Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  “Mum, does it matter? I’ll be a grownup soon anyway.”

  Mum placed it on the scrubbed table. “Just drink it.”

  Tony drank. He wiped his chin and banged down the glass.

  “Well, off you go,” Mum said.

  He headed up the stairs.

  Doctor Halstead was waiting for Tony up in the spare room. He’d been coming around to test him every Thursday since Mum and Dad received the brown envelope from school, arriving punctually at half twelve, taking best china coffee with Mum in the lounge afterwards. There was no mystery about the tests. Once or twice, Bobby had seen the syringes and the blood analysis equipment spread out on the candlewick bedspread through the open door. Tony had told him what it was like, how the doc stuck a big needle in your arm to take some blood. It hurt some, but not much. He had shown Bobby the sunset bruises on his arm with that perverse pride that kids display over any wound.

  Doctor Halstead came down half an hour later looking stern and non-committal. Tony followed in his wake. He shushed Bobby and tried to listen to Mum’s conversation with the doc over coffee in the lounge by standing by the door in the hall. But grownups had a way of talking that was difficult to follow, lowering their voices at the crucial moment, clinking their cups. Bobby imagined them stifling their laughter behind the closed door, deliberately uttering meaningless fragments they knew the kids would hear. He found the thought oddly reassuring.

  Tony grew up on the Thursday of that same week. He and Bobby had spent the afternoon together down at Monument Park. They had climbed the whispering boughs of one of the big elm trees along the avenue and sat with their legs dangling, trying to spit on the heads of the grownups passing below.

  “Will you tell me what it’s like?” Bobby had asked when his mouth finally went dry.

  “What?” Tony looked vague. He picked up a spider that crawled onto his wrist and rolled it between finger and thumb.

  “About being a grownup. You will talk to me afterwards. I want…I want to know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’re still brothers, right.”

  “You’ve got it. And—”

  “—Hey, shush!”

  Three young grownups were heading their way, a man, a woman and an uncle. Bobby supposed they courting—they had their arms around each other in that vaguely passionless way that grownups had, their faces absent, staring at the sky and the trees without seeing. He began to salivate.

  “Bombs away.”

  Bobby missed with his lob, but Tony hawked up a green one and scored a gleaming hit on the crown of the woman’s head. The grownups walked on, stupidly oblivious.

  It was a fine afternoon. They climbed higher still, skinning their palms and knees on the greenish bark, feeling the tree sway beneath them like a dancer. From up here, the park shimmered, and you could see everything; the lake, the glittering greenhouses, grownups lazing on the grass, two fat kids from Tony’s year lobbing stones at a convoy of ducks. Bobby grinned and threw back his head. Here, you could feel the hot sky around you, taste the clouds like white candy.

  “You will tell me what it’s like to be a grownup?” he asked again.

  But Tony suddenly looked pale and afraid, holding onto the trembling boughs. “Let’s climb down,” he said.

  When Bobby thought back, he guessed that that was the beginning.

  Mum took one look at Tony when they got home and called Doctor Halstead. He was quick in coming. On Mum’s instructions, Bobby also phoned Dad at the office, feeling terribly grownup and responsible as he asked to be put through in the middle of a meeting.

  Tony was sitting on the sofa in the lounge, rocking to and fro, starting to moan. Dad and the doc carried him to the spare bedroom. Mum followed them up the stairs, then pulled the door tightly shut. Bobby waited downstairs in the kitchen and watched the shadows creep across the scrubbed table. Occasionally, there were footsteps upstairs, the rumble of voices, the hiss of a tap.

  He had to fix his own tea from leftovers in the fridge. Later, somehow, all the house lights got turned on. Everything was hard and bright like a fierce lantern, shapes burned through to the filaments beneath. Bobby’s head was swimming. He was someone else, thinking, this is my house, my brother, knowing at the same time that it couldn’t be true. Upstairs, he could someone’s voice screaming, saying My God No.

  Mum came down after ten. She was wearing some kind of plastic apron that was wet where she’d wiped it clean.

  “Bobby, you’ve got to go to bed.” She reached to grab his arm and pull him from the settee.

  Bobby held back for a moment. “What’s happening to Tony, Mum? Is he okay?”

  “Of course he’s okay. It’s nothing to get excited about. It happens to us all, it…” Anger came into her face. “Will you just get upstairs to bed, Bobby? You shouldn’t be up this late anyway. Not tonight, not any night.”

  Mum followed Bobby up the stairs. She waited to the open the door of the spare room until he’d gone into the bathroom. Bobby found there was no hot water, no towels; he had to dry his hand on squares of toilet paper and the flush was slow to clear, as though something was blocking it.

  He sprinted across the dangerous space of the landing and into bed. He tried to sleep.

  In the morning there was the smell of toast. Bobby came down the stairs slowly, testing each step.

  “So you’re up,” Mum said, lifting the kettle from the hob as it began to boil.

  It was half eight by the clock over the fridge; a little late, but everything was brisk and sleepy as any other morning. Dad stared at the sports pages, eating his cornflakes. Bobby sat down opposite him at the table, lifted the big cereal packet that promised a scale model if you collected enough coupons. That used to drive Tony wild, how the offer always changed before you had enough. Bobby shook some flakes into a bowl.

  “How’s Tony?” he asked, tipping out milk.

  “Tony’s fine,” Dad said. Then he swallowed and looked up from the paper—a rare event in itself. “He’s just resting, son. Upstairs in his own room, his own bed.”

  “Yes, darling.” Mum’s voice came from behind. Bobby felt her hands on his shoulders, kneading softly. “It’s such a happy day for your Dad and me. Tony’s a grownup now. Isn’t that wonderful?” The fingers tightened, released.

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t go to school,” Dad added. He gave his paper a shake, rearranged it across the teapot and the marmalade jar.

  “But be sure to tell Miss Gibson what’s happened.” Mum’s voice faded to the back of the kitchen. The fridge door smacked open. “She’ll want to know why you’re late for register.” Bottles jingled. Mum wafted close again. She came around to the side of the table and placed a tumbler filled with white fluid beside him. The bitter milk. “We know you’re still young,” she said. “But there’s no harm and now seems as good a time as any.” Her fingers turned a loose button on her blouse. “Try it darling, it’s not so bad.”

  What happens if I don’t…Bobby glanced quickly at Mum, at Dad. What happens if…Through the kitchen window, the sky was summer grey, the clouds casting the soft warm light that he loved more than sunlight, that brought out the green in the trees and made everything seem closer and more real. What happens…Bobby picked up the tumbler in both hands, drank in down in breathless gulps the way he’d seen Tony do so often in the past.

  “Good lad,” Mum sighed after he’d finished. She was behind him again, her fingers trailing his neck. Bobby took a breath, suppressed a shudder. This bitter milk tasted just as Tony always said it did; disgusting.

  “Can I see Tony now, before I go to school?”

  Mum hesitated. Dad looked up again from his newspaper. Bobby knew what it would be like later, the cards, the flowers, the house lost in strangers. This was his best chance to speak to his brother.

  “Okay,” Mum said. “But not for long.”

  Tony was sitting up in bed, the TV Mum and Dad usually kept his their own bedroom propped on the dressing table. Having the TV was a
special sign of illness; Bobby had had it twice himself, once with chicken pox, and then with mumps. The feeling of luxury had almost made the discomfort worthwhile.

  “I just thought I’d see how you were,” Bobby said.

  “What?” Tony lifted the remote control from the bedspread, pressed the red button to kill the sound. It was a reluctant gesture Bobby recognised from Dad.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine Bobby.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes…Not really.” Tony shrugged. “What do you want me to say? You’ll find out soon enough, Bobby.”

  “Don’t you remember yesterday? You said you’d tell me everything.”

  “Of course I remember, but I’m just here in bed…watching the TV. You can see what it’s like.” He spread his arms. “Come here, Bobby.”

  Bobby stepped forward.

  Tony grinned. “Come on, little brother.”

  Bobby leaned forward over the bed, let Tony clasp him in his arms. It was odd to feel his brother this way, the soft plates of muscle, the ridges of chest and arm. They’d held each other often enough before, but only in the wrestling bouts that Bobby launched into when he nothing better to do, certain that he’d end up bruised and kicking, pinned down and forced to submit. But now the big hands were patting his back. Tony was talking over his shoulder.

  “I’ll sort through all the toys in the next day or so. You can keep all the best stuff to play with. Like we said yesterday, we’re still brothers, right?” He leaned Bobby back, looked into his eyes. “Right?”

  Bobby had had enough of grownup promises to know what they meant. Grownups were always going to get this and fix that, build Wendy houses on the lawn, take you to the zoo, staple the broken strap on your satchel, favours that never happened, things they got angry about if you ever mentioned them.

  “All the best toys. Right?”

  “Right,” Bobby said. He turned for the door, then hesitated. “Will you tell me one thing?”

  “What?”

  “Where babies come from.”

  Tony hesitated, but not unduly; grownups always thought before they spoke. “They come from the bellies of uncles, Bobby. A big slit opens and they tumble out. It’s no secret, it’s a natural fact.”

  Bobby nodded, wondering why he’d been so afraid to ask. “I thought so…thanks.”

  “Any time,” Tony said, and turned up the TV.

  “Thanks again.” Bobby closed the door behind him.

  Tony finished school officially at the end of that term. But there were no awards, no speeches, no bunting over the school gates. Like the other new grownups, he just stopped attending, went in one evening when it was quiet to clear his locker as though the whole thing embarrassed him. Bobby told himself that that was one thing he’d do differently when his time came. He’d spent most of his life at school, and he wasn’t going to pass it by that easily. Grownups just seemed to let things go. It had been the same with Dad when he moved from the factory to the admin offices in town, suddenly ignoring men he’d shared every lunchtime with and talked about for years as though they were friends.

  Tony sold his bicycle through the classified pages to a kid from across town who would have perhaps a year’s use of it before he too grew up. He found a temporary job at the local supermarket. He and Dad came home at about the same time each evening, the same bitter work smell coming off their bodies. Over dinner, Mum would ask them how everything had gone and the talk would lie flat between them, drowned by the weak distractions of the food.

  For Tony, as for everyone, the early years of being a grownup were a busy time socially. He went out almost every night, dressed in his new grownup clothes and smelling of soap and aftershave. Mum said he looked swell. Bobby knew the places in town he went to by reputation. He had passed them regularly and caught the smell of cigarettes and booze, the drift of breathless air and sudden laughter. There were strict rules against children entering. If he was with Mum, she would snatch his hand and hurry him on. But she and Dad were happy for Tony to spend his nights in these places now that he was a grownup, indulging in the ritual dance that led to courtship, marriage and a fresh uncle in the family. On the few occasions that Tony wasn’t out late, Dad took him for driving lessons, performing endless three point turns on the tree-lined estate roads.

  Bobby would sit with his homework spread on the dining room table as Mum saw to things that didn’t need seeing to. There was a distracting stiffness about her actions that was difficult to watch, but difficult not to. Bobby guessed that although Tony was still living at home and she was pleased that he’d taken to grownup life, she was also missing him, missing the kid he used to be. It didn’t require a great leap of imagination for Bobby to see things that way; he missed Tony himself. The arguments, the fights, the sharing and the not-sharing, all lost with the unspoken secret of being children together, of finding everything frightening, funny and new.

  In the spring, Tony passed his driving test and got a proper job at the supermarket as trainee manager. There was a girl called Marion who worked at the checkout. She had skin trouble like permanent sunburn and never looked at you when she spoke. Bobby already knew that Tony was seeing her in the bars at night. He sometimes answered the phone by mistake when she rang, her slow voice saying Is Your Brother About as Tony came down the stairs from his room looking annoyed. The whole thing was supposed to be a secret until suddenly Tony started bringing Marion home in the second hand coupe he’d purchased from the dealers on the high street.

  Tony and Marion spent the evenings of their courtship sitting in the lounge with Mum and Dad, watching the TV. When Bobby asked why, Tony said that they had to stay in on account of their saving for a little house. He said it with the strange fatality of grownups. They often talked about the future as though it was already there.

  Sometimes a strange uncle would come around. Dad always turned the TV off as soon as he heard the bell. The uncles were generally fresh-faced and young, their voices high and uneasy. If they came a second time, they usually brought Bobby an unsuitable present, making a big show of hiding it behind their wide backs.

  Then Uncle Lew began to visit more often. Bobby overheard Mum and Dad talking about how good it would be, keeping the same uncle in the family even if Lew was a little old for our Tony.

  Looking down at him over his cheeks, Lew would ruffle Bobby’s hair with his soft fingers.

  “And how are you, young man?”

  Bobby said he was fine.

  “And what is it you’re going to be this week?” This was Lew’s standard question, a joke of sorts that stemmed from some occasion when Bobby had reputedly changed his mind about his grownup career three or four times in a day.

  Bobby paused. He felt an obligation to be original.

  “Maybe an archaeologist,” He said.

  Lew chuckled. Tony and Marion moved off the settee to make room for him, sitting on the floor with Bobby.

  After a year and half of courtship, the local paper that Tony had used to sell his bicycle finally announced that he, Marion and Uncle Lew were marrying. Everyone said it was a happy match. Marion showed Bobby the ring. It looked big and bright from a distance, but close to, he saw that the diamond was tiny, centred in a much larger stub of metal that was cut to make it glitter.

  Some evenings, Dad would fetch some beers for himself, Tony and Uncle Lew, and let Bobby sip the end of a can to try the flat dark taste. Like most other grownup things, it was a disappointment.

  So Tony married Marion. And he never did get around to telling Bobby how it felt to be a grownup. The priest in the church beside the crematorium spoke of the bringing together of families and of how having Uncle Lew for a new generation was a strengthened commitment. Dad swayed in the front pew from nerves and the three whiskies he’d sunk beforehand. Uncle Lew wore the suit he always wore at weddings, battered victim of too much strain on the buttons, too many spilled buffets. There were photos of the families, photos of the b
ridesmaids, photos of Lew smiling with his arms around the shoulders of the two newlyweds. Photograph the whole bloody lot, Dad said, I want to see where the money went.

  The reception took place at home on the lawn. Having decided to find out what it was like to get drunk, Bobby lost his taste for the warm white wine after one glass. He hovered at the border of the garden. It was an undeniably pretty scene: the awnings, the dresses, the flowers. For once, the boundaries between grownups and children seemed to dissolve. Only Bobby remained outside. People raised their glasses and smiled, drunken uncles swayed awkwardly between the trestle tables. Darkness carried the smell of the car exhaust and the dry fields beyond the houses. Bobby remembered the time when he had watched from his window and the music had beaten smoky wings—when the grownups had flown over the cherry trees that now seemed so small.

  The headlights of the hire limousine swept out of the darkness. Everyone ran to the drive to see the Tony and Marion duck into the leather interior. Uncle Lew squeezed in behind them, off with the newlyweds to some secret place. Neighbours who hadn’t been invited came out onto their drives to watch, arms folded against the non-existent chill, smiling. Marion threw her bouquet. It tumbled high over the trees and the rooftops, up through the stars. Grownups oohed and ahhed. The petals bled into the darkness. It dropped back down as a dead thing of grey and plastic. Bobby caught it without thinking; a better, cleaner catch than anything he’d ever managed in the playing fields at school. Everyone laughed—that a kid should do that!—and he blushed furiously. Then the car pulled away, low at the back from the weight of the three passengers and their luggage. The taillights dwindled, were cut out by the bend in the road. Dad swayed and shouted something, his breath reeking. People went inside and the party lingered on, drawing to its stale conclusion.

  Uncle Lew had Tony and Marion’s first child a year later. Mum took Bobby to see the baby at his house when he came out of hospital few days after the birth. Uncle Lew lived in town up on the hill on the far side of the river. Mum was nervous about gradient parking and always used the big pay and display down by the library. From there, you had to cut through the terraced houses, then up the narrowly winding streets that formed the oldest part of town. The houses were mostly grey pebbledash with deepset windows, yellowed lace curtains and steps leading though steep gardens. The hill always seemed steeper than it probably was to Bobby; he hated visiting.