The Realities of Aldous U

by Michael Lawrence

  ‘I haven’t been yet.’

  ‘Well, no rush.’

  She returned to her task. He watched her for half a minute before summoning his nerve and taking a few paces toward her.

  ‘Kate...’

  It was the first time in all these months that he’d uttered her name in her presence. To him it felt almost impertinent. Not to her, though. She sat back, smiling.

  ‘Alaric.’

  ‘I’m – ’ He faltered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Delivered in such a rush, it clearly startled her. ‘With us,’ he added, reddening, already backing away.

  Kate remained quite still for some time after he’d gone. It was all she could do not to bawl her eyes out.

  13: 43

  The fire, made up of dry twigs, grass and heaped leaves, pumped sparks into the night. Wood splintered and crackled. Originally, their fires had been started by striking a stone against the blade of Scarry’s pen-knife, a tedious, hit-and-miss process; then, for a while, there’d been the matches, but when they ran out and were not replaced they were forced to return to their former system – until Gus O’Brien arrived with his cigarette lighter. It was the lighter rather than Gus’s personality that brought him a welcome. He was Ric’s age, but seemed older, being much more self-assured, lacking any degree of self-doubt. He was extremely thin, with long arms that swung as he loped along, and skeletal fingers that moved ponderously, like the limbs of a sleepy spider. His eyes were small and dark, quite piercing if they picked you out, and his hair so fair that in certain lights it seemed almost white. He parted his hair in the middle, and when he bent forward it fell on either side of his face, shadowing his sharp features. Ric had disliked Gus at first sight, and not warmed to him since.

  They were preparing their evening meal on the pitted apron of rock in front of Scarry’s house when the pipes started. They’d heard them before, irregularly, always in the evening or at night, so the sound did not startle them; but, as always, chatter ended and heads tilted as the breathy sound floated zephyr-light through the trees. Only Gus and Scarry responded negatively, Gus with a growled ‘Jesus Christ!’ and a covering of the head, Scarry with a sneer and a contemptuous gob into the fire. Ric did not share their disdain for these musical interludes. The playing wasn’t particularly accomplished, but the panpipes’ wistful character soothed his mind. He guessed from the softening of the younger boys’ features that they were similarly charmed, though neither the music nor its effect was ever discussed.

  There was also a response from some of the forest’s other life. On those nights that the man from the stone house set a chair outside his door and breathed into the pipes, birds that kept quiet and still during the day would stir. Out of the dusk or darkness they would warble and chuckle and caw and screech in a rising cacophony that would amuse Ric, bring a groan from Scarry, and turn Gus apoplectic. Tonight, as the pipes played on and the cries and squawks reached a crescendo, Gus jumped up, shouted ‘This is driving me fuckin’ nuts!’, and plunged into the bushes. Scarry, attempting similar rage – a pale imitation – took his own leave shortly afterwards, in a different direction.

  The mood among the remaining four was lighter for Gus and Scarry’s absence, but they went about their business as though deaf to the sounds that had driven them away. When the playing ceased at last and the birds calmed down, the silence that replaced the clamor was stark by comparison. Needing to take the edge off it – and purge the musings the pipes had stimulated – Ric jumped up and strode to where the three boys sat minding the squirrel sizzling on a spit. A white squirrel, larger than any squirrel of any color that they’d encountered before, there would not be enough flesh on it to satisfy six stomachs, so care must be taken with every edible scrap and morsel.

  ‘Watch it doesn’t burn,’ Ric said. ‘There’s nothing else.’

  ‘Sure there is,’ a thin, amused voice said.

  Something thudded at his feet. He jumped back.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Gus jerked into the firelight. ‘What does it look like?’

  Ric peered at the corpse, and recoiled. ‘It’s a cat!’

  ‘It’s meat.’

  He inspected the dead animal. ‘It… it’s not…?’

  ‘Yep. This’ll keep him quiet for a while.’

  ‘Oh, you reckon, do you?’

  Gus squinted at him. ‘Something bothering you, son?’

  Ric withdrew, unnerved by the sardonic grin in the shuddering firelight. They were the same height, and he was broader, but he had no doubt that Gus, with his thinly-veiled eagerness for conflict, could take him, and revel in the taking.

  ‘Whassat?’ Scarry, returning from the trees, adjusting his belt.

  ‘Fresh rations,’ Gus said.

  Scarry bent over the cat. Recognizing the fur, he laughed, but with some unease. To cover this, he picked the cat up by the tail and dangled it over the fire. Fur sizzled, and caught. He continued to hold it while small flames crept up the body from the head, stripping it hair by hair. When the only uncharred fur was at the end of the tail, he laid the carcass beside the fire, almost tenderly now it was on the menu.

  ‘How’s the squirrel doing?’ Gus asked.

  ‘Looks done,’ said Jonno, trying not to look at the dead cat.

  ‘Get it off then and do this.’

  The boys weren’t keen to touch the cat, so Scarry picked it up again, swung it before their eyes. Hag looked like he was fighting tears. The other two tried to look amused, but their eyes betrayed them. They pried the squirrel off the spit, fingers dancing on the hot flesh, while Scarry drove the skewer down the cat’s throat, the length of its body, forcing it out the end with leering effort. He tossed the result into Badger’s lap. Badger shrieked and jumped up. The skewered cat rolled onto the rocky ground. Scarry told the boys to stop feckin’ about and get on with it.

  ‘What do you think he’ll do when he finds out?’ Ric wondered aloud.

  ‘He won’t find out if it’s eaten,’ Scarry said.

  ‘He will if we hang the leftovers outside his door,’ said Gus.

  Scarry chuckled, again uneasily. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He might come after us,’ a small frightened voice said: little Hag.

  ‘Hope he does,’ Gus said.

  Ric glanced at the boys. Noted their alarm. They didn’t know – none of them knew – what Gus O’Brien was capable of.

  Flash 2

  The strain of driving through the rain and the dark, the constant glare of oncoming headlights, was getting to her. Pulling in at a service station for a break, she found all the spaces around the restaurant taken. She parked as near as she could, clambered out with the usual difficulty, and made an ungainly dash through more puddles than she missed.

  She wasn’t really hungry, but she hadn’t eaten for hours, so after seating herself at one of the faux-marble tables by the window and logging her ID with the tabscan, she tapped an extra key on the selection pad. Thirty seconds later a Fairtrade mocha and a cinnamon Danish rose up on the tablewaiter. In spite of the speed of delivery the pastry turned out to be as stale as the drink was stewed. ‘Fucking dump,’ she thought, only realizing that she’d said it out loud when a bald man at a nearby table grinned agreement. She toyed with the Danish, sipped the foul beverage, and gazed bleakly through her fragmented image in the streaming black window.

  It bothered her, what she was about to do. By insisting on the location of her child’s birth, and where it was to grow up, she was forcing events, foisting a whole rack of unforeseeable consequences on it and, by extension, on a great many others as yet unborn. Since her teens she’d been acutely aware of how a life can jump tracks with a word, an involuntary movement, any one of a thousand tiny decisions made or not made on a given or ungiven day. At sixteen her life had changed radically, tragically, and her school work, along with her confidence, had suffered terribly. She’d rallied because she’d had to, but even after the second upheava
l later that year her work had never recovered sufficiently for her to achieve the grades she would have obtained in her original reality. Career choices thus reduced, a series of nothing-much jobs followed until a vague interest in archaeology coupled with a natural facility with pen and pencil brought a small commission to illustrate some found objects. This led to other commissions, and eventually to a three-month contract at the Vindolanda site on Hadrian’s Wall where she’d met Donald Lomas, a twenty-seven-year-old volunteer helping with the excavations. She and Don had lived together for just over four years, toward the end of which she discovered that he’d been screwing around for at least two of them. She had moved out of their flat and his life ten days before learning of her condition, which, wanting nothing more to do with him, she’d decided to keep to herself. The child would be hers alone, and would bear the Underwood name.

  And here was the point, or part of it. If not for the succession of abstract occurrences that had conveyed her to the wandering eye of Don Lomas, she would have gone in another direction entirely, to a different relationship, more than one perhaps, and not, this unpleasant October night, be heading for Withern Rise to give birth to his child.

  She shoved the coffee and the plate away and stood up.

  ‘Back into the night, eh?’ the man at the nearby table said.

  ‘Yeah. Fun.’

  But first, to the pretentiously-labeled ‘Femmes’. Checking herself in the mirror after leaving the cubicle, she could not ignore the shadows under her eyes and the lines at the corners which had little to do with laughter. The unsubtle wall lighting also picked out silver threads in her damp hair. Until recently she’d always worn her hair long, but because Don had liked it that way the week after she walked out on him she’d had the bulk of it lopped of. In the mirror, with these harsh shadows, these lines, she looked like an over-the-hill pixie.

  She was on her way back to the car, rushing head down into the rain, when it came to her that by checking her appearance in the mirror she’d left the restaurant a minute or two later than she would have if she had not. She was about to rejoin the motorway x number of vehicles on from that point. One of the cars or lorries in the new stream of traffic might be driven by someone who’d drunk more than he should, or one of his tires might blow, making him lose control and cause an accident in which she would be a fatality. She and her unborn child. On the other hand, something of the sort might have happened if she’d left sooner rather than later. The face-check of the haggard pixie might just have saved their two lives. There was no telling which departure would have been to their best advantage. There never was.

  Part Two

  THE WILD

  14: 36

  ‘Bit early to look over a house, isn’t it?’ Ivan huffed.

  ‘The agent said it’s their only chance this week. From here they’re off to some relatives for a few days.’

  ‘So why don’t they wait till they get back?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t want to risk losing it, I didn’t ask. Where are you going?’

  ‘The shop, where else?’

  ‘But it’s not even nine.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m staying here while people traipse round my home, do you?’

  ‘You obviously expect me to.’

  ‘You’re better at things like that.’

  ‘I’ve never shown anyone round a house before.’

  ‘You’ll pick it up.’

  He closed the door behind him.

  They arrived at ten past: an amiable middle-aged couple with a babe-in-arms and a daughter in her early teens. Alex longed to ask them to remove their shoes before going upstairs, particularly to the bedrooms, but didn’t know how to without seeming rude. The parents seemed to like the house from the first, but when the woman murmured as they went along the hall, ‘Big, isn’t it?’ little more needed to be said. They did the full tour, however, inspecting every room, every built-in cupboard, the woman commenting favorably on the furnishings, various ornaments, the views of the garden, while the man seemed content to smile and add the occasional word of agreement. The daughter, saying even less, looked bored, while the baby whimpered all the way round, and smelt foul.

  After they’d driven away, promising to think about it, Alex phoned Ivan. He said he’d ring her back, which meant that he had customers. He returned the call about fifteen minutes later.

  ‘You rang to tell me they weren’t interested?’ he said, when she gave this opinion.

  ‘I can’t be certain, but I’ll be surprised if we hear from them again.’

  ‘Well, there’ll be others.’

  ‘Hope so.’

  He detected something in her voice. ‘What is it, Lex?’

  ‘Nothing. Just… you know.’

  He wasn’t sure that he did, but he made the appropriate noises in soft tones, and clicked off with a relief he did not like to admit to.

  15: 47

  ‘Why are you still here?’ Alaric asked, finding his father still in the kitchen when he went down for breakfast.

  ‘Overslept.’ Ivan finger-and-thumbed two crisp slices of wholemeal from the toaster. ‘Sat up too late last night watching that stupid bloody film.’

  Alaric poured cereal and milk into a bowl. They’d both just sat down to eat when Kate looked in the window.

  ‘Come and see this.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ Ivan demanded.

  ‘Wake you? Since when was waking you in the job description?’

  ‘Kate, you know I have a shop to run.’

  ‘Didn’t think of it. Busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘The garden. Come and look.’

  ‘I can look at the garden any time.’

  ‘I don’t mean the garden. There’s an injured toad here.’

  ‘Well, if it croaks it won’t be the first time.’

  ‘Come on. Both of you.’

  With a sigh apiece, they got up and went outside, flinching at the brightness of the day. They joined Kate at the edge of the drive, on her haunches beside a pile of bricks Ivan had had delivered for a bit of wall he planned to build sometime-never. They bent to inspect the toad. It was large and green, gulping hard, staring helplessly up at them.

  ‘Looks like it’s been mauled,’ Kate said. Alaric told her of the cat he’d seen in the garden yesterday. ‘That’s probably it then. Cats!’

  ‘Why is this of interest?’ Ivan asked.

  ‘Why? The poor thing’s suffering.’

  ‘It’s not a pet. These things happen in the wild.’

  ‘The wild? Your garden?’

  ‘We can’t be responsible for every creature that hangs around it. Not exactly invited guests, are they?’

  Kate lent over the toad, trying to soothe it but not liking to touch it. Alaric watched her. She was so concerned. No idea what to do, but concerned. Just like Mum would have been.

  ‘I wonder if we could get it to the vet,’ she murmured.

  ‘The vet?’ Ivan said. ‘And how much would he cost?’

  ‘We can’t just leave it to suffer, Ivan.’

  ‘No. You’re right. Move aside.’

  Kate obeyed, shuffling to one side without rising.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  A brick came down hard. A small squelch. Ivan stood up.

  ‘Problem solved,’ he said. ‘Now. Mind if I finish my toast?’

  He stalked back to the house. As he reached the step he stopped suddenly and gripped his left arm, but within thirty seconds he was back at the table, munching toast, sipping tea.

  Kate and Alaric had not moved. Their eyes hadn’t left the brick. You wouldn’t have known there was anything under it.

  16: 39

  There was a chill to the mornings now, but still Aldous woke raring to experience every moment of every day, whatever the temperature or weather. The injustice of his life’s brevity did not weigh heavily, though the loss of his immediate family saddened him. Naia had told him as much as she’d b
een able to find out about them: that the house, along with his father’s boat-yard, had been sold after the war and that Withern Rise (but not the boat-yard) had been bought back years later by his younger brother, Rayner; that his sister Ursula had married at some point, produced two daughters (whose current whereabouts were unknown) and moved to Canada. All she could tell him about his youngest sister, Mimi, was what Alex had discovered when compiling the Underwood family tree: that she might or might not have married but had had a child at some point. Aldous often thought about impish, high-spirited little Mimi. She was nine the last time he saw her. Be in her late sixties now. Hard to imagine her so old. Impossible. All those missing years. If she was still alive, what sort of life had she had? Where was she today? What was her situation? And why hadn’t she been there when he woke from his long sleep? Why hadn’t anyone been there?

  Kate had gotten on to the nursing home where he’d spent most of his life and nagged them until they provided, grudgingly, all the information they had in their database on the family. It wasn’t much. His mother had visited regularly through all the years of Aldous’s confinement, and died in her seventies. The trust fund Mrs. Underwood had set up to take care of him had been on the point of running out when he woke. His restoration to full wakefulness had come just in time. As Aldous had very little money of his own, Kate took it upon herself to make sure that he received the state pension that a person of his apparent maturity was entitled to. His unusual progression toward his present age, without a single insurance contribution along the way, had proved a stumbling block, but she’d persevered to such rewarding effect that Naia was rather proud of her.

  Aldous didn’t say as much – though he couldn’t help hinting at it – but he hated what had become of the area since he was officially a child here. It was all so ugly now, so vulgar, with such a cramped air, strutted by bullet-eyed youths and large, loud girls, the pavements spattered with gray blobs of chewing gum and spittle, vomit occasionally, and wherever there was grass there was litter. Withern Rise, too, looked rather jaded to his eyes, and the grounds were far less full and bountiful than they were in the nineteen-forties. Mr. Knight did his best with the gardening, but he was only part-time and neither as knowledgeable or as painstaking as his father was. It wasn’t really a working garden these days anyway. All that was required of it was that it did not offend the eye too much. The panorama from the front porch was largely unobstructed by the bushes and hedges and informal structures that had once added such character. In the old days the drifting eye was pleasantly hindered at every turn. There were more trees then, plants of all kinds and description, much more color; more birds too (and thus more birdsong), there being more for them to perch on, nest among, lay their eggs in.