‘I didn’t come to ask you if I could marry him. I’ve given him my word and that’s settled. I came to ask you about . . . arrangements.’
‘But if you marry him, I can’t come home. Ever.’
She tightened her lips. ‘That’s one of the things we’ve got to talk about. I’m selling the house, and Jane and I are moving to Cheshire. I need to know what things you want to keep and . . .’
He didn’t think it could have got any worse, but it did. He just kept staring at his shoes. At the great big scrape-mark he’d made on one toe, playing football after lunch in the yard. An hour ago I was happy and I didn’t even know I was happy . . .
‘Your hamsters—’
‘Give them away. Give them to Billy Turner.’ Billy Turner was the char’s son. Cruel; always trying to interfere with the hamsters. Mum had spoken to him about it. It was like sending your two best friends to the torture chamber.
‘Perhaps that would be best,’ said Mum, relieved. ‘It would have been difficult in the removal van. We can buy you some more there.’
We? We? He no longer knew who ‘we’ was.
‘Who’s we?’ he asked, head still down.
‘Simon, don’t be silly. I thought you were beginning to be sensible. What about your model railway?’
‘Sell it. Give it away. Give that to Billy Turner too. Throw it out of the window.’
She tried to take his hand again, but he shook her off. ‘Simon, look. I haven’t got much time. I had to take a day off work specially. I’ve driven a hundred miles . . . I have to be back by seven . . . please be sensible. I only want to know if there are any things you don’t want any more. We can take them all if you like. There’ll be room. And the hamsters, they can easily go in the back of the Range Rover.’
Her mouth was shaking. This is the way, he thought. This is the way to smash it.
‘Give everything away,’ he said; and when his voice caught in his throat by accident he was not displeased. ‘And write to Nunk and ask if I can stay with him this summer holidays, till I go to Wellington.’
‘But you’ve invited Tris to stay with us again!’
‘Tris – at his house? Joe Moreton’s rotten house? You must be joking. I invite friends to our house.’
‘But Tris—’
‘If you’re so fond of Tris, you should have thought . . .’
She was silent a long time; he thought he’d won. Then she said, in her steeliest voice, ‘Either you stop these silly games, Simon, or I’m taking you back to school. I’ve given Joe my word, and you know I always keep my word. I know it’s hard for you. That’s why I came all this way to tell you myself. I could have written you a letter. I’ll do anything to make it up to you, you know I will, but—’
‘Take me back to school!’
‘Is that what you really want?’
‘Yes.’
She waited another moment, then turned the key in the ignition and did a precise three-point turn, and drove towards school in silence. School got nearer and nearer. Every bend and halt sign, he was expecting her to give in. But at last they arrived. Classes had just ended. He saw Bowdon and . . . and Tris. Tris waved to Mum, and pretended to fall into a flower bed. Mum waved back and laughed out loud.
That laugh did it. He got out of the car in a flash. Mum wound down the car window swiftly, and even then for a crazy moment he thought he’d won. But she only asked the same stupid questions.
‘So you don’t want to come home for the wedding?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t want to keep the hamsters?’
‘No.’
‘Or any things?’
‘No.’
Each no was like the blow of a hammer. Smashing. Knocking down. Every time, she winced. But she kept on to the end. In a miserable black way, he loved it; loved the smashing-up like he was drunk. But sometime, it had to come to an end.
‘Goodbye for now, Simon. I’ll write to you soon; even if you don’t write back.’
‘They make us write home; didn’t you know?’
It was amazing how you could go on hurting people.
‘Isn’t there anything you want to keep?’
‘Yeah. My father’s army kit.’
Mum’s eyes went as small as pins.
‘It’s mine!’ he shouted. ‘He left it to me in his will. All personal possessions. It said. I have to choose on my twenty-first birthday which to keep . . .’ He realised he was shouting, and glanced fearfully around. But there wasn’t a kid in sight. Nobody wanted to miss their tea and rock-bun. Not even Bowdon.
She wound up her window with a small frantic hand; and drove off without a backward glance.
FIVE
‘Look at that sloppy beggar in the rear-rank,’ said Nunk. ‘Handlin’ himself like a fairy.’
Simon surveyed the steaming block of paratroopers as they tramped past in forty-two pounds of webbing equipment. He couldn’t pick out the one that looked like a fairy; they all looked very fit and tough to him. But if Nunk said so, it must be true. Nunk knew everything about soldiers. Nunk was Colonel now.
Nunk had been the man who taught Father how to parachute.
Simon had enjoyed his month; better than school. The bugles in the morning, echoing faintly over the married-quarters. Bugles that meant get-up to the paras; get up, get shaved, stand by your beds and get on first-works parade. While he, Simon, just lay and stretched and listened.
Following Nunk round everywhere, with the big golden Labrador called Nijmegen. Nunk walking in past the guardroom, and the guard-commander calling, ‘Guard, turn out!’ All the guards moving so fast and neat, and Nunk saluting casually and saying, ‘Carry on, guard-commander.’
And the paras had watched Simon too; remembered whose son he was. Once, a small corporal had approached him, shaken hands, talked incoherently for several minutes, and fled. Later, Nunk told him that Father had rescued the corporal, wounded, under fire in Aden.
And the wide parade ground, bigger than four football pitches, that stretched to the corrugated-iron sheds where men leapt and swung in webbing harness hung from the roof. And the captive-balloon, dangling its eight-hundred-foot rope with the yard-long white mark, that told the men when to open their chutes on their first descent. Oh, it was all so great. Like coming home when he was small.
‘You’ve enjoyed your holiday?’ asked Nunk. ‘Really?’
‘Great,’ said Simon; but his heart sank. When people asked that, the holiday was nearly over.
‘Enjoyed havin’ you,’ said Nunk, tapping his little bamboo stick against his knife-edged trousers.
‘When do I have to go?’ asked Simon. He didn’t want to look at Nunk; but Nunk waited in silence till he did. Nunk still looked nearly as young and handsome as a choirboy. But a choirboy with greying hair; a very tough choirboy indeed. His eyes were clear and simple as a dog’s. But they had an inevitability no dog’s ever had. For years and years Nunk had stood by the exit door of drop planes; looking at the paras, the young and frightened paras on their first real jump, as they shuffled forward. That was where he’d got those eyes. If they wouldn’t jump, Nunk pushed them, fast. If he had to, he would even put a foot in their chest and kick them out of the plane. If they had to be kicked out, Nunk didn’t want to know them any more. They were sent away and Nunk forgot them. It was unbearable that Nunk should ever forget him.
‘I’ll jump,’ said Simon. ‘You won’t have to push me.’
‘Good lad,’ said Nunk. ‘We’ll go tomorrow. I’ll take a day’s leave an’ run you up.’
‘I want to hitch-hike,’ said Simon.
Nunk looked distinctly put out; caught at his own game of how-much-guts? But Nunk was fair; Nunk knew the rules. ‘OK,’ he said; but worrying like hell about what Mum would say. It was really quite funny. Simon liked teasing Nunk.
Then he thought of Joe Moreton, and the fun went away.
‘This chap Moreton,’ said Nunk, returning his clear merciless eyes to the luckless para
s, who were just pounding past again. ‘This chap Moreton. There’s been a lot of talk since people heard he was going to marry your mother. I have to be fair, Simon, I’ve heard nothing bad against him. Not my sort of chap, of course – pacifist, ban-the-bomb. Got it in for us Army people of course – and the politicians. Works very hard underminin’ respect for authority – too much of that these days. But his private life . . . no drugs or women or anything. Too busy knockin’ authority. Met chaps like him in the old National Service days – nothing the Army did was right for them – but when it came to the crunch they did their bit. Takes all sorts . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Simon tightly. ‘How early can I leave?’
‘Reveille. I’ll book us an early call with the guard-commander.’ But when Nunk hurried away, he didn’t go towards the guardroom.
Simon sat on a fence, overlooking the village of Gorseley, Cheshire. Still early; sun not high, shadows long. The dew had searched out all the hedgerow cobwebs and decorated them with shining beads strung in unbelievable complexity. There was still a slight mist over the village, where it lay cupped in the valley around the spire of the church. Quiet; only the occasional car tore a rip in the silence, but the silence mended itself again. It would be hot, later.
He had set off at reveille. Not liking the complexity of the roads he would have to trace; the filthy black suburbs of Birmingham. Not wanting to leave the trim white railings and red firebuckets of Aldershot.
But he hadn’t walked a mile before a truck had pulled up alongside. He hadn’t even made a hitch-hike sign. The corporal-driver must have known from the haversack he was carrying that he was going somewhere . . .
‘Where you heading, mate?’
They were going to Manchester they said. To pick up some regimental silver. Wasn’t it stupid, sending a three-ton truck to pick up a bit of silver? Just like the Army . . .
Anyway, they used the motorways, driving unbelievably fast for a three-tonner, and rejoicing that they weren’t held back in convoy. They offered Simon fags he refused, and chocolate that he ate, and grumbled non-stop about every officer and sergeant in the regiment. Except Nunk; which was what finally gave the game away. So Simon was not surprised when, having reached the Holmes Chapel turn-off, where they should have dropped him, they decided to take him all the way. The Army could afford the petrol; they could fiddle the speedometer to fool the QM.
But he had made them drop him at the edge of the village. He would do the last bit on his own feet; he would not be delivered like a parcel. Nunk would understand; Nunk liked saving his own face, too. Nunk was OK. Nunk was like Father. Father on his huge brown horse with the shining leather; Father leaning down from a great height and taking him from Mum, and Mum saying be careful and Father putting the horse from a walk to a trot to a canter that jiggled Simon up-and-down unmercifully. Then the horse went into a gallop, and stopped jiggling and went straight and smooth and fast as a blur, and then the fence and they were flying with Father’s arm very tight. And he’d thought there’d be a bump on the far side but there wasn’t. And Mum running up, laughing and breathy and calling Father a bloody lunatic . . .
Stop it, he thought, and set off walking into the village, banging his feet down hard.
Gorseley looked great from a distance, but it wasn’t so hot close-to. The village shop had turned itself into a mini-market, all blue-and-white stripes and freezers. There was a newly-cut road on the left, offering four-bedroom executive houses. Too many new bungalows, too much white plastic fencing. Even white plastic urns. There were some old thatched cottages, but far too clean and newly-painted, with aluminium up-and-over garage doors let into their sides. The village hall notice board advertised the flower show, but also a Tupperware party.
So, with the aid of Mum’s precisely-drawn map, he came to Mill House, with the hated white Range Rover parked in the drive. Mill House, turning a limestone gable-end to the road, and stretching back deep into an orchard of ancient useless moss-grown apple trees. It had the original stone-slab roof; but the chimney had been cut short by a central-heating cowl. And back among the trees he could see a nonsense of all glass windows on the first floor above a two-car garage. The gravel drive was far too beautifully raked. Joe Moreton had too much money and no sense of how things were done.
He knocked. No answer; only somewhere a little rush of water, so somebody was up. He knocked again. Then tried the door. It opened, and he went in.
Dim. The deep slow tick of a grandfather clock. Drawn curtains. On the hall mantelpiece, a brass Buddha; no, three brass Buddhas. And a huge one on a table at the foot of the stair. Everywhere, Buddhas. Tiny ones two inches tall; the biggest nearly three feet.
It wasn’t a house, it was a rotten museum. And a funny musky smell. Marijuana? No, Nunk had said no drugs.
He called out hallo. Nobody answered. But there were noises somewhere. He advanced again, trailing his haversack along the thick carpet and up the stairs.
‘You’re fat!’ Jane’s voice, all gloaty. He could tell she was pinching rolls of someone’s bare flesh. Jane’s you’re-fat game was played at every opportunity. His own stomach tingled at the memory. He nearly laughed. Some things hadn’t changed . . .
‘You’re so fat – look!’ She giggled. ‘An’ look at all the hairs on your chest. You’re like a big fat monkey. An’ . . . there’s hairs under your arms an’ hairs inside your nose an’ hairs on the end of your nose. No one should have hairs on the end of their nose. I’m going to pull them out!’
Screams of high-pitched glee. ‘Don’t do that – you’ll bump me off. Don’t blow up your belly like a horse.’
Simon stood so still, he might have been frozen into ice. Only, he let go the strap of the haversack and it fell silently onto the thick, thick carpet of the upstairs corridor.
Jane changed tack. She was only ever cruel for a bit; pinching, or trying to pick away a bit of skin with her fingernail over and over again, or twisting ears. Then she got worried.
‘I love you. Do-you-love-me?’
Deep rumble. Rumbling laugh. Faint smell of man drifting down the passage, mixed with a hint of Mum’s perfume.
‘You-must-love-me-Joe. Or-I’ll-pull-every-one-of -your-hairs-out-an’-then-you’ll-be-all-bald-like-an-egg.’
‘OK. I love you. I surrender.’
‘Just as well, my dear. Now bump me up and down again.’
A soft movement of cloth on cloth took Simon’s unfocused eyes to the end of the corridor. Mum was standing there in a long turquoise dressing-gown that stretched to her feet, tea tray in her hand. Her hair was scraped back with a comb, early-morning. Her face sleepy and shockingly gentle.
‘Simon?’ she said, puzzled, as if he was a ghost. She kept peering at him; his face must be in shadow or something. ‘Simon? Simon, we weren’t expecting you till lunch. Nunk said . . .’
She advanced, swishing softly.
‘Simon, what are you standing there like that for, you silly goose? You gave me quite a turn. Cat got your tongue? It’s just that when Nunk phoned . . .’
She got near enough to see his face. Her blue eyes, which had been so wide they were almost black, suddenly narrowed to pinpoints. Horseshoe-shaped anxiety lines hooked round the corners of her mouth.
‘Simon! What’s the matter?’
She let go the tray with both hands, and it crashed, sending out stars of milk and tea across the carpet. One hand went to her mouth.
‘Simon, what are you looking like that for?’
Looking like what? He didn’t know how he looked. The look on his face stood like a monster between them. He couldn’t control the look on his face. He didn’t know how to work the muscles. But he knew what the look must look like, because he could see its reflection on her face. He turned in terror and ran out of the house. And not all her calling would fetch him back.
The devils had returned.
SIX
He ran out through the gate, turned left, ran a hundred yards and ducked back through a g
ap in the hedge. He didn’t want her to find him. He heard her voice approaching, calling. She must look very silly, wandering up the road in her dressing-gown. She got pretty near; too near. Then her voice lost hope and dwindled.
Then he remembered he’d left his haversack lying on the hall floor and that made him feel lonely. It hadn’t held much: Mum’s map, a few sandwiches that Aunty Marge had made, a plastic map and Father’s army badge. But now he had nothing.
For the first time he looked around. Saw the roof of Mill House over the apple trees, too close for comfort, and slipped deeper into the hedge. For the rest, he could see nothing but turnips; a field of turnips growing in neat geometric rows as far as the eye could see. Their geometry only broken by pale random fringes of weed. The turnips were in full leaf, purply-blue-grey, full of darker blue shadows. The wind, coming across them, lifted their undersides in silvery waves. They whispered together like friends. Somehow, he felt they were happy. The smell of turnip soothed him.
He’d never seen a bigger field. There were dips in the ground, where hedgerows had been rooted out to make several fields into one. The great field rose slightly, then fell gently away. The turnips got smaller and smaller and tinier and tinier, until looking at them did funny things to your eyes.
At that point he saw a roof, just sticking up over the faint far edge of the field. Screwing up his eyes against the sun, he could see the roof was very like Mill House. Huge simple stone slabs. Somehow, it looked . . . inviting.
Don’t be silly, he told himself. How can a roof be inviting? There’ll be people living there. They’ll stare at me. If I knock they’ll want to know what I want . . . Angrily, he turned his eyes away. But there was nothing else to look at but the hedge and the turnips. Soon his eyes returned to that roof again. There was one chimney, but no smoke coming from it. Why should there be smoke coming from it, in the middle of summer?
Then he saw there was a slab missing from the roof, just at the base of the chimney. And he knew, looking at the black hole the missing slab had left, that the place was empty. Inviting . . . inviting . . . A quivery, illogical excitement filled him. He thought of burglary. He thought, absurdly, of Goldilocks and the Three Bears . . .
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