10
May had seen Lionel approaching from where she stood at the window. She could hear him talking to Joseph, gravely, all the bounce gone out of him. She cried out sharply, ‘Did you get the drink, Lionel?’
‘There wasn’t any whisky,’ he said, entering the hut.
George boiled a kettle of water and carried it outside to the bracken. He rested the kettle on the grass and squatted on his haunches, probing with his fingers for the exact location of the wasps’ nest.
Kidney stood in the doorway and watched George curiously, looking at his great boots that reflected the moonlight and the metal kettle that glittered in the undergrowth. When George poured the water down through the tangle of leaves and fern, Kidney raised one arm above his eyes as if avoiding a blow. He didn’t understand what was happening. He moaned, overcome with dread, rubbing his arm against his eyes. Joseph shook him by the shoulder and asked him what was wrong. He looked beyond the distressed youth to George and told Kidney there was nothing to fear.
‘Dotty’s gone,’ said Kidney. ‘She ran away. She took her hat.’
‘Oh.’ Joseph shrugged and turned away, hardly concerned. She wouldn’t go far.
When he came back in with the kettle, George suggested they should play another game of Monopoly. He looked from one to another of their faces. ‘I should enjoy it,’ he said in his calm and weary manner.
Joseph had involuntarily shaken his head in refusal. He stood in the centre of the room and said undecidedly, ‘Well, if you feel like that – ’
George said he would fetch some paraffin from the store shed first, as the lamp was burning low. ‘Set the game,’ he told May, taking up the polythene container from beside the cooker.
‘Shall we?’ she asked, once he had gone, looking to Balfour for a decision. Joseph had climbed on to a chair and was searching the shelf carefully.
‘Hold the lamp up for me,’ he told her, and she did as he asked, keeping it away from her face, disliking the smell of the drying wick.
‘Roland took my pills,’ Kidney said, watching them both. ‘He took away my bottle.’
Joseph looked down into the upturned face of May, the calculating eyes softening with alarm, the mouth, black under the held-aloft lamp, opening to shout an accusation, a criticism. ‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘They’re about somewhere.’
The harsh tone of his voice and the contempt in his eyes silenced her. She set the lamp on the table and bent her head to hide her feelings, which were mixed. She was instinctively certain that Kidney had given the child the pills. She thought Joseph was a fool, he would dismiss as nonsense anything she might say. Well then, let him take the consequences.
Balfour told himself there was nothing to worry about. Kidney had stolen the pills and was trying to blame Roland. Kidney had hidden them somewhere so that he could take his three prescribed tablets a day. Mental defectives, like the old, clung to established routines. It gave them security.
Lionel looked as if the loss of the pills was a personal insult. They were all, he thought – all of them – irresponsible and undisciplined.
May set out the Monopoly board and counted the money. When it was done Joseph demanded that she make a cup of tea. She did as he asked without a comment; she could afford to be compliant now that she knew he was to be shown up as a fool. She dwelt with pleasure on the thought of his discomfiture the following day when Roland would be sick and petulant and wanting to go home to his mother. She looked at Lionel, but he wouldn’t return her glance She put the cups noisily on to the table, rehearsing what she would tell Lionel when they were alone. I object to your attitude … How dare you treat me like this … Everyone noticed what a bore you were about Churchill … George says you’re a Jew …
There was very little sugar left in the basin. Hardly enough for one person. Joseph said Kidney ought to have the spoonful that remained.
‘Ought he?’ said May grimly.
‘Take it. Kidney,’ ordered Joseph. ‘You’ve got a sweet tooth, I know.’
Blushing with pleasure at Joseph’s regard for him, Kidney emptied the sugar into his cup.
In silence they waited for George to return. The lamp was guttering now, smoke staining the glass funnel. Moonlight lined the windowsills like a fall of snow.
There was a difference about the Monopoly game tonight. Whereas the night before George had appeared bored, hardly seeming to know what he was doing, now he proceeded skilfully to acquire the more expensive property. With his third throw he landed on Mayfair, then Park Lane. He studied the board intently and began to buy houses at ￡200 a time. It was his turn now to tell Joseph to throw the dice, to move three paces forward, to go to jail. It became a battle between the two of them. As they bought more property, their transactions with the bank took longer. May yawned and Lionel sat with his head bent low, a polite smile on his face, his hand inside the opening of his shirt.
In one such pause May said someone should go and look at Roland.
‘Not now,’ Joseph said. He was occupied in doing a swop with Balfour – Fleet Street for The Angel, Islington. ‘Good, good,’ he said triumphantly paying his money and tucking the scarlet street card into his clip of property. He was astounded at May for buying two sites and not attempting to buy the third. ‘You landed on it last go,’ he shouted.
‘Well, I didn’t know,’ May pouted. ‘They all look alike to me.’
‘But they’re different colours, you nit.’
‘Well, they still look the same to me.’
‘Wild animals,’ said Kidney, ‘like mice or fleas, look extremely alike.’
‘You mean each member of each species does,’ amended George.
‘Like the Arabs,’ said Lionel, ‘or the Chinese. Nothing to tell between them.’ He got up from the table, excusing himself, and went towards the door.
‘Go and look at Roland while you’re at it,’ his wife bade him. ‘And make our bed ready for later.’
‘We aren’t sleeping in the barn,’ said Lionel.
‘I’m not going in the dark to that other hut.’ May’s voice was shrill.
Lionel came to her and stood with his hand on her shoulder. ‘Shut your trap, May,’ he said. He shook her a little, unplayfully, before releasing her.
It took Lionel some time to locate the candle and the matches on the washstand. There was a basin covering a jug alongside the saucer. He admired George and the MacFarleys. Everything as it should be. Roland looked very frail. Lionel inspected the lids of his shut eyes and the curved mouth, pale above the blankets and felt a stab of dislike. The child was like the father, a natural beast of the forest. He wished with all his heart that he hadn’t told him about May and his coin. He blew out the candle and took it back with him over the grass.
‘Sleeping peacefully,’ he announced, taking his place at the table.
He watched May secretly. Once he leaned forward to light her cigarette. She thanked him, bringing her face close to his held-out hand and he smelled her perfume and drew back severely into the shadows. What she had done, it seemed to him, was not in itself so dreadful. She had rendered him other little disservices during their married life. The deceits she practised were inspired by vanity, not by malice. He had, without her knowledge, forgiven her within himself on several occasions. But the cold hardening of the heart that he now experienced was totally strange, a prolapse of feeling that was beyond adjustment. He thought even his face was undergoing a change. He went to the sink and drank water, regarding himself in the mirror. It was his father’s face that he saw reflected, the same righteous mouth, the similar unrelenting eyes gazing at him without understanding. He moved nearer the glass, saw the stubble on his cheek bone, the lobe of his ear looming large. He knew now who he was. What little remained of his old self felt a faint twinge of pity for that relation by marriage, his wife May, unaware of his transformation.
Not entirely unaware. She knew he had taken umbrage. She opened and shut her handbag several times. ‘Have you a handkerchief, Lionel?’ she cried at last. He didn’t look up. She said desperately, ‘Lionel, I’m talking to you.’
‘Your move, I believe,’ said Lionel, addressing Joseph.
The game continued. When May was declared bankrupt Joseph remembered Roland. ‘Go and see him,’ he told May.
May didn’t care to admit she was afraid of the dark. She hovered on the top step of the porch and dabbed her foot into the field of moonlight like a girl by the sea. ‘I don’t know where the candle is,’ she protested, coming indoors.
Lionel pointed at the saucer he had put on the draining board.
In the barn May didn’t look at Roland’s face. There were too many shadows. She sat holding the candle on the far bed and began to count to a hundred. Perhaps she had been mistaken about the little boy and the pills. He was breathing quite normally. When she had counted to sixty she got up abruptly and ran back to the hut. The night was so calm the candle stayed alight. She entered the door with her face misty and the little flame intact.
‘You look as if you’d seen a ghost,’ said Joseph, looking up from his property cards.
‘It’s so creepy out there with that moon. It’s different in the country.’ She shivered affectedly. ‘It looks – oh, I don’t know – as if everyone had gone out.’ She laughed at herself.
‘Make some more tea, May,’ ordered Joseph. She irritated him, wandering about, not doing anything constructive.
‘Oooh,’ wailed May, gazing helplessly about her. ‘I’ve left my bag in the barn.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Balfour, ‘I’m out anyway.’
Joseph protested. ‘You’re not out, mate. You could mortgage those stations, you know.’
‘Perhaps he’s had enough,’ George said, searching Balfour’s face for signs of strain ‘Perhaps he should go to bed now.’
‘I’m all right, George.’ Balfour glanced apologetically at Joseph. ‘I’ll just go and fetch May’s bag.’
‘Please,’ May said.
‘See that Roland’s covered up well,’ shouted Joseph as Balfour left the hut carrying the candle. ‘Make sure he’s warm enough.’
As soon as he had finished this round he would go himself to look at the child, see he was warm and snug. He might even bring the boy inside to sleep in his bed if old Dot-Dot failed to return.
In the barn Balfour put down the candle and turned back the blankets on the iron bed. He felt Roland’s forehead and his pulse. He drew the blankets high again and sat crouched on the bed holding the child’s hand in his own. It wasn’t his child. He couldn’t feel surprised or shocked. He had always, it seemed, been on the threshold of some experience that would open a door, and now here was just such an experience and there was no sudden illumination, no revelation such as he had imagined. Indeed it appeared to him that the door had closed for ever. He was quite untouched, it wasn’t his loss. He thought perhaps he should be reacting differently. He should, like a man drowning, relive his gone-through life, but he couldn’t do it. There were no pictures, no truths, no emotions. Soon, in a few hours, he knew there would be an ambulance and a general exodus, a dispersal into the landscape, a journey into another part of the wood. It would soon be over. He would go home and tell his mam about it and she would cry out and he might just feel something then. Only because of her. Just as well. He was nothing really. There was no depth to him, no value. He put the little boy’s hand under the blankets and stood up. ‘Bye-bye,’ he said, as if the child still lived, was dreaming still in the iron bed. He went out leaving the door open.
Outside he could hear the voice of May and then her laughter, as if she were happy. He looked at the roof of the hut cutting the August sky, and the moon, perfectly still, hung above the rise of the field. All the leaves on the trees glittered like glass.
Through the window he could see them grouped round the table – Lionel, May, George, Joseph. The lamp bloomed like a trapped and second moon.
When he entered, Joseph was telling Lionel to leave his money alone. ‘Take your thieving hands off my lolly,’ he shouted. He looked up. ‘Everything all right, mate?’ he asked full of fun, holding the paper money in his fist like a bouquet.
‘No,’ Balfour said. His head ached. ‘He’s d-dead.’