The Blue Last (6 page)

When there was time in the Moonraker, Benny would sit on the library ladder and read
David Copperfield,
his favorite book. It was because David was worse off than Benny that he liked it. Benny felt lucky there was no Mr. Murdstone in his own life to make him miserable. Of course, the other side of that was there was no Peggotty to help Benny over a misery, so maybe life evened itself out pretty much, the same terms for him and for David.

But it still made him sit there thinking, his chin in his cupped hand, elbow on knee, for long periods. Was it better to have no enemies, even if it meant no friends, or have both? This was not an easy question. Anyway, he really couldn't say he had no friends for there were the people he lived with, and the people he delivered to, who were very friendly toward Benny and Sparky. As for his employers, it was only Mr. Siptick and Mr. Gyp who could stand in for Mr. Murdstone. Mr. Siptick was forever going on about the things he did wrong and Mr. Gyp was always asking pointed questions about Benny's mum (his dad being dead, which was true) and ending up with asking
“You sure you got a mum, Benny Keegan?”
—he'd ask with his wheezing kind of laughter—
“or should I go call the Social?”

This froze Benny's insides, not only for himself, but also for Sparky. And Sparky even took a couple of steps backward when Mr. Gyp mentioned the Social. But for all the icy fear that replaced the blood running through his veins, Benny was canny enough to keep his expression noncommittal when he answered,
“Well, you could do, but when they came to the house to take me away, Mum, she'd be pretty mad and I wouldn't work here no more. Anymore,”
he'd corrected himself. A lot of reading in the Moonraker had vastly improved his speech. The thing was, Mr. Siptick and Mr. Gyp, neither of them wanted to lose Benny, for Benny worked for much less—and did a better job—than anyone else they could have found.

This morning Mr. Siptick, wearing his same old green jacket with his name, SIPTICK, on the pocket, rolled up a copy of
Gardener's World
and handed it to Benny. “Just you mind that mutt don't slobber all over it.” Mr. Siptick said this every day.

“His name's Sparky and did anyone ever complain about slobbering?”

Benny also answered this way every day. Sparky could carry two papers at once, since Benny put them in a thin, brown bag to make it easier for him to keep them together.

Mr. Siptick waved a dismissive hand and settled down on his stool to count his money out for the day. “Well, go on,
go
on!”

“You forgot the Toblerone for old Mrs Ely.”

“For pity's sake, boy, just pick one up, candy's right in front of you!”

Benny took a Toblerone from one of the candy boxes lined up on a rack. “Okay, I'm off.”

Mr. Siptick made no answer.

On Monday morning, which this was, his usual deliveries were one,
Daily Telegraph
to the butcher, Mr. Gyp; two, sausages and racing form to Brian Ely; three,
Telegraph, Times
and
Guardian
to the boys at Delphinium (Benny thought they used all these papers to cut flowers over); four,
Times
to the Moonraker; and five, if Miss Penforwarden was sending books along, Benny's favorite stop was a big house called Tynedale Lodge.

It was convenient to go next to the butcher's for that way he could pick up the sausages for Brian Ely when he dropped off Mr. Gyp's paper. Sparky always knew when they were going to Mr. Gyp's for he seemed to droop. Sparky was some kind of terrier, Sealyham, maybe. Sparky looked just like Snowy, the white dog in
Tin-Tin,
with his oblong white-tufted face. Neither of them could stand Mr. Gyp. In his usual sharp-tongued way, he started complaining about lateness when Benny and Sparky were hardly in the door.

“I can't help it if Mr. Siptick makes me late.”

“You just mind your tongue, Master Keegan. And that there dog, too. I don't want him gettin' his teeth into these sausages for the Elys.”

As if Sparky didn't know better. Benny handed Sparky two more papers he'd been carrying under his arm, and he himself carried the sausage. He said the same thing and got the same reply.

“Well, I'm off.”

Nothing.

Brian Ely was a stocky man with a head like a bullet, which was close to his shoulders, so that he seemed to be perpetually shrugging. He wore loud suits with wide lapels.

“Ah! Sausages! Have these for our tea, we will. Paper's here, Mum!” he shouted back over his shoulder. Benny couldn't decipher the tremulous reply. He wondered why old Mrs. Ely didn't die. She always seemed in the process, what with her lack of breath and always having to hang on to things—chair backs, stair rails, coatracks, people—to keep herself upright. She was worn down to nothing but a bag of bones. It was a wonder.

Brian Ely exclaimed over the racing form as if he didn't get it nearly every morning. “The form! Good lad. He took the brown bag from Sparky's mouth, removed the racing form. He shook it open. “What d'you like in the ninth at Doncaster?” He looked down at Sparky, who seemed to be thinking it over.

“See you, Mr. Ely. Oh, and here's your mum's Toblerone.” He handed that over and then raised his voice. “'Bye, Mrs. Ely!” he shouted. He wished he'd just gone ahead and left, for now he saw Mrs. Ely making her breathless way toward them from the rear parlor.

“C'm on, Ma, no need to exert yourself.”

There was a wooden rod all along the wall of the hallway, attached there just so old Mrs. Ely could hold herself up. “Just . . . wan' . . . pa . . .” she said, or tried to. The rest was lost in her gathering in enough breath even to get that across. She stopped, holding on with both hands and breathed asthmatically. Her face was bloodless, but that appeared to be its natural color. Benny wondered if she would drop dead there and then, but he supposed not, as she'd done this many times before. She was always falling down, too.

Brian Ely just shook his head and heaved a sigh as he refolded the racing form. He went a few paces down the hall to where his mum was gasping for breath, handed her the racing form and she then turned to make her breathless way back.

“Got no patience, has Mum. No, she's got to have that form first thing and don't even like me reading it first.”

Benny asked, “Why don't I bring two, then? You could each have your own copy.”

Brian Ely laughed. “Oh, I thought of that. But she'd just think I was hiding something. Ever so suspicious. Well, she's a good old mum fer all that. I'll say it if I must—she can really pick 'em. Would 'ave made a good tout, she would.”

After the door closed on them, Benny just stood there until Sparky gave him a nudge. They both trotted on to the Moonraker.

It was four steps down, each step bearing a gold-painted moon in its different phases. Sybil Penforwarden had hired a painter to do that. Inside the walls were brownish-red brick. On two sides of the room were arched openings, forming what looked like four separate chambers filled with shelves of books.

The bell rasped at the opening of the door and brought Miss Penforwarden from the shadows of the back shelves into the shadows of the front ones. Benny looked around, then called, “ Morning, Miss Penforwarden.” The little shop was ill lit, but that was one of the reasons Benny liked it. There were dim wall sconces against the brick and an old metal shade hung from the ceiling, throwing a swooning kind of yellow light over the books. This light made his eyelids heavy. He always thought there was something stranded about the shop, something alien and other-worldly. Maybe it was just the name.

Miss Penforwarden came out from the rear of the shop, cheerful as ever. “Benny, I'm so glad you came round this morning. I'm getting up a parcel of books to go to the Lodge. Can you take them?”

Of course he could, as she well knew. Yet she always acted as if Benny's appearances here were a stroke of wonderful luck, something that happened erratically, even though he'd been coming for a year like clockwork. She liked to allude to his “larger” life, as if there were important things going on in it and the Moonraker was merely a blip on the screen.

“You just find a seat and I'll be back in two shakes.”

“Okay,” he said. She'd be back in many more shakes than just two. He headed toward the shelf of books nearest the window, Sparky at his heels. He loved the room and the alcoves in which were floor lamps situated over easy chairs, in case a customer needed more light to have a quiet read. The chintz slipcovers were faded and threadbare, which made them all that much more comfortable and less apt to bother Miss Penforwarden, the bother of children's sticky hands or dirty shoes. There was the children's corner in the back that held a table and small chairs, stuffed animals, blocks, puzzles. Yet Benny had never seen a child back there; the few who came gravitated to the front room.

Miss Penforwarden had told Benny the room originally must have been a wine cellar for the house (now sectioned off into small flats). Benny said the only other purpose it could have served was as a dungeon. He liked this dungeon notion. He had never been to the Tower of London or any of the great houses and castles that might have harbored a dungeon, so dungeon life was fair game. What he really had to worry about more than being thrown in a dungeon was thinking up explanations of why he wasn't in school. First, he considered illness, like a heart murmur he'd had since a baby, but then somebody had said working the way he did, wouldn't that put more strain on a heart than just sitting in a schoolroom? Then he had said it was his asthma and had given a few voluntary wheezy coughs to demonstrate. But it was mostly Mr. Gyp who bothered him this way and he tried to ignore it.

Benny pulled down
David Copperfield
and looked for the place he'd marked with a toothpick. He didn't think Miss Penforwarden would mind.

But his thoughts trailed across the page. He was thinking of that “larger” life Miss Penforwarden liked to refer to, the one he didn't have. He wasn't sure he even wanted one. For he liked routine, the sort of action that would go with a “smaller” life: the blue dawn over Waterloo Bridge, his morning tea and thick bread and making his deliveries. But a “larger” life was the kind of life he imagined for the inhabitants of Tynedale Lodge, though he couldn't clothe it in any particular activity. Tennis, perhaps?

Dancing? Swordplay with masks on? A mysterious life. He was curious about it, but as he never went anywhere except for the garden and kitchen when he delivered things, he supposed he would never know. Certainly, it would include countless relations and friends. He hadn't any relations and the nearest he had to friends were the people within his delivery route and his mates where he lived.

David Copperfield
still open in his hands, he leaned his head against the other Dickens books and thought about his mum. She had liked her routines, too. Selfridges had been on Thursdays. Harrods, Monday; Harvey Nick's, Tuesday. He had argued that people knew right away they were Irish, for that's what so many of the Irishwomen did, keeping a baby with them or a child. And these people didn't like the Irish. Begging mortified Benny. Whenever some passerby dropped coins in his upturned cap, Benny looked away. But at least his mother didn't walk on the pavement holding his hand and stopping first one woman, then another. That's what so many of them did. His mum would tell him, when he asked about their present awful state, that she was so sorry things had gone to the bad for them.

Da died,
he would say, as if he were explaining things to her. But she didn't seem to like to speak of his father because it pained her so much.

She'd talk about their old home in County Clare.
Ah, beautiful it was! But never mind; we'll get back there when things improve, so.

Benny looked down at the pages of
David Copperfield.
It was something about Steerforth. Benny thought about David's mum, how pretty she was. And so had his own been. Prettier, he bet. Images of County Clare floated in his mind: the rough coast and the sea, the great smooth rocks worn down by the waves' onslaught, and fierce weather, the kind that met Steerforth and David when they went to visit Peggotty.

Good books, his mum had said, will always keep you in good stead.
Good books, Bernie, are important. Read as much as you can.

His name was really Bernard, but he had so much trouble getting his tongue around that
r
when he was tiny, it came out “Benny.” As names you start out with will stick, so had his.

“Here we are, dear,” said Miss Penforwarden, who had come with the tied-up parcel. There was also a small book, which she tied with string so Sparky could carry it. “It's for young Gemma,” said Miss Penforwarden.

It wasn't wrapped, so Benny could see the title:
Name Your Cat.
“She's not even got a cat.”

Benny and Sparky left with the books.

G
emma was already at the back gate when Benny and Sparky got there, as usual holding the doll dressed in its “baptismal clothes”(Gemma called them), a bonnet and a biscuit-colored and dingy dress, its length covering the feet and trailing down. This doll remained nameless; she could not decide. Last time, she had been through the
Q
s and must now be up to the
R
s.

The gate creaked back and he entered the rear garden of the Lodge. The top of the gate was higher than Gemma's head. She was nine and the butler, Barkins, was always telling her she was too old for dolls. Benny had said that's ridiculous, you can never be too old for something you really liked.

Benny asked, “What'd you want this cat book for?” Sparky had dropped it at her feet and himself trotted off, over to the pond, which he seemed partial to. Probably to watch the big goldfish.