Mort shrugs. ‘Maybe my body just really wants to grow.’
‘So you need a double-dose? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Err… maybe.’
‘Sure thing,’ says the doctor. ‘And if that doesn’t work we can use injections or maybe even a slow-release implant. Don’t worry; we’ll get this thing under control.’
When the doctor has gone, Baby Joe opens his eyes and says: ‘What did she mean about pills?’
‘Vitamins,’ says Mort.
‘No,’ says Baby Joe. ‘There’s something else. Tell me.’
‘I can’t,’ says Mort. ‘I’m not supposed to tell.’
‘I order you to tell.’
‘But this comes from higher up,’ says Mort.
‘There’s no one higher up than me,’ says Baby Joe.
‘There always something higher up,’ says Mort.
‘No, no, no!’ shouts Baby Joe and he throws himself on his cushions and bites them, and sheds real tears.
‘You won’t like it,’ says Mort.
Baby Joe sits up. ‘Tell me anyway.’
Mort folds him arms. ‘I don’t think I should.’
‘I’ll give you anything you want.’
Mort looks at Baby Joe’s purple plush all-in-one, his big soft cushions. ‘Got any chocolate?’ says Mort.
‘Can chocolate make you grow?’ says Mort. He is sitting out on the quayside, where no boats are, with Piet the security officer. Water sloshes beneath the concrete surface where they sit; like most of the city, the island is built on piles. Across the water are the deserted docklands of Amsterdam, the scrapheaps where gangs of children used to clamber. The bridge to the island was blown up long ago.
Piet is on duty, so he’s wearing his dark uniform, but when his shifts are over he becomes the island’s unofficial gardener, growing vegetables in the little park – a patch of wood, wild lawn and dark earth that has its incongruous existence in the middle of the concrete island.
Piet is breaking a chocolate bar and counting out the squares. ‘Two for me. One for you.’
Mort gives him a look.
‘What?’ says Piet. ‘Come on. I’m twice your size. Though now you come to mention it I think you are getting taller.’
With a guilty look, Mort shakes his head.
‘In which case you’d better not have too much,’ says Piet. ‘Because you know they won’t keep you here if you get too big.’
‘How’s the little guy?’ asks Big Joe. ‘How’s my little barrel of organs?’ Just lately, he’s been thinking a lot about Baby Joe. It’s all that gets him to sleep at night, when his heartbeat turns lumpy. He’s thinking of getting closer to his clone-son, in case an emergency operation is needed.
His assistant looks at the last page in the leather-bound report and frowns. He reads it to himself again.
‘Actually, it appears he’s a little depressed. He’s overeating. Got himself a bit of a weight problem.’
‘Overweight? Depressed?’ shouts Big Joe, leaping out of his chair. ‘I gave orders he was supposed to be kept happy.’
‘It seems that happiness has involved a few too many doughnuts.’
‘Fire that dietician!’ screams Big Joe. ‘Get him on an exercise regime. Do I have to think of everything myself?’
‘If we fire the dietician,’ says Mort, ‘what’s to stop him going to the papers, or telling his story to some human rights organisation?’
‘You’re right,’ says Piet.
‘Besides, where will we get another one?’
‘We couldn’t get a short person right away,’ agreed Piet. ‘But the dietician doesn’t necessarily have to speak to Baby Joe. After all, he’s never seen me, but that doesn’t stop me doing my job.’
‘I think it’s best to leave things as they are,’ says Mort.
‘What do you mean there’s been a fire?!’ shouts Big Joe.
His assistant reads out the latest report, in full.
Baby Joe had agreed to give up the doughnuts, if he could have one last feast. But the vat of oil in the catering caravan overheated and burst into flames. Baby Joe’s life had been in danger and he had to be evacuated from the igloo. Unfortunately there hadn’t been time to cover his eyes, so when he saw giants with fire hoses running towards him, he began, not unnaturally, to scream.
‘What’s happening?’ says Big Joe. ‘For years it’s been quiet and now when I need the little guy to be happy and healthy and look after my organs like he should it’s one thing after another.’
His assistant hesitates before reading out the psychoanalyst’s report: it seems that Baby Joe is having an existential crisis. His whole perception of reality has been called into doubt.
Big Joe moves to Amsterdam; but he isn’t ready to visit the island. ‘We’ve got to find something to distract him,’ he says. ‘All we have to do is keep him happy for a very short time: surely that should be possible.’
Big Joe calls in the circus.
It takes a while. It’s not easy to assemble a circus made up only of the very short: children, dwarves and midgets. Then it takes a while for them all to be screened, checked, and tested for infections.
At last the show is ready to go. The centre of the warehouse is transformed into a circus ring and the little Prince is brought out of his igloo for the occasion. He wears a silk mask over nose and mouth, so that only his eyes convey his determination not to be amused.
Baby Joe mounts his throne; Mort stands behind him and the show begins. A short dark man is the ringmaster, and there are children and midget acrobats turning cartwheels and building pyramids, followed by dwarves with baggy trousers and red noses, throwing custard; a short muscular man in tights walks the high wire.
Beneath his silk mask, Baby Joe does nothing to stifle a yawn.
Then to a fanfare of trumpets comes the bareback rider. She is a dark-haired girl of perhaps fifteen, in pink spangles, aboard a white pony. The pony’s hooves rap out a canter on the hard floor as the girl tumbles about on his back, balancing, bending, and turning as if she weighs no more than a doll. Girl and pony are tiny, but perfectly proportioned; and they look as if they are having fun.
Mort can’t take his eyes off her. Neither can Baby Joe.
A week later, Big Joe receives some reassuring news: ‘Your son has upped his exercise regime,’ says the assistant, ‘and he’s laying off the doughnuts.’
‘Good,’ says Big Joe. ‘But let’s get one thing straight: he’s not my son.’
A week later the circus troupe is still on the island. The boat they came in is untidy with bored performers, longing to get under way. But Baby Joe won’t let them leave.
‘This is what it used to sound like,’ says Piet, looking blissful as he listens to the slap of ropes in the wind and the complicated lapping of water.
‘Hello, you two,’ says Priscilla, the bareback rider.
‘Hello, young lady,’ says Piet. ‘How is our little Prince today?’
‘I’ve been teaching him to do handstands,’ says Priscilla. ‘He’s asking for you, Mort.’
Mort crawls into the igloo and stands up. His head is pushing against the rubber ceiling now and he doesn’t even try to hide it.
‘Priscilla’s been telling me the truth,’ says Baby Joe. ‘She says she’s seen giants too. And there are stories about them eating people and….’
‘The person you saw was Piet,’ says Mort. ‘He doesn’t eat people. He’s here to protect you.’
‘From what?’ whispers Baby Joe. ‘From the other giants?’
‘Let’s call it Harvest Time,’ says Big Joe, when he hears that his old heart and lungs are giving way. His need is greater now than Baby Joe’s. No more waiting.
His Chief Physician and Chief Surgeon look at each other. ‘As you know,’ says the Chief Surgeon, ‘it was always our intention to replace non-vital organs first. So it will take some time to complete the sequence of transfers. The heart and lungs will have to come last, of course. But they can
usefully be removed together. Skin grafts can be done at the very end, together with the hair transplant.’
‘So what comes first?’
‘An eye, a kidney and possibly a lobe of the liver,’ says the Chief Physician. ‘That will do to begin with.’
‘All right,’ says Big Joe. ‘Let’s do it. Make it as soon as possible.’ He turns to his assistant. ‘In the meantime give the little guy anything he wants. Just make him happy.’
The ringmaster complains to Mort. ‘How long must we stay here?’
‘As long as it takes,’ says Mort. ‘Why? You’re being paid aren’t you? And looked after.’
‘We want to leave, that’s all,’ says the ringmaster. ‘And we won’t go without Priscilla.’
‘I think we may have to get Priscilla to leave,’ says Mort.
‘Are you feeling left out, Mort?’ says Piet. ‘Is that it? The little Prince doesn’t have much time for you these days, does he?’
Mort shrugs. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he says. ‘I can understand he’d rather look at her than me.’
‘She’s keeping him nice and quiet,’ says Piet. ‘That’s all I care about.’
But then Priscilla asks Mort and Piet if Baby Joe can leave the igloo.
‘It’s about time that boy had some fresh air,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you’ve kept him zipped up in there all these years.’
‘He’s not supposed to go out,’ says Piet. ‘The risk of infection….’
‘Is the same for everybody...’ says Priscilla. ‘Come on; why shouldn’t he live a little?’
But Piet says no.
One day, when he is digging a deep trench in the garden, Piet hears laughter among the trees and then from between them sees the white pony carrying Priscilla, and Baby Joe sitting up behind her.
‘Hello, Big Piet!’ shouts Baby Joe, waving his hand as Priscilla turns the pony around and gallops away with the little Prince.
‘Mort!’ shouts Piet, running after them. Baby Joe looks back, laughing at him.
But he stops laughing when Piet’s legs crumple, when his body sags to the earth. ‘Turn around!’ he tells Priscilla.
‘What for?’ she says.
Baby Joe is frantic: ‘I order you.’
She reins in the pony. ‘You forget yourself,’ she says. ‘I’m not your servant.’ But then she sees what Baby Joe is looking at: Piet lying prone, his face in the earth. As they reach him, so does Mort.
‘Do something,’ says Baby Joe.
‘Help me,’ says Mort. Between the three of them they manage to turn Piet over.
‘It’s no good,’ says Mort, getting up from his knees. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Why did it happen?’ says Baby Joe.
‘It happens,’ says Mort. ‘Nobody lives forever.’
‘What shall we do with him?’ says Priscilla. ‘What about his family?’
Mort shakes his head.
The three of them decide to bury Piet’s body in the garden. ‘Not here though,’ says Mort. ‘We don’t want him feeding the runner beans; let’s dig a hole for him under a tree.’
It is Mort who digs between the tree roots. At last his spade knocks something hard. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Are we down to the concrete again?’ But here the concrete is not whole. The roots have broken through it. ‘Look,’ says Mort. ‘It’s the bottom of the island.’
He scrabbles about and there are splashes as lumps of concrete fall into the water. Mort puts his head down between the tree roots. ‘Look at that,’ he says. There is the water, four or five feet below. Beneath the surface of the island there is another world, of tangled roots. At first these seem impenetrable, but then he sees chunks of daylight, not so far away.
Instead of burying Piet, they slide his body into the water. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow,’ says Priscilla.
‘Believe me,’ says Mort. ‘He won’t mind.’
‘When they find out he’s gone, they’ll send someone new,’ says Mort. ‘I think it’s time for the circus to leave – and you should go with them.’
But Baby Joe is too afraid.
Piet’s disappearance has the security guards on edge. They are glad to see the circus leave and will do nothing to stop Priscilla going with them.
When he sees that the giants won’t stop her, when he sees Mort escort Priscilla to the gangplank, Baby Joe bursts into tears.
‘Stop crying,’ says Mort. ‘It can’t be helped now.’
A week later, Baby Joe wakes up in his usual bed wearing an eye patch. His back is sore.
‘What’s happened to me?’ he asks.
The nurse smiles and says, ‘You’re fine’.
It’s a while before they let him have visitors.
Mort is the first.
‘Go away,’ says Baby Joe.
‘It’s all right, Nurse,’ says Mort. ‘You can leave us.’
Mort squats down next to Baby Joe’s bed and looks him in the eye. ‘You can trust me,’ whispers Mort.
‘Shut up,’ says Baby Joe.
‘Just get better. And be ready to leave when I tell you.’
‘Why should I?’
‘What do you think will happen if you stay? The giants are going to eat you!’
It is another week before Piet’s body is found, entangled in a rope hanging off the back of the island. Everyone goes down to watch him being hauled out of the water. There is much speculation. Surely Piet could swim – so did he throw himself off in a fit of remorse? Now that bits of Baby Joe are missing, no one can pretend they don’t know what he’s destined for. People are talking of leaving: perhaps someone gave Piet a push?
Nobody thinks that it might just have been his time.
‘Now,’ says Mort. He makes Baby Joe wear a long overcoat over his purple all-in-one. ‘When you can,’ says Mort, doing up the buttons on the overcoat, ‘ask Priscilla to take you shopping. You need some new clothes.’
In the park, Mort digs between the tree roots, down to the twigs and branches covering the hole. Kneeling, he whistles.
When Baby Joe sees Priscilla’s face appear from below wearing a big welcoming grin, he starts to cry again.
‘Don’t wait,’ says Mort. ‘Go now.’ He helps Baby Joe to climb down.
‘But aren’t you coming?’ says Priscilla.
‘No,’ says Mort, looking down at them. He smiles. ‘I’ll see you both later.’ He piles the branches and twigs back over the hole. Earth and leaves fall on Baby Joe and Priscilla; they move away under the island, clambering over tree roots in the dark.
‘What now?’ says Baby Joe.
‘Ssh!’ says Priscilla. ‘The boat is over here. We’ll have to wait quietly till night falls; then we can cross the water.’
They sit in the boat for some time without speaking. Baby Joe wonders how long Priscilla has been hiding there waiting to rescue him. She’s shivering. He takes off the long overcoat and puts it round her shoulders.
She passes her arms through the sleeves and buries her hands in the pockets. ‘What’s this?’ she says, taking out a small slab wrapped in silver foil.
‘Give it to me,’ says Baby Joe. He holds the slab to his nose. ‘Almost certainly,’ he says, inhaling deeply, ‘this will be the last of the chocolate.’ He breaks it in half. ‘Here.’
His one remaining eye is bright. ‘Good old Mort.’
When Big Joe’s helicopter lands on the island, no guard lines up to salute him.
‘Where the hell is everyone?’ says Big Joe.
‘Like I told you, sir,’ says his assistant, ‘we’ve heard nothing from the island for twenty-four hours.’
‘Well, I want you to find them, wherever they are,’ says Big Joe. ‘And then I want them all fired.’
‘Yes, sir,’ says the assistant. He consults his map. ‘The warehouse is this way, sir.’ The assistant leads the way.
The doors to the warehouse are wide open. The two men stop at the entrance, looking at the big rubber igloo. It squats in silence.
‘Do you want me to go in first?’ says the assistant.
‘No,’ says Big Joe. ‘I’ve waited long enough. You stay out here and keep watch.’
To enter the igloo Big Joe has to get down on his hands and knees; his assistant looks the other way as Big Joe crawls into the tunnel. It’s a tight fit. What if no one’s there? Big Joe panics, his breath comes in stutters, and then he wriggles out the other side.
Locking eyes for the first time with the boy on the throne, Big Joe tries to rise to his feet. His heart is a small fist punching the wall of his chest. He opens his mouth but no words come.
‘Guess who,’ says Mort, raising his hand. ‘Don’t get up, Joe. I’ve waited long enough. Now this is it.’
The Love I Carry
Christmas, and I carried my love to Cardiff. I took it with me round the shops, ready to give it to the right person – if only I should see him. The crush of people was intense, but the love I bore was so large, so evident, people moved out of its way.
The air was cold but freshly so; I liked it. And I was free to look about me and move at my own pace because I didn’t have my head trapped between the items on a long Christmas list. Other shoppers had to hurry and frown because their lists were very long indeed and there was still so much to do before people far and near (and sometimes dear) could have their perfect Christmas. My list was very short: two items. I already knew what I wanted.
First I bought the miniature radio. A young assistant saw my love; his eyes shone on me as he took my money and handed me the bag. But I knew he would be frightened, were I to offer him my love right then and there: it would be too generous, too heavy, too much. So I took the radio and my love away with me and carried them along Queen Street and into Boots where I expected to find a present for my father. I had to take my love in with me. I could hardly leave it outside, tethered like a dog; anyone might want it, try to take it home. I wasn’t ready for that.
A travelling shaving mirror, my mother had said. I looked for the mirror; I looked for the man. I found the mirror halfway down the shop; it took me a long time to get there. On the way I glimpsed men who were like him, in parts: a hairstyle, a coat, the height of him, never the right smell though – perhaps I didn’t know it well enough, I had no memory of the scent of his neck. He was there, I could feel it, among the people, but all in pieces, while my love was solid and, all the time I carried it, quite heavy.
Pumping Up Napoleon Page 11