The Insect Farm (35 page)

For the very first time in his life – or certainly in the time that I have been taking care of him – Roger woke up and opened his eyes spontaneously. I had been about to nudge him awake as I always do, holding his shoulder and starting to move him gently backwards and forwards. Always Roger goes from totally asleep to totally awake in an instant, with no gradation in between the two states. However, on this
occasion, as I was about to take hold of him, his eyes popped open, he beamed me a big big smile and said, “Happy birthday, Jonathan.” I nearly fell backwards from the shock.

“Roger!” I said. “You scared the living daylights out of me. Have you been lying there awake and waiting for me to come in?”

“How old are you today?” he said, totally ignoring my question. “Fifty-seven, is it?”

“Yes, it is, Roger. Fifty-seven. How clever of you to remember.”

Roger covered his mouth, just as he often did when something felt too exciting for him to cope with. His eyes shone, wide and innocent, exactly as they had half a century ago in anticipation of some treat or other.

“I have something for you.”

“You do? That’s great, Roger, what is it?” I began to anticipate what he might have made in his craft lesson at the day centre, and readied myself for seeming to appreciate a fly swat or a wooden device for making it easier to pull my feet out of rubber wellingtons. Instead of that, Roger leapt out of bed and a moment later he had pulled open the drawer in which we kept his pullovers. I assumed that he had secreted whatever it was at the back of a drawer, except that he kept on pulling until it fell out, and all of the folded-up clothes spilt onto the floor.

“Roger?” I said. “What on earth?” But I didn’t have time for any further enquiry because Roger had turned the drawer
upside down, and I saw something that looked like an envelope attached with Sellotape to the bottom. Roger was picking away at the corners of the tape and soon had released the envelope. He turned and handed it to me. I looked down at it, genuinely and utterly confused. The paper was yellowing and brittle with age, and I did not have the smallest clue as to what it could contain. I turned it over and saw some words written in ink, as from an old-fashioned fountain pen. A moment later I felt an echo from a distant time, another life, a long long time ago. I recognized the shaky handwriting as my father’s and squinted in the half-light to read what it said.

“To be given to Jonathan on his 57th birthday.”

I continued to stare down at the envelope in total amazement, and then I looked back at Roger, lost for words. I had so many questions that I did not know where to begin. All I was getting back from Roger in response was the sunshine of an almighty grin, as from a small boy who has been sworn to secrecy and, despite many temptations and all the odds against doing so, has managed to keep his promise. Here I was, looking at my supposed mentally handicapped older brother, who had managed to keep a secret for not far short of forty years.

“Roger? What the hell?…” I tried and failed to find the right words. “Is this from Dad? You’ve kept it all this time?” Roger was too excited to answer, but just stood still, smiling and nodding vigorously. Clearly he was beside himself with delight that he had completed a task that he must have been
asked to undertake all those years ago. “And has this letter been stuck to the drawer since Dad died?”

Roger shook his head, and now I remembered that we hadn’t even bought the chest of drawers until after the fire in which Mum and Dad had been killed.

“He told me to keep it in the insect farm and so I did. I put it underneath the drawers when we bought the flat.”

“So how long before he died did he give it to you?”

“One day,” said Roger, and sat back on the bed, as though tired after the completion of his life’s work. He looked neither happy nor sad to recall the day our parents had died.

Oddly enough, I could not bring myself to open the letter there and then. These events were so unexpected and weird for me that I felt that I needed to take them on board before I did so. My eyes were blinking to try once again to focus on the stale yellow pages and the watery lines of blue ink.

“What’s for breakfast?” asked Roger.

“As it’s my birthday and therefore rather a special occasion,” I said, “I thought we might have a pickled bat brains on walnut bread with stale doughnuts.”

Roger put one finger to his lips as though considering the offer, and then shook his head.

“Nice idea, Jonathan,” he said, “but I think I’ll just have toast and Marmite and then maybe a banana.”

“Coming right up,” I said.

Fifteen minutes later, as Roger ate his food and stared into the middle distance, I was looking again at the envelope and
thinking. I was still reeling at the idea of Roger keeping it safe and secret from me for all this time, and had not the slightest notion of what could be in it. I glanced again at Roger, saw that he was in something of a trance, and inserted my thumb under the flap of the envelope and slid it along, tearing as I went. Inside was a single sheet of A4 paper, covered in tiny writing in the same trembling hand. I put on my specs and began to read.

My eyes were streaming with huge tears as I read the final few words, and I had to swallow hard to suppress the cry that was welling within me. I looked up and was glad to see that Roger was still staring into empty space, no doubt mentally down at the farm among his creations. I dried my face and tried to compose myself.

“It’s so great to receive that from Dad after so much time has passed, Roger. Brilliantly well done to you for saving it all these years.” Suddenly his face lit up with pleasure once again, but now I had a question which I had to ask, even though I already knew the answer. “Do you have any idea what is in this letter?” The expression on my older brother’s face changed again, and instantly he was more serious. He shook his head like someone being asked if they knew a particular party game. “That’s good, Roger,” I said. “Dad was just remembering what it was like to be fifty-seven and wanted to wish me a happy birthday. A lovely thought.”

Lame as it was, the explanation seemed to Roger to be perfectly satisfactory and, having kept the secret for so long, he seemed quite ready to get on with the day as though nothing special had happened.

My father’s handwritten words were echoing across the decades and around my brain, and I felt sharp surges of pain to think of the anguish which he and our mother had endured, and how desperate they must have been to feel that the best thing was to devise and carry out their plan. To be in a situation in which the best service you can perform for your children is to take your own lives must surely be as desperate as anything can get in this lifetime. It struck me that we often talk about people making “the ultimate sacrifice”, and that’s exactly what our parents had done for their son.

I guess that, once they decided on their course, it was impossible for my parents to go on living with it looming over their future. However, as so often in our lives, there were unanticipated consequences from the timing of their action. Their preoccupation must have been – understandably – the end of their own lives and the long-term financial security and welfare of their children. I also had little doubt that the prospect of advancing Parkinson’s disease must have been a terrifying one. They thought they were doing their best. From my point of view, of course, the timing could scarcely have been more unfortunate, and despite myself I felt a flash of anger that a decision which would have such a profound effect on the rest of my life had been taken by them alone and
without my knowledge or consent. Their suicide had taken place while I was still at university, completely derailing my own plans, which had led directly to me having to live apart from Harriet. It was living apart from her which had thrown my wife into the arms of Brendan Harcourt, with all the dreadful and tragic consequences that had followed from that. I thought about how so much of what we do with one intention in our minds can so very easily turn into something completely unexpected and undesirable, and I wondered what my parents would have thought had they ever known what would be the aftermath of their personal self-sacrifice.

A little later on that morning, Roger asked me if I wanted to go down to the insect farm. His enthusiasm for his hobby had remained undiminished over the years, and quite often I would go down there with him. Some years ago I had commandeered a little area of unused ground just outside of the shed and turned it into something resembling a garden; nothing serious, just a few slightly sad-looking flowers and a little patch of shingle. Some friendly council workers digging up the road outside had looked the other way while I made off with half a dozen paving slabs on a wheelbarrow, and over the course of a couple of weeks, Roger and I had manhandled them into place to create our own little makeshift patio. We had a pair of folding canvas chairs which remained propped up against a wall inside the shed, to be pulled into use on any day when the sun broke through the clouds. On this day, my fifty-seventh birthday, there was a watery sun, and so I packed
a make-do picnic of pies and salad, and made up a flask of tea. I could hear Roger pottering about inside the shed while I sat outside, enjoying the fresh air and reading the
Observer
.

After an hour or so I took my chair and went inside to see what Roger was up to, and found that he was kneeling on the floor and bending over one of his glass tanks, apparently motionless, and peering inside. For a few minutes I watched him, as unaware of me standing behind him as the insects in the tank were unaware of his looming presence above them. Funny how something so potentially powerful, so awesome in relation to yourself, can be just outside of your ability to perceive it. These creatures owed their existence to Roger, and yet had no knowledge of him. They went about their business, eating, working, reproducing and occasionally massacring their enemies, without awareness or thought that they may be answerable to a greater being. Most often his presence was entirely benign and life-giving. Just occasionally however, if the situation demanded it, he would intervene, invisibly, and turn their lives upside down.