A Bit of Earth (23 page)

‘I don't really do puzzles much anymore,' said Felix. ‘All my puzzles are too easy now. Puzzles seemed to stop after I was about five.'

‘Oh,' said Guy. Here was yet another way that he'd failed without even realising. Non-provision of puzzles. ‘Well, we could get you some harder ones.'

‘No thanks,' said Felix. ‘But I might have some more water. Do you want some?'

‘Yes please.'

‘Blue or green?'

‘What are you having?'

‘Green.'

‘I'll have blue. I know, get one of each and we'll take their temperatures. I don't know why we didn't think of that before.'

‘OK, Dad.'

By the time Felix had struggled back through the swing doors and the office door with the plastic cups full to their brims, Guy had fetched a thermometer from the lab.

‘Cor, I wish we had one that long at home,' said Felix, carefully putting the cups down on the table.

‘Right. Now the truth will be revealed. Write this down. Sample A, the cup next to the window … now Sample B … right, which is which? B is half a degree warmer. Is that the blue one or the green one?'

‘Um, I think it's the blue one, but I got a bit mixed up when I had to balance them on the photocopier whilst I did the doors, it seemed to be a bit, um, hot.'

‘The mystery remains unsolved,' said Guy.

It was hot. They arrived on the Saturday afternoon. There was a wooden five-bar gate at the start of a long drive. Felix got out to open it, and then shut it once Guy had driven through. It looked very heavy, but he managed. Guy had always loved doing gates like that. It was such a holidayish thing to have to do. If only, he thought, I could have a holiday from being myself.

He had been expecting people to look him up and down, but that first night it was just the Misselthwaites and Erica and her parents. They ate noodles with lime and chilli. He realised that Felix had never been given noodles before, or quite possibly lime or chilli either; but he ate them all up. Felix seemed predisposed to love everything. The moment they'd arrived Erica's mother, Rosemary, had taken Felix off to look at the river. Guy had been left standing there like a lemon, saying, ‘Well!' and knowing that his heartiness was too, too transparent. Then Phil, Erica's father, gave him a mug of tea and Guy saw how deeply muddy and blackly creased his hands were. Ah, a gardener, or possibly a charcoal-burner. All would be well.

Felix and Guy were given a tiny spare bedroom in an attic. Felix was on an ancient camping bed that groaned at his every breath. In the end Guy hauled him, still sleeping, across the gap, and they slept together in the huge nest of ancient eiderdowns and blankets that Rosemary had thought necessary for an attic room in May. Guy could feel individual feathers through the old cloth, spiky and soft through the silkiness. Perhaps, he thought, we should stay here for ever. Then he fell asleep.

He didn't hear Erica at 2 a.m. standing at the bottom of the little flight of creaky wooden stairs that led to the attic. He didn't know that she was wearing her new cotton shortie pyjamas which were yellow with white polka dots. She was hardly breathing at all. After a while she decided that she was being ridiculous, and went back to bed.

The next day, the day of the party, was something else entirely. The people began arriving after breakfast. It seemed that Erica actually had about a dozen brothers, each one taller and more athletic-looking than the last. One by one they pumped Guy's hand, and introduced him to a partner and some kids. There was no way of telling them apart. There were aunts and uncles and grandparents and neighbours. And everybody had crazy non-names. They were all called things like Dagger and Spaniel and Plops. Guy thought that he might just have been able to pick out the neighbours. The people related to Erica all had the same long limbs. Then he began to suspect that some of the Greys had married some of the neighbours.

Rosemary was making salads. Erica was snapping peas. Felix helped her, thinking it exotic. Some giant pieces of flesh were being prepared for the flames. Somebody had
arrived with wicker baskets of strawberries and blueberries. Convention on Walton's Mountain, thought Guy. He wondered aloud what would happen if it rained.

‘Oh, it never rains on our parties!' someone told him. Guy helped himself to a beer and went outside. It seemed that Erica had tipped her family off. Not once was he asked the whereabouts of his wife, and he trusted that nobody asked Felix about his mum.

There were three giant barbecues going. He wandered away across the garden to stare at the sheep in the field next door. They were Jacob's sheep, all spotty and stripy; his very favourite sort of sheep. He hoped Felix would come and join him, although he had seemed happy doing those peas. Guy drank the beer and walked down to the river that ran, so obligingly, through the garden. There were trout in the shade of a willow, and watermint and kingcups were in flower. Perhaps if he sat here all day, beside these irises, nobody would notice. He could hear that a game of rounders was getting under way. Suddenly, on silent bare feet, Erica was there beside him.

‘Are you OK?'

‘Yes, yes,' he said politely. She was wearing a skirt. He didn't remember ever seeing her in a skirt before, let alone a spotty one in shades of pink and red, that was all crinkly.

‘I used to come down here all the time to get some peace when I lived at home. There are water voles. Dad thought he saw an otter last summer.' She put her glass, empty but for a sprig of mint and some pink stickiness, down on the grass and took a step closer to him. Good God, thought Guy,
she might be about to kiss me. He stood very still. Something made them look up. Felix was sitting by himself in the willow tree.

‘Hi Felix!' said Erica, smiling, and not missing a beat. ‘Would you like to come and play rounders?'

‘Um, no thanks, I don't think anyone would pick me.'

‘It's not like that. It's not like at school. Everyone is picked. It's just for fun.'

The yells and whoops and cries of ‘Get ‘im out!', ‘To third base!', ‘Butterfingers!' sounded exactly like school to Guy and Felix.

‘Are you going to open your presents?' Felix asked her. ‘We brought you a present but we didn't know when we were meant to give it to you.'

‘Now would be nice.'

They walked back to the house together, Felix and Erica holding hands.

‘I like your skirt,' Felix told her. ‘It looks as though it would rustle, but it doesn't. I hate it if clothes make a noise.'

The present was wrapped in paper that could only have been from a sub-post office.

‘It's something from Amazon,' Felix said. ‘Dad is always ordering stuff on Amazon.'

‘Wow! This is lovely. And some of these will be from
the
Amazon. Thank you. I've always wanted to read more about sea-beans.'

It was
Sea-Beans from the Tropics: A Collector's Guide to Sea-Beans and Other Tropical Drift on Atlantic Shores.
Guy had ordered it for himself weeks ago and then forgotten about it. It had arrived conveniently when a present for
Erica was required. He had thought it ideal, but was reluctant to part with it straight away. He hoped he might get to read it too.

That evening Felix and Guy left for Cornwall, driving west into the sunset and then the night. Felix slept. Wasn't there something in the life force, some animal instinct, some migratory pull to go west? Guy felt footloose and in control, like someone in a movie. Really, he and Felix shouldn't be so tied to routine. They could go anywhere. He had the radio tuned to some bonkers show that kept on playing songs like ‘Everybody's Talking' and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy'. Hours later he was almost sorry when they arrived at the hotel. Felix woke up enough to make it upstairs to bed.

‘But Dad, I thought Erica was coming too,' he said as he fell back to sleep.

Guy had no idea why Felix thought that, but it would have made sense. He wished that she had come. He decided to ring her in the morning and ask her to join them, and maybe she could bring the sea-beans book with her.

He opened the window so that they could sleep to the sound of the waves.

Guy had Erica's parents' address and phone number on a Post-it note in his wallet. Rosemary answered the phone. He realised that perhaps it wasn't normal to be ringing at 8.30 a.m.

‘It's Guy,' he said.

‘Oh hello.'

‘I was just ringing to say, um, thank you for the party. And having us to, um, stay, and …'

‘Well, thank you. It was a pleasure meeting you both. How was your long drive?'

‘Oh, um, er, fine. Nice actually.'

‘Did you want to talk to Erica?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘Well, I'm sorry, you've just missed her. She's just gone out for a ride with someone.'

‘A ride. Oh. Just tell her I rang please. It's not important.'

So she was back with that black helmet boyfriend. Oh well, thought Guy. I guess I never had a chance. Off on a motorbike going too fast around the lanes of Wiltshire. He realised where the thought was taking him. He ground his fists into his eye sockets to stop it all.

‘Come on, Felix,' he said. ‘Let's hit the beach.'

When Erica came back, smelling strongly of her friend Polly's horses, Rosemary said, ‘Nice ride?'

‘Great, but my legs are really achy. I think I'll have a bath. And I know I stink, even though it's a good stink.'

‘Oh, Guy rang. Just to say thank you, I suppose.'

‘That's impressive. Not like him to make a voluntary phone call.'

And that was that.

There must have been several bucketfuls of sand on the floor of their room, and it was only the end of the first day. Felix had the first shower. Afterwards he looked so clean and healthy that Guy felt proud. Their hotel TV had a cartoon channel, which Felix watched, constantly laughing out loud, whilst Guy made some tea in the stainless-steel pot. Felix's pyjama trousers were well on the way to becoming pyjama shorts. Guy realised that they would have to go clothes shopping again soon, and actually buy stuff. He also realised that he was quite looking forward to it, and he smiled as he crunched across the sandy carpet into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, his shower done, he felt as clean and warm and healthy as Felix.

Guy hadn't noticed the full-length mirror in the tiny bathroom. A hideous old man emerged from the steam. What did he think he had been doing, feeling at all good about things? Fool. Dolt. He looked with horror at the man in the mirror. His curls were flattened into a ridiculous bathing cap. He hadn't realised that he was turning into a tortoise. He seemed to have swapped necks with Michael Palin. He knew that his eyebrows were turning white, but he hadn't really noticed his chest hairs going the same way. Forty-two next year, or was it forty-four? He couldn't remember. Who could love him now? Thank God he had Felix. He hoped that Felix was not so damaged that he would never be able to leave home, but equally that Felix would stay with him for ever. What could he do to ensure that Felix didn't make the mess of life that he had?

There was no chance of Erica coming to join them. She was off with the motorbike boyfriend. Guy remembered the
tall, youthful silhouette swinging that helmet as though it were the Gorgon's head.

He shaved and put on a T-shirt that was older than Felix. He lay down on the bed with him and they watched cartoons until the sky turned dark.

Tomorrow, the Eden project. Today it was the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They had seen Flora's Green with its ‘luminous backdrop of living colour'. Guy wondered which colours could and could not be called living. At first he found it all too annoyingly busy, but soon the irritation of other people not only existing in the world, but having the audacity to visit on the day that he had chosen, was washed away by the loveliness of it all. They passed through aisles of metal hoops for fruit trees and climbers in the Vegetable Garden, and decided that when they got home they would try eating one of everything they saw – asparagus, globe and Jerusalem artichokes, cardoons (which Felix now wanted to start growing), sea kale – it would make a change from Felix's usual repertoire of cucumber, carrots, sweetcorn and green lettuce. Felix said that now he would eat purple and brown leaves too. There was a whole world of fruit and vegetables out there, waiting to be tried. The wisteria in the Sundial Garden was just ‘going over'. They looked in awe at the bee boles.

‘I wouldn't mind one of these,' said Guy in the head
gardener's office. Or a pineapple pit, or a peach, banana or melon house. They had lunch in a café and then went skidding through Sikkim and down towards New Zealand and the Jungle.

‘What does that say?' asked Felix. There was a notice, faded blue ink inside a colourless plastic wallet, drawing-pinned to a tiny postbox on a tree.

‘You can read that, can't you?' The notice was a bit high. Surely Felix didn't need glasses already? Another corrupt gene passed on, Guy thought, cleaning his own glasses on his shirt.