Being Small (9 page)

“I think I might have annoyed him.”

“That works too. The boy has resources. Nigel, out of the kitchen, thank you very much. You too, Michael. This is a demonstration, not a masterclass – we’ll do hands-on, but later.”

～

So I perched on a stool in the doorway and watched him cook. Cubes of pork with green beans and spring onions, in a cream and mustard sauce; if not a masterclass it was absolutely a lesson for me, and I did learn. In my life, garlic came dry in granules, and you shook them from a jar. Of course I knew about cloves and bulbs and garlic-presses, which was why we would never have fresh garlic, because my mother didn’t run to gadgets. More trouble than they were worth, she said, just think of the washing-up. Perhaps it was a consequence of the migratory life we led, from kitchenette to primus stove to someone else’s kitchen, but my mother’s definition of a gadget seemed to run far and wide. She allowed a couple of battered saucepans, good for heating what came from tins; she did have a huge old frying-pan, for the all-day breakfasts that were her fallback position. Not much else.

Not like here. Here the kitchen was full of devices. Many of them looked new, but not unused. Kit did his cooking with a chopping-board, though, and a knife: which was how I learned that a garlic-press isn’t crucial after all, that the edge and the flat of a knife are all you need to address a clove of garlic.

“Pretty much all you need, full stop,” Kit averred, when I said that aloud, or something like it. “Give me a knife, a spoon and a pair of chopsticks, and I will travel the world. Don’t look so worried, I won’t make you eat with chopsticks tonight. I think I will cut everything up good and small, though. Fork-food, easy to manage. Whoever cooks gets to clean up after, that’s a house rule. And we all eat with Quin, that’s another; and it’s been a while since he made it to the dining-room. Gerard uses that as a study these days, the table’s all buried under papers. So we eat off our laps, and I can live without spillage.”

He fried cubes of cold cooked potato in butter, scattered them with parsley, divided everything up into huge white bowls. He told me to start carrying through to the front room, while he took a dish of dark brown jelly out of the fridge, scooped a ladleful into another bowl and began to chop it into neat little dice.

“What’s that?”

“Consommé, for Quin. It’s about all he can stomach at the moment. Luckily, he likes it. But then, who wouldn’t? Concentrated gravy, essence of beef with red wine and brandy for added bite: it’s like a whole Sunday dinner in a spoon, without all the bother of chewing. Want to try?”

He ran his finger round inside the ladle, and it came up with jelly clinging. I thought he was going to hold the finger out, for me to lick; but he slid it into his own mouth instead, and offered me the ladle.
Monkey see, monkey do.
So I did, and then I trotted back and forth with bowls and napkins, glasses and forks and wine while this dark, intense sliver of pure savour melted slowly and secretly on my tongue.

～

“Royal jelly,” Tony said, when he saw Quin’s supper. “Serve up enough of it, it turns a grub into a queen-bee.”

“Am I that grubby?” Quin sucked consommé off a teaspoon, slowly. “And do you mean fat and pale, or just unsanitary?”

“Neither of those, any more. You’re in transition. Which is why you have your drones,” and a sweep of his glass included all of us, “buzzing about you.”

“Tony,” Gerard said, “be quiet, and fetch another bottle.”

“I’ll go,” I said quickly, getting to my feet and halfway out of the door already, half my mind on second helpings, the scrapings in the pan.

Behind me, I heard, “I like that boy,” and “Mmm, so do we, we thought we might adopt him,” and “For the duration.”

They spoke softly, but I could still put a name to each of the three voices. The first was Tony’s, and the second Kit’s. The third – well, I’d heard that exchange before. Last time had been in the woods, and Peter had said it, but he wasn’t here. This time it had come out acid, and was Quin’s.

～

Whoever cooks gets to clean up after
. I insisted on helping with the washing-up, just to cement my claim. But then I went home, virtuously early. Tony had disturbed the evening’s flow, and there’d be no chance of extra brownie-points tonight. It was hard to leave, but I’d had as much as I’d hoped for, more; and not to overstay my welcome in the one house, not to let that welcome cause me trouble in the other, both of these were important. By the time my mother came in most of my things were in my room and I was in my bathrobe, and my breath smelled of nothing but spearmint and scrubbing.

～

Saturday morning I put on my own clothes, old clothes, and remembered that I’d forgotten to reclaim my running gear, damp or dry; and looked at Kit’s clothes and wondered if I should wash them. By hand, that would have to be, and laboriously in the basin, and drying them above the bath and fielding questions from my mother, whose were they and why had I been wearing them? It wouldn’t last, but just for now I found that I quite liked it, to have a part of my life that she couldn’t interrogate.

So I folded Kit’s things as neatly as I could manage and put them in a bag as they were. One evening’s wear on a fresh-bathed body, I hadn’t spilled anything and I hadn’t been close while he was cooking; I didn’t think they smelled, of garlic or of me.

My mother took me on an expedition to the local shops, before she went back to work. I kept my eye on number thirty-nine as we passed, but there was no sign of life. Quin’s curtains were closed, and Kit’s car wasn’t in the driveway. We found the library, with its free broadband access for registered ticket-holders; that was my school, one of my schools, and she gave me a task and left me there to pursue it.

Blood
, she said,
learn about blood.
She didn’t need to say more. From the discovery of pulmonary circulation to the latest advances in haematology, all the knowledge in the world was out there, and the hunt was up.

I wondered sometimes whether she had any plan for my education. If there were a logical progression from subject to subject, I could never see it; she seemed to pluck these projects at random from what she knew or what she thought I ought to know, wherever she thought some new branch of learning might lie. Sometimes they seemed strangely appropriate, as now, significant almost – but the world is a web of links, and all things interconnect. The true surprise would be if she managed to produce a series that was truly random, unaffected by her life or by mine. And with subjects so broad, so fundamental, how could they not
apply?

If there were a goal to all this study beyond the thing itself, I couldn’t see that either. If there were an end-point, she had never said. College seemed unlikely, unless I proposed it myself. I supposed I should make that decision soon, one way or the other. There would be public exams, no doubt, that I would need to sit and pass. Or if I decided against, again no doubt she was waiting for me to say so, to say
no more learning now, it’s time I got a job
or
time I travelled
,
time I left home
or
my turn to look after you.

This much at least I knew about myself, that I didn’t make decisions easily or well. I could leave it to Small to choose for both of us; that might be best. Otherwise, I’d have to choose for him. That might not work out too well, for either one of us.

I had my hour on the net, then spent a while longer with the online catalogue, planning a strategy, a route into understanding, and tagging books I’d need to borrow. In a week, I should be able to answer any questions she might have for me; but a week’s study would only throw up questions of its own, mapping the depths of what we didn’t know. I could be a month on this road, easy, if she left me to follow it so long. She rarely did. I think she was frightened of speciality, of obsession. She knew how tight my focus could go, and how long I could walk a line.

How long’s a piece of string, Michael?

As long as you let it be. How long can I have?

As long as Small allows it.

That really was the way it worked, the way we worked it out between the three of us. If I’d been a thief, she’d have given us just enough rope for Small to hang me. She felt safe to let me run, because she knew she could rely on Small to rein me in again, because he always did.
Twins watch out for each other
, she used to say that often, until neither one of us needed to hear it anymore.

Which was maybe why I didn’t want to tell her about my ongoing adventures at number thirty-nine. Her interest would pique Small’s jealousy, which would bring not an end but an immediate limit to those adventures,
thus far and no further: she lets you out and I pull you back, you know you can’t be trusted by yourself.

I knew he didn’t trust me out alone, which might or might not be the same thing. But as long as our mother didn’t know, then we were in collusion, Small and I, and that was a different thing entirely. Twins need to share their secrets, or what was ever the point of being twinned?

I found a bakery and bought a couple of cheese pasties, munching as I walked back to the house. It was another sunny day, we were having a run of them, it almost amounted to a summer; maybe I’d take a book to the park. Maybe I’d take a book and a dog.

Kit’s silver Mini was parked in the lane, because their drive was full of cars. I went home, washed crumbs and grease off my face and fingers, did the best I could with my hair, collected my book and the bag of Kit’s clothes and headed straight out again.

Confidently up the drive and round to the back of the house, squeezing by all the cars; a confident ring on the offshoot doorbell, the usual blizzard of barking and Nigel’s happy feet against the woodwork; a long wait, longer than usual, longer far than you’d expect. Long enough, eventually, to have me ringing again. And then cautiously opening the door, knowing that it was never locked; sticking my head inside the offshoot and calling out, “Hullo?”

No answer, but I could hear voices dimly, thickly, faded by distance and roughened by the walls and doors between us, all but drowned altogether by Nigel’s noise. I quieted him as best I could and went up to the door into the house proper. And knocked there, much less confident now; and was just on the turn, just wanting not to be heard after all so that I could slip away and be gone and pretend I never came, when I saw a figure through the dimpled glass.

The door opened, and it was Gerard. The big man, all in his shirtsleeves, no tie but his good suit trousers that he hadn’t had time to change; and there was blood on his white shirt and blood on his hands, a spray of blood across his face and glasses and he snapped, “Oh, for the love of God, boy, not now!”

“No, right, sorry, only I brought Kit’s clothes back...”

“What? Did you? Oh, I see,” as I waved the bag at him vaguely. “Don’t give it to me,” showing me his hands, “leave it on the counter there and go away.”

And then he was gone and the door had slammed behind him.

～

I stood still for a minute, just thinking; and the easy thought, the obvious thought was that nobody in that house would have time for Nigel now. Hadn’t had for a while by the look of him, not fussing at me but just whining at the back door now, scratching at it where the scars showed he had scratched a lot before.

So I put the bag of clothes on the counter there, just where I’d been told to, and I took Nigel’s lead down off the wall where it was hanging, and I took him out for a walk.

For a good long walk, we went all the way down to the river and a fair distance along, he was tired and lagging before I let him lead me back; and when we reached the house again I let him in quietly, checked that he had water, hung up the lead and went away. The clothes had gone; I hoped that they’d proved useful.

～

Adam phoned, to talk about his yesterday’s hangover and hold out an unspoken willingness to face the same tomorrow. I deliberately didn’t hear the implicit invitation, knowing that he couldn’t spell it out. As the free one and the wicked one, it was my task to lay temptation in his path, his to succumb. He needed someone to blame, and not himself. Between us, Small and I could ordinarily soak up all the guilt that was going, but not tonight. Tonight I was all full and we wanted time alone, Small and I.

When my mother came home, brightly questioning, I told her about my quiet day: work in the library, a long walk in the afternoon and home all evening. Perhaps an early night, I said, take my book to bed. She smiled over teenage constitutions and how there might be a timelag but a night’s indulgence would always catch up in the end; she asked if I wanted a milky drink, and waved me goodnight when I said no, and told us not to lie awake half the night with the radio on.

～

We lay awake half the night with the radio on, too quiet for her to hear. Sometime around midnight I heard a dog being walked in the lane outside. For a little while the footsteps were silent and the dog was not, barking inquiringly, impatiently. I lay still, didn’t turn a light on, didn’t look out of the window. Soon enough the footsteps moved on, and the dog went with.

～

Next day I kept close to my comforts: staying indoors and setting my room up the way I liked it, everything placed where it always was, where I knew it ought to be. Books went into alphabetical order by subject, starting in my own room and winding through to the living-room, on their brick-and-scaff-plank shelving. CDs did the same, and then my mother’s old LPs that she couldn’t or wouldn’t replace. Lunchtime came and went but I was busy, too busy to go out or to scavenge for whatever food there was in the flat. Not hungry, anyway. All day I’d been drinking too much coffee; I was jittering, restless, flitting from one project to another, reading a page here and writing a paragraph there and then finding something else to do.

I was hoovering the stairs when the doorbell rang. Nice and handy to answer, it might almost have been deliberate, I might almost have been hanging around waiting, anticipating, filling time.

Who knew where we were, who’d got caught up with our new address? Adam, of course, but it was a school day and he wasn’t a skiver in the easiest of times. With exams upcoming, he’d be diligent even without his parents’ pressure. My mother’s work, but she was there right now and they didn’t make housecalls anyway. My mother’s friends? Perhaps, but they were trained to telephone before they came; her shifts were too erratic to predict and I’d had enough of stilted conversations with the middle-aged.