Authors: Elaine Feinstein
–There! The black-red fish blood began to run up fast into the glass, and Ben smiled at her. She shared his relief. The fish back in the dustbin thrashed around vigorously. And Ben apologised, on the way out into the rain: I didn’t do that very well.
*
The days passed. And one day Lena noticed that, irrationally and without any particular hope of intention, the whole piece of misery was being buried. Shallowly. She could still touch it, still feel the outline of it. But the edge was gone. She was able, quite coolly, to ask Gertrud to leave by the end of the month. And there were other improvements. All of them, one way or another, could gratefully take their chance to turn their spirit into another direction.
Watching Alan: loyal serious absorbed. As he carefully washed the white painted wood at the side of the stairs.
–What a help you are, she said. And bent to kiss the red golden hair, tufty over the ears, but smelling freshly.
He smiled up at her, and went back to the job, enjoying it, doing it crudely and not getting into the corners, but squeezing out the cloth with great
enthusiasm
.
–It’s fantastic fun.
–Not like that, she couldn’t help saying, but gently, knowing the clumsiness of his fingers, feeling the enormous generosity of it, his doing this on a bright Saturday morning instead of running about the garden.
They both looked into the bucket which held a whitish brown liquid, frothing a bit at the sides.
–I think I’d better change the water, he said. And when she laughed saying, I think you’d better, he laughed back at her freely, his whole face opening with laughter, delighted to share a sense of the job’s
absurdity
.
A little guiltily, she bent to call between the stairs:
–Michael? Will you be picking up the bits on your floor, darling?
She knew he would not hear that, and went down to find him. And there he was sitting with the guitar on his lap, very attentively, his fingers picking out a new chord, the chord from the Brassens record, wasn’t it? That he liked so much. Head to one side, tongue
between
little sharp teeth, he hummed, his bare feet tapping the floor.
–Look at this room, she wailed.
But Michael gave two knocks on the wood of his guitar; and beat out the new chord again
‘Mais pour bien vous punir
Un jour vous voyez venir
Sur terre
Les enfants non voulus
Ils viennent chevelus
Poètes.’
She regarded him curiously.
–You say the French very well, Michael! I wonder if you.
–Listen, he interrupted her. His face white, mouth pursed, and a little smile appearing at the corner of his lips as he saw she was watching him with pleasure. But she could hear Alan’s voice, lonely and aggrieved from the top landing.
–Michael, she said hastily. There’s a crisis, Johnnie’s coming to tea. We must get cleared up.
Michael looked up with clear hostile eyes.
–Let Alan help then, he said coldly.
–He
is
,
she said edgily.
–Then that’s all right. Michael went back to his first piece.
She accepted it. It was easier. But could not help the angry glare in
her eye as it lit on him, sitting, humming,
playing, as she and Alan flew about the house picking up and hoovering: to get straight.
By quarter to two, lunch over, dishes away under the sink the shining steel of the draining board immaculate, not even a Daz packet or a coffee pot, the floor: blue, radiant blue with a light glazing of polish. And the stairs. The whole house breathed in the February light, leafless trees entered the huge windows, their slender branches suddenly the only disjuncture in rooms of clear surfaces.
–Isn’t it pretty everywhere. Lena was stunned. Saying again, as she did once a week, forgetting work, the hospital, the impossibility of getting a char. Shouldn’t we keep it like this? wouldn’t it be fun?
*
And they waited for Johnnie to come.
Alan found waiting difficult. She knew that, and yet she couldn’t help him. She knew looking at the hard curve of the neck against his collar as he craned forward at the window for a sight of the bus, that he was afraid, geared for disappointment. Why? To ease him, she said: People are nearly always a bit late, darling.
–I’m just making sure I don’t miss him, said Alan, a bit embarrassed. Michael looked importantly at his watch.
–He hasn’t been before, said Alan.
–Well, would you like to go and stand out by the stop? she suggested.
–And I’ll come with you, added Michael.
–No, you don’t
pig
,
he’s my visitor, said Alan swiftly Michael pursed his lips.
–Now that’s silly, said Lena (in spite of herself looking at the clock again). Why can’t you both play with him? Football. It’s more fun with three.
–Because we want to play chess, said Alan. Anyway.
Football goes all uneven with three.
–I’ll play the two of you, offered Michael.
–Now, don’t be completely absurd, said Alan hotly.
You can’t even stand up to
one
of us, so where’s the sense in that? And he’s
come
to play chess.
–
If
he comes, said Michael. Pointedly he inspected his watch. Mine says quarter to.
–It’s fast, said Lena.
–No, said Michael, very precisely. What does your watch say, Adam?
–Quarter to, Alan agreed. And left the window, his eyes bulging a little, his lower lip slackening, as the lines at the side of his nose deepened. Michael went back to his book.
–Let’s have another coffee, suggested Lena. And, look, what about one of the cakes we’ve got for tea? We’ve got plenty.
Michael grinned. Don’t worry, I’ll eat them up if Johnnie doesn’t come.
–Of course he’ll come, shouted Alan. You don’t
want
him to come, but he’ll come. He’s my best, my very best friend!
And sticking his hands in his pockets he left the room. Lena heard the bang of the front door.
–Must you be so spiteful? she asked.
–I suppose Alan was just lovey-dovey, said Michael indifferently. Or didn’t you notice that? Anyway what I
say
doesn’t make any difference does it?
–But you say things to
hurt.
Michael considered: Well, he is late isn’t he. That’s all I was saying. Sometimes you don’t like me just to say
facts.
*
It was so close to Ben’s voice Lena was stopped by it. And now, even as she heard the door she questioned the truth of it, linked her own anxiety and Alan’s,
hated their similar complaisance, their feverish
dependence
.
Michael bent his black head over a book.
Then the two boys rushed in, Alan’s face shining now, mouth wide with laughter, and Johnnie too! bold faced and giggling.
–Missed the bus, Alan was saying triumphantly. But great now he’s here what shall we do?
–Football, said Johnnie instantly.
And Michael raised his head from his book.
Lena made no sound or move.
–O.K., O.K., said Alan. He didn’t care. And suddenly, looking at Michael he added roughly. Come on Michael. And the three of them set off, out on to the untidy grass lawn. She could hear the yells and groans clearly through the glass.
Upstairs she opened the window and looked down on the garden. The high notes of birds, and the rising of voices from the children invisible behind the
greenhouse
came into her with the May smells, and the lilac.
All the trees were green now: yes almost she could say she was happy.
–You can say anything. There was Ben’s voice. In her head to answer her.
As though lies ever were what people chose to subsist in, as though truth were a thing which could ever be handed over intact. When he hated the simplicity of her readings he never took in the tones of his own presence, how every word in a conversation was
coloured
by when and how. Like.
–You look better dressed than undressed, she
remembered
that. That was true. And said by herself in front of a mirror, looking at the neatness of a new dress, the unexpected pleasure of green and blue in close proximity, the deep bronze of her stockings.
And said by him from the bed, his eyes remembering always, the others: how differently loaded the words would be. Always those other women, Mrs. T. the landlady she remembered. Well, that one at least would be
fifty
now, she thought with relish. And dried up surely where he best remembered.
A sudden peal of laughter from the children reached her. There they were on the scrubby grass, both her boys with their shirts out flapping. They had set up two sticks for a goal, and mounted as dogged guard was Alan flying himself into the mud as the other two kicked the ball at him. And Michael his thin elbows working swerved and dodged and kicked round the post, his eyes brilliant with determination also.
*
Looking again through the window she could see that the game was changing: to tennis. And she
remembered
. There were only two racquets. Ben’s old one, and the good Spalding she’d bought Alan when he went to his new school. (A mistake, probably.) And now she pushed at the sash of the window to open it but it was stuck. Silently through the glass she could
perceive
the line of the discussion as it developed from the ceremonious unclicking of the presses, the drawing across the garden of the sheeted clothes line in
preparation
, the positioning of Michael at the sideline, his face bright enough for the moment. As ball boy.
Should she go down? On the whole she decided against it. She was tired, and perhaps she would be wrong to interfere. What, after all, could she say? So she lay on the bed, picked up the Mailer paperback and stopped listening.
About an hour later she got up to call them in for tea. Coming in she could hear Alan’s excited voice: Gosh, that’s a great racquet, my Spalding. I played
really well, Mum. Did you know I was a great tennis player?
–And did Michael get a turn? she inquired.
–Well. We let him do it a bit, said Johnnie.
–He’s no
good
,
though, said Alan. The racquets are too heavy for him.
–That’s not true, said Michael.
–Well! you don’t
play
well, anyway, said Alan. He had already begun to eat passionatedly. Lena shared a few sandwiches on to the three boys’ plates.
–I don’t want those. I think I’ll just have my cake, said Michael.
–No. Bread first, said Lena firmly.
–I’m not hungry for bread.
–Bread first.
–Then I won’t have anything. Michael got up
shrugging
.
Irritated, Lena went on sharing out tomato sandwiches and biscuits on to his empty plate. Then she followed him, into the hall, and called. A bit of a perfunctory shout: she expected no reply.
*
From the kitchen she could hear Alan and Johnnie talking passionately. Arguing over the bumps of uncut grass and the way they put out the bounce of the ball, and then as they sensed her absence the interchange turned into quick meaningless punning, from
grass
to
pass
to
arse
: until suddenly she heard Alan say, irrelevantly again.
–I’m great at tennis though.
He wasn’t, she reflected very good at games in general. It worried her to hear him boast, but Johnnie seemed to accept it happily enough.
–Have you had enough to eat? she came back to press them.
They had not. So she cut more bread and they were still eating when the phone rang—Kari: Johnnie’s mother, at that moment rather measured and distant as she was trying to organise the return of her several children from different parts of the town.
–Are you O.K. Lena? she found a moment briefly to ask. But the main point was would Lena make sure Johnnie got the right bus, would she cross the road with him: now, in fact because his father wanted to see him.
So Lena stopped tea, found Johnnie’s coat and a blue ball he said was his, though she had some doubts about that, and it was almost six o’clock before she
remembered
Michael again.
She did so with an intense, ill-defined apprehension, and she wished somehow she had found him before Johnnie’s ball and coat, as she looked through room after room while Alan went on phlegmatically eating up the biscuits.
Unfairly she yelled at Alan: You aren’t helping much. Where’s Michael? Go and look in the sheds for him, will you?
At which he made a face of disgust and reluctance. But he moved a foot or two towards the door picked up an apple and said: I shouldn’t think he’s there really, Mum.
–Never mind that, go and look.
–Michael, he just managed to call through his apple, peering at the open door into the garden.
She gave him a none-too-gentle pat on the bottom, and he went off slowly up the path still eating.
A moment later she was frozen by a shriek of horror. And rushing out after him she cursed her own sloth, expecting what disaster she could barely formulate, calling
Michael
,
Michael
: miserably.
She came instead upon Alan standing stupefied in the centre of the garden, holding his racquet. Bewildered, she looked about him for Michael, whose tormented or mangled form she somewhere expected to see. Instead there was only Alan crying, real tears of fury, yelling. Puzzled, she came closer.
–What the hell is it? she asked.
And then could see. The four central strings were snipped through cleanly and hung loose against the frame of the others.
–How. Did
that
happen? How? blubbered Adam.
–Shut up, she said, automatically. And was thinking of Michael. Oh, Christ, not that much spite in him surely, not that much hatred please.
–I don’t know, she said. The garden door is open.
–You mean someone would come in from outside then? Why? said Alan. Why would anyone do a thing like that?
She examined the racquet again. The strings where they were cut were like hard wax points.
–I wonder what he used. They’re pretty tough, she speculated.
And now out of the corner of her eye, she could see Michael. And he
had
been in the sheds, the white powder of them was all over him. In his hand was a piece of wood he had been carving.