Field Study (8 page)

Kenny spends a day in bed. He goes to sign on. He does a day’s work for his brother-in-law, who gives him a sofa and some paint. He repaints all the doors in the flat, and starts on the skirting boards. Then he phones Maria.

She sounds happy to hear from him and they chat for a while about this and that. She tells him her dad’s got work again and he says that’s really good news because it’s been about three years hasn’t it, and she says, over. Kenny can hear that Maria is smiling while she talks about how happy her mum is and how everything will be easier now. It makes him smile too and forget to listen properly, and so he nearly misses it when Maria says she’d like to come over tomorrow evening. He says fine, and then they say goodbye and Kenny’s back in the flat before he knows it. He sits in the kitchen and stares at the TV.

It’s late when he wakes up. He has a bath and cleans the windows. He doesn’t want to sit around waiting like the last time, so goes for a walk in a park which is something
he would never normally do. Then he gets a bus across the centre of the city, sitting on the top deck. On the way back, he gets off at the river and walks across one of the bridges. It’s late afternoon when he gets to the other side and he realises he has no money left to buy anything for dinner. He gets a bus to his mum’s to borrow a tenner till he gets his giro. She’s hurt because he’s in a hurry, so he promises to come for Sunday lunch.

When he gets back, Maria is sitting on the step outside the block, but she’s not annoyed. Tells him she was early, thought she’d wait a bit. She looks relieved.

They cook dinner together and eat in the kitchen, not saying very much, but feeling quite cosy. It gets dark and they wash up, and then Maria says she would really like some chocolate.

She is lying on the bed when he comes back from the shop. He throws the sweets on the mattress and sits down next to her. She has a sip of his lager and eats her chocolates and they watch a film together and she falls asleep. He stares at her belly and her breasts and her legs for a long time and then he covers her up and goes to sleep on the sofa. He hears her get up and go to the toilet, but she doesn’t come into the living room, so he doesn’t go back into the bedroom.

She stays for breakfast and helps him finish the skirting boards, but after lunch she goes home. Kenny washes up and then he has a bath and he thinks about Maria. About
all the times they slept together before, and how he doesn’t know if sleeping together now would be a good idea or not, but he wants to all the same and he hopes she does, too. He’s already been in the flat for a month.

It’s Saturday and he’s got no money, so he spends the day in bed half watching telly, mostly thinking about Maria. He needs to pay the rent soon. He needs some money for food and fags and bus fares. When the baby comes he’ll need ten times more. He does some maths on the back of an envelope and it all adds up to needing a job. Sunday lunch tomorrow: he’ll ask his brother-in-law.

His brother-in-law says he’ll ask his boss, but he can’t promise anything. His sister tells him to look in the paper like everyone else and his dad tells her to be quiet. She is for a minute or two and they all eat, but then she says that Kenny shouldn’t have got Maria pregnant in the first place if he doesn’t have a job, and Kenny’s dad swears at her. Kenny’s mum leaves the room and then Kenny’s dad gets angry and Kenny’s brother-in-law just carries on eating and Kenny thinks that would be me if I was married to Maria and sitting in a family row. He has to pay the rent, and he owes his mum a tenner, and he knows she worries, and he has to chew every mouthful twenty times to distract himself from throwing the dishes around the room. Sprouts in the shag pile, gravy on the walls.

Kenny’s dad comes round and takes him in to work. Only there’s nothing for him to do and Kenny thinks his dad is
probably paying him out of his own pocket, which is like taking five tenners off his mum and giving her one back. After the second day he tells his dad he’s got some other work. Kenny’s dad knows he’s lying, and Kenny knows that he knows.

He goes to sign on. Pays the rent, gives his dad a tenner for his mum, gets a bag of fifties for the meter and buys a week’s worth of bread and beans. He gets a paper every morning and takes a pile of coins to the phone box to call for jobs but there’s nothing doing. It rains a fair bit that week and Kenny wishes he had a phone so Maria could call and it wouldn’t be up to him to swallow his lump of pride every time. He holds out over the weekend, and then on Sunday night the buzzer goes.

Kenny goes down this time and keeps Maria company up the stairs. She’s a bit bigger again and she looks good, even in the damp stairwell.

They settle down on the bed quite quickly and turn the TV on but leave the light off. The room gets darker and they get under the duvet where it is warm, and Kenny feels Maria’s legs next to his, her belly pressed against his ribs. They share a can of lager and stay like that until it gets late and they’re both sleepy. Maria slips to the edge of the mattress and takes off her trousers and socks. She leaves her knickers on but takes off her bra under her T-shirt. Then she gets back under the duvet. Kenny kicks off his jeans and turns the telly off. The room is quiet and dark
and neither of them moves for a while. Kenny really needs to pee now, but maybe Maria will fall asleep while he’s out of the room. He puts a hand on her arm. She breathes steadily and doesn’t move. Kenny gets up quietly and goes to the bathroom.

He pees in the dark and brushes his teeth and decides to talk to her in the morning.

Maria rolls over when he gets under the duvet and puts a hand on his stomach. He touches her fingers and then strokes her arm, and then he rolls over and strokes her back. He can’t see her in the dark, but he knows her eyes are open. He kisses her and she puts her hands on his chest. Kenny takes his T-shirt off and then he takes hers off, too. She is uncomfortable, but he thinks she’s beautiful.

He isn’t sleepy. He wonders if it was the right thing to do. She doesn’t say anything, but lies very still next to him. After a while, she rolls onto her side and goes to sleep. A little later, she rolls over again, putting her back to him. After that, Kenny goes to sleep, too.

In the morning he cooks breakfast and they eat in bed. Kenny reads the paper while Maria has a bath. His brother comes round with the paint and an eighth. They whisper in the narrow hall so Maria won’t hear. Kenny’s brother smiles, pats him on the elbow and says he’ll leave them to it.

Maria gets back into bed to read the paper and Kenny
makes a start on the bathroom. She comes in after a while with a cup of tea for him and he asks her if she likes the colour. She nods, but doesn’t look too certain, so Kenny says she can choose the colour for the big room if she likes. Maria shrugs.

– Blue.

– If it’s a boy.

– Yeah. Whatever.

She comes back in a bit later with her coat on. The paint smell is making her a bit sick, thought she’d go for a walk, buy a pint of milk.

__

Kenny waits.

He doesn’t turn the lights on when it gets dark and he doesn’t cook himself any dinner, he just lies in the bed. He can’t cry and he can’t sleep. He lies very still and smokes his brother’s eighth.

At the end of the week Kenny cashes his giro and paints the living room blue.

He goes to the phone box and calls his brother to see if he can stay over. He rings his mum and says he won’t come for Sunday lunch, but he’ll see her soon. Early evening, Kenny hands the keys back to the neighbour and walks out of the estate onto the main road.

The architect was young and enthusiastic, energetic and ambitious. He had a quiet passion for space, for dimensions, for awe. For comfort, for splendour and for ease. This passion was undimmed by the pragmatics of fire escapes, minimum sanitation requirements, cost-effective building materials, and optimum car-parking arrangements.

The architect’s designs were singular. His drawings and his gracious manner somehow inseparable. Bureaucrats with construction millions would comb their hair and run a checking tongue across their dentures in preparation for their meetings. Those clients who fell for his designs invariably also fell for him.

Small articles had begun to appear in specialist journals, respectful in their appraisal. The architect was treading a unique path and considered himself a lucky man: success and all its grand gestures, though still distant, seemed inevitable.

Today, however, is different.

All week the architect has struggled and strained, but what he has produced bears no relation to his expectations, and he feels critical of every line he has drawn. Although he can name each fault, he cannot make improvements.

It has never happened before and he is determined not to let it worry him.

Another project requires his attention. A simple matter of
redrawing the car park. Twelve executive spaces are required, not ten. He allows this task to stretch over three working days. A minor incident on the face of it, but his boss is puzzled. Upset, even, though he does not show it. The partners discuss the architect over pub lunches and the secretaries start sugaring his coffee in sympathy, falling silent when he walks by.

The architect tells himself it’s nothing, that he just needs a break. He rings his brother and goes for the weekend. They are drunk, they are sober. They talk women, politics, work out an old grievance and resolve again to visit their father more often. Each feels happy with the time spent together.

The weeks go by, as they do, and the architect keeps busy. Long hours with little time for brooding, reflecting. Returning home from a conference, he reads his first newspaper in days. A new public building on the front page. Half the world throws hands up in horror, the other half claps hands in praise, and the architect skims the articles, avoiding the fact that he has no opinion.

Evening falls and he allows himself another look at the newspaper. The building is a puzzle to him, a shape. He cannot assess scale, proportion, quality. His mind’s eye sees no interior. A cold cloud gathers in his belly. He cooks dinner and watches TV.

At work, two glaring errors in a recent front elevation have been noted. The boss wants a word. The architect
retires to the associates’ washroom to think matters through. That elevation was done before. Before what? Before.

He starts crossing the road to avoid construction sites. He takes unpaid leave. On the telephone he tells friends that he is pursuing his own interests. He learns of others’ successes and tastes his first bitterness. He wants to confess. If I could laugh about this with someone. But he is ashamed of his feelings and buries them deep where they hurt most.

The days fall by, all swift and all exactly the same. He can no longer read newspapers, much less journals. Television is distressing rather than distracting. His savings are dwindling and the mortgage is a worry. He considers other careers. Each seems attractive for a day or so, an hour or two, but nothing lasts. At night he dreams structures, wakes hopeful and forgets them.

He asks his father for a loan, and it turns into a row.

– I’d like to see what you’re designing.

– You wouldn’t understand it anyway.

– If your mother were alive.

– If you were the last person on earth.

The dismissal notice from his boss – brimful of disappointment and regret – rests behind the clock on the mantel. Barely read, unacknowledged. It didn’t happen. He never had that job.

The architect spends as much time as possible outside, driving out to the country at dawn, and only returning after dark. He turns no lights on in the house, and fantasises about being found dead on a hillside. Flat on his back, arms outstretched against the damp ground. He imagines the last thing he’d see would be sky, blinkered by the long green grasses fluttering against his cold pink cheeks.

He talks to no one and worries about the need to be something worthwhile, meaningful, substantial, good. He worries about being boring.

His brother is impatient, irritated. Why doesn’t he get some work, stop sponging off Dad, think about other people for a change, get on with it. The architect sells his house, his car, his record collection, and moves in with his father. Back in his old room with the Meccano under the bed, the architect feels much better.

His days are spent sleeping and eating. His dad takes him to the allotment and sets him to digging, so as the boy will get some movement. He discusses sowing patterns with his son, and weeding strategies. Frosts and pests, composts and companion plants. And though the architect is quiet, his father is glad to have him around because he loves him very much.

His brother comes to visit regularly, and even brings his girlfriend once. She has a thoughtful manner and lovely hair. His dad is happier than he’s been in weeks, cracks
jokes and opens an extra bottle.

After dinner, she washes while the architect dries, and he asks her to take off her clothes. She is charming, unfailingly polite and ignores his request. The rest of the evening passes without incident, but his brother comes round the next morning with harsh words. On the way to the doctor’s, his dad tells the architect that he really mustn’t say such things. At lunchtime, his father’s eyes are red, but he heats the soup as usual, and they even listen to some music together.

Three months later the medication is reduced, although the twice-weekly hour of silence with a counsellor continues. The architect doesn’t tell her that he no longer has ideas. That floor plans make his chest ache. That he dreams of staircases crumbling beneath his feet. He knows all these things himself, and he also knows how banal they are. Instead, he cries a little, and after she expresses approval, he cries a great deal.

He starts looking in the paper for jobs. Wills himself to search through the architectural appointments, but finds his mind stubbornly closed to the idea. The shame of this is almost too much to bear, and he is regularly nasty to his father. Both know this is uncalled for, neither says anything about it.

In job interviews he cites an elderly parent as a reason for leaving his last employment. A change of direction was needed, he smiles, confesses. Dad was the catalyst, really.
The old charm trickles back again from the brink, and the managers understand crossroads, family commitments, appreciate the honesty, the evidence of storms weathered. Not all of them think this makes him employable, but he soon has a job.