The Cement Garden (11 page)

‘And there was something about him in the paper,’ Sue was saying.

‘What paper?’ Sue named the local weekly and I laughed.

‘Everyone gets written about in that,’ I said, ‘if they live long enough.’

‘I bet you don’t know how old he is.’ I made no reply.

‘Twenty-three,’ Sue said proudly and smiled at me. I wanted to hit her.

‘What’s so amazing about that?’

Sue dried her hands. ‘It’s a perfect age for a bloke.’

I said, ‘What are you talking about? Who said?’

Sue hesitated. ‘Julie said.’

I gasped and ran out of the kitchen. In the living room I paused to look for Commander Hunt. He had been tidied away into a bookshelf. I ran upstairs with the book to the bedroom, slammed the door hard and lay down on the bed.

8

More frequently my bad dreams became nightmares. There was a huge wooden box in the hallway which I must have passed a dozen times before without giving it a second thought. Now I stopped to look. The lid that used to be nailed on tight was hanging loose, some of the nails were bent back and the wood around them was splintered and white. I was standing as near to the box as I could without being able to see inside. I knew I was in a dream and that it was important not to panic. Something was in the box. I managed to open my eyes a little and saw the bottom corner of my bed before they weighed shut. I was in the hallway again, a little closer to the box and foolishly peering in. When I tried my eyes again they opened easily and wide. I saw the corner of my bed and some of my clothes. In a large armchair at the side of my bed sat my mother staring at me with huge, hollow eyes. That’s because she’s dead, I thought. She was tiny and her feet hardly touched the floor. When she spoke her voice was so familiar that I could not imagine how I could have forgotten it so easily. But I could not understand exactly what she was saying. She used a strange word, ‘drubbing’ or ‘brudding’.

‘Can’t you stop drubbing,’ she said, ‘even while I’m talking to you?’

‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said, and noticed as I glanced down that there were no clothes on the bed and that I was naked and masturbating in front of her. My hand flew backwards and forwards like a shuttle on a loom. I told her, ‘I can’t stop, it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘What would your father say,’ she said sadly, ‘if he was alive?’ As I woke up I was saying out loud, ‘But you’re both dead.’

I told this dream to Sue one afternoon. When she unlocked her door to let me in I noticed that she held her notebook open in one hand. While she was listening to me she closed it and slid it under her pillow. To my surprise my dream made her giggle.

‘Do boys do that all the time?’ she said.

‘Do what?’

‘You know, drubbing.’

Instead of answering her I said, ‘Do you remember when we used to play that game?’

‘What game?’

‘When Julie and I were the doctors examining you, and you were from another planet.’ My sister nodded and folded her arms. I paused. I had no idea what it was I was going to say.

‘Well, what about it?’ I had come to talk about my dream and about Mother, and already we were talking about something else.

‘Don’t you wish,’ I said slowly, ‘that we still played that game?’ Sue shook her head and looked away.

‘I can hardly remember anything about it.’

‘Julie and I used to take all your clothes off.’ It sounded unlikely as I said it. Sue shook her head again and said unconvincingly, ‘Did you? I don’t really remember it that well, I wasn’t very old.’ Then, after a silence, she added warmly, ‘We were always playing silly games.’

I sat down on Sue’s bed. The floor of her bedroom was covered with books, some of them open and placed face downwards. Many of them were from the library and I was about to pick one up when I felt suddenly weary of the whole idea of books. I said, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of sitting in here all day reading?’

‘I like reading,’ Sue said, ‘and there’s nothing else to do.’ I said, ‘There’s all kinds of things to do,’ simply to hear Sue say again that there was nothing to do. But she sucked her thin, pale lips into her mouth, the way women do after they put lipstick on their lips, and said, ‘I don’t feel like doing anything else.’ After this we sat in silence for rather a long time. Sue whistled and I sensed she was waiting for me to leave. We heard the back door open downstairs and the voices of Julie and her boyfriend. I wished that Sue disliked Derek the way I did, then we would have all sorts of things to talk about. She raised her faint eyebrows and said, ‘That will be them,’ and I said, ‘So?’ and felt isolated from everyone I knew.

Sue resumed her whistling and I turned the pages of a magazine, but we were both listening carefully. They were not coming upstairs. I heard the sound of running water and the rattle of teacups. I said to Sue, ‘But you still write in that book, don’t you?’ She said, ‘A bit,’ and looked towards her pillow as if she was prepared to stop me snatching at it. I waited a moment and then I said in a very sad voice, ‘I wish you’d let me see the bits about Mum, just those bits. You could read them to me if you like.’ Downstairs the radio came on at full volume. ‘
If you … ever plan to motor west, take my way … that’s the highway that’s the best …
’ The song irritated me but I remained looking sadly at my sister.

‘You wouldn’t understand any of it.’

‘Why not?’

Sue spoke quickly. ‘You never understood anything about her. You were always horrible to her.’

‘That’s a lie,’ I said loudly, and after a few seconds I repeated, ‘That’s a lie.’ Sue sat on the edge of her bed, her back straight and one hand resting on the pillow. When she spoke she stared mournfully in front of her.

‘You never did anything she asked you. You never did anything to help. You were always too full of yourself, just like you are now.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t have dreamed about her like that if I didn’t care about her.’

‘You didn’t dream about her,’ Sue said, ‘you dreamed about yourself. That’s why you want to look in my diary, to see if there’s anything about you in it.’

‘Do you go down to the cellar,’ I said through my laughs, ‘and sit on that stool and write about us all in your little black book?’

I forced myself to go on laughing. I felt troubled and I needed to make a lot of noise. As I laughed I put my hands on my knees but I could not quite feel them. Sue watched me as if she was remembering rather than seeing me. She took the book from under her pillow, opened it and looked for a page. I stopped laughing and waited. ‘August the ninth … You’ve been dead nineteen days. No one mentioned you today.’ She paused and her eyes ran down several lines. ‘Jack was in a horrible mood. He hurt Tom on the stairs for making a noise. He made a great scratch across his head and there was quite a lot of blood. At lunch we mixed together two tins of soup. Jack did not talk to anyone. Julie talked about her bloke who is called Derek. She said she might bring him home one time and did we mind. I said no. Jack pretended he didn’t hear and went upstairs.’ Sue found another page and went on reading with more expression, ‘He has not changed his clothes since you died. He does not wash his hands or anything and he smells horrible. We hate it when he touches a loaf of bread. You can’t say anything to him in case he hits you. He’s always about to hit someone, but Julie knows how to deal with him …’ Sue paused, and seemed about to go on, but changed her mind and snapped the book shut. ‘There,’ she said. For several minutes after we argued wearily about what Julie had said at lunchtime.

‘She didn’t mention bringing anyone home,’ I said.

‘She did!’

‘She didn’t.’ Sue squatted on the floor in front of one of her books and pretended not to notice when I left.

Downstairs the radio was playing louder than I had ever heard it. A man was shouting wildly about a competition. I found Tom sitting at the top of the stairs. He was wearing a blue and white frock which tied up in a bow behind. But his wig was somewhere else. As I sat down beside him I was aware briefly of a faint, unpleasant smell. Tom was crying. He put his knuckles in his eyes like little girls do on biscuit-tin lids. A large tube of green snot hung out of one nostril, and when he sniffed it bobbed out of sight. I watched it for a while. Beyond the sound of the radio I thought I could hear other voices but I was not certain. When I asked Tom why he was crying he cried louder. Then he recovered and whined, ‘Julie hit me and shouted at me,’ and he began to cry again.

I left him and went downstairs. The radio was on loud because Julie and Derek were having an argument. I stopped short of the door and tried to listen. Derek seemed to be pleading with Julie, his voice had a whining note. They were both talking, almost shouting, as I came in and they both stopped immediately. Derek leaned against the table, his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed. He wore a dark-green suit and a cravat which was knotted through a gold clasp. Julie stood by the window. I walked between them towards the radio and switched it off. Then I turned and waited for one of them to speak first. I wondered why they did not go out into the garden to shout at each other. Julie said, ‘What do you want?’ She was not dressed up like Derek. She wore plastic sandals and jeans, and had tied her shirt in a knot under her breasts. ‘Just came down to see what all the noise was, and who,’ I said, glancing at Derek, ‘hit Tom.’ Julie tapped her foot slowly to make it clear she was waiting for me to leave.

I walked back between them slowly, putting my heel down just in front of my toes the way people do when they measure a distance without a ruler. Derek cleared his throat very softly and pulled out his watch on the end of its chain. I watched him snap it open, close it and put it away. I had not seen him since the first time he visited the house over a week ago. But several times now he had called for Julie in his car. I had heard its engine outside and Julie running down the front path but I never looked out of the window at them the way Sue and Tom did. Two or three times now Julie had stayed out all night. She never told me where she went but she did tell Sue. The morning after, the two of them would sit in the kitchen for hours, talking and drinking tea. Perhaps Sue wrote it all down in her book without Julie knowing.

Suddenly Derek smiled at me and said, ‘How are you, Jack?’ Julie sighed noisily.

‘Don’t,’ she said to him, and I said very coolly, ‘All right.’

‘What are you up to these days?’

I looked at Julie as I spoke. ‘Nothing much.’ I could see it irritated her that I was talking to her Derek. I said, ‘What about you?’ Derek paused before he spoke and then he sighed. ‘Practising. A few small games. Nothing big, you know …’ I nodded. Derek and Julie were staring at each other. I looked from one to the other and tried to think of something else to say. Without taking his eyes off Julie Derek said, ‘Ever played the game yourself?’ If she had not been there I would have said yes. I had watched a game once, and I knew the rules. I said, ‘Not really.’ Derek pulled out his watch again.

‘You should come down and have a game.’ Julie unfolded her arms and walked quickly out of the room. She gave a little sigh as she went. Derek watched her go and said, ‘I mean, are you busy now?’ I thought hard and said, ‘I’m not all that busy.’ Derek stood up and dusted his suit down with his hands which were very small and pale. He went into the hallway to adjust his cravat in the mirror. He called over his shoulder, ‘You should get a light for out here.’ We left by the back and as we were going through the kitchen I noticed that the cellar door was wide open. I hesitated, I wanted to go upstairs and ask Julie about it. But Derek pushed the door shut with his foot and said, ‘Come on. I’m already late,’ and we hurried out, up the front garden path towards the low, red car.

I was surprised that Derek drove so slowly. He sat upright in his seat and held the wheel at arm’s length and between finger and thumb, as if the touch of it disgusted him. He did not speak to me. There were two rows of black dials on the instrument panel, each with a flickering white needle. I watched these for most of the journey. None of the needles really moved its position except those on the clock. We drove for a quarter of an hour. We turned off a main road and went down a narrow street with vegetable warehouses on either side. In some places there were rotting vegetables piled in the gutter. A man in a crumpled suit stood on the pavement staring at us blankly. He had oily hair and a folded newspaper stuck out of his pocket. Derek stopped the car by him and climbed out, leaving the engine running. Behind the man was an alleyway. As we passed him to go down it Derek said to the man, ‘Park the car and see me inside.’ At the end of the alley were green swing doors with ‘Oswald’s Hall’ scratched into the paint. Derek went in first and held the door open for me with one finger and without turning round. Two games were being played on the tables furthest from us, but nearly all the tables were empty and dark. There was one table in the centre of the hall that was all lit up. It seemed brighter than the other two, and the brightly coloured balls were set out ready for a game. Someone was leaning against this table with his back to us smoking a cigarette. Cut into the wall behind us was a bright square hole, and through it an old man in a white jacket was looking at us. On a narrow shelf in front of him there were cups and saucers with blue edges, and a plastic bowl with one bun inside. Derek stooped down to speak to the man and I walked a few steps away towards one of the tables. I read the name of the maker and his town on a brass plate screwed to the edge right behind the centre pocket.

Derek made a clicking sound at me with his tongue. He held a cup of tea in each hand and he jerked his head to make me follow him. With his foot he pushed open a door in the same wall. Next to the door I noticed for the first time a window with one pane of glass missing. A woman with thick glasses sat behind a desk writing in an accounts book and on the other side of the tiny room a man sat in an armchair holding a packet of cigarettes. The smoke made it hard to see. There was just one dim lamp on the edge of the desk. Derek set down the teacups by the lamp and pretended to punch the man on the chin. The man and the woman made a lot of fuss over Derek. They called him ‘son’ but he introduced them to me as ‘Mr and Mrs O for Oswald.’