Breaktime (12 page)

All day I had felt drawn to Robby. I had not been able to resist that underskin of violent energy, that blush of fanatic charm. But in this same instant of insight, fascination vanished as mysteriously and as rapidly as it had seized me. In that second Robby had shown me myself.

Was it cruel selfishness, an ugly weakness in me (another?!) that at this same second I lost all interest in him? Whether it was so or not, I must confess that I did. I knew him, you see, what he was and why he was. All sorts of jigsaw moments from our day together fell now into place, and I knew him. Besides, too much of what I now understood spoke to me about myself, reflected me as if I were looking in a mirror. Perhaps my abrupt loss of interest was an act of self-defence as much as of selfishness? I acted to save myself while there was still time; I could not help but sense that Robby was already lost.

‘You can find your own way out, I take it?’ said Mr Hode. He turned to Jack. ‘I think you too had better leave, Jack. I’m sure you would not want to overstay your welcome. Do call and pick up your things another day, if you’d rather.’

‘Turn him out and I go as well. For good,’ said Robby, clench-mouthed and still unmoving.

His father did not take his eyes from Jack. ‘I think Robby and I ought to discuss matters in private, if you wouldn’t mind, Jack.’

‘You heard me,’ said Robby.

There was a moment’s silence. Tense. A fulcrum. Whatever was to be done had to be done now. Afterwards would be too late. A private war and a private peace turned on this point in time.

Jack sighed. ‘I’m going, Robby,’ he said. ‘It’s best. There’s nowt now, you know that.’

‘I’m glad you’re being sensible,’ said Hode.

‘Sensible!’ shouted Robby. ‘O, Christ!’ He turned and sat, hunched, in a chair that flanked the fire, dabbing a hand at his bleeding mouth.

‘Well?’ said Hode to Jack and myself.

Our final cue to leave. But despite my loss of interest in Robby, I felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him to such defeat. Not he himself, but he anyone.

‘Perhaps we should talk all this over together?’ I said with pale conviction.

Hode rounded on me. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘I do not know who you are, nor why you are here. But I saw the trouble you helped cause tonight, and that is enough for me. As far as I am concerned you have no business in this house, nor is there anything I wish to discuss with you. You may leave now, or I shall call the police and have you charged with breaking and entering. Which shall it be?’

One of the worst things about being our age is the way an adult like Hode can beat you down with words—or me anyway; I expect you, Morgan, would have withstood him. Your only answer—mine anyway—is either to stand there flabbergasted or to lash out in uncontrolled anger and make an idiot of yourself. This time I was reduced to an angry flabbergast. From which Jack rescued me.

‘How-way, kiddo,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Nightcap

Outside the night was frosty. I realized I was lathed in sweat, was flushed.

We paused in the road, the moon shining through the leaves of overhanging trees, brindling the surface.

‘What now?’ I said, feeling suddenly lost. Abandoned. Empty. Shock, I suppose, after the excitements.

‘I’m going to doss down in the shed at work,’ Jack said. ‘It’s just down the road a bit. There’s some sacks and we could brew up on the stove. Want to come?’

I had heard him; but my mind was still catching up.

‘What gets me,’ I said sullensick, ‘is that all the time he was just using me.’

Jack laughed, a sound like the call of a preying night bird. ‘O, aye?’ he said.

‘Well, wasn’t he?’ I said, defiant.

‘Aye, I suppose he was.’

‘You know he was. He was planning it with you all along, from when we were in the pub at lunch time.’

‘Yes. I didn’t know all the details. But I knew the kind of thing it was likely to be.’

‘And you didn’t warn me.’

Jack said nothing; gazed at me in the moongloom.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘so he was your mate.’

‘And you were like a rabbit spelled by a fox. Even if I’d told you, you’d still have done what he wanted.’

He was right, I knew.

‘Maybe. But it was the way he used me that gets my gut.’

‘So he used you, Sunshine. What were you doing?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He used you, sure. But you must have been using him. And me an’all.’

Experience. It’s all experience
.

‘How do you know what I was doing?’

That bird of prey laugh again.

‘Because everybody is using everybody else all the time, kiddo. We’re all users. That’s what people
are
.’

Why did I laugh? For I did. And felt myself again. Almost refreshed, even if tired. Very tired.

‘You’re a cynic, Jack, you know that?’

‘I know I’m nowt of the sort. Now are you coming with me or not?’

It would have been another experience; but I could not. It was too much. Like everything else, it seems, you can have too much experience for one day.

‘No thanks, Jack, not tonight.’

‘I can promise you a good time.’

‘I’ll see you around, eh?’

‘I hope, bonny lad.’

‘What’ll you do now?’

‘Hang about Richmond for a day or two, just in case Robby . . . But he won’t. It’s done.’

‘And if it is?’

‘I’ll move on somewhere. Dunno where. Doesn’t matter. There’s always sommat wherever you go.’ That laugh again.

‘So long then.’

‘So long. Take care. Sunshine.’

He turned and walked away up the moonspeckled road, a slight figure in that chequered light, despite his bulk. His feet made no sound. He might have been a ghost.

When he was out of sight, I walked back down the lane towards the river and Robby’s car where I had left my pack. I thought of spending the night there, where we had sat earlier.

As I turned to go, there came from the Hodes’ house the sound of voices raised in argument. I could not make out what was being said, only the hard, brutal clash of anger. Nor could I distinguish son’s voice from father’s. They were as one sound, one voice, like a man battling against himself.

1
All right, all right, I admit it! I got this idea for telling my tale from
At Swim-Two-Birds
by Flann O’Brien (which I have been reading recently with, I might add, often puzzled pleasure). But then, to be fair, I expect he pinched it from somebody else. (Nothing is safe these days.) But from whom? James Joyce I’ll bet. I’ve discovered that almost all the interesting things contemporary writers do they get from his
Ulysses
. Which I have never managed to read beyond
see here
. (I’ve only tried twice, I confess. But Midge says everybody talks about
Ulysses
and how it is the greatest novel of the twentieth century but that few people have actually ever read it right through to the end. So I don’t feel
that
guilty. I’ve a few years left to try it again.) But working on the principle that there is nothing new in this world, where did Joyce get the idea from? I asked Midge. He said, ‘Good question. Probably from Duns Scotus, or one of those forgotten Jesuit theologians Joyce was brought up knowing about at his ghastly school. It sounds to me like the kind of way Jesuits would argue. But go and find out for yourself, lad. Why expect me to know and do all your work?’ Typical Midge!

THE LEAP

HOW TO SET
this down? How to describe it? It happened to me, but not me. I was him, but not him. Haven’t you, Morgan, ever been through a day when you were not yourself? When it was not you who experienced your events but some other you? This day was like that for me. So how to describe it and make you believe how it was, how it seemed? How to show you me-him this day?

Begin at the beginning. As I-I. As eye.

Slept solidly. A cuckoo woke me. Unexpectedly refreshed. Fit. Healthy. Happy, I suppose. (How do you ever know? What’s the proof?) Optimistic, certainly; full of energy. And hungry. Yet, as I say, not quite myself. Somehow other.

A bright day. Crystal light glaze-blinking the tingle-crisp river, where I plunged myself, in-out, quickish. Naked. Like the day. Skin-sizzling afterwards.

Yesterday seemed a shaggy dog story. Had it been? Why bother to wonder? Why consider? Consideration is for recollection in Wandsworth. (The day’s first terrible witticism. Apologies. The crazed light made my brain flippant.)

Packed pack. On back. Strode into Richmond. There: breakfasted—bacon, egg, sausage, beans, toast, marmalade, tea, tea, tea, tea (I was bottomlessly thirsty), tea. At Johnny’s Cafe (truly!).

‘Why not just buy the urn, love,’ said the busty waitress, bodied as undulatory as the dales, at my sixth request. ‘Where you putting it all? Softens the brain, too much tannin.’

‘Not to mention its deleterious effects on other parts,’ I said.

‘Cheeky,’ she said, unflurried. ‘An early bird. Have you shaved yet?’

‘No, does it excite you?’

She rubbed her hand, lascivious, down my jaw. ‘Know what I would do?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Put some milk on and let cat lick it off.’

‘Ah, well,’ I said. ‘You can’t win ’em all. Thought maybe you liked them young.’

She put my bill down on the counter. ‘Chicken, I like them any age, but I’m busy just now.’

A nymphomaniac waitress! A narrow escape!

Time to make a quick getaway before she rips off her pinny and assaults me on the prepacked bacon in her storecupboard.
¹

A limbering up for Helen! Which reminds me, where’s the telephone? Outside Woolies.

Riffle through the telephone book (cigarette-smokey-sniffy, dogeared pages, scrawled messages, e.g.
Come and lay me, cooky 3694758. Tringaling my dingaling 6256943
.) And I’m away.

Hello?

Could I speak to Helen, please?

Just a minute, the baby’s crying
.

I’m sorry, that’s better
.

Could I speak to Helen, please?

O, yes, just a minute, who shall I say?

Tell her, it’s the boy she left behind.

It’s who . . . the baby’s crying again. Just a minute . . . Helen!
. . .

She’s just coming
.

Hello?

Help.

O!

Pee.

It’s you
.

Go to the top of the class and give the penicillin out.

You’re chirpy
.

Cheeky, I’ve just been told.

That too. By whom?

Waitress in Richmond where I purchased sustenance.

And anything else?

She was too busy.

Not that you weren’t willing
.

No. She was a little Massy Harris for my taste.

Have you any?

Can you have, without experience to teach discrimination?

Always one for the words
.

The currency of intercourse. I thank you for the compliment.

Take it how you like
.

You’re still mad at me?

Am I?

I’m asking.

I’m wondering
.

Words it was did for me yesterday, eh?

Perhaps
.

I’m sorry.

Are you?

I think so. Will you forgive me?

I’m not sure
.

If I say please?

I don’t like being called
. . .

Promiscuous?

Yes
.

You knew the word.

Yes
.

Ah, I see! You can’t talk?

No
.

The baby’s stopped crying.

Yes
.

We could conduct this conversation much more comfortably somewhere else. This phone box stinks.

I’m not sure I want to
.

Look, Helen, I meant what I said on that note.

Embarrassing!

At the bus?

Yes
.

Desperation breeds disregard. But I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.

Two apologies in one day. What’s the world coming to!

Never mind the world. What about us?

Whatever have you been doing, watching old movies?

Nothing so exciting. What have you been doing, by the way?

Nothing so exciting
.

You too? We must meet at once and swap notes.

As they say
.

But I am—desperate, I mean.

For what?

Do you want the graphic details on the telephone? We might be bugged.

All right. Don’t bother
.

You’ll meet me?

What’ll you do if I don’t?

Throw myself off Richmond Castle into the Swale?

Not imaginative enough
.

Streak through Gunnerside at tea time on Sunday?

There’s nothing you’ve got that they haven’t seen here in abundance. Boring. Anyway, most of them here are Primitive Methodists
.

And you’ve not had any excitement? Tut, tut. Well, let me see. Dress in drag as a district nurse, call on your aunt saying I’ve come at the request of her visiting niece to check her for pregnancy.