Another part of the wood (21 page)

Balfour kept his eyes closed.

‘Don’t you think it’s a little foolish letting Roland go off with Kidney?’ May said.

‘Foolish? What’s that supposed to mean exactly?’ Joseph faced her, knowing exactly what she meant, angry, fearful that he
might be put in the wrong.

‘Well, Kidney’s not exactly a suitable companion for a little boy. He’s very odd.’

‘Odd?’

‘Yes, odd.’ May turned to Dotty for support. ‘Do you think Kidney’s fit to look after Roland?’

Dotty looked at Joseph and was forced unwillingly to defend him. ‘I don’t think there’s much harm in him … He’s a bit simple,
but he’s all right.’

‘Kidney isn’t simple,’ Joseph said sternly. ‘I’ve told you that often enough.’ He was sorry at once that he had spoken so
loudly. She had meant to be loyal. He added more gently, ‘He’s not simple at all. He’s just mentally blocked. He’s perfectly
intelligent and normal, but he can’t communicate.’

‘That’s not what you said before,’ said Dotty.

‘Perfectly normal!’ May lifted her eyebrows and eyed him incredulously. ‘He’s almost an imbecile. There’s nothing normal about
him.’ She was growing irritated, malicious. Savagely she dug her nails into the table top. She couldn’t bear Joseph and his
supercilious ways, and Dotty rattling the cups, and the ridiculous wooden hut set in the middle of nowhere. ‘I think it’s
terrible,’ she cried. ‘A little boy like Roland, sleeping in the same room as that big fat man and going off for walks with
him for hours … Anything could happen. He looks as if he’s abnormal.’

Joseph thought she was absurd. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told her sharply. ‘I’ll just walk over to the
road and look for them.’ He glanced at Dotty, but she wouldn’t look at him. She blamed him too.

‘I’ll just s-stretch my legs a bit,’ said Balfour, rising from the sofa and coming to the door. ‘I’ll just come over the field
for a walk.’

They passed Lionel in the grass, the newspaper lying flat, his head propped on his arm. He was snoring.

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Balfour. ‘They won’t have gone far.’

‘I’m not in the least bit worried,’ Joseph told him. ‘That woman’s a cow.’ He shook his head with disgust. ‘It doesn’t do
to coddle them too much, you know. They’ve got to have a feeling of independence. Strike out on their own, dear boy.’

Balfour agreed, keeping pace with difficulty, thinking of Roland being independent, striking out with his mentally disturbed
companion. ‘We’ve got quite a few lads l-like Kidney at the club,’ he said. ‘Same types, same difficulties, only a bit more
predictable.’ He looked quickly at Joseph but failed to read his expression.

Joseph said abruptly, ‘How so?’

‘Well, you get to know the signs. It’s a kind of pattern. They’ve got the same troubles at home, lack of interest, lack of
– ’

‘– security?’ suggested Joseph.

‘That and other things …’

‘What things?’

‘B-bad housing. Three or four to a bed. Bad diet. Bad schools. They usually have mentally defective parents and a long history
of – ’

‘Kidney’s parents are perfectly intelligent,’ said Joseph. ‘Particularly about Kidney.’

‘Yes – well, there are differences,’ Balfour conceded. ‘Different environment, like. As a general rule there’s only one parent
anyway. The dads have usually b-buggered off somewhere.’

His head was aching once more. The poison was working through his bloodstream. But he would gladly have been stung all over
again if it would have erased that last remark. ‘I only meant about the lads at the club. I mean the parents are different …
You and Roland, that’s different. I can see that … You understand him.’

‘I love him,’ said Joseph simply, coming to the gate at the end of the field. He climbed it agilely and walked quickly away
along the path between hedge and haystack.

Roland, turning the bend of the road, saw his father at the entrance of the farm and began to run towards him with arms held
out. Swaggering, Joseph went leisurely to meet his son. The boy ran swiftly, clutching the sprig of heather.

‘Where the devil have you been?’ Joseph shouted. He swung the child up in his arms, shaking him fiercely. ‘Where have you
been, beauty boy? Just where have you been?’

Roland was trying to tell him. He was choked with the violence of the embrace and the excitement of his return. ‘We’ve been
up the mountain,’ he got out at last, looking up slyly at Joseph’s face, waiting for the surprise to show.

‘Up the mountain!’

‘Me and Kidney, right to the top. We did, didn’t we?’ He twisted in his father’s arms seeking confirmation from Kidney.

‘All that way?’ Joseph was amused and delighted. He turned and called triumphantly to Balfour. ‘Did you hear that, eh, Balfour?
Would you believe it, right up the mountain.’

Balfour said ‘Jolly good’, looking at the animated child and the silent Kidney scuffing his boots at the edge of the road.

Roland rode on Joseph’s shoulders across the field, a conqueror’s return. He beat at his father’s head with his fists and
felt giddy. The sky was colourless now, without clouds. It was like riding on the back of an elephant, swaying high above
the ground, with Balfour and Kidney following, lurching under the low branches of the elm tree, the sky rocking up and down,
his heart bumping. He hoped he wasn’t going to be sick.

They were all amazed at him. Roland was gratified by their surprise. Dotty made him fried eggs and tomatoes, but he was no
longer hungry. He drank several cupfuls of water, but his throat remained dry. ‘It was lovely up the mountain,’ he said, attempting
for Dotty’s sake to eat something. ‘You could see all the way to Liverpool … and the sea shining.’

‘What about the tower?’ Dotty wanted to know. ‘Was it a real tower?’

‘Yes. It was jolly good.’ He looked at his father and said quickly, ‘It was a super tower, really good … One of its walls had
gone. Wasn’t that interesting? Kidney told me a story about a king and some children.’

‘Did he now?’ Joseph made sure that May had heard. ‘Kidney told you a story did he?’

‘Eat your supper,’ said Dotty, not wanting the food to be wasted.

‘All about this Lear going off for a walk. It was a good story,’ lied Roland. He dropped his hands into his lap and yawned.
‘I don’t want any more egg, thank you, Dotty.’

‘You mean King Lear?’ said his father.

‘What?’ The child pushed his plate away. The light in the hut had almost gone. His father’s face was in shadow. ‘Kidney showed
me his wee-wee,’ he said. ‘It’s awfully big.’ He yawned again, his eyelids heavy.

Lionel laughed and wished instantly he hadn’t. You never knew quite where you were with Joseph, all unconventional and bohemian
one moment and prudish as they come the next. Lads often did that sort of thing among themselves. Nothing to be shocked about.
Perfectly understandable. Of course Roland was a little young and Kidney a little old, but even so. He looked at his wife
and was deceived by the expression on her face. He touched her leg with his knee and kept his mouth solemn.

‘Did he?’ said Joseph, regarding the child a moment longer before rising from the table to light the lamp.

May longed to interrogate Roland but was intimidated by the presence of Joseph. She felt uneasiness at the situation not yet
explained and satisfaction that her fears had been justified. She looked at Kidney contemptuously.

Roland’s throat hurt. He found it difficult to talk. ‘My mouth feels funny,’ he complained, letting his jaw go slack.

Joseph told him he was tired. ‘You’ve been a long way, little
soldier. It’s time you were in bed.’ Gently he undressed the boy, wiped his fingers with a flannel and dabbed at the smooth,
sleepy face. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s my beauty boy.’

Roland was too tired to do his teeth. Joseph insisted. The child began to cry. ‘I don’t want to …’

Joseph disliked the whining protest. He flung down the toothpaste in irritation. ‘Oh don’t bother then. Let them all fall
out,’ he shouted.

‘He’s tired,’ said Dotty, wanting to take the weary boy on her knee, but not doing so.

Lionel took Roland to the barn. It was still and silent out in the field. No breeze, the trees motionless, the sky waiting
for the moon. ‘Must be careful of the wasps’ nest,’ said Lionel. ‘We mustn’t trip over that, must we?’

Roland was too drowsy to be frightened. Besides, the man’s strong arms held him sure and safe. His own body felt strange,
heavy. Even the tips of his fingers lying on the curve of Lionel’s wrist were leaden and insensitive. He was carried into
the barn and laid down.

‘Good night, old boy,’ said Lionel, tucking the blankets about him firmly. He rested on the side of the bed and brushed the
hair away from the boy’s unseen forehead. ‘No tricks tonight, old boy. No pennies in your ear tonight.’ The child spoke so
indistinctly that Lionel was forced to lower his head on a level with the bedclothes. ‘What’s that, old boy?’

‘May put your penny down the …’

‘Down where?’

‘ … wasp hole.’

‘
May
did?’

But the child slept. Lionel strained forward to catch a glimpse of his features, but the darkness was tight and final.

He rose at last and walked outside, closing the door behind him. He stood as near to the bracken as he dared. It was so still
out there under the trees that he fancied he could hear the wasps moving, like honey trickling, in their nest beneath the
leaves. May
had thrown his coin down there, May had done that? He didn’t doubt Roland.

Through a triangle of light shining from the porch a man passed, plodding heavily in the darkness. Lionel listened to the
footsteps going over the grass and when the sound finished went back into the hut.

‘Gone down all right?’ asked Joseph, wanting peace, distressed by his angry parting with Roland.

Lionel nodded, not looking at May, going to the sofa to sit beside Balfour.

She knew something was wrong. His face had in some fashion collapsed. Only his moustache seemed permanent.

‘Asleep, is he?’ persisted Joseph, moving restlessly about the hut.

Lionel nodded once more and fiddled with the cravat about his throat.

‘I’ve sent Kidney for the milk. I thought I’d meet him on the way back and have a bit of a talk with him.’ Joseph wasn’t concerned
about their opinion of Kidney, only of himself. I’ve spoiled it all, he thought: Dotty’s holiday – poor Dotty, slouched over
the table rolling her cigarettes – and Roland’s. He suppressed the desire to go now, at once, to the barn and tell the boy
he was sorry about the tooth-brushing.

May sensed he was vulnerable. She couldn’t help taking advantage. ‘You really ought to have a little talk with Roland. You’d
get more information out of him. Anything might have happened, you know.’

‘I don’t see it would serve any purpose.’ Joseph tried to be patient.

‘Boys of Kidney’s age are very developed nowadays,’ said May. ‘Normal ones, let alone that one – ’

‘If you’re trying to suggest Kidney assaulted Roland – ’

‘Well, what did he want to show his thing to the child for?’ asked May. She gave a little giggle and Joseph said quickly,
‘All adolescents experiment … If he had harmed Roland, Roland would have told us.’

‘If he was my child …’ began May, tossing her head.

‘Well, he isn’t, is he?’ he retorted.

Balfour was disturbed. He was convinced now that they were all different from him, even the foolish May. They must know more,
they appeared to know more. Behind everything, they said, lay something else, another meaning altogether. They had such tolerance.
They didn’t think it all that important that Kidney might have exposed himself to Roland. Even May’s comments were made only
to get at Joseph – she wasn’t concerned about the child. And Joseph, why was he worried about the effect on Kidney? Taking
a broad view, he was right to worry about that; but there was something wrong in it all. There was family, and blood ties,
and sticking up for your dad even if you did think he was a right yob of a bastard, and not letting on you had no underpants
and telling the rent man your mam was out when all the time she was hiding behind the back door, and when it came down to
the centre, the core, all the feuding and protecting was pride in your own flesh and blood – well, maybe not pride, but loyalty:
there wasn’t anything else. But somewhere along the line Joseph and Dotty and the rest of them, old George too, had cut themselves
free from that sort of thing, gone out on a limb. They didn’t really feel they belonged to anyone any more.

‘One has to be very careful,’ Joseph was telling him – it was Balfour he was looking at – ‘not to suggest too much to a child.
One must guard against meddling.’

‘Well, he looked a bit pale to me,’ May cried, unable to keep quiet. ‘Not at all well.’

‘Rubbish. He was just tired. All that way up the mountain. He’s only a child.’

‘He looked more than tired. He didn’t eat any supper.’ She was holding the sprig of heather, rolling it back and forth across
the palm of her hand, rubbing the dry buds from the stem.

‘That’s mine,’ Joseph cried, snatching the heather from her and sticking it into the pocket of his shirt. He flounced out
of the door. They heard him shout a greeting, and then a farewell, and Willie’s
voice replying ‘All the best, all the best’, as if it were Christmas.

Lionel was watching his wife sitting in her chair, separate from him, head lowered to scrutinize her polished nails. Beneath
the darkening roots of hair lay her little pale-grey brain, hidden, secretive, beyond his reach or influence. His vicious
wife. How often had he met old comrades from the regiment who seemed at first the same comrades, untouched by time. Only later,
after some conversation or longer acquaintance, one found they weren’t the same but altered beyond recall. They had taken
up smoking or given up drink, learnt to drive or become religious, adopted a new style of speech, an unfamiliar mannerism.
The same yet no longer the same. People changed and in changing affected others, were affected in their turn, a continual
process of addition and subtraction. Cut the communication lines and contact was broken, no information could come through.
If the breach was serious enough, the lapse of time long enough, one could be fired upon by one’s own guns.