The Cement Garden (3 page)

No one ever came to visit us. Neither my mother nor my father when he was alive had any real friends outside the family. They were both only children, and all my grandparents were dead. My mother had distant relatives in Ireland whom she had not seen since she was a child. Tom had a couple of friends he sometimes played with in the street, but we never let him bring them into the house. There was not even a milkman in our road now. As far as I could remember, the last people to visit the house had been the ambulance men who took my father away.

I stood there several minutes wondering whether to return indoors and say something conciliatory to my mother. I was about to move on when the front door opened and Julie slipped out. She wore her black gabardine school raincoat belted tightly about her waist and the collar was turned up. She turned quickly to catch the front door before it slammed and the coat, skirt and petticoat spun with her, the desired effect. She had not seen me yet. I watched her sling her satchel over her shoulder. Julie could run like the wind, but she walked as though asleep, dead slow, straight-backed, and in a very straight line. She often appeared deep in thought, but when we asked her she always protested that her mind was empty.

She did not see me until she was across the road and then she half-smiled, half-pouted and remained silent. Her silence made us all a little afraid of her, but again she would protest, her voice musical with bemusement, that
she
was the one who was afraid. It was true, she was shy – there was a rumour she never spoke in class without blushing – but she had the quiet strength and detachment, and lived in the separate world of those who are, and secretly know they are, exceptionally beautiful. I walked alongside her and she stared ahead, her back straight as a ruler, her lips softly pursed.

A hundred yards on, our road ran into another street. A few terraced houses remained. The rest, and all the houses in the next street across, had been cleared to make way for four twenty-storey tower blocks. They stood on wide aprons of cracked asphalt where weeds were pushing through. They looked even older and sadder than our house. All down their concrete sides were colossal stains, almost black, caused by the rain. They never dried out. When Julie and I reached the end of our road I lunged at her wrist and said, ‘Carry your satchel, miss.’ Julie pulled her arm away and went on walking. I danced backwards in her path. Her brooding silences turned me into a nuisance.

‘Wanna fight? Wanna race?’ Julie lowered her eyes and kept to her course. I said in a normal voice, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you pissed off?’

‘Yes.’

‘With me?’

‘Yes.’

I paused before speaking again. Already Julie was drifting away, absorbed in some internal vision of her anger. I said, ‘Because of Mum?’ We were drawing level with the first of the tower blocks and we could see through into the lobby. A gang of kids from another school were gathered round the lift shaft. They lolled against the walls without talking. They were waiting for someone to come down in the lift. I said, ‘I’ll go back then.’ I stopped. Julie shrugged and made a sudden movement with her hand that made it clear she was leaving me behind.

Back on our street I met Sue. She walked with a book held open in front of her. Her satchel was strapped tight and high across her shoulders. Tom walked a few yards behind. From the look on his face it was clear there had been another scene getting him out of the house. I felt easier with Sue. She was two years younger than I, and if she had secrets I was not intimidated by them. Once I saw in her bedroom a lotion she had bought to ‘dissolve’ her freckles. Her face was long and delicate, the lips colourless and the eyes small and tired-looking with pale, almost invisible lashes. With her high forehead and wispy hair she sometimes really did look like a girl from another planet. We did not stop, but as we passed Sue looked up from her book and said, ‘You’re going to be late.’ And I muttered, ‘Forgot something.’ Tom was preoccupied with his own dread of school and did not notice me. The realization that Sue was taking him to school to save Mother the walk increased my guilt and I walked faster.

I walked round the side of the house to the back garden and watched my mother through one of the kitchen windows. She sat at the table with the mess of our breakfast and four empty chairs in front of her. Immediately facing her was my untouched bowl of porridge. One hand was in her lap, the other on the table, the arm crooked as if ready to receive her head. Near her was a squat black bottle which contained her pills. Her face mixed Julie’s features with Sue’s, as though she were their child. The skin was smooth and taut over the fine cheekbones. Each morning she painted on her lips a perfect bow in deepest red. But her eyes, set in dark skin wrinkled like a peach stone, were sunk so far into her skull she seemed to stare out from a deep well. She stroked the thick, dark curls at the back of her head. On some mornings I would find a nest of her hair floating in the toilet. I always flushed it away first. Now she stood up and with her back to me began to clear the table.

When I was eight years old I came home from school one morning pretending to be seriously ill. My mother indulged me. She put me into my pyjamas, carried me to the sofa in the living room and wrapped me in a blanket. She knew I had come home to monopolize her while my father and two sisters were out of the house. Perhaps she was glad to have someone at home with her during the day. Till the late afternoon I lay there and watched as she went about her work, and when she was in another part of the house I listened closely. I was struck by the obvious fact of her independent existence. She went on, even when I was away at school. These were the things she did. Everybody went on. At that time the insight had been memorable but not painful. Now, watching her stoop to knock eggshells from the table into the rubbish pail, the same, simple recognition conveyed both sadness and menace, in unbearable combination. She was not a particular invention of mine, or of my sisters, though I continued to invent and ignore her. As she was moving an empty milk bottle, she turned suddenly towards the window. I stepped back quickly. As I ran down the side path I heard her open the back door and call my name. I caught a glimpse of her as she stepped round the corner of the house. She called after me again as I set off down the street. I ran all the way, imagining her voice above the row of my feet on the pavement.

‘Jack … Jack.’

I caught up with my sister Sue just as she was turning through the school gates.

3

I knew it was morning and I knew it was a bad dream. By an effort of will I could wake myself. I tried to move my legs, to make one foot touch the other. Any slight sensation would be enough to establish me in the world outside my dream. I was being followed by someone I could not see. In their hands they carried a box and they wanted me to look inside, but I hurried on. I paused for a moment and attempted to move my legs again, or open my eyes. But someone was coming with the box, there was no time and I had to run on. Then we came face to face. The box, wooden and hinged, might once have contained expensive cigars. The lid was lifted half an inch or so, too dark to see inside. I ran on in order to gain time, and this time I succeeded in opening my eyes. Before they closed I saw my bedroom, my school shirt lying across a chair, a shoe upside down on the floor. Here was the box again. I knew there was a small creature inside, kept captive against its will and stinking horribly. I tried to call out, hoping to wake myself with the sound of my own voice. No sound left my throat, and I could not even move my lips. The lid of the box was being lifted again. I could not turn and run, for I had been running all night and now I had no choice but to look inside. With great relief I heard the door of my bedroom open, and footsteps across the floor. Someone was sitting on the edge of my bed, right by my side, and I could open my eyes.

My mother sat in such a way as to trap my arms inside the bedclothes. It was half-past eight by my alarm clock and I was going to be late for school. My mother would have been up for two hours already. She smelled of the bright-pink soap she used. She said, ‘It’s time we had a talk, you and I.’ She crossed one leg over the other and rested her hands on her knees. Her back, like Julie’s, was very straight. I felt at a disadvantage lying on my back and I struggled to sit up. But she said, ‘You lie there a moment.’

‘I’m going to be late,’ I said.

‘You lie there a moment,’ she repeated with a heavy emphasis on the last word, ‘I want to talk to you.’ My heart was beating very fast, I stared past her head at the ceiling. I was barely out of my dream. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I want to look at your eyes.’ I looked into her eyes and they roved anxiously across my face. I saw my own swollen reflection.

‘Have you looked at your eyes in a mirror lately?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said untruthfully.

‘Your pupils are very large, did you know that?’ I shook my head. ‘And there are bags under your eyes even though you’ve just woken up.’ She paused. Downstairs I could hear the others eating breakfast. ‘And do you know why that is?’ Again I shook my head, and again she paused. She leaned forward and spoke urgently. ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’ My heart thudded in my ears.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Yes you do, my boy. You know what I’m talking about, I can see you do.’

I had no choice but to confirm this with my silence. This sternness did not suit her at all; there was a flat, play-acting tone in her voice, the only way she could deliver her difficult message.

‘Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on. You’re growing into a young man now, and I’m very proud you are … these are things your father would have been telling you …’ We looked away, we both knew this was not true. ‘Growing up is difficult, but if you carry on the way you are, you’re going to do yourself a lot of damage, damage to your growing body.’

‘Damage …’ I echoed.

‘Yes, look at yourself,’ she said in a softer voice. ‘You can’t get up in the mornings, you’re tired all day, you’re moody, you don’t wash yourself or change your clothes, you’re rude to your sisters and to me. And we both know why that is. Every time …’ She trailed away, and rather than look at me stared down at her hands in her lap. ‘Every time … you do that, it takes two pints of blood to replace it.’ She looked at me defiantly.

‘Blood,’ I whispered. She leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

‘You don’t mind me saying this to you, do you?’

‘No, no,’ I said. She stood up.

‘One day, when you’re twenty-one, you’ll turn round and thank me for telling you what I’ve been telling you.’ I nodded. She stooped over me and affectionately ruffled my hair, and then quickly left the room.

My sisters and I no longer played together on Julie’s bed. The games ceased not long after Father died, although it was not his death that brought them to an end. Sue became reluctant. Perhaps she had learned something at school and was ashamed of herself for letting us do things to her. I was never certain because it was not something we could talk about. And Julie was more remote now. She wore make-up and had all kinds of secrets. In the dinner queue at school I once overheard her refer to me as her ‘kid brother’ and I was stung. She had long conversations with Mother in the kitchen that would break off if Tom, Sue or I came in suddenly. Like my mother, Julie made remarks to me about my hair or my clothes, not gently though, but with scorn.

‘You stink,’ she would say whenever there was disagreement between us. ‘You really do stink. Why don’t you ever change your clothes?’ Remarks like these made me loutish.

‘Fuck you,’ I would hiss, and go for her ankles, determined to tickle her until she died of exhaustion.

‘Mum,’ she would shriek, ‘Mum, tell Jack!’ And my mother would call tiredly from wherever she happened to be, ‘Jack …’

The last time I tickled Julie I waited till Mother was at the hospital, then I slipped on a pair of huge, filthy gardening gloves, last worn by my father, and followed Julie up to her bedroom. She was sitting at the small desk she used for doing homework on. I stood in the doorway with my hands behind my back.

‘What do you want?’ she said in full disgust. We had been quarrelling downstairs.

‘Come to get you,’ I said simply, and spread my enormous hands towards her, fingers outstretched. The sight alone of these advancing on her made her weak. She tried to stand up, but she fell back in her chair.

‘You dare,’ she kept saying through her rising giggles. ‘You just dare.’

The big hands were still inches from her and she was writhing in her chair, squealing, ‘No … no … no.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘your time has come.’ I dragged her by the arm on to her bed. She lay with her knees drawn up, her hands raised to protect her throat. She dared not take her eyes off the great hands which I held above her, ready to swoop down.

‘Get away from me,’ she whispered. It struck me as funny at the time that she addressed the gloves and not me.

‘They’re coming for you,’ I said, and lowered my hands a few inches. ‘But no one knows where they will strike first.’ Feebly she tried to catch at my wrists but I slid my hands under hers and the gloves clamped firmly round her rib cage, right into the armpits. As Julie laughed and laughed, and fought for air, I laughed too, delighted with my power. Now there was an edge of panic in her thrashing about. She could not breathe in. She was trying to say ‘please’, but in my exhilaration I could not stop. Air still left her lungs in little bird-like clucks. One hand plucked at the coarse material of the glove. As I moved forward to be in a better position to hold her down, I felt hot liquid spreading over my knee. Horrified, I leapt from the bed, and shook the gloves from my hands. Julie’s last laughs tailed away into tired weeping. She lay on her back, tears spilling over the trough of her cheekbones and losing themselves in her hair. The room smelled only faintly of urine. I picked up the gloves from the floor. Julie turned her head.

‘Get out,’ she said dully.