still awake?’ his father whispered.

  Hector sighed. ‘I can’t sleep.’

  Ezra sat on the edge of Hector’s bed. ‘Let’s get something straight,’ he said. ‘I’m the insomniac in this family. You’re a little young to take over, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not my fault.’

  Hector had put his glasses back on. It took his father a moment, in the near dark, to register that they were sunglasses.

  ‘I thought they’d help me sleep,’ Hector explained. ‘I don’t think they do,’ he said, and took them off.

  Ezra stroked the hair from his son’s forehead. ‘Don’t brood, Hec,’ he said. ‘We’ve spoken about this.’

  ‘I can’t help it, Daddy,’ Hector complained. ‘To be conscious is an illness.’

  ‘It is, is it?’

  ‘That’s what Dostoyevsky said. A real thorough-going illness.’

  As more objects in the gloom became visible to Ezra, he identified his own Penguin copy of Notes from Underground lying on the floor – his son must have filched it from his bookshelves in the spare room. It was impossible to predict what would catch Hector’s imagination. It was clear already that he was clever – he’d been doing well in his first year at comprehensive – but in a quite arbitrary way. His interests were whimsical. His every report through primary school had contained the comment, Could pay more attention in class, because no teacher seemed able to engage him. Instead, he’d announce a new interest – geometry at school last term, his guitar at home – in an offhand way, and then become absorbed in it to an alarming degree. Hector immersed himself, and that was how he read books: their son’s body went into a zombified slump on a sofa and his spirit was sucked out. When it returned, it took a while for his family to be convinced that some part of him had not been left behind.

  ‘Daddy,’ Hector breathed now. ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ezra whispered. ‘Sure. How about, let me see, do you remember Last of the Mohicans?’

  ‘No, I mean one of your stories, Daddy. From the jungle.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Ezra nodded. ‘Fine. Let me think.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘What, Hector?’

  ‘Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong?’

  ‘Where?’

  Hector looked puzzled. ‘Anywhere.’

  Ezra put his hand on his bony boy’s arm. ‘You feel out of place?’

  Hector looked affronted. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I know: Hec. Listen. I’ll tell you about when I was first there. Okay?’

  �
��Yes.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ezra said. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. As he did so he repositioned himself on Hector’s bed, as if physical readiness were necessary; for the start of a story he’d told, over the years, many times, he needed to prepare himself.

  ‘I’d been in the village for some weeks,’ Ezra began. ‘A couple of months, learning the Indians’ language, and the most rudimentary, easily observable things about them. There were thirty people in this village. I’d been told by the brothers at the Jesuit mission downriver – who were the only people from the outside who’d had contact with them – of the Achia’s flippant attitude to children. Mothers, they told me, slipped away from the hut to give birth alone, through a hole in their hammocks, expelling the baby on to earth below.

  ‘If a baby is malformed, the Brothers said, the mother discards it at once. If a child cries too much, if it’s a nuisance to her, the mother kills it. If an infant son falls sick and dies, the father will kill a daughter. If the father has been killed by an enemy, or is sick and cannot hunt, the mother calculates the chore of feeding her children on a dwindling supply of banana and plantain, and fish that must be caught, and she might kill one or two of them.’

  ‘That’s awful, Daddy,’ Hector murmured.

  ‘This is what I was told. Achia children who died were then forgotten, as if conjured out of people’s minds and memory, into nothingness.’

  ‘Oblivion,’ Hector breathed.

  ‘Birth, the Jesuits explained to me, appeared to be easy. Childbirth, they claimed, becomes more difficult the more a culture comes to value the individual. As if the value of an individual soul can be measured by the pain a mother goes through to bring forth a human being into his or her existence.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Hector asked, prodding forward the story he half remembered from a previous telling.

  Ezra frowned. His children asked to hear the stories that he’d never finished writing: a curious validation. ‘One night,’ he continued, ‘I was awoken by Pakani, the best hunter in the tribe, whispering in my ear, “A child comes.”

  ‘“Now? Your baby?” I asked him.

  ‘“My child will come. I go.”